Re:ACLU apply their standards *very* unevenly
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The modern constitutional doctrine is really quite clear: once the child is "viable" it is protected as a person. Before that, it is part of the mother.
Strictly speaking, this is not very good biology, as well, different DNAs, etc, but it does provide the same level of protection that a dying man with tubes in every every body cavity has--both he and the child are on life support and are therefore not fully protected.
There are differences (the dying man is terminal, the child is not), but this has really been decided. The majority of Americans now support abortion and the Court has upheld this in numerous decisions.
As a further aside, you must remember that the ACLU sees this as a right which deserves protecting: the right to privacy. So saying that they are abridging rights is true, but they are protecting the rights of mothers at the cost of unviable fetus' rights.
Other World Computing is one of the bigger Apple resellers and their support is quite interesting. In a lot of ways, Apple is going to have a hard time attacking him just because one of their closest allies is supporting him (though I do think he is going to need a new name--iProduct is just too close to Apple names to not cause "brand confusion"). Of course, this could be interesting--either Jobs & Co. do a Bush and ruin relations with all their allies and friends, or they allow it to go ahead and only cripple it behind the scenes. I am betting they just manage to get the supply costs to skyrocket and make the eMac/iMac more competitive with his soon-to-be higher priced box. But that is just a prediction. Maybe they will realize that if his box is well made, it could help them win market share in the low-cost category.
Of course, the ideal situation is for Apple to let him exist and just use him as the bargain basement entree into Apple-land. That way, Apple can continue to make super-high quality boxes and let him eek out a profit as the Walmart PC of the Apple world.
More than 50% comes from the Mid East, eh? Maybe if you LIVE in the middle east that is true, but not here in the U.S. (see Domestic Oil Use). oh, and not all Middle eastern countries are "terrorist" states--rarely are Kuwait or Saudi Arabia (or other autocratic allies) classified as "terrorists." So I suggest you think about this: terrorism is not a new problem and is not confined to the middle east. Try Pacific terrorists, the right-wing extremists in the U.S., we used to have Puerto Rican extremists blowing up cars on the interstates, Northern Ireland, Corsican terrorists, etc. These are all non-Muslim terrorists that have been more dangerous until one amazingly high-profile attack (9/11). That was not the end-all and be-all of the terror world.
And if you really want to get coy, you can stop buying sheep from Corsica and rum from Puerto Rico (in case the Puerto Ricans deicde to start a new terror campaign). Grow up; we cannot stop all chanels to terrorists in a free market system. So if you want to create a central planning and development structure for the world with its politburos, fine, but short of that and a MASSIVE police force, you will never stop chanelling money to bad people (like Coca-Cola who has hired the military in South American states to execute labor organizers, or Exxon-Mobil, etc, etc).
I have used LaTeX and HTML to write papers before too. That doesn't mean that I am not more efficient using MS technology for my classwork... sometimes I need to send a draft copy to a prof, and it is nice that s/he can read the damn thing easily. The idea of switching a school is insane--imagine the Fine Art department's attempts at ditching Photoshop for GIMP (which does not have all the same functionality yet, but I still use it because it is free) or the modern language teachers trying to relearn the keyboard shortcuts as they try to write a paper for publication (last I checked, most 50 year-old non-technical profs would KILL if they had to do things differently).
This CANNOT be a real post, simply because no college president is stupid enough to even think about this. Unless the college only has CS and engineering classes, they need the MS apps just to keep the profs from storming his office in a rage that the "Windows" key is now a Meta key. People do not like to change systems--it is expensive and inefficient, and unless there is a compelling reason to do so, they should not need to move. To say that "we are moving to OSS because it is free" is absurd--software costs are not the biggest number in most computing environments, and in many applications, MS technology is simply better than others. Take the shared calendars in MS Office (for Windows only, dammit! though I guess OS X is getting it soon). That technology is actually good and useful. Sure it may pick up a virus every week, but it has functionality that no other system has.
Now imagine a different scenario. A kid runs XP so he can run his games. He writes a presentation for Powerpoint. He brings it to class and it doesn't work with the system there! While we may hate MS for good reason, it does provide a common system for us to be compatible with. MS is the most used system in the world, and even if they move to OS X, they will still need to use Office just to make sure they can keep up with the students' home gaming boxes. Do not underestimate this--the students will still use their Windoze boxes and will want the damned college computers to work with theirs.
um, plus here in CT we have 2 huge casinos... and the government does skim the profits, but then again, the tribes contribute ENORMOUSLY to the traffic and thus cost the state money. while the state may make money off of this, it is sort of like a tax on cigarettes or other "sins." sorry, I had to sit through the governor's budget address today and am a little tired of listening to the complaints about taxes (damned internship).
you are missing the point. if we get telephone spam and mail spam, there are real costs involved. this only adds a slight cost and hurts everyone while not stopping the email spam. it is absolutely absurd. the correct solution is for the government to institute "no call" lists like they have for telephones and to aggressivley monitor the offenders. this requires that we can actually trace mail back to the source (i.e., no annonymous email). but I will gladly give up the modicum more privacy in email over snail mail if I never get another spam without the AG's office getting involved (plus I really doubt how much privacy I have now if the government really wanted to know what I was emailing people).
if MS is only required to release a subset of the code, what is to keep them from hiding the codecs in the other parts or intentionally obfuscating the source (ie, leaving the explanatory comments in the hidden parts)? basically, unless a company can get at the whole source, there can be some real issues and MS knows it.
you forget that CD/DVD are more tempermental than HD (if their head is positioned so that it is vertical). If you have ever had an incar CD player, you would know that they skip all the time unless buffered. Now unless you find a buffered CD player a HD is better suited. Also, keep in mind that with 8-10 Gigs of data, how often do you really need to take that puppy out of the trunk?
All I can say is wow. They are powerful, cool (tempurature) and look really nifty. And maybe they will kill Intel in the mobile market (which would make me very happy). Go Transmeta and make us proud!
This thing has one serious bug that prevents it from beating Ramen: it costs real money. Ramen costs what, $0.25 or less (except from 7-11) which makes it perfect for college/grad student geeks who only have a few cents for a meal. This thing must cost a buck or more. Now that is what is going to prevent this thing from actually ever beating (or coming nearly as popular as) Ramen. And it requires refridgeration/freezing which stops people from hoarding a flat of Ramen on the floor of their dorm room. No, Ramen is quite safe.
With Intel trying to play catch up with AMD and dropping RAMBUS in favor of traditional SDRAM after having committed to RAMBUS, it shouldn't surprise us that they are having a hell of a time. Frankly, I am surprised that they have not had more problems. True, they have been plagued with bugs, but they redesigned the whole board in a matter of weeks. Imagine if they didn't have a talented team...
While this sounds really cool (and it may be one day), for now, nothing works with it. For best effects, you need to encode anything with 2 cameras. To program Quake to use this, just imagine what it would be like. That and it is just analog makes it fairly uninteresting as far as I am concerned. Note, at least the thing has a 2D/3D button so you won't ruin your eyes on reading funky looking text.
try browsing their site... they only give you deskjet and laser jet drivers. If you want other ones, it looks like you have to buy their commercial product based on the system. It only costs a few hundred dollars for the free CUPS core plus the drivers they should provide with their GPL software. Doesn't sound like such a hot deal to me.
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The modern constitutional doctrine is really quite clear: once the child is "viable" it is protected as a person. Before that, it is part of the mother.
Strictly speaking, this is not very good biology, as well, different DNAs, etc, but it does provide the same level of protection that a dying man with tubes in every every body cavity has--both he and the child are on life support and are therefore not fully protected.
There are differences (the dying man is terminal, the child is not), but this has really been decided. The majority of Americans now support abortion and the Court has upheld this in numerous decisions.
As a further aside, you must remember that the ACLU sees this as a right which deserves protecting: the right to privacy. So saying that they are abridging rights is true, but they are protecting the rights of mothers at the cost of unviable fetus' rights.
Other World Computing is one of the bigger Apple resellers and their support is quite interesting. In a lot of ways, Apple is going to have a hard time attacking him just because one of their closest allies is supporting him (though I do think he is going to need a new name--iProduct is just too close to Apple names to not cause "brand confusion"). Of course, this could be interesting--either Jobs & Co. do a Bush and ruin relations with all their allies and friends, or they allow it to go ahead and only cripple it behind the scenes. I am betting they just manage to get the supply costs to skyrocket and make the eMac/iMac more competitive with his soon-to-be higher priced box. But that is just a prediction. Maybe they will realize that if his box is well made, it could help them win market share in the low-cost category.
Of course, the ideal situation is for Apple to let him exist and just use him as the bargain basement entree into Apple-land. That way, Apple can continue to make super-high quality boxes and let him eek out a profit as the Walmart PC of the Apple world.
More than 50% comes from the Mid East, eh? Maybe if you LIVE in the middle east that is true, but not here in the U.S. (see Domestic Oil Use). oh, and not all Middle eastern countries are "terrorist" states--rarely are Kuwait or Saudi Arabia (or other autocratic allies) classified as "terrorists." So I suggest you think about this: terrorism is not a new problem and is not confined to the middle east. Try Pacific terrorists, the right-wing extremists in the U.S., we used to have Puerto Rican extremists blowing up cars on the interstates, Northern Ireland, Corsican terrorists, etc. These are all non-Muslim terrorists that have been more dangerous until one amazingly high-profile attack (9/11). That was not the end-all and be-all of the terror world. And if you really want to get coy, you can stop buying sheep from Corsica and rum from Puerto Rico (in case the Puerto Ricans deicde to start a new terror campaign). Grow up; we cannot stop all chanels to terrorists in a free market system. So if you want to create a central planning and development structure for the world with its politburos, fine, but short of that and a MASSIVE police force, you will never stop chanelling money to bad people (like Coca-Cola who has hired the military in South American states to execute labor organizers, or Exxon-Mobil, etc, etc).
I have used LaTeX and HTML to write papers before too. That doesn't mean that I am not more efficient using MS technology for my classwork... sometimes I need to send a draft copy to a prof, and it is nice that s/he can read the damn thing easily. The idea of switching a school is insane--imagine the Fine Art department's attempts at ditching Photoshop for GIMP (which does not have all the same functionality yet, but I still use it because it is free) or the modern language teachers trying to relearn the keyboard shortcuts as they try to write a paper for publication (last I checked, most 50 year-old non-technical profs would KILL if they had to do things differently).
This CANNOT be a real post, simply because no college president is stupid enough to even think about this. Unless the college only has CS and engineering classes, they need the MS apps just to keep the profs from storming his office in a rage that the "Windows" key is now a Meta key. People do not like to change systems--it is expensive and inefficient, and unless there is a compelling reason to do so, they should not need to move. To say that "we are moving to OSS because it is free" is absurd--software costs are not the biggest number in most computing environments, and in many applications, MS technology is simply better than others. Take the shared calendars in MS Office (for Windows only, dammit! though I guess OS X is getting it soon). That technology is actually good and useful. Sure it may pick up a virus every week, but it has functionality that no other system has.
Now imagine a different scenario. A kid runs XP so he can run his games. He writes a presentation for Powerpoint. He brings it to class and it doesn't work with the system there! While we may hate MS for good reason, it does provide a common system for us to be compatible with. MS is the most used system in the world, and even if they move to OS X, they will still need to use Office just to make sure they can keep up with the students' home gaming boxes. Do not underestimate this--the students will still use their Windoze boxes and will want the damned college computers to work with theirs.
um, plus here in CT we have 2 huge casinos... and the government does skim the profits, but then again, the tribes contribute ENORMOUSLY to the traffic and thus cost the state money. while the state may make money off of this, it is sort of like a tax on cigarettes or other "sins." sorry, I had to sit through the governor's budget address today and am a little tired of listening to the complaints about taxes (damned internship).
you are missing the point. if we get telephone spam and mail spam, there are real costs involved. this only adds a slight cost and hurts everyone while not stopping the email spam. it is absolutely absurd. the correct solution is for the government to institute "no call" lists like they have for telephones and to aggressivley monitor the offenders. this requires that we can actually trace mail back to the source (i.e., no annonymous email). but I will gladly give up the modicum more privacy in email over snail mail if I never get another spam without the AG's office getting involved (plus I really doubt how much privacy I have now if the government really wanted to know what I was emailing people).
if MS is only required to release a subset of the code, what is to keep them from hiding the codecs in the other parts or intentionally obfuscating the source (ie, leaving the explanatory comments in the hidden parts)? basically, unless a company can get at the whole source, there can be some real issues and MS knows it.
you forget that CD/DVD are more tempermental than HD (if their head is positioned so that it is vertical). If you have ever had an incar CD player, you would know that they skip all the time unless buffered. Now unless you find a buffered CD player a HD is better suited. Also, keep in mind that with 8-10 Gigs of data, how often do you really need to take that puppy out of the trunk?
I hear they are working on patenting the word "book". Any day now, we should hear the outcome...
All I can say is wow. They are powerful, cool (tempurature) and look really nifty. And maybe they will kill Intel in the mobile market (which would make me very happy). Go Transmeta and make us proud!
This thing has one serious bug that prevents it from beating Ramen: it costs real money. Ramen costs what, $0.25 or less (except from 7-11) which makes it perfect for college/grad student geeks who only have a few cents for a meal. This thing must cost a buck or more. Now that is what is going to prevent this thing from actually ever beating (or coming nearly as popular as) Ramen. And it requires refridgeration/freezing which stops people from hoarding a flat of Ramen on the floor of their dorm room. No, Ramen is quite safe.
With Intel trying to play catch up with AMD and dropping RAMBUS in favor of traditional SDRAM after having committed to RAMBUS, it shouldn't surprise us that they are having a hell of a time. Frankly, I am surprised that they have not had more problems. True, they have been plagued with bugs, but they redesigned the whole board in a matter of weeks. Imagine if they didn't have a talented team...
While this sounds really cool (and it may be one day), for now, nothing works with it. For best effects, you need to encode anything with 2 cameras. To program Quake to use this, just imagine what it would be like. That and it is just analog makes it fairly uninteresting as far as I am concerned. Note, at least the thing has a 2D/3D button so you won't ruin your eyes on reading funky looking text.
try browsing their site... they only give you deskjet and laser jet drivers. If you want other ones, it looks like you have to buy their commercial product based on the system. It only costs a few hundred dollars for the free CUPS core plus the drivers they should provide with their GPL software. Doesn't sound like such a hot deal to me.