padren

Baseless accusations yes, but we are talking about observing a lot of events and dialog and drawing the conclusion they are deligitimizing their opponents. It's not simply shouting "You Deligitimize!" at the opposition. As far as assassinations go it was a valid concern when Bush was President and it's a valid concern now. There were nuts on the left that accused Bush of basically the largest black flag op in world history and murdering thousands of Americans, election fraud and all but eating babies for breakfast. He was pretty heavily deligitimized by those groups and accusing those groups of such had merit. The key difference from that time however, is the Democrats denounced those nuts just as Republicans did. There were Democrats that accused him of milking 9/11 and endangering civil liberties and a great number of things - but those were based on his actions, not his ideology and did not deligitimize him, merely criticized him. It's worth pointing out that difference and ask the question as to why Republicans are not denouncing these people. It has nothing to do with "scaring" anyone about possible assassinations or steering Obama's policy but to call the Republicans on their policies with regards to civil discourse.

As for the "punishment" factor, there are active groups that felt Katrina was the result of God's wrath for weak morals, as with 9-11, and just about any catastrophe. It's not about punishing them, it's about whether you can help them if it is God that is punishing them, and whether they have to get right with God first before any help you offer can do any good. I definitely acknowledge that there is a huge range of Christians and I by no means try to bunch all in one generalized group. The article pertains to "evangelicals" in particular, which also has a range but that overlaps with some pretty intensive faith based beliefs for how politics and at times, even business should run. To me, this system sounds similar to the idea of say, a church setting up a 'non commercial charter flight schedule' that is in every way an airline, but done without contracts and donations to do away with the "greed" and bureaucratic red tape (ie, federal regulations). That's fine and all, and could even be well done. It could also be run by the same people that believe American Airlines does not allow two Christian pilots to work on the same shift due to the potential of the rapture. For the record they believe this is AA's policy, some believe all airlines do this. Most important they believe this is done because it's the smartest and safest decision. Now, that's fine and good - but what we have is a bunch of people with "good intentions" who create a coop to sidestep the regular oversight (to save good people more money) of commercial versions who genuinely believe that (A) the regulations are good in theory to keep bad people honest but (B) really isn't needed for them because they are good people and now they are taking their experience as Ministers and church officials and trying to run an ad-hoc business. (At this point, this describes the medical coops and the example of an air-charter coop equally. Also, this is honestly the key element in my resistance to the coop program.) On top of that, if you throw into it people that believe commercial airlines take safety precautions to cope with The Rapture and think it's considered just good common sense that flight rosters should include one pilot non-Christian even if the only non-Christian available for a given flight has less experience, is a little sick, or far less rested than an alternative. It's fine to run a church with all those sorts of ideas. It starts to concern me when it starts bubbling over into critical programs. It always will to some degree, but it's not a trend I can see as anything but disconcerting.

I respect your opinion and there is validity. One of the real questions is are we discussing "health care coops" or "faith based health care" because you can have a secular coop with all the same strengths and caveats as any church run one. However, my concern is they are not trying to just bring a secular coop around the church mailing list - they are bringing the benefits of their faith into this system to do it better. Unless I read too deeply into the article of course, but I don't think I did. The problem is I only see one way it can play out: the benefits of faith brought to health care are no different than bringing the benefits of faith to a casino. Combine that with the fact they can loose money at a gross rate as long as they focus on improving recruitment and you have all the makings of a ponzai scheme. If they find themselves in that dangerous situation - what is the cause? Is it financial, or is it divine? Do they hold on to their faith and weather the storm, or bring in accountants to fix the mess? Or is it punishment for not adhering to the righteous path - are they supporting people in their system that have already turned their back on God? It's fine to run a church by faith - worst case people have to go somewhere else on Sundays if it shuts down. It's unsettling when faith starts to direct decisions in health care or emergency landing procedures in airplanes.

The real reason is that fossil fuels are used are first of course - as insane_alien mentioned, they are cheap, but you could argue the social cost in terms of pollution and long term environmental impact are not represented in the price. Of course: 1) The actual costs are not really determinable and the cause of much debate - some of the debate is considered disingenuous and for no other purpose than putting off settling such costs (that would be collected as taxes, used as incentives for renewable/clean energy and offsetting health costs due to pollution, etc) 2) The cost of paying those costs in terms of significantly raising energy prices are also debated. If the cost of fuel jumped to include covering the funds needed to counter the ill effects it could have a huge impact on the economy and slow the development of alternative sources - as such we intentionally defer those costs to future generations (though they catch up with us more every year) to stay "productive" and continue advancing technology so we can do away with those fuel types. We obviously can't ride the 2nd reason indefinitely though it has been cited as why we avoid various initiatives to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The problem is we need a genuine balanced approach based on a rational thought out plan, but too many parties are too motivated by self interest or fearful that other parties are disingenuous in their contributions to the discussion due to their self interest to really achieve any functional dialog. The plus side is we are approaching the turning point on alternative energy market viability, and as we get closer the cost of incentive programs to fill that gap becomes less cost-prohibitive as the actual price gap continues to close. We will probably have to hit a point where we actually do put huge taxes (ie, adjust for true long term cost) on fossil fuels because technology will reduce those costs too - but to do so at a point where alternative sources have hit the current competitive prices so it doesn't shock the economy. It's not unlike walking up a teeter-totter and shifting weight gently enough when you get to the middle that you don't slam the other side down. The transition requires delicacy but not to the point of trepidation - and at the same time you don't want unbridled righteous brute force. P.S: Your site fails to mention nuclear as a clean energy alternative. If you are concerned about the waste it's worth noting new technologies are developing that can help clean up our existing radioactive waste as a new safe energy source.

I agree 100%. I don't know the best solution, but the fact they had all that and everything was still legal seems a bit too lax. More importantly, there was no way to tell if it was legal. I am not suggesting a ban on any large group of weapons - just saying there's got to be a better way to fine tune the laws with this one.

I'd love it if we could build a bigger better collider for 2012. Firing it up in December would be awesome.

Just a note on this North Hollywood Shootout - if the guns were illegal, why were they returned when they were pulled over for speeding not long before? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout#Backgrounds Were these just the legal weapons they had on them? Of course the AKs and such they had at the time of the robbery were not on that list, but they had a pretty hefty arsenal. They were armed for Armageddon and they didn't serve more than 100 days and had most of their items returned. I've never quite understood this part of the story to be honest. Secondarily while police took one pretty clear message from that exchange (we need bigger guns) it also demonstrated the golden rule of crime for criminals - being armed to the teeth and shooting it out is still more lethal than getting in and out without a shot fired. No matter how prepared you think you are, being prepared to shoot it out still means being prepared to die. Being prepared to get in and out with a pistol beats preparing with bombs and AKs any day. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged First, before you can do that you have to determine if such a ban in the US would be as effective as a ban in the UK. In a lot of this country you may as well ban alcohol if you ban guns. You'll have a lot of people simply reject the law and by definition become criminals, subject to all the costs of criminalizing any activity - shattered careers, families, incarceration, prosecution, etc. What's more, if all guns were illegal then someone who wants a gun for home defense may have an easier time finding guns that are illegal now (clip size, etc) than guns that are less dangerous. That doesn't even touch on the constitutionality of such a law - just the practicality.

While I don't want to descend into a discussion on whether democracy itself is dead in the US... I will agree that it is severally impaired. First, it's not that people are being misinformed, it's that people want to be misinformed - they actively avoid competing points of view and criticism, fail to fact check, and accept their representatives making blanket statements like "Obama is delusional if he thinks he can..." without describing what they base such a statement on. They do this willfully (often on both sides) because they are so certain that their values are correct, and the "little facts" are not worth their concern. They feel they have a winning ideology that trumps the opposing ideology and there is no room for proposals that move the nation in a direction away from their ideological predilection. I see the largest problem being that we have gotten so polarized and distrustful of the "opposition" that the idea of working out a consensus has become unthinkable. As for holding representatives accountable the first thing people need to do is actually make it known to their representatives that their key issue is honest debate of the facts, and that requires millions of Americans actually writing their representatives when they drop that ball on a regular basis. When Wilson gets millions of dollars in days for an act he openly apologized for how can he take any message from that other than his outburst and subsequent disingenuous apology has the approval of his constituents? People didn't call him on his distasteful outburst - they funded him for it. Ironically, if they approve that, then they have to see his apology as disingenuous... and are actively supporting such underhanded tactics. Perhaps most of the people who voted for him actually found his behavior unacceptable from an ethical standpoint (lets just assume that for the sake of assuming we have ethical base) which is theoretically possible - what is certain though is they did not speak as loudly as those that did contribute funds. Those people are resigned to the idea that politics is an ugly affair and even the people they vote for will continue ugly politics. They are the ones failing the system IMO. They should be calling into every conservative radio show, writing him directly, and making their discontent known. A huge part of the problem is people are so jaded they just resign themselves to defeat of ever being able to counter the momentum in Washington. The next largest issue is people only tend to discuss politics with like minded people and stay to "trusted" news sources that already agree with them. We have to discuss issues with people of opposing views in a constructive manner to advance our own views. We have a lot of discontent but everyone vehemently defends a different direction in how to fix it - we actually have to come to the table with the notion that we don't individually all have it figured out yet or everyone just tries to hammer everyone else with their own ideas. We have to have some faith that proper civil discourse will lead to the best outcome in the long run, even if it takes a while for the best ideas to rise to the top. If we individually each think "my ideas are the best, but they will win out in the long run, even if not right now... and if they don't in the long run then they weren't the best afterall" we can actually let them compete in an open manner of debate on their merits, instead of panicking and trying to railroad our ideas through for fear that they'll be sunk due to dirty tactics of "the opposition." A huge part is myopic fear I think. Both parties rile up their bases to the point where the idea of the opposition winning just one election could spell unrecoverable disaster for the country - finally send it off that cliff to the left or right. People have to stop buying into that and demand policies be won on their merits, not through political force, even if it means their favorites may not win this election, or even next. We have to see the quality of the discussion as the most important thing to fight for, and all our ideas and ideological preferences must come second. It's the only way we can make any progress over any real span of time.

1) They make this rickety patch-work solution to address the current calamitous state of health care. 2) Health care legislation is proposed that not only closes the gaps their system was invented to help alleviate, but closes many of the gaps their system can't address. Now, they are worried they'll be left out because there won't be room for such shoddy programs as theirs. They could be looking forward to meeting the coverage requirements the legislation will call for (which only exist to benefit the participants) but instead they are worried they will not be able to exist in their current format. That would be like a bunch of people getting together in the neighborhood to be alert and put out fires as best they can here and there since there is no fire department in the community - only to get all worked up when plans to actually build a fire station comes before the city. On a whole other aside - I am personally unsettled by the whole idea of faith-based health care because health is a life and death issue and to introduce more faith into that critical thought process makes about as much sense as going to your pastor for advice on how to manage your real estate investments. For all the places where prayer can play a role in people's lives, it shouldn't apply to praying that their medical bills get paid on nothing but faith in a promise. Right now insurance companies do fail to comply with their promises too often through legal loopholes, but these guys don't even have to jump through loopholes. While the decision is up to the individual and their own faith of course - I feel a lot better when people make health care decisions based on the facts and the numbers they have without the idea of divine intervention. A lot of people have no conflict with their religion and the advice of their doctors. Now we have ministries creating these programs that essentially require you to have faith that God would not allow too many sick people to overtax the pool. Combined with forcing the potential applicant into the situation of choosing a health care "provider" not only based on the brain taxing task of crunching of the numbers on various companies - but to extend that with the issue of faith and whether your faith in your church is strong enough to trust the health of your entire family to it... that bothers me. I guess I can't really think about it too rationally since it goes into an area that isn't entirely dominated by rational thought - but I can say I am concerned with the effects of that as a trend, and I do think it opens up a lot of room for abuses of trust. The irony is that universal coverage will allow non-profit insurance in the spirit of these programs since they do want to cover everyone but the current cherry picking poisons the pool for anyone that doesn't want to cherry pick. The only difference is their promises would have to be legal, and they'd have to conform to the other regulations.

That's the problem I think - the people who are spreading these lies are doing what the people who voted for them want them to do - kill liberal legislation at all costs, by any means necessary. If you want a higher ethical standard of politician, you need a base that cares enough to hold them to that standard.

People have always had the right to play "faith based chicken" with the laws of physics in this country. At least within certain limits - you still have to pay your taxes to support your fire department even if you'd prefer to pray the flames away should your house catch on fire. I had a much larger post written but I really can't talk about this topic without potentially crossing the line with regards to religious discussions on these forums. It really bothers me that we can look at this topic and proceed as far as "facepalm" but any further thought on the topic runs the risk of being read as "religion bashing" which I honestly don't want to do - but this is a genuine phenomena that is impacting our very real political environment in this country and I have no idea how to explore the topic within the rules. Could we get clarifications on this topic's boundaries from a moderator, so we can better keep it on an acceptable track? It strikes me as having a high probability of jumping the tracks.

I'm not sure if the issue is 'capability' as choice. Perhaps they've evaluated the evidence and thought about it very well, and came to the simple conclusion that lies and fear mongering would suit their overall goals better. Perhaps it's Democrats that are ignoring the "evidence" and giving the American public too much credit. Well, that may describe the "parties" better than the "base" I'll admit, but I am not 100% sure it's all that different with the base. I think they are more afraid of health care reform working than it failing - if it works then it will be far harder to repeal when a Republican controlled government comes along with the right free-market solution that doesn't push us in a direction of European style moral relativism and government facilitated services. It's far more important to keep "traditional values" than it is to save lives or improve quality of living. At least that's how it appears to me - and if someone holds that view any arguments over whether a bill saves lives is moot, all that matters is if the spirit of the bill is based on a sickly "Liberal America" ideal or a healthy "Conservative America" ideal.

Wow, I was curious and that does not disappoint. Are you saying that they actually track the state of a single "tweet" as it propagates through the entire list of subscribers sequentially, and only completes the transaction after it has been verified as closed by every end point destination? Does this mean that a faulty client could cause server side lags in delivery to other clients? I imagine the "entire list of subscribers" to a single tweet at least leverages various "push ahead" servers so that subscribers don't all reside in a single database (hub/spoke/hub/spoke/etc) so that you just have secondary servers handling the subscribers it's responsible to iterate (yuck) through. Considering that there are a million and one flavors of reliable UDP protocols out there that sounds odd to go that way. It's at least not TCP based is it? Honestly it sounds like a Reliable UDP would be perfect, though I've only written one RUDP server and it didn't require scaling so I am no expert.

I am curious about this because their concept is so simple, it sounds like a real special kind of fail to pull that off - can you elaborate?

That's a good idea, I wish my old comp wasn't AGP. Right now I don't have any other cards to test that are PCIe and no other systems I can test it on. It's gotta be the motherboard or the card I think - though, I wonder how those ram tests would pass if it was the motherboard, if it has to go through that to get to the ram. Btw, I do appreciate all the advice everyone, this has been frustrating me for quite a whole now.

At least it wouldn't be over 140 characters. Seriously, the only thing I can think of use-wise is some sort of data mining, but I doubt it would be of too much use. It may have potential - which seems to be enough for virtual companies again. There is some sort of value to having a very low overhead and actively engages millions (6 million users last I checked) of people. Not sure if that's a billion dollars, but perhaps no one who does these assessments understands. With all the stories of companies turning down opportunities to purchase companies at 1/10th their later value (especially if we forget the crash ) I guess "unknown potential" is still a commodity.

AKs are all about heavy firepower - rarely a requirement in any given criminal enterprise. If criminals planned to say, storm a prison - then AKs may be of value. However, criminals generally want to avoid shootouts, taking fire is seriously threatens your average criminal's retirement plan. You want firepower that ensures you are unchallenged and a handgun and/or shotgun is usually enough to do that. If you need enough firepower to overpower opposing firepower then someone on your side is probably going to die even if you kill those in opposition - most criminals will rethink their plan of attack in those situations.

1) I think the 2nd amendment is pretty safe. I personally support gun rights, even if I think at times it's taken a little far (The calls to arm teachers after Columbine, etc.) - but I don't see any major shifts coming. 2) Naturally the 'ability to acquire firearms' impacts gun related crimes as if no ability to acquire firearms existed then such crime would be impossible - but that is an impossible scenario. I do think it impacts gun related crime in a realistic way, but it's hard to break down what to take from that fact. 3) Criminals that use guns as an aid to commit crimes (I believe that's the demographic of criminal you were trying to isolate) includes a very wide spectrum. I doubt the majority are premeditated - in the world of disorganized crime when someone decides to commit a crime they use the tools they have on hand. When it comes to organized crime, I don't know a lot about it but I do recall guns being smuggled into the US found in a bust from Canada, which were smuggled in because they wouldn't be tracked. As far as AKs and the like, I don't know the statistics but I think assault rifle violence in the US seems to be exceptionally low, so I am not too worried about smuggled weapons from collapsing countries.

I had to wrangle to get the cudart.dll but once I did it worked. I ran 100 rounds on 256Mb and had zero errors. It's a 512Mb card. That is a great program btw - I've been looking for something like that for some time. Do you think the test is pretty conclusive though? I was pretty sure it would be a bad memory issue too. If it's worth noting - I've yet to have vertex data become notably corrupt, though it is a much much smaller amount of data. The textures often appear readable, like the texture data was intended for rendering to something else, like the pointers got all messed up but the data is still more or less intact.

Based on one individual with a 0.08 who still has sharper reaction time, eyesight and driving skill than another individual in their 80s. Or, a person who is exceptionally sleep deprived, which can be more deleterious than alcohol. - To be clear I am not advocating drunk driving or any such things, just pointing out it doesn't matter how well a driver with 0.08 could master a live driving test, they are still barred from driving under the influence while it is legal for someone who is tired or otherwise has reduced capacities that can still meet the baseline requirements.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341011 Says it's max power is 750W on the specs. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I've blown the dust out many times, but the temperature never says it goes over 50c. I'm pretty comfortable with mucking with the guts and have removed it more than once to check for any signs of damage, burn, and clearing out dust. But from what I can tell, 50c is a really low temperature for a card that's not even idling. Edit: While it seems specific to my graphics, I do notice the only component in the system that gets any bad reviews is the motherboard. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131320 I've always had good luck with Asus before - a colleague of mine builds lots of computers and goes with them (he's off in Iraq now, so he can't really help), this is the second system I've built from scratch for myself and I had to replace it's MB with an ASUS one which had no problems. All the components are 11 months old at this time, if that helps.

I gotta ask, does the key effect: Have other health benefits? I take ibuprofen for muscle tension and headaches, but can watermelon have other similar effects? If so, do people who take blood thinners need to worry about 'excessive watermelon consumption' or use it as a healthy alternative to ibuprofen? While I celebrate the most obvious benefit of this finding, I am really curious about other potential uses.

I built my computer almost a year ago, I have this gfx card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162017 the problem is it's never done high end 3D stuff very well. I hadn't tried it with much at all, and figured it was an isolated problem or drivers or such. I've updated to all the latest drivers and found that multiple programs (Fallout 3, EVE Online, etc) show the same symptoms. It will run well and fast, and then lock up for a few seconds - 3-30s, and all the textures will become corrupted. At this point it often becomes laggy or will run smooth but with completely corrupt textures. I've also experienced hangs/crashes with video, but otherwise my computer runs perfectly fine. I am using XP pro so I don't have any gfx accel UI features or such. I've been trying to call technical support, but it goes to voicemail which says it's full. I haven't overclocked or anything, and I am seriously considering just getting a new card, but I want to be sure that's the problem before I spend the money. I can post any other components if that is helpful. Any ideas?

That is not precisely true. An individual in the bunker has to push the button. However, there is a checklist that ends in "pushing the button" if a series of events occur, based on sensor data and communications failure. Once a "command missile" is launched though, the system does take over, and the missile sends the codes to instruct the other missiles to launch. Missiles telling missiles to launch missiles. Is there anything the cold war can't do? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/cybercinema/bomb20.htm

To play devil's advocate here, some drunk drivers are better than some sober drivers, but we do have more generalized laws based on the statistical trends. It's worth noting too, a lot of people here have differing views of what they think is right and what they think should be legal. I am personally skeptical that a healthy relationship can be born out of a father and a daughter because quite frankly, the father has known the daughter her entire life, and has a huge "edge" in circumventing her normal capacities to evaluate and deliver well reasoned consent. I question whether consent can be considered legitimate, if the father shapes his daughter's understanding of the world and controls her exposure to external information. I am not saying all such relationships are based on that, but the concern does disturb me. Overall, I'd have to investigate the topic in much further detail to determine an opinion on legislation.