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Comment Re:algorithms, third-party sources, or complaints. (Score 0) 198

I'm much more concerned about Ron Paul than Santorum.

The President can do jack shit about people's religion. Really. I'd like to see him try to outlaw porn. It'll be a cold day in hell before he does. But the President has quite a bit of control over the military and a fair amount of say in what the Federal Reserve decides to do (well, it's its own thing and can pretty much do its own thing, but the President can tell it what he wants it to do and it can get spanked if it doesn't).

See, I'd rather have a President who has batshit crazy notions about religion than one that has batshit crazy notions about foreign and fiscal policies. You can't win them all, but if you can pick the ones you want to win, those are the ones I want to win.

Comment Re:algorithms, third-party sources, or complaints. (Score 2) 198

A "banner ad" is a block of HTML which is supposed to stay within its allotted "banner" area.

As such, it can contain anything that HTML can contain and which doesn't clearly (i.e. noticeably) break out of its rectangular frame when the site's admin tests it out.

Scripts, Flash, Silverlight, Java, you name it; if it's installed and can be embedded in HTML (or included by the HTML referencing another file), it's possible. But the only reason the banner's HTML would really ever contain a Java embed would be if the banner's designer wanted to execute a Java exploit on visitor's computers. And a conscientious site's admin would delete the offending banner in short order if this was discovered to be the case.

Does that clear up your question any?

Comment Re:16-year-old kids have too much free time (Score 1) 160

It wasn't pure musical notation. (I was thinking along the same lines when I enrolled.) It was rote memorization of the names of dead people and the classical pieces which they had composed. I was bored, and got an F. And as I said, the art class was much more rewarding, so I'm glad I didn't just skid through with a passing grade in the class that I had hated.

Comment Re:16-year-old kids have too much free time (Score 1) 160

Hard classes? Bah. It wasn't the hard classes that got me. It was the stupid and/or pointless ones. I got As in calculus and physics, and an F in music appreciation. (I learned my lesson and took a class in digital media instead - PhotoShop, Flash, and iMovie. At least then I was learning stuff that I could actually find a use for. I still tinker in GIMP quite frequently.)

The hardest classes that I had to take were the advanced circuits classes, and those were B grades in classes that most students took more than once before passing. And I blame the instructor partly; brilliant guy, but he sucked at explaining why we did things the way that we did them. I still haven't the foggiest notion of how to calculate the amplification of a MOSFET or FET amplifier stage with feedback. There were two different formulas and I never understood why either formula applied, or why they had to be different.

Comment Re:Nobody has a right to a monopoly (Score 1) 366

Actually the right to vote is revokable.

No, it most definitely is not. It can be and is infringed upon, but it cannot be revoked.

Cutting off someone's ability to have a hand in the civil elective process is just as barbaric and unjust as the old laws which dictated cutting off the actual hand of people who were convicted of stealing.

Laws cannot break the law, and the Constitution is law. However, they can and do. For instance, the laws in D.C. illegally broke the law for decades by infringing on people's second amendment rights. The only recourse is to have those illegal laws repealed or struck down.

There is probably only one crime which I would even consider worthy of removing someone's access to the democrative process: I would permit those convicted of election fraud to be barred from voting. This is not because their right to vote can be taken away; I'd even say that they still have the right to cast a single vote, but they can't be trusted to do that. And even this smells sourly of cutting off the thief's hand. If it was possible to allow them to vote, with full confidence that not only they wouldn't but that they in fact couldn't corrupt the elective process by their involvement, I'd be in full support of letting them vote.

Comment Re:Right, because BS is a thorough refutation (Score 1) 366

Let say someone downloads a copy of a popular movie, burns a 1000 copies with official looking prints and seals them in original looking wrappers, and takes them and gives them out for free in front of a store where the movie has just been released for initial sale. Does that still not cause harm to the author, distributor, performers, etc.? After all the copies don't cost them anything, they haven't lost anything.

Red herring.

Let's say someone downloads a copy of your menu and opens up a restaurant cattycorner to yours which boasts the same entrees as yours and undercuts your prices. Does that not cause harm to you, as the owner of the first restaurant?

Why yes, it does. And it's not illegal. And if you complain to me, you will be told to put on your big boy pants and deal with it. This isn't kindergarten.

Now, let me ask this question, because I'm really curious to an answer.

Does everything which causes harm necessarily need to be made illegal?

Comment Re:Right, because BS is a thorough refutation (Score 1) 366

Why is computer generated graphics of child porn illegal? Because of some fallacy that legality == morality??

But that is the only reason that child porn is illegal in the first place.

All sorts of other crimes create an "injured party". Photos of the injured party are only illegal if the injured party happens to be an inadequately-dressed child.

Comment Re:Request a blood test (Score 1) 498

The point of the low BAC limit is to reinforce the message that you don't drink and drive.

No, it's to reinforce the message that you don't drive drunk. And 0.08 is not drunk.

Back in the day, people would go out, get pissed and drive home ... So the position now is you do not go out, drink, and drive home. At all.

Why not? Obligatory Wikipedia link to the fallacy you're using.

But I digress. Let's ignore all of that for now and just play a simple little game. The figures I have seen indicate that the risk multiplier at a BAC of 0.08 is about 2x normal (at a BAC of 0.00). Risk also generally scales linearly with respect to miles driven (at least for comparable driving conditions; city and highway driving aren't necessarily the same).

So, here is the game: I will present you with two situations where there is more or less equal risk involved. You will tell me which situation is an example of someone who poses a grave danger to himself and other drivers, and which situation is perfectly okay.

Situation 1: A guy has 3 beers on a Saturday afternoon and then drives to the store to buy some eggs for Sunday's breakfast. He has a BAC of slightly over 0.08, which is the legal limit. At this level of intoxication, his risk of being involved in a collision is about twice what it would be if there were no alcohol in his blood. This could be easily avoided if he simply didn't drink before driving.

Situation 2: This guy believes that drinking and driving is never okay in any amount, so his trip to the store is made at a flat 0.00 BAC. However, he's a poor planner because a day or two later he's taking the trash out and discovers that he has run out of trash bags, and he has to make a second trip to the same store to buy more bags. He ends up driving twice as far, and the risk is twice as much. This would be easily avoided if he just checked around the house before he left and made a list of everything he needed to avoid making extra trips in the near future.

Which of these two men is vilified as a menace to society?

Comment Re:In Germany ... (Score 1) 498

Not only "can" it differ, it always differs, and significantly - they are not the same thing, and in fact the two different measurements are a few orders of magnitude apart. A scaling factor is used to convert the actual BrAC reading into an estimated BAC.

http://www.dwi.com/blood-alcohol-content

Breath testing devices rely on an a ratio that equates the parts of alcohol found in breath to the correlating amount of alcohol found in blood. ... [T]he ratio of Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) to Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)... is [assumed to be] 2100:1. However, the actual ratio can vary substantially by individual from 1300:1 to 3100:1.

Comment Re:What about those who didn't get caught? (Score 2) 498

The machines could be off both ways...In a city that size I bet a few of them who should have been off the streets later went on to cause an accident or fatality.

If the machines were passing people with a real BAC of, say, 0.09, I'd bet against you. And I'm reasonably certain I'd win.

Realize: If someone has a 0.13 and the breathalyzer registers 0.07, it's likely that the cops would notice that the figure was erroneous. The reverse is not true: If someone had a 0.03 and the breathalyzer registered 0.09, there is no way that any cop could tell the difference. I'm reasonably certain that they were not letting drunks go simply because the breathalyzer said they were okay.

Comment Re:Good (Score 2, Informative) 498

Call me naive and over trusting, but I generally figure if you are driving poorly enough to warrant a cop pulling you over in the first place.. you probably should be off the road ... Are there cases where police have abused this power? Pulled someone over who was not drunk and driving just fine, did the breathalizer...

Have you completely forgotten about DUI checkpoints? Everyone gets stopped, and they either take the breathalyzer or they get arrested for failing to give a sample. Yes, they're a blatant violation of our rights, but courts all over have ruled in favor of the practice.

The reason for this is, of course, your assumption is quite incorrect: the legal limit is SO DAMN LOW that you won't be "driving poorly enough to warrant a cop pulling you over". That's why they have to pull everyone over and use the breathalyzer.

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