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Comment Re:yes but...yes in fact. (Score 1) 302

It's not their faith telling them they are abortifacients, It is the US Government Department of Health and Human Services. HHS says the 2 IUDs in question and the morning/week after pills in question keep a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. Their faith says that life begins at conception, so being force to pay for something that keeps that life from implanting in the uterus is a violation of their religious belief.

So basically, you're just saying what I'm saying, "It's their faith that tells them these are abortifacients."

Further, when you talk about the "they" in "their religious beliefs", you are not talking about individuals, but a corporation. Now, we can argue whether or not corporations are people, my friend, but I'm pretty sure you will agree that "Inc" does not have religious beliefs.

As you can clearly see from the National Review article (and the National Review is the mothership for anti-abortion types), this is NOT about abortifacients, but about absolutely anything that someone can say violates their religious beliefs. And if you recall your history, you will note that at one time people found religious justification for owning slaves, refusing to serve blacks, gays, Catholics and Jews.

That's why Hobby Lobby is this era's Plessy v Ferguson. It will go down as one of those decisions about which people will someday say, "That wrong-headed case was decided during the bad old days". And not because of anything having to do with abortion.

I'm sure there were people back during Plessy, that made rational-sounding arguments just like yours for why segregating the races was God's will.

Comment Re:yes but...yes in fact. (Score 3, Insightful) 302

It's about more than just "abortifacients". http://www.nationalreview.com/... Except, the four methods Hobby Lobby objected to are not "abortifacients". http://www.newrepublic.com/art... But I guess, if their faith tells them they're abortifacients, then abortifacients they shall be. Isn't that the whole point of the decision of the five (male) Supreme Court justices? And we already have cases being brought to use the Hobby Lobby precedent to allow all sorts of civil rights violations, nullification of laws, and even special exemption from taxation based on religious faith. It's going to be a few interesting years until Hobby Lobby is overturned, which it almost certainly will be, Hobby Lobby is the 21st century's Plessy v. Ferguson. But that's the whole point, right?

Comment Smiley (Score 1) 176

I'm pretty sure there's more to the story than we're getting out of either Russia or the US. And that goes double for what we're getting out of the Russian media (RT) and the US media. As sympathetic as I am to the Anonymous folks, their cries of "kidnapping" based only on what's coming out of Russia are a little premature. Does anyone here doubt that a Russian MP's son would be involved in a large-scale criminal enterprise stealing US credit card info? Is that really so improbable? I don't have a need for immediate information or immediate reaction on these things. We'll see what we see. Until then, I don't believe a damn thing in any of the reports. Both countries have very large, powerful and dishonest intelligence services who are expert at this crap. They had more than half a century of Cold War practice after all. And I've learned to tread lightly when it comes to RT or the US media.

Comment Started messing with is last night (Score 1) 125

I am very interested in graduating beyond CentOS 6.x. The GNOME2 thing annoys me where compatibility with GIMP is concerned. A few other issues in its lacking up-to-date-edness as well. And I know that's the point of RHEL/CentOS so I have remained somewhat comfortable with it. But Damn that GNOME/GTK/GIMP issue. One or more of those people should work this out because the problem, while presently not applicable under CentOS7, it has the potential to return as their practices and philosophy haven't changed and that's what caused the problems in the first place.

I am reminded as to why I wanted to avoid GNOME3 in the first place. Way too much mouse movement involved there. (Touchpad users especially annoyed) and the GNOME Shell plugins thing? I haven't gotten into that, but early on, the way things worked plugins didn't work well with one another. Cobbling an ideal system for me required a lot of hackery. Plus, it required a lot more manual intervention. I see there is a plugin panel type thing so maybe they have worked that out now.... I hope.

Still, I want MATE. I added EPEL this morning, and got MATE installed. I will also want Compiz going but ran out of time this morning. The "Software" app (I liked Yumex... I want it back... another thing I want) but whatever is missing in the repo data, I see "Mate Desktop" as a category, but there is nothing in it. Going to the repo view, I can select packages. The app resolves dependencies but doesn't warn/advise me as to what it includes when resolving.

That's what I've got for now... I'm liking it basically.

Comment Re:hive mind? (Score 1) 123

A friend of mine works in a lot of internet marketing and used to do things like search optimization and whatnot. Trust me, no matter what user-based system you set up, people will work day and night to subvert it to push their products. Any sort of review or rating system would be corrupted very quickly.

So the system is inherently flawed.

I can't believe there's no way to design a more robust system of review that isn't prone to corruption. Maybe the FDA is that system, but it's an expensive and inefficient way to go. Of course though, any app that interfaces with a pacemaker or diabetic medication or something ought to be vetted by them. A "health and fitness app" less so.

Comment hive mind? (Score 1) 123

Is this something that would respond to crowd-sourcing? I'm asking because I really don't know.

I've noticed that the reviews for apps have become much less reliable. Apple and Google have even started making it harder to break out the low-rated reviews on apps in their stores now, and there's so much manipulation of the reviews that it's impossible to fully trust them. And Apple and Google are far from blameless in this.

I wouldn't mind seeing some independent site that had sort of "wiki-reviews" of apps and medical apps might be a place to start. Let's see what some people with medical book-learnin' have to say about these things. We all know the wide range of quality of these things. This is one of those areas where anecdotal information would be pretty useful. I don't need to read peer-reviewed journal articles to know whether an app that measures and charts heart rate is useful, I just need to know if it does what it says it's doing. I've used an excellent sleep app for about a year now and I'm convinced that my experience matches what it's telling me, but I would have liked to know a little more in advance.

Having reviews on online stores was a good idea, but it's getting hopelessly corrupted. There's got to be some solution to this besides having the FDA have to chase it all down and delay the release of apps until they pass regulatory muster.

Comment Engineers (Score 1) 64

I'm so old, I still think an "engineer" is the guy who drives a train.

Clearly, a whale isn't going to be driving a train, though, so they must be the other type of engineer. But how do they work a slide rule with those flipper things?

Comment Re:For a well-written refutation (Score 1) 30

Not him, this era.

A year ago, I would have said different, but I'm starting to get optimistic. Even the strange anti-corporate anti-authoritarian turn the Tea Party individuals have taken makes me optimistic.

What doesn't make me optimistic is the counter-revolutionary scum that's growing on the Left. Fortunately, those people are getting found out pretty quickly and exposed. The Obama dead-enders, the neo-feminists theoriticians and people who will tell you that privacy is "so 20th century".

I've got precious little energy left for those who would rather sit and point at "them" whether they be far-Left adbuster types or tea partiers. I had a bit of a revelation this weekend, hanging around a small Western Wisconsin town with a bunch of people who would consider themselves "tea party". They're figuring out that the Kochs and the mainstream AFP folks who've been funding the tea party don't really have their best interests at heart. They sounded a lot like the adbusters I know back home. Very strange times, when they figure out they've got converging interests, as they already have in Moral Monday parts of the South and anti-Keystone XL groups in Nebraska.

Or maybe it was just a nice quiet weekend in the country and I'm in a charitable mood. But you're right, fuck Obama. He's got nothing for me.

Comment Re:This and more (Score 0) 88

Do you think gun injuries are massive? By that definition, people being struck by lightning and winning lotteries are absolutely out of control and in epidemic rates.

Lumping car related injuries and fatalities in with guns is a wonderful way to create your hyperbole argument, but I would invite you to visit a shooting range some time. I think so far, without fail, once people actually use guns, they get a better impression of them and simply gain a better perspective on things.

We live in a dangerous world. No doubt about it. And we cannot make it un-dangerous no matter how we try. If we rid ourselves of all technology and live as animals live, we would STILL have dangers. It's time we stop denying that technology serves us, but in much the same way that "time-saving kitchen gadgets" don't really save [much] time, other tech has its costs as well.

And seriously, the right to enjoy the fun of shooting as well as the fighting chance to defend one's self? It's written into law. Why do we have to keep having the discussion? My advice to you and all gun-fearing people out there? Get a gun. You're a good person. Learn to use it well and wisely. Your fears will decline and we'll all be safer for it.

Comment Re:This and more (Score 1) 88

I think you will find that the permission of the site location's management will likely be required as well to run this equipment as it becomes more common. I find the tech to be "cool" until you realize that it's all rather noisy. So it becomes not only a danger issue (and it's not like there isn't already danger associated with skiiing or any of the other activities likely to be focus of these drones) but one which is a nuissance to others.

This all speaks of the problems of enjoying and living in the moment and of that moment being missed due to "recording the moment." The moments are tainted by the added equipment. If it's not a person who lives the tainted moments behind a lens or LCD panel, then it's the moment being tainted by loud noises generated by the machinery to automate the process.

Adding a "leash" to the devices is interesting but I cannot imagine these devices responding fast enough that they won't get tugged like a child's helium balloon at every turn.

I suppose if they could get rid of the noise problem, I would find the tech more interesting.

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