... is NOT that "because some government regulations are unfounded, all of their regulations will be so.". The argument against regulations in general is that they punish innocent people (by restricting their liberty) without proof that the regulated activity will harm anyone. This is distinguished from objectively-defined law, where:

a) the restricted activity (in the case of good law) is a violation of someone's rights.
b) the violation must be proved in court (including civil court).

So, to choose an example I know will piss off many slashdotters, regulation of "air pollutants" is not a valid exercise of government power, since this punishes people that might emit a certain quantity of some substance, without proof that such emissions will actually harm someone. We already have laws against polluting other people's property - if someone can be proved to be doing so, they should be punished. And, if someone believes that they are going to be harmed by emissions that have yet to occur, they can even go to civil court and present merely a preponderance of evidence that this harm will ensue in order to receive relief, including injunctive relieve to prevent the activity, That is the valid operation of coercive government power - to prevent objectively definable rights violations, not to pander to people's imagined fears.

In the case of the FAA device regulations, the issue is even more clear cut - the FAA should have nothing to say at all about what devices a private airline allows to be used on its planes. That should be the decision of the airline, and they can base this decision on what they consider to be the appropriate tradeoff between safety and passenger convenience. Then, passengers could decide how they feel about a given airline's policy, and this could be factored into their patronage decision. True, this requires that passengers would need to exercise some adult judgment in their choice of airlines. Oh, the horror. Such is part of the price of liberty.

I've been through Ben-Gurion ~10 times, and have not had similar experiences. Indeed, from what I know of the Israeli security techniques, the goal is not really to make you sweat, but simply to observe your behavior in reacting to mundane, but rapid fire, questions. In effect, it's a lie detector test, where the detectors are well trained (and intelligent) humans. The US could have a similar system - with similar success - if we reallocated resources away from security theater and toward hiring and training good people to do this kind of pattern recognition. Unfortunately, since the TSA is viewed as a job-creation program, and since it *is* security theater (not actual security) that is the goal of the program, we are unlikely to get there.

Even with the danger posed by the current hostilities, Israel continues to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Name another country, when faced with rocket attacks on its civilian population, as Israel has for the past 5+ years, which would do anything similar.

Oh yes - Egypt has an ongoing land blockade of Gaza as well.

Please. Israel could wreak any level of destruction on Gaza they want. Indeed, I'd wager you have complained elsewhere about how "asymmetric" is Israel's war-making capacity and how that, ipso facto, makes their use of the military "offensive", independent of the reality of waves upon waves of rockets being deliberately launched at their civilian population. It is crystal clear that Israel is being as precise as possible in their targeting.

War is hell. Innocents die. The best way to save innocent lives is to end the war as quickly as possible, which means using the absolute minimum force necessary to ensure that the aggressor side is completely defeated, with no capability of resuming its aggression.

As to who is the aggressor - I propose the following thought experiment: if there were no active hostilities in the region, and if Israel could therefore remove its naval blockade of Gaza, and if Gaza were allowed, say 10 years to develop its political, economic and social, cultural institutions, where would you prefer to live: Israel or Gazastan? An honest answer to that question (especially if you are gay or female) would tell you all you need to know about the "who is the aggressor" question.

Well, if the federal government didn't control education policy and funding, then it would have no impact whatsoever. If you advocate the involvement of government in education, you can have very little to say in opposition to elected officials' pedagogical opinions being leashed on the classroom.

Exactly, I was totally disappointed to see that these super-duper chefs were brewing beer! Why can't the President do it himself? I'm a total idiot in the kitchen, but I brew and bottle my own. I guess this is just another case of "you didn't build that".

This is ridiculous.

The only government action taken against OWS had to do with time, place, and manner restrictions on their _behavior_ (i.e. "occupying" public spaces). There have been zero restrictions on the content of anyone in that movement's speech (and I dare you to provide a cite that proves otherwise).

And, what is more, these time/place/manner restrictions on OWS "gatherings" were imposed with extreme laxness, as compared to such prohibitions implemented against virtually any other protest movement in US history. The Z-park encampment was allowed for at least two months; Philadelphia, 2.5 months; Boston at least 3 months; the list goes on. This is while health, safety and traffic regulations were routinely flouted (not to mention the rampant felony activity, including rape, assault, and theft).

The worst infringements of free speech rights in the U.S. remain as part of "campaign finance" law. The overturning of McCain-Feingold was a step in the right direction there, but there are still many unconscionable restrictions that are supported by both the D's and R's, since they amount to incumbency protection.

Despite the fact that your post contains nothing but facts and logic, it will never achieve a rating higher than 1. What were you thinking?

The jury is still out on radiation hormesis. Look it up.

Yeah, but the quantity of stuff that needs to be mined to produce the same amount of energy is quite a bit different and impacts the likelihood of mining accidents:

Coal - ~6,150 kilowatt-hours (kWh)/ton
Uranium – 2,000,000,000 kWh/ton
Uranium, Fast Breeder reactors (up to 100x more) - 200,000,000,000 kWh/ton

[Do over with my real user name - I hate being anonymous]

You are correct. And, not only is the '496 patent about an ASIC implementation of ASR, but it also uses the same ancient dynamic time warping approach to matching as does the '032. What is more, there is no chance at all that the plaintiff could have the slightest reason to believe that Apple (really, Nuance/Dragon) is using this approach. This case should be tossed out immediately.

The problem with our patent system is not the idea of "intellectual property" per se, but that the legal profession (including most of the well-meaning examiners at the USPTO) as currently trained is ignorant of the most basic technical concepts, and thus we waste time and money on ridiculous prosecutions such as this.

I was referring to Lernout and Hauspie - the founders of that company - as not being technologists.

Dragon technology is the state-of-the-art in large vocabulary speaker-independent ASR. Jim Baker's basic mathematical framework is still the basis for all commercial ASR systems. This included the L&H ASR technology at the time of the deal. Each company's ASR engine has its own bells and whistles to distinguish it, but the main differentiator these days is the access to domain-specific data for training the statistical models - in combination with the many heuristic tricks used in building those models.

It is hard to know the source of your bad anecdotal experience with Dragon Naturally Speaking. The technology has its limitations, and just "doesn't work" in probably 20% of the situations (broadly defined) in which it is deployed. The field needs another 2 or 3 fundamental research breakthroughs before any random use case could be guaranteed to be effective. But, many people have found Dragon dictate quite useful, particularly in restricted language domains, such as legal, medical, and business emails.

Oh, and the ASR engine behind Siri _is_ a version of Dragon, so your post is somewhat non-sensical.

... and everyone in the industry knew that they were full of shit with their finances. The two founders - Lernout and Hauspie - were accountants, not technologists. The company had significant investment from the Belgian government, and L&H were politically well-connected enough to keep milking that funding source as they rode the tech frenzy of the 90's. In every instance where we competed against them, they always bid at ridiculously low prices that couldn't possibly be economically sensible. They had some decent technology, but their business practices were always suspect. It was very likely the taxpayer financing which kept their bubble from bursting before it did.

To be fair, Dragon was primarily involved in desktop ASR, whereas L&H (and my company - Voice Control Systems), were focusing on telephony applications. So, the Bakers may not have been fully acquainted with L&H's reputation. But, really, they should have been extremely suspicious of this deal, especially when the offer was changed to 100% stock. TFA didn't say what the value of some of the competing offers were, but I'm guessing they were substantially less than $580M. If it sounds too good to be true ....

None of this is to excuse Goldman, which apparently was hired to do something that they did not do. And clearly, the Bakers were done an injustice. But, something tells me that they were willfully blind to the possibility that this offer was unjustified. And for that, they should blame themselves.

There is nothing to distinguish the primary sentiments expressed here from the hatred of European Jews, Italians, Irish, West-Africans, etc. that have been voiced by the most backward and unthinking bigots throughout American history. Each of the individuals seeking work here has - in our founders' terms - an inalienable right to pursue their happiness in any peaceful manner they choose.

When they ask for a job at a given wage, they are infringing no one else's rights - noone has a "right" to a job at a higher wage than the employer is willing to pay. It is only by dropping this context that someone can complain about the so-called "unfair" competition imposed by other individual job seekers, no matter where they come from. There is no un-bigoted reason to prefer that someone born in America gets a given job over someone born elsewhere.

Yes, the H-1B visa program should be abolished - in favor of absolutely free immigration and job-seeking by any non-criminal from any place in the world. This is America's promise, as expressed eloquently on the Statue of Liberty. Where has that spirit gone?

Nice generalization. Of course, most of us "anti-government" types, are not actually "anti government"! Instead, we favor a government limited to its proper functions, none of which involve the initiation of force against innocents.

And, to anticipate your brilliant retort - yes, I will take back whatever measly social security payments that remain when it is my turn, since the money was taken from me without my consent for all of those years. I will also use the public roads, which I never asked to be built, and the public schools, for which I have paid my share - against my will - many times over. I will do this knowing that I would have been more than happy had the government never got involved in any of these illegitimate functions, and that the free enterprise replacements for these would have been much more efficiently created and managed, had not the government monopolized these in the only way monopolies can actually exist - by the threat of the gun.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with OP. Shilling actively lobbied in favor of the loan, showing he did not disagree with the notion on principle. He was/is a hypocrite.