All those moments will be lost in time ...like tears in the rain.

Hmmm.. So your argument is that because the internet crosses state and international boundaries the Fed is free to regulate it. The problem with this is that the commerce clause is about regulating TRADE as it crosses the boundaries between the states and other countries. The Fed can regulate, tax and otherwise control things that cross the state's border, but what happens within the state is the business of the state. The Fed has been justifying a LOT of things using the Commerce Clause, which are really pushing us into some very grey areas.

Please tell me why my interaction with my local phamacist is regulated by federal laws? Please tell me why I cannot grow marijuana for my personal consumption in my back yard? Both of these are because the Supreme Court does not agree with your interpretation of the Commerce Clause. Don't blame the Feds, blame the Supreme Court which has allowed the Fed to implement such laws and regulations.

So, my reading says that the Fed can regulate buying/selling (commerce) that crosses the state line over the internet, but if the state wants to regulate ISP's within it's borders, it is free to do so w/o Federal involvement as long as the state doesn't stray beyond it's constitutional power

Both your reading and my reading of the Commerce Clause carry zero weight. Only the opinion of the Supreme Court matters and it has made it quite clear that your reading does not agree with its view of the Commerce Clause.

My position is because of the latter, the former is irrelevant. If you are an adult, in a state where a 17 year old can’t give informed consent, don’t have sex with a 17 year old. Period.

I see. Because the law is always right, eh? As in enforcing slavery, suppressing women, having separate entrances for people of the "wrong" color, forcing them to the back of the bus, taking money without a warrant or a court order or a conviction or probable cause, torturing people, making love to the "wrong" sex (or just involving the "wrong" orifice), allowing (only) congress to engage in insider trading, retroactively increasing the sentences of the convicted, wiretapping and so forth without warrants, shooting Indians without consequence...

I could go on for quite a while with regard to laws that were completely, utterly wrong and which never, ever should have been obeyed on their own merits, or even in the context of maintaining public order. Certainly they deserved no part whatsoever in any call for "respect" for the system -- to the contrary, laws like these tell thinking citizens that the law is -- and lawmakers are -- not worthy of respect.

But you, your position as stated, is "obey", and that's the end of it. So really what you're saying is that if your masters -- and face it, that's what you are presenting them as -- say "lick the typhus infected dog crap off my boots", you will kneel down, stick that tongue out, and proceed to shine, shine, shine -- and that you want others to do the same.

Your way of thinking about this -- "It was illegal, and you shouldn’t do it" -- is fundamentally unsound. Your point of view is blinkered and short-sighted. Your concept of "should" is toxic. When the law is wrong, it is wrong -- and the only sound reason to obey bad law is to protect those you love and your own life from evil, coercive violence from the same source. When law is bad, if you can disobey, you should disobey.

The only governance worthy of obedience and respect is good governance. Anything else deserves a swift kick in the ass.

It's not quite "punishing your pancreas", it's that you become insulin resistant. Your pancreas could be putting out MORE insulin and you could still have type 2 diabetes. If the pancreas was "getting worn out", then the mechanism of treating type 2 diabetes with excercise would not work.

(You can also have a pancreas that does not work well, but that is not the mechanism being discussed.)

And here I thought obese women couldn't be more sexy.

Sure. But it doesn't work there, either.

The fucker is 47 years old. 47!!! What version of "consensual" was it?

She was 17. It is your position that a 17-year old could never give informed consent? That's pretty much the law's position (and it is demonstrably stupid, and almost always harmful, and so out of touch with reality it's almost frightening.) If you're going with "age line in the sand" to define 17 year olds as incompetent by definition in such matters, then you are all those things the law is, and we're done -- take your torch and pitchfork and have at it.

Get here? Ok, then I presume that is not your position, and that you agree that at least some 17 year olds can indeed give informed consent. So the next question is, is it your position that such a a 17-year old can give informed consent if the partner is also 17, but not if the partner is 47? Because I have to tell you, that kind of thinking can only arise from magical bullshit, and I'm fresh out. Anyway...

I shouldn't have to even ask this, but given the twisted, peculiar nature of your post, I presume you agree that the 47 year old can give informed consent, yes?.

Also, at least get your terminology right. A pedophile is someone with a sexual interest in children. Which is horrific and creepy, because children aren't sexually mature and so sexuality, by its very definition, isn't part of their normal and customary worldview. And putting it there, or trying to, is abusive, in the fundamental sense of the term. You know, child abuse. Because they're children.

An ephibophile, on the other hand, is someone with primary or exclusive sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, often described as ages 15 to 19 (but perhaps much more accurately defined by the single criteria of being physically a sexually mature human being. 15 is not a magic number, no matter what your astrologer has been telling you.) Note that if this is not your primary or exclusive interest, then you're just a typical person. Because sexually mature bodies are typically of normal and healthy sexual interest to most who are sexually active. Which is not to say that the first word out of a teenager's mouth might not send most 47-year-olds running away screaming, but that's really not the same issue.

Also note that for many teenagers (I want to say all, but I have not met them all) sex is pretty much the #1 subject on their mind. Learning about it, having it, exploring it, and so on. The whole shebang, as it were. And this is precisely correct behavior from the POV of the body's various clocks. Socially, we have to deal with the hangover of superstition and Victorian insanity, but the fact is, many teenagers (definitely including the 17 year old demo) are having great, happy sex all the time and the vast majority of those so engaged are both glad of it and not even fractionally interested in any contrary opinion of yours thereof.

Sometimes sex is about relationships and all of that. Complex, interrelated, even a matter of power or submission. Which can be wonderful. Rah, rah. But sometimes it's just sex. Hot, steamy, bouncy, hanging-from-the-chandeliers physical activity with a bang. Or several. Ahem. In such a case, and in the instance of informed consent, I see absolutely no barrier to sex between a 17 year old and a 47 year old, any more than I see a barrier between a 17 year old and a 47 year old that should prevent them from playing tennis, or chess.

Here in Montana, the age of consent -- below which "sex without consent" can be charged -- is sixteen. It's still stupid as there will be (mostly) exceptions on either side of the rule, but the point is, were that guy here, no one would even blink, legally speaking.

Seems to me that you put your Outrage Panties on a little too tight this morning.

They're quite wrong. In denial, most likely,

LOOK at it. Over 300,000 years, CO2 *never* pulls far away from temperature by more than a little bit -- the degree of tracking is extremely consistent, to the point that we can observe a maximum deviation between the two of X. Over any period of time. In addition, correlation of slope direction and lead/lag are very high.

Now, a look at the last graph segment clearly shows CO2 making an excursion away from temperature of a magnitude far in excess of X over any other similar time frame on the graph. If temperature were following CO2 as the graph otherwise might have been interpreted to have been telling us, then we could reasonably expect at least that the slope direction would match; it doesn't. We could also expect that the delta between CO2 and temperature at least would be in range as per the rest of the graph; it isn't. We could also expect that temperature would now be around, or past, -60 at the core location; it isn't (not even close.)

That graph, if accurate (and that seems to be the consensus) is telling us VERY loudly that CO2 is not tightly driving temperature, not generally, and definitely not right now. That leaves only two possibilities: (1) Temperature is driving CO2 (you might think so right now... the current spike is an addition to the normal amount, so it doesn't defray the idea that temperature is the driver of the tracking component... except for one problem: the graph, prior to modern +CO2 times, shows CO2 both leading and lagging temperature, as well as local bi-directional spikes of each that the other does not follow within the bounds of the same rate of change as shown on the rest of the graph, which serves to exonerate both as drivers), or (2) something unknown is driving them both, for which we have significant indicators pointing that way.

The GW advocates are telling us that CO2 is a tight driver of temperature, and it's going to bite us. The evidence doesn't support that, nor does the historical record.

The non-GW advocates are telling us that it's all a plot for financial gain, which is absurd (although that's not to say that there isn't financial advantage to be found in either camp.)

I say, by policy, we should quit emitting crap of any kind into the atmosphere. We don't know how it keeps its balance, and it's going to be all too interesting if it suddenly fails to balance. I'd rather not find out what that means in practical terms. I don't own either enough ammo to survive social breakdown, or a sealed environment suitable for living out my life in spite of arbitrarily hazardous conditions.

Plea bargains would be fine if the penalties for a crime weren't ten times what they should be.

No, they wouldn't. They only time they are "fine" is when they let the accused off completely without damage to reputation, financial position, or property. (as in, I'll never, ever do it again your honor / case dismissed, arrest record expunged) And plea bargains never, ever do that, so they are uniformly toxic.

Plea bargains do a lot more than save time and money. They uniformly increase the win streak for the prosecutor (they are never a win for the defense), which has value in several ways -- it's good political capital, it makes promotion more likely, it reduces workload, they don't have to prove their case (a different issue than workload... this is more about actual, you know, justice), and the promises made don't actually have to be kept. Promise the accused that the adjudication withheld verdict will protect them from a criminal record? Sure, go ahead. But it won't. Promise them that the result will be the end of it, that is, this is what will happen, and that's the deal? Sure, go ahead. Then watch gleefully as ex post facto laws alter the deal, Darth Vader style. Even years or decades after the fact. Plea bargains also put the hangman's choice to the innocent: plead guilty to this lesser thing, suck up the criminal record, and we "promise" that'll be the end of it. Otherwise, at trial, we're going to charge you with enough so that something will stick, and it's off to prison for you plus the criminal record and loss of everything you own and concomitant damage to your family. Your "choice", which of course is no choice at all unless you already have nothing to protect - reputation, family, home, finances.

And remember, the choice to "take a plea" does not mean that anything you were promised must, or will, come to pass. What it does mean is that you just jumped head first into the grinder of a fundamentally broken justice system, and you're about to become hamburger.

Continuing on its original funding approach, it remains free software but requires a fee on proprietary platforms.

Ok, rant coming. Not objecting to these folks right or choice to charge for commercial use (in fact, I think it's appropriately self-reinforcing and somewhat amusing) but my rant is on a subject that can, at least in one important aspect, be traced back to the more global linux/GUI issue, which this immediately brought to mind. Ahem.

<RANT>
Between a snarkily neurotic prejudice against non-open source and the GPL (but I repeat myself) and no standard, basic GUI available to anyone at no cost or other encumbrance (different from OS X and Windows, which are both, oddly enough, home to myriad small commercial applications not found for linux... the very applications I need to do my work day to day), it seems to me that the linux community has created an almost perfect shoot-thyself-in-the-foot paradigm. Only the foot, never the heart and never the head, but damn... that foot looks like a spaghetti colander to me.

I'm truly appalled by the self-mutilating nature of it all, at the very same time I admire the astonishing effectiveness of such a sparse strategy. It's like finding an ice cube in really hot soup - where the bloody thing refuses to melt.

There are occasionally days when I think to myself, someone oughta do it, maybe I ought to. But then I think to myself, the linux folk, by and large, clearly want to wallow in this lack of commercial attention, this dearth of small, cool GIU applications, problem solvers, games and so on. I guess they should then, and yet another day goes by with linux knocking on the door of "the day of the linux desktop" with no one answering except the already-faithful. [waves at the already faithful, admires their pitchforks and torches]

Then there are the days when it is unavoidably brought to my attention that Apple has managed to really fuck up the underlying *nix nature of OS X, from the broken UDP capabilities to cron being superseded by some abjectly weirded out fuckery to broken and unsupported functionality like UTF-8 printing to the I-always-run-into-it disappointment that arises after trying yet another open source project that simply will not come together properly because of some code difference, or some policy, created by Apple. But on those days, as I'm almost inevitably making something for myself, I jut open a VM, fire up linux, and do the project there, where it will almost certainly config, make and install like a good little project. Those are the days I most regret that linux is not, and apparently will never be, an OS that I can actually use the whole time I'm at my desk, thereby avoiding having to accept the... gifts... Apple (and Microsoft -- but I quit actually using Windows for anything more than a test platform years ago -- open VM, try, works, doesn't work, so noted, close VM) are always so willing to hand me, barbed end first.

Just wanted to say that. I know it isn't going to change. Maybe it shouldn't change. Well, I'll not dwell on it any further. I have to get back to using an operating system that is graced by the actual applications I need to use day to day. Due to, you know, actually being neutral to commercial closed-source developers.

PS... I really enjoy linux. A truly great OS. And what runs on it, and all that is so universal that it might as well be part of the OS, even if it isn't. Everything from cron to Apache. And midnight commander! It's only the tail-chewing open sores nature of the snark-GPL-GUI complex that I react so poorly to.

Ok. Mod me to hell and gone. I feel a tremor in the farce. I'd better get back to my wretched commercial hive of scum and villainy before the linux people come out. They're easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in pretty much the usual numbers. Cuz, you know, small commercial developers won't... ok, ok, I'm going.
</RANT>

Of course, your real point seems to be that the plural of anecdote is not data, which is true.

Exactly. Incidentally, most of my machines have Thermaltake supplies - I'm not one to skimp on parts either. I'm still not getting where Apple thought $400 was an appropriate price for a 350 watt supply though.

Almost all of my co-workers with PC's have suffered fan failures, power supply failures, etc etc and gone through at least one replacement cycle in that time.

On the flip side, I've had:

2000 Mac Pro - drive failure, power supply failure (and Apple wanted $400 for the replacement supply)
2001 iMac - CD-ROM failure
2004 iBook - 2x power supply failures
2008 MacBook - power supply failure, and a PMU firmware issue that Apple denied yet quietly fixed a few weeks later

In contrast, over the last 20 years I've owned seven PCs, five of which I built myself. One drive failure, one power supply failure, and no other issues to speak of.

I just love the fact that some idiot modded my post down.

Slashdot is like yin and yang.

The posts contain some of the most intelligent remarks on blogs in general, while moderation seems to be a process identical to random poo-flingery.

You just can't beat that for being red hot and ice cold at the same time.

Could it be that Slashdot has been data mining, and is preferentially giving mod points to those with IQs under 50?

That's beside the point: the thing to observe is that that graph clearly indicates that climate temperature is not significantly tracking CO2 levels. While there may be some effect, it's demonstrably not what drives temperature in the graph.

We can reach this conclusion because in the graph, historically speaking, temperature and CO2 track each other very well; but when CO2 was pushed separately consequent to our emissions, temperature did not follow. A likely conclusion is that either temperature drives CO2 (the reverse of what we're generally being told), or something else -- something not on that graph -- is driving them both. But that graph definitely does not support the contention that CO2 drives temperature.

So how well can we determine what is actually going on? We're limited here because we have no prior example of this particular sequence of events, and so we're reduced to guessing about a system that has, at least so far, proven too complex to accurately predict. Predictive models fielded to date have uniformly failed to present an accurate picture of the conditions of the last 15 years or so, but we're being asked to take action based on predictions those same models make that are within the same order of magnitude. Should we really do that?

If you were risking your money at a game of chance, and someone gave you a system that was alleged to predict the coming betting events, but when used, it seriously failed to do so, would you then elect to use that same system to guide your other bets well into the future? The way I see it, it's better to make your individual bets very conservatively based on the best estimate you can make at the time of the bet based on whatever known factors you can access instead of failed predictive mechanisms. It's also not at all wise to bet everything in any case where you could lose it consequent to a single event of betting wrong.

In that light, my primary concern lies with the state of the chemistry of the oceans; and I am fairly certain that the prudent thing to do is stop adding so much CO2 (or anything else, really) to the atmosphere, no matter what the eventual effects might be predicted to be, or not be. The bottom line is I don't consider it wise to significantly alter the state of a complex system we can't control or fully understand.

The whole thing pisses me off. It's not really science as we know it; we have no experiment to run that will validate the contentions of either side; we do have lots of near-term indicators, but they aren't particularly consistent and they certainly aren't predictable. Yet from this, we are in receipt of glassy-eyed claims from people on both sides of the issue, delivered with utter conviction.

So what to do? The best metaphor for this is we have a potentially dangerous animal at our feet. Do we really want to kick it and throw sand in its face to see if it'll turn around and bite us?

cops don't care who really did it

Neither do the prosecutors -- or the judges. For them, it's all about notches on the handle of their figurative pistol.

Our justice system attracts some of the worst human beings among us. The very last thing you can expect from it, and from them, is "justice."