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Comment Re:Hell, no (Score -1) 648

Any public official who thinks this does violate the Constitutional separation of Church and State should be slapped for failing to actually read and understand the Constitution. It's absolutely unbelievable what people believe about that document, despite it being available to anybody to read.

The phrase "separation of Church and State" does not exist in the Constitution. Go read it sometime. That phrase came from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut in 1802, which expressed that the "wall of separation between Church and State" was intended to be a one-way wall, keeping the government from making anti-religious laws. Unfortunately, it is exactly the opposite today. Government now oppresses religion freely.

If people want to push their religion of evolution (it's a religion... it has not been and cannot be absolutely PROVEN) with private money, even for a profit, I don't care. But the second you start taking my money to proselytize your religion, I get VERY agitated.

My point is that you're just one side of the coin. Perhaps the solution is neither heads nor tails, but rather to allow both to exist "outside the coin" - without stepping on each other's toes (or in this case, wallets. I don't want my money spent on your religion, and I fully respect you not wanting to spend money on mine).

Comment Re:where is ATT and comcast with IPV6? (Score 1) 460

Bah, they better be giving discounts to go to IPv6. Many people will need to upgrade routers or OS's because they can't handle IPv6.
Knowing how corrupt big business is, they'll probably do something stupid like give you the option between NAT and IPv6, and tack an extra monthly charge on no matter which one you pick (but of course, an even higher monthly charge if you pick neither). This will do nothing but raise awareness that there are more ISPs out there than just AT&T & Comcast.

Hey stupid, corrupt ISPs! Try this one! $5/mo discount for a couple months to every customer who agrees to permanently switch to IPv6. Can't cost that much out of your 18-light-year-deep pockets, and would actually make customers happy with you... for once...

Comment Sigh... (Score 1) 286

Here we go... Mars Rock all over again... NASA must want more grant money
(very publicly/loudly) "Proof of extraterrestrial life!"
(very privately/quietly and AFTER grant money comes through) "Whoops, sorry, it was actually a normal crystal formation"

Comment Re:Should be done anyway! (Score 1) 129

And how much do they bill you for the AV software? Sounds to me like this would be way too easily abused... or like those popups that some people still get that say "Your computer is infected! Pay $40 for this tool to remove!"

How would they know you're botnetted? Perhaps you just happen to have a traffic pattern similar to a particular botnet because of a server you're hosting... I'd be annoyed if I was getting redirected on every http request. Either that, or they already have your PC compromised with their own software. Any ISP that does either of those is one that I'll avoid.

Comment None of them! (Score 1) 480

USPS - Package is always smashed.

UPS - Likes to be late, or decide they don't feel like delivering and make me drive out to the local distribution center if I want my package. Also found once a package was opened, had things removed, and was taped shut again. Also, refuses to 'return to sender' or to allow me to refuse accepting shipment.

FEDEX - a deliveryman once signed for and kept a package being delivered to me. It was in an Alienware box, but what was in the box wasn't a computer - it was an Alienware backpack with a laptop slot to hold the laptop that arrived a few days earlier. Package was eventually recovered and given to me, though.

Comment Enough already (Score 1) 221

There's no question mankind has abused the environment, but it's a slippery slope towards government mandated environment control. Anyone who has studied formation of tyrannies knows that it always starts with something seemingly harmless that removes previous freedoms, and just exponentiates from there.

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 2, Insightful) 1065

Let X = the number of people saved by use of a knife

Let Y = the number of people injured or killed by a knife

Do you really think that X is higher than Y? I'll bet Y is two orders of magnitude higher than X, at least.

Does this mean that we should make the very existence of knives illegal?
Of course not!
This isn't an issue of saving lives, it's an issue of communist-style government control. If they can put a number behind a policy that makes it seem like you're better off with the policy, regardless of the facts, they'll do it over and over again until we find ourselves getting shipped off to labor camps because of an off-color tweet.

Just a couple situations where this policy would absolutely suck:
- Obvious "stuck in the car" scenario
- Car breaks down on a busy highway. Nearby cars will almost absolutely block your signal. You'll have to walk down the highway until you can exit on foot, or else your call will drop every time someone drives by.
- Passenger needs to make a call. Now you have to pull over, get out, and hope you can get far enough from your car and other traffic to keep your signal from getting blocked
- I use my phone GPS. While blocked, I would have to print out directions, which makes me have to read them while I'm driving. With my phone, I just set it, look over the route once to make sure it isn't insane, and follow what it speaks. No distraction... unless I need to look at a piece of paper...

A distracted driver is a distracted driver no matter if they're on the phone or doing something else. It would make more sense to outlaw putting a radio and cd players in cars, and while we're at it let's take out a/c because drivers get distracted while operating the controls. Best of all, nobody can be killed by lack of music. Let's take it a step further and mandate all cars look exactly the same so drivers aren't distracted when the Lamborghini drives by. Nobody will be hurt by that one.

My point is that such a law is absolutely, 100% stupid. If you want communist control, go to China and stay there, please.

Comment iPads aren't worth it (Score 1) 97

As if doctors couldn't afford their own iPad? They aren't that useful in a hospital setting anyways. I work in an IT department for a hospital (~6000 total employees) and while we find that several top executives are trying to push for being able to do more hospital stuff on their iPad, we were never able to justify, on a cost-to-benefit analysis, buying more than 2 iPads, and that was so our current web developers could run compatibility tests (not actually building anything for it, just tweaking existing web pages). They add zero functionality. We already have systems in place that do everything the "iPad pushers" want, and they do it quite well.

Comment Walk buttons work... (Score 1) 824

Where I live, the walk buttons have an effect, but won't alter the flow of traffic. If you don't push the button, the sign will never switch to "walk". However, pushing the button doesn't turn on the "walk" sign any sooner; it just makes sure to turn it on the next time the right light turns green. Only if there are no cars at (or coming up on) the intersection will it actually alter the order of traffic lights to let you walk sooner.
Then of course there are a couple of older intersections that always turn the "walk" light on no matter if someone has pushed the button or not.

And the close button on elevators is for impatient people. Seriously, you can't wait another whole second for the door to close? I've never needed to push a close door button because the doors were perfectly capable of closing on their own. I've only ever used the open button, to hold the elevator for people. If I were to make an elevator, I'd omit the close button entirely. Or put one in and have the elevator spew an insult every time it was pushed. Oooh, even better... shock the button pusher! Too bad I'd probably get sued for that one.

Comment Re:And so it begins (Score 2, Informative) 415

I have a hunch that this pull has nothing to do with openness and everything to do with avoiding a lawsuit for facilitation of wiretapping.

I'd still call the Android Market pretty open. The platform as a whole is still quite open, considering you can easily install apps without going through the Market - Just download the installer and run it on the phone and you have it again. All that really happened here was getting de-listed from the Market.

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