Free Republic

Mainly. Clearly, whatever climate Jupiter may have will be affected to a larger extent by its internal heat than by the heat from the sun, simply because one is greater than the other.

Equally clearly, this does not alter the fact that the climates of the other planets are driven by the sun.

That's not quite accurate: According to NASA, Jupiter emits approximately twice as much heat from its core as it receives from the sun.

My guess is that, while this is a token gesture, it is also a clumsy attempt to hide their bias. CBS wishes to attack President Bush and his administration from behind a veil of plausible deniability. If their pundits participate in direct Bush-bashing, this becomes impossible.

It could indeed backfire, but there is a fairly easy, albeit intellectually dishonest (but when has that stopped a Leftist?), way of finessing that requirement:

Suppose that I am a presenter on a PBS "current affairs" program. Suppose further that I wish to propagate some nonsensical thesis (that human activity is causing the Global climate to heat up, for example). What I do is to arrange a discussion between two advocates of positions respectively for, and against, my thesis. However, the person I choose to represent the case I support will be articulate, well-informed and charismatic, while his/her opponent will be some half-baked conspiracy-theorist dredged from the nether reaches of some group widely seen as ridiculous. (I will, of course, make sure that this person's affiliation is clearly stated; it would also help if English is not this person's first language). I will pretend to be a neutral, disinterested arbiter who, during the course of this "debate", will come to be persuaded of the view that I already held.

This is a technique for which the BBC has been notorious for at least the past 40-odd years.

Now suppose that you are the popular, well-known host of a radio talk show. Absent the Fairness Doctrine, you can, at your leisure, refute my entire program point-by-point, revealing my bias and dishonesty in the process. (This is why such techniques are not as successful as they might otherwise be at present).

However, under the Fairness Doctrine, you would be required to grant me "equal time" to rebut your refutation, thus at the very least diluting its effect.

All-in-all, I think it is best that the abomination known as the Fairness Doctrine remain an historical curiosity, never to be re-enacted.

The relevant section is this:

"`(a) Public Interest Obligation to Cover Publicly Important Issues- A broadcast licensee shall afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance. The enforcement and application of the requirement imposed by this subsection shall be consistent with the rules and policies of the Commission in effect on January 1, 1987.'."

In other words, the Bill includes an attempt to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine.

The Wikipedia article on the Fairness Doctrine says, in part:

"In 1986 the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a loose interpretation by the FCC of an aspect of the Fairness Doctrine, ruling that Congress had "never made the doctrine a binding requirement." In August 1987, the Commission abolished the doctrine by a 4-0 vote, in its Syracuse Peace Council decision. The FCC insisted that the doctrine had grown to inhibit rather than enhance debate and suggested that, due to the many media voices in the marketplace at the time, the doctrine was perceived to be unconstitutional.

"In the spring of 1987 Congress attempted to contest the FCC vote and restore the Doctrine (S. 742, 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987)), but the legislation was vetoed by President Reagan. Another attempt to resurrect the doctrine in 1991 ran out of steam when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto."

The article also points out that:

"It has been routinely criticized by conservatives in the media as a means of keeping their views from being expressed or of deliberately cutting their available air time in half."

This is the reason why some of us are concerned by anything that gives ammuntion to those arguing in favor of this Bill.

That makes an excellent tagline.

Oh, it got made, in 1994, according to IMDB. There is a link on that page to its box-office receipts. It...well...I was going to say it bombed, but that would not be accurate. Ishtar bombed; Howard the Duck bombed; Gigli bombed. According to IMDB, each of these movies has box office figures that are several hundred times better than It's Pat.

1) You said the CPU was 667MHz; does that mean it's a Pentium-3? (Not that this is likely to make any difference - but it's nice to be sure).

2) Have you tried checking the support info at Micron's site?

3) What is the model name of your machine? (For example, the machine on which I am composing this response is a Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop).

FWIW, my guess at this point is that the motherboard (btw, what is its model identifier?) chipset or the BIOS (and which company made the BIOS?) is failing to handle XP correctly. I had the identical problem with an orphaned PC (350MHz Pentium-2 with 384MB memory) when I tried to make it useful again by installing WindowsXP Home edition on it. Eventually, I gave up and returned the PC to the trash where I had found it.

Oh, yes....which variety of XP are you trying to install? And have you thought of adding a hard drive and installing Linux on that? You could then use Linux - I recommend SUSE, but almost any major distro would be good - to back up the data on your C: drive before doing the wipe-and-install recommended by other FReepers. Of course, if my guess is correct (and I hope it isn't), none of what any of us are suggesting is going to do you any good: There may be a BIOS upgrade that you could apply (but there probably isn't), but you may well wind up getting a new PC, anyway.

Technically speaking, 10,000,000,000¹⁰⁰ for a googol. But it's all imaginary to me.

No, a googol is 10¹⁰⁰. A googolplex is 10^googol.

Economic Left/Right: 7.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.49

Which puts me just about where Milton Friedman is (maybe a tad less Libertarian than he was). It also explains why I find Social Conservatism so tiresome: Social issues are not nearly as important to me as fiscal or military issues.

Oh, OK. As I said, my JVC players both can, and the Toshiba owned by my parents back in Europe can be configured to do the reverse (automatically convert NTSC to PAL; I found that out when I gave my father a "Region 0" NTSC DVD for his birthday in 2005).

I never tried it in my DVD players, though. Checked a couple of the player's documentation. Assumed that the other two couldn't. Didn't want to dig them out to be able to play one DVD (if they did play PAL).

Fair enough, although, as I implied in my previous post, you would probably have been unable to play them anyway due to the "region" issue.

Also, not being its native format, isn't there a loss of quality?

That was my first reaction, upon discovering that my locked player could convert PAL to NTSC (for Region 0 only, of course). I haven't noticed any loss of quality or introduction of artefacts, but then, despite my initial thoughts, I never really looked for them.

You've tweaked my curiosity: I got the English release of the "Matrix" trilogy as a Christmas present. I think I will rent the American release of one of them, and compare them on my unlocked player.

To be honest, I never tried.

It was probably a Region 2 DVD, anyway.

That's not necessarily so. My JVC DVD player handles PAL DVDs just fine, automatically converting PAL signals to NTSC. I think you would find, were you to investigate, that most, if not all, big-name DVD players can handle both PAL and NTSC formats.

The zone issue is another matter entirely. My other JVC DVD player is specifically unlocked so that it can play discs from any region, as well as both PAL and NTSC formats.

Returning the DVD to England would have cost more than what we paid for it.

This leads me to believe that you fell foul only of the "region" issue, not the "format" issue.

LOL...and that typo is in the original article! I would have expected BOR, of all people, to proof-read his work.

Agreed.

Projection is not reality.

Agreed.

Facts are absolute and do not change. Circumstances and context change in which the interpretation of facts may rightly vary.

That is true, but incomplete. The set of facts pertaining to a given case may change as new information becomes available, and in the face of such a change, an honest man will necessarily amend his view. That is what I understand Keynes to have meant by his words.

Integrity persists--or loses. Character matters.

Character strives to discern absolute truth and act accordingly.

I agree with this also, but it seems to me that you and I are talking about two different aspects of the way in which one should approach Truth. (Capitalization used to distinguish absolute Truth from perceived truth).

That doesn't concern you even a little bit? The timing is certainly suspect enough on its face to make me very skeptical. If a Dim had done it, we would be howling right now.

Sure, it concerns me a little bit, but coincidences do happen (and more frequently than most people believe). Perhaps I am more gullible than you; time will tell.

As I said, "For now, I will give him the benefit of the doubt on this point" (emphasis added).

On the contrary, an honest man can, and will, change his mind (perhaps more than once) on many issues over the course of his life. As John Maynard Keynes put it (and this is perhaps the only instance of Keynes getting something right):

"When the facts change, I change my mind".

Maybe he's sincere and it's just a huge coincidence that he should reverse his position on all key issues at this point in his life, or maybe he just says whatever he thinks will get him the most votes.

For now, I will give him the benefit of the doubt on this point. (Note that this is not an expression of support; I will not support any primary candidate until Thanksgiving of this year, at the earliest).

And these items definitely indicate murder as a sure fire outcome!

That will take a lot of jackass calisthenics to arrive at murder as the plan in place, talk about a ssstttrrreeetttccchhh!

You're right, based on those items. But the article failed to mention the other items also found in her possession at the time she was arrested: A steel sledgehammer; a four-inch retractable knife; several feet of rubber tubing; several plastic bags; a map with directions to her victim's house, and a list which included all of these items.

I use the word "victim" because Nowak did actually use the pepper spray, thus justifying at least a charge of assault.

Remember also that the quantity of evidence needed to bring a charge is substantially less than that which is required for a criminal conviction. I too doubt that a charge of attempted murder will stand up in court, but I have no doubt that she was intending more than just a friendly (or unfriendly) chat. How much more will be for a jury to decide.

That is correct. The desktop now allows sharing of its printer.

Now, if you have not already done so, yo need to log on to the laptop while the desktop is running, and bring up the laptop's "new printer" wizard (or whatever Vista uses as an equivalent). Tell it to create a network printer; it will ask for a path to that printer, or it may be able to find the path itself. It will also ask you to give the printer a name. Once it knows where the printer is, it will create a network printer, to which you can then print.

At least, that's the way it works in WinXP, Win2K and Win98SE, none of which require any special driver software when setting up network printers; the drivers are only required for printers local to the machine on which they are being configured.

Just to continue the conversation, let me suggest that there are essays of an explanatory or descriptive nature which are so evocative and vivid as to require little effort to imagine and image.

True; I didn't think of that.

That said, even though I try for clarity in my own descriptions, I do try to leave something for the imagination. I like to conceal tiny glinting nuances of secondary meanings which can give additional delight to the astute observer.

That illustrates exactly what I was trying to say.

ROFL. Actually, I strive to be both.