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That's quite possibly the funniest thing I've read in some time. Bravo!

It's a pretty famous quote... and i work across the street from the Dirksen building.

Whatever his other foibles, Reagan knew how the USG operates:

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Trust me, I have a PhD in engineering.

Would you care to expand upon that? Or is this the scenario we are looking at below?

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. -- Arthur C. Clarke

Or perhaps we simply have a loose troll?

I'd suggest reading at least one F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. The Great Gatsby is the most popular and certainly an easy read -- if you're a reasonably fast reader, you can knock it out after lunch on a public holiday and be done by supper. This Side of Paradise is very good too, but should preferably be read for the first time before the reader is in their mid twenties. Once you're an English teacher, it's too late.

But seriously, tell your young ones not to wait till they're old to read Fitzgerald. And if they like him, he's got a metric assload of short stories to fill those idle times between leap years.

A splendid rant, but I like a few older quotes on the subject.

And a third, though not directly related to the industry of false tales.

A splendid rant, but I like a few older quotes on the subject.

And a third, though not directly related to the industry of false tales.

A splendid rant, but I like a few older quotes on the subject.

And a third, though not directly related to the industry of false tales.

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It is interesting the way that can play out.

Yes, the Bush White House was very definitely using fear of nukes to justify its decision to invade Iraq. Remember this?

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
—Condoleeza Rice, 8 Sep 2002

Mandela paved the way for future greats like Julius Malema (may Allah exalt him beyond the status of a syphilitic camel someday) and the advancement of SA into the paradise it was always meant to be. Modern tribalism brings the community of South Africa together - in celebration of casting off the shadow of apartheid, and in non-consensual sexual activity all across the nation.
 
  Proof is abundant that black leaders can turn a formerly thriving but unfair country into a far more equitable ghetto.

Oppenheimer saved _millions_ of lives.

I'm not sure he saw it that way:

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

In fact, he was later very much opposed to its use:

However, he and many of the project staff were very upset about the bombing of Nagasaki, as they did not feel the second bomb was necessary from a military point of view.[113] He traveled to Washington on August 17 to hand-deliver a letter to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson expressing his revulsion and his wish to see nuclear weapons banned."

Oppenheimer was always a very conflicted individual.

Remember that he wasn't an elected politician or military commander, he was a civilian scientist who was tasked to develop the atomic bomb. It was never his job to decide if the bombs should be used and he knew that. In fact, he was very much motivated to both develop these weapons during WWII when he was terrified of the Nazi's developing a nuclear capability and using it on the Allies.

It's unfortunate that he felt bad about it later on. But guess what? A lot of people felt bad about many of their war actions later on. However, it was war. People tend to make different decisions when they are under an extreme amount of stress from a looming predator as compared to when they are relaxing in their vacation house.

Try to envision the time period. The Nazis had annihilated most of Europe and were gassing civilian Jews to death because they didn't think they were the perfect race. They were making lightshades out of Jewish skin for fun. The Japanese were waging a particularly vicious war on the Pacific. The US was stuck between these two insanities and tried to stay out of things for as long as possible. 12 MILLION people died in WWII. After the Nazis surrendered, the US had to start shipping war weary troops to the other side of the world for more fighting.

Was dropping two atomic bombs on Japan a nice thing to do? No. But I think the US was prepared to keep making nukes and dropping them on Japan until Japan surrendered rather than lose more US troops invading Japan.

Oppenheimer saved _millions_ of lives.

I'm not sure he saw it that way:

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

In fact, he was later very much opposed to its use:

However, he and many of the project staff were very upset about the bombing of Nagasaki, as they did not feel the second bomb was necessary from a military point of view.[113] He traveled to Washington on August 17 to hand-deliver a letter to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson expressing his revulsion and his wish to see nuclear weapons banned."

Encore! Now do an ad hominem on Thomas Jefferson.

All the way distracting from the trivial observation that uninformed people will cast uninformed votes.

working together. There's a word for that.

I think Benito Mussolini said it best.

Yes, including this: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."

-- Ogden Nash

(Unstated but equally true of cats.)

At least they dropped the apostasy charges, right? Right?

These people need more Voltaire. *sigh*

Well, maybe, somebody is finally going broke underestimating the taste of the American public?

Now this one is something that could easily fall into Hanlon's / Heinlein's Razor but it does seem a bit like somebody really favors the politicians these days.

I think Carl Sagan was wrong. The Universe is really out to get us.

So basically, Amazon is trying to turn all of us into Lisp programmers?

This is my money, the state and its corporate partner shouldn't be making money off me when I try to get it.

I just wanted to interject this: conservative or liberal, I hope we can all agree that big business colluding with big government is often times a recipe for bad things to happen.

Isn't that Mussolini's definition of Fascism [1]?
" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

Other cute nicknames that sum up the state of our wonderful nation since the new millenium:
Crony Capitalism
Military Industrial Complex
Kleptocracy

[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/benitomuss388775.html

We have to get beyond the Left vs Right myth. Nearly every country has two parties like this and both now answer to corporate lobbyists. Let's drop the left vs right moniker in debates and listen to the issues instead: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jesse_ventura.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/06/13/jesse-ventura-explains-why-governments-are-like-gangs/

The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do. -- Joseph Stalin

I think it's just good old-fashioned bureaucratic daftness that causes it. Sort of like everyone's favourite Babbage quotation, only with more self-congratulation for reducing costs. The other plausible answer is an antisocial "not my problem" attitude, but those rarely even consider public welfare.

A developer building an internal app uses conventions and tools that are relavent at the time of production. This developer is not clairvoyant. They can't put the sourcecode against their head johnny carson style and predict that in 5 years that say, activeX is going to be a major pariah, and that the core framework they are making will become totally unworkable.

...

The asymmetry cannot be fixed. The problem it causes cannot be fixed.

You can't solve it in its entirety, however you can alleviate the impact by the architecture and modularisation of your system. Then, you can upgrade it "by parts": whatever part can not longer be supported by the technology-of-the-moment, gets re-written (trivial example, take it as an example only: implement the business logic into an app server exposing API interfaces, separate the UI in some other place in the code. ActiveX UI no longer supported? Reimplement it, let the server-side logic untouched).

Granted, doing this doesn't come for free (higher dev costs, possibly higher hardware costs to run it), but one can look at this as an investment into one's future capability to evolve.
Put in other way: Change is not compulsory. But again, neither is survival

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/rahmemanue409199.html
-Rahm Emmanuel

The wealthy donate to museums and cultural causes that have acquired the same tax exempt status as humanitarian aid causes. They're also the only ones benefiting from their own causes. They also donate less as a percentage of income than the poor. That on top of being able to exploit capital gains tax rates to pay a lower percentage of income on taxes than the middle and working classes.

Millions is peanuts. As middle class wage earners, you'll "contribute" that in mandatory taxes, some of which may actually be used for something you care about (school, roads, social safety nets, wars, ...) A single hospital is billions of dollars. Countries cost trillions to run.

Capitalism is working and generating wealth in society, but it's not something that works faithfully or evenly. It's very easy to have the winners in the "free market" capture your government too, and then where are you?

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/rahmemanue409199.html

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -Rahm Emanuel

Former aid to President Obama and current mayor of Chicago which is undergoing major budgetary and violent crime crisises as we speak.

A Pelco camera at an ATM tied Timothy McVeigh to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. [citation] ATM camera robots that can see beyond the bank's property line would be illegal in Texas.

If your neighbor's house is burning down in the middle of the night and you call the fire department after your smoke alarm goes off, then you will be breaking the law in Texas. Your little smoke detector robot is illegal if it can smell your neighbor's smoke.

Would barometers that automatically warn you of extreme weather events (tornado conditions) be illegal since they detect "other conditions"?

I doubt the Texas proposal will be come law. The unintended consequences are too obvious. ... unless the idea is to make everyone a criminal, of course.

Oops. GP actually used the word correctly -- google it, break out a dictionary or just rely on these quotes: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/apprehend.html

And ethics can't be figured out by polling for people that don't mind a concern/problem.

They worked out so well last time.

An example was Oscar Levant.

The barber said he was going to open a butcher shop : "You mean you are going to close this one?"

"Elizabeth Taylor should get divorced and settle down.'

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/oscar_levant.html

Just because they really are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid.- Steven Brust

I'm not a paranoid deranged millionaire. Goddamit, I'm a billionaire. Howard Hughes

http://mobile.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/paranoid.html

I agree with that, but many of his quotes are insulting, not disagreements. First of all, he paints all religions with the same brush. Some religions actively encourage scientific inquiry, some religions tell you to question your faith, and some discourage inquiry and questions. Taking them all the same is insulting, and saying that religion is actively damaging to the world is insulting as well.

Dawkins is a smart man, but I think he actively damages relations between atheists and theists. I have a sister who would be atheist but she doesn't want to be associated with people like that. I know many other people who are atheist, but don't take on the label because of how antagonistic atheists like Dawkins are.

But more importantly, while you are right that Christianity in the general sense is not incompatible with these two scientific theories, certainly a literal interpretation of the Bible is incompatible.

Which, of course, is binding to Christians... Sigh.

Well, to prove just how idiotic this reasoning is, I've decided to apply it the other way round. Do you trust Linus Torvalds? Surely most Slashdot readers do. So there's a good chance you do too. Yet, dear VeniceBeach, a literal interpretation of Linus Torvalds own words is totally incompatible with biology, the Apple App Store, or basic economy. It's even incompatible with Slashdot! Don't believe me? I have proof: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/linus_torvalds.html.

> Software is like sex
Burn biologists! They claim that sex is about reproduction!

> Any program is only as good as it is useful.
Burn the guy who wrote Bubble Wrap for the iPhone!

> Giving the same thing to a thousand consumers is not really any more expensive than giving it to just one.
Burn the car dealer who refused to sell me one thousand cars for the price of one!

> Microsoft isn't evil
Burn Slashdot!

Need I go on? Or can you accept the idea that Christians don't have to take the Bible literally? There's a fraction of ultra-bigots in the US who are ready to take everything in the Bible literally, save for "thou shalt not kill" when it applies to a deer or restricts their right to bear arms. I demand that Christians (or Americans, for that matter) not be judged by this standard.

Equating any Christian to this stereotype is as insulting to the majority of Christians as equating all Linux kernel hacker to a lowly -1 Slashdot troll.

There you go again.

lol.. Isn't that exactly what happened with the GM bailout? He gave GM to the Employees Union.

Where, on Planet Wingnutia? I don't know on what planet the ownership of GM was turned over to the union, but on this planet Obama made the company go through bankruptcy, voided union contracts, and forced newer workers - who didn't crash the economy - to accept massive cuts in compensation as a condition for receiving a bailout.

Conditions that were not enforced on the bankrupt banks after the financial crisis. The bankers - who did crash the economy - not only got to keep their salaries, not only continued to be rewarded with astronomical bonuses, but had the value of their bank stock re-inflated with trillions of dollars in interest-free loans backed by the taxpayer.

There is indeed an "ism" you're looking for here, but it's not "socialism".

The US is perhaps a good place to be polite. Robert A. Heinlein noted, "An armed society is a polite society." Okay. That may be a bit of hyperbolic humor. But, whatever the reason, in my experience your cross-cultural observation is correct.

I once had a French boss. An editor to be exact. He was blunt to the point of cruelty from my point of view. Others also found him so -- especially the Americans. But we published a damned good magazine. And I learned a lot from him. And, to be fair, he was as hard on himself as he was on us. Brits are also a bit more blunt than Americans I have observed.

Personally, I make a distinction between constructive honesty and brutal frankness. That said, people in a workplace need to develop a thick hide or standards never get raised. However, create too much of a negative atmosphere and potentially good ideas are suppressed. Finally, when finishing a product you need somebody in charge with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue.

"Woolman, if you don't come in Sunday and fix this copy, then don't bother to come in Monday. Now get out."

I think you've been unfairly tagged on the flamebait item...

Considering that /. is supposedly a nerd haven, and I was essentially paraphrasing Heinlein... yea.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink. Earl Long Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/whisper.html#aDdBKTeRF7pytwOE.99

Thank you very much for the nice quote from Thomas Jefferson. Just google it and it's probably "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson_7.html

It had expansion slots! Oh, how I loved that idea. Something that PC copied and improved on and that we are heading towards again with Arduino shields etc.

My gut feeling [and I'm a greenie too] is that we need to modularise all our electronics so that we are not constantly throwing and recycling large hunks of kit. I'm aware that the structure and economics of the industry would have to change. But, after all, I'm from the post-war where things got mended and there were whole industrial 'ecologies' that did that.

About the only product that really has that now is the bicycle, you can replace nearly every bit of it. After you have done so, is it the same bicycle though? One needs to ask Heraclitus: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/heraclitus107157.html sorry, I'm beginning to ramble now...

We've got the best democracy money can buy ;-)

We're suppose to have a republic.

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

Taking a random page off of Autosport.com (a site I currently have open), gives me a Twitter button which redirects to a sign in page when clicked, a LinkedIn button which redirects when clicked, a Facebook button which redirects when clicked, and indeed a Google +1 button which, surprise surprise, redirects anyway because I'm logged into a Google+ account which is not my own (business account) and requests permission to continue.

Those are somewhat different species of buttons. The third party website in those cases specifically inserted code for the buttons so that users would +1/like/whatever the website's own content, which directly benefits the website. What I'm talking about is putting the button on an ad, which only indirectly benefits the website it's actually on (by making ads more relevant/profitable), and which might be on websites that hadn't wanted or expected an ad that would spawn a new tab just for that. I could also see how the advertisers themselves would object, since you have a user who was interested enough in their ad to want to +1 it who is now distracted from actually buying the interesting thing advertised by a new tab that has them signing into Google+.

There could also be a million other reasons. Maybe they didn't even think about it, and this was the just the first implementation that came to mind. Maybe they had some internal reasons based on existing infrastructure. We're both just speculating about their motives.

My point is that when you have a competitor playing Cardinal Richelieu it doesn't make any sense to ascribe ulterior motives to ambiguous conduct, because there is no possible way to operate a large corporation such that no one will ever do anything that can't be painted in a bad light by assuming without evidence that their motives are impure.

enough money in investment accounts that I could have bought the house outright

Just more proof that Bob Hope was +5 Insightful.

Jon Stewart? Oh come on....he didn't start that saying. J Paul Getty did, who at one point, was the richest man in the US. Saddened but not surprised you got modded +5 for that drivel.....

See here. Or any one of the other dozen websites that say the same thing. It's a very well known quote, my friend and it's not typically attributed to Jon Stewart.

The war criminal Tony Blair made lots of statements about them having WMDs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3750847.stm
have a search for WMD in 2002.
If you care to, WMDs around that time was sold to us as: chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tony_blair.html
I'm not too sure what nation you want to take your Nobody from; but here in the UK in early part of our decade our Nobody at the time, the war criminal Tony Blair, did make the claim.

Note: I'd to retract my comment about Tony Blair being a war criminal. I've since found that out to be thought of as untrue.

Is that you, Steve Martin*?

* Thought nobody would remember, eh Tsingi? http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/stevemarti163457.html

Nah, it's OK. I'm not embarrassed to say that I rip off humour. It's still funny.
Mind you it is a little embarrassing to get caught ripping off Steve Martin.

Is that you, Steve Martin*?

* Thought nobody would remember, eh Tsingi?
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/stevemarti163457.html

That's actually a reference to a popular Yogi Berra quote: Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.

Yup. That's why it's referred to as pushing data to or pulling data from the the internet. I think the great elasticity and extreme tenuity of the pneumatic tubes is why they call it an ethernet cable.

Have you heard of this schmuck "Einstein!?!" He EVEN SAID "I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."

He ADMITS to being right ONLY 1% OF THE TIME. How is it possible we continued to pay attention to him!?!