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If the president is appointing judges in eastern Texas who are plaintiff friendly why isn't this happening everywhere?

I'm not sure. Other posters have noted the possibility that the volume of patent cases being tried in the district might constitute a significant portion of public revenues, at least with regard to the court system, which might be one possible reason for the current situation -- with the current crop of judges positioning the eastern Texas district as a kind of niche market for patent cases; however, I must confess that I am not knowledgeable enough to assess the validity of such a claim. As to presidential appointment, a judge generally serves for life, so the answer to why isn't this happening everywhere might have to do with the accidents of history as much as anything else, in terms of when past judges have retired and who happens to be president at the time. That said, this is all supposition, and I'm not really sure as to the real reasons.

First I didn't say I was opposed, I just went up the thread to make sure I didn't. Actually if anything I oppose forum shopping. I also oppose more new laws, I actually believe most laws should be revoked and that what's left as well as new laws should be reevaluated every few years at most. The same with regulations.

Aha -- this is a position I can understand. And by "opposition", I was responding to your previous statement about changing the whole system:

So fix the system in east Texas. Don't change the whole thing because there may be a problem in one location.

I apologize for my lack of clarity. As to revoking most laws and regulations and requiring a review every few years, I support this idea in theory, but I am not so sure about the practicality of such an approach, particularly in any society as large and unwieldy as our own. The bigger the society, the less the sense of community, and (it seems, at least) the less some people will feel the need to be scrupulous. The concept of monkeyspheres might apply here. (While Cracked.com is a humour site, this particular posting strikes me as wiser than funny -- and actually not really that funny at all once the implications are considered.)

While revoking most laws leaves us open to various abuses of anything outside the law, on the flip side, we have our current various abuses of anything legislatable -- who do we get to write and implement laws, and how corrupt or corruptible are they? It begins to look like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of problem.

But then again, perhaps my less sanguine outlook is due to my more cynical upbringing in the DC area. One cannot come of age so close to the stink of power without seeing a few things related to the uglier sides of human nature. :-P

Cheers,

You mean this?

Seems like a nice ploy, what with all them angry, uppity nettards jumping to action in a flurry of group joins, posting and pageloads!

Guess they've been taking notes from livejournal.

This is America. Kids can't look at boobs, but you can legally own and operate flamethrowers, build and use garage guns, and fire an M134 minigun.

We make a lot of sense here, don't we?

Forgot the /jk tag.
Great article, great site, here's a favorite story of mine.

Do check out this article.

The relevant bits:
"First of all, the college Gates left was Harvard, not the community college that most of the people who cite his story are thinking of leaving. He entered Harvard by scoring 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT--the man was, and still is, a genetically mutated genius."
And "...Gates left college because it didn't provide the training in computer programming that he needed for the software business he was running on the side. It wasn't that Gates couldn't keep up at Harvard; Harvard couldn't keep up with Gates."

I think you have it upside down, resouces are the PRIME reason regardless of any percieved 'need'. When you talk about enforcing "ideology" you are talking about political/religious control of a particular territory and consequently all the resouces within it.

Wars are never just between the two sides in the headlines, there are all sorts of factions at all sorts of levels. The underlying motivation for war comes from our shared territorial instincts. I'm sure priests, politicians and crusaders would disagree but IMHO religion and politics is just the sales pitch.

The USS cracked

Sounds like the worst name ever for a ship.

USS Cracked? Doesn't seem to bad to me.

"Once you can do that with one subgroup of humans, you can do it for any."

To a westener in India it stands out like dogs-balls but if you look again you will find all humans spend a lot of time behaving like this, wealth just makes the behaviour more potent. Once you see that, all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense. Not saying it's right or wrong it's just the way our wetware bios works.

Have we? Does it scale? Can the result be "democratic"?

Who said anything about democratic? And the number is apparently 150. I got that number from this link. They also use that number in a business book called The Tipping Point. I have not gotten around to reading that book yet.

Anyway, I'm not saying we are perfect, but we've done pretty well on a macro scale so far. Make an argument towards a superior alternative, that has been achieved.

Having worked for some "adolescent" companies, I've noticed that certain traits used to achieve initial success have to be unlearned for continued success. Specifically, a young company needs to take advantage of its flexibility and lack of formal process to get new customers. As it matures, a company needs rigid, yet adaptable, internal processes. I think mankind is at that period where the traits that have served them well (pack animal mentality) no longer due. We can and are doing that via learned behavior.

"Wow, I mean, just wow. You think things are terribly wrong and awful but you can't be bothered to fix them, but you obviously want them to be fixed because otherwise you wouldn't be complaining"

Everyone who gets into politics does so to "fix things" such as the "drug problem". The rest of us will simply try our best to ignore their attempts at "fixing things" and get stoned anyway. It's not that we aren't bothered, it's that we are behaving like humans, and by trivializing the complexity and difficulty of the politics, so are you.

"Yeah, and get the sack because you hung up on 90% of your callers. People treat tech support like shit."

But they only get away with it when YOU let them. Have you ever thought about why you get 90% abuse? Do you work for scammers? Is it becuase the abusers keep ringing and everyone else but you hangs up? Is it because you are ineffective in 90% of calls?

Disclaimer: No flame intended, just that introspection is preferable to feeling like shit. It's a given that most helpdesk people are paid like shit but that is no reason to allow yourself or others to treat you like shit. If your boss would rather have you constantly abused than stand up to a few bulling, blowhard customers then getting the sack is a blessing.

"The sad thing about the greenies is that they would be the first to tell the Religious Right, "stay out of my life!" on abortion or gay marriage or sex on TV or the Internet, but they are the first to tell others how to run their lives in a green way, whether anyone asked them or not."

At the age of 50 I'm certainly aware that political ideaology is no match for real life pragmatisim in a Darwinian environment. I am not Irish but for conceptually similar political reasoning I am unashamed to be "green". I ask you to please refrain from lumping all greenies (evironmentists) together under the greenpeace banner. Some of it's later day actions are a huge cringe factor to the rest of us and have been successfully used by many politicains/corporations to put rational people with genuine concerns into the political "nut-job" basket.

As a scientifically literate "greenie" I am happy to inform you that I do not want to "tell you what to do", the caveate being that whatever you ARE doing has no material affect on me. If what you are doing is offensive to me (but not directed at me) I will ignore you, if you befowl OUR planet I consider that a material affect on me and reserve the right to "interfere" by finding/pointing out what you are doing and petitioning society to find an effective solution. Even if that solution is to take your company away by force as a defensive measure.

Note - The link is an extreme example, I don't think GP self-promotion is a "defensive measure" but the jury did and that's what counts, I am compelled to begrudgingly accept the referee's decision not because I think it's justice servered but because imperfect democracy trumps a perfect free market.

Like most humans (including "greenies") enviromentalisim is only part of my world view. If you want to label my politics I would say "socially liberal, fiscally conservative, strong advocate of science based policy" - To me the science requirement would seem to automatically imply the environmentalisim, it would also reduce the influence of the creationists, the eco-warriors, the French secret service that sunk their boat, the managers of Exonn and their chief anti-scientist Fred Singer, Neo-cons at the UN, Senator Inhofe and his fans, in fact a whole bunch of cliques within large organizations who do no actual work in society other than trying to "tell you what to do" by unilateral force or deception....OTOH....Each and every one of us has a point in our worldview beyond which "telling someone what to do" is our only reasonable option.

If WPA is Cracked then is WPA2 Mad?

Excellent book.

Regarding number eight: Do you like my fangs? They're haunted.

-Peter

Wizard?!?

They simply wrote gibberish and statements that were no more than simple tautologies when you boiled away the strained lingo in a few physics journals and now they have had two French TV shows including Temps X.

There are some more good ones (some duplicates to the linked article) at http://www.cracked.com/article_16696_6-ballsiest-scientific-frauds-people-actually-fell.html.

I love cracked.com as much as anybody, but I'm surprised to see newscientist.com actually use their idea.

Damn, I misquoted! You just read the Cracked article too, huh?

You forgot "pain." I still love 'em, though.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15123_five-most-unintentionally-funny-albums-2006.html

"I read somewher that murder is a crime, genocide is statistics."

Or in it's original form: "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic."

You won't save the world by shouting at it, all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense if you look inside the Monkeysphere.

I never thought an article on Cracked would be relevant to a discussion on Slashdot, but here it is.

6 Brainwashing Techniques they are using on you Right Now.

Gamer's Manifesto
Video Game 7 Commandments
The Scratchware Manifesto

All good reads, if you haven't checked them out... and all very valid complaints!

Gamer's Manifesto
Video Game 7 Commandments
The Scratchware Manifesto

All good reads, if you haven't checked them out... and all very valid complaints!

The trouble is that people who follow satire know more about the news than people who read the actual news. So eventually we'll all be reading UnNews and fake news sites!

Apart from the ad-homs that was an informative and insightful reply, right up until the point you assume to know everything about the GP's political views.

Disclaimers: Non American. I don't actually agree with your reply. I'm an old fart and feel like posting a rant.

rant/
I was born in 1959, I remeber the wall coming down but I don't remember the end of the cold war. As I see it the wars in the ME are between two fading empires. The first is a bankrupt empire run by a crime syndicate who's main customer is China, the second is an empire that is indebted to China and has recently lost a lot of it's clout as an essential Chinese customer, this empire has been in the process of consolidating power under one man while the empire itself spirals toward bankruptcy. China itself over the last 3-4 decades has gone from a famine infested hell hole to a well oiled economic jugernaught representing 1/5 of mankind.

The alternative to international fuedalisim is the picture painted by the UN where international politics is exemplyfied by the response to the tsunami and dammed by the reponse to Rawanda/Burma/etc.

Neither version particularly inspires me, humans are tribal creatures living in a global society, our technology has outpaced our evolution such that personal tribes are constantly changing as people jump from job to job. You can know the guy at the local shop for 10yrs, suddenly he sells up and you are no longer part of each others tribe. But hey, I'm too old for spear chucking of the modern or ancient variety and I'd be dead several times over if not for modern medicine.

Gerogia, LOTR style: The Bear and the Eagle had words at the inter-kingdom games, the Bear accused the Eagle of enslaving Kosovo into the guild and said he was making sure the same thing didn't happen to Osetia, "If the Eagle tries to stop me I will take all of Georgia and sever the black snake, and if the Eagle puts his magic shield on my doorstep I will send it to the rubbish heap".

The frog heard of the argument and became concerned about the black snake as it helps keep his guild ice-free in the winter time. He said to the Eagle "Let the Bear have Osetia if he promises not to touch the black snake". The Eagle's pride was hurt at the suggestion of backing down, his feathers started to puff up in frustration. The Frog gulped and started to turn away, as he turned he spied the orange puppet all torn and tattered after the Bear had swiped it with a paw, "The world needs a scapegoat" he said.

Postscript (in jest): After several frustrating hours of trying to explain what that meant to a birdbrain the Frog and his backers at the guild simply gave up and announced the ceasefire anyway, the Bear accepted and demanded the Eagle sacrafice the orange puppet. Later the guild managed to distract the Eagle by pointing out the orange puppet's face was turning green again.
/rant

"thereby guiding public funding of scientific research"

Exactly, I find the bit about changing NASA's mission statement the most telling example in the UCS link. Having said that I'm sure you can come up with equally telling examples from a different perspective.

"Is there nothing that politicians and corporations can't fuck up?"

All I can say is that I agree with the quotes "war is a failure of politics" and "all wars are resource wars". The Monkeysphere is both a reasonable and humourous explaination for all the random ass-headed cruelty of the world.

"The scientific method is good and all"

To paraphrase Sagan, "Science is mankind's candle in the dark".

The mandatory quote in this kind of thread is "absense of evidence is not evidence of absense" since the only thing that can be said about the (non)existance of God is "dunno".

You can learn more about the scientific method from Sagan's book including the concept that science does not "prove" anything. I admire Dawkin's for his writings and his efforts to fight the pious who take pity on people who don't share their beliefs. However his lack of belief can only be differentiated from a theist using Occam's razor, ie: "The universe just is" is a simpler model than "God did it". Regardless of what model you use there are at least 10 things that Atheists and Theists can agree on

He's doing it to instill fear - it was explained in the first movie that he needs to instill fear to get the job done. As much as I hate that voice (I actually started laughing during TDK) I give it pass for that reason.

Also, seeing this hilarious video didn't help with the laughing.

Here's an example of sampling

And I think we can all agree that no one should ever do that again.

I think you might have missed my point which was: a system by definition is a "set of rules governing behavior". I'm not from the US but like most people here I think that on the whole capitalisim to serve customers, democracy to serve people, and most of all informed debate between people, are all GoodThings(TM).

To further emphasise my original point, in your post the very words 'service', 'property', 'trade', 'pay', 'work' are concepts found in economic systems. Without a system to connect these concepts together their definition is at the mercy of the default 'might is right' rule of natural selection.

Sure, the 'might is right' instinct got us to the top of the food chain, but it won't keep us there much longer if we don't address some 'big picture' issues that when combined have become a serious threat to the food and water supply in every nation. However like I said I don't have the answers even though I have had five decades to ponder all the random assed cruelty in the world.

You're making an implicit assumption that people are reasonable. Mutual agreement and communism work great in small societies. Once you get past the size of the intrinsic human monkeysphere, altruism and accountability go out the window. Which throws a huge realistic wrench into your idealism. The thing is, society is set up so that altruism and accountability as spread as evenly and widely as we know how, which forces (imprisons, as you'd call it) everyone to keep working together, to some degree. The thing is, that's what creates the greatest common good for everyone involved. There are a few big winners who can exploit the system, but there are many fewer losers, and society as a whole has a much higher standard of living because of the system.

I can appreciate your sentiment, just like I can appreciate the sentiment of people saying they want me to go to heaven. I just think you've got a few assumptions and implications that haven't been given a thorough vetting.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16270_six-degrees-paris-hilton-global-reach-one-vagina.html

Confession: I saw that from Digg.

"for no reason whatsoever"

Control over finite resources == survival in hard times, for example both sides of this (remarkably civil) thread are willing to kill to defend their 'rights'. What they really mean by rights is access to basic needs like food, water, shelter, sewerage, electricity,...,playstation,...,where does 'basic needs' stop? Who dies if there is not enough water for everyone? - How much is 'enough'?

Nature rewards survival, the two opposing forces of competion and co-operation explain much of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world.

And Staff Sargent Max Fightmaster!

Anyway, somewhere around 5,000 of Scientology's crack commandos wiretapped and burglarized various agencies. They stole hundreds of documents, mainly from the IRS. No critic was spared, and in the end, 136 organizations, agencies and foreign embassies were infiltrated.

"I keep seeing this come up, and I keep asking is not the government made of people?"

Indeed, but there are 6 billion different opinions on how the world should work. I posted the monkeyshpere link above, but it's worth posting again (note there are two pages).

Best post I have triggered with a one liner for many years. The monkeysphere sort of sums it all up in a humorous way.

As for the Dilbert site... It's been part of my daily routine for a good 10 years, but now it's completely invisible with Firefox except for the top banner, and IE asks for lots of flash installs which I WILL NOT DO. kudos to those who posted RSS feeds.

Look at how they come up with them.

Asia Carrera?
See #2 on this link: http://www.cracked.com/article_15753_p2.html :-)

"Some beings are simply programs being executed, and some, the self aware, are programmers."

The self aware are simply subroutines with illusions of grandure, embrace the horror.

Internet funnyman David Wong wrote a very in-depth article about the future possibilities of MMO's awhile ago, which can be found here.

...the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch.

People shouldn't be watching TV anyways. It rots your brain.

People shouldn't be watching TV anyways. It rots your brain.

Ironically the FDA didn't include cloned sheep in the announcement, claiming a lack of data, though the very first cloned animal was a sheep named Dolly.

We all live in an us vs them mindset. You care more about your friends and family than you do do guy on freeway next to you, it's ok. It's part of being human and there isn't much you can do about it. I know it's presented as humor, but this article on monkeyspheres (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) covers the problem quite well. As long as the system (government/laws) isn't setup to treat them differently, the individuals can continue to show the preferential treatment they give their friends and family without ruining everything. At lest I hope so or we're all boned.

My parents are ministers, I lost my attempt-to-reconcile-science-and-Genesis faith when I was a teenager, when I noticed how much my cultural environment had influenced my belief, if i was raised somewhere else i would most certainly be believing something else...

But there is a brittleness to the Christian Faith as it is general practiced in the USA, where literalist and fundamentalist interpretations seem to hold sway. Surprisingly, this goes hand in hand with a surprising lack of knowledge about everything but the most famous stories in the Bible.

Cracked had a funny piece on the most "badass" bible verses. I think many of these would come as surprises to most American Christians. So that, combined with a kind of "folk" interpretation of, say, what happens when you die (I think the pop culture idea of being whisked up to the gates of Heaven immediately holds a lot of sway, as opposed to the idea of a bodily resurrection at the end of the world)

Anyway, American Christian Fundamentalism is just ugly.