Slashdot Mirror
House Democrats Tell Ajit Pai: Stop Screwing Over the Public (arstechnica.com)
slack_justyb shares a report from Ars Technica: The House Commerce Committee is "reassuming its traditional role of oversight to ensure the agency is acting in the best interest of the public and consistent with its legislative authority," Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) said in an announcement yesterday. Pallone, Jr. and Doyle wrote a letter to Pai, saying that he has made the FCC too secretive and has repeatedly advanced the interests of corporations over consumers. They wrote: "Not only have you have failed on numerous occasions to provide Democratic members of this committee with responses to their inquiries, you have also repeatedly denied or delayed responding to legitimate information requests from the public about agency operations. These actions have denied the public of a full and fair understanding of how the FCC under your leadership has arrived at public policy decisions that impact Americans every day in communities across the country. Under your leadership, the FCC has failed repeatedly to act in the public interest and placed the interest of corporations over consumers. The FCC should be working to advance the goals of public safety, consumer protection, affordable access, and connectivity across the United States. To that end, it is incumbent upon the Committee's leadership and its members to oversee the activities of the FCC."
On Thursday this week, the Communications Subcommittee will hold a hearing about the impact of Pai's net neutrality repeal on consumers, small businesses, and free speech. Witnesses who have been invited to testify at the hearing include former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell (who is also a former FCC chairman), and representatives of Mozilla, Free Press, and Eastern Oregon Telecom.
On Thursday this week, the Communications Subcommittee will hold a hearing about the impact of Pai's net neutrality repeal on consumers, small businesses, and free speech. Witnesses who have been invited to testify at the hearing include former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, cable industry chief lobbyist Michael Powell (who is also a former FCC chairman), and representatives of Mozilla, Free Press, and Eastern Oregon Telecom.
When ~30% of the (least educated) public stops pretending being screwed is in their best interest, for party politik turned treason. Mitch McConnell has the power to hold his party accountable but not the balls/spine/brains.
Wait, if that is your "traditional role", where have you been? On vacation? Too busy?
about time but what did you expect when you put a former verizon executive in charge.
att and verizon shold be broken up and stay broken up.
You treasonous 0-news-source faggots complain about "the media" and "the librul sciences" and "academia" and "judges" and "laws"... now you complain about slashdot submissions. Ask around, see if anyone cares.
Treasonous little bitches.
Dems: We can't let ideas we disagree with get posted to the internet! Good God! Our failed 19th century economics would be obvious!
90% marginal tax rates?
Legalized post-birth abortion?
Geez, you'd think the Democrats would be forced to call their opponents "Hitler!" and "Nazis", those ideas are so fucking lame.
It will be just about as effective as an internet petition.
"90% marginal tax rates?" - False claim. "Legalized post-birth abortion?" - False claim. Seriously asking, were you born without testicles and a spine like Mitch, you lying faggot nazi children? Back to Moscow.
Shilling? I have never read a positive post or comment regarding Ajit Pai on slashdot. He is universally hated by anyone who is aware of his professional existence.
Will Slashdot ever again bother to pretend to be impartial journalists?
Dude, I've been here 20 years, this place has never been impartial. Always a strong left-lean with healthy doses of unixlove, windowshate and appledisdain.
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up.. and I fully suspect they are paid trolls. Whoever is doing the paying... get a refund, we see right through you.
You must come from some imaginary site.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Pai to Congress: Pound sand
This site is barely even worth visiting these days.
What's left to do to make the site not worth your visiting at all?
And yet so much of Slashdot was all about Trump being the great savior of the country, despite people predicting shit like Ajit-Pai would be put in power.
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up.
+1 for use of the word "boors."
Kendall, LynnwoodCuckster, Brett Buttfuck all endorsed Pai's corporatism, along with a few other of "the usual toady suspects" - so Pai did get a few easy marks to fuck out of this barrel, lets be honest about the traitors among us.
Nazi's were on the political left. Trump is on the political right.
Since you asked, a few more of these high caliber comments (found a few comments down at the time of my posting):
https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13354260&cid=58076268
Slashdot isn't journalism. They do news aggregation. Whatever is popular makes it to the top.
If you want the actual proposed tax rate by O'Cortez it's %70 after 10 MILLION dollars of annual INCOME, not "wealth" but INCOME, you easily fact checked lying idiot.
When you stop lying I'm sure your little traitor's bitch heart will just stop ticking right there.
"We OVERWHELMINGLY voted for the Republicans," - Lol? Overwhelming, but NOT even a MAJORITY is about as overwhelming as Trump's lies about his inaugural crowd, fact-checked in realtime. Traitor please bitch, lol
You lying faggots are even BAD at being lying faggots, lol.
captcha : taunted
Show me in the constitution where the federal government has the authority to regulate telecommunications.
You can't because it isn't there.
At best, the federal government has the authority under the interstate commerce clause to regulate RF spectrum and power, and to prohibit telecom carriers from handling communications in a discriminatory manner.
That's it.
"This is the same old long game of do nothing but blame the other side for things being bad" - Including the Russian bots influencing the "public response" to Pai's Net Neutrality authoritarianism? You're an equivocating moron.
https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/FCC.2017.11.31.%20IG%20Request%20Letter.%20CAT.%20OI.pdf
https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/press-releases/led-by-cantwell-and-udall-senators-call-for-impartial-investigation-into-potential-quid-pro-quo-between-chairman-ajit-pai-trump-administration-and-sinclair-broadcasting
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/technology/fcc-sinclair-ajit-pai.html?partner=IFTTT
avatars, blogs, emoji, hashtags, there's plenty of cancers to choose from mate
- different AC
I have to love how loose the left is with words they deem offensive like "faggot" and "bitch" and other one Slashdot won't even let me post when they think no one is around to notice.
And then they claim that the other side is the "racist" and "sexist" and "homophobic" one, all the while constantly spouting off crazy stuff like the above.
"Show me in the constitution where the federal government has the authority to regulate telecommunications." - Article 3. see : Appointment of Supreme Court, et al
You don't seem to get why you are horribly wrong. That's why you get the responses you do.
If you actually opened your eyes and saw how sh$@ the US has become thanks to "small gubmint' no Regulations!" mindset, you wouldn't be dismissing stories like what got posted so easily.
But you've got poor eyesight and a thick head. Somebody has to find a way to introduce reality to you despite those handicaps. It's either that, or figure out how to get your b$!! hauled off to an old folks home....
Actually, I'm glad the politicians are through with me after I vote. I'd hate to see that level of idiotic political advertising year round.
That is all.
This is why it's *better* to not fix NN so Dems can visibly fight the righteous fight.
Back in the mid 2000s looking at the CNN vs Fox news anchors I thought the only difference between liberal and conservative news anchors is that the latter don't try to hide the fact that they are assholes.
Over time I began to think that it's true for liberals and conservatives in general, at least the prominent ones.
In 2016 I understood that the difference was more important than I had thought, and that I'd rather deal with assholes who at least don't smell of hypocrisy.
They're so busy pandering to undocumented aliens, I didn't know they still had time left over to regulate the internet!
Once he's finally booted out of the FCC he's got several cushy jobs with lots more $$$ at any of the several companies he's helped. The consumer once again is fucked, over and over and over, while the fucker is well compensated.
I felt the same way. I've been coming here for over a 12+ years and it sure seems that right wing opinions have crept up in the past several years.
Whoever is doing the paying... get a refund, we see right through you.
Which means shit... Trump and the republicans still won, and the democrats still suck. Rational liberalism and common respect and civilized behavior in general have been wiped out
sure seems that right wing opinions have crept up in the past several years.
I don't have a problem with civilized opinions from any side. What gets tiresome is what this very thread is full of, should you read it at -1 (which I do, because I'm a sucker for punishment I guess)
It's the incessant, schoolyard name-calling and stick-hurling that makes me want to line them up against the wall and give them a taste of true jack-booted, foot-stomping authoritarian firing-squad.
Seriously. If all that AC drivel name calling truly reflects America today.. we're so fucked it ain't even funny. It's not even smh funny... it's just... ugh. No intelligence. Just parroting and namecalling.
But y'know? I used to think the same of forums. This place here, this is the last that I visit. I gave up on all others. Pointless exercise.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
You spell like a Russian.
he is universally hated by those both living and dead*
(*) republicans exempted, because...reasons
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
been more like 10 years that the right wingers came here to 'balance' (cough) things out a bit.
a few posters are real, but most are turfers and bots. very annoying.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Most liberals and conservatives are not assholes. The new problem is that the left and right are being mislabeled as liberal/conservative. All of these terms have been turned on their heads.
The origin of the word Liberal is from Liberty... and today's liberals are anti-liberty to the core. Suppression of free speech, public vilification to ruin people, anti-gun rights, pro-heavy regulation... none of which sounds like liberty.
The origin of the word Conservative is "generally" to preserve what is currently already present and to not change that. Desire to change government institutions, shrink government, repeal laws, and facilitate a police states... none of which sounds like conservatism.
That said... Liberals and Conservatives can get along... if you find out that you cannot get along... then it is more likely that you belong to either the extreme right or extreme left... and there is low chance that being extreme is healthy for either you or your enemies!
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up.
I think it goes back further than that. My sense is that it crept up steadily post-9/11, but spiked after Barack Obama was first elected. The target shifted from him to Hillary Clinton (his presumptive successor) over the next 8 years, with "Benghazi", "but her e-mails", and "lock her up" calls from the right-wing chorus. And it spiked yet again during the lead-up to the 2016 POTUS election, I suspect with help from Russian troll-farms.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
FYI: calling a homophobic "gay" or "closeted" or using one of their own slurs is a targeted insult which may actually indicate what the person throwing the insults things of their targets rather than indicate anything about them.
Saying a racist acts like a n1gger does not make you racist, it's probably the most offensive insult to the racist and if they are slow they'll make a false assumption your racist and judging them as not being like you and not in the group they identify with. This would make them even more insulted and being slow, less likely to figure out the trick you are playing on them.
Way too many simplistic Americans these days poking up shallow outrage over everything but they don't even care enough to stop and THINK for a second; it's just a bunch of emoting. Sometimes people like the parent post cleverly exploit those people by pushing their emotional buttons to get them ranting.
Despite continuing certain Weimar-era social welfare programs, the Nazis proceeded to restrict their availability to “racially worthy” (non-Jewish) beneficiaries. In terms of labor, worker strikes were outlawed. Trade unions were replaced by the party-controlled German Labor Front, primarily tasked with increasing productivity, not protecting workers. In lieu of the socialist ideal of an egalitarian, worker-run state, the National Socialists erected a party-run police state whose governing structure was anti-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, and militaristic in nature. As to the redistribution of wealth, the socialist ideal “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was rejected in favor of a credo more on the order of “Take everything that belongs to non-Aryans and keep it for the master race.”
Above all, the Nazis were German white nationalists. What they stood for was the ascendancy of the “Aryan” race and the German nation, by any means necessary. Despite co-opting the name, some of the rhetoric, and even some of the precepts of socialism, Hitler and party did so with utter cynicism, and with vastly different goals. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists
Aww... Nazi right wing faggot learned something against their faggoty will, awwwwww. Poooooor baby.
TIL accurately portraying someone's statement is "bias".
Did you forget "center"? It's the group that gets screwed by both Democrats and Republicans while it thinks it's getting along, but they are just getting their way.
I've been reading since the 90s. I've never seen any /. editor or employee openly threatening people in the comments. I don't agree with him either, but you look like the jack ass here.
Captcha: intrepid
Not too many politicians/political appointees are as blatantly overt as Pai. Typically they just try to screw us over behind closed doors. Pai just doesn't give a shit, he'll do it in broad daylight.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Really? Snopes? That's your rebuttal?
Well, it's quicker than citing every single history book written on the subject.
Oh, and if you actually bother reading the Snopes article, they all but admit that yes, the Nazis were left-wing socialists
You really need to work on your literacy. The only parts that make this claim are the ones being debunked, as well as the things the NAZIs promised early in the party's history, but failed to deliver once they were actually in power. Who'd have thunk you couldn't trust NAZIs to deliver on campaign promises. (That last sentence is sarcasm BTW. Just making sure to label it since you're having trouble understanding simple English).
But since it's not written in your native language, I suppose we should give you some leeway in your inability to understand it.
It's one of the reasons why they're no longer considered a trusted fact checker by Facebook.
You got the direction backwards there. They left Facebook, not the other way around.
Trump didn't even get the majority of votes cast, much less have a majority of the people vote for him.
He squeaked by because of quirks in the electoral system.
I'm not sure they're pretending. I've met many in person, including a few fairly intelligent and well educated I really thought would know better. I think a lot of them really are that gullible and/or stupid. Or at least angry and desperate enough to believe anyone who says they'll make things better. Tell them the government is corrupt (which I think we all know), and that you're going to do something about it, you get a lot of people's attention. Then start feeding them increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories, and giving them permission to be ever-larger assholes to... basically anyone whoisn't 100% on board with your agenda... some get turned off, but the ones that stick around, they get more committed to the cause than ever, and increasing lose connection with reality. I've met some who, when confronted with video of Trump's more obviously heinous or stupid statements or actions, simply dismiss them as fakes. And once someone is convinced that the propaganda office is the only source of real news, I really don't know how you can possibly shake their faith.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We OVERWHELMINGLY voted for the Republicans
2% is not OVERWHELMINGLY.
who gained a LOT of seats in the senate
Pre-election polls had you gaining 6 seats. You gained 4. And those 4 were quite close instead of the forecasted blow-out. The Democrats were defending twice as many seats, and many in "red" states, so we lost some. But good news! That flips in 2020, and Republicans will be defending far more seats, many in "blue" states.
Also, you seem to have forgotten that the House had the largest swing since Watergate. How'd that happen if the public OVERWHELMINGLY voted for Republicans?
Almost like it wasn't actually a Republican wave election.....
just refuse to vote for politicians who accept corporate PAC money. Look, right here's a wing of the Democratic party that does just that. They're looking to primary the corporate, Clintonion Democrats next election too.
I'm open to hearing a GOP equivalent but, well, I don't know any. Maybe folks like that jump ship to the libertarian party, IDK. Doesn't matter.
Refuse to vote for anyone who takes corporate PAC money. And vote in your primary. Your vote has orders of magnitude more power in a primary. Politicians don't fear being reelected. They _do_ fear being primaried. Show up and give'em something to be scared of again.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The "General Welfare" clause only permits the exercise of authority granted in the 18 enumerated powers of the federal government.
Hamilton was wrong - Madison was right.
It makes no logical sense to allow the federal government to tax and spend on anything it likes, while at the same time constricting its authority to 18 enumerated powers.
"General welfare" does not permit the federal government to do anything it wants - it can only see to the general welfare of the country within the bounds of the enumerated powers.
The FCC as it exists today far exceeds those bounds.
As long as they aren't boers...
Additionally, there have been more than enough Democrats in power over time to have solved this problem as well.
You seem to not understand the basics of our system of government. Congress has to pass legislation through both houses of Congress. And thanks to filibuster abuse, not a whole lot passed through the Senate while the Democrats had control.
The problems could have been fixed a long time ago.
Ok, describe how. And remember, you have to get McConnell to agree to your fix.
We have nearly had almost a Century of Telecom regulations and guess what... the monopolies are still here and there is an endless supply of ignorant apologist's to defend these morons.
Hmmm....I wonder if there was some famous president in the 1980s who massively rolled back regulations and enforcement.....followed by his vice president.....followed by a DLC "we love deregulation" who couldn't keep his dick in his pants.....followed by another president that massively cut those regulations again......followed by one party in Congress stopping any efforts at regulation.
It's almost like you haven't actually paid much attention to politics.
And don't forget, NN still has loopholes called Zerorating
No, it was converting Internet service to a Title II service.
and I still saw Netflix and several services throttled anyways while NN was in effect
Good news! As a Title II service, you could have filed a complaint and made that stop. And gotten paid from the fine. You did file a complaint, right? Or was that up to someone else to do for you?
Honestly I think it's high time we put anonymous coward to rest. The ideal behind it is irrelevant. I can't remember a single time AC was used for legitimate whistle blowing, it's just a plaything for trolls and assholes
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Don't worry. They're probably not Americans.
wink.
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up
No way. They've always* been here. They've just been emboldened by cheeto mussolini, and made louder. I've been arguing with them all along.
* At least since high five digit days, when I started reading.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Despite continuing certain Weimar-era social welfare programs, the Nazis proceeded to restrict their availability to “racially worthy” (non-Jewish) beneficiaries. In terms of labor, worker strikes were outlawed. Trade unions were replaced by the party-controlled German Labor Front, primarily tasked with increasing productivity, not protecting workers. In lieu of the socialist ideal of an egalitarian, worker-run state, the National Socialists erected a party-run police state whose governing structure was anti-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, and militaristic in nature. As to the redistribution of wealth, the socialist ideal “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was rejected in favor of a credo more on the order of “Take everything that belongs to non-Aryans and keep it for the master race.”
Above all, the Nazis were German white nationalists. What they stood for was the ascendancy of the “Aryan” race and the German nation, by any means necessary. Despite co-opting the name, some of the rhetoric, and even some of the precepts of socialism, Hitler and party did so with utter cynicism, and with vastly different goals. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists
Aww... Nazi right wing faggot learned something against their faggoty will, awwwwww. Poooooor baby.
Somebody with mod points is butthurt.
There are more than enough Democrats on the take with ISP's as well. Additionally, there have been more than enough Democrats in power over time to have solved this problem as well. They were also bitched at for not taking Ajit to task over the cyberattack BS.
This is the same old long game of do nothing but blame the other side for things being bad.
Pure straw man argument. Tom Wheeler passed the net neutrality rules and seemed to be actually working for the benefit of the consumers and the American people. How is that "do nothing but blame the other side?"
Clearly you didn't follow the link did you?
It does not matter if opinions are "right" or "left".
It only matters if they are stupid or not. Or scientific wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Slashdot is part of the fake news, though not nearly as fake as you are, loser.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
It makes sense now. Right wing Trump supporters believe the rhetoric and empty promises of political parties. The Nazis did it too, they'd pay lip service to socialism whilst going full ball fascism and nationalism whilst wiping out the socialist unions.
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up.
I think it goes back further than that. My sense is that it crept up steadily post-9/11, but spiked after Barack Obama was first elected. The target shifted from him to Hillary Clinton (his presumptive successor) over the next 8 years, with "Benghazi", "but her e-mails", and "lock her up" calls from the right-wing chorus. And it spiked yet again during the lead-up to the 2016 POTUS election, I suspect with help from Russian troll-farms.
Accuracy and perspective is what is required. Basically too many people don't know what is true, and don't know how to put what they do know in the correct context. For instance, her emails were a problem, but not likely to be one that would affect her if she had been elected, if for no other reason than all the negative publicity. Also, knowing say 100 bad things about person A but 900 good things, makes person A a better choice than person B where you know 20 bad things, and only 30 good things.
Maybe some good will come out of AI and it can automatically insert links to rebut disinformation or correct people as to the scale of problems. Of course such a thing would in itself add problems to be solved, but hopefully fewer than without it. We need something that brings a step change. All the disinformation lately is just exhausting. Heck I'm listening to the SOTU now and i can't bring myself to figure out which ones (other than the obvious ones) are lies or not. I'll have to wait till someone does the work and read it. This is amusing, he just brought out the "Socialism" boogieman. The problem with actual socialism isn't that it is evil, is that it generally doesn't work at scale. People tend to work harder when there is a profit motive.
How much does correct the record pay these days for losers like you to lie?
Less than you're getting from GOP.
Americans are the same way now. Politics is about name calling these days, pure and simple. No politician is presenting any ideas on what is a good way to govern, instead they only speak in order to bash the opposing but highly similar party.
Go into a bar and watch two drunks debating a topic. Those guys make much better arguments for their side than you will see in politics. Stupidity is inherent in politics based upon an overwhelming amount of evidence.
I didn't leave the left. It left me.
You think this site really moves enough traffic that Russian trolls even bother with it?
I barely comment here now and I've been here with one username or another since almost the beginning.
I only occasionally bother reading the comments because most threads are so heavily loaded with right wing (hopefully) trolls that I feel like I'm reading Fox News.
The stories are still pretty good, but the conversation is shit.
Combine that with the lack of voting ability and there's really nothing left here to draw you into the comments section.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Tom Wheeler needed to walk over and make it into law instead of pretzeling the existing one. Otherwise it was just a policy whim hiding as law. We have ways of making laws. That congress will not get off its ass and do something is NOT the FCCs problem. Its ours.
The dems started this shit in NC. Pretending that the big ol data providers were out to rip off the 'little guy' ISPs. When the truth is BOTH sides of that fight want to rip us off. FAANG dumped money on the DNC and suddenly the whole conversation flipped around. They are not on your side. Both of them are on the side of money.
It is like the old question 'for 100 dollars will you stop beating your wife' yes means something and no means something. They have presented you a false choice of 'we give stuff away for free they big ol ISPs are ripping us off' and 'the data providers are over using our lines and ripping you off because we have to build more'. NEITHER are true. Their is a third choice. Title III and a revision of Title II.
The current chair is following the law. The law needs to be changed. They have been very clear on that. Hell Obama even stated he was just going to make up law with executive orders. Then the next guy comes in and goes 'yeah about all of that, nope'. That is not law. That is policy that exists at the whim of fools who should not have power.
This is going to be an awesome hearing.
Because raising taxes always works.
https://freebeacon.com/politic...
"God forbid the rich leave" - Cuomo.
whoops.
he is universally hated by those both living and dead*
(*) republicans exempted, because...reasons
Republicans are excepted because, being undead, they don't belong to either of the two categories.
Aaaaand my point gets made for me.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I just figured you just forgot to remove the sig.
Translation: Person responsible for laws, complains employees doing nothing are still obeying the law. As a bureaucrat, Pai should be accountable for the output, or lack thereof, of his department. Doyle doesn't have any direct influence in that regard but he should be complaining to the appropriate bureaucrats, not the arsehole that already ignores him.
If Doyle wants answers, he can table a hearing and demand Pai provide answers in person. This is politicians refusing to throw their weight around. To what purpose?
The whole point of the Slashdot moderation system was to deal with trolls or just unhelpful/off topic noise that plagued forums pre-Slashdot.
I remember there was just less political talk early. Then more vocal liberals, but I'm not sure that actually indicates the population of the forum.
I been using that tag line since 2009, and BeaHD is a prick troll who I wouldn't piss on if he was on fire. He's stealing my intellectual property, goddamnit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wow in my decades, now, of slashdot I’ve never...
Beau has shattered all my confidence /. will ever recover.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Nope, sorry. Not buying it. Just because it isn't your use case doesn't make it not someone else's.
What do you have against Dutch farmers?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
You know it is not a binary classification, right?
Nazis and Communists are opposite ends (Right and Left) of the socialist spectrum, while Conservatives and Liberals are on an orthagonal axis.
Socialists believe in government control of the individual - traits obviously displayed by both Communists and Nazis.
Conservatives and liberals believe in a mix between financial and social control of the individual with limited governmental control, which ostensibly is how the US and other western democracies function.
Tons of further nuances, but TLDR is that Nazis and Commies are both socialists with different ideologies on how to dress up the pig.
I'm not sure they're pretending. I've met many in person, including a few fairly intelligent and well educated I really thought would know better.
I wonder how many more before you realize that actually most of the truly intelligent believe something you do not... and engage in introspection at that point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
eh, fuck off tool.
Ok comrade.
Always a strong left-lean
Slashdot is, and has been for a long time, the place I come to learn about the latest right-wing talking points from people who believe them and are willing to defend them, at least a little bit. It depends on the story, but the Slashdot userbase does not fit into a single political category. Slashdot users usually deride gun control, and are quite a bit more libertarian than the general populace. These positions are not consistent with a strong left-lean.
I always find it interesting to see how certain topics interact with Slashdot's technically-minded population. Climate change denial, for example, conflicts with a science-positive outlook, and even those people here who are strongly right wing have pretty well rejected certain talking points along those lines. I've seen people elsewhere repeating claims that climate scientists are living the high life, and that climate change is really all about pulling in that sweet sweet research money. That's a real claim that some deniers make, but it's so ridiculous that when I've seen it here it's never gotten much traction. Likewise claims that nebulous unspecified "jobs" are more important than droughts / hurricanes / loss of coastline / etc. The only denier claims that have legs here are ones which give the appearance of being science-positive.
But they do have legs, because Slashdot does not have a strong left-lean. I'm sure there are trolls, but there's a fair share of true believers as well.
If failing to deliver automatically makes one right wing, then no far left regime qualifies as far left. They don't get off that easily.
Both socialism and fascism had the same flaw: "the masses are unwashed and must be guided, except for me"
You mean it's not a left-wing echo chamber like you're used to, and people with diverse opinions can be heard? Gosh, how awful. And you try to delegitimatize such opinions by calling them trolls. This kind of shit is how we got Trump. Go back to your safe space. You can't compete in the marketplace of ideas.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated by force"
- Karl Marx
Don't mistake American "liberals" as being left-wing.
America doesn't have a left-wing.
> I've met some who, when confronted with video of Trump's more obviously heinous or stupid statements or actions, simply dismiss them as fakes.
*THIS* *THIS* *THIS*
*THIS* is why Trump goes on about "Fake News". It isn't because he disbelieves any one story but to condition his supporters.
He's not as dumb as a lot of people think.
and I fully suspect they are paid trolls. Whoever is doing the paying... get a refund, we see right through you.
What an absurd suspicion. Do you honestly think anyone in the world gives enough of a crap about us to pay someone to post something on Slashdot? ... wrong opinions, but then opinions nonetheless. You said it yourself, Slashdot has never been impartial so it stands to reason there are people out there impartial in a different direction.
A far more realistic suspicion: People have different opinions
If all that AC drivel name calling truly reflects America today.. we're so fucked
He have always been this fucked. The difference is that platforms which provide anonymity as well as exposure have become more popular allowing people to unleash their inner arsehole.
The government is only "corrupt" if you've fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of the liberal state.
The purpose of the state is to manage the massive conflict of interest between the working class, and the capital owning class.
EVERYTHING else is in service of this goal.
Police to enforce the property rights of the ruling class.
Education to indoctrinate workers into the capitalist mode of production. (Elites get a different education, for a different purpose)
Healthcare to realize better return on investment from workers.
Media to impose the values of the dominant class onto the subordinate class.
Entertainment, for ideological domination, and also to distract from poor working conditions.
Pharmaceuticals to distract from grinding, dehumanizing, shit working conditions.
Transport to allow workers to be pooled from a larger geographical area.
Welfare schemes to provide a subsistence baseline, so that workers don't literally die out under capitalist exploitation.
I've been coming here for 22 years (holy shit I'm old) and it's always had more of a libertarian bend than anything. Slashdot covered the free state project when it was announced which ws a libertarian movement. I think some of the old time libertarians are becoming less moderate in their position as time has gone on. Myself, I've deviated more hard left as the right wing has lost it's collective mind. I don't doubt that some folks who were more right leaning to begin with went further right (and lost their minds).
If something to be regarded as true or not, why not back it up with facts and coherent arguments instead?
For a start, they have to appear to the public if they are in government, but not if they are a business. For every shitty thing a politician has done you can see a business owner do the same thing, but with less accountability and even in the USA more pay and benefits.
Don't bring up "but this was an honest person" you talked about government being corrupt. I can point to honest politiicans too.
Farmers under the BSE scare induced ban of sheep spine in cow food were still caught OVER A YEAR AFTER THE BAN STARTED feeding sheep spine and brains to their cows, because doing so increases the weight of the cow, which is sold per kilo on the hoof, not per quality.
Capitalism makes wealth (capital) equate to power. Those things you describe enshrine capital as prime, and that means you're talking about capitalism, not liberalism.
If you're american, go read up on artisan economy and the homesteading act that capitalists made government enact to kill the artisan economy in the USA at the time because capitalism had already taken over government and was now making it enshrine capitalism as the political ideology.
Yes, Net Neutrality is obviously something that goes against consumers, and only libruls don't get it.
General welfare is what an FCC is supposed to be shoring up (but is not under Pai).
Show me in the constitution where it says you can own guns and NOT be in a militia? Heck show me where it says you should have public roads (if you want to whine about "general welfare" being incorrect). And I take it you demand that the armed forces be disbanded and their stuff thrown out, yes? After all, you have a gun and that is to be part of a well regulated militia. So there's no need for a standing army.
And the whinging is about a 60-70% marginal tax rate. It would be a bit over 42% if all that was paid was the taxes in the bands described, and the upper rate at 10mil a year would hit a little over 1500 people in the USA anyway. How many people were hit by an average of 42% in the 50s?
So your factoid about the average net tax rate is bullshit.
Center is "where I am" no matter where you are on the left-right divide.
Your problem is that your left is rightwing and your rightwing far right. So when you claim that they're both assholes, then you're right: the right IS all assholes. Try electing some leftwingers instead. At least find out if the left are assholes.
Because it isn't true, they only WANT it to be true. Or at least silence critics for being mean (yet also applauding "reals beat feels".
The thing is, you have to convince people that you can change the corruption without becoming or already being corrupt. That is hard enough and very unlikely.
Then, to make real change, you have to convince people that you can make the lives better for the Poor's without making the lives of everyone else not any less than it is now. Probably impossible.
Nobody who has made it to being 'not poor' will give that up. But the money needs to come from somewhere. So we either reduce the military or become super efficient or redistribute wealth from the public. All equally unlikely things. It's going to be real fun when automation really kicks in as that primarily targets low income jobs. The future better get really comfortable with socialism or we will see many revolutions as it is guaranteed that the poor will vastly outnumber those who are not.
"Reals beat feels" is hilarious coming from the party of "Jesus hates sex" and "Marijuana Kills".
By that logic, the Republicans are substantially more socialist than the Democrats on the grounds the Republicans demand control of our sexuality and enforce draconian penalties for the use of marijuana.
This is amusing, he just brought out the "Socialism" boogieman. The problem with actual socialism isn't that it is evil, is that it generally doesn't work at scale. People tend to work harder when there is a profit motive.
The problem here is that the lower classes don't have a profit motive under Capitalism anymore-it's as good as they can do to tread water, and they're getting increasingly fatalistic about even doing that. If you want to stop Socialism, you need to fix this problem fast.
You absolutely do vote. I vote almost daily. Voting on Slashdot is based on (and always has been based on) the quality of your posts. That's what makes it work so (relatively) well for unmoderated discussions online.
I don't respond to AC's.
The Dems want to keep that "benefit" to themselves only. They screw everyone really well! Especially the sheeple they keep on the government teet.
It coincided with the arrival of the alt-right. Not saying that the people here are necessarily alt-right, just that the alt-right popularized a lot of techniques that are used by everyone on the right now.
Essentially they updated populism for the social media age. Previously it was harder for populists because the media was the primary way that politicians could reach voters, and journalists had seen it all before and didn't let the bullshit slide. Then social media pushed them aside, people started getting their news from each other, and politicians with a small army of followers could speak to the electorate directly.
Ordinary users adopted techniques like framing, alternative facts, whataboutism and never playing defence. Often not even consciously, just copying what they saw working for other people. And the progressives, the left were too proud to do it, too hung up on principals and bogged down trying to use the truth as their sword when politics had already moved to the post-truth world.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No slashdotter nor non-corporate shill is against Net Neutrality. No candidate did run nor will run on an anti-NN stance because it is completely anti consumer to do so. All of these AC puppets are transparent. Go buy some real accounts... and then look at the post history before you delete it.
I do hope you are paid well enough to weather the shit storm your actions are brewing.
Ok Cartman calm down, it was a joke.
Almost like it wasn't actually a Republican wave election.....
If you get all your information from liberal media like Slashdot.Org then that is the lie for you to believe.
pro-heavy regulation... none of which sounds like liberty.
While you may disagree you should at least accept that they think it is liberty. As in there is a massive power imbalance between individuals and corporations, so regulation is needed to maintain individual liberty. After all if you need protection from the government due to a power imbalance, it follows that other large organizations, often multinational in scale, are also a threat.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The modern origin of this myth is kinda interesting too. The far right realized that the 1940s Nazis were tarnishing their image. The optics of Hitler and the Holocaust were not good. First they tried pretending that while they shared the same basic goals as the Nazis they planned to reach them through a non-violent, peaceful ethnic cleansing of the United States. When that failed they tried the opposite - "we are far right identarians, you are confusing us with those left-wing Nazis!"
Of course it doesn't help that they continue to use Nazi imagery and rhetoric, continue to praise historical Nazi figures and have basically the same views, philosophy and desire for a racially pure ethnostate.
Still, apparently some people fell for it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The fix is easy. Just need an IQ test before you can post AC. Kinda like the drunk post apps.
Login or be smart.
Will ACs ever again bother to pretend not to be walking fallacies? Attack the substance of the article, not the ones posting it.
I, like Pepperridge Farm, remember when words like Troll and Fascist used to actually mean something other than "someone who disagrees with me."
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1%, and liberals have since been regularly stating that "the overwhelming majority of Americans" voted against Trump. So I guess if it was one tenth of a percent more you would consider it overwhelming? It is almost like both sides aren't actually full of crap.....
Truth, a friend of mine and I get drunk and argue all sorts of things all the time in bars. The arguments may make little to no sense and may not be logically sound, but at least we aren't calling each other names.
Eastern Oregon Telecom are going to be there, or the outcome could be very different.
How about putting a signature on that ascii diarrhea, you AC faggot?
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
yep.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Trump should be given the Nobel Peace prize. He's done just as much as Obama to deserve one (i.e. nothing).
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Serously? I can't read a single fucking article without the standard ORANGE MAN BAD off topic bullshit AT THE TOP OF EVERY PAGE.....
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
I've been here just as long as you and it's my observation that Slashdot became more left wing after the founders sold out.
I was conservative then, I'm conservative now and I *wish* I was getting paid to read this left wing drivel.
My internet connection works and is even faster & cheaper than it was BT (Before Trump).
Almost 120 years of festering hatred.
Since you asked, a few more of these high caliber comments (found a few comments down at the time of my posting): https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13354260&cid=58076268
I can appreciate that. There has definitely been an increase in stupid responses like that. But Slashdot has always been that way to an extent. There's that guy, or guys, who used to keep posting about anal sex with black people, and we used to have lots of sneaky goatse links. I kind of like that Slashdot takes all comers, even the stupid ones.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up.
I think it goes back further than that. My sense is that it crept up steadily post-9/11, but spiked after Barack Obama was first elected. The target shifted from him to Hillary Clinton (his presumptive successor) over the next 8 years, with "Benghazi", "but her e-mails", and "lock her up" calls from the right-wing chorus. And it spiked yet again during the lead-up to the 2016 POTUS election, I suspect with help from Russian troll-farms.
I think they've always been here. Slashdot has a large population of Libertarians, both the nutbar total anarchist kind and the less nutty "anrachy for rich people (but police protection from the poor)" kind, we've always had a fair share of right leaners, its the rise of the far right that is the issue, the far right-wing has always been here but they've always been too scared to spew their bile. The problem with /. is the same with almost everywhere. The rebranding of white supremacists rebranded themselves as "Alt-Right" to fool people into thinking they aren't bigoted arseholes, this largely worked and so every bigoted arsehole is emboldened and claiming victim status whenever they are rightfully called a bigoted arsehole.
/.
I relish the day when the worst we had were GNAA and Swichuer trolls combined with the odd troll linking to goatse. They were good times.
Also, the GP forgot that there has always been a large population of Apple fanboys on
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The FCC like any other governmental organization survives by constantly changing regulations needlessly and having such a maze that you need to consult a specialty lawyer to get through it
Their regulators would have a field day going to DEFCON and trying to nail all the people with SDRs for example. I guarantee you that the second they start harassing people for now having HAM Extra licenses to modify radio equipment or start enforcing regulations that you canâ(TM)t own or sell anything that can transmit on a restricted band like FM/AM radio, or the huge swath of public safety, licensed business bands, GMRS, and whatever else crap theyâ(TM)d might as well just sit a whole army of suits around the Ballyâ(TM)s (and the rest of the town) with RF direction finding equipment. And if they did they, theyâ(TM)d suddenly start finding $10 homemade parts that are mobile just to piss them off that blow something annoying like âoe1800 Kars for Kidzâ over randomly changing bands stuck under mugglesâ(TM) car bumpers or something.
Imagine. Just stick one under a housekeeper or dietary cart and it changes frequency randomly between every three and five minutes. Itâ(TM)s going to move all over the hotel. Or stick it under that annoying assholeâ(TM)s car bumper so it jams the local police band every time someone gets within fifty feet of the car. Imagine cops frustrations when they call the FCC and try to get them to figure that one out. And they can put all the notices they want out because the people that are unwittingly transmitting it from their cars donâ(TM)t even know it.
The FCC with net neutrality and radio rules in particular (I.e. they just banned and want to fine anyone who sells those BeoFang radios from China $19000/day for doing so, and basically want to make owning one (which would apply to a SDR too for example) just because it has the capability to go smash all over 121.5MHz or a police band or something just as illegal) is sooner or later going to piss 2600 and Anonymous off. Iâ(TM)ll sit back and laugh.
Hereâ(TM)s ten watts of static on the local police dispatch band right when someone is committing that bank robbery bitch!
Because raising taxes always works.
https://freebeacon.com/politic...
"God forbid the rich leave" - Cuomo.
whoops.
Worked fine all the way up to Reagan...where they then sold the voodoo economics of the trickle down theory...which is fully demonstrated by states like Kansas, where they are finding their revenues are falling way short of the needs of the state.
Contrast to other states which are not so Republican...like CA, CO..whose economies are doing pretty good despite more "liberal" political leadership than you typically see in the Republican party.
I think we have been saying that the majority (read: not overwhelming majority) voted against Trump (I can't say they voted for Hilary, I know I didn't, not really).
Someone with a low uid would be smart enough to know that there is means of resetting a password that is lost/otherwise unavailable. Here you go
That is true. He also might have done more than Obama for peace, considering he is a loose cannon, governments and people around the world unite against US and get hesitant because of fear of what the orange cheeto might mess up next.
The difference is that platforms which provide anonymity
Yup. That's the issue with social media, and the precursor forums/comment sections/chat rooms/etc, they remove the threat of getting punched in the mouth when you cock off to the wrong person.
It's not a "quirk", it's the way the system works. We're a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
If you go by state vote/electoral votes, which is how the country was wisely designed, than Hillary got squashed.
Each individual state maintains a degree of sovereignty, thus we don't go by general population, we're too large a country for that to work in the best interests of everyone.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Do you honestly think anyone in the world gives enough of a crap about us to pay someone to post something on Slashdot?
Yes, yes I do think that. But only as a grain of sand in a larger beach.
In other words: No one's targeting /. specifically, alone, in a vacuum. But you can't deny there is a campaign to further split this country, and it seems /. is caught in it indirectly, as part of a larger effort.
It can't be coincidence that ALL comments section, from youtube to /. to newspapers all across the country have the same language, the same namecalling, the same unwillingness to listen, and it all started at the same time. Either someone is looking to make bank on our divisiveness, or.... we are truly this divided for reals. If the latter, then we're a cunt hair away from civil war.
Maybe the preppers aren't crazy. Maybe I should invest in an underground food, medicine and arms cache in some undisclosed location.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
He follows the law the way the head of the Mafia does. By hiring other people and then claiming that he never asked them to do what they did.
Then you're missing the number of ACs (and named accounts but mostly ACs) also posting extreme left wing rhetoric. It's gone way up on both counts.
I've been here about 18 years, and while I agree slashdot was usually left leaning, I think the way the left is now tilting extremely to the left (AOC, Ilhan Omar, open borders, abolish the electoral college, 90% taxes, everything is racist and sexist, etc.) has gotten more people to move more center or even right.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
No liberals are claiming an overwhelming majority voted against Trump. You may shut me up with a reference but I ain't seen it in my circles. That argument only worked in the primary when you considered how many voted for Trump vs another primary candidate. In which case, yes, an overwhelming majority of Republicans voted against him in the primaries.
they only speak in order to bash the opposing but highly similar party.
It's almost like they're using the fighting as a front to hide all the corporatist things they are doing that they all agree on.
I agree with your comments on the biases of Slashdot generally (although I've only been here about 12 years).
But I highly doubt the right-wing trolls are being paid, I've seen paid trolls at work and they usually do a half decent job, most people wouldn't even label them as trolls, they employ things like subtlety, nuance, cunning and long-term strategic thinking. I've seen none of those qualities on Slashdot (apart from a few notable exceptions) for a long time. If someone is paying them, damn straight they should get a refund, my pre-teen nephew could do a better job.
And another +1 for correct use of "boors".
Stupidity is inherent in politics based upon an overwhelming amount of evidence.
I don't think that lack of intellect is rampant in politics. I'm not saying there aren't dumb people, but it'd be pretty hard to get into the upper echelons if they were truly dumb. What I'd say there IS a ton of: elitism, posturing, manipulating, back stabbing, sociopathy, ignorance, etc. The majority of the politicians' only true goal is to get re-elected, the only way to do that is keep the people with the money happy. It seems like it would take a pretty intelligent person to be able to do that, while still finding ways to appear to be working for the people that vote.
Also, the GP forgot that there has always been a large population of Apple fanboys on /.
Apple shilling has gone way down now that anyone who forgets to turn off smart quotes shamefully vomits "Sent from my iPhone" unicode all over their posts.
If failing to deliver automatically makes one right wing, then no far left regime qualifies as far left. They don't get off that easily
When you have absolute power over a country, you get to "deliver" the policies that you actually want. Failure to deliver on those early promises indicates the NAZIs didn't actually want those policies.
I don't mind ACs, sometimes they do add some intelligence to the conversation. It would be nice if the site required you to be logged in to post, even as AC. And it should affect the users Karma/etc. (Maybe it does that, idk. Very rarely post under AC)
No... They're a bunch of lowlife scum suckers.
Found Oracle Data Cloud had reams of information on me. So I hit the opt out page https://www.oracle.com/legal/privacy/privacy-choices.html
and then entered my name address and email here http://bluekai.com/offlineoptout/
and had my FaceBook tracking and other tracking removed from Oracle's massive tracking database.
It should cut the lame emails and lamer direct junk mail.
Here is an example of the problem. You will not like this, but you won't be able to refute this. mjwx is calling someone like me a racist, however if we debated he would tell me riots to prevent Milo, Ann Coulter, C. Rice from giving speeches is ok. He would also tell me it is acceptable for Twitter/Facebook to censor Diamond and Silk, along with Candice Owens because it is "their service".
Yes, all those people are being censored are gays, women, or blacks. I had GameboyRMH tell me its such a non-issue that including those incidents shouldn't even be brought up. Meanwhile, the same people who prevent blacks from talking are the ones calling me a racist.
As for Clinton's emails, you have another simple problem that you just can't answer. We have MULTIPLE people who have lied to Congress multiple times: Comey, Clinton, Holder, Clapper, Brenenon, etc. None of them have been charged, even McCabe and Clinton have BOTH been given referrals to prosecute multiple times to the DOJ and nothing has been done. On the other side Michael Cohen said March 2016 instead of June 2016 and he got charged with a 5 year sentence and felony for lying. Roger Stone also got charged a felony for lying to Congress.
Care to explain this without it sounding like blatant bias? Of course you can't. So mjwx calls me a racist for pointing this out.
So if you ever wonder why I call PopeRatzo a moron, Amimojo a liar, or GameboyRMH a racist bigot, its because they refuse to debate these issues and instead go right to calling me a racist.
Bonus: Any one who supports the DNC now, will immediately be called a member of the KKK by me. Between support for Robert Byrd, and now Northam, it is pretty obvious that being a member of the KKK doesn't bother DNC supporters. With your calls for censorship of people like Candice Owens, you back it up. You calling me a racist will just get me in your face more.
I think you've gone beyond the ability for me to be civil with you anymore. I will destroy you with facts that you can't debate and you are the ones responsible for the name calling once you are backed into a position you can't defend.
More specifically, the electoral college exists for the same reason the senate is structured like it is: the U.S.A. is a union of states, not a homogeneous state unto itself. The states vote for the president, just like they would vote in a constitutional convention.
Will Slashdot ever again bother to pretend to be impartial journalists?
Dude, I've been here 20 years, this place has never been impartial. Always a strong left-lean with healthy doses of unixlove, windowshate and appledisdain.
It's only recently -- the past 5 or so years -- that a certain cadre of very loud right-wingnut boors have shown up.. and I fully suspect they are paid trolls. Whoever is doing the paying... get a refund, we see right through you.
You must come from some imaginary site.
I think you're forgetting the inexorable pull of time. Over those 20 years, many of us doe-eyed recent college grads have learned about hard work and discipline. We've experienced government overreach and more closely identify with the founding fathers of the U.S.A. than the founding fathers of the U.S.S.R., because it seems a lot of the overreaching comes from the "liberal" side of the aisle, which is ironic given the meaning of the term.
All that said, Ajit Pai is an idjit, and we all hate him.
If I were on the plane with Mao Zedong, Hitler and Ajit Pai with two bullets, I would shoot shitpai twice.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You are a typical left wing troll
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That is one stupid overgeneralizing crap of bull.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You ignorant dipshit. You don't even recognize the underhanded the techniques you employ, like your belief that if you name something ("wahtaboutism") you win and don't have to engage with an argument? Everything is just a fucking reference with you. No need to actually understand anything; someone on your team said something so that is your truth and if you can just hold enough information in your dull unimaginative pulpy clod of a brain to make conjure up a reference to it you get that warm feeling in the cockles and can smugly think you belong in the company of your masturbatory heroes. Fuck you and your self-righteous swill.
Exactly. I got tired from being banned fro reddit subs for calling idiots for what they are, so I retreated to the place where I have been for 20 years.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Back in the mid 2000s looking at the CNN vs Fox news anchors I thought the only difference between liberal and conservative news anchors is that the latter don't try to hide the fact that they are assholes.
TV news is more sensationalist than just about anything in writing. Both take extreme views to pump up viewership, while i just want to get my news and get out - TV doesn't work for me in that regard.
I think that's reasonable to optionally post as AC, being logged in as a regular user. I just never saw the benefit for making an account. It's just one less login I have to worry/care about. Nevertheless, there are still trolls/assholes even with accounts. But I don't care what people use, so long as it's civil.
You won't ever be rich you faggot.
Plus you'll still be paying taxes to me with my cock in your mouth.
Voetsek!
Wow in my decades, now, of slashdot I’ve never...
Beau has shattered all my confidence /. will ever recover.
Is that even the real BeauHD? It looks like his username is actually something like "BeauHD++(5555555)" which somehow doesn't link to an actual user profile: https://slashdot.org/~BeauHD++...
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Slashdot has always been more right wing libertarian with a socialist commenter community 20 years ago when we were poor and young.
5 years ago some of us got rich old and started caring more about keeping their money and having the government fuck off as we hit 40. I am a Democrat still but if I made $180K and 1 million in savings I could see myself being right wing.
People grow up as demographics change. Cute mellinials aren't on here and are on mobile cell phone oriented places.
http://saveie6.com/
In the case of Pai the courts have struck down many of his decisions not purely on political grounds but on procedural and legal ones. For example the last court decision regarding tribal Internet subsidies. The court struck them down for 2 main reasons:
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Boors: taste of the Rockies.
When the system was set up, news traveled at the speed of horse when it traveled at all. Most people went their entire lives without a single interaction with the federal government. The bulk of commerce was INTRAstate. The electoral college made good sense under those conditions.
Then times changed, We invented telegraph and interstate commerce became much more common. Now, it's practically impossible to avoid interaction with the federal government. Recognizing that and popular sentiment, all 50 states either by law or by striong convention cast their electoral votes based on the popular vote. It was a quick way to implement a popular vote for the president without re-engineering the whole thing and passing a Constitutional amendment. It was widely seen as close enough. So close, in fact, that no president in the 20th century was elected after losing the popular vote. The possibility was seen as more theoretical than practical and so was considered a "quirk".
Meanwhile, when did 55% become a squashing?
And the progressives, the left were too proud to do it, too hung up on principals and bogged down trying to use the truth as their sword when politics had already moved to the post-truth world.
A couple hundred years ago this was already noted:
Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.
If you've made the determination that facts are no longer relevant to the position you hold, you have literally decided to disengage from reality. It's not really possible to use reality to deal with that. (How a sizable fraction of the country managed to all come down with the same mental health problem at the same time is baffling to me.)
However, the answer to people trying to create a post-factual political system isn't to fight fantasy with fantasy either. It's sticking to what's true and offering them the mental health services they need to be able to re-engage with reality.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I completely disagree.
What it's time for is logged in users to stop feeding the trolls. And checking my watch, it's been that time for about 20 years around here.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
we're too large a country for that to work in the best interests of everyone.
...so instead we go with a system that has evolved to work in the best interests of the minority of citizens. Given that no system will work in the best interests of *everyone*, wouldn't it be better if it worked in the best interests of the majority who are currently underrepresented by virtue of living in populous States, as opposed to the minority in sparsely-populated ones?
It's not the Electoral College per se that's the problem. It's the fact that our states' boundaries form a de-facto gerrymander in favor of sparsely populated regions. That was less true back in the days of the 13 original states - and when rural concerns were not so diametrically opposed to (sub)urban ones. But it's on the verge of becoming untenable.today.
The Senate, of course, is wildly undemocratic - and maybe that's by design, but the Electoral College was never intended to be undemocratic - it was just a practical way of counting the vote in a low-tech time. You could say that it worked up until recently, because if nothing else, the popular and Electoral College results always used to pick the same President. But not any more, and it should be fixed. There's no practical reason to give states 2 extra electoral votes, based on their Senators. Of course, it's in the Constitution - but show me where the drafters intended the E.C. to be undemocratic...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I always have to laugh when this comes up. What youâ(TM)re implying is that Trump *couldnâ(TM)t* win a popular vote if that was the contest. You donâ(TM)t know that - his strategy would have been different. You argument is completely founded in ignorance
It is both hilarious and sad that the American left is so far up is own ass they don't realize they pioneered all these techniques.
Remember Atheism+ and Donglegate? Remember SomethingAwful's Helldump? Remember Shankey Kane and her MVC psychodrama? Remember "it's not my job to educate you" twitter sanctimony, and the "brogrammer" sniping?
Online harrassment and doxing was called online activism and reporting, right up until the progressive left got a taste of its own medicine. Then suddenly it was only "misogynists" and "racists" who did it, even as women and minorities kept telling the progressive left they don't speak for them.
I'm still left, just not progressive, because that's just an excuse to declare oneself on the right side of history but axiom.
Heck I'm listening to the SOTU now ...
What? You listened to the Stupid of the Universe (SOTU)? :p
Ignorant, Trump-deranged liberals too frequently repeat this talking point.
I'm attributing much more credit than is probably due, solely from your status as an early user.
Put on your game theory glasses and think about what an optimal campaign strategy would be for the 2016 election (who would you visit? what states? etc..). Now imagine the U.S. system was strictly popular vote (as you would perhaps prefer?). Would your optimal campaign strategy change? If your answers are the same then you probably shouldn't be on slashdot.
and other forms of new media. The Internet's made telecom so cheap I don't need the AP to tell me what to think anymore. Trump did it. Alexandria Ocassio Cortez is doing it now (it's why the mega corps are so scared of her).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
didn't spend a dime of his own money and got through the primary. The key is:
a. use New Media (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc).
b. Rely on old media's insatiable need for content.
c. Never, never, _never_ apologize for _anything_. On the Internet if you back peddle for second they eat you alive.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I was saying Boo-urns!
I thought that a large fraction of "conservatives" strongly favor post-birth abortion.
They call it capital "punishment".
Which probably does not "work" (deter crime) https://math.dartmouth.edu/~lamperti/my%20DP%20paper,%20current%20edit.htm
is often applied in error https://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-penalty-mistakes-the-rule/
and is probably a tool of racism https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html
FWIW I enjoy shooting and have little time for SJW types; OTOH, taxes are merely the cost of renting time on the massive piece of capital equipment known as "society" ; it is possible that even a 90% marginal rate can be justified; maybe: something like this https://web.archive.org/web/20130411183250/http://www.sff.net/people/jack.haldeman/people.htm might male it more palatable
https://www.businessinsider.co...
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Shilling? I have never read a positive post or comment regarding Ajit Pai on slashdot. He is universally hated by anyone who is aware of his professional existence.
Well, he's hated by all the kiddies here who want unlimited internet service for free.
You get what you pay for.
No, what I am saying is that any claim that Trump has a mandate from the majority of the people is unfounded. I was specifically responding to a claim that the majority of the people supported Trump's policies. A claim that is easily falsified and made even more ludicrous given that he couldn't even rally enough legislators in his own party to avoid the first single party government shutdown in the history of the United States.
They said in a statement.
You must have a bad memory, then. I can remember many instances where an AC posted something giving the inside scoop on Company X and ended with "Posting as AC because I actually work at Company X."
(Posting as AC because I don't want my comments to be publicly associated with me, not because I'm either a troll or an asshole.)
None of that counters the well documented FACT that Trump did not capture the majority of the popular vote. Grumpy claims of "well he coulda if he really wanted to" don't change that. I can just as easily claim that if the Dems had run ANYBODY other than Clinton (not even that well liked in the Dem's own rank and file), Trump wouldn't have even come close. Alas, that doesn't change anything either. Likewise in the primaries had the GOP come up with anything but a rogue's gallery of the unelectable to go against Trump...
All that said, Ajit Pai is an idjit, and we all hate him.
He is not an idiot. If he were an idiot, he'd be ineffectual. He's perfectly intelligent, and thoroughly malevolent to public interest.
It can't be coincidence that ALL comments section, from youtube to /. to newspapers all across the country have the same language, the same namecalling, the same unwillingness to listen, and it all started at the same time. Either someone is looking to make bank on our divisiveness, or.... we are truly this divided for reals. If the latter, then we're a cunt hair away from civil war.
It's both. There's been a concerted effort to troll America, and the right-wing American trolls have adopted its methods because they can see that they work. And those people have been emboldened by Trump's words and actions, and become louder. They learned the lesson that if they can divide liberals, they can make us less effective.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So people who disagree with you must be paid trolls?
I think youâ(TM)re the one living in an imaginary state dude...
in the end, but their supporters at the beginning all were. It's easy to promise everything for everyone, only a conservative is less likely to believe the lie.
That is one stupid overgeneralizing crap of bull.
Name one time when an AC post protected someone from something other than being recognized as a troll. Just one will do as a counterexample.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can't read the first sentence. It said Weimar-era. Weimar and Nazi isn't the same word. You know, like you guys are always screaming about words having meanings? It even started, THE VERY FIRST WORD, with a pronoun implying "they" were not "Weimar-era".
You conservatives should spend more time in school and not church-school. You might learn something.
I don't, for a second, think those are liberals. You still act like we don't know for certain that Russian trolls are purposefully seeding strife and division. Making one side look like a a bunch of hypocritical bastards seems to be a good way to get you to dismiss their statements. It seems to have worked on you.
Here's where you whine about "oh da rushins". I'll make you a deal: We'll shut up about the russians if you shut about the latino invasion.
I like it as much as the trumps likes having their products made in China while screaming Amercia First. How about neither one of us kill ourselves, and we kill the assholes making us hate each other, whomever that might be?
Lame shill is lame.
If you actually believe what you wrote here, you have absolutely no idea what a Liberal is. Your idea of a Liberal is a caricature that has been illustrated for you by the media.
Boors: Taste the Ruskis.
Every prior president has been elected via the same system. If we had a popular vote system, both candidates would have ran a different campaign, so you can't even make the popular vote claim. Campaigns are ran to win, not to win the popular vote. There was no whining about the rules before the election, and I guarantee that had the shoe been on the other foot, the left wouldn't be complaining about it...maybe the right would, but then they'd be full of shit too.
Just another day in Paradise
You wouldn't be here crying about it if Trump had lost but "won" the "popular vote".
Just another day in Paradise
Since I typically vote republican, let me just say I hate him too. I thought the left didn't like stereotyping.
Just another day in Paradise
Why waste a bullet?...line them up and do all three with one.
Just another day in Paradise
We voted for Republicans to OPPOSE so-called "net nutrality" and the market destroying laws
Yes the lack of regulation promotes an open and free market. Now hurry up and sign up to the one overpriced internet company you can access, two if you're really lucky. Don't forget to add your youtube, facebook and slashdot passes for only 5 bucks each.
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It's not a "quirk", it's the way the system works. We're a constitutional republic, not a democracy. If you go by state vote/electoral votes, which is how the country was wisely designed, than Hillary got squashed.
Each individual state maintains a degree of sovereignty, thus we don't go by general population, we're too large a country for that to work in the best interests of everyone.
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy. https://twitter.com/realdonald...
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There is some insight to what youre write. But having civilzed opinions only seems like half the coin. Somehow the american political debate (wich alot of the time is barely borderline civil talk) creeps into all threads.
It's really silly to us non-americans to see how every thread winds up having comments about trump and left/right.
So some political figures were caught doing dodgy stuff with their taxes and lying about stuff to the feds.
I would be surprised if any us political player didnt do dodgdy taxes and lie. As an outside observer, those seem to be par for the course for the last few decades.
Meanwhile, russians were found to be caring only about themselves - with no link to either side. Are you as surprised as me?
They were left-wing ideologically. The practice is up for debate - but iäd wager the war throws a decent size wrench in that debate since wartime behaviour is often odd.
The biggest "left" benchmark is the communists. The major difference between the (original) communists of that era and the nazis were that one wanted to kill by class, and the other by race. This is big reason why you commonly see pro-nazi/germany texts written by the communist organisations throughout europe in newspapers of the day. If you remember your history then you know they were even in cahoots at the start of the war - until germany got greedy and refused to agree to the concessions that the soviets wanted for their continued aid. the breakdown of those negotiations in nov -40 are what sealed the entire outcome of the war.
The fact that modern racists arent smart enough to understand that theyre worshipping socialists isnt a surprise. But society in the 20-30's was generally much more racist compared to today and that includes the socialists, who created institutes for racial science across europe, and those studies continued well into the second half of the century. "The left" today is a very different thing compared to "the left" from the 1920'-40's. A hundread years make alot of difference.
The point here is that is doesnt matter if the nazis were "left" or "right", becuase those concepts have changed too much since then. They were an offshoot of socialism that chose a new enemy to fight(instead of the traditional "class"-enemy"). They did alot of evil stuff, just like the commies and capitalists of the east/west.
There is no innocence on any side in that time period, only lots of evil and partially closed blinders.
That doesn't change the fact that Trump and his supporters have no basis to claim the existence of a popular mandate for Trump or his policies. There isn't one. Most of the people didn't want him to be president.
You might as well claim that you could have beaten Usain Bolt in the Olympics if you had trained for that.
That doesn't change the facts one iota. He has no popular mandate at all.
That doesn't change the fact that Trump and his supporters have no basis to claim the existence of a popular mandate for Trump or his policies.
They do have a basis: the electoral college. It's the same one Democrats had in 2008 and 2012
Most of the people didn't want him to be president.
No, around 1/4th of the people didn't want him by voting for Hillary or somebody else. Hillary got 65 million, a little less than Obama did in 2012. Obama got 69 million in 2008.
US has over 300 million people.
The rest of the country simply didn't vote at all. We can't say they didn't want Trump anymore than say they didn't want Hillary (or Obama)
That's why we look at the electoral college. Both Obama and Trump clearly had the popular support there. It's the only place either could claim they have a popular mandate
There's a couple morals to be learned here. One is be careful of what tactics and rhetoric you use, as your enemy can use it back at you. The other is that "popular mandate" is a fallacious argument (argumentum ad populum) for both sides. It was bullshit when the Ds ran it to push Obamacare. It's bullshit now with Trump.
See, this is a perfect example of a right-wing, mouthbreathing paid troll the other guy was talking about.
What the actual eff?
Someone actually typed that in!
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
And that is a good thing. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The sarcasm is lame when you consider that your access is limited to one provider because of regulation. But, you just keep swimming in your willful ignorance.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
You were wrong. The left LOVES stereotyping. They always have. What they don't like is BEING STEREOTYPE. Especially, if the stereotype is correct.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The EC is not the popular vote. Nothing about the EC is a basis for any claims about the popular mandate. Trump lost the popular vote (so no popular mandate). The non-voters can't be said to have wanted Trump.
Obama won the popular vote as well as the EC. So did every president in the 20th century. W. won the popular vote for one term, but only won in the EC for the other term. How large the margin of victory in the popular vote needs to be to constitute a mandate is up for debate, but I don't think there's much controversy in the claim that it must be a positive number at least.
The non-voters are an amalgam of people who genuinely don't care, people who don't like any of the choices, people who feel that because of the EC their vote won't matter, people who remain undecided, people who can't get to the polling place, people whop forgot what day it is, and people who are not eligible to vote for various reasons.
You must live in a perpendicular universe. In the one I live in, the stories are shit. Lots of uninformed crying over political and technological nonsense, intersparsed with a few generic science stories available last week on any other website.
The comments are the only reason to even visit this dump. The occasional +5 insightful can add a lot to your understanding. Otherwise the site content is derivative crap you can find on the bottom of your shoe.
Stupidity is inherent in politics based upon an overwhelming amount of evidence.
I don't think that lack of intellect is rampant in politics. I'm not saying there aren't dumb people, but it'd be pretty hard to get into the upper echelons if they were truly dumb. What I'd say there IS a ton of: elitism, posturing, manipulating, back stabbing, sociopathy, ignorance, etc. The majority of the politicians' only true goal is to get re-elected, the only way to do that is keep the people with the money happy. It seems like it would take a pretty intelligent person to be able to do that, while still finding ways to appear to be working for the people that vote.
I can't imagine being convinced that Trump is not a complete moron who was either placed in his role or stumbled into it via appealing to other bigoted morons who are fundamentally incapable of even understanding how the most basic parts of government, economy or business work. A Trump supporter is either a complete idiot or straight up evil. I'm not sure which one is better.
No one gives a fuck what your point is.
Slashdot has long been leaning towards certain cultures and legitimate users who didn't goose step to the beats of those drums were regularly down modded and lost their moderation points for not sucking Slashdot dick. At that point accounts get abandoned and the real trolling comes to life. How about you demand that over and underrated mods be removed and let's see how the kinds of bitches who post twenty times a day and mysteriously have ever post up modded fair.
Either way, I guess it doesn't really matter anymore at all. Slashdot lost most if not all of its street cred years ago when it stopped being a tech site. The current owners just want people to post to keep the ad dollars rolling in. That's why stories with serious polarizing content appear so frequently now. Slashdot needs to produce repeat traffic to make money. It has nothing to do with the ideals of old. Those days were over even before CmdrDildo left.
"Most people" doesn't matter. Win/lose by the rules at the time, and stop whining. Your comparison to Bolt is completely baseless.
Just another day in Paradise
Get it through your skull. Had the election been on popular vote, the vote tally would not have been the same because the candidates would have campaigned with different methodologies. That's not to say that HRC may not have won, only that Trump could have.
Just another day in Paradise
He won by the rules, making it a mandate. It's not called a "popular mandate".
Just another day in Paradise
They constantly complain about profiling, which is why we have to search grandma in a wheelchair as she goes through TSA, as well as your toddler.
Reminds me of when I was 20 and had a new '78 TransAm. I was pulled over about ten times in the one year that I owned it. I'd argue that only three of those were valid traffic stops, but I'm sure I fit a profile.
Just another day in Paradise
There is this thing called a popular mandate (sometimes public mandate or voter mandate, please look it up before replying). He don't got it. Sophistry won't help. Please join us back here in realityland.
I'm not arguing who got elected. I am refuting claims that Trump enjoys a majority of public support.
Get it through YOUR skull. He didn't win the popular vote PERIOD. That means he has no popular mandate PERIOD. You can coulda, woulda, shoulda all you want but he DIDN'T. The majority of people voting for President voted for someone else. That is not even in controversy. They heard him speak, they heard his platform and ideas, and they said NO! Not just no, they were adamant enough to hold their noses and vote for Hillary instead.
Umm, no I live in the UK where we have shitloads of choice of high speed, unlimited connections for a fraction of what the US pays. Thanks to regulation.
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And even more disturbing to me is I'm seeing a lot more of the same behavior from the left leaners now. It went from some bad taste jokes about insert (right leaning politician) to a milder but no less disturbing emulation of the Black Obama bullshit all the right wingers were (and in many cases still *ARE*) hurling around even today.
Being a true patriot and not what people call a patriot today, I'm looking for the door and a chance to live up to the espoused founding principles of this country, and not the actual compromised ones we've been running under for 200 years. The biggest mistake America ever made was the reunification of the Civil War, because as we'v seen, a forcefully unified America is not a culturally unified America.
For anyone who feels the same, come to IRC2P.
Back a long time ago, the difference was right wing opinions were actually sane. Nowadays it's become acceptable for right wingers to literally call for the extermination of whole sectors of humanity and justify it as "just an opinion". That would never have been supported, by anyone, just a few years go.
If you've made the determination that facts are no longer relevant to the position you hold, you have literally decided to disengage from reality. It's not really possible to use reality to deal with that. (How a sizable fraction of the country managed to all come down with the same mental health problem at the same time is baffling to me.)
The surest sign of the insanity came when a black man was elected president. That's when the right wingers started going off the rails, and the first wave of utterly laughable bullshit got stirred up. From birtherism to benghazi, no expense was spared to pin every problem on Obama. And now no expense is spared to attribute Obama's many accomplishments to Trump, no matter how obviously incorrect it is.
However, the answer to people trying to create a post-factual political system isn't to fight fantasy with fantasy either. It's sticking to what's true and offering them the mental health services they need to be able to re-engage with reality.
If your wish were to come true, the entire country would become socialist overnight. Which would be an excellent thing, but I doubt the entrenched interests would go that quietly.
Remember, American: what you consider "extreme left" is barely left of centre in literally the rest of the world. What you consider "right leaning" is rightly called fascism in the rest of the civilized world.