Hyper-space bypasses are planning matters. They have nothing to do with whether or not we send signals into space.
I'd be more concerned about what we're sending being interpreted as an insult, except that the subsequent invasion force would probably be eaten by a small dog.
Firstly, I agree that it is factually correct to say "some say".
Substantive links that would justify an invasion on their own with no other reason or purpose were disproved. But various links existed nonetheless.
If by "links", you mean the Iraq and Al Qeada share the same planet, are made up of people who usually have teeth at some point in their lives, sure, there were definite links.
In terms of cooperative links, there were stronger links between the Bush family and Al Qaeda than there were between the previous Iraq government and Al Qeada - blood is thicker than water and all that. The Iraqi regiem stood for secular society, something which Al Qaeda is fundamentally opposed to, so the links between Al Qaeda and Iraq were the same as the links between any two sworn enemies.
The only people who still dispute this are neo cons and idiots who bought the propaganda of neo cons. Neo conservatism is an ideology that, amongst other things, promotes the creation of external enemies to galvanise and motivate the domestic populus. It promotes war as a way of manitaining a productive economy. It says "who cares if we kill millions of coons on the other side of the world, as long as we have cheap gas." (Hey Bush, whaddaya reckon Jesus would really think of that?) This cynical ideology has been published for decades and I find it incredible that people fell for it. I find it even more incredible that even after the lies have been exposed, people who purport to be intelligent still support it. This is criminal stupidity.
Close examination of the international law and relevant resolutions suggest that the neo cons who pushed this propaganda and advocated war should be tried with war crimes, or given that the United States doesn't recognise international justice, the Bush administration should be charged under US law for treason. By charged, I mean they have a case to answer and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
little bit over the offtopic joust - but I just gotsta...
Science has no ontological component or justification; that's just your mind chasing its own tail when you postulate that it does. Science is a method. No more, no less. The goal of that method is to pin down reality as far as possible given the cognitive, perceptual and technical limitations of the beings employing the method. The reason this is worthwhile is because it advances the human condition through such knowledge. Significantly. Often rapidly. Sometimes frighteningly.
BZZZZZZZZZT Clang CLANG BAAAAROOOOOGAAAH! I think you just hit 16.3 kilogads on the contractictometer.
The point is that by taking an agressively anti-religious stance, you provide the perfect conditions for agressive pro-religious folks (and remember, they are folks). If instead you leave them to have their beliefs and say, "hey, I don't follow that one myself, but it could work for them," they might start thinking that heretics, heathens, etc aren't so bad when you get to know them and don't really deserve to have rocks thrown at them and burn for eternity in the firey lakes that burn on sulpher. Just a thought.
Data is only data by agreement. The number 0, invented by religious nuts way back, only has meaning because we agree it does. Sure, there are repeatable, measurable structures within the universe, but the measurements and the meaning we give them are just what we agree on. That is truth. Reality is regardless of truth.
We cannot know for sure that R=E/I because resistance, electric potential and current were all invented by humans as part of a model and there may well be an electromotive fairy manipulating the effects behind the scenes for her own amusement. The fact that it's consistant could well be her little running joke. Sure, it's a stupid argument and I don't personally subscribe to it, but it's possible. My point is that, while that's not useful, it's also not really harmful, so why worry about it? You can't prove it isn't so. No worthy scientist can. Why are you so agressive and apparently angry about people believing what they want? Do you punch little kids for getting their photo taken with Santa?
If religious people want to pray for something you would like to see happen, say "thanks" - doesn't mean it will work, but there is research that suggests that intention effects matter and who knows exactly what the effects of a little bit of intention applied to exactly the right minute chunk of space might do? It doesn't hurt and it does build bridges - that's a good thing.
That's absolute bullshit. There's scientific research to say that religion works, bozo. A quick google showed this among many others:
Dr Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the US, and his team, have examined the brain activity of eight longtime expert Buddhist practitioners, including monks, while they meditated on unconditional compassion, generating loving empathic thoughts toward all beings. ...
Intriguingly, the electrodes detected much greater gamma wave activity in the experienced meditators, and found that this was much better organised and coordinated than in the brains of the novice meditators.
... The extreme gamma wave activity detected in this group has also been associated with weaving together far-flung brain circuits, suggesting higher mental activity and heightened awareness of those mental states most likely to bring happiness.
There are other studies that show that praying produces similar results, and other studies that show that regular attendance at religious gatherings such as church on Sunday are benificial for peoples wellbeing because they establish order and stability which in moderation are important for mental wellbeing. I couldn't be bothered looking them up, but from memory these things aren't hard to find.
Religion of most forms combines routine and meditation and these things are benificial. I'm not particularly religious, but I find your attitude offensive because you appear misconstrue science, which is a method of enquiry, into the worst distortion of a religion - a fanatical and blinkered belief system which is the only truth and must be blindly supported as one would support a football team.
I understand the context of your post, but there to say what you have said as an apparent endorsement of science is an insult to scientific discovery. Most scientific understanding of existence is based on models and these models are just that. Models. There is not necessarily such a thing as an atom, but experiments yield results which support the model called "atom" to a point that is useful. Perhaps, instead of saying god isn't real and insulting religious people, try seeing god as a model. As with the particle model and wave models of light, your model and the various religious models can coexist if you want them too. It seems you are happy to be yet another religious fanatic.
My personal favorite fantasy geothermal solution has been to go into Utah and just burn/dig an enormous hole through the coal into the depths. ... You could build a whole community into the walls of the place.
Praytell, does your fantasy include the evolution of the people who live in these communities into short, pale skinned humanoids with enormous black eyes who feed predominantly on fungus, communicate via telepathy and play a strange form of full contact ten pin bowling involving large lead mallets and crash helmets?
If so, we're definitely on the same page...
Then again, maybe you think that "bigger is better" regarding the diameter of the bore in geothermal applications.
I would guess that the former is not only more interesting, but also more likely.
System76 only ship to US and Cananda, Dell doesn't ship Ubuntu laptops in Australia and somehow I think the eeeeeeeeeePC will choke if I try to run Eclipse on it. Also, being in au, we have 240V @ 50Hz mains, so rechargers may need replacing, plus it's a lot easier to do salary sacrifice (saving masses on tax) if I buy in Australia.
Linux is not a valid alternative because it is free.
Things that cost less have less value for the simple reason that they cost less. Things that are free are worth nothing. It has nothing to do with quality, it's about the perceptions of idiots.
You try to buy a new notebook and they all have windows on them, or at least something at the top of the page on the website saying "Dull recommends Windows Fista Pleb Edition" and it's included in the price of the laptop, or at least it appears to be.
So captain idiot says, "Wow!, I buy the new laptop and I get the latest OS valued at $23,900.95 for free!"
If the tone of this email seems a little dark, it's because I'm trying to buy a laptop with linux in Australia. I'm trying to do it without going through a vendor which buys windows and then charges extra to replace it, and I don't want to support Novel. I'm currently considering buying online from all the major vendors and sending them back when I can't accept the EULA, although that will probably make them just put the EULA on their website as a pre-purchase annoy screen...
It's unfortunate, however, that Sun continues to pretend that they've already got it all figured out and running smoothly, when there is obviously so much more work to do.
This is true... but...
Imagine Sun said "It's not perfect yetm but it's getting better" with every release. Meanwhile, given their standard marketing practices, MS said ".Net works perfectly, outperforms everything, in fact it runs faster than is theoretically possible on all supported hardware* and gives the officer responsible for purchasing software a 53% increase in sex appeal!". What's the PHB going to buy?
Sure they might ask for input from propeller heads, but at the end of the day MS is trusted and consistant (much more important than good - see McDonalds). Sun basically has to lie to keep the technology alive. It's standard business in any field.
*Minimum system requirements: 8*4 core 64 bit Intel processor with 64GB RAM. 256*4 core with 1.3TB recommended.
How about throwing a little evidence behind that thought?
Not really the kind of thing that one can prove with hard evidence, is it? Perhaps the number of studies that show that poorer people are generally happier people go part way.
For all I know, it's specifically designed the make the US look bad.
What is it with the paranoia? The US isn't even bottom of the list. What makes you think the US is important enough for people to make up a study like this to make the US look bad? Why the arrogance?
It may strike you as meaningless, but then GDP is a measure of how well a group plays a game invented by humans which no longer has much basis in the physical world. For me happiness is more important than that shit.
I don't know anything about your first sentence here, so I won't reply to that. The second seems strange, though, as if you believe that a precision weapon is somehow less prone to human error than an inprecise weapon.
Again, get educated and stop buying the propaganda. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.
What would you like him to be "punished" for? Being unpopular?
"Extraordinary rendition", Gauntanimo Bay, Iraq - incuding the awarding of contracts and any aother war crimes that pop up. Lobby to recognise the Hauge. It isn't a leftist conspiracy, it actually maintains high standards of justice.
While I cannot agree with everything Israel has done (they are not infallible, just look at the Old Testament for that proof),
This is important. Saying the isrealis are the same people as the isrealites is like saying Latvians are Latin. They are not the same. Modern isrealis are predominantly from central asia. a large number of people descended from the isrealites are/were palestinians.
Isrealis commited acts of terrorism throughout the 20th century and then with the nod from Great Britain, invaded and haven't stopped fighting and stealing land since. And they are not isrealites. I agree that the violence has to stop. I also don't recognise isreal as a modern nation.
GDP doesn't impress me much, and is a poor indicator of how "good" a country is. Rich people are much less likely to be good than happy people, in terms of actions to help other people and unwillingness to inflict harm for a buck.
If you want to impress me with goodness, work on this, which apparently both Australia and the United States have a long way to go.
BTW, the US kidnaps people, flies them to other countries and tortures them. The US "accidentally" bombs embassies with precision weapons. We are none of us squeaky clean, but while you guys allow the likes of Cheney to go unpunished, while you reward people who get rich peddling death machines with high office, you're going to find that the criminal actions within your nation become the criminal actions of your nation.
Same answer. Isreal is a nation born from terrorism. It was created as a homeland for a bunch of people from Europe and Central Asia with no ancestral link to the Middle East. There is a stronger ancestral link for a lot of Palestinians, given that a large number of the first muslims were jews descended from the Isrealites.
So again, to modern Isrealis, Get The Hell Out. Stop Invading Other Countries. Stop Annexing Other Territories.
Another option is to stop the economic blockade of Palestine. If the US was really interested in truth, justice and democracy, they would fund the Palestinians. That way they could develop the high tech weaponry to face Isreal on an equal footing and they wouldn't feel compelled to resort to the tactics they use now.
All you need to do is look at articles that paint popular companies in a slightly bad light. Rather than try to reconcile the fact that something they like did something they don't like, they just try to rationalize it away.
That, my freind, is not cognitive dissonance, that is cognitive cancellation, otherwise known as RDF, or reality distortion field.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when the brain waves of one idea don't harmonise nicely with another idea. The result of mixing the brain waves/ideas is dissonance, an uncomfortable, harmonically complex brainwave which 'feels' wrong and requires resolution.
Cognitive cancellation occurs when two completely opposite ideas mix. Take for example an F/OSS advocate in an Apple showroom. The F/OSS has egalitarian ideas about software ownership and believes in openness and running with any hardware platform. He is presented with another idea: the mac; proprietary and limited to a small set of very shiny hardware. These brainwaves, one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase, mix in the head of our protagonist, resulting in a flatline - absolute cognative silence.
All the sales rep has to do is whisper "Apple good", and in the deathly silence of our F/OSS advocate's mind, it is absolute and world forming as the voice of God.
Just thought I'd clear that up for you.
BTW, what TFA didn't mention was the one monkey who threw a chair across the room and demanded all the f**kin M&Ms "...or I'll fucking kill you!!!". There's always one arsehole.
If you go to a bar in Aussie, and tell someone that you don't like Iran because Iran held Americans hostage, they'll beat you up because the US "interferes" in Aussie's political process somehow?
No exactly. You go into a bar talking about Iran as if they did all the bad shit and the US was just an inocent player who now has a greivence. Do that with the usual blind adherance to US propaganda and unwillingness to accept that the US might be anything other than squeeky clean, you're likely to shit some people.
Keep up that attitude and people who you annoyed will injure you. Verbally or physically, body or pride doesn't matter.
The world is not jealous of US freedom, the world is pissed off with US self righteousness.
Just a little history lesson here. The current government of Iran are the ones who took US citizens hostage an refused to let them go. They also threatened an Ally.
I'm Australian. The US kidnapped an Ausrtralian and held him hostage until he agreed to plead guilty to charges in a process which does not uphold any common sense of justice and by all accounts (other than those of Cheney and his ilk) constitutes a war crime.
The US government has interfered in our political system, being instrumental in the removal of at least one prime minister and threatens and bullies Australia frequently. In fact NZ shows a lot more balls than Ausrtralia over US bullying, but that's another issue. Given that, it's amazing we are still allies.
While Australia does not generally declare war on other countries, you be very careful if you ever visit and vocalise that kind of attitude in the wrong bar over here. If you come over here, try to look a little sorry so you don't get injured.
They constantly threaten to attack a country which did nothing to them.
Not just one country. Try North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Panama, Cuba, Libya, Vietnam.... oh what? You're talking about Iran. Sorry.
Yeah, I guess the fact that another country in your proximity has invaded your freinds, shown a complete disregard for human rights, regularly shoots civilians including children, has annexed parts of other states and developed nuclear weapons in secret in the name of some artificial religious zealotry aren't valid reasons to jump up and down screaming about their irradication as a disease. That would be evil.
But Iran has rockets that can reach US personnel and allies (like say... Europe, Israel, India, Japan and so on... May I suggest you read up on NATO also).
That is so fuckin true, and it's something those pinkos don't understand. Thanks for putting it down so clearly. I mean shit, these people spout all that crap about how Iran is developing weapons because the US keeps threatening them and sold Iraq WMDs and is trying to control Iraq now and Isreal doesn't like them and has a track record of bombing Syria and Lebanon and stealing land without giving a shit about civilians or human rights of anyone who isn't jewish, and Isreal has nukes. Wa wa wa. What a load of BS - it's clear that all Iranians are evildoers and they will not stop until they have destroyed America's freedom. They can reach American forces who are stationed all around the world to protect American freedom for the whole planet. Anyone who says otherwise is a crackpot.
Also, what about Pakistan. Those guys are just pretending to be freinds when in really they hate the US more than North Korea or even Canada and they already have nukes! We should be bombing them now. All of those Muslims from Syria to Pakistan. Fuck diplomacy, fucking fry 'em.
Than there's Sudan. Nuke Sudan. They hate American freedom too and their hatred has probably already spread throughout Africa from Cairo to Johanessburg. BOOM
Then there's China and Russia, who are only pretending not to be commie by the way. Nuke China and Russia. Then we'd better nuke Japan, because I don't think they really learned the first time - The PS3 runs Linux and not Vista. BOOM
Speaking of Linux - isn't that a socialist ploy from Finland? BOOM! And isn't the EU taking steps to inhibit the legitimate freedoms usually afford such fine American technology as Vista? BOOM
Fucking South America is full of commies and drug pushers. New Zealand refuses the freedom of having nuclear armed ships in it's harbours and now that Steve Irwin is dead, Australia is no fucking use. BOOM BOOM BOOM
Given wind currents, etc, that only leaves Canada and Mexico.
Fuck 'em. BOOM
Or to put it in a less sarcastic way, paranoia breeds paranoia. Fear breeds fear which leads to stupid decisions. Humans don't think as clearly when they are scared. Paranoia is an excellent and well worn political tool to keep a population voting for idiots. Try thinking outside of that cage for a bit.
Not lies, just statistics. The figures are meaningless without analysis, and a good analyst could derive at least four mutually exclusive conclusions from them and many meaningless curiosities in between.
That's where journalism comes in. The journalist weaves a story favouring one outcome and discounting some others with a view to creating or fuelling controversy and conversation. The purpose of good journalism is not to inform or educate, it is to entertain the unwashed masses.
Given that this appeared on the front page of slashdot, I would call it excellent journalism.
TFA seems to be comparing Radiohead's model to iTunes and traditional record sales, which is a bit confusing. Given that it doesn't take sales of the disks into account, the only fair comparison would be strictly between Radiohead and iTunes/<your_favourite_provider_of_lossy_compressed_files>. On those terms I would be surprised if this new model isn't hugely more profitable for Radiohead and cheaper for consumers.
If you take a different view of their model and consider the downloads to be predominantly promotional, they have more than paid for their promotional material before the actual product even ships. They have also made more than enough to pay for pressing upfront as well as any further promotion.
While a lot of the recent publicity is generated by novelty, I think online busking is an excellent long term method of promoting quality recordings.
The disc sets sell at 40 pounds each, from which they have to pay for pressing, printing, handling and shipping. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but I know locally 40 pounds (~$A90) would easily cover those costs for runs as small as 1000 and internationally they will probably sell a lot more than that. Radiohead has elimitated the risk of over-producing discs by offering a pre-order model and they don't have to give 98-99% to a record company.
I don't think TFA can make sensible analysis until after the discs ship. It's definitely an interesting model.
Slashdot Mirror
Hyper-space bypasses are planning matters. They have nothing to do with whether or not we send signals into space.
I'd be more concerned about what we're sending being interpreted as an insult, except that the subsequent invasion force would probably be eaten by a small dog.
Firstly, I agree that it is factually correct to say "some say".
If by "links", you mean the Iraq and Al Qeada share the same planet, are made up of people who usually have teeth at some point in their lives, sure, there were definite links.
In terms of cooperative links, there were stronger links between the Bush family and Al Qaeda than there were between the previous Iraq government and Al Qeada - blood is thicker than water and all that. The Iraqi regiem stood for secular society, something which Al Qaeda is fundamentally opposed to, so the links between Al Qaeda and Iraq were the same as the links between any two sworn enemies.
The only people who still dispute this are neo cons and idiots who bought the propaganda of neo cons. Neo conservatism is an ideology that, amongst other things, promotes the creation of external enemies to galvanise and motivate the domestic populus. It promotes war as a way of manitaining a productive economy. It says "who cares if we kill millions of coons on the other side of the world, as long as we have cheap gas." (Hey Bush, whaddaya reckon Jesus would really think of that?) This cynical ideology has been published for decades and I find it incredible that people fell for it. I find it even more incredible that even after the lies have been exposed, people who purport to be intelligent still support it. This is criminal stupidity.
Close examination of the international law and relevant resolutions suggest that the neo cons who pushed this propaganda and advocated war should be tried with war crimes, or given that the United States doesn't recognise international justice, the Bush administration should be charged under US law for treason. By charged, I mean they have a case to answer and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Is that war anything to do with the inappropriately named war on ineffective wars?
I'm told we can win if we stay the course.
little bit over the offtopic joust - but I just gotsta...
BZZZZZZZZZT Clang CLANG BAAAAROOOOOGAAAH! I think you just hit 16.3 kilogads on the contractictometer.
The point is that by taking an agressively anti-religious stance, you provide the perfect conditions for agressive pro-religious folks (and remember, they are folks). If instead you leave them to have their beliefs and say, "hey, I don't follow that one myself, but it could work for them," they might start thinking that heretics, heathens, etc aren't so bad when you get to know them and don't really deserve to have rocks thrown at them and burn for eternity in the firey lakes that burn on sulpher. Just a thought.
Data is only data by agreement. The number 0, invented by religious nuts way back, only has meaning because we agree it does. Sure, there are repeatable, measurable structures within the universe, but the measurements and the meaning we give them are just what we agree on. That is truth. Reality is regardless of truth.
We cannot know for sure that R=E/I because resistance, electric potential and current were all invented by humans as part of a model and there may well be an electromotive fairy manipulating the effects behind the scenes for her own amusement. The fact that it's consistant could well be her little running joke. Sure, it's a stupid argument and I don't personally subscribe to it, but it's possible. My point is that, while that's not useful, it's also not really harmful, so why worry about it? You can't prove it isn't so. No worthy scientist can. Why are you so agressive and apparently angry about people believing what they want? Do you punch little kids for getting their photo taken with Santa?
If religious people want to pray for something you would like to see happen, say "thanks" - doesn't mean it will work, but there is research that suggests that intention effects matter and who knows exactly what the effects of a little bit of intention applied to exactly the right minute chunk of space might do? It doesn't hurt and it does build bridges - that's a good thing.
That's absolute bullshit. There's scientific research to say that religion works, bozo. A quick google showed this among many others:
There are other studies that show that praying produces similar results, and other studies that show that regular attendance at religious gatherings such as church on Sunday are benificial for peoples wellbeing because they establish order and stability which in moderation are important for mental wellbeing. I couldn't be bothered looking them up, but from memory these things aren't hard to find.
Religion of most forms combines routine and meditation and these things are benificial. I'm not particularly religious, but I find your attitude offensive because you appear misconstrue science, which is a method of enquiry, into the worst distortion of a religion - a fanatical and blinkered belief system which is the only truth and must be blindly supported as one would support a football team.
I understand the context of your post, but there to say what you have said as an apparent endorsement of science is an insult to scientific discovery. Most scientific understanding of existence is based on models and these models are just that. Models. There is not necessarily such a thing as an atom, but experiments yield results which support the model called "atom" to a point that is useful. Perhaps, instead of saying god isn't real and insulting religious people, try seeing god as a model. As with the particle model and wave models of light, your model and the various religious models can coexist if you want them too. It seems you are happy to be yet another religious fanatic.
Praytell, does your fantasy include the evolution of the people who live in these communities into short, pale skinned humanoids with enormous black eyes who feed predominantly on fungus, communicate via telepathy and play a strange form of full contact ten pin bowling involving large lead mallets and crash helmets?
If so, we're definitely on the same page...
Then again, maybe you think that "bigger is better" regarding the diameter of the bore in geothermal applications.
I would guess that the former is not only more interesting, but also more likely.
<deadhorse action="flog">Why buy an IBM Thinkpad T61 when you can buy an IBM Thinkpad T61 Alike for 1/5th the price?</deadhorse>
System76 only ship to US and Cananda, Dell doesn't ship Ubuntu laptops in Australia and somehow I think the eeeeeeeeeePC will choke if I try to run Eclipse on it. Also, being in au, we have 240V @ 50Hz mains, so rechargers may need replacing, plus it's a lot easier to do salary sacrifice (saving masses on tax) if I buy in Australia.
Thanks anyway though....
Linux is not a valid alternative because it is free.
Things that cost less have less value for the simple reason that they cost less. Things that are free are worth nothing. It has nothing to do with quality, it's about the perceptions of idiots.
You try to buy a new notebook and they all have windows on them, or at least something at the top of the page on the website saying "Dull recommends Windows Fista Pleb Edition" and it's included in the price of the laptop, or at least it appears to be.
So captain idiot says, "Wow!, I buy the new laptop and I get the latest OS valued at $23,900.95 for free!"
If the tone of this email seems a little dark, it's because I'm trying to buy a laptop with linux in Australia. I'm trying to do it without going through a vendor which buys windows and then charges extra to replace it, and I don't want to support Novel. I'm currently considering buying online from all the major vendors and sending them back when I can't accept the EULA, although that will probably make them just put the EULA on their website as a pre-purchase annoy screen...
This is true... but...
Imagine Sun said "It's not perfect yetm but it's getting better" with every release. Meanwhile, given their standard marketing practices, MS said ".Net works perfectly, outperforms everything, in fact it runs faster than is theoretically possible on all supported hardware* and gives the officer responsible for purchasing software a 53% increase in sex appeal!". What's the PHB going to buy?
Sure they might ask for input from propeller heads, but at the end of the day MS is trusted and consistant (much more important than good - see McDonalds). Sun basically has to lie to keep the technology alive. It's standard business in any field.
*Minimum system requirements: 8*4 core 64 bit Intel processor with 64GB RAM. 256*4 core with 1.3TB recommended.
And there is only one fridge because in my house when someone says "where's the milk?" the answer is usually "in the fridge."
My brain backs up periodically. People call me a sh1thead. Then I call the cerebral plumber and all is well.
Not really the kind of thing that one can prove with hard evidence, is it? Perhaps the number of studies that show that poorer people are generally happier people go part way.
What is it with the paranoia? The US isn't even bottom of the list. What makes you think the US is important enough for people to make up a study like this to make the US look bad? Why the arrogance?
It may strike you as meaningless, but then GDP is a measure of how well a group plays a game invented by humans which no longer has much basis in the physical world. For me happiness is more important than that shit.
Again, get educated and stop buying the propaganda. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.
"Extraordinary rendition", Gauntanimo Bay, Iraq - incuding the awarding of contracts and any aother war crimes that pop up. Lobby to recognise the Hauge. It isn't a leftist conspiracy, it actually maintains high standards of justice.
This is important. Saying the isrealis are the same people as the isrealites is like saying Latvians are Latin. They are not the same. Modern isrealis are predominantly from central asia. a large number of people descended from the isrealites are/were palestinians.
Isrealis commited acts of terrorism throughout the 20th century and then with the nod from Great Britain, invaded and haven't stopped fighting and stealing land since. And they are not isrealites. I agree that the violence has to stop. I also don't recognise isreal as a modern nation.
I won't blame you. I will wonder WTF the FBI is doing knocking on my door. I will tell them to leave and if they don't I'll call the Victorian Police.
By the way, Isreal is a terrorist state. Check the history. Ignore the propaganda.
GDP doesn't impress me much, and is a poor indicator of how "good" a country is. Rich people are much less likely to be good than happy people, in terms of actions to help other people and unwillingness to inflict harm for a buck.
If you want to impress me with goodness, work on this, which apparently both Australia and the United States have a long way to go.
BTW, the US kidnaps people, flies them to other countries and tortures them. The US "accidentally" bombs embassies with precision weapons. We are none of us squeaky clean, but while you guys allow the likes of Cheney to go unpunished, while you reward people who get rich peddling death machines with high office, you're going to find that the criminal actions within your nation become the criminal actions of your nation.
Same answer. Isreal is a nation born from terrorism. It was created as a homeland for a bunch of people from Europe and Central Asia with no ancestral link to the Middle East. There is a stronger ancestral link for a lot of Palestinians, given that a large number of the first muslims were jews descended from the Isrealites.
So again, to modern Isrealis, Get The Hell Out. Stop Invading Other Countries. Stop Annexing Other Territories.
Another option is to stop the economic blockade of Palestine. If the US was really interested in truth, justice and democracy, they would fund the Palestinians. That way they could develop the high tech weaponry to face Isreal on an equal footing and they wouldn't feel compelled to resort to the tactics they use now.
That, my freind, is not cognitive dissonance, that is cognitive cancellation, otherwise known as RDF, or reality distortion field.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when the brain waves of one idea don't harmonise nicely with another idea. The result of mixing the brain waves/ideas is dissonance, an uncomfortable, harmonically complex brainwave which 'feels' wrong and requires resolution.
Cognitive cancellation occurs when two completely opposite ideas mix. Take for example an F/OSS advocate in an Apple showroom. The F/OSS has egalitarian ideas about software ownership and believes in openness and running with any hardware platform. He is presented with another idea: the mac; proprietary and limited to a small set of very shiny hardware. These brainwaves, one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase, mix in the head of our protagonist, resulting in a flatline - absolute cognative silence.
All the sales rep has to do is whisper "Apple good", and in the deathly silence of our F/OSS advocate's mind, it is absolute and world forming as the voice of God.
Just thought I'd clear that up for you.
BTW, what TFA didn't mention was the one monkey who threw a chair across the room and demanded all the f**kin M&Ms "...or I'll fucking kill you!!!". There's always one arsehole.
No exactly. You go into a bar talking about Iran as if they did all the bad shit and the US was just an inocent player who now has a greivence. Do that with the usual blind adherance to US propaganda and unwillingness to accept that the US might be anything other than squeeky clean, you're likely to shit some people.
Keep up that attitude and people who you annoyed will injure you. Verbally or physically, body or pride doesn't matter.
The world is not jealous of US freedom, the world is pissed off with US self righteousness.
I'm Australian. The US kidnapped an Ausrtralian and held him hostage until he agreed to plead guilty to charges in a process which does not uphold any common sense of justice and by all accounts (other than those of Cheney and his ilk) constitutes a war crime.
The US government has interfered in our political system, being instrumental in the removal of at least one prime minister and threatens and bullies Australia frequently. In fact NZ shows a lot more balls than Ausrtralia over US bullying, but that's another issue. Given that, it's amazing we are still allies.
While Australia does not generally declare war on other countries, you be very careful if you ever visit and vocalise that kind of attitude in the wrong bar over here. If you come over here, try to look a little sorry so you don't get injured.
Not just one country. Try North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Panama, Cuba, Libya, Vietnam.... oh what? You're talking about Iran. Sorry.
Yeah, I guess the fact that another country in your proximity has invaded your freinds, shown a complete disregard for human rights, regularly shoots civilians including children, has annexed parts of other states and developed nuclear weapons in secret in the name of some artificial religious zealotry aren't valid reasons to jump up and down screaming about their irradication as a disease. That would be evil.
That is so fuckin true, and it's something those pinkos don't understand. Thanks for putting it down so clearly. I mean shit, these people spout all that crap about how Iran is developing weapons because the US keeps threatening them and sold Iraq WMDs and is trying to control Iraq now and Isreal doesn't like them and has a track record of bombing Syria and Lebanon and stealing land without giving a shit about civilians or human rights of anyone who isn't jewish, and Isreal has nukes. Wa wa wa. What a load of BS - it's clear that all Iranians are evildoers and they will not stop until they have destroyed America's freedom. They can reach American forces who are stationed all around the world to protect American freedom for the whole planet. Anyone who says otherwise is a crackpot.
Also, what about Pakistan. Those guys are just pretending to be freinds when in really they hate the US more than North Korea or even Canada and they already have nukes! We should be bombing them now. All of those Muslims from Syria to Pakistan. Fuck diplomacy, fucking fry 'em.
Than there's Sudan. Nuke Sudan. They hate American freedom too and their hatred has probably already spread throughout Africa from Cairo to Johanessburg. BOOM
Then there's China and Russia, who are only pretending not to be commie by the way. Nuke China and Russia. Then we'd better nuke Japan, because I don't think they really learned the first time - The PS3 runs Linux and not Vista. BOOM
Speaking of Linux - isn't that a socialist ploy from Finland? BOOM! And isn't the EU taking steps to inhibit the legitimate freedoms usually afford such fine American technology as Vista? BOOM
Fucking South America is full of commies and drug pushers. New Zealand refuses the freedom of having nuclear armed ships in it's harbours and now that Steve Irwin is dead, Australia is no fucking use. BOOM BOOM BOOM
Given wind currents, etc, that only leaves Canada and Mexico.
Fuck 'em. BOOM
Or to put it in a less sarcastic way, paranoia breeds paranoia. Fear breeds fear which leads to stupid decisions. Humans don't think as clearly when they are scared. Paranoia is an excellent and well worn political tool to keep a population voting for idiots. Try thinking outside of that cage for a bit.
Not lies, just statistics. The figures are meaningless without analysis, and a good analyst could derive at least four mutually exclusive conclusions from them and many meaningless curiosities in between.
That's where journalism comes in. The journalist weaves a story favouring one outcome and discounting some others with a view to creating or fuelling controversy and conversation. The purpose of good journalism is not to inform or educate, it is to entertain the unwashed masses.
Given that this appeared on the front page of slashdot, I would call it excellent journalism.
TFA seems to be comparing Radiohead's model to iTunes and traditional record sales, which is a bit confusing. Given that it doesn't take sales of the disks into account, the only fair comparison would be strictly between Radiohead and iTunes/<your_favourite_provider_of_lossy_compressed_files>. On those terms I would be surprised if this new model isn't hugely more profitable for Radiohead and cheaper for consumers.
If you take a different view of their model and consider the downloads to be predominantly promotional, they have more than paid for their promotional material before the actual product even ships. They have also made more than enough to pay for pressing upfront as well as any further promotion.
While a lot of the recent publicity is generated by novelty, I think online busking is an excellent long term method of promoting quality recordings.
The disc sets sell at 40 pounds each, from which they have to pay for pressing, printing, handling and shipping. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but I know locally 40 pounds (~$A90) would easily cover those costs for runs as small as 1000 and internationally they will probably sell a lot more than that. Radiohead has elimitated the risk of over-producing discs by offering a pre-order model and they don't have to give 98-99% to a record company.
I don't think TFA can make sensible analysis until after the discs ship. It's definitely an interesting model.
Thank you. And thanks to the "scientists" who did this research.
Yesterday, while we were out, my 2 year old called home and spoke to a light globe. This research eases my mind.