There were two days of filming. Have you ever sat for a two day exam? You will eventually trip up. These weren't written questions. The manner and demeanor of the questioner carries a lot of information, and Katie Couric was offensively haughty. The question about what she read was particularly snarky, and delivered in an offensive way. If I were forced to suffer through that, my response would have been, "Fuck you. I read whatever I damn well please, and it usually talks about how Katie Couric is butch."
Yeah, I'll never be President. Tell me this, why didn't they air all the times that Couric asked Palin about abortion. Wouldn't want to give the impression that it was an extended badgering session would we?
Asking her what she reads is snarky? When you're campaigning for the VP position in the country, nobody should be able to ask you what you read? That's pathetic. Her demeanor was too offensive so Palin couldn't manage to make coherent sentences? Seriously? And you want her to be representing the country to other world leaders and engaging in negotiations on our behalf when she can't even handle a simple interview? God, I hope the other diplomats don't offend her, she might accidentally give away Alaska or something.
**Reposted this reply since it somehow got set to anonymous on the first try.
Lipstick on a pig? Running for the highest office in the land, and he did not realize how it would be taken...the controversy it would cause after having been so effectively used by his opponent only a week earlier? He did not have enough socializing to know that it would be correctly be taken as a lowbrow insult? Either he knew how his words would be interpreted and is given to nasty insults, or he was completely unaware of all the press around Palin using that comment to so much applause and is therefore an idiot. Given that after only weeks in office, he uses his bully pulpit to say that he doesn't have all the facts but that the police are stupid, I still don't know which way to categorize him.
Moving troops into Pakistan? As a candidate for the highest office in the land, he will proclaim far and wide that he will invade one of our few tenuous allies in a war torn region? How in the HELL can anyone read that as anything less than complete shoe-size-IQ asinine is beyond me.
How about, "We need to spread the wealth around." And conservatives are idiots for calling him a socialist? WTF?
I can see why he picked a dolt like Biden for a running mate. They can share stories about the taste of shoe leather after they both get their feet out of their mouths.
The people interviewing Palin were definitely out to get her. Their entire demeanor screamed it for the entire interview. On the other hand, Chris Matthews was talking about getting a chill up his leg as he was peeing his pants watching an Obama speech. I mean, when Saturday Night Live does a skit about it, you know it is blaringly obvious.
Palin spoke as well, if not better, than Obama. Still does. Not that the bar is very high.
Really? Katie Couric was out to get her? She asked her some very basic, straight-forward questions and Palin was a train wreck and couldn't form a coherent response. Which questions in particular did you think were the ones where she was out to get her?
Sarah Palin was always more qualified than Obama. Sarah Palin had great executive experience as Governor and Mayor. Obama? Zero executive experience. Biden? Zero executive experience. Quite frankly, Obama did not have the resume that most people expect to see in a Presidential candidate.
And I seem to remember many liberals thinking that Bush should be impeached. I don't know what the numbers were, but you didn't cite a source for yours, so...
Are you serious? Did you hear those interviews with her? She can hardly express a coherent thought unless someone hands her a script. It's completely ridiculous to consider her qualified to be president. I'm find it terrifying that so many Republicans think she is. At best she'd be a puppet, because she apparently can't think for herself and has to have the party talking points drilled into her before she can even respond to a question. I don't want someone that vapid to be president.
No, really, we've had video conferencing for more than 50 years. No-one wants it because it doesn't add anything constructive. It's not like the difference between TV and radio - if you're on a phone call, you can be doing other things, with a video call you're just blankly staring at a screen with another face blankly staring back at you. Video conferencing is a niche that continually dies out moments after it is introduced.
But you can't attribute that failure to the concept when we've never had a good implementation of it widely available to people. It's simply never been done. So you're left with either crappy video quality, or decent to good video that nobody else has access to, so you're extremely limited in who you can talk to with it. While it may not be appropriate for all situations, having the option would be great. Maybe if we ever get a good implementation we can test this out.
We don't have HD video conferencing because very few want it. My mobile network has done video conferencing for more than 5 years - still don't use it.
The limiting factor isn't bandwidth, it's apathy.
Says you. Fact is we haven't had the bandwidth to even test that theory. You're just dismissing it out of hand because jerky, low-res video chat with crappy bandwidth hasn't appealed to people. No kidding. Doesn't appeal to me either, but good video chat would. Still waiting on that.
Here is a music video by Boards of Canada, in which they show the original footage of Joseph Kittinger jumping from 102,800 ft. Much of the last part of the video is from something else, but the first part is real. It really is haunting to see him push off of the balloon platform.
Would have been pretty awesome if he actually had landed from the jump and then surfed back to land:)
Although I was posting long before I registered, I refrained from registering because I was uncomfortable with registering on Internet sites at that time. We'd probably have ended up with very similar 3-digit UIDs, but no idea whose would be the lower. Not that it matters at the 3-digit level - or even at the 4-digit level given how few old-timers are left.
Was the same story for me, and I've heard it from others here as well. Seems like a lot of us had reservations about creating accounts for websites back then. I probably missed a 3-digit UID by a matter of hours. Maybe a day or so at most.
I think you didn't understand. The gas pedal pivots from the floor, which means it can never be stuck under the mat.
I guess I did. But the gp post said, "Honda had so many it redesigned the pedals on the new Civic to pivot from the floor instead of the firewall so the mats can't get under them", emphasis mine. That sounds to me like he's saying the mats were getting stuck under the pedals, which seems like something that could happen. I have no idea how the pedal could get stuck under the mat. I've never seen that happen. I have seen mats get bunched up under the pedals before. That seemed like the much more common problem.
Honda had so many it redesigned the pedals on the new Civic to pivot from the floor instead of the firewall so the mats can't get under them.
So that's why my VW Golf has that weird gas pedal when the break and clutch pivot from the top!
Man, I was breaking my noodle trying to figure that one out, because except for maybe looking a bit cooler, it made no sense.
According to your link, VW had the most complaints/100,000 vehicles, so that makes perfect sense.
That still doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they do it with the brake pedal as well? If a mat gets stuck under the gas pedal, well then you might have a hard time maintaining acceleration. If it gets stuck under the brake pedal, then you might not be able to stop. Which one sounds like the bigger problem to you?
Those on the road have at least been told which is the gas pedal and which is the brake, and have demonstrated that they can remember the difference at least sometimes.
So there are probably times when they can't, like when they panic, or aren't paying attention, which could easily lead to the kinds of "sudden unintended acceleration" that we've seen.
The time to speak up is before the decisions are made, that is the only time your voice can have a positive effect. If you disagree with the decisions, you express your opinion at the ballot box. The point of electing a leader is to have someone to make the tough decisions, since you'll never get a unanimous agreement from all citizens. You won't always agree with the decisions, and not every decision made will turn out to be the right decision. But once that decision is made, you follow through on it, and express your opinion at the ballot box at the appropriate time. In the current war, you need to wait until the Afghan national army is trained and armed properly to keep the Taliban at bay indefinitely. Then the US forces can withdraw, and you can bitch about what a stupid decision it was in the first place. To cut and run now will result in the Taliban regaining power in Afghanistan. Do you think they won't try any more terrorist attacks against US civilians at that point?
No, the time to speak up is always, and especially around election time when we can actually replace the idiots making the bad decisions with others who will hopefully make less bad decisions. Saying we should get out is not whining, it's stating the belief that our government should take that action, i.e. do something to correct the initial bad decision that was made. I don't necessarily agree with that assessment, but it's certainly his right to state his beliefs about it. That's why we have free speech.
I was with you up until EVE. I love the fact that death actually has consequences in EVE.
I don't know a lot about the current state of EVE, as I haven't played it since sometime around the second year it was out. So this is more of a general statement than one informed by the specifics of the situation in that game. I think that consequences for dying are good, but making it easy for high level players to grief the newbs is not. If you're getting blasted to pieces by some ungodly powerful ship five minutes after creating your first character in-game, are you really going to want to try to learn the game? Learning it takes time, and getting killed repeatedly just makes the learning incredibly frustrating. Having some safe areas for the newbs to get their space legs is a good thing, especially if you want to attract new players over time. I think there should definitely be gameplay mechanics that reward taking risks, and those risks could be anything from minor to deadly, but taking those risks should be up to the player.
I saw an article a bit ago doing the math about how many cars can move through a electric equivalent of a gas station, and something like 10x more gasoline powered cars are able to fuel up FULLY over the course of an hour.
That's why there's an alternative proposition to use replaceable battery packs. Pull the car in to the station and a mechanical device removes the tamper-resistant-and-registered bank of batteries from the car. Then it lifts a charged pack in. This also means the owners don't have to spend thousands of dollars after so many charges for a new set of batteries.
So who will be taking old battery packs out of circulation then? Who pays for replacing them, and how?
First, was I replying to your post? Why no I was not, I was replying to the same post you were replying to.
Second, they did screw up because they took a hard copy of the email from the Chief of Security instead of obtaining a signed letter. You sure can argue why they needed it in the first place, but I will point out they DID take the email with them to show to the rent-a-idiots. Hard copy of an email is meaningless, something signed by CoS would have told the rent-a-idiots that were doing something wrong.
You basically just explained that the guards were wrong and that the reporters didn't need any permission. They didn't screw up, the guards did. They might have been able to prevent the guards from screwing up if they had some kind of signed permission, but that just reinforces the idea that you actually need such permission, which you don't. The guards fucked up, period.
I honestly can't stand these people who go out and attempt to provoke situations. Yes, there are bad cops out there who certainly abuse their position of power and deserve to be outed. But this is just ridiculous. The guy is trying to stir up shit, and I have to commend the cops for putting up with that and not even blinking an eye.
Everything he did was reasonable and well within the law. What harm is there in someone filming a traffic stop? What harm is there in holding police accountable? If you'd ever been a victim of a cop abusing his authority, you'd probably carry a camera around in case you or someone you care about gets stopped too.
That guy is an assclown. I am no fan of police brutality, or stomping on rights, but that guy was outright trying to provoke an encounter.
So the video starts with a traffic stop that he is videoing. As as emergency responder (EMT) and a driver, I have little sympathy for those using their cellphone while driving. So he pissed me off with his "Santa Fe 'bureaucrats' have deemed cellphone use while driving 'illegal'." (air quotes his).
So what does he do? With a video camera and an openly displayed handgun, he walks right up to the car beside the cop, and loudly proclaims that he is going to "videotape this to keep you accountable". Note that there's no perceived problem on camera, officer is just writing a ticket.
Officer asks him to step back out of the scene, "I'm keeping you accountable!", but he steps back, officer writes ticket, and without even a glance, gets in his car and finishes his paperwork. Evil mean nasty policeman.
A few minutes later, guy is still recording, police officer pulls up, "What was that back there?" "I'm keeping you accountable!" "I told you to step back because you had a handgun at my traffic stop", "It's not illegal to open carry in New Mexico!" "No, it's not. What's your name?" "I don't have to tell you my name! I'm not under arrest! I'm not being detained!" (note at this point that the officer was still in his car, arm dangling out the window, while he was on the sidewalk. "No, you're not." Cop drives off.
Fascist pigs! Kill cops!
This guy needs a slap. It's one thing to hold officers of the law to account when they're abusing their authority. It's another to pretend you're doing everyone a public service by running around, actively seeking out situations in which you can interfere with lawful activities, and antagonize and provoke police into responding to you just so you can say "HA! I TOLD YOU SO!".
Color me unimpressed.
The guy went there because his girlfriend called him. Maybe he's been a victim of a cop abusing his authority before and wanted to make sure that it didn't happen to her. The cop should have just let him film from a distance and left him alone. He didn't break any laws. But the cop follows him after he leaves the scene and starts badgering him about things that aren't against the law and weren't even threatening. He was just filming the stop.
Why should the cop even come after him, let alone spew a bunch of bullshit about how he has to show them his ID and stuff. Maybe the cops need to learn the law. This seems like a good education for them. I'm sure they went back and found out that they had no right to demand an ID or a license for his gun, and that the guy had done nothing wrong. I'm held accountable for my job, why shouldn't police, with all the authority we give them, be held accountable for theirs? I think they need to be held accountable, as these cops didn't even seem to understand the limit of their own authority or what the law actually says.
Switching to a more objective system for districting, and a better election system (auto runoff or something similar), along with secure voting systems and publicly funded campaigns would go a long way toward fixing the issues.
I seriously doubt any of those would actually make democracy better. Trying to fix a known issue by switching system just exposes you to all the unknown issues. There's certainly no "objective" system for districting - a human must make some decision, and that human will be accountable to someone elected, and nature will take it course (or he won't be, and that's the new King).
The fact that a representative can annoy 40%, or even 60% of his voters and get away with it it still the least bad system ever seen in practice. You can't destroy the lives of 90% of your people and laugh at their misfortune, as has been common with other systems. Really, you can't stray too far from sanity without the voters reacting, compared to say Roman emperors.
While we may have the least bad system in practice, that doesn't mean that it can't be improved upon. While there may be unknown issues, they may not be as bad as the known issues we have now. I'm certainly willing to try something else if there's a chance that it could improve the system. Just sticking with what we have means we'll continue to see the same crap happening, and I don't see that as acceptable, especially when there are other options that could work better.
While Gerrymandering has created a few utra-safe districts, for the most part it only helps a few percent. If a representative really annoys his district he's still out, despite all the tricks. Other than the voting machine scam, I'm not sure there are better ways to handle the rest of the logistics, merely ways for which the corrupt failure mode is less obvious.
It's not whether he really annoys his district. It's that he can really annoy 40%+ of his district, but they will never have the numbers to vote him out. Gerrymandering is continuously working to segregate those areas that would oppose a candidate and include those pieces into areas of strong support so that the dissenters' votes will never be enough to carry any district.
Switching to a more objective system for districting, and a better election system (auto runoff or something similar), along with secure voting systems and publicly funded campaigns would go a long way toward fixing the issues.
There's just no part of "democracy" that selects people fit to lead - it's nowhere in the protocol. It's nevertheless the least-bad system, as there's very little in aristocracy or dictatorship that selects people fit to lead, and democracy has the huge advantage of letting you replace bad choices bloodlessly. Elections do almost nothing to select wisely among new candidates, but they don't have to as they do a great job of removing really bad incumbants. By that criteria, does it really matter what the person promised, or instead whether what they actually did while in office was of benefit?
The election system is essentially rigged. Gerrymandering, myriad restrictions on getting on a ballot to begin with, one of the worst possible methods of voting for candidates, voting machines that have been shown to have major security flaws, but are used anyway, campaigns funded by special interests, etc., all help to make a system designed to keep those who serve the special interests in power and keep others from mounting effective campaigns. There are better ways of handling all of these things, but only those already in power can make those changes. Of course they won't. Why change the system that serves you?
Is it really any worse than AA essentially saying "Ask God For Help"?
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Seven out of 12 steps speak of God. How is that not "recruiting for religion"? Or more to the point - why isn't this as bad as the Scientology thing you just talked about?
Sincerely,
An Atheist
Oh definitely. AA is a huge scam as well. I'm certainly not trying to downplay that. If you're already a believer or you want to believe in Christianity of some flavor, then I guess it's not going to do any more harm. A lot of people don't realize that that's what AA is actually about though. It's even worse for scientology. Most people don't have the first clue what it is to begin with, and the scientology folks like it that way.
Sarah Palin will win the next elections and lead your country straight back to the Middle Ages.
California will declare the independence but the rest of the country won't notice. They'll be too busy burning abortionists, gays, brown people and scientists. Oh, and books. Many, many, many books.
California can't afford to declare jack or shit right now. They're hardly the model of the right way to do things. Few states are as fucked up as California is.
I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure there is a public interest in accurate representation of campaign promises. They are all lies to begin with, and largely irrelevent to the popularity contest.
Even if you mirror the whole site, the offended candidate will still claim the quotes were taken out of context, or that the "mirror" is a fraud, and people will believe whomever they already support... I guess I'm not seeing it.
In that case you might as well throw out the entire election system. I'd actually support that, as I think the current system sucks mightily. The courts aren't going to see it that way of course, and I think that everyone understands that.
Whether promises are kept or not is going to be irrelevant to the court, as it won't be determined until after the election. What's important before the election is to know what the candidate's views are on the issues. What's important after the election is to be able to point to their campaign statements to hold them to it or at least make them explain any change. Look at everyone doing that with Obama. It's generating backlash from his more liberal supporters on a variety of issues. It's good to have accurate representations and records of all of this. The more the better. I'd love to see permanent archives of all of it really.
The new site is being accused of misrepresenting her views, which is exactly why it shouldn't be completely fair use to present her old site as they did. Then they can be accused of misrepresentation.
That's just it. With the ability to republish her previous website, they then gain the power to change & misrepresent what she said. Heck, I just did it, but unless you look carefully, can you see it?
If they manipulate it, then they're fraudulently misrepresenting her statements, and she can certainly sue them for that. She didn't make any such claim about the site though, so I see no reason to believe they did so.
Besides what were the "wackie views" she is running away from anyway? Lower taxes, less spending, limited government? If you look at the polls, she is in the majority. What is so crazy about any of that? The department of energy was created in the 1970s, we did fine without it up until then, I think we could somehow survive without it in the future. Every state has an EPA and a Dept of Education, we don't need these at the federal level, they aren't part of the enumerated powers anyway.
Not really. The DoE was basically a consolidation of existing agencies.
Here comes the infamous ultra-conservative persecution complex.
I'm not a conservative (only , I've just observed the phenomenon that on many web sites (like slashdot), that whenever something outrageous happens and it's a Democrat's doing, the party affiliation is left out. Likewise, summaries tend to be slanted against Republicans on slashdot.
I think it depends on what happened. Democrats regularly get reamed here for support of ridiculous things like the DMCA or ACTA, etc. It's not that they're republicans or democrats, it's their actions on topics that/. users care about. I think/. actually slants rather libertarian.
Slashdot Mirror
There were two days of filming. Have you ever sat for a two day exam? You will eventually trip up. These weren't written questions. The manner and demeanor of the questioner carries a lot of information, and Katie Couric was offensively haughty. The question about what she read was particularly snarky, and delivered in an offensive way. If I were forced to suffer through that, my response would have been, "Fuck you. I read whatever I damn well please, and it usually talks about how Katie Couric is butch."
Yeah, I'll never be President. Tell me this, why didn't they air all the times that Couric asked Palin about abortion. Wouldn't want to give the impression that it was an extended badgering session would we?
Asking her what she reads is snarky? When you're campaigning for the VP position in the country, nobody should be able to ask you what you read? That's pathetic. Her demeanor was too offensive so Palin couldn't manage to make coherent sentences? Seriously? And you want her to be representing the country to other world leaders and engaging in negotiations on our behalf when she can't even handle a simple interview? God, I hope the other diplomats don't offend her, she might accidentally give away Alaska or something.
**Reposted this reply since it somehow got set to anonymous on the first try.
And Obama is any better? Really?
Lipstick on a pig? Running for the highest office in the land, and he did not realize how it would be taken...the controversy it would cause after having been so effectively used by his opponent only a week earlier? He did not have enough socializing to know that it would be correctly be taken as a lowbrow insult? Either he knew how his words would be interpreted and is given to nasty insults, or he was completely unaware of all the press around Palin using that comment to so much applause and is therefore an idiot. Given that after only weeks in office, he uses his bully pulpit to say that he doesn't have all the facts but that the police are stupid, I still don't know which way to categorize him.
Moving troops into Pakistan? As a candidate for the highest office in the land, he will proclaim far and wide that he will invade one of our few tenuous allies in a war torn region? How in the HELL can anyone read that as anything less than complete shoe-size-IQ asinine is beyond me.
How about, "We need to spread the wealth around." And conservatives are idiots for calling him a socialist? WTF?
I can see why he picked a dolt like Biden for a running mate. They can share stories about the taste of shoe leather after they both get their feet out of their mouths.
The people interviewing Palin were definitely out to get her. Their entire demeanor screamed it for the entire interview. On the other hand, Chris Matthews was talking about getting a chill up his leg as he was peeing his pants watching an Obama speech. I mean, when Saturday Night Live does a skit about it, you know it is blaringly obvious.
Palin spoke as well, if not better, than Obama. Still does. Not that the bar is very high.
Really? Katie Couric was out to get her? She asked her some very basic, straight-forward questions and Palin was a train wreck and couldn't form a coherent response. Which questions in particular did you think were the ones where she was out to get her?
Sarah Palin was always more qualified than Obama. Sarah Palin had great executive experience as Governor and Mayor. Obama? Zero executive experience. Biden? Zero executive experience. Quite frankly, Obama did not have the resume that most people expect to see in a Presidential candidate.
And I seem to remember many liberals thinking that Bush should be impeached. I don't know what the numbers were, but you didn't cite a source for yours, so...
Are you serious? Did you hear those interviews with her? She can hardly express a coherent thought unless someone hands her a script. It's completely ridiculous to consider her qualified to be president. I'm find it terrifying that so many Republicans think she is. At best she'd be a puppet, because she apparently can't think for herself and has to have the party talking points drilled into her before she can even respond to a question. I don't want someone that vapid to be president.
No, really, we've had video conferencing for more than 50 years. No-one wants it because it doesn't add anything constructive. It's not like the difference between TV and radio - if you're on a phone call, you can be doing other things, with a video call you're just blankly staring at a screen with another face blankly staring back at you. Video conferencing is a niche that continually dies out moments after it is introduced.
But you can't attribute that failure to the concept when we've never had a good implementation of it widely available to people. It's simply never been done. So you're left with either crappy video quality, or decent to good video that nobody else has access to, so you're extremely limited in who you can talk to with it. While it may not be appropriate for all situations, having the option would be great. Maybe if we ever get a good implementation we can test this out.
We don't have HD video conferencing because very few want it. My mobile network has done video conferencing for more than 5 years - still don't use it.
The limiting factor isn't bandwidth, it's apathy.
Says you. Fact is we haven't had the bandwidth to even test that theory. You're just dismissing it out of hand because jerky, low-res video chat with crappy bandwidth hasn't appealed to people. No kidding. Doesn't appeal to me either, but good video chat would. Still waiting on that.
Here is a music video by Boards of Canada, in which they show the original footage of Joseph Kittinger jumping from 102,800 ft. Much of the last part of the video is from something else, but the first part is real. It really is haunting to see him push off of the balloon platform.
Would have been pretty awesome if he actually had landed from the jump and then surfed back to land :)
Although I was posting long before I registered, I refrained from registering because I was uncomfortable with registering on Internet sites at that time. We'd probably have ended up with very similar 3-digit UIDs, but no idea whose would be the lower. Not that it matters at the 3-digit level - or even at the 4-digit level given how few old-timers are left.
Was the same story for me, and I've heard it from others here as well. Seems like a lot of us had reservations about creating accounts for websites back then. I probably missed a 3-digit UID by a matter of hours. Maybe a day or so at most.
I think you didn't understand. The gas pedal pivots from the floor, which means it can never be stuck under the mat.
I guess I did. But the gp post said, "Honda had so many it redesigned the pedals on the new Civic to pivot from the floor instead of the firewall so the mats can't get under them ", emphasis mine. That sounds to me like he's saying the mats were getting stuck under the pedals, which seems like something that could happen. I have no idea how the pedal could get stuck under the mat. I've never seen that happen. I have seen mats get bunched up under the pedals before. That seemed like the much more common problem.
Honda had so many it redesigned the pedals on the new Civic to pivot from the floor instead of the firewall so the mats can't get under them.
So that's why my VW Golf has that weird gas pedal when the break and clutch pivot from the top!
Man, I was breaking my noodle trying to figure that one out, because except for maybe looking a bit cooler, it made no sense. According to your link, VW had the most complaints/100,000 vehicles, so that makes perfect sense.
That still doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they do it with the brake pedal as well? If a mat gets stuck under the gas pedal, well then you might have a hard time maintaining acceleration. If it gets stuck under the brake pedal, then you might not be able to stop. Which one sounds like the bigger problem to you?
Those on the road have at least been told which is the gas pedal and which is the brake, and have demonstrated that they can remember the difference at least sometimes.
So there are probably times when they can't, like when they panic, or aren't paying attention, which could easily lead to the kinds of "sudden unintended acceleration" that we've seen.
The time to speak up is before the decisions are made, that is the only time your voice can have a positive effect. If you disagree with the decisions, you express your opinion at the ballot box. The point of electing a leader is to have someone to make the tough decisions, since you'll never get a unanimous agreement from all citizens. You won't always agree with the decisions, and not every decision made will turn out to be the right decision. But once that decision is made, you follow through on it, and express your opinion at the ballot box at the appropriate time. In the current war, you need to wait until the Afghan national army is trained and armed properly to keep the Taliban at bay indefinitely. Then the US forces can withdraw, and you can bitch about what a stupid decision it was in the first place. To cut and run now will result in the Taliban regaining power in Afghanistan. Do you think they won't try any more terrorist attacks against US civilians at that point?
No, the time to speak up is always, and especially around election time when we can actually replace the idiots making the bad decisions with others who will hopefully make less bad decisions. Saying we should get out is not whining, it's stating the belief that our government should take that action, i.e. do something to correct the initial bad decision that was made. I don't necessarily agree with that assessment, but it's certainly his right to state his beliefs about it. That's why we have free speech.
I was with you up until EVE. I love the fact that death actually has consequences in EVE.
I don't know a lot about the current state of EVE, as I haven't played it since sometime around the second year it was out. So this is more of a general statement than one informed by the specifics of the situation in that game. I think that consequences for dying are good, but making it easy for high level players to grief the newbs is not. If you're getting blasted to pieces by some ungodly powerful ship five minutes after creating your first character in-game, are you really going to want to try to learn the game? Learning it takes time, and getting killed repeatedly just makes the learning incredibly frustrating. Having some safe areas for the newbs to get their space legs is a good thing, especially if you want to attract new players over time. I think there should definitely be gameplay mechanics that reward taking risks, and those risks could be anything from minor to deadly, but taking those risks should be up to the player.
That's why there's an alternative proposition to use replaceable battery packs. Pull the car in to the station and a mechanical device removes the tamper-resistant-and-registered bank of batteries from the car. Then it lifts a charged pack in. This also means the owners don't have to spend thousands of dollars after so many charges for a new set of batteries.
So who will be taking old battery packs out of circulation then? Who pays for replacing them, and how?
First, was I replying to your post? Why no I was not, I was replying to the same post you were replying to.
Second, they did screw up because they took a hard copy of the email from the Chief of Security instead of obtaining a signed letter. You sure can argue why they needed it in the first place, but I will point out they DID take the email with them to show to the rent-a-idiots. Hard copy of an email is meaningless, something signed by CoS would have told the rent-a-idiots that were doing something wrong.
You basically just explained that the guards were wrong and that the reporters didn't need any permission. They didn't screw up, the guards did. They might have been able to prevent the guards from screwing up if they had some kind of signed permission, but that just reinforces the idea that you actually need such permission, which you don't. The guards fucked up, period.
This times a thousand.
I honestly can't stand these people who go out and attempt to provoke situations. Yes, there are bad cops out there who certainly abuse their position of power and deserve to be outed. But this is just ridiculous. The guy is trying to stir up shit, and I have to commend the cops for putting up with that and not even blinking an eye.
Everything he did was reasonable and well within the law. What harm is there in someone filming a traffic stop? What harm is there in holding police accountable? If you'd ever been a victim of a cop abusing his authority, you'd probably carry a camera around in case you or someone you care about gets stopped too.
That guy is an assclown. I am no fan of police brutality, or stomping on rights, but that guy was outright trying to provoke an encounter.
So the video starts with a traffic stop that he is videoing. As as emergency responder (EMT) and a driver, I have little sympathy for those using their cellphone while driving. So he pissed me off with his "Santa Fe 'bureaucrats' have deemed cellphone use while driving 'illegal'." (air quotes his).
So what does he do? With a video camera and an openly displayed handgun, he walks right up to the car beside the cop, and loudly proclaims that he is going to "videotape this to keep you accountable". Note that there's no perceived problem on camera, officer is just writing a ticket.
Officer asks him to step back out of the scene, "I'm keeping you accountable!", but he steps back, officer writes ticket, and without even a glance, gets in his car and finishes his paperwork. Evil mean nasty policeman.
A few minutes later, guy is still recording, police officer pulls up, "What was that back there?" "I'm keeping you accountable!" "I told you to step back because you had a handgun at my traffic stop", "It's not illegal to open carry in New Mexico!" "No, it's not. What's your name?" "I don't have to tell you my name! I'm not under arrest! I'm not being detained!" (note at this point that the officer was still in his car, arm dangling out the window, while he was on the sidewalk. "No, you're not." Cop drives off.
Fascist pigs! Kill cops!
This guy needs a slap. It's one thing to hold officers of the law to account when they're abusing their authority. It's another to pretend you're doing everyone a public service by running around, actively seeking out situations in which you can interfere with lawful activities, and antagonize and provoke police into responding to you just so you can say "HA! I TOLD YOU SO!".
Color me unimpressed.
The guy went there because his girlfriend called him. Maybe he's been a victim of a cop abusing his authority before and wanted to make sure that it didn't happen to her. The cop should have just let him film from a distance and left him alone. He didn't break any laws. But the cop follows him after he leaves the scene and starts badgering him about things that aren't against the law and weren't even threatening. He was just filming the stop.
Why should the cop even come after him, let alone spew a bunch of bullshit about how he has to show them his ID and stuff. Maybe the cops need to learn the law. This seems like a good education for them. I'm sure they went back and found out that they had no right to demand an ID or a license for his gun, and that the guy had done nothing wrong. I'm held accountable for my job, why shouldn't police, with all the authority we give them, be held accountable for theirs? I think they need to be held accountable, as these cops didn't even seem to understand the limit of their own authority or what the law actually says.
Switching to a more objective system for districting, and a better election system (auto runoff or something similar), along with secure voting systems and publicly funded campaigns would go a long way toward fixing the issues.
I seriously doubt any of those would actually make democracy better. Trying to fix a known issue by switching system just exposes you to all the unknown issues. There's certainly no "objective" system for districting - a human must make some decision, and that human will be accountable to someone elected, and nature will take it course (or he won't be, and that's the new King).
The fact that a representative can annoy 40%, or even 60% of his voters and get away with it it still the least bad system ever seen in practice. You can't destroy the lives of 90% of your people and laugh at their misfortune, as has been common with other systems. Really, you can't stray too far from sanity without the voters reacting, compared to say Roman emperors.
While we may have the least bad system in practice, that doesn't mean that it can't be improved upon. While there may be unknown issues, they may not be as bad as the known issues we have now. I'm certainly willing to try something else if there's a chance that it could improve the system. Just sticking with what we have means we'll continue to see the same crap happening, and I don't see that as acceptable, especially when there are other options that could work better.
While Gerrymandering has created a few utra-safe districts, for the most part it only helps a few percent. If a representative really annoys his district he's still out, despite all the tricks. Other than the voting machine scam, I'm not sure there are better ways to handle the rest of the logistics, merely ways for which the corrupt failure mode is less obvious.
It's not whether he really annoys his district. It's that he can really annoy 40%+ of his district, but they will never have the numbers to vote him out. Gerrymandering is continuously working to segregate those areas that would oppose a candidate and include those pieces into areas of strong support so that the dissenters' votes will never be enough to carry any district.
Switching to a more objective system for districting, and a better election system (auto runoff or something similar), along with secure voting systems and publicly funded campaigns would go a long way toward fixing the issues.
There's just no part of "democracy" that selects people fit to lead - it's nowhere in the protocol. It's nevertheless the least-bad system, as there's very little in aristocracy or dictatorship that selects people fit to lead, and democracy has the huge advantage of letting you replace bad choices bloodlessly. Elections do almost nothing to select wisely among new candidates, but they don't have to as they do a great job of removing really bad incumbants. By that criteria, does it really matter what the person promised, or instead whether what they actually did while in office was of benefit?
The election system is essentially rigged. Gerrymandering, myriad restrictions on getting on a ballot to begin with, one of the worst possible methods of voting for candidates, voting machines that have been shown to have major security flaws, but are used anyway, campaigns funded by special interests, etc., all help to make a system designed to keep those who serve the special interests in power and keep others from mounting effective campaigns. There are better ways of handling all of these things, but only those already in power can make those changes. Of course they won't. Why change the system that serves you?
Is it really any worse than AA essentially saying "Ask God For Help"?
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Seven out of 12 steps speak of God. How is that not "recruiting for religion"? Or more to the point - why isn't this as bad as the Scientology thing you just talked about?
Sincerely, An Atheist
Oh definitely. AA is a huge scam as well. I'm certainly not trying to downplay that. If you're already a believer or you want to believe in Christianity of some flavor, then I guess it's not going to do any more harm. A lot of people don't realize that that's what AA is actually about though. It's even worse for scientology. Most people don't have the first clue what it is to begin with, and the scientology folks like it that way.
Sarah Palin will win the next elections and lead your country straight back to the Middle Ages. California will declare the independence but the rest of the country won't notice. They'll be too busy burning abortionists, gays, brown people and scientists. Oh, and books. Many, many, many books.
California can't afford to declare jack or shit right now. They're hardly the model of the right way to do things. Few states are as fucked up as California is.
I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure there is a public interest in accurate representation of campaign promises. They are all lies to begin with, and largely irrelevent to the popularity contest.
Even if you mirror the whole site, the offended candidate will still claim the quotes were taken out of context, or that the "mirror" is a fraud, and people will believe whomever they already support ... I guess I'm not seeing it.
In that case you might as well throw out the entire election system. I'd actually support that, as I think the current system sucks mightily. The courts aren't going to see it that way of course, and I think that everyone understands that.
Whether promises are kept or not is going to be irrelevant to the court, as it won't be determined until after the election. What's important before the election is to know what the candidate's views are on the issues. What's important after the election is to be able to point to their campaign statements to hold them to it or at least make them explain any change. Look at everyone doing that with Obama. It's generating backlash from his more liberal supporters on a variety of issues. It's good to have accurate representations and records of all of this. The more the better. I'd love to see permanent archives of all of it really.
The new site is being accused of misrepresenting her views, which is exactly why it shouldn't be completely fair use to present her old site as they did. Then they can be accused of misrepresentation.
That's just it. With the ability to republish her previous website, they then gain the power to change & misrepresent what she said. Heck, I just did it, but unless you look carefully, can you see it?
If they manipulate it, then they're fraudulently misrepresenting her statements, and she can certainly sue them for that. She didn't make any such claim about the site though, so I see no reason to believe they did so.
Besides what were the "wackie views" she is running away from anyway? Lower taxes, less spending, limited government? If you look at the polls, she is in the majority. What is so crazy about any of that? The department of energy was created in the 1970s, we did fine without it up until then, I think we could somehow survive without it in the future. Every state has an EPA and a Dept of Education, we don't need these at the federal level, they aren't part of the enumerated powers anyway.
Not really. The DoE was basically a consolidation of existing agencies.
Here comes the infamous ultra-conservative persecution complex.
I'm not a conservative (only , I've just observed the phenomenon that on many web sites (like slashdot), that whenever something outrageous happens and it's a Democrat's doing, the party affiliation is left out. Likewise, summaries tend to be slanted against Republicans on slashdot.
I think it depends on what happened. Democrats regularly get reamed here for support of ridiculous things like the DMCA or ACTA, etc. It's not that they're republicans or democrats, it's their actions on topics that /. users care about. I think /. actually slants rather libertarian.