Hang on, I've seen drug ads in US magazines like the US edition of Reader's Digest, where the vast majority of the space in the ad (I'm talking *pages* here) was taken up with closely spaced print detailing the results of the trials, the list of contra-indications, known side effects, other stuff from/about the FDA etc. etc. We don't get anything like that in the UK. The only place you see that is in the packet itself after you've bought it/been prescribed it.
Has this apparently strict US requirement been done away with now? Or is it that you are saying they can get away without any of this *iff* they avoid actually making any claims about the drug?
The guy they put away at the beginning of the movie was not a criminal type, he was subjected to a combination of (what some would see as) extreme provocation, and unfortunate happenstance.
There was no sense of any premeditation involved in the way the scene was portrayed. Had a crime actually taken place it would need to be treated as a crime of passion, insofar as the law in the jurisdiction involved might recognize the difference between this and murder in cold blood.
This being so, I don't believe the sentence given to this movie character can be viewed as just. If the same thing had happened today in real life and somebody managed to stop him just in the nick of time before he hurt anyone - sure, he would have gone down for attempted assault or murder - but surely it is also likely that he would have been eligible for early parole given his background, circumstances and non-criminal character. He might even get his sentence commuted on appeal. Because the act was out of character and he would be so obviously unlikely to offend again.
It didn't look like the character in the movie would get much opportunity to appeal or earn parole, paralyzed inside a glass tube.
> You just seem to want the story to be about your perspective...
Well OK, but you can hardly blame him for being jumpy about the subject when central govt. is so openly attempting to obtain "Total Awareness" about its own citizens. Don't you find the thought of that totality a bit creepy? Few people would be comfortable with the intense level of scrutiny that the US government, in particular, apparently craves. And I fear that government in the UK, and in the EU, is headed the same way.
The Lego Group themselves stated once in their literature (and I remember seeing it once in an official FAQ on their web site) that the correct collective noun is "Lego", not "Legos". As the trademark owners they're surely entitled to have the final say on that matter.
*slaps head* GOVERNOR of the Bank of England. Duh. I meant also to say that the pundits keep referring to a *global* economic slowdown, so I don't think it's just a few rich countries.
Remember that when we stop buying, the "developing" nations have no-one left to sell to.
Yep, chances are they are just saying this to wind up the US. I'll bet this sort of thing is actually quite a long way down on their list of priorities. Even if they mean it, the cash could easily dry up before it gets that far. The world isn't exactly in a boom economy right now.
...should work, with the helmet used to provide an good contact to Earth. For convenience the Pringles can could actually be fixed onto the helmet (obviously needs good insulation between them) which leaves your hands free.
Of course then you won't be able to watch your kids at the playground because the minute you turn up you'll be ejected by angry parents wanting to protect their kids from the weirdo wearing the cyberman hat.
Most people I know orient their keyboard so that the whole keyboard (keyboard and keypad) are centered against the monitor, not just the main keyboard.
Well I don't, and I really don't see how anybody could be more effective with a keyboard if they did. How could you touch-type? Your right hand would be aligned with the centre of your body but the left would be way out there lined up with your shoulder. The right hand would be rotated with respect to the key rows. Screw aesthetics, surely basic ergonomics are more important?
If your statement can be taken at face value, then you clearly supported the invasion for moral, humanitarian reasons. Reasons, moreover, that I don't think many people on the anti-war side of the debate would have much disagreement with.
But, when the government lies about the true reasons for that particular war (and they must have lied more often than not, because they kept changing their story) and when there are numerous other places where such a "humanitarian" war might have resulted in an even greater good, it calls even the whole humanitarian aspect into question. The government certainly had it in their power to mislead us about WMDs, because we can now see that they actually did so. The government could just as easily have misled us about the humanitarian situation as well. Lies about that would have been just as much to the benefit of their political goals, as were the lies that we already know they did tell.
So even if I do buy your premise that a bloody invasion might be justifiable in principle, that does nothing to assert that justice was served in this particular case. Because it is now blatantly evident that we cannot trust our leaders to have told us the truth about any of it.
I won't say it must have been the oil; that is just too simplistic. But they did promote this war for their own reasons, and those precise reasons may never be known to the rest of us.
I cannot feel comfortable about a war being fought by my elected leaders, and therefore fought in my name, when there is no realistic expectation that I should know the real reasons why that war is being fought.
You assert that there were at least some desirable side effects. These are hard to see right now amongst all the death and destruction but you ask that we defer judgement since the supposed benefits won't actually be apparent for at least ten years as even you admit it will take that long to rebuild. Of course those benefits may actually never even arrive at all, for all we know (who knows what lies ten years ahead?).
But whether your optimistic assessment is accurate or not, it is just not enough to rely on such putative side effects for a moral justification, especially when experience tells us that (1) our governments very likely exaggerated heavily about precisely how bad things were for the Iraqis under Sadaam, and (2) there must have been an unimaginable amount of money involved this war for somebody at some level.
Because although we may never know the precise reasons for a war, hammered into policy in smoke-filled rooms, we do know this one thing which history has taught us: that all wars, and I do mean *all* wars, are ultimately about economics.
Now if we allow our leaders to get away with misleading us about such deadly important issues, as US citizens have in fact let theirs do dozens of times since the end of the second world war, then it is surely inevitable that those leaders, increasingly absent any meaningful public oversight, will increasingly perpetrate whatever acts happen to seem expedient (and in our name too) for reasons that might very easily have less and less moral underpinning. All the while spreading propaganda amongst the citizenry, with the help of their rich media friends, to stave off awkward questions and suppress dissent (and this art of spin and propaganda is an art that has actually become a very precise and powerful science).
Be warned that this is the precise reason why the militants in the Third World (eg. al Qaeda) are determined to inflict pain and death upon *all* American citizens rather than just focussing on the military per se. They have quite correctly identified that the basis of their problem is the American people's wilful gullibility, philosophical complacency and political idleness - which are quite sufficient in themselves to allow the US military to be hijacked, as it has been, to serve the personal agendas of the rich and powerful few. All we had to do was look the other way. And we obliged.
I wield a heavy cluestick, and I wield it without thought or subtlety.
The language you used before was a little too coarse to be justifiable by that sort of argument, particularly when used without provocation. I mean, I regularly behave like a bit of an asshole, but what you said was a bit over the top even by my poor standards.
Maybe you should ask yourself this: What is the point in possessing social skills if you don't use them? For that matter, how is anyone supposed to know whether you actually have any?
That was a little harsh, gmhowell. I agree that neon lights etc. are an affectation, but some people like that sort of thing. And as for well-designed cases with plenty of room, slide-out mb trays, good cable routing, thumbscrews and the like - these features are useful to those of us who do a fair amount of upgrading. I often have to do component testing and this sort of case saves me a lot of fiddle-arsing about.
Consider: while the RIAA and MPAA have been stealing our elected political representatives from us, while we saw the media companies' propaganda universally echoed from every mainstream news outlet, our response to date has amounted to little more than wailing, rending our hair and gnashing our teeth.
We could not conceive of any effective way to combat their mindshare amongst the apathetic population-at-large, and without which we could never get sufficient leverage to move the politicians.
At the same time the EFF struggled valiantly on our behalf but their voice is relatively tiny, representing (as it appeared to be) only the tiny fraction of the population that is geekdom.
The answer was staring us in the face the whole time.
* The EFF adopts the same media tactics as our enemies.
* They effectively rebrand themselves as representing the much larger number of people who mainly use the internet to download music etc.
* The EFF becomes a truly popular movement with mass appeal - fingers crossed - and the pro-digital-rights community in general gets a significant mindshare at last.
* The EFF gets a big funding boost from new subscriptions - fingers crossed again - and at last, at last, the battle will be fought on a much more level playing field.
Go EFF! Why the fsck didn't anybody think of this before ?! (smacks head repeatedly on desk)
1) Burn it onto DVD. But I don't know which format is likely to survive the longest!
2) Hand it over in whatever form you can to your nearest major University and let them work out how to archive it. If they can find a way to do so reliably, it will be very valuable to their Faculty of History in a hundred years or so!
If you can do both, then great - you could distribute it to several Universities. Be sure to include a few European Unis that that have already been around for at least 600-700 years as these are surely the most likely to survive intact over the long term;o)
Well, I agree with *you*. Dalton's stage acting experience (as an RSC player) made for a much more realistic character. Crikey, you even saw him get angry and almost lose control, which is something you don't generally see Bond do. Now Connery was mainly just a pretty face, he couldn't really act worth a fart.
Having said all that the Bond movies I enjoyed the most were the Roger Moore ones. This was the era when they really began the tradition of Extremely Implausible Escapes From Certain Doom. Remember tbe opening scenes from The "Spy Who Loved Me", where these baddies chase him right over the edge of a cliff on top of a mountain and you think: "crap, get out of THAT!"... and then his parachute opens and it's a giant Union Flag. Though I suppose that got a bigger laugh in the UK than it did in the US...
Moore was the best *conedy* James Bond, right enough. And arguably, those comedy Bonds were the most entertaining. That last one with Brosnan in it was shite.
Virtually all of you who replied to my comment (this one's parent) missed the point completely. I'm not claiming there is any truth in his assertion about where SCO's market went - the point is only that this is what SCO "officially" believes to be the case.
If people can convince themselves that they have a just cause then they can be persuaded to do *anything*. That's why they are down on Linux so much, and it's why they *think* they will win. *IF* they were able to convince the courts BOTH that Linux really did take SCO's market AND that this was only made possible because Linux was fattened up with SCO's so-called "Intellectual Property", they they *would* win. Both of these claims are implausible but SCO's CEO says he believes them to be true.
"You go back to SCO's brand in the 1990s and it was Unix on Intel. SCO was primed to seize the multibillion-dollar server market of Unix on Intel that hit in the early 2000s that has in fact shifted over to Red Hat."
Ah. So now we begin to see what this is all about. Linux ate their lunch and they want revenge, but they can't attack Linux directly because "Linux" doesn't own any cash for them to rob.
Then he volunteers the idea that IBM want to buy them out, and then immediately denies that SCO would have any interest in such a deal.
Really, what would he be expected to say if a buyout was exactly what he *was* after? He would pump up the notion that a buyout was desirable to IBM and then play hard to get so as to negotiate a good price. Which is exactly what he did.
This is just so blatantly obvious I'm having a hard time deciding whether McBride is truly stupid or if this is some kind of feint intended to divert everybody from his real intentions.
Slashdot Mirror
Hang on, I've seen drug ads in US magazines like the US edition of Reader's Digest, where the vast majority of the space in the ad (I'm talking *pages* here) was taken up with closely spaced print detailing the results of the trials, the list of contra-indications, known side effects, other stuff from/about the FDA etc. etc. We don't get anything like that in the UK. The only place you see that is in the packet itself after you've bought it/been prescribed it.
Has this apparently strict US requirement been done away with now? Or is it that you are saying they can get away without any of this *iff* they avoid actually making any claims about the drug?
The guy they put away at the beginning of the movie was not a criminal type, he was subjected to a combination of (what some would see as) extreme provocation, and unfortunate happenstance.
There was no sense of any premeditation involved in the way the scene was portrayed. Had a crime actually taken place it would need to be treated as a crime of passion, insofar as the law in the jurisdiction involved might recognize the difference between this and murder in cold blood.
This being so, I don't believe the sentence given to this movie character can be viewed as just. If the same thing had happened today in real life and somebody managed to stop him just in the nick of time before he hurt anyone - sure, he would have gone down for attempted assault or murder - but surely it is also likely that he would have been eligible for early parole given his background, circumstances and non-criminal character. He might even get his sentence commuted on appeal. Because the act was out of character and he would be so obviously unlikely to offend again.
It didn't look like the character in the movie would get much opportunity to appeal or earn parole, paralyzed inside a glass tube.
> You just seem to want the story to be about your perspective...
Well OK, but you can hardly blame him for being jumpy about the subject when central govt. is so openly attempting to obtain "Total Awareness" about its own citizens. Don't you find the thought of that totality a bit creepy? Few people would be comfortable with the intense level of scrutiny that the US government, in particular, apparently craves. And I fear that government in the UK, and in the EU, is headed the same way.
God having a bad hair day.
The Lego Group themselves stated once in their literature (and I remember seeing it once in an official FAQ on their web site) that the correct collective noun is "Lego", not "Legos". As the trademark owners they're surely entitled to have the final say on that matter.
*slaps head* GOVERNOR of the Bank of England. Duh.
I meant also to say that the pundits keep referring to a *global* economic slowdown, so I don't think it's just a few rich countries.
Remember that when we stop buying, the "developing" nations have no-one left to sell to.
Lucky you. Europe has been hurting for a while now. And the newly installed government of the Bank of England has just said it's now the UK's turn.
Yep, chances are they are just saying this to wind up the US. I'll bet this sort of thing is actually quite a long way down on their list of priorities. Even if they mean it, the cash could easily dry up before it gets that far. The world isn't exactly in a boom economy right now.
...should work, with the helmet used to provide an good contact to Earth. For convenience the Pringles can could actually be fixed onto the helmet (obviously needs good insulation between them) which leaves your hands free.
Of course then you won't be able to watch your kids at the playground because the minute you turn up you'll be ejected by angry parents wanting to protect their kids from the weirdo wearing the cyberman hat.
I think it must be that low-fat grill thing with George Foreman's name on it that gets pushed on the shopping channels.
Well I don't, and I really don't see how anybody could be more effective with a keyboard if they did. How could you touch-type? Your right hand would be aligned with the centre of your body but the left would be way out there lined up with your shoulder. The right hand would be rotated with respect to the key rows. Screw aesthetics, surely basic ergonomics are more important?
If your statement can be taken at face value, then you clearly supported the invasion for moral, humanitarian reasons. Reasons, moreover, that I don't think many people on the anti-war side of the debate would have much disagreement with.
But, when the government lies about the true reasons for that particular war (and they must have lied more often than not, because they kept changing their story) and when there are numerous other places where such a "humanitarian" war might have resulted in an even greater good, it calls even the whole humanitarian aspect into question. The government certainly had it in their power to mislead us about WMDs, because we can now see that they actually did so. The government could just as easily have misled us about the humanitarian situation as well. Lies about that would have been just as much to the benefit of their political goals, as were the lies that we already know they did tell.
So even if I do buy your premise that a bloody invasion might be justifiable in principle, that does nothing to assert that justice was served in this particular case. Because it is now blatantly evident that we cannot trust our leaders to have told us the truth about any of it.
I won't say it must have been the oil; that is just too simplistic. But they did promote this war for their own reasons, and those precise reasons may never be known to the rest of us.
I cannot feel comfortable about a war being fought by my elected leaders, and therefore fought in my name, when there is no realistic expectation that I should know the real reasons why that war is being fought.
You assert that there were at least some desirable side effects. These are hard to see right now amongst all the death and destruction but you ask that we defer judgement since the supposed benefits won't actually be apparent for at least ten years as even you admit it will take that long to rebuild. Of course those benefits may actually never even arrive at all, for all we know (who knows what lies ten years ahead?).
But whether your optimistic assessment is accurate or not, it is just not enough to rely on such putative side effects for a moral justification, especially when experience tells us that (1) our governments very likely exaggerated heavily about precisely how bad things were for the Iraqis under Sadaam, and (2) there must have been an unimaginable amount of money involved this war for somebody at some level.
Because although we may never know the precise reasons for a war, hammered into policy in smoke-filled rooms, we do know this one thing which history has taught us: that all wars, and I do mean *all* wars, are ultimately about economics.
Now if we allow our leaders to get away with misleading us about such deadly important issues, as US citizens have in fact let theirs do dozens of times since the end of the second world war, then it is surely inevitable that those leaders, increasingly absent any meaningful public oversight, will increasingly perpetrate whatever acts happen to seem expedient (and in our name too) for reasons that might very easily have less and less moral underpinning. All the while spreading propaganda amongst the citizenry, with the help of their rich media friends, to stave off awkward questions and suppress dissent (and this art of spin and propaganda is an art that has actually become a very precise and powerful science).
Be warned that this is the precise reason why the militants in the Third World (eg. al Qaeda) are determined to inflict pain and death upon *all* American citizens rather than just focussing on the military per se. They have quite correctly identified that the basis of their problem is the American people's wilful gullibility, philosophical complacency and political idleness - which are quite sufficient in themselves to allow the US military to be hijacked, as it has been, to serve the personal agendas of the rich and powerful few. All we had to do was look the other way. And we obliged.
If, on the other h
Make me, coward.
The language you used before was a little too coarse to be justifiable by that sort of argument, particularly when used without provocation. I mean, I regularly behave like a bit of an asshole, but what you said was a bit over the top even by my poor standards.
Maybe you should ask yourself this: What is the point in possessing social skills if you don't use them? For that matter, how is anyone supposed to know whether you actually have any?
Good point. Where are people with moderator points when you need them...
That was a little harsh, gmhowell. I agree that neon lights etc. are an affectation, but some people like that sort of thing. And as for well-designed cases with plenty of room, slide-out mb trays, good cable routing, thumbscrews and the like - these features are useful to those of us who do a fair amount of upgrading. I often have to do component testing and this sort of case saves me a lot of fiddle-arsing about.
RTFC. Please.
Consider: while the RIAA and MPAA have been stealing our elected political representatives from us, while we saw the media companies' propaganda universally echoed from every mainstream news outlet, our response to date has amounted to little more than wailing, rending our hair and gnashing our teeth.
We could not conceive of any effective way to combat their mindshare amongst the apathetic population-at-large, and without which we could never get sufficient leverage to move the politicians.
At the same time the EFF struggled valiantly on our behalf but their voice is relatively tiny, representing (as it appeared to be) only the tiny fraction of the population that is geekdom.
The answer was staring us in the face the whole time.
- * The EFF adopts the same media tactics as our enemies.
Go EFF! Why the fsck didn't anybody think of this before ?! (smacks head repeatedly on desk)* They effectively rebrand themselves as representing the much larger number of people who mainly use the internet to download music etc.
* The EFF becomes a truly popular movement with mass appeal - fingers crossed - and the pro-digital-rights community in general gets a significant mindshare at last.
* The EFF gets a big funding boost from new subscriptions - fingers crossed again - and at last, at last, the battle will be fought on a much more level playing field.
ahem!
Here are a couple of ideas:
;o)
1) Burn it onto DVD. But I don't know which format is likely to survive the longest!
2) Hand it over in whatever form you can to your nearest major University and let them work out how to archive it. If they can find a way to do so reliably, it will be very valuable to their Faculty of History in a hundred years or so!
If you can do both, then great - you could distribute it to several Universities. Be sure to include a few European Unis that that have already been around for at least 600-700 years as these are surely the most likely to survive intact over the long term
Well, I agree with *you*. Dalton's stage acting experience (as an RSC player) made for a much more realistic character. Crikey, you even saw him get angry and almost lose control, which is something you don't generally see Bond do. Now Connery was mainly just a pretty face, he couldn't really act worth a fart.
... and then his parachute opens and it's a giant Union Flag. Though I suppose that got a bigger laugh in the UK than it did in the US...
Having said all that the Bond movies I enjoyed the most were the Roger Moore ones. This was the era when they really began the tradition of Extremely Implausible Escapes From Certain Doom. Remember tbe opening scenes from The "Spy Who Loved Me", where these baddies chase him right over the edge of a cliff on top of a mountain and you think: "crap, get out of THAT!"
Moore was the best *conedy* James Bond, right enough. And arguably, those comedy Bonds were the most entertaining. That last one with Brosnan in it was shite.
Virtually all of you who replied to my comment (this one's parent) missed the point completely. I'm not claiming there is any truth in his assertion about where SCO's market went - the point is only that this is what SCO "officially" believes to be the case.
If people can convince themselves that they have a just cause then they can be persuaded to do *anything*. That's why they are down on Linux so much, and it's why they *think* they will win. *IF* they were able to convince the courts BOTH that Linux really did take SCO's market AND that this was only made possible because Linux was fattened up with SCO's so-called "Intellectual Property", they they *would* win. Both of these claims are implausible but SCO's CEO says he believes them to be true.
Here's the most telling remark of all. McBride:
Ah. So now we begin to see what this is all about. Linux ate their lunch and they want revenge, but they can't attack Linux directly because "Linux" doesn't own any cash for them to rob.
Then he volunteers the idea that IBM want to buy them out, and then immediately denies that SCO would have any interest in such a deal.
Really, what would he be expected to say if a buyout was exactly what he *was* after? He would pump up the notion that a buyout was desirable to IBM and then play hard to get so as to negotiate a good price. Which is exactly what he did.
This is just so blatantly obvious I'm having a hard time deciding whether McBride is truly stupid or if this is some kind of feint intended to divert everybody from his real intentions.
You know, I initially misread that as "A group of Chinese 'amateur' rocketeers successfully launched...". Signs of the times I guess.