"There are times when it is prudent to suspicious of a person's claims, such as when it is evident that the claims are being biased by the person's interests. For example, if a tobacco company representative claims that tobacco does not cause cancer, it would be prudent to not simply accept the claim."
There is absolutely nothing wrong with weighing a person's self-interest when considering their claims, particularly in the energy industry which is infamous for creating phony advocacy organizations that exist solely for the purpose of telling lies on behalf of their funders.
Asking the question of who funds this particular group is an absolutely relevant question and one that deserves an answer rather than immediately attacking the motives and fairness of anyone who asks it.
Out of Palm Beach County emerged one of the least restrictive standards for determining a valid punch-card ballot. The county elections board determined that a chad hanging by up to two corners was valid and that a dimple or a chad detached in only one corner could also count if there were similar marks in other races on the same ballot. If that standard had been adopted statewide, the study shows a slim, 42-vote margin for Gore.
Now, that was one of the six standards used in the NORC recount. CNN didn't mention the other five in that article, but they all had the same result: Gore wins.
I said state-wide recount, not a four county recount. As I recall, the NORC recount said that recounting the four counties Gore originally selected would not have caused a change in the results. However, a statewide recount, under any scenario, would. CNN chose to emphasize the four-county recount because they've been carrying water for the Republicans ever since Ted Turner left. What it boils down to is if you count all the votes, Gore wins. If you don't count all the votes, Bush wins.
Anyway, here's the actual tallies from the NORC recount.
-PREVAILING STANDARD: County election officials told Florida journalists how they would define votes if required to do a recount and in this scenario the majority standard was imposed statewide. In punch-card counties, ballots with at least one corner of a chad detached counted as votes. In optical scan counties, where voters are required to fill in blanks on a paper ballot - like on a standardized test - ballots with any affirmative marks counted. That means a vote counted even if the oval was not completely filled in or a candidate's name was circled or underlined; so did ballots on which a voter correctly filled in the oval and also wrote the same candidate's name in the space for write-ins.
Result: Gore ahead by 60 votes.
-TWO-CORNER STANDARD: At least two corners of a chad must be detached to count as a vote, a position that had been argued, at times, by Bush supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 105 votes.
-MOST INCLUSIVE: Ballots with dimpled chads count as votes, an argument often made by Gore supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 107 votes.
-LEAST INCLUSIVE: Only cleanly punched chads count as valid votes. For optical scan, only fully filled ovals and those ballots on which a voter filled in the oval and wrote in the candidate's name, too.
Result: Gore ahead by 115 votes.
-COUNTY-by-COUNTY: Drawn from the county election officials. It accepts results from Broward and Volusia counties because those counties completed hand counts that were included in state-certified election totals. For those counties that said they would not count overvotes, relies on prevailing standard.
Result: Gore ahead by 171 votes.
-PALM BEACH STANDARD: Based on a standard Palm Beach election officials briefly used, this counts dimpled chads as valid votes if a pattern of dimpled chads exists elsewhere on the same ballot. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 42 votes.
Here's some media reaction from the time:
A close examination of the ballots suggests that more Floridians attempted to choose Gore over Bush. -- Chicago Tribune
Gore would have won most recount scenarios that included "overvotes," ballots that showed votes for more than one candidate. Democrats long have contended that a plurality of Florida voters intended to cast their ballots for Gore but that thousands spoiled their votes because of confusing instructions, badly designed ballots or other obstacles. The study adds evidence to bolster that case. -- LA Times
One of the most compelling questions since the election has been: Who would have won if all the uncounted ballots were hand-counted using the same standards? If that had happened using the counting methods most widely used in the state, the study shows, Bush would have gotten an extra 3,607 votes, Gore an extra 4,204 -- giving Gore the state by a scant 60-vote margin. -- Orlando Sentinel
But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the
It wasn't Gore's intention to "game" the system by asking for the first recounts to be in those four counties in Florida. Rather, that was the legal mechanism he was supposed to follow in order to eventually trigger a state-wide recount. I think he should have taken a page from the Republican playbook and said "screw the law, we're going to win this in the court of public opinion and then make a new law". He should have loudly and immediately agitated for a full state-wide recount regardless of Florida's electoral procedures. He really opened himself up to Republican attacks by giving the appearance of wanting a selective recount.
There was, of course, one full state wide recount, the NORC recount done after the election by a consortium of media groups. That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios. Further, the judge that would have ruled on a state wide recount said that he would have insisted that overvotes be counted, that is, votes where voters punched a chad for Gore and also filled the write-in field Gore due to ambiguous instructions. This alone would have given Gore more than enough votes to win the state and the presidency regardless of butterfly ballots and Katherine Harris's various manoeuvres.
A persecution complex, expressed with vague whining: check.
Cowardly posting with an anonymous account: check.
An inability to understand that legitimate elections matter in a democracy: check.
A stated belief that the only ethics or motivation anyone has is whether or not their candidate wins: check.
Yep, you're a Republican all right.
And I remember a time when posting right-wing, Ayn Rand type opinions was the norm on Slashdot, and it was the liberals who had to constantly defend their beliefs from multitudes of conservatives. That time was when Clinton was in office and we were enjoying peace and prosperity. Amazing how six years of incompetence, ignorance, malfeasance, and evil can change the tone of a forum, eh?
Rigged voting in Louisiana? Say it ain't so. But it's not shocked-shocked you feel watching this; it's genuine shock. As the drama proceeds, adducing more evidence for the unreliability of the voting machines than can possibly be explored here, you might also feel flattened. Computers count around 80 percent of votes in America. The marketing director for Diebold, Mark Radke, who defends both the company and its chief executive (a major Republican fund-raiser who once promised in a letter to "deliver the electoral votes of Ohio" to President Bush), talks in maddening doublespeak and wears the arched-eyebrow expression of a silent-movie fiend. His Nixon-era nondenial denials turn the stomach.
The Washington Post review is more like what you described, but even with them their chief complaint is that the film doesn't give enough time to other examples of Republican voter fraud. They said:
Surely, there was more going on in Ohio in 2004 worth raising questions about. Such as: the state's misallocation of voting machines, which led to long lines at the polls; restrictions on provisional ballots; the rejection of thousands of voter-registration forms by the Republican secretary of state (who happened to be chair of Bush's statewide campaign); Democrats alleging voter "intimidation" by Republicans; and the existence of tens of thousands of "spoiled" ballots.
As for Bev Harris being a crackpot, well, she is. Everyone I know who has had personal contact with her has been burned by her. But she does seem to be effective at raising the awareness of this issue, even as she detracts from it with her behavior. She seems to be a two steps forward, one step backwards type of person. But whatever her motives, she's doing a service to her country by making people more aware of the problems with Diebold.
Do you think that maybe Rice had a hand in crafting the US response to those events, given her position?
You're talking about Bush the Smarter's administration, yes? The one that completely missed all warning signs of the impending fall of the Soviet Union? The one that labelled Mikhail Gorbechev as "the man with no new ideas"? The one that insisted that the Soviet Union was an overwhelming conventional threat that justified huge increases in military spending right up until the very day it imploded?
Is it "left-wing propaganda" to point out the flaws and dishonesty in the way this country is run?
The far-right screechers that most of the Bushbots model themselves after consider any criticism of their words or actions to be "left-wing propaganda". Usually they call it "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" as well.
Anything Republicans do is good. Anything Democrats do is bad. It's tribal thinking, and it's deep as most of them get these days. And then they have the nerve to accuse others of practicing moral relativism.
Are you saying a Slashdot editor didn't bother to fully read the article and just made up a sensational and misleading headline in order to troll for mouse-clicks?
Will be the same as it is now. That is, seeing the "Flashblock" icon that my favourite extension in Firefox adds to web pages in order to save me from the craptacular, useless, and intrusive annoyances that compose about 95% of the instances where a developer has made the unfortunate and foolish decision to include Flash on a web page.
I've found that Norton and McAfee are the source of more computer problems than any other software, including Windows itself. They are bug-ridden, invasive, and wasteful of resources. About 50% of the "service calls" I do consist of replacing Norton/McAfee with AVG and then typing "msconfig" to turn off all the other garbage they've got installed in their tray. Then they say "You fixed my computer! It's like brand-new! You must be some kind of god damn genius!"
I wish I had mod points today. You are exactly correct, people buy gold so they can skip a lot of the game. The reason they do this is because WOW is perhaps the most boring RPG ever created.
I borrowed a friends discs once and bought a month's worth of access just so I can see what all the fuss was about. I simply couldn't believe how bad this game is. All of the quests were of the "find ten of these useless things and get back to me" or "kill that asshole over there" variety. My seven year old son's Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish games have more depth.
And I really hate how everything seems to "charge" you in time. Cast a spell, wait a few seconds. Open a chest, wait a few seconds longer. It's like the whole mechanic of this game is to make me sit here wasting my life watching progress bars while charging me $15 a month to do so. And then there's the fact that half the game experience is watching your character's back while he trudges slowly across the landscape.
And there's other really dumb things in the basic interface. You click on a guy attacking you from behind with your sword and it says "facing wrong direction". Well no fucking shit, man. I thought I communicated my intention to turn around and whack that fucker when I right-clicked on the monster. The game is filled with stuff like this. I had far, far more fun playing Diablo online.
I'm just not getting why this is the most successful game of all time. Maybe it gives obsessive-complusive people something to do? Seems like the best play here is to just not get involved in it in the first place.
Except that it wasn't John Kerry or any of his flunkies that denied the investigator's security clearances, thereby preventing them from actually, you know, investigating.
John Kerry also does not have the power to step in and make things right, as Bush obviously does. After all, he attached hundreds of "signing statements" to laws passed by congress saying that the laws do not apply to him. The new American constitution seems to be "What Bush says, goes".
Here we have the spectacle of a sitting president breaking the law openly and not even bothering to deny it. When your own elected government tries to get to the bottom of it, the administration takes the unprecedented step of declaring the whole issue a matter of "national security", thereby denying the ability of anyone to investigate it. At least, until they find a Bush family friend to head up the panel, as they did in his $800,000 insider trading case (the friend was later rewarded by being made ambassador to Saudi Arabia).
You Republicans make a lot of noise about liberty and freedom and the sanctity of the Constitution. But over the last few years you've bent yourselves into contortions to transfrom the office of the president into that of a pre-Magna Carta ("Magna Carter" as Bush once said) king. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because your founding fathers would have collectively puked at the sight of you.
First of all, pulling a site because of phoney registration info is hardly "pulling the plug on free speech". Thanks Zonk for yet another in your series of sensational and completely misleading headlines. Lots of sites in the USA have been pulled because of fake registration records. Do you want to go on record as saying that the USA hasn't had any free speech for a long time because of this?
Second, the entire purpose of the stephentaylor.ca site is to fling feces at Liberals in a baboon-like fashion and hope that some of it sticks. Look at the "updates" within this single blog post. He starts out by calling Volpe's donations from a pharmaceutical company "drug money" like he got stacks of hundreds in a black bag from a Columbian drug lord. Then he goes completely over the top, accusing Volpe of undermining fundamental freedoms in our society and paving the way for tyranny with his "censorship". Then he admits he got the facts wrong (which makes him better than Zonk, at least) and everything had happened in a legal and routine manner. Nothing he, or anyone else, said later disputes this. He just says that because it's a rule, it doesn't make it right, which is the boilerplate childish fallback for anyone who has accused an opponent of unlawful behavior who then discovers his charges were false in all details.
Third, he produces an excerpt of a letter supposedly from the people who registered the domain fradulently, claiming that the "real" reason the domain was pulled was because the registrar didn't want to expose itself to defamation claims. Questions arise: is the email actually from the people who registered the site? We don't know. Is it the whole email? We don't know. Was defamation given as the only reason the site was pulled, or even as the primary reason? We don't know. I know that's a high enough standard for stephentaylor.ca, which needs a rationale a molecule thick to smear any Liberal in existence, and it's not too surprising that it's a strong enough rationale for Zonk. But it shouldn't be enough info for fair and reasonable people.
The one thing we do know for certain is that the site was registered with phoney info, which is enough to get a site pulled on either side of the border.
People talk on cell phones in cars, too, but that doesn't mean that cell phones are useless things we shouldn't have. As for dweebs constantly checking their mail from their boss, blackberries have "push" email which informs you when an email arrives. You don't need to keep checking them all the time, like you would with a typical email server.
Be the biggest asshole you can possibly be to everyone around you at all times. Helping people hurts them. Hurting people helps them. Never feel shame. And always wrap yourself in a cloak of smug self-righteous virtue, even while you're kicking some poor helpless slob in the teeth.
And as I've already explained at length, the law applies only to specific cases of inciting violence. It has nothing to do with being "offensive". For example, I could freely say that you're a clueless fuckwit who can't read an article with the slightest degree of reading comprehension. But the moment I say you're so god damn stupid that, for the good of the community, we should burn down your house and kill your family, then I'm guilty of "hate speech".
According to you, the fact that I can't distribute literature exhorting your town to kill you and your family is such a greivous breech of liberty that Canadians have put themelves on the path to totalitarianism. I know lynching is a long and proud tradition in the USA, but we don't see it the same way up here. And you accuse me of defending the indefensible?
Justifying the prohibition of hate speech on a basis of the "Fire in a crowded theater" or "clear and present danger" doctrines doesn't apply here, unless you believe that Canada is in so much danger of being converted to Nazism that if pro-Nazi statements are tolerated, that Canadians will be setting fire to non-whites by this time next week. You can believe this if you like, but I know a few Canadians, and I don't think you can sell them on this. People I associate with voluntarily tend to be a bit saner than you are.
Gee, where to start with this statement. Such a rich vein of willful ignorance and unwarranted attacks. Let's start with the fact that nothing in this law has anything to do with making "pro-Nazi" statements. Maybe you're confusing Canada with Germany. You can make all the pro-Nazi statements you want here. March in your parade, wear your armband, seig heil. But as soon as you start saying that we need to finish what Hitler started with the Jews, you're guilty of hate speech. If you honestly can't see the distinction here you're even dumber than I thought.
Second, the threshold of action is far, far lower than the entire nation converting to Nazism. If you and your family are burned to death after I whipped up a mob to kill you all, then the consequences for you are far greater than they would have been if the nation did indeed convert to Nazism. And these consequences are what we're trying to avoid. I know, I know, it's that weird, foreign, giving-a-shit-about-your-own-citizens thing that so many Americans find difficult to understand.
Next time you want to slag another country's laws, maybe you should actually have some awareness of what those laws are. Especially when a citizen of that country has already explained those laws at length, with citations, in terms a ten year old could understand.
Because if you don't do these things, you'll look like just another xenophobic, ignorant, irrational American. You don't want that, do you?
You gave an example of the Canadian government taking action against a Muslim school that advocated violence. This is the only action of the Canadian government that you cited. From this, you conclude that the Canadian government will only prosecute white people under hate laws and they will refuse to prosecute Muslims.
Two questions: Are you on crack? Did you share it with the people who modded you to +5?
Nice speech. Would have been better if you'd had any idea of what you're talking about.
Here's the Canadian Criminal code. Search on "Hate Propaganda". Here's the relevant parts.
318. Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
319. Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or an offence punishable on summary conviction.
Seems pretty clear and reasonable so far. We can't advocate the extermination of any identifiable segment of our population, and we can't incite hatred against a group if, in the authorities judgement, it is likely to cause a "breach of peace". In other words, it recognizes that speech that incites violence does not deserve the same protections as speech that doesn't. Further, the law explictly states a number of defenses against this law. Use any of these and you can incite all the hatred you want.
(a) if the statements communicated were true;
(b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;
(c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or
(d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.
This, to you, warrants a warning to us poor Canadians to avoid a future where our grandchildren are as free as they would be in Red China?
It's particularly rich coming from an American. Right now you guys are far closer to totalitarianism than Canada will ever be in a hundred thousand lifetimes. You've got the Homeland Gestapo interrogating people due to their choice of T-shirts or library books. You've got a president and attourney general who equate questions and dissent with giving "aid and comfort" to terorrists. You have a labour system where, for voicing your true opinion to your boss, you can lose your children's health coverage.
I think you've got much greater problems to take care of at home before you concern yourself much with us poor Canadians. Don't worry about us, we're living a lot more freely than you.
Slashdot Mirror
"There are times when it is prudent to suspicious of a person's claims, such as when it is evident that the claims are being biased by the person's interests. For example, if a tobacco company representative claims that tobacco does not cause cancer, it would be prudent to not simply accept the claim."
There is absolutely nothing wrong with weighing a person's self-interest when considering their claims, particularly in the energy industry which is infamous for creating phony advocacy organizations that exist solely for the purpose of telling lies on behalf of their funders.
Asking the question of who funds this particular group is an absolutely relevant question and one that deserves an answer rather than immediately attacking the motives and fairness of anyone who asks it.
Now, that was one of the six standards used in the NORC recount. CNN didn't mention the other five in that article, but they all had the same result: Gore wins.
Anyway, here's the actual tallies from the NORC recount.
-PREVAILING STANDARD: County election officials told Florida journalists how they would define votes
if required to do a recount and in this scenario the majority standard was imposed statewide. In
punch-card counties, ballots with at least one corner of a chad detached counted as votes. In optical
scan counties, where voters are required to fill in blanks on a paper ballot - like on a standardized
test - ballots with any affirmative marks counted. That means a vote counted even if the oval was not
completely filled in or a candidate's name was circled or underlined; so did ballots on which a voter
correctly filled in the oval and also wrote the same candidate's name in the space for write-ins.
Result: Gore ahead by 60 votes.
-TWO-CORNER STANDARD: At least two corners of a chad must be detached to count as a vote, a position
that had been argued, at times, by Bush supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan
ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 105 votes.
-MOST INCLUSIVE: Ballots with dimpled chads count as votes, an argument often made by Gore supporters.
Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 107 votes.
-LEAST INCLUSIVE: Only cleanly punched chads count as valid votes. For optical scan, only fully filled
ovals and those ballots on which a voter filled in the oval and wrote in the candidate's name, too.
Result: Gore ahead by 115 votes.
-COUNTY-by-COUNTY: Drawn from the county election officials. It accepts results from Broward and
Volusia counties because those counties completed hand counts that were included in state-certified
election totals. For those counties that said they would not count overvotes, relies on prevailing
standard.
Result: Gore ahead by 171 votes.
-PALM BEACH STANDARD: Based on a standard Palm Beach election officials briefly used, this counts
dimpled chads as valid votes if a pattern of dimpled chads exists elsewhere on the same ballot. Same as
prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 42 votes.
Here's some media reaction from the time:
A close examination of the ballots suggests that more Floridians attempted to choose
Gore over Bush.
-- Chicago Tribune
Gore would have won most recount scenarios that included "overvotes," ballots that
showed votes for more than one candidate. Democrats long have contended that a plurality of Florida voters intended to cast
their ballots for Gore but that thousands spoiled their votes because of confusing instructions, badly
designed ballots or other obstacles. The study adds evidence to bolster that case.
-- LA Times
One of the most compelling questions since the election has been: Who would have won
if all the uncounted ballots were hand-counted using the same standards? If that had happened using the counting methods most widely used in the state, the
study shows, Bush would have gotten an extra 3,607 votes, Gore an extra 4,204 -- giving Gore the state
by a scant 60-vote margin.
-- Orlando Sentinel
But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots,
or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of
uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the
It wasn't Gore's intention to "game" the system by asking for the first recounts to be in those four counties in Florida. Rather, that was the legal mechanism he was supposed to follow in order to eventually trigger a state-wide recount. I think he should have taken a page from the Republican playbook and said "screw the law, we're going to win this in the court of public opinion and then make a new law". He should have loudly and immediately agitated for a full state-wide recount regardless of Florida's electoral procedures. He really opened himself up to Republican attacks by giving the appearance of wanting a selective recount.
There was, of course, one full state wide recount, the NORC recount done after the election by a consortium of media groups. That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios. Further, the judge that would have ruled on a state wide recount said that he would have insisted that overvotes be counted, that is, votes where voters punched a chad for Gore and also filled the write-in field Gore due to ambiguous instructions. This alone would have given Gore more than enough votes to win the state and the presidency regardless of butterfly ballots and Katherine Harris's various manoeuvres.
A persecution complex, expressed with vague whining: check.
Cowardly posting with an anonymous account: check.
An inability to understand that legitimate elections matter in a democracy: check.
A stated belief that the only ethics or motivation anyone has is whether or not their candidate wins: check.
Yep, you're a Republican all right.
And I remember a time when posting right-wing, Ayn Rand type opinions was the norm on Slashdot, and it was the liberals who had to constantly defend their beliefs from multitudes of conservatives. That time was when Clinton was in office and we were enjoying peace and prosperity. Amazing how six years of incompetence, ignorance, malfeasance, and evil can change the tone of a forum, eh?
The Washington Post review is more like what you described, but even with them their chief complaint is that the film doesn't give enough time to other examples of Republican voter fraud. They said:
As for Bev Harris being a crackpot, well, she is. Everyone I know who has had personal contact with her has been burned by her. But she does seem to be effective at raising the awareness of this issue, even as she detracts from it with her behavior. She seems to be a two steps forward, one step backwards type of person. But whatever her motives, she's doing a service to her country by making people more aware of the problems with Diebold.
Do you think that maybe Rice had a hand in crafting the US response to those events, given her position?
You're talking about Bush the Smarter's administration, yes? The one that completely missed all warning signs of the impending fall of the Soviet Union? The one that labelled Mikhail Gorbechev as "the man with no new ideas"? The one that insisted that the Soviet Union was an overwhelming conventional threat that justified huge increases in military spending right up until the very day it imploded?
Must have been impressive advice she was giving.
Is it "left-wing propaganda" to point out the flaws and dishonesty in the way this country is run?
The far-right screechers that most of the Bushbots model themselves after consider any criticism of their words or actions to be "left-wing propaganda". Usually they call it "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" as well.
Anything Republicans do is good. Anything Democrats do is bad. It's tribal thinking, and it's deep as most of them get these days. And then they have the nerve to accuse others of practicing moral relativism.
That's a valid comment, and funny too. You must have hit one of the crackhead moderators.
Are you saying a Slashdot editor didn't bother to fully read the article and just made up a sensational and misleading headline in order to troll for mouse-clicks?
I don't believe you.
1. Choosing the wrong side in both World Wars.
2. Producing the majority of the world's porn actresses.
Will be the same as it is now. That is, seeing the "Flashblock" icon that my favourite extension in Firefox adds to web pages in order to save me from the craptacular, useless, and intrusive annoyances that compose about 95% of the instances where a developer has made the unfortunate and foolish decision to include Flash on a web page.
I've found that Norton and McAfee are the source of more computer problems than any other software, including Windows itself. They are bug-ridden, invasive, and wasteful of resources. About 50% of the "service calls" I do consist of replacing Norton/McAfee with AVG and then typing "msconfig" to turn off all the other garbage they've got installed in their tray. Then they say "You fixed my computer! It's like brand-new! You must be some kind of god damn genius!"
I wish I had mod points today. You are exactly correct, people buy gold so they can skip a lot of the game. The reason they do this is because WOW is perhaps the most boring RPG ever created.
I borrowed a friends discs once and bought a month's worth of access just so I can see what all the fuss was about. I simply couldn't believe how bad this game is. All of the quests were of the "find ten of these useless things and get back to me" or "kill that asshole over there" variety. My seven year old son's Putt-Putt and Freddi Fish games have more depth.
And I really hate how everything seems to "charge" you in time. Cast a spell, wait a few seconds. Open a chest, wait a few seconds longer. It's like the whole mechanic of this game is to make me sit here wasting my life watching progress bars while charging me $15 a month to do so. And then there's the fact that half the game experience is watching your character's back while he trudges slowly across the landscape.
And there's other really dumb things in the basic interface. You click on a guy attacking you from behind with your sword and it says "facing wrong direction". Well no fucking shit, man. I thought I communicated my intention to turn around and whack that fucker when I right-clicked on the monster. The game is filled with stuff like this. I had far, far more fun playing Diablo online.
I'm just not getting why this is the most successful game of all time. Maybe it gives obsessive-complusive people something to do? Seems like the best play here is to just not get involved in it in the first place.
Except that it wasn't John Kerry or any of his flunkies that denied the investigator's security clearances, thereby preventing them from actually, you know, investigating.
John Kerry also does not have the power to step in and make things right, as Bush obviously does. After all, he attached hundreds of "signing statements" to laws passed by congress saying that the laws do not apply to him. The new American constitution seems to be "What Bush says, goes".
Here we have the spectacle of a sitting president breaking the law openly and not even bothering to deny it. When your own elected government tries to get to the bottom of it, the administration takes the unprecedented step of declaring the whole issue a matter of "national security", thereby denying the ability of anyone to investigate it. At least, until they find a Bush family friend to head up the panel, as they did in his $800,000 insider trading case (the friend was later rewarded by being made ambassador to Saudi Arabia).
You Republicans make a lot of noise about liberty and freedom and the sanctity of the Constitution. But over the last few years you've bent yourselves into contortions to transfrom the office of the president into that of a pre-Magna Carta ("Magna Carter" as Bush once said) king. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because your founding fathers would have collectively puked at the sight of you.
First of all, pulling a site because of phoney registration info is hardly "pulling the plug on free speech". Thanks Zonk for yet another in your series of sensational and completely misleading headlines. Lots of sites in the USA have been pulled because of fake registration records. Do you want to go on record as saying that the USA hasn't had any free speech for a long time because of this?
Second, the entire purpose of the stephentaylor.ca site is to fling feces at Liberals in a baboon-like fashion and hope that some of it sticks. Look at the "updates" within this single blog post. He starts out by calling Volpe's donations from a pharmaceutical company "drug money" like he got stacks of hundreds in a black bag from a Columbian drug lord. Then he goes completely over the top, accusing Volpe of undermining fundamental freedoms in our society and paving the way for tyranny with his "censorship". Then he admits he got the facts wrong (which makes him better than Zonk, at least) and everything had happened in a legal and routine manner. Nothing he, or anyone else, said later disputes this. He just says that because it's a rule, it doesn't make it right, which is the boilerplate childish fallback for anyone who has accused an opponent of unlawful behavior who then discovers his charges were false in all details.
Third, he produces an excerpt of a letter supposedly from the people who registered the domain fradulently, claiming that the "real" reason the domain was pulled was because the registrar didn't want to expose itself to defamation claims. Questions arise: is the email actually from the people who registered the site? We don't know. Is it the whole email? We don't know. Was defamation given as the only reason the site was pulled, or even as the primary reason? We don't know. I know that's a high enough standard for stephentaylor.ca, which needs a rationale a molecule thick to smear any Liberal in existence, and it's not too surprising that it's a strong enough rationale for Zonk. But it shouldn't be enough info for fair and reasonable people.
The one thing we do know for certain is that the site was registered with phoney info, which is enough to get a site pulled on either side of the border.
People talk on cell phones in cars, too, but that doesn't mean that cell phones are useless things we shouldn't have. As for dweebs constantly checking their mail from their boss, blackberries have "push" email which informs you when an email arrives. You don't need to keep checking them all the time, like you would with a typical email server.
Canada actually consumes more energy per person than the US and also produces more CO2 per person.
Americans like to come on Canadian forums and repeat that claim, though I've yet to see anyone give a citation. Would you like to be the first?
I did a quick google and didn't find much except this page which states that Canada has a slightly lower per capita production of CO2 than the USA.
That was due to a chemical, wasn't it? Sarin if I remember right. It wasn't a biological attack.
If you order within the next ten minutes, he'll mail you an anti-grav generator, too.
Be the biggest asshole you can possibly be to everyone around you at all times. Helping people hurts them. Hurting people helps them. Never feel shame. And always wrap yourself in a cloak of smug self-righteous virtue, even while you're kicking some poor helpless slob in the teeth.
It's a really good philosophy for sociopaths.
And as I've already explained at length, the law applies only to specific cases of inciting violence. It has nothing to do with being "offensive". For example, I could freely say that you're a clueless fuckwit who can't read an article with the slightest degree of reading comprehension. But the moment I say you're so god damn stupid that, for the good of the community, we should burn down your house and kill your family, then I'm guilty of "hate speech".
According to you, the fact that I can't distribute literature exhorting your town to kill you and your family is such a greivous breech of liberty that Canadians have put themelves on the path to totalitarianism. I know lynching is a long and proud tradition in the USA, but we don't see it the same way up here. And you accuse me of defending the indefensible?
Justifying the prohibition of hate speech on a basis of the "Fire in a crowded theater" or "clear and present danger" doctrines doesn't apply here, unless you believe that Canada is in so much danger of being converted to Nazism that if pro-Nazi statements are tolerated, that Canadians will be setting fire to non-whites by this time next week. You can believe this if you like, but I know a few Canadians, and I don't think you can sell them on this. People I associate with voluntarily tend to be a bit saner than you are.
Gee, where to start with this statement. Such a rich vein of willful ignorance and unwarranted attacks. Let's start with the fact that nothing in this law has anything to do with making "pro-Nazi" statements. Maybe you're confusing Canada with Germany. You can make all the pro-Nazi statements you want here. March in your parade, wear your armband, seig heil. But as soon as you start saying that we need to finish what Hitler started with the Jews, you're guilty of hate speech. If you honestly can't see the distinction here you're even dumber than I thought.
Second, the threshold of action is far, far lower than the entire nation converting to Nazism. If you and your family are burned to death after I whipped up a mob to kill you all, then the consequences for you are far greater than they would have been if the nation did indeed convert to Nazism. And these consequences are what we're trying to avoid. I know, I know, it's that weird, foreign, giving-a-shit-about-your-own-citizens thing that so many Americans find difficult to understand.
Next time you want to slag another country's laws, maybe you should actually have some awareness of what those laws are. Especially when a citizen of that country has already explained those laws at length, with citations, in terms a ten year old could understand.
Because if you don't do these things, you'll look like just another xenophobic, ignorant, irrational American. You don't want that, do you?
You gave an example of the Canadian government taking action against a Muslim school that advocated violence. This is the only action of the Canadian government that you cited. From this, you conclude that the Canadian government will only prosecute white people under hate laws and they will refuse to prosecute Muslims.
Two questions: Are you on crack? Did you share it with the people who modded you to +5?
The law specifically exempts private speech from the statutes. You can read the actual law in a post of mine later in this thread if you want.
Here's the Canadian Criminal code. Search on "Hate Propaganda". Here's the relevant parts.
Seems pretty clear and reasonable so far. We can't advocate the extermination of any identifiable segment of our population, and we can't incite hatred against a group if, in the authorities judgement, it is likely to cause a "breach of peace". In other words, it recognizes that speech that incites violence does not deserve the same protections as speech that doesn't. Further, the law explictly states a number of defenses against this law. Use any of these and you can incite all the hatred you want.
This, to you, warrants a warning to us poor Canadians to avoid a future where our grandchildren are as free as they would be in Red China?
It's particularly rich coming from an American. Right now you guys are far closer to totalitarianism than Canada will ever be in a hundred thousand lifetimes. You've got the Homeland Gestapo interrogating people due to their choice of T-shirts or library books. You've got a president and attourney general who equate questions and dissent with giving "aid and comfort" to terorrists. You have a labour system where, for voicing your true opinion to your boss, you can lose your children's health coverage.
I think you've got much greater problems to take care of at home before you concern yourself much with us poor Canadians. Don't worry about us, we're living a lot more freely than you.