[All of the following is quoted from the Amazon book description]
Book Description
Had enough?
Whether you find the government oppressive, the economy spiraling out of control, or if you simply want adventure, you're not alone. In increasing numbers, the idea is talked about openly: Expatriate.
Over three hundred thousand Americans emigrate each year, and more than a million go to foreign lands for lengthy stays.
But picking up and moving to another country feels like a step into the void. Where to go? How to begin? What to do?
Volume 2 of the Process Self-Reliance Series, this smartly designed two-color guidebook walks you through the world of the expat: the reasons, the rules, the resources, and the tricks of the trade, along with compelling stories and expertise from expatriate Americans on every continent.
Getting Out shows you where you can most easily gain residence, citizenship, or work permits; where can you live for a fraction of the cost of where you're living now; and what countries would be most compatible with your lifestyle, gender, age, or political beliefs.
So if you've had enough of what they're selling here and want to take your life elsewhere-well, isn't that the American way? At any rate, it's not illegal. Not yet, anyway.
About the Author Mark Ehrman is a frequent traveler and freelance writer whose work regularly appears in the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Travel and Leisure, and numerous travel magazines city guidebooks.
The paper ballots are effectively useless because firstly, recounts are only done automatically if the margin of victory is extremely low. A clever hacker will make sure the margin is slightly greater than the trigger.
Secondly, many secretaries of state are instituting punitive costs charged to the candidate demanding a recount. It costs millions to challenge the count. A lot of campaigns find it hard to justify the cost, and may well not have the money left over.
And third, I strongly opine that even if the paper ballots clearly show that the electronic totals were altered, the news media will bury the story, if they don't simply report it as a conspiracy theory and bad methodology counting the paper. After all, Gore had the majority of the cast votes in 2000 per the media-sponsored recount done after the election, with bullet-proof counting methods and both parties staring at the process. To THIS DAY people don't even know that the recount was done, and if they do, they concentrate on the recount as per Gore's original request, where he barely lost, rather than the state-wide recount done by the Tribune-led media project, which showed he barely won -- if all the votes that clearly showed a choice were counted.
Fourthly, a HELL of a lot of "spoiled ballots" are being tossed these last six years, far more proportionally that were found before. I don't think people magically started messing up their ballots. There is a heavy finger on the scale, one that favors Republicans. Since they are spoiled, so-called, we don't count them again. Toss out enough "spoiled" ballots from poorer (black/college) Democratically leaning areas, and they have plausible deniability as to why the e-count doesn't match the paper count. And yes, since the computer would be printing the ballots, this should be a silly argument, BUT THEY WILL MAKE IT ANYWAY, and the assembled dopes of the media will swallow it, as they have all the other garbage in every major election since 2000 (statistics don't work anymore? Only Democrats lie to exit pollsters, only in close races? COME ON!).
Guaranteed, two weeks from now: Republicans will hold on to both houses. By slim margins. No paper trails. And all these polls showing that Democrats will win by landslides? Dismissed as conspiracy theories. Just statistics.
Sometimes statistics is the truth and smarmy little me say are lies.
After three thousand years, it isn't a grave, and it isn't robbing. If you want to contradict me, have the relatives of the dead give me a call.
Now, the archaeologists, THEY cleaned the places out in the 19th century.
Once again, it ain't stealin' if no one owns it. Just 'cause someone claims it doesn't mean they own it, either. Those tombs were emptied using political pressure, military occupation, and just plain thuggin' thievery by museums for the last couple of centuries. No one calls those Indy Jones thieves, although they sure as hell were. No one except that Kali Ma dude from movie two, yes, I know.
Forensic evidence indeed. To prove fraud, you simply tally up the paper ballots. If the tally doesn't match the electronic total, fraud occured. So simple.
Also, you can pinpoint exactly where and when and to what advantage the Diebold hack occured. If we had such a system in place in 2004, there would have been hell to pay in Ohio. And it would prevent the upcoming hack in November, as they simply have to pinpoint individual precincts to alter -- no need to hack every machine. The pattern would be obvious if there were a paper trail.
Why else do you think Diebold has fought so hard to prevent paper trails at all costs? It makes no sense, as they would simply make more money with paper trails. Occam's razor: they know that the paper tally would not match their electronic tally, and HELL would break loose. In a rational country, this would be obvious. We aren't rational. The Republican faction in this country has a lot invested in these machines.
Operationally, a covert attacker would be an idiot to use any sort of electronic communications media. The 9-11 attackers observed complete e-silence, and communicated face-to-face. Bin Laden as well.
And I must challenge this constant assumption of cell of killers surrounding you and plotting your deaths.
WHERE ARE THEY? It's been five years, for chissakes. On 9-11 itself, they could only get enough manpower to take 4 planes instead of the 12 they wanted. And they can't ever pull that trick again.
Occam's razor, kids. They aren't there. There are no "terror cells" full of brown people saturating the country. It's a truthy crock. The "terrorists" we've kidnapped gave us nothing but lies under torture, which gave us endless terror warnings.
They ain't there. Stop snivelling! BUSH IS LYING. He has no intel at all. We have no humint in these groups, the people we're torturing are nonentities or innocents that we've used as proxies for our anger. All the "facts" Bush has sold us on, from the "terraist cells" to the Iraq terror to Iran to Korea were garbage. We got hit with a simple trick on 9-11. That's it. We don't have to stop the planet to find the evildoers. They are DEAD. We however are making millions of people who hate our guts on a daily basis in Iraq, so I guess it's a goddamned self-fulfilling prophecy after all.
"As far as I know, allofmp3 does not have license to distribute its songs in the US. Therefore, selling songs in the US is an act of copyright infringement in the US."
They aren't in the U.S. There are no treaties involved, no trade agreements either. U.S. law does not apply outside of the U.S., with the exception of us kidnapping people around the world and torturing them to death, which apparently is legal whether anyone else in the world objects or not.
And, to clarify the issue, think of it as people *phoning* a Russian server and listening to recorded music on the phone for a fee. Imagine them recording the sound with an old-fashioned tape recorder. This would break no law in the U.S. or Russia. It's not even a metaphor, it's what we're doing.
And after they're eighteen, they can pass through the body scanners, look into retinal pattern id readers, submit to body cavity searches, submit to endless background checks, drug checks, be pushed into first amendment zones, get checked on secret "terrorist" watch lists, have their email and IM's read, have their mail opened, packages scanned, DNA data catalogued, car monitored by GPS tracking devices, their phones tracked every second of their lives and by extention their own movements monitored until they die.
Sweet freedom! And that's just the people who haven't done everything. Get convicted of something and you are a prisoner for the rest of your life, if not in bricks then in opportunities.
And WHAT ARE THE ODDS of a terrorist attack hitting anyone? What are the odds of being killed by your car? Why aren't cars illegal, then? Why aren't there driver terror lists? Alchohol watch lists? Oh, why go on.
We've given up what it means to be free because we're terrorized cowards incapable of rational risk analysis. No sense of human rights, no idea of history not promulated by Fox News or equivalent.
So, what's a kid gonna look forward to after they release him from the school prison but the bigger prison that we all are sharing (unless we're rich -- whole different world for them, always).
"Americans see what happens to people who speak out against the administration: Colin Powell, and V. Plame are prime examples of people who have had their careers destroyed because of the current administration."
Don't forget, as a prominent example of why Total Surveillance is WRONG, that ex-Marine and Iraq weapons Inspector Scott Ritter was speaking out about Bush's full out lying prior to the Iraqi invasion... and was raided for kiddy porn due to an FBI investigation of his internet habits.
Big fuss. Ritter was never asked back on TV again to speak. And the FBI dropped the case, no real reason given. I guess it was about the lack of evidence. Nice coincidence, tho, being monitored while he was speaking about Bush's lying.
Mission fucking accomplished. Critic disarmed and ruined, thanks to TOTAL SURVEILLANCE, CITIZENS! WE NEVER LIE OR USE THIS NEW ILLEGAL MONITORING SYSTEM FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES. NO. YOU CAN'T SUE US. WE DON'T EXIST. AND WE'RE NEVER WRONG. EVER. NOW SHUT UP, TINFOIL HAT WEARER.
Is that the hat with the new RFID tracker for retailers, or the RFID trackers for the Homeland/SS at the airports, or New Improved RFID tracker for tracking toll booth payments as well as your car's every move, or the RFID tracking insert suitable for tracking the poor, helpless children would would certainly be in mortal danger from terrorist pedophile internet stalkers if we were not tracking their hats?
Thank you for your support, citizen, for obeying the Law and stopping kid-following a-rabs everywhere. Remember to report anyone who does not where the new, guvmint-approved TinFil Hat with improved security features. And tell your kids to keep an eye on those evildoers at school as well. The schools are there to be protect your tykes from rifle-wielding Arab terrorist pedophile teenaged blackcoat killers, so every kid turned in is another IED brick removed from the wall of Fortress America. Godspeed the chosen people, the American race...
Not. He isn't. Scientology would definitely let us know if he were one of them.
His parents were, but it's not discussed. And this is from a former alt.religion.scientology poster and spreader of the word of Xenu. Since he doesn't discuss their lives, I'd think it rude to bring up his parents in his presence. I'd cringe if I ever heard someone asking him about it.
Apparently his parents were high-level true believers. But let it go; apparently, and per his recollections, they left him alone to make up his own mind, and it seemed to work out well in the end. He picked up a solid interest in religion and mythology on his own, and I'd *assume* that he understands the mechanics of what Hubbard did in contructing a business from Hugo Gernsbach-era science fiction neo-myth.
His parents loved him, and he turned out very okay. So, let it lie.
Why else do you think Rush Limbaugh and similar call themselves comedians? Protection against defamation.
And in England you don't need to prove malice, hence that cryptic comment by Tom Cruise in that South Park episode about Scientology, "I'll sue you! I'll sue you in ENGLAND!"
"And now Google is using their monopoly in the web platform"
Not a monopoly. A court has to render a finding first. And you have to be pretty damned abusive as well, for the Justice Department to take you to court to determine a monopoly status exists.
Microsoft is alone in their monopoly status. They earned the right to be restricted as they are by acting like prime a-holes for over twenty years.
Re:Deleted Scenes from the Interview
on
Ballmer Sounds Off
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· Score: 5, Insightful
"voluntarily chose"
Oh, please. No one voluntarily chooses to give up the rights to copy and play their own music. They do so under duress, to make a living. They always gave it up because the other choice is to work at McDonalds.
Those people they voluntarily give up their rights to steal all the profits for decades. If they decide to give the artist anything at all, after the "expenses" are deducted.
If any artists are on the side of the corporations that hold the copyright gates, then they are usually young, dazzled by the bright lights, and were brought up thinking that the proper way of things is to submit to the flashy men in the conference room. They were born in a slave culture, and they think like slaves. This is the downside of feudalism: serfs eventually wholeheartedly support their lords -- they can't imagine that it could work any other way. And corporatism = feudalism; it's not even a metaphor.
No, Joss stated that one of the characters would have to die, for thematic reasons. No studio head demanded it.
Joss NEVER planned on killing the series.
AND. Do remember that he ain't necessarily gonna stay dead. He was stabbed through the chest, and the crew had to leave on that instant, abandoning the body. In SF/Comics world, he could have been saved unbeknownst to them, and returned at some point in a series or new movie.
These kids who bow to the government went to with dogs sniffing their crotches for drugs. They really don't get civil liberties or how their rights should be protected at all costs. They went to work for feudal corporations who monitor their every orifice. They've no experience with freedom.
When people go on about how safe their schools are and how wonderful drug testing and E911 monitoring of their kids is, I want to scream at them, "You idiots. You are raising a generation of anti-American drones. You've scared them to death of Stranger Danger and kidnapping and dangerous city thugs and drug epidemics and Moslems, and they've become fascistic, giving in to power at every chance. You've made a generation of Good Germans. You've killed us."
That's the problem with the profit mania, innit? You can't point at the technology and science that doesn't exist because they won't fund research. The money maniacs are hemetically sealed from the consequences of their greed.
I'm not on the "left", and neither is the parent poster. Ronald Reagan is on the damned "left" compared to what passes as policy in the U.S.
What the business neocons have perpetrated was an attack on the United States itself. They've wiped out tens of millions of decent paying jobs and Walmarted even the IT sector. They've shut down pollution controls and opened up the national parks for mining and clearcutting. They have literally refused to pay out their pension funds -- they STOLE the damned pension funds! Right under our noses.
WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY GOING, THEN? There's the pack of traitors. The ones who got paid off in stocks and bonuses to destroy the U.S. economy for their fat own Cayman Island accounts. If the cost of labor and manufaturing is so low, and the prices of the products are the same, then hundreds of billions of dollars are being siphoned into SOMEONE'S pockets.
Treason? If the profits of your own corporation and your own CI accounts are the only thing you feel morally obligated to protect, you are a traitor. Treason. Adam Smith would have spit on this vermin. And the worst of all is that they convinced all the"moderate" voices on what passes for our "left" that they are the voices of the future.
They are thieves, they are liars, they are traitors, and they should be investigated and imprisoned. Bush has shown us the way! We don't actually need laws to arrest people. We can just do it 'cause we know they are eeevil.
A nice prison in Antarctica would be appropriate. Let them wear WalMart clothes and eat K-Mart food and crap in a Sam's Club plastic bucket, just like all the other "terrorists". And no trials. We will just know the evil ones by looking in their eyes...
Intel made (finally) better processors than it did before, and the articles immediately spread around the web, predicting AMD's death, long delayed. Then, Intel coverage burned up all the media oxygen. AMD can't get its products covered because Intel is better, and Intel is better because AMD can't get its products covered.
Reality is perception, and the collective perception is that AMD has curled up and died, if you read the major websites and magazines.
Maybe they'll clock in at $100-- Sony and the other eBook reader companies can't seem to drop the prices, mainly due to lack of economies of scale because they make them in such small numbers.
They historically couldn't sell because they were too big, the screens sucked, the formats were DRMed to hell and back, the readers were too expensive, the ebooks too expensive, and it's illegal to scan (some) books that you'd really like to. Did ya know that scanning a textbook will land you a (possible) five year federal prison sentence? Per book? Plus tens of thousands in fines, maybe more? Per book, again. The big guns have bought some nasty laws to prevent people from doing what they want to do, namely, save money on books by copying them. Might drive down the cost of textbooks. I digress.
That said -- this is a really nice ebook reader. Been waiting for this for years. The screen is right. The lack of DRM lockout of text books I already possess is a huge winner -- I've actually scanned some, so it's nice to read my ebook on something besides a PC.
As for the costs. Ah, cost accounting, the death of the human species. This reader will make it or not based on immediate market reaction, profit or loss. This is the wrong way to look at the costs.
The real cost is: how many trees will we NOT cut down in the world if this reader were prevalent? How much CO2 would be converted back to O2, slowing the greenhouse overheating, if hundreds of millions of trees aren't pulped to provide all those millions of pounds of paper books and newspapers and magazines that are discarded after reading? Factor the cost of those trees' absence into the balance of how much Sony win/loses in the next quarter.
If we were a sane race, we would use government funds to develop and distribute ebook readers and slowly ban paper books . A hundred billion dollars would be cheap. Give them away for free. And plant forests. The cost of doing otherwise is the possible heat death of our civilization. The free market is a moron.
Real purpose: spreading stories about superchips years in advance to kill AMD now. AMD is being ignored to death by the press, and Intel is making sure that AMD can't get a foot in the media door.
Worked well in the past, until they couldn't actually produce a faster product. AMD is still cheaper, but you still can't hear much about their products anymore.
It is a rare, successful artist with multiple hit albums that ever makes it to the point where the record companies actually cough up any money (after the artist finishes paying off the LOANS -- expense to the RC, always a loan to the artist) to the artist. And of course, with the new digital download accounting, even old timers are finding that the new online deal cuts out 75% of their royalities due to magical "new technology" charges.
Artists make money from live performances, 'cause the RC's haven't managed to buy up all the performance venues yet. Premature downloads don't hurt the artist's bottom line, 'cause they don't make money from CD sales. The early release helps the artist because popularity=more ticket sales at the ballroom.
The RC's just steal money. I doubt the artists are crying much over their poor masters' predicament.
60,000 slaughtered innocents in Iraq, god knows how many slaugtered in railroad cars in Afghanistan. 3000 dead in office towers. Torture of kidnapped people around the world, at least a hundred more dead that way. almost 3000 dead soldiers in Iraq alone. 12,000 more with their dicks and breasts blown off. A dictator "president". Complete police state lockdown. Utter looting resulting in national bancruptcy. Lobbyists in charge of every environmental and labor agency in government. Lies, lies, and more lies about anything and everything they do. A media on its knees with its brains blown out.
Clinton / Gore: no soldiers died in combat. LAX bombing stopped in 1999. Economy booming, jobs growing, paying off debt. Only flaw was the Republicans stopping at nothing to tie up the news shows with lie after lie after lie after lie...
My god. "Balance".
A moral-free moron vs. Gore, a scholar who's being lauded around the world. Ditto Clinton Death vs. life. Stupidity vs. intelligence. Torture vs. no torture.
Same thing with the McCain "torture deal" yesterday. Legalizing crimes against humanity, retroactively, so that the Republicans don't have to worry about investigations and trials post-election if the Demos win. Not that I see those spineless corporatocrats even daydreaming about doing their jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Out-Leaving/dp/09760 82276
[All of the following is quoted from the Amazon book description]
Book Description
Had enough?
Whether you find the government oppressive, the economy spiraling out of control, or if you simply want adventure, you're not alone. In increasing numbers, the idea is talked about openly: Expatriate.
Over three hundred thousand Americans emigrate each year, and more than a million go to foreign lands for lengthy stays.
But picking up and moving to another country feels like a step into the void. Where to go? How to begin? What to do?
Volume 2 of the Process Self-Reliance Series, this smartly designed two-color guidebook walks you through the world of the expat: the reasons, the rules, the resources, and the tricks of the trade, along with compelling stories and expertise from expatriate Americans on every continent.
Getting Out shows you where you can most easily gain residence, citizenship, or work permits; where can you live for a fraction of the cost of where you're living now; and what countries would be most compatible with your lifestyle, gender, age, or political beliefs.
So if you've had enough of what they're selling here and want to take your life elsewhere-well, isn't that the American way? At any rate, it's not illegal. Not yet, anyway.
About the Author
Mark Ehrman is a frequent traveler and freelance writer whose work regularly appears in the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Travel and Leisure, and numerous travel magazines city guidebooks.
The paper ballots are effectively useless because firstly, recounts are only done automatically if the margin of victory is extremely low. A clever hacker will make sure the margin is slightly greater than the trigger.
Secondly, many secretaries of state are instituting punitive costs charged to the candidate demanding a recount. It costs millions to challenge the count. A lot of campaigns find it hard to justify the cost, and may well not have the money left over.
And third, I strongly opine that even if the paper ballots clearly show that the electronic totals were altered, the news media will bury the story, if they don't simply report it as a conspiracy theory and bad methodology counting the paper. After all, Gore had the majority of the cast votes in 2000 per the media-sponsored recount done after the election, with bullet-proof counting methods and both parties staring at the process. To THIS DAY people don't even know that the recount was done, and if they do, they concentrate on the recount as per Gore's original request, where he barely lost, rather than the state-wide recount done by the Tribune-led media project, which showed he barely won -- if all the votes that clearly showed a choice were counted.
Fourthly, a HELL of a lot of "spoiled ballots" are being tossed these last six years, far more proportionally that were found before. I don't think people magically started messing up their ballots. There is a heavy finger on the scale, one that favors Republicans. Since they are spoiled, so-called, we don't count them again. Toss out enough "spoiled" ballots from poorer (black/college) Democratically leaning areas, and they have plausible deniability as to why the e-count doesn't match the paper count. And yes, since the computer would be printing the ballots, this should be a silly argument, BUT THEY WILL MAKE IT ANYWAY, and the assembled dopes of the media will swallow it, as they have all the other garbage in every major election since 2000 (statistics don't work anymore? Only Democrats lie to exit pollsters, only in close races? COME ON!).
Guaranteed, two weeks from now: Republicans will hold on to both houses. By slim margins. No paper trails. And all these polls showing that Democrats will win by landslides? Dismissed as conspiracy theories. Just statistics.
Sometimes statistics is the truth and smarmy little me say are lies.
"Grave robbers "
After three thousand years, it isn't a grave, and it isn't robbing. If you want to contradict me, have the relatives of the dead give me a call.
Now, the archaeologists, THEY cleaned the places out in the 19th century.
Once again, it ain't stealin' if no one owns it. Just 'cause someone claims it doesn't mean they own it, either. Those tombs were emptied using political pressure, military occupation, and just plain thuggin' thievery by museums for the last couple of centuries. No one calls those Indy Jones thieves, although they sure as hell were. No one except that Kali Ma dude from movie two, yes, I know.
Forensic evidence indeed. To prove fraud, you simply tally up the paper ballots. If the tally doesn't match the electronic total, fraud occured. So simple.
Also, you can pinpoint exactly where and when and to what advantage the Diebold hack occured. If we had such a system in place in 2004, there would have been hell to pay in Ohio. And it would prevent the upcoming hack in November, as they simply have to pinpoint individual precincts to alter -- no need to hack every machine. The pattern would be obvious if there were a paper trail.
Why else do you think Diebold has fought so hard to prevent paper trails at all costs? It makes no sense, as they would simply make more money with paper trails. Occam's razor: they know that the paper tally would not match their electronic tally, and HELL would break loose. In a rational country, this would be obvious. We aren't rational. The Republican faction in this country has a lot invested in these machines.
Operationally, a covert attacker would be an idiot to use any sort of electronic communications media. The 9-11 attackers observed complete e-silence, and communicated face-to-face. Bin Laden as well.
And I must challenge this constant assumption of cell of killers surrounding you and plotting your deaths.
WHERE ARE THEY? It's been five years, for chissakes. On 9-11 itself, they could only get enough manpower to take 4 planes instead of the 12 they wanted. And they can't ever pull that trick again.
Occam's razor, kids. They aren't there. There are no "terror cells" full of brown people saturating the country. It's a truthy crock. The "terrorists" we've kidnapped gave us nothing but lies under torture, which gave us endless terror warnings.
They ain't there. Stop snivelling! BUSH IS LYING. He has no intel at all. We have no humint in these groups, the people we're torturing are nonentities or innocents that we've used as proxies for our anger. All the "facts" Bush has sold us on, from the "terraist cells" to the Iraq terror to Iran to Korea were garbage. We got hit with a simple trick on 9-11. That's it. We don't have to stop the planet to find the evildoers. They are DEAD. We however are making millions of people who hate our guts on a daily basis in Iraq, so I guess it's a goddamned self-fulfilling prophecy after all.
"As far as I know, allofmp3 does not have license to distribute its songs in the US. Therefore, selling songs in the US is an act of copyright infringement in the US."
They aren't in the U.S. There are no treaties involved, no trade agreements either. U.S. law does not apply outside of the U.S., with the exception of us kidnapping people around the world and torturing them to death, which apparently is legal whether anyone else in the world objects or not.
And, to clarify the issue, think of it as people *phoning* a Russian server and listening to recorded music on the phone for a fee. Imagine them recording the sound with an old-fashioned tape recorder. This would break no law in the U.S. or Russia. It's not even a metaphor, it's what we're doing.
And after they're eighteen, they can pass through the body scanners, look into retinal pattern id readers, submit to body cavity searches, submit to endless background checks, drug checks, be pushed into first amendment zones, get checked on secret "terrorist" watch lists, have their email and IM's read, have their mail opened, packages scanned, DNA data catalogued, car monitored by GPS tracking devices, their phones tracked every second of their lives and by extention their own movements monitored until they die.
Sweet freedom! And that's just the people who haven't done everything. Get convicted of something and you are a prisoner for the rest of your life, if not in bricks then in opportunities.
And WHAT ARE THE ODDS of a terrorist attack hitting anyone? What are the odds of being killed by your car? Why aren't cars illegal, then? Why aren't there driver terror lists? Alchohol watch lists? Oh, why go on.
We've given up what it means to be free because we're terrorized cowards incapable of rational risk analysis. No sense of human rights, no idea of history not promulated by Fox News or equivalent.
So, what's a kid gonna look forward to after they release him from the school prison but the bigger prison that we all are sharing (unless we're rich -- whole different world for them, always).
"Americans see what happens to people who speak out against the administration: Colin Powell, and V. Plame are prime examples of people who have had their careers destroyed because of the current administration."
Don't forget, as a prominent example of why Total Surveillance is WRONG, that ex-Marine and Iraq weapons Inspector Scott Ritter was speaking out about Bush's full out lying prior to the Iraqi invasion... and was raided for kiddy porn due to an FBI investigation of his internet habits.
Big fuss. Ritter was never asked back on TV again to speak. And the FBI dropped the case, no real reason given. I guess it was about the lack of evidence. Nice coincidence, tho, being monitored while he was speaking about Bush's lying.
Mission fucking accomplished. Critic disarmed and ruined, thanks to TOTAL SURVEILLANCE, CITIZENS! WE NEVER LIE OR USE THIS NEW ILLEGAL MONITORING SYSTEM FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES. NO. YOU CAN'T SUE US. WE DON'T EXIST. AND WE'RE NEVER WRONG. EVER. NOW SHUT UP, TINFOIL HAT WEARER.
Is that the hat with the new RFID tracker for retailers, or the RFID trackers for the Homeland/SS at the airports, or New Improved RFID tracker for tracking toll booth payments as well as your car's every move, or the RFID tracking insert suitable for tracking the poor, helpless children would would certainly be in mortal danger from terrorist pedophile internet stalkers if we were not tracking their hats?
Thank you for your support, citizen, for obeying the Law and stopping kid-following a-rabs everywhere. Remember to report anyone who does not where the new, guvmint-approved TinFil Hat with improved security features. And tell your kids to keep an eye on those evildoers at school as well. The schools are there to be protect your tykes from rifle-wielding Arab terrorist pedophile teenaged blackcoat killers, so every kid turned in is another IED brick removed from the wall of Fortress America. Godspeed the chosen people, the American race...
Not. He isn't. Scientology would definitely let us know if he were one of them.
His parents were, but it's not discussed. And this is from a former alt.religion.scientology poster and spreader of the word of Xenu. Since he doesn't discuss their lives, I'd think it rude to bring up his parents in his presence. I'd cringe if I ever heard someone asking him about it.
Apparently his parents were high-level true believers. But let it go; apparently, and per his recollections, they left him alone to make up his own mind, and it seemed to work out well in the end. He picked up a solid interest in religion and mythology on his own, and I'd *assume* that he understands the mechanics of what Hubbard did in contructing a business from Hugo Gernsbach-era science fiction neo-myth.
His parents loved him, and he turned out very okay. So, let it lie.
Why else do you think Rush Limbaugh and similar call themselves comedians? Protection against defamation.
And in England you don't need to prove malice, hence that cryptic comment by Tom Cruise in that South Park episode about Scientology, "I'll sue you! I'll sue you in ENGLAND!"
The phrase is "ruined utterly". I believe it's trademarked by L. Ron Hubbard.
"And now Google is using their monopoly in the web platform"
Not a monopoly. A court has to render a finding first. And you have to be pretty damned abusive as well, for the Justice Department to take you to court to determine a monopoly status exists.
Microsoft is alone in their monopoly status. They earned the right to be restricted as they are by acting like prime a-holes for over twenty years.
"voluntarily chose"
Oh, please. No one voluntarily chooses to give up the rights to copy and play their own music. They do so under duress, to make a living. They always gave it up because the other choice is to work at McDonalds.
Those people they voluntarily give up their rights to steal all the profits for decades. If they decide to give the artist anything at all, after the "expenses" are deducted.
If any artists are on the side of the corporations that hold the copyright gates, then they are usually young, dazzled by the bright lights, and were brought up thinking that the proper way of things is to submit to the flashy men in the conference room. They were born in a slave culture, and they think like slaves. This is the downside of feudalism: serfs eventually wholeheartedly support their lords -- they can't imagine that it could work any other way. And corporatism = feudalism; it's not even a metaphor.
No, Joss stated that one of the characters would have to die, for thematic reasons. No studio head demanded it.
Joss NEVER planned on killing the series.
AND. Do remember that he ain't necessarily gonna stay dead. He was stabbed through the chest, and the crew had to leave on that instant, abandoning the body. In SF/Comics world, he could have been saved unbeknownst to them, and returned at some point in a series or new movie.
These kids who bow to the government went to with dogs sniffing their crotches for drugs. They really don't get civil liberties or how their rights should be protected at all costs. They went to work for feudal corporations who monitor their every orifice. They've no experience with freedom.
When people go on about how safe their schools are and how wonderful drug testing and E911 monitoring of their kids is, I want to scream at them, "You idiots. You are raising a generation of anti-American drones. You've scared them to death of Stranger Danger and kidnapping and dangerous city thugs and drug epidemics and Moslems, and they've become fascistic, giving in to power at every chance. You've made a generation of Good Germans. You've killed us."
RIP America, b. July 4, 1776 d. Sept 11, 2001.
That's the problem with the profit mania, innit? You can't point at the technology and science that doesn't exist because they won't fund research. The money maniacs are hemetically sealed from the consequences of their greed.
I'm not on the "left", and neither is the parent poster. Ronald Reagan is on the damned "left" compared to what passes as policy in the U.S.
What the business neocons have perpetrated was an attack on the United States itself. They've wiped out tens of millions of decent paying jobs and Walmarted even the IT sector. They've shut down pollution controls and opened up the national parks for mining and clearcutting. They have literally refused to pay out their pension funds -- they STOLE the damned pension funds! Right under our noses.
WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY GOING, THEN? There's the pack of traitors. The ones who got paid off in stocks and bonuses to destroy the U.S. economy for their fat own Cayman Island accounts. If the cost of labor and manufaturing is so low, and the prices of the products are the same, then hundreds of billions of dollars are being siphoned into SOMEONE'S pockets.
Treason? If the profits of your own corporation and your own CI accounts are the only thing you feel morally obligated to protect, you are a traitor. Treason. Adam Smith would have spit on this vermin. And the worst of all is that they convinced all the"moderate" voices on what passes for our "left" that they are the voices of the future.
They are thieves, they are liars, they are traitors, and they should be investigated and imprisoned. Bush has shown us the way! We don't actually need laws to arrest people. We can just do it 'cause we know they are eeevil.
A nice prison in Antarctica would be appropriate. Let them wear WalMart clothes and eat K-Mart food and crap in a Sam's Club plastic bucket, just like all the other "terrorists". And no trials. We will just know the evil ones by looking in their eyes...
Media oxygen.
Intel made (finally) better processors than it did before, and the articles immediately spread around the web, predicting AMD's death, long delayed. Then, Intel coverage burned up all the media oxygen. AMD can't get its products covered because Intel is better, and Intel is better because AMD can't get its products covered.
Reality is perception, and the collective perception is that AMD has curled up and died, if you read the major websites and magazines.
Maybe they'll clock in at $100-- Sony and the other eBook reader companies can't seem to drop the prices, mainly due to lack of economies of scale because they make them in such small numbers.
They historically couldn't sell because they were too big, the screens sucked, the formats were DRMed to hell and back, the readers were too expensive, the ebooks too expensive, and it's illegal to scan (some) books that you'd really like to. Did ya know that scanning a textbook will land you a (possible) five year federal prison sentence? Per book? Plus tens of thousands in fines, maybe more? Per book, again. The big guns have bought some nasty laws to prevent people from doing what they want to do, namely, save money on books by copying them. Might drive down the cost of textbooks. I digress.
That said -- this is a really nice ebook reader. Been waiting for this for years. The screen is right. The lack of DRM lockout of text books I already possess is a huge winner -- I've actually scanned some, so it's nice to read my ebook on something besides a PC.
As for the costs. Ah, cost accounting, the death of the human species. This reader will make it or not based on immediate market reaction, profit or loss. This is the wrong way to look at the costs.
The real cost is: how many trees will we NOT cut down in the world if this reader were prevalent? How much CO2 would be converted back to O2, slowing the greenhouse overheating, if hundreds of millions of trees aren't pulped to provide all those millions of pounds of paper books and newspapers and magazines that are discarded after reading? Factor the cost of those trees' absence into the balance of how much Sony win/loses in the next quarter.
If we were a sane race, we would use government funds to develop and distribute ebook readers and slowly ban paper books . A hundred billion dollars would be cheap. Give them away for free. And plant forests. The cost of doing otherwise is the possible heat death of our civilization. The free market is a moron.
Real purpose: spreading stories about superchips years in advance to kill AMD now. AMD is being ignored to death by the press, and Intel is making sure that AMD can't get a foot in the media door.
Worked well in the past, until they couldn't actually produce a faster product. AMD is still cheaper, but you still can't hear much about their products anymore.
And the Gulf War and the Iraq invasion/occupation cost how much?
It is a rare, successful artist with multiple hit albums that ever makes it to the point where the record companies actually cough up any money (after the artist finishes paying off the LOANS -- expense to the RC, always a loan to the artist) to the artist. And of course, with the new digital download accounting, even old timers are finding that the new online deal cuts out 75% of their royalities due to magical "new technology" charges.
Artists make money from live performances, 'cause the RC's haven't managed to buy up all the performance venues yet. Premature downloads don't hurt the artist's bottom line, 'cause they don't make money from CD sales. The early release helps the artist because popularity=more ticket sales at the ballroom.
The RC's just steal money. I doubt the artists are crying much over their poor masters' predicament.
Ah."Balance".
60,000 slaughtered innocents in Iraq, god knows how many slaugtered in railroad cars in Afghanistan. 3000 dead in office towers. Torture of kidnapped people around the world, at least a hundred more dead that way. almost 3000 dead soldiers in Iraq alone. 12,000 more with their dicks and breasts blown off. A dictator "president". Complete police state lockdown. Utter looting resulting in national bancruptcy. Lobbyists in charge of every environmental and labor agency in government. Lies, lies, and more lies about anything and everything they do. A media on its knees with its brains blown out.
Clinton / Gore: no soldiers died in combat. LAX bombing stopped in 1999. Economy booming, jobs growing, paying off debt. Only flaw was the Republicans stopping at nothing to tie up the news shows with lie after lie after lie after lie...
My god. "Balance".
A moral-free moron vs. Gore, a scholar who's being lauded around the world. Ditto Clinton Death vs. life. Stupidity vs. intelligence. Torture vs. no torture.
Balance.
Same thing with the McCain "torture deal" yesterday. Legalizing crimes against humanity, retroactively, so that the Republicans don't have to worry about investigations and trials post-election if the Demos win. Not that I see those spineless corporatocrats even daydreaming about doing their jobs.