"How much time before Bush bans Rand McNally Maps & Globes?"
GWB and his brain trust already have banned access to satellite imagery, when and where at their discretion. And yes, some paper maps are now "classified".
Editorial: I don't think Al Qaeda really exists anymore, not in the way the PLO does; I don't think there is a mighty global army of "terrorists" (yet -- we're making one!); I don't even think there is such a thing as "terrorism", and you can't have a war against it. I think Bush has created the greatest engine for continuous war we've ever had. The evile commies were pikers. We've an enemy now that can't be identified, and so can never be defeated. We've a population that is convinced it is under attack by Islam. (Really. Harken to the people.) Bush has grabbed control of all branches of government, the military, intelligence, food production, libraries, public communication, the schools... and hasn't produced a single "terrorist", and doesn't seem to be in any hurry to prove that he has. We've let ourselves be snookered by a man who's conned himself into believing he's fighting God's war against evil. There will be no end to this.
The man didn't understand there was a difference between Shiites and Sunni. That Sweden is not Switzerland. He decides with his "gut", not because he thinks it's better to, but because that's all he's got. There's no opposition because no news organization credits anti-administration criticism for long.
It's like an ice age: once the ice triumphs, it takes a hell of a lot of heat to reverse the glaciers. And a very long time.
And drag our screaming kids back into the fire when they try to jump? Sorry, that was on tape.
You brought it up; it's offtopic but I hate to see the "Jackbooted Thugs" murdering poor religionists meme reinforced.
They immolated their own kids with themselves; they were stark staring mad -- and should have had the kids taken away. There was outstanding evidence they were heavily armed, abusing kids, and thought themselves at war with the "government". They weren't victims of anything except their own mad vision.
Their kids were the victims.
Look at it this way: what if the people dragging their kids back into the flames had been, oh, Iranians, doing it in the name of Allah? Is being caucasian and southern a pass to do things you would consider religious fanaticism on the steets of Teheran?
"Number two, Apple is under no obligation to support ANYONE else's DRM, period."
I've no horse in this race, since I don't "own" (license) DRM'ed music, but I'd have to say that although Apple doesn't have to support anyone else's DRM format, that doesn't mean that they can stealthily change my hardware's capabilities to preclude my option to do so. I bought the iPod; I did not give permission for anyone to change the software.
I realize my "license agreement" may "give" them permission. I do not agree with it.
It's about 3 years until the U.S.'s intentional devaluation of the dollar and our need to borrow from the EU and China throws the U.S. into a depression, dragging everyone down with it.
An unstable U.S. with 100,000 nuclear, sorry, nukular, weapons is a very bad thing indeed.
This isn't directed at you or even your post. It's just a scream. Bush and Reagan, the neocons, always obsessed with missle attacks, because they never think for even a few seconds. There's so much money in building a missles "shield", and so much inbred fear of missles in U.S. citizens, that we can't think properly.
WHY a missle to deliver a nuclear bomb? Use a cruise missle instead. OR, a commuter aircraft for an airburst. Or put it on a freight train. Or a container on a cargo freighter. Or just move it around in a U-Haul. Or just have a couple dozen in subbasements of the consular offices of the [fill in feared country of your choice here], ready to detonate at any time. There could be a nuke in the Russian embassy in Washington DC, disguised as a samovar.
I don't imagine missles hitting us; I never did, even in the terrorized commie-hystera of Reagan's era. NO COUNTRY IS GOING TO FIRE A MISSLE AT THE U.S.. Get over this insanity. No one is going to insure their nation's immediate suicide! Russia isn't going to kill itself. CHINA IS NOT GOING TO FIRE A MISSLE AT THE U.S. They are doing just fine, have no impulse to eliminate their civilization by frying Los Angeles. NO, THEY ARE NOT MADMEN, EVEN IF THEY ARE COMMUNISTS. They never were!
We have lived in a continuous state of hysteria since the forties. We've sapped our GDP by funding this imaginary war for decades. A lot of people are richer for it, of course.
The only real danger of a nuclear attack has been from extra-national agencies such as Al Qaeda; but they, no matter how fearful we are of them, aren't that interested in causing the nuclear annihilation of Islamic nations, which Bush and the U.S. would certainly cause if such an attack was launched. There's no strategic reason for such an attack. 9-11 was about provoking us into doing something stupid, which we of course did, as predicted. But a nuke? Why?
There should be a name for this syndrome. A belief that everyone else in the world is suicidally insane and incomprehensible.
"The whole idea is to allow poor people to get on the internet."
Well, then it is highly illogical to use Windows, no? Linux and OpenOffice are both "free", as in: not costing money.
AMD doesn't need MS for this at all. The price of the box would be much cheaper without Redmond's contribution.
So why? Because they want to give MS a bone. MS likes bones, and if you don't feed them the occasional femur, they start thinking that meat would taste better. The meat of your still-beating heart, freshly ripped from your chest during the hostile takeover, or during the utter destruction of your business model.
" If Al Gore didn't have a well-deserved reputation for firing off whoppers, this one wouldn't have stuck."
He had no such reputation. As the parent post's link points out, it was fabricated by the RNC and various eager writers in 2000.
Bush, however, has a long history of non-history. Which rarely has been questioned by those self-same eager boys. His arrest record. Drug use. Alchoholism until he was 40. Violent behavior. Horrfying academic record coupled with a well-documented sense of disdain towards university education. Dad's friends' influence in getting him into the champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard. Failure to show up for duty. Refusing direct orders to report for a physical. Failure to be sent to Vietnam via the Army for refusing said order, which happened to other officers who did not obey orders. Failures of his "businesses". His involvement in the real estate deal in which land granted to build a baseball stadium was instead sold off to build profitable developments, giving him his first real money with which to run for governor. The utter fiscal disaster left in Texas after his tax cuts there. The collapse of the Texas school system, with his blessing. The funeral industry scandal that he involved himself in. The amazing elevation of a no-account dunderhead to governor and then President in less than five years. His daughters: the restauranteur who carded the twins was weeks later ruined by inspectors - business lost as retribution. The retribution against the man who outed the Bush's national guard record - his veterans benefits canceled as he dies from a viral infection caught in service. The vile accusations against McCain in 2000. the unbelieveable memetic attack against Gore in 2000. The Bush brothers control of the electoral process in Florida in 2000. The recount blockage. The fake "riot" in Dade county against election officials, rioters composed of RNC staffers. The shutdown of environmental laws. Of the Microsoft case. The unbelieveable failure to read critical material before 9-11 warning of the attack. the four-year campaign to block the investigation of such. The utilization of a sad, small attack by a couple of dozen fanatics to convince Americans they were at war with Iraq, Iran, Europe, and anyone who looked at us funny. The complete failure to capture the man who actually attacked us. The illegal imprisonment of anyone who looked useful in making the dope look competent in waging war. The flauting of the law in imprisonment and torture of anyone they felt like. Ignoring the Supreme Court in refusing a fair hearing to those tortured. The suppression of the torture news. The suppression of any news that they made inaccurate statement about "evidence" of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the 9-11 idiots' attack. The complete restructuring of the U.S. into a police state, ongoing. Refusing to answer questions put to him by the press. Declarations that the press was an "interest group", and as such, could be ignored or lied to. Creation of special civilian "intellence" filters that culled "facts" from the CIA biomass that the President could use to invade a non-combatant nation.The setup later to blame the CIA for the information they themselves filtered and massaged, and therefore take direct control of ALL intel agencies. War crimes against a non-hostile nation. Imprisonment of citizens of a non-hostile nation. Torture of citizens of a non-hostile nation. Coverup of same. Successful attempts, through RNC-sympathetic corporate board members at GE, Disney, Viacom and AOL-Time-Warner, to "Red State" or "Nascarize" the news operations of NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, now ongoing as the Brokow, Jennings, and Rathers are being expunged simultaneously along with all non-right-wing thinkers. The current run-up to invade Iran. The destruction of Social Security by tax cuts. The future elimination of public education by the deaths of a thousand cuts to advance a religious and private school system. Censorship. State religion. The complete restructuring of the judiciary to a Chicago-
I'm certain that Apple's IP-conscious designers are making it as difficult as they can to use the iPod as anything nearly like an ebook, but they can only do so much. And someday, non-powered nonvolatile eInk-like screens will be used instead of LCDs, which will make hacking a usable eBook screen a lot easier.
You could store ten of thousands of books on a low-end iPod.
Bush: There you go again. I don't believe I've ever said that.
Kerry: Yes, you did. twenty seconds ago.
Bush: Internets conspiracy theories again.
Kerry: You just said it again! Just now!
Bush: Did not.
Kerry: I appeal to the moderator. Did he not say "internets" twice in the past minute?
Moderator: A journalist is objective. I do not have an opinion. I only report.
Bush: How's the wife and kids? Carol still happy working for the campaign?
Moderator: She's fine sir! Sends her regards!
Kerry: What the hell? A journalist can state the plain truth as he sees it! Neutrality is not objectivity! Deafness either! Did he say it? And what's this about your wife? How objective are you--
Moderator: I can only say that you said you claim he said "internets". That's journalism.
Kerry: No, that's parroting! Are you a journalist or are you a tape recorder?
Moderator: I'm a guy making four million a year which I'm not going to risk by pissing off the boards of Viacom, GE and Disney.
Kerry: Why are we even here?
Bush: See? He's flip-flopping on either or not he wants to be here at this here debate.
Kerry: [confused] I can't deal with this...
Bush: [smirking] That's why I'm going to be President! I'm decisive. Flip-flopper. Liberal.
CIA? They've done fine with security. It'll be fun to see Carl Rove, Bush, and all the others in the White House get their Internets accounts closed for exposing Valerie Plame and the CIA front she worked for as intelligence assets simply to destroy her husband, because he dared call them liars. Treason IS, after all, de facto misuse of intelligence. Outting a dissenter's wife as an agent and destroying an anti-WMD intel operation should do it.
But you still get to be President. Reality is so flexible in America.
"Please give even one example of a war happening primarily because of defense contractors being able to profit off of it. I can't think of a single instance myself."
If they ever get it working, I'd want to be rendered into a diamond-based microchip. I could even program it to emulate my personality in a Q/A session, hold a nice selection of pictures, video, and audio files, and do other things to weird out the survivors. And it'd be made of me!
And make a couple of backups, because of the jump-up-and-down on my remains crowd.
"Wouldn't that violate their copyright, assuming that the restrictions on the media don't allow copying? The C in DMCA still stands for Copyright, right? Nevermind the `digital' parts that were added on..."
Sigh. Fair Use is really dead, isn't it? Fair Use allows you to copy your DVD, no matter what the corps say. Copyright has exceptions. Of course, they convince more people every day that the past never happened, and that copyright trumps all. Sigh again. Perception of reality is key.
Software exists to remove network logos. It's annoying that they put them in, but they are doing it intentionally to mess up your recordings. So smear it out.
Anyway, HD-DVD's are coming soon. Present DVD's are downrezzed from about 525 lines to 480. Why buy fuzzy recordings for high prices when soon they will have full-rez versions available?
And you can download most popular programs NOW using Bittorrent -- in HD format, wide aspect ratio. And make copies. Which HD-DVD's wll not let you do.
They simply won't make a decent product at a decent price. If we want to see Buffy in her hidef glory, we'll have to do it ourselves for a while. For free gratis.
It's not even funny. My friends, who can't possibly afford SUV's and the gas bill that comes with, insist on them for reasons of "style". But it's not the reason they need the trucks. They are too bloody overweight to bend at the knees and proceed to enter any normal-sized automobile.
Safety my arse. They are too fat, won't discipline themselves, and wind up in a 5000 pound vehicle that crashes into objects with an extra 1000 pound payload consisting of their families. It's rather sad. Hell, not sad, anger-inducing. They are killing people by the thousands because they need to use a cargo truck to haul their keisters in.
Actually, up until the 2000 election, exit polls were remarkably accurate.
They are still remarkably accurate -- if done for elections held anywhere but in the U.S. Magic.
And if exit polls no longer work, statistically the variant outcomes should scatter for Bush and Kerry roughly equally. They do not. They all skewed way, in some cases REALLY WAY, over to Bush.
And something is definitely wrong. Check Bev Harris's work these past few days. In Florida, she was issued unsigned audit tapes in response to her requests for evidence after the election, rather than the signed and verified ones.
After being denied the originals, she actually found them in the TRASH. Police were called to stop her, but she got the tapes.
Kids, they compared the unsigned results to the actual, disposed-of results from the dumpster.
The copies she was given do not match the originals. The vote was way, way adjusted for Bush. In. Every. Case.
She won't make the conclusion outright, but it's obvious. Where Jeb could cheat, he did. Mygod, how could he NOT cheat??
It's like a dream. I remember posting this more or less same comment in a PC Magazine online forum back in '98 or '99.
This is the endgame, folks. This is what Gates has had planned for years -- the real endgame. Not some iffy market monopoly over PC operatings systems and office software.
This is the whole enchilada. They want to own EVERYTHING worth owning. This is why the "Intellectual Property" meme has been pumped so hard these past few years. the real reason why the RIAA, MPAA, the SPA, and all the overseas equivalents are suing anything that moves. It's the natural outcome of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
The biggest boys are pooling their resources to start the ultimate monopoly. They want to put a meter on every conceivable human idea they can beg, buy, borrow or steal. I'm not overstating how enormous their ambition is. Don't look at the distracting smiling face; keep your eyes on the magicians' hands.
I DO understand that they are talking about patents. But it's really irrelevant. They are going to force revenue to precipitate out of the ether into their hands that dwarfs anything Gates ever dreamed of. And that kind of wealth, driven by monoploy players, will be used to buy up more than merely patents.
It's why MS has been pumping the RIAA and MPAA to adopt MS proprietary codecs. It's why the X-Box REALLY exists. It's about owning the culture, or more precisely, the circulatory system of the culture. They want to own processes, patents, and eventually, every piece of ownable video, audio, and images of art. They will own the newspapers, or at least the means of disseminating the newspapers. All cable networks. They want the internet(s) under their control, if only to control the information flow so it can't affect their power.
The biggest boys are lining up for a piece of something even they can't visualize. The ultimate shape of this monster will be worldwide. It's power will be greater than any government or combination of governments.
They won't permit any real change in patent or copyright laws. They might let us have token victories on things that don't matter much, but the final shape will be dictated by them.
Here's the final outcome:
A loose confederation of very wealthy men will run a structure composed of corporations that will really, truly own every copyrighted work of man. They will own our history. They will meter it out to their advantage. Witness (NBC?) refusing to permit use of a copyrighted video of Bush making an idiot of himself on TV before the election, just because they could, no reason necessary.
And these corporations will hold copyrights and perhaps even patents, in some form, for ever-extended periods of time. Effectively for eternity. Corporations can't die. They can't go to jail. You can't arrest them. They are fictions designed to hide real men from real responsibilty for their actions.
We're going to have immortal fictions own our world. Americans say, "So what? I'll buy stock."
That's why privately owned corporations are all the rage right now. Why some of the biggest are invite-only for those they deem worthy. ICANN was bought by one of these monstrosities. Some corporations are buying back their own stock with an eye to, well, not share the wealth.
I'm only pointing out the obvious.
I'm not anti-business. I'm anti-corporation. There is a difference. I want expiration dates on IP. I want the corporate shield for individual malfeasance to be gone. I want this incestuous network of greedy buggers to hew to some kind of law that they didn't write themselves. We fought long and hard to break up the 19th century trusts that were smothering the life out of representative government; I DON'T want them back, only immortal, anational, and unkillable.
Reno let the rabid dogs have a special prosecutor, who spent seventy millions bucks to mount an impeachment fishing expedition. What else would you want?? JEEZ.
And it all came up empty.
Now Aschroft? Snatched defeat from the claws of victory, and completely let Microsoft walk after it was convicted, fried, toasted by the Reno Justice Department. Dragged his heels on the Enron investigation -- helped Bush run interference as the billions were stolen. Slow-walked the Valerie Plame treason investigation past the election. Didn't investigate massive election interference in both 2000 and now 2004. Let the Pubs walk on using Homeland Security apparatus to interfere in the Texas redistricting. Won't instruct Bush to comply with the Supreme Court's stunning orders to let the concentration camp prisoners have access to a fair trial - they are ignoring the law of the land and performing show trials. He rammed the Patriot act into law, effectively repealing at least three ammendments in the Bill of Rights.
And the FBI was gutted by Freeh, the Clinton appointee who turned for the impeachment elves and committed 50 full time agents to investigating Clinton's sex lives while Al Queda was moving into position. Freeh "reformed" the FBI by eliminating an entire middle level of analysts, and "streamlining" the flow of information from below into the executive offices - ie, him. The warning from field agents were ignored because experienced analysts no longer existed to read the damned reports.
The FBI was "changed around" by Freeh. I doubt much that Ashcroft did didley to restore the analysts back to duty. Waht Bush/Ashcroft are doing, really, is to make every information asset we have responsible to and report to the executive, ie Bush. Not only do we not have the middle level of analysts back, we instead have a pack of political true-believers distilling info for the President's consumption. It's a wreck.
His resignation was rumored for over a year. no surprise. However, his replacement will be much worse.
Human life is too sacred to even conceive of killing a fertilized ovum. Human life in the womb must be preserved at all costs, up to and including executing doctors.
Those phrases were added to the money and to the Pledge in the 1950's, during the commie hysteria. They are not part of our nation's origin.
"Morals and beliefs", like "moral values", is simply doubletalk for religion. They aren't "moral" values. They are RELIGIOUS values. Morals exist outside of religion.
By "moral", fundamentalists mean repression of homosexuals,abortion,and secular government. It is advocacy of tax-paid religious instruction in fundamentalist christian dogma(you don't think Scientologists are going to steer "moral values", do you?), creationism, sexual repression, censorship, militarism, and end-of-the-world viewpoints in everyday government.
Politics is life,my friend. It's what makes people people.
Slashdot Mirror
"How much time before Bush bans Rand McNally Maps & Globes?"
:) Have a nice day, everyone.
GWB and his brain trust already have banned access to satellite imagery, when and where at their discretion. And yes, some paper maps are now "classified".
Editorial: I don't think Al Qaeda really exists anymore, not in the way the PLO does; I don't think there is a mighty global army of "terrorists" (yet -- we're making one!); I don't even think there is such a thing as "terrorism", and you can't have a war against it. I think Bush has created the greatest engine for continuous war we've ever had. The evile commies were pikers. We've an enemy now that can't be identified, and so can never be defeated. We've a population that is convinced it is under attack by Islam. (Really. Harken to the people.) Bush has grabbed control of all branches of government, the military, intelligence, food production, libraries, public communication, the schools... and hasn't produced a single "terrorist", and doesn't seem to be in any hurry to prove that he has. We've let ourselves be snookered by a man who's conned himself into believing he's fighting God's war against evil. There will be no end to this.
The man didn't understand there was a difference between Shiites and Sunni. That Sweden is not Switzerland. He decides with his "gut", not because he thinks it's better to, but because that's all he's got. There's no opposition because no news organization credits anti-administration criticism for long.
It's like an ice age: once the ice triumphs, it takes a hell of a lot of heat to reverse the glaciers. And a very long time.
End of sermon
And drag our screaming kids back into the fire when they try to jump? Sorry, that was on tape.
You brought it up; it's offtopic but I hate to see the "Jackbooted Thugs" murdering poor religionists meme reinforced.
They immolated their own kids with themselves; they were stark staring mad -- and should have had the kids taken away. There was outstanding evidence they were heavily armed, abusing kids, and thought themselves at war with the "government". They weren't victims of anything except their own mad vision.
Their kids were the victims.
Look at it this way: what if the people dragging their kids back into the flames had been, oh, Iranians, doing it in the name of Allah? Is being caucasian and southern a pass to do things you would consider religious fanaticism on the steets of Teheran?
"Number two, Apple is under no obligation to support ANYONE else's DRM, period."
I've no horse in this race, since I don't "own" (license) DRM'ed music, but I'd have to say that although Apple doesn't have to support anyone else's DRM format, that doesn't mean that they can stealthily change my hardware's capabilities to preclude my option to do so. I bought the iPod; I did not give permission for anyone to change the software.
I realize my "license agreement" may "give" them permission. I do not agree with it.
It's about 3 years until the U.S.'s intentional devaluation of the dollar and our need to borrow from the EU and China throws the U.S. into a depression, dragging everyone down with it.
An unstable U.S. with 100,000 nuclear, sorry, nukular, weapons is a very bad thing indeed.
Missles, missles, missles, MISSILES, always missles.
This isn't directed at you or even your post. It's just a scream. Bush and Reagan, the neocons, always obsessed with missle attacks, because they never think for even a few seconds. There's so much money in building a missles "shield", and so much inbred fear of missles in U.S. citizens, that we can't think properly.
WHY a missle to deliver a nuclear bomb? Use a cruise missle instead. OR, a commuter aircraft for an airburst. Or put it on a freight train. Or a container on a cargo freighter. Or just move it around in a U-Haul. Or just have a couple dozen in subbasements of the consular offices of the [fill in feared country of your choice here], ready to detonate at any time. There could be a nuke in the Russian embassy in Washington DC, disguised as a samovar.
I don't imagine missles hitting us; I never did, even in the terrorized commie-hystera of Reagan's era. NO COUNTRY IS GOING TO FIRE A MISSLE AT THE U.S.. Get over this insanity. No one is going to insure their nation's immediate suicide! Russia isn't going to kill itself. CHINA IS NOT GOING TO FIRE A MISSLE AT THE U.S. They are doing just fine, have no impulse to eliminate their civilization by frying Los Angeles. NO, THEY ARE NOT MADMEN, EVEN IF THEY ARE COMMUNISTS. They never were!
We have lived in a continuous state of hysteria since the forties. We've sapped our GDP by funding this imaginary war for decades. A lot of people are richer for it, of course.
The only real danger of a nuclear attack has been from extra-national agencies such as Al Qaeda; but they, no matter how fearful we are of them, aren't that interested in causing the nuclear annihilation of Islamic nations, which Bush and the U.S. would certainly cause if such an attack was launched. There's no strategic reason for such an attack. 9-11 was about provoking us into doing something stupid, which we of course did, as predicted. But a nuke? Why?
There should be a name for this syndrome. A belief that everyone else in the world is suicidally insane and incomprehensible.
"The whole idea is to allow poor people to get on the internet."
Well, then it is highly illogical to use Windows, no? Linux and OpenOffice are both "free", as in: not costing money.
AMD doesn't need MS for this at all. The price of the box would be much cheaper without Redmond's contribution.
So why? Because they want to give MS a bone. MS likes bones, and if you don't feed them the occasional femur, they start thinking that meat would taste better. The meat of your still-beating heart, freshly ripped from your chest during the hostile takeover, or during the utter destruction of your business model.
" If Al Gore didn't have a well-deserved reputation for firing off whoppers, this one wouldn't have stuck."
He had no such reputation. As the parent post's link points out, it was fabricated by the RNC and various eager writers in 2000.
Bush, however, has a long history of non-history. Which rarely has been questioned by those self-same eager boys. His arrest record. Drug use. Alchoholism until he was 40. Violent behavior. Horrfying academic record coupled with a well-documented sense of disdain towards university education. Dad's friends' influence in getting him into the champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard. Failure to show up for duty. Refusing direct orders to report for a physical. Failure to be sent to Vietnam via the Army for refusing said order, which happened to other officers who did not obey orders. Failures of his "businesses". His involvement in the real estate deal in which land granted to build a baseball stadium was instead sold off to build profitable developments, giving him his first real money with which to run for governor. The utter fiscal disaster left in Texas after his tax cuts there. The collapse of the Texas school system, with his blessing. The funeral industry scandal that he involved himself in. The amazing elevation of a no-account dunderhead to governor and then President in less than five years. His daughters: the restauranteur who carded the twins was weeks later ruined by inspectors - business lost as retribution. The retribution against the man who outed the Bush's national guard record - his veterans benefits canceled as he dies from a viral infection caught in service. The vile accusations against McCain in 2000. the unbelieveable memetic attack against Gore in 2000. The Bush brothers control of the electoral process in Florida in 2000. The recount blockage. The fake "riot" in Dade county against election officials, rioters composed of RNC staffers. The shutdown of environmental laws. Of the Microsoft case. The unbelieveable failure to read critical material before 9-11 warning of the attack. the four-year campaign to block the investigation of such. The utilization of a sad, small attack by a couple of dozen fanatics to convince Americans they were at war with Iraq, Iran, Europe, and anyone who looked at us funny. The complete failure to capture the man who actually attacked us. The illegal imprisonment of anyone who looked useful in making the dope look competent in waging war. The flauting of the law in imprisonment and torture of anyone they felt like. Ignoring the Supreme Court in refusing a fair hearing to those tortured. The suppression of the torture news. The suppression of any news that they made inaccurate statement about "evidence" of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the 9-11 idiots' attack. The complete restructuring of the U.S. into a police state, ongoing. Refusing to answer questions put to him by the press. Declarations that the press was an "interest group", and as such, could be ignored or lied to. Creation of special civilian "intellence" filters that culled "facts" from the CIA biomass that the President could use to invade a non-combatant nation.The setup later to blame the CIA for the information they themselves filtered and massaged, and therefore take direct control of ALL intel agencies. War crimes against a non-hostile nation. Imprisonment of citizens of a non-hostile nation. Torture of citizens of a non-hostile nation. Coverup of same. Successful attempts, through RNC-sympathetic corporate board members at GE, Disney, Viacom and AOL-Time-Warner, to "Red State" or "Nascarize" the news operations of NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, now ongoing as the Brokow, Jennings, and Rathers are being expunged simultaneously along with all non-right-wing thinkers. The current run-up to invade Iran. The destruction of Social Security by tax cuts. The future elimination of public education by the deaths of a thousand cuts to advance a religious and private school system. Censorship. State religion. The complete restructuring of the judiciary to a Chicago-
um, guys?
The iPod IS an ebook. It wouldn't take much to make it work. As a matter of fact, people are already using iPods to read text. Check out this sort-of eBook creator, or this iPod ebook creator.
I'm certain that Apple's IP-conscious designers are making it as difficult as they can to use the iPod as anything nearly like an ebook, but they can only do so much. And someday, non-powered nonvolatile eInk-like screens will be used instead of LCDs, which will make hacking a usable eBook screen a lot easier.
You could store ten of thousands of books on a low-end iPod.
" George W. Bush: I think you meant "internets"!"
TheWayitShouldHaveBeen:
Kerry: Sir, I do believe you said "internets".
Bush: There you go again. I don't believe I've ever said that.
Kerry: Yes, you did. twenty seconds ago.
Bush: Internets conspiracy theories again.
Kerry: You just said it again! Just now!
Bush: Did not.
Kerry: I appeal to the moderator. Did he not say "internets" twice in the past minute?
Moderator: A journalist is objective. I do not have an opinion. I only report.
Bush: How's the wife and kids? Carol still happy working for the campaign?
Moderator: She's fine sir! Sends her regards!
Kerry: What the hell? A journalist can state the plain truth as he sees it! Neutrality is not objectivity! Deafness either! Did he say it? And what's this about your wife? How objective are you--
Moderator: I can only say that you said you claim he said "internets". That's journalism.
Kerry: No, that's parroting! Are you a journalist or are you a tape recorder?
Moderator: I'm a guy making four million a year which I'm not going to risk by pissing off the boards of Viacom, GE and Disney.
Kerry: Why are we even here?
Bush: See? He's flip-flopping on either or not he wants to be here at this here debate.
Kerry: [confused] I can't deal with this...
Bush: [smirking] That's why I'm going to be President! I'm decisive. Flip-flopper. Liberal.
Kerry: [giggles, has an infarct]
CIA? They've done fine with security.
It'll be fun to see Carl Rove, Bush, and all the others in the White House get their Internets accounts closed for exposing Valerie Plame and the CIA front she worked for as intelligence assets simply to destroy her husband, because he dared call them liars. Treason IS, after all, de facto misuse of intelligence. Outting a dissenter's wife as an agent and destroying an anti-WMD intel operation should do it.
But you still get to be President. Reality is so flexible in America.
"Please give even one example of a war happening primarily because of defense contractors being able to profit off of it. I can't think of a single instance myself."
Cheney. Haliburton. Iraq.
1 caret diamond? Nah.
If they ever get it working, I'd want to be rendered into a diamond-based microchip. I could even program it to emulate my personality in a Q/A session, hold a nice selection of pictures, video, and audio files, and do other things to weird out the survivors. And it'd be made of me!
And make a couple of backups, because of the jump-up-and-down on my remains crowd.
"Wouldn't that violate their copyright, assuming that the restrictions on the media don't allow copying? The C in DMCA still stands for Copyright, right? Nevermind the `digital' parts that were added on ..."
Sigh. Fair Use is really dead, isn't it?
Fair Use allows you to copy your DVD, no matter what the corps say. Copyright has exceptions. Of course, they convince more people every day that the past never happened, and that copyright trumps all. Sigh again. Perception of reality is key.
Software exists to remove network logos. It's annoying that they put them in, but they are doing it intentionally to mess up your recordings. So smear it out.
Anyway, HD-DVD's are coming soon. Present DVD's are downrezzed from about 525 lines to 480. Why buy fuzzy recordings for high prices when soon they will have full-rez versions available?
And you can download most popular programs NOW using Bittorrent -- in HD format, wide aspect ratio. And make copies. Which HD-DVD's wll not let you do.
They simply won't make a decent product at a decent price. If we want to see Buffy in her hidef glory, we'll have to do it ourselves for a while. For free gratis.
It's not even funny. My friends, who can't possibly afford SUV's and the gas bill that comes with, insist on them for reasons of "style". But it's not the reason they need the trucks. They are too bloody overweight to bend at the knees and proceed to enter any normal-sized automobile.
Safety my arse. They are too fat, won't discipline themselves, and wind up in a 5000 pound vehicle that crashes into objects with an extra 1000 pound payload consisting of their families. It's rather sad. Hell, not sad, anger-inducing. They are killing people by the thousands because they need to use a cargo truck to haul their keisters in.
"Certainly not when the crumple zone is your knees."
In an SUV, not speaking metaphorically here at all, you understand: the crumple zone is the car of the poor bastard you hit. And the people in it.
That's how SUV's survive crashes unscathed.
Then, do they at the hospital refer to SUV drivers as "organ removers"?
It's all in what you want to perceive.
Actually, up until the 2000 election, exit polls were remarkably accurate.
They are still remarkably accurate -- if done for elections held anywhere but in the U.S. Magic.
And if exit polls no longer work, statistically the variant outcomes should scatter for Bush and Kerry roughly equally. They do not. They all skewed way, in some cases REALLY WAY, over to Bush.
And something is definitely wrong. Check Bev Harris's work these past few days. In Florida, she was issued unsigned audit tapes in response to her requests for evidence after the election, rather than the signed and verified ones.
After being denied the originals, she actually found them in the TRASH. Police were called to stop her, but she got the tapes.
Kids, they compared the unsigned results to the actual, disposed-of results from the dumpster.
The copies she was given do not match the originals. The vote was way, way adjusted for Bush. In. Every. Case.
She won't make the conclusion outright, but it's obvious. Where Jeb could cheat, he did. Mygod, how could he NOT cheat??
Damn.
It's like a dream. I remember posting this more or less same comment in a PC Magazine online forum back in '98 or '99.
This is the endgame, folks. This is what Gates has had planned for years -- the real endgame. Not some iffy market monopoly over PC operatings systems and office software.
This is the whole enchilada. They want to own EVERYTHING worth owning. This is why the "Intellectual Property" meme has been pumped so hard these past few years. the real reason why the RIAA, MPAA, the SPA, and all the overseas equivalents are suing anything that moves. It's the natural outcome of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
The biggest boys are pooling their resources to start the ultimate monopoly. They want to put a meter on every conceivable human idea they can beg, buy, borrow or steal. I'm not overstating how enormous their ambition is. Don't look at the distracting smiling face; keep your eyes on the magicians' hands.
I DO understand that they are talking about patents. But it's really irrelevant. They are going to force revenue to precipitate out of the ether into their hands that dwarfs anything Gates ever dreamed of. And that kind of wealth, driven by monoploy players, will be used to buy up more than merely patents.
It's why MS has been pumping the RIAA and MPAA to adopt MS proprietary codecs. It's why the X-Box REALLY exists. It's about owning the culture, or more precisely, the circulatory system of the culture. They want to own processes, patents, and eventually, every piece of ownable video, audio, and images of art. They will own the newspapers, or at least the means of disseminating the newspapers. All cable networks. They want the internet(s) under their control, if only to control the information flow so it can't affect their power.
The biggest boys are lining up for a piece of something even they can't visualize. The ultimate shape of this monster will be worldwide. It's power will be greater than any government or combination of governments.
They won't permit any real change in patent or copyright laws. They might let us have token victories on things that don't matter much, but the final shape will be dictated by them.
Here's the final outcome:
A loose confederation of very wealthy men will run a structure composed of corporations that will really, truly own every copyrighted work of man. They will own our history. They will meter it out to their advantage. Witness (NBC?) refusing to permit use of a copyrighted video of Bush making an idiot of himself on TV before the election, just because they could, no reason necessary.
And these corporations will hold copyrights and perhaps even patents, in some form, for ever-extended periods of time. Effectively for eternity. Corporations can't die. They can't go to jail. You can't arrest them. They are fictions designed to hide real men from real responsibilty for their actions.
We're going to have immortal fictions own our world. Americans say, "So what? I'll buy stock."
That's why privately owned corporations are all the rage right now. Why some of the biggest are invite-only for those they deem worthy. ICANN was bought by one of these monstrosities. Some corporations are buying back their own stock with an eye to, well, not share the wealth.
I'm only pointing out the obvious.
I'm not anti-business. I'm anti-corporation. There is a difference. I want expiration dates on IP. I want the corporate shield for individual malfeasance to be gone. I want this incestuous network of greedy buggers to hew to some kind of law that they didn't write themselves. We fought long and hard to break up the 19th century trusts that were smothering the life out of representative government; I DON'T want them back, only immortal, anational, and unkillable.
"Reading, Writing, and ArithmAtic."
O, sweet justice.
SHHHHH!!!
... now 600K... 700K... 1 million...
Nobody knows about Pullman, not even Chicago yuppies. You can still buy a home there for less than...
oh damn. Here come the people with the trust funds... now the places are worth 500,000 dollars
you think I'm kidding? Condos in UPTOWN are going for 550K now. This is insane.
Reno let the rabid dogs have a special prosecutor, who spent seventy millions bucks to mount an impeachment fishing expedition. What else would you want?? JEEZ.
And it all came up empty.
Now Aschroft? Snatched defeat from the claws of victory, and completely let Microsoft walk after it was convicted, fried, toasted by the Reno Justice Department. Dragged his heels on the Enron investigation -- helped Bush run interference as the billions were stolen. Slow-walked the Valerie Plame treason investigation past the election. Didn't investigate massive election interference in both 2000 and now 2004. Let the Pubs walk on using Homeland Security apparatus to interfere in the Texas redistricting. Won't instruct Bush to comply with the Supreme Court's stunning orders to let the concentration camp prisoners have access to a fair trial - they are ignoring the law of the land and performing show trials. He rammed the Patriot act into law, effectively repealing at least three ammendments in the Bill of Rights.
And the FBI was gutted by Freeh, the Clinton appointee who turned for the impeachment elves and committed 50 full time agents to investigating Clinton's sex lives while Al Queda was moving into position. Freeh "reformed" the FBI by eliminating an entire middle level of analysts, and "streamlining" the flow of information from below into the executive offices - ie, him. The warning from field agents were ignored because experienced analysts no longer existed to read the damned reports.
The FBI was "changed around" by Freeh. I doubt much that Ashcroft did didley to restore the analysts back to duty. Waht Bush/Ashcroft are doing, really, is to make every information asset we have responsible to and report to the executive, ie Bush. Not only do we not have the middle level of analysts back, we instead have a pack of political true-believers distilling info for the President's consumption. It's a wreck.
His resignation was rumored for over a year. no surprise. However, his replacement will be much worse.
Human life is too sacred to even conceive of killing a fertilized ovum. Human life in the womb must be preserved at all costs, up to and including executing doctors.
For, after birth, fuck you hippie! Die!
Don't forget Prohibition III:
:(
"War on Intellectual Property Criminals"®
Ashcroft is firing up the black armored assault vehicles as we speak
""In God we Trust!" "One Nation, Under God!"
Those phrases were added to the money and to the Pledge in the 1950's, during the commie hysteria. They are not part of our nation's origin.
"Morals and beliefs", like "moral values", is simply doubletalk for religion. They aren't "moral" values. They are RELIGIOUS values. Morals exist outside of religion.
By "moral", fundamentalists mean repression of homosexuals,abortion,and secular government. It is advocacy of tax-paid religious instruction in fundamentalist christian dogma(you don't think Scientologists are going to steer "moral values", do you?), creationism, sexual repression, censorship, militarism, and end-of-the-world viewpoints in everyday government.
Politics is life,my friend. It's what makes people people.