That is... utterly evil. Wow... that's magnitudes above and beyond the normal petty corporate evil encountered every day. Let me guess: that man is still employed, and probably moved higher up the chain.
Dear FSM in heaven, whomever you are, may you be blessed with abundant Karma, you have just saved my ass this Christmas!!! Duck Tales the DVD is out and I'm snagging TWO copies!!!
The problem is, Anonymous is falling victim to a mis-applied "No True Scotsman". I get what you're saying, but the very nature of Anonymous allows the/b/tards to come in and co-opt it, ultimately becoming Anonymous in the process and rendering your defense moot.
I wish they'd open up the Disney vault for those shows. Darkwing Duck HELLZ YEAH!!!!! As for Duck Tales, bring that back, PLUS Duck Tales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (one of the most criminally underappreciated Disney movies EVER-waaay ahead of its time)
Gawddamnit, here I was, all ready and set to hate on you, and then you had to go and throw in the most awesome counter and riposte ever. Touche, you fscking bastard.
Well, I'm going to crack open a beer and laugh my ass off at YOU, because you, as you are obviously an ubermensch and superior to everyone else on this planet, have to put up with and live under the government/society we mensch "deserve".
How does it feel to have to live and deal with us peons, every day of your life? To be surrounded by such idiots, knowing that your brilliance and superiority will never, ever go noticed, or that you'll ever make a bit of difference in this world? Bet it feels pretty good, doesn't it.
Have fun trolling tonight... I'm sure you'll have no problem finding plenty of targets
To answer your question, in my view of the world there IS Justice, and there should be hope of it. The debate between you and BlueLucidFox, and between Rakuen and CheekyJohnson (and touched on by others in this thread - never thought I'd spawn an actual serious, good discussion here) touched on a couple of key elements that I personally believe in: Justice, and Balance.
I believe that Justice must be tempered with Balance (or Mercy, if you will). Yes, there is corruption. Yes, there is evil. And yes, we should always be vigilant in monitoring for, exposing of, and protecting the instruments of our society from those elements. We have to be exact and thorough in our safeguarding, and spend the time and effort to verify if there is corruption/evil, how far has it spread, what must be done to fix the problem, and what preventions do we need to have in place. To do so is hard, and takes time and resources.
However, it is also wrong of people to smear our entire social structure with the insinuation that all those in authority are corrupt (without proof) and then insist on tearing down everything -- and conveniently rebuilding with themselves in charge. At that point, all we've done is exchange the Devil we know for the Devil we don't, and all too often the new Devil is exactly the same as the old-all he did was switch suits. Justice without Mercy leaves us wide open to such actions. It takes Mercy to realize that we don't have to destroy the whole system, just prune the parts that need pruning.
And what exactly, pray tell, would you do once the corruption and tyranny gets exposed? What are you hoping for? The revolution to begin? Bringing down the 'fat cats' and bringing 'justice' to the 'oppressed'? Okay, fine, heard that all before.
What happens afterwards? Who does the clean-up? Who puts everything back in order? Or, would there be a New World Order? One based on your personal definitions of what is 'Just' and 'Un-Just'? One in which the Wrongs are Righted, the Righteous finally ascend to Their Proper Station, and we all live in a land of Kumbayah under a new benevolent rule?
I'll cut to the chase. Spare me your indignant moral outrage and nihilistic desire to watch the world burn. You're just as bad, corrupt, and potentially tyrannous as those you espouse to hate. The only difference between 'Them' and people like you is that you haven't gotten your turn to be in charge.
What you've described is a normal Scotsman. An odd Scotsman wouldn't wear anything below the waist at all-not even trousers, be on the receiving end of a tossed telephone pole for no particular reason, deliver Glaswegian kisses to cows and trees while sober, and not only would refuse to eat anything that didn't already have sheep, potatoes, turnips, or sod in it, he'd also refrain from alcohol in all its forms. Nor would he know how to play golf.
In retrospect, it's probably the total abstainment from alcohol that would mark a Scotsman as being 'odd'. Everything else would probably get overlooked or forgiven.
Apple just makes devices that allow us to access the internet reliably. The greatest threat to the internet ISN'T Apple, MS, Google, or any of the other big tech companies, it's any entity that wants to shut down sites like ED, 4Chan, and/b/. True internet freedom is about content and guaranteeing access to that content, not about the portal you choose to utilize.
Okay, I'm curious. What exactly did happen, and why do you declare it to be different from a mental flashback of a disturbing video? Not trying to troll here, I really would like to understand the innate severity of the situation.
Because I demonstrated the initiative and resolve to improve myself, at my own expense (I had a friend in HR explain this to me). To paraphrase what she told me: good companies are on the look-out for employees who are willing to spend their own money to better themselves, rather than take a free ride on the company dime. Doing so demonstrates initiative, a desire to learn, and competence. As such, smart employers will want to retain those employees, as opposed to the ones who either a) remain stagnant or b) take the company money allotted for education, use it, and then jump ship to a better position with a competitor (which happens a lot).
Not all companies or managers do this, and you can chalk that up to the human experience - there are good companies and bad companies. I lucked out in belonging to a good one. So even though I got the Phoenix degree, the fact that I put my own time and money into improving myself for two years demonstrated to my management that I was capable of a lot more than my peers were. I was able to demonstrate that I indeed earned a Master's degree because I knew my source material and I could apply it to my job. It's what got me the job rather than the candidates with MBAs from the University of Washington I was competing against.
I'll second this. I had a thief break into my car to steal my CD changer. He broke the glass in my driver window, but then all he did was cut the cable, pop the trunk, and pull everything out. He actually took the time to pile up the CDs and what he didn't need on my driver's seat. Then he closed the door behind him. While I was out a CD changer and a window, it could have been a heck of a lot worse. I was struck by how... kind... basically the guy was.
I got my Masters in Education from Phoenix, so I'll share my experience. Bear in mind, I'm not in IT, I'm just a finance analyst, so my experience is going to be different than what true IT workers have encountered.
To be honest, I went in because I needed a Masters degree to move up the corporate ladder. In my opinion and experience, a Masters takes ten years off the advancement clock in the corporate non-IT world, and I didn't want to do the fifteen year Sales grind, or having to change careers at 30 and start at entry-level with entry-level pay yet again. I already have a Bachelor's degree, but chose to go out into the real world and get my teeth kicked in for five years rather than jump to grad school (I had too many friends going to grad school straight out of college, getting their Masters, and then ending up as grocery store clerks or waiters because MBAs and what-not weren't guarantees of jobs anymore- this was in 2000) So I decided to do a Masters in something I thought would be interesting: education. I chose Phoenix because I didn't have the time to go back to a traditional school for two years. I also didn't want to do the night school option for an MBA, as I believe those degrees are overvalued due to market saturation, and not worth the debt. Better to study something you're interested in than following the crowd.
My recruitment, in retrospect, was something out of a boiler-room. The difference was that I was ready to commit, and my recruiter was actually pretty cool (she wasn't Mormon, unlike the vast majority of them). Anyway, I jumped into the UoP online program and went in.
Several things became immediately apparent: The GRE, MAT, and other exams are there for a reason-to weed out people who shouldn't be in grad school. Some of the students I saw in my initial classes were atrocious-they should have been kicked straight back to grade school, their academic skills were so awful. The emphasis was more on producing volumes of writing initially than on quality; and the textbook resources were customized for Phoenix exclusively.
Basically, I experienced every horror story you've read about or heard. And my Master's thesis was a joke. But here's the difference. I only had two truly godawful teachers that made me question the integrity of the program: a teacher in a class about a year in, and the one who managed the end step of my thesis. The rest of my teachers (aside from those two) were highly trained educators who worked in the fields they taught in, and they knew their stuff. Wow, were they good. I learned developmental theory, organizational theory, curriculum design & instruction, statistics, educational psychology, etc from people who lived it every day. And by that point, most of my fellow students were also working teachers who knew what they were doing. So I had to pony up and put in mucho hours of study and work in order to be taken seriously by my classmates and my instructors. THOSE people are why I learned what I did about education.
When I found out about all the scandals with UoP, I was devastated. Here I was, a 'smart' guy, who'd been conned out of two years and $50K. It was one of the most traumatic moments of my life. I gritted it out and finished with my degree anyway, but I was convinced that my life was over. I'd done all that work for nothing - a tarnished degree worth nothing. But then my wife (who's a teacher herself) would talk with her fellow teachers about some pedagogical matter, and I not only knew what they were talking about, I could describe it and solve their issue better than they could. I knew what the big issues surrounding Education in the US and worldwide were. And, my company transferred me from sales into finance at a much higher salary and more secure position because I went through what I did.
To wit, the scandals are valid because there are huge problems with UoP.The media says Phoenix is trying to fix the problems, and I've seen their commercials, but I'll believe they've reformed when I see it. I got suckered, a
Pi for instance. As far as I can tell, it's infinite. Or 1/3 translating to 0.33333 et al. Why do these numbers go infinite? Why isn't there a definite end? And, what are the real world implications of an infinite number?
Roberts, Alito, and Thomas would vote in favor of allowing the FBI to retain the authority. Scalia and Kennedy would be swing votes here, but I suspect they'd swing rightward on this.
I don't. Any entity that can mobilize resources to track down anyone on the planet who does something truly offensive -like kill cats- and bring them to justice, all the while remaining invisible to the eyes of any authority, is worthy of respect and fear. So far Anonymous has been content with taking on Scientology (which has long needed to be done).
What I wonder is, how powerful is Anonymous, and the boards that host it? Does Anonymous have any limit to it's power? I find myself hoping not, because IMHO, Anonymous, ED, and 4chan are the first, last, and best lines of defense for freedom, self-expression, and individuality. If they go, we're all well and truly f*cked.
That is frightening. How did he justify his interpretation to you, knowing full well that you're a former military officer?
Also, what rank did you hold upon leaving active duty? If you were signing for cav vehicles, I imagine you were probably an O-5? Which would make his question even more ridiculous
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That is... utterly evil. Wow... that's magnitudes above and beyond the normal petty corporate evil encountered every day. Let me guess: that man is still employed, and probably moved higher up the chain.
The bus is armored, the Nuns are packing M-16s and plenty of attitude, and it's all taking place at Thunderdome. It's gonna be a hell of a show.
Now get back in the Corral. And don't forget to take your dentist friend with you.
Dear FSM in heaven, whomever you are, may you be blessed with abundant Karma, you have just saved my ass this Christmas!!! Duck Tales the DVD is out and I'm snagging TWO copies!!!
The problem is, Anonymous is falling victim to a mis-applied "No True Scotsman". I get what you're saying, but the very nature of Anonymous allows the /b/tards to come in and co-opt it, ultimately becoming Anonymous in the process and rendering your defense moot.
I wish they'd open up the Disney vault for those shows. Darkwing Duck HELLZ YEAH!!!!! As for Duck Tales, bring that back, PLUS Duck Tales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (one of the most criminally underappreciated Disney movies EVER-waaay ahead of its time)
Hmmm... thermonuclear bowel movements, anyone?
Gawddamnit, here I was, all ready and set to hate on you, and then you had to go and throw in the most awesome counter and riposte ever. Touche, you fscking bastard.
Hopefully you never do. I like your viewpoint, and I agree with you.
Well, I'm going to crack open a beer and laugh my ass off at YOU, because you, as you are obviously an ubermensch and superior to everyone else on this planet, have to put up with and live under the government/society we mensch "deserve".
How does it feel to have to live and deal with us peons, every day of your life? To be surrounded by such idiots, knowing that your brilliance and superiority will never, ever go noticed, or that you'll ever make a bit of difference in this world? Bet it feels pretty good, doesn't it.
Have fun trolling tonight... I'm sure you'll have no problem finding plenty of targets
Hey Spun, good question.
To answer your question, in my view of the world there IS Justice, and there should be hope of it. The debate between you and BlueLucidFox, and between Rakuen and CheekyJohnson (and touched on by others in this thread - never thought I'd spawn an actual serious, good discussion here) touched on a couple of key elements that I personally believe in: Justice, and Balance.
I believe that Justice must be tempered with Balance (or Mercy, if you will). Yes, there is corruption. Yes, there is evil. And yes, we should always be vigilant in monitoring for, exposing of, and protecting the instruments of our society from those elements. We have to be exact and thorough in our safeguarding, and spend the time and effort to verify if there is corruption/evil, how far has it spread, what must be done to fix the problem, and what preventions do we need to have in place. To do so is hard, and takes time and resources.
However, it is also wrong of people to smear our entire social structure with the insinuation that all those in authority are corrupt (without proof) and then insist on tearing down everything -- and conveniently rebuilding with themselves in charge. At that point, all we've done is exchange the Devil we know for the Devil we don't, and all too often the new Devil is exactly the same as the old-all he did was switch suits. Justice without Mercy leaves us wide open to such actions. It takes Mercy to realize that we don't have to destroy the whole system, just prune the parts that need pruning.
Hope that answers your question?
And what exactly, pray tell, would you do once the corruption and tyranny gets exposed? What are you hoping for? The revolution to begin? Bringing down the 'fat cats' and bringing 'justice' to the 'oppressed'? Okay, fine, heard that all before.
What happens afterwards? Who does the clean-up? Who puts everything back in order? Or, would there be a New World Order? One based on your personal definitions of what is 'Just' and 'Un-Just'? One in which the Wrongs are Righted, the Righteous finally ascend to Their Proper Station, and we all live in a land of Kumbayah under a new benevolent rule?
I'll cut to the chase. Spare me your indignant moral outrage and nihilistic desire to watch the world burn. You're just as bad, corrupt, and potentially tyrannous as those you espouse to hate. The only difference between 'Them' and people like you is that you haven't gotten your turn to be in charge.
What you've described is a normal Scotsman. An odd Scotsman wouldn't wear anything below the waist at all-not even trousers, be on the receiving end of a tossed telephone pole for no particular reason, deliver Glaswegian kisses to cows and trees while sober, and not only would refuse to eat anything that didn't already have sheep, potatoes, turnips, or sod in it, he'd also refrain from alcohol in all its forms. Nor would he know how to play golf.
In retrospect, it's probably the total abstainment from alcohol that would mark a Scotsman as being 'odd'. Everything else would probably get overlooked or forgiven.
Just a stupid question, but does gravity really pull? Or does it push?
My sysadmin bit the head off a banana this morning...
Apple just makes devices that allow us to access the internet reliably. The greatest threat to the internet ISN'T Apple, MS, Google, or any of the other big tech companies, it's any entity that wants to shut down sites like ED, 4Chan, and /b/. True internet freedom is about content and guaranteeing access to that content, not about the portal you choose to utilize.
Okay, I'm curious. What exactly did happen, and why do you declare it to be different from a mental flashback of a disturbing video? Not trying to troll here, I really would like to understand the innate severity of the situation.
Because I demonstrated the initiative and resolve to improve myself, at my own expense (I had a friend in HR explain this to me). To paraphrase what she told me: good companies are on the look-out for employees who are willing to spend their own money to better themselves, rather than take a free ride on the company dime. Doing so demonstrates initiative, a desire to learn, and competence. As such, smart employers will want to retain those employees, as opposed to the ones who either a) remain stagnant or b) take the company money allotted for education, use it, and then jump ship to a better position with a competitor (which happens a lot).
Not all companies or managers do this, and you can chalk that up to the human experience - there are good companies and bad companies. I lucked out in belonging to a good one. So even though I got the Phoenix degree, the fact that I put my own time and money into improving myself for two years demonstrated to my management that I was capable of a lot more than my peers were. I was able to demonstrate that I indeed earned a Master's degree because I knew my source material and I could apply it to my job. It's what got me the job rather than the candidates with MBAs from the University of Washington I was competing against.
Hope that answers your question?
I'll second this. I had a thief break into my car to steal my CD changer. He broke the glass in my driver window, but then all he did was cut the cable, pop the trunk, and pull everything out. He actually took the time to pile up the CDs and what he didn't need on my driver's seat. Then he closed the door behind him. While I was out a CD changer and a window, it could have been a heck of a lot worse. I was struck by how... kind... basically the guy was.
I got my Masters in Education from Phoenix, so I'll share my experience. Bear in mind, I'm not in IT, I'm just a finance analyst, so my experience is going to be different than what true IT workers have encountered.
To be honest, I went in because I needed a Masters degree to move up the corporate ladder. In my opinion and experience, a Masters takes ten years off the advancement clock in the corporate non-IT world, and I didn't want to do the fifteen year Sales grind, or having to change careers at 30 and start at entry-level with entry-level pay yet again. I already have a Bachelor's degree, but chose to go out into the real world and get my teeth kicked in for five years rather than jump to grad school (I had too many friends going to grad school straight out of college, getting their Masters, and then ending up as grocery store clerks or waiters because MBAs and what-not weren't guarantees of jobs anymore- this was in 2000) So I decided to do a Masters in something I thought would be interesting: education. I chose Phoenix because I didn't have the time to go back to a traditional school for two years. I also didn't want to do the night school option for an MBA, as I believe those degrees are overvalued due to market saturation, and not worth the debt. Better to study something you're interested in than following the crowd.
My recruitment, in retrospect, was something out of a boiler-room. The difference was that I was ready to commit, and my recruiter was actually pretty cool (she wasn't Mormon, unlike the vast majority of them). Anyway, I jumped into the UoP online program and went in.
Several things became immediately apparent: The GRE, MAT, and other exams are there for a reason-to weed out people who shouldn't be in grad school. Some of the students I saw in my initial classes were atrocious-they should have been kicked straight back to grade school, their academic skills were so awful. The emphasis was more on producing volumes of writing initially than on quality; and the textbook resources were customized for Phoenix exclusively.
Basically, I experienced every horror story you've read about or heard. And my Master's thesis was a joke. But here's the difference. I only had two truly godawful teachers that made me question the integrity of the program: a teacher in a class about a year in, and the one who managed the end step of my thesis. The rest of my teachers (aside from those two) were highly trained educators who worked in the fields they taught in, and they knew their stuff. Wow, were they good. I learned developmental theory, organizational theory, curriculum design & instruction, statistics, educational psychology, etc from people who lived it every day. And by that point, most of my fellow students were also working teachers who knew what they were doing. So I had to pony up and put in mucho hours of study and work in order to be taken seriously by my classmates and my instructors. THOSE people are why I learned what I did about education.
When I found out about all the scandals with UoP, I was devastated. Here I was, a 'smart' guy, who'd been conned out of two years and $50K. It was one of the most traumatic moments of my life. I gritted it out and finished with my degree anyway, but I was convinced that my life was over. I'd done all that work for nothing - a tarnished degree worth nothing. But then my wife (who's a teacher herself) would talk with her fellow teachers about some pedagogical matter, and I not only knew what they were talking about, I could describe it and solve their issue better than they could. I knew what the big issues surrounding Education in the US and worldwide were. And, my company transferred me from sales into finance at a much higher salary and more secure position because I went through what I did.
To wit, the scandals are valid because there are huge problems with UoP.The media says Phoenix is trying to fix the problems, and I've seen their commercials, but I'll believe they've reformed when I see it. I got suckered, a
Pi for instance. As far as I can tell, it's infinite. Or 1/3 translating to 0.33333 et al. Why do these numbers go infinite? Why isn't there a definite end? And, what are the real world implications of an infinite number?
Roberts, Alito, and Thomas would vote in favor of allowing the FBI to retain the authority. Scalia and Kennedy would be swing votes here, but I suspect they'd swing rightward on this.
I don't. Any entity that can mobilize resources to track down anyone on the planet who does something truly offensive -like kill cats- and bring them to justice, all the while remaining invisible to the eyes of any authority, is worthy of respect and fear. So far Anonymous has been content with taking on Scientology (which has long needed to be done).
What I wonder is, how powerful is Anonymous, and the boards that host it? Does Anonymous have any limit to it's power? I find myself hoping not, because IMHO, Anonymous, ED, and 4chan are the first, last, and best lines of defense for freedom, self-expression, and individuality. If they go, we're all well and truly f*cked.
That is frightening. How did he justify his interpretation to you, knowing full well that you're a former military officer?
Also, what rank did you hold upon leaving active duty? If you were signing for cav vehicles, I imagine you were probably an O-5? Which would make his question even more ridiculous
That's not enough? A entire planet is 'breathing' methane. I'd say that's grounds for some serious exploration.