Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer... In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walked on among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
Re:Ah, the era of homepages
on
Jurassic Web
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Remember insidetheweb.com? All those shitty message boards with shitty, SHITTY coding that you could spam tags such as and completely own a thread because it wouldn't be stripped by the server and thus would be interpreted as browsers as proper html?
Man, those were the days. Then ezboards sprung up, an then eventually as people wisened up they started to get real boards based on phpBB and such on hosting.
So Windows sells more because it's well-designed and easy to use?
Sometimes it really is just marketing. Not that the Ipod isn't easy to use. I've found most people I talk to just buy it because that's all they hear about.
Other MP3 players are pretty much just about as easy to use.
And I missed the part of the Constitution that forbids socialized medicine, mortgage bailouts, etc.
Because they didn't specifically forbid an infinite amount of things, it's allowed? You must've failed civics if you didn't realize that the constitution was a document of enumerative powers. Quick, go and google up "enumeratived powers"...!
Ah, the kind, compassionate liberal reduced to invective. I've seen this before---claim to be working for the "common man", talking about the rights of the poor, and how there's no shame in being working class, and then when pointed out that many conservatives and libertarians are not wealthy at all, the classist sniping begins. Makes you wonder what some liberals REALLY think...
The left says no such thing, except for that people get paid a fair amount, and treated well in the workplace.
And what is "fair", and "treated well"? Subjective notions; this always entails a "high standard of living" because "fair" and "treated well" are always relative judgments.
There's a reason many liberals believe that people have a right to free healthcare, and a right to internet access, so on and so forth.
I agree. The term has been used by so many groups and co-opted by moderates that it's hard to pin it down. I'm using it in terms of the laissez-faire, almost (or perhaps complete) anarchistic "free markets, free minds" type. Basically, the individualist, voluntaryism type.
I stopped reading after you claimed that libertarians were the "true" right, while simultaneously being "true" democrats.
You missed my point. I did not intend to compare libertarians to the political motives of democrats, but in terms of freedom of individual action. One person, one vote, freedom of making choice, etc? How about extending that all the way to all our rights? I did not mean "democrat" in terms of "democracy" literally.
Do you see nothing wrong with having rights not because they benefit society, but because some person, or group of people, arbitrarily decided they were important to have? If granting a right to people does not benefit society as a whole, why grant that right at all?
Because individuals are not the subjects of society. The masses should not be able to dictate what individuals can or cannot do for their own needs. Society ruling over individual men is no more just than a king ruling over everyone else. Why should the numbers matter, when it's the principle that's more important?
OK, I'll grant you that, however, libertarians don't appear to be the wealthy ones--the ones advocating laissez-faire. How many CEOs do you see advocating no government handouts and bailouts...? Most libertarians hate the Republican party as much as they hate the Democratic party; this study simply looked at Republican vs. Democrat. I'm not sure you can say libertarians are rural or urban based on this study. I'm also not sure that a neighbor's conditions effect you more in the city... perhaps the same thing might effect more people.
Yeah, I noticed I should have worded it to more accurately reflect the headline, so guys please stop giving me guff about it:)
If the money is going to get spent, then it's better off going to OSS than to one of the many groups that helped Obama get elected. But I otherwise agree with you.
Nice try, but the vast majority of free-market libertarians I've met are FAR from wealthy. Usually those advocating a more liberal system are the wealthier. Compare the bigger cities vs. the countries; bigger cities such as New York and San Fran are typically very liberal and also relatively wealthy.
The big ideological divide here is that you, a liberal, is that you're viewing people and things by function and utility, whereas the (true) libertarian believes in rights in-and-of-themselves, rights for the sake of rights. Whereas you may believe in freedom of speech because the free exchange of ideas may lead to better ideas, the libertarian believes that people should innately just be able to say what they want to say as an individual right, with little concern over whether it benefits society or not.
The greed of corporations is not ideological, not in any traditional sense of the word. Corporations, composed of usually many shareholders that are far removed from the employees of the company and their standard of living, highlight part of what's inherently wrong with democracy in the first place. And Laissez-faire is not an inherently pro-corporation philosophy--many libertarians oppose "corporate personhood" and also the greed of big business extends into government handouts and favors, which the staunch libertarian strongly rejects in almost all, if not all, circumstances.
You bring up the Iraq war, like the libertarians supported it, and maybe some "libertarians in name only" did, but the true adherents never supported it. The most laissez-faire guy in Congress--Ron Paul, obviously--strongly opposed the war from the get-go, one of the relatively few Republicans who did!
Ironically, too, that you complain about people whine about "socialism" and their big-screen TVs when the libertarians typically stress saving money instead of continual spending. It is the left that believes that people should have that high standard of living, with all its modern comforts, not the "true" right (if you consider the libertarian to be the "true right"). If you think the libertarians weren't complaining about the cost of the war--in lives and in money--you clearly weren't listening. I find that far, far too common in the left, whom choose to misrepresent libertarians quite willingly, or at least ideologically aren't all that interested in the truth.
The libertarian does not necessarily oppose "Universal Healthcare" insofar that is a voluntary decision of the individual. Not because they want to stop UH, but because they simply want to maximize the freedom and choice of every individual, even if that means the individual can end up hurting themself. The libertarian is the true democrat, as the libertarian beliefs in personal action and personal choice as opposed to the sham activities of modern democracies where some group inevitably takes from another group for the former group's benefit, whether it be poor from rich or rich from poor, able from unable or unable from able, smart from stupid or stupid from strong, or so on.
The libertarian is about individual action whereas the modern liberal is about government action. The libertarian often wouldn't mind to see what you want enacted in society, they just want it to be a personal choice--no matter if most people would find it beneficial. The modern attempt to construct a "one-size-fits-all" society is what the libertarian ultimately rejects because the focus on the libertarian is on the rights of the individual and not what most fits for the group.
Until you can understand and properly address the concerns of the libertarian, your arguments won't make much headway with any of them, because you're talking past them and insulting them by implying they believe or dislike things that may not necessarily be the case.
Ahahaha, someone named "SanityinAnarchy" is, like a true socialist, advocating government means to perceived social problems. So much for the "anarchy" part!
Nowadays both parents work. Do you really think high school is a place for "higher learning" or a place to shuffle adolescents to keep them from "getting in the dumpster" so to speak?
Slashdot Mirror
"The smug, self-righteous sons of bitches" part is quite appropriate then, isn't it?
I've always been a PC at heart.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer... In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walked on among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
THIS PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Remember insidetheweb.com? All those shitty message boards with shitty, SHITTY coding that you could spam tags such as and completely own a thread because it wouldn't be stripped by the server and thus would be interpreted as browsers as proper html?
Man, those were the days. Then ezboards sprung up, an then eventually as people wisened up they started to get real boards based on phpBB and such on hosting.
....Ubuntu...??
RAlink more like RAstink, right? RIGHT?
No, I don't doubt that. However, that is very different from their continued success today. The market today has much better MP3 players.
At the time it was probably the best, but nowadays, there IS better.
Most people don't sit down and compare MP3 players; they buy the Ipod because it's well-marketed.
So Windows sells more because it's well-designed and easy to use?
Sometimes it really is just marketing. Not that the Ipod isn't easy to use. I've found most people I talk to just buy it because that's all they hear about.
Other MP3 players are pretty much just about as easy to use.
Ipods are pretty overrated, at least in terms of price vs. features + performance.
I don't think people quite got what "YES WE CAN" really meant. They didn't read the "FUCK YOU OVER" at the end that was implied.
And I missed the part of the Constitution that forbids socialized medicine, mortgage bailouts, etc.
Because they didn't specifically forbid an infinite amount of things, it's allowed? You must've failed civics if you didn't realize that the constitution was a document of enumerative powers. Quick, go and google up "enumeratived powers"...!
Ah, the kind, compassionate liberal reduced to invective. I've seen this before---claim to be working for the "common man", talking about the rights of the poor, and how there's no shame in being working class, and then when pointed out that many conservatives and libertarians are not wealthy at all, the classist sniping begins. Makes you wonder what some liberals REALLY think...
The left says no such thing, except for that people get paid a fair amount, and treated well in the workplace.
And what is "fair", and "treated well"? Subjective notions; this always entails a "high standard of living" because "fair" and "treated well" are always relative judgments.
There's a reason many liberals believe that people have a right to free healthcare, and a right to internet access, so on and so forth.
A chicken in every pot and car in every garage.
There's also the interesting phenomenon of Hollywood being incredibly liberal.
I agree. The term has been used by so many groups and co-opted by moderates that it's hard to pin it down. I'm using it in terms of the laissez-faire, almost (or perhaps complete) anarchistic "free markets, free minds" type. Basically, the individualist, voluntaryism type.
I stopped reading after you claimed that libertarians were the "true" right, while simultaneously being "true" democrats.
You missed my point. I did not intend to compare libertarians to the political motives of democrats, but in terms of freedom of individual action. One person, one vote, freedom of making choice, etc? How about extending that all the way to all our rights? I did not mean "democrat" in terms of "democracy" literally.
Do you see nothing wrong with having rights not because they benefit society, but because some person, or group of people, arbitrarily decided they were important to have? If granting a right to people does not benefit society as a whole, why grant that right at all?
Because individuals are not the subjects of society. The masses should not be able to dictate what individuals can or cannot do for their own needs. Society ruling over individual men is no more just than a king ruling over everyone else. Why should the numbers matter, when it's the principle that's more important?
See? You don't even try to understand the point I'm trying to make. I'm not talking about trying to make a "few individuals" rich and happy.
The point is this: mutual consent among INDIVIDUALS, not majorities in a group.
OK, I'll grant you that, however, libertarians don't appear to be the wealthy ones--the ones advocating laissez-faire. How many CEOs do you see advocating no government handouts and bailouts...? Most libertarians hate the Republican party as much as they hate the Democratic party; this study simply looked at Republican vs. Democrat. I'm not sure you can say libertarians are rural or urban based on this study. I'm also not sure that a neighbor's conditions effect you more in the city... perhaps the same thing might effect more people.
Uh, to be fair, he's being sarcastic, he's mocking what you think he's saying. Still, his overall point is... just wrong.
Yeah, I noticed I should have worded it to more accurately reflect the headline, so guys please stop giving me guff about it :)
If the money is going to get spent, then it's better off going to OSS than to one of the many groups that helped Obama get elected. But I otherwise agree with you.
Nice try, but the vast majority of free-market libertarians I've met are FAR from wealthy. Usually those advocating a more liberal system are the wealthier. Compare the bigger cities vs. the countries; bigger cities such as New York and San Fran are typically very liberal and also relatively wealthy.
The big ideological divide here is that you, a liberal, is that you're viewing people and things by function and utility, whereas the (true) libertarian believes in rights in-and-of-themselves, rights for the sake of rights. Whereas you may believe in freedom of speech because the free exchange of ideas may lead to better ideas, the libertarian believes that people should innately just be able to say what they want to say as an individual right, with little concern over whether it benefits society or not.
The greed of corporations is not ideological, not in any traditional sense of the word. Corporations, composed of usually many shareholders that are far removed from the employees of the company and their standard of living, highlight part of what's inherently wrong with democracy in the first place. And Laissez-faire is not an inherently pro-corporation philosophy--many libertarians oppose "corporate personhood" and also the greed of big business extends into government handouts and favors, which the staunch libertarian strongly rejects in almost all, if not all, circumstances.
You bring up the Iraq war, like the libertarians supported it, and maybe some "libertarians in name only" did, but the true adherents never supported it. The most laissez-faire guy in Congress--Ron Paul, obviously--strongly opposed the war from the get-go, one of the relatively few Republicans who did!
Ironically, too, that you complain about people whine about "socialism" and their big-screen TVs when the libertarians typically stress saving money instead of continual spending. It is the left that believes that people should have that high standard of living, with all its modern comforts, not the "true" right (if you consider the libertarian to be the "true right"). If you think the libertarians weren't complaining about the cost of the war--in lives and in money--you clearly weren't listening. I find that far, far too common in the left, whom choose to misrepresent libertarians quite willingly, or at least ideologically aren't all that interested in the truth.
The libertarian does not necessarily oppose "Universal Healthcare" insofar that is a voluntary decision of the individual. Not because they want to stop UH, but because they simply want to maximize the freedom and choice of every individual, even if that means the individual can end up hurting themself. The libertarian is the true democrat, as the libertarian beliefs in personal action and personal choice as opposed to the sham activities of modern democracies where some group inevitably takes from another group for the former group's benefit, whether it be poor from rich or rich from poor, able from unable or unable from able, smart from stupid or stupid from strong, or so on.
The libertarian is about individual action whereas the modern liberal is about government action. The libertarian often wouldn't mind to see what you want enacted in society, they just want it to be a personal choice--no matter if most people would find it beneficial. The modern attempt to construct a "one-size-fits-all" society is what the libertarian ultimately rejects because the focus on the libertarian is on the rights of the individual and not what most fits for the group.
Until you can understand and properly address the concerns of the libertarian, your arguments won't make much headway with any of them, because you're talking past them and insulting them by implying they believe or dislike things that may not necessarily be the case.
No. Why? Because open source isn't typically a large lobbying group.
Next.
Ahahaha, someone named "SanityinAnarchy" is, like a true socialist, advocating government means to perceived social problems. So much for the "anarchy" part!
Nowadays both parents work. Do you really think high school is a place for "higher learning" or a place to shuffle adolescents to keep them from "getting in the dumpster" so to speak?