Yeah some CEOs true value for sitting on his can and talking on the phone all day and most likely stripping the assets of the company and running it into the ground is 30 million a year plus a golden parachute, pleeeeeaaaasseee make me barf a lot.
The only difference between the CEO and janitor is that daddy paid for the CEO to go to business school so he (or she) could recite an endless string of meaningless buzz terms like "action items," "team empowerment," "rightsizing" and other such meaningless drivel that often leads to cruel outcomes such as outsourcing that hurt BOTH American and third world workers.
When people wake up to the fact that wages and salaries AREN'T set by the market but by what owners (and their parasitic apologists economists) are willing to pay (themselves a lot and those that actually make and design things very little) then we will all be much better off.
I think people "demonize" active x because it makes it's so damn easy to install serious malware on a Windows box. Not everyone is an elite ubergeek like on slashdot and when a dialog box comes up saying hit OK to continue viewing the web site they click it without even knowing what they are clicking on. Of course in a perfect world everyone would know what they are clicking but the actual facts are that many non computer experts need to use a computer in their day to day life. That being the case the computer needs to be set up so ORDINARY users can use the damn thing without snagging malware. And yes it's very possible my Firefox and Mac setups never get malware even the iMac used by my mom who is a total non techie.
It's called a gforce 5200 fx *. I have one in both my G5 tower and my secondary p.c. It's good enough to play Quake 3, and Need for Speed Porsche unleashed which are realistic enough for my taste, and the card has a tiny heat sink and no fan so I assume it's not drawing much power. If you want to play the latest games at 1800 x 1400 or whatever than yes you will need a giant heat producing card with a fan that sounds like a jet taking off. I'd comment though that I think recent games don't look THAT much better than the games I mentioned and game play and creativity seems to have stagnated entirely, YMMV.
And is this "power" worth the death of even one 1200 year old Redwood tree and the birds and squirrels that call it home? My understanding is, is that the core of Buddhism is having compassion for the suffering of ALL sentient beings. I would think this singularity is going to consume a lot of energy, cause a lot of environmental damage, lead to people living an even more mediated existence (farther from other animals, plants, etc) than we live now, and will be the farthest thing from Buddhism imaginable. Zen for example is supposed to be about unmediated experience as in the Zen the saying do not mistake the finger pointed at the moon for the moon.
I say that not out of a superior attitude as obviously I'm typing this on a computer to upload to slashdot, but rather to get you to think about what you are saying. Perhaps the singularity would be a wonderful thing to experience, but "Buddhist" it is most certainly not.
It's not even that good. Bitter not guilty but convicted "hacker" equals "screw you guys" next time I'm doing it for real like identify theft for the Russian mob. It's almost like they WANT to breed a new generation where many are criminals. After all if many are criminals than a police state is justified, right?
Ding, ding... G5 dual tower here 2.5 gigs of ram, as well as an ibook g3 900, and a PIII 1 ghz with XP and Ubuntu. I don't forsee a need to upgrade for years. Sure a macbook would be nice, but I certainly don't need it.
Yeah you too asshole I suspect you won't be cheering too loud when total chaos in the middle east started by the U.S. and Israel hikes gas prices to 6/gallon. Hint #2 I don't support the Dems at all so it's not like I would have "won" if Kerry had won. Yes Kerry is a big giant waffling asshole who called for "more troops" in 2004, and Bush is steely nerved 70 I.Q. lying imperalist asshole, they BOTH suck. Both buy into the elite agenda of war and offer the long suffering AMerican people nothing of value. I think if you ask anyone with more than 2 functioning brain cells you will get the same opinon troll.
Yeah the Washington Post is in the commies pocket how could I have not know? Idiot. I hope you are very, very, happy when Bush and Israel get us into WWIII over their expansionist premptive strike policies. It may all be fun and games now, but when the Iranians bomb the straights of Hormuz and gas goes up to 6+/gallon perhaps you won't be laughing so loud in your yuppie burbclave. Then I suspect you'll wish you had listened to right wing isolationists like Texas Rep. Dr.Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts (Reagan's former deputy treasury secretary), and left wing non intervionist peace activists who have been calling Bush out on his lies since the beggining. Hint do a google search for "the Downing Street Memoes," you can handle a google search right? And no I don't suck at the Dems stale teats either, Hilary is EVERY bit as bad as Bush. A pox on BOTH the Democruds and Repigagains.
So might equals right eh? How Nazi of you. Hint the Nazis won in Poland in 1939, that would make them right by your logic. Thanks for playing though and better luck next time. Your consolation prize is 10 years in Guantanamo bay with a nice black hood over your head for doing such a poor job defending his majesties policies.
You neo-cn supporters are impervious to facts aren't you? Did you actually read the Washington Post article I linked to? No of course not that would require you to be a member of the reality based community that Bush has adamantly rejected. And no I don't support the Dems either BOTH Bush and Kerry suck, chew on that one for a while of single cell brained life form.
What part of "has not been observed" don't you understand?
"His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May."
Ah ha now I can run Penguin Planet (formerly Tux racer) at 500 frames per second. Now never mind the refresh rate on my monitor is 70 hz, I tell ya that's living. Who needs to solve world hunger or war when you've got this?
"In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.
According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was "ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.
In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did.
According to the records, Bush had been instructed to report to William Turnipseed, an officer in the Montgomery unit. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not," Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Globe in 2000. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that although no official record has been found, "obviously, you don't get an honorable discharge unless you receive the required points for annual service." He said Bush "specifically remembers" performing some of his duties in Alabama. Bartlett also provided a news clipping from 2000 quoting friends of Bush's from the Alabama Senate campaign saying they recalled Bush leaving for Guard duty on occasion.
Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."
Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time.
Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records. His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May. Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."
The records indicate that Bush surfaced at the end of May 1973 and fulfilled point requirements 10 times between May 31 and July 30. In September 1973, Bush requested an early discharge to attend Harvard business school; in October he received an honorable discharge."
Just because Rather got Roved on one piece of "evidence" it does not follow that Bush did serve. Yeah I know there is a vast left wing cospiracy to tell the truth. Why don't you whine and cry about it?
Don't forget Bin Laden was a CIA asset, yes even according to the MSM MSNBC
"As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.
By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow."
The analogy to Goldstein as the fallen inner party member in 1984 though not exact is close enough to give one pause as to the uses of propaganda by the Bush regime.
"The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."
It seems post WWII leaders read 1984 as how to book instead of a prescient warning. Whoever moded the parent post as funny is out to lunch it's not very damn funny.
"In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes Hate is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting The Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them and the principles of democracy.
The film and its accompanying auditory and visual cues (which include a grinding noise that Orwell describes as "of some monstrous machine running without oil") are a form of brainwashing to Party members, attempting to whip them into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for Emmanuel Goldstein and the current enemy superstate. Apparently, it is not unknown for those caught up in the hate to physically assault the telescreen, as Julia does during the scene. The movie, as it progresses becomes more surreal, with Goldstein's face morphing into a sheep as enemy soldiers advance on the viewers, before one such soldier charges at the screen, machine gun blazing. He morphs, finally, into the face of Big Brother at the end of the two minutes. At the end, the mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted viewers chant "BB" over and over again, ritualistically.
Orwell's obvious reference in the sequence is to the utter demonization of an enemy during a time of war and the exultation of the cult of personality of the leaders of totalitarian states. Parallels (in form, if not content) to the Two Minutes Hate can be seen in real-world propaganda films from the Second World War."
At the risk of a one note tune here, OS X's mail.app allows saving e-mail as smart folders using about any criteria an e-mail has including subject, sender, any word within the e-mail, the date sent, and attachment type. In many ways smart folders are better than tags as everything is saved under the smart folder and available instantly as opposed to a tag which leaves the content in the unsorted heap. I've been using Tiger for a year now and at first I HATED spotlight for it's SLOOOOW indexing, but I'm just now starting to grok how useful smart folders are.
Bravo what I was going to say. I'd only add that Apple's mail.app also has excellent indexing via spotlight, threaded conversations, a good spam filter, spel chik:), and multiple mail accounts. That's all I need in a home mail client. Perhaps more would be useful in a corporate environment, but that's not where I use my computers. Will no one think of lusers? Thunderbird would probably do likewise BTW if you get a spotlight plugin for it. I use firefox and mail.app because I'm weird that way:)
Remeber the KISS principle, keep it simple stupid.
Tell that to the people in California who got refund checks from Micro$oft being a convicted monopolist. Yes I know you are a shill apologist for corporations, but sometimes you people need to face the facts:
"Microsoft resolves class-action suit By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: January 10, 2003, 8:55 PM PST
update Microsoft said late Friday that it has settled a California class-action lawsuit for up to $1.1 billion, a move that would end the largest suit of the kind against the giant software company.
The settlement, which arose from claims that Microsoft unlawfully wielded its Windows monopoly to overcharge consumers for the operating system, allows individuals and businesses in California who bought Microsoft products during a five-year period to apply for vouchers with values of $5 to $29. The vouchers can be used to buy most hardware or software products from any manufacturer."
I see your point about big payoffs to individuals, but class action suits are a whole other ball of wax. A class action suit in undertaken when many people have been screwed by a corporation most of whom either couldn't afford a lawyer as an individual, or the lawyer would cost more than the individual payout. Class action suits ARE a form of justice to make sure corporations can't just get away with screwing people with defective products, and leave the individual customer just holding the bag with no compensation possible. Since corporations have such enormous power in our society sometimes collective action is necessary against them to insure they don't use their tremendous resources to screw the little guy.
How many people on dialup DON'T run Windows update? I bet my parents in rural Oregon don't, downloading like 15 to 20 megs of security updates every month on dialup would be a pain in the butt. So most likely M.S. will try to shut down thier LEGAL XP sp2 on their recently purchused computer, grrrr....
While Gate's and Buffet's contributions make them more noble than many billionaires clears throat are you listening Steve Jobs, I think it should also be pointed out that Gate's fortune came from charging a lot of money for Windows and had he charged less that money would ALEADY be in millions of peoples pockets with no need for showy charitable contributions. Buffet's money comes from even less savory sources such as currency speculation. Here is an excerpt from an article on the pernicious effects of currency speculation:
"Indeed, from an ethical viewpoint, it can be argued that intervention in currency markets should not be promoted when it goes against a 'fundamental' trend and is only used to enable countries to continue to pursue unsound economic policies, e.g. the kind of 'crony capitalism' pursued by some countries. However, intervention is justified because of the following phenomena existing in currency operations:
1. The existence of destabilising trading, i.e. so-called 'noise trading' (as opposed to trading on fundamentals). Noise-traders act on price dynamics only, driven by misinformation such as technical analysis or 'rumours'; behaviour that may drive prices away from their fundamental value. Band-wagon or herding effects, where everyone starts to mimic the action of a few leaders may, in principle, worsen the case. One of the more mythical players in this respect are the so-called 'hedge funds', that are sometimes held responsible for triggering a crisis because of the sheer volume of their operations and the demonstration effect they have on other investors, turning a currency crisis into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This also raises the issue of market manipulation by powerful agents.
2. Theories on speculative runs clearly show that speculative attacks take off too early, before a clear (current) fundamental worsening of the value of the currency is witnessed. It is driven by expectations, and it starts as soon as speculators think the attack has some chance of succeeding (2). As such, countries may not be given time enough to change their policies for the better. The purpose of effective intervention should be to give them time to readjust.
3. These speculative transactions are not just (private) 'zero-sum games', where one party gains what the counterparty in the transaction loses. Because of their potential to trigger a financial crisis, these 'games' can have large social costs:
* on the countries involved, especially on their most vulnerable groups. Box 1 highlights the social impact of the current crisis in Asia
* by 'contagion' on other countries that are not directly involved and which provokes a global chain reaction of financial 'panics and crashes' (the so-called 'systemic risk'). In the 1995 peso crisis, strong effects were transmitted to countries such as Argentina. The Asian currency crisis had direct contagion effects on countries such as the Philippines and Singapore, and ultimately, because of the real economic linkages, to the whole world. The direct costs are huge: the Asian currency crisis has lowered current world growth projection for 1998 alone by about 1%; since world GDP is about US$ 30,000 billion, total costs can be estimated at US$ 300 billion at least. World-wide, the ILO (International Labour Organisation), in its 1998 World Employment Report, estimated that unemployment increased by 10 million people solely due to the Asian financial crisis."
And here is an article that shows the extent that Buffet is involved in the incredibly destructive practice of currency speculation:
" The buy-and-hold billionaire is up to his ears in... derivatives... Buffett once called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction," so you'd think he would steer clear. But his company, Berkshi
Your logic is flawless but I have one ethical caveat, what kind of people does it make us that we put so much thought in to how to "compete" in an e-bay auction? Is all of our mountains of junk really worth the mean spirited get it at all costs attitude it produces? What if we put this ingenuity into saving the sick and hungry of the world or solving our fossil addiction here in the U.S.? It seems that Bill Gates of all people has learned this lesson though in the imperfect way common to all us humans. Can the rest of us geeks rise to nurturing our better impulses and not mere raw rank greed?
Although I am not personally religious I agree with the Catholics and Buddhists that avarice is corrupting to the soul or psyche if you want to use a more scientific term:
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah some CEOs true value for sitting on his can and talking on the phone all day and most likely stripping the assets of the company and running it into the ground is 30 million a year plus a golden parachute, pleeeeeaaaasseee make me barf a lot.
The only difference between the CEO and janitor is that daddy paid for the CEO to go to business school so he (or she) could recite an endless string of meaningless buzz terms like "action items," "team empowerment," "rightsizing" and other such meaningless drivel that often leads to cruel outcomes such as outsourcing that hurt BOTH American and third world workers.
When people wake up to the fact that wages and salaries AREN'T set by the market but by what owners (and their parasitic apologists economists) are willing to pay (themselves a lot and those that actually make and design things very little) then we will all be much better off.
I think people "demonize" active x because it makes it's so damn easy to install serious malware on a Windows box. Not everyone is an elite ubergeek like on slashdot and when a dialog box comes up saying hit OK to continue viewing the web site they click it without even knowing what they are clicking on. Of course in a perfect world everyone would know what they are clicking but the actual facts are that many non computer experts need to use a computer in their day to day life. That being the case the computer needs to be set up so ORDINARY users can use the damn thing without snagging malware. And yes it's very possible my Firefox and Mac setups never get malware even the iMac used by my mom who is a total non techie.
I'll take your word for it dude, sometimes I'm glad to be 40, over the hill and a casual gamer. :)
That's why I've got a Mac and an old PIII tower, sometimes minamalism rules. :)
It's called a gforce 5200 fx *. I have one in both my G5 tower and my secondary p.c. It's good enough to play Quake 3, and Need for Speed Porsche unleashed which are realistic enough for my taste, and the card has a tiny heat sink and no fan so I assume it's not drawing much power. If you want to play the latest games at 1800 x 1400 or whatever than yes you will need a giant heat producing card with a fan that sounds like a jet taking off. I'd comment though that I think recent games don't look THAT much better than the games I mentioned and game play and creativity seems to have stagnated entirely, YMMV.
* Or the equivalent ATI model
And is this "power" worth the death of even one 1200 year old Redwood tree and the birds and squirrels that call it home? My understanding is, is that the core of Buddhism is having compassion for the suffering of ALL sentient beings. I would think this singularity is going to consume a lot of energy, cause a lot of environmental damage, lead to people living an even more mediated existence (farther from other animals, plants, etc) than we live now, and will be the farthest thing from Buddhism imaginable. Zen for example is supposed to be about unmediated experience as in the Zen the saying do not mistake the finger pointed at the moon for the moon.
I say that not out of a superior attitude as obviously I'm typing this on a computer to upload to slashdot, but rather to get you to think about what you are saying. Perhaps the singularity would be a wonderful thing to experience, but "Buddhist" it is most certainly not.
It's not even that good. Bitter not guilty but convicted "hacker" equals "screw you guys" next time I'm doing it for real like identify theft for the Russian mob. It's almost like they WANT to breed a new generation where many are criminals. After all if many are criminals than a police state is justified, right?
Ding, ding... G5 dual tower here 2.5 gigs of ram, as well as an ibook g3 900, and a PIII 1 ghz with XP and Ubuntu. I don't forsee a need to upgrade for years. Sure a macbook would be nice, but I certainly don't need it.
Yeah you too asshole I suspect you won't be cheering too loud when total chaos in the middle east started by the U.S. and Israel hikes gas prices to 6/gallon. Hint #2 I don't support the Dems at all so it's not like I would have "won" if Kerry had won. Yes Kerry is a big giant waffling asshole who called for "more troops" in 2004, and Bush is steely nerved 70 I.Q. lying imperalist asshole, they BOTH suck. Both buy into the elite agenda of war and offer the long suffering AMerican people nothing of value. I think if you ask anyone with more than 2 functioning brain cells you will get the same opinon troll.
Yeah the Washington Post is in the commies pocket how could I have not know? Idiot. I hope you are very, very, happy when Bush and Israel get us into WWIII over their expansionist premptive strike policies. It may all be fun and games now, but when the Iranians bomb the straights of Hormuz and gas goes up to 6+/gallon perhaps you won't be laughing so loud in your yuppie burbclave. Then I suspect you'll wish you had listened to right wing isolationists like Texas Rep. Dr.Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts (Reagan's former deputy treasury secretary), and left wing non intervionist peace activists who have been calling Bush out on his lies since the beggining. Hint do a google search for "the Downing Street Memoes," you can handle a google search right? And no I don't suck at the Dems stale teats either, Hilary is EVERY bit as bad as Bush. A pox on BOTH the Democruds and Repigagains.
So might equals right eh? How Nazi of you. Hint the Nazis won in Poland in 1939, that would make them right by your logic. Thanks for playing though and better luck next time. Your consolation prize is 10 years in Guantanamo bay with a nice black hood over your head for doing such a poor job defending his majesties policies.
You neo-cn supporters are impervious to facts aren't you? Did you actually read the Washington Post article I linked to? No of course not that would require you to be a member of the reality based community that Bush has adamantly rejected. And no I don't support the Dems either BOTH Bush and Kerry suck, chew on that one for a while of single cell brained life form.
0 4Feb2?language=printer
What part of "has not been observed" don't you understand?
"His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-20
Next time give me a challenge arguing with neo-con supporters is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Ah ha now I can run Penguin Planet (formerly Tux racer) at 500 frames per second. Now never mind the refresh rate on my monitor is 70 hz, I tell ya that's living. Who needs to solve world hunger or war when you've got this?
You mean the news service that got it right about Bush going AWOL?
0 4Feb2?language=printer
Here's what a Feb 2004 Washington Post article has to say:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-20
"In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.
According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was "ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.
In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did.
According to the records, Bush had been instructed to report to William Turnipseed, an officer in the Montgomery unit. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not," Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Globe in 2000. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that although no official record has been found, "obviously, you don't get an honorable discharge unless you receive the required points for annual service." He said Bush "specifically remembers" performing some of his duties in Alabama. Bartlett also provided a news clipping from 2000 quoting friends of Bush's from the Alabama Senate campaign saying they recalled Bush leaving for Guard duty on occasion.
Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."
Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time.
Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records. His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May. Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."
The records indicate that Bush surfaced at the end of May 1973 and fulfilled point requirements 10 times between May 31 and July 30. In September 1973, Bush requested an early discharge to attend Harvard business school; in October he received an honorable discharge."
Just because Rather got Roved on one piece of "evidence" it does not follow that Bush did serve. Yeah I know there is a vast left wing cospiracy to tell the truth. Why don't you whine and cry about it?
Don't forget Bin Laden was a CIA asset, yes even according to the MSM MSNBC
"As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow's invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation.
By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan's mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan's freedom - like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation - were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to "read" than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the "reliable" partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101/
The analogy to Goldstein as the fallen inner party member in 1984 though not exact is close enough to give one pause as to the uses of propaganda by the Bush regime.
"The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/1/
It seems post WWII leaders read 1984 as how to book instead of a prescient warning. Whoever moded the parent post as funny is out to lunch it's not very damn funny.
"In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes Hate is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting The Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them and the principles of democracy.
The film and its accompanying auditory and visual cues (which include a grinding noise that Orwell describes as "of some monstrous machine running without oil") are a form of brainwashing to Party members, attempting to whip them into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for Emmanuel Goldstein and the current enemy superstate. Apparently, it is not unknown for those caught up in the hate to physically assault the telescreen, as Julia does during the scene. The movie, as it progresses becomes more surreal, with Goldstein's face morphing into a sheep as enemy soldiers advance on the viewers, before one such soldier charges at the screen, machine gun blazing. He morphs, finally, into the face of Big Brother at the end of the two minutes. At the end, the mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted viewers chant "BB" over and over again, ritualistically.
Orwell's obvious reference in the sequence is to the utter demonization of an enemy during a time of war and the exultation of the cult of personality of the leaders of totalitarian states. Parallels (in form, if not content) to the Two Minutes Hate can be seen in real-world propaganda films from the Second World War."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
At the risk of a one note tune here, OS X's mail.app allows saving e-mail as smart folders using about any criteria an e-mail has including subject, sender, any word within the e-mail, the date sent, and attachment type. In many ways smart folders are better than tags as everything is saved under the smart folder and available instantly as opposed to a tag which leaves the content in the unsorted heap. I've been using Tiger for a year now and at first I HATED spotlight for it's SLOOOOW indexing, but I'm just now starting to grok how useful smart folders are.
Bravo what I was going to say. I'd only add that Apple's mail.app also has excellent indexing via spotlight, threaded conversations, a good spam filter, spel chik :), and multiple mail accounts. That's all I need in a home mail client. Perhaps more would be useful in a corporate environment, but that's not where I use my computers. Will no one think of lusers? Thunderbird would probably do likewise BTW if you get a spotlight plugin for it. I use firefox and mail.app because I'm weird that way :)
Remeber the KISS principle, keep it simple stupid.
Tell that to the people in California who got refund checks from Micro$oft being a convicted monopolist. Yes I know you are a shill apologist for corporations, but sometimes you people need to face the facts:
"Microsoft resolves class-action suit
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: January 10, 2003, 8:55 PM PST
update Microsoft said late Friday that it has settled a California class-action lawsuit for up to $1.1 billion, a move that would end the largest suit of the kind against the giant software company.
The settlement, which arose from claims that Microsoft unlawfully wielded its Windows monopoly to overcharge consumers for the operating system, allows individuals and businesses in California who bought Microsoft products during a five-year period to apply for vouchers with values of $5 to $29. The vouchers can be used to buy most hardware or software products from any manufacturer."
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-980269.html
I see your point about big payoffs to individuals, but class action suits are a whole other ball of wax. A class action suit in undertaken when many people have been screwed by a corporation most of whom either couldn't afford a lawyer as an individual, or the lawyer would cost more than the individual payout. Class action suits ARE a form of justice to make sure corporations can't just get away with screwing people with defective products, and leave the individual customer just holding the bag with no compensation possible. Since corporations have such enormous power in our society sometimes collective action is necessary against them to insure they don't use their tremendous resources to screw the little guy.
...read that as British pornographic industry?
How many people on dialup DON'T run Windows update? I bet my parents in rural Oregon don't, downloading like 15 to 20 megs of security updates every month on dialup would be a pain in the butt. So most likely M.S. will try to shut down thier LEGAL XP sp2 on their recently purchused computer, grrrr....
...glue a PDA to a piece of velcro and wrap it around your wrist. Cost 300 bucks or 1/6th what this device costs and just as "beautiful."
While Gate's and Buffet's contributions make them more noble than many billionaires clears throat are you listening Steve Jobs, I think it should also be pointed out that Gate's fortune came from charging a lot of money for Windows and had he charged less that money would ALEADY be in millions of peoples pockets with no need for showy charitable contributions. Buffet's money comes from even less savory sources such as currency speculation. Here is an excerpt from an article on the pernicious effects of currency speculation:
... derivatives... Buffett once called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction," so you'd think he would steer clear. But his company, Berkshi
"Indeed, from an ethical viewpoint, it can be argued that intervention in currency markets should not be promoted when it goes against a 'fundamental' trend and is only used to enable countries to continue to pursue unsound economic policies, e.g. the kind of 'crony capitalism' pursued by some countries. However, intervention is justified because of the following phenomena existing in currency operations:
1. The existence of destabilising trading, i.e. so-called 'noise trading' (as opposed to trading on fundamentals). Noise-traders act on price dynamics only, driven by misinformation such as technical analysis or 'rumours'; behaviour that may drive prices away from their fundamental value. Band-wagon or herding effects, where everyone starts to mimic the action of a few leaders may, in principle, worsen the case. One of the more mythical players in this respect are the so-called 'hedge funds', that are sometimes held responsible for triggering a crisis because of the sheer volume of their operations and the demonstration effect they have on other investors, turning a currency crisis into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This also raises the issue of market manipulation by powerful agents.
2. Theories on speculative runs clearly show that speculative attacks take off too early, before a clear (current) fundamental worsening of the value of the currency is witnessed. It is driven by expectations, and it starts as soon as speculators think the attack has some chance of succeeding (2). As such, countries may not be given time enough to change their policies for the better. The purpose of effective intervention should be to give them time to readjust.
3. These speculative transactions are not just (private) 'zero-sum games', where one party gains what the counterparty in the transaction loses. Because of their potential to trigger a financial crisis, these 'games' can have large social costs:
* on the countries involved, especially on their most vulnerable groups. Box 1 highlights the social impact of the current crisis in Asia
* by 'contagion' on other countries that are not directly involved and which provokes a global chain reaction of financial 'panics and crashes' (the so-called 'systemic risk'). In the 1995 peso crisis, strong effects were transmitted to countries such as Argentina. The Asian currency crisis had direct contagion effects on countries such as the Philippines and Singapore, and ultimately, because of the real economic linkages, to the whole world. The direct costs are huge: the Asian currency crisis has lowered current world growth projection for 1998 alone by about 1%; since world GDP is about US$ 30,000 billion, total costs can be estimated at US$ 300 billion at least. World-wide, the ILO (International Labour Organisation), in its 1998 World Employment Report, estimated that unemployment increased by 10 million people solely due to the Asian financial crisis."
http://www.cidse.org/pubs/cttenpt1.htm
And here is an article that shows the extent that Buffet is involved in the incredibly destructive practice of currency speculation:
" The buy-and-hold billionaire is up to his ears in
Your logic is flawless but I have one ethical caveat, what kind of people does it make us that we put so much thought in to how to "compete" in an e-bay auction? Is all of our mountains of junk really worth the mean spirited get it at all costs attitude it produces? What if we put this ingenuity into saving the sick and hungry of the world or solving our fossil addiction here in the U.S.? It seems that Bill Gates of all people has learned this lesson though in the imperfect way common to all us humans. Can the rest of us geeks rise to nurturing our better impulses and not mere raw rank greed?
Although I am not personally religious I agree with the Catholics and Buddhists that avarice is corrupting to the soul or psyche if you want to use a more scientific term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avarice