That honestly wasn't clear to me when he uses language like "blown up." What I'm suggesting is that other people may misinterpret his sig (if that's what I've done which STILL isn't clear to me) IF that's what I've done then I apologize for the great, great, grandfather post.
In my defense though I would say clarity of language is absolutly critical in defense of liberties. These issues are far too important to play cute language games with that could possible be misintrrepreted.
If your sig is meant to support the right of people not to be hassled by a police state, the wording is unclear, and "blown up," is an emotionally loaded term that plays into the Bush agenda. Perhaps you ought to rethink the wording. Obviously I DIDN'T understand what you meant and I still don't.
Thus your chance of having a hear attack is 2500 times greater than being "blown up by a terrorist." And the terrorist attack was a one time event where as heart attacks are ongoing. Over ten years that means you are 25,000 times more likely to die of a heart attack than from a terrorist attack. Perhaps what we need is a war on Burger King and not a war on terror.
Please THINK before you mindlessly spout off in favor of surrendering our civil liberties based on the neo-cons fear mongering in your sig, MM K?
Is this the Iraqis fault for defending THEIR homeland against invading foreigners, or Bush's fault for invading Iraq on false pretenses (see Downing street memos) when they did exactly nothing to us having no WMDs and no connection to Al Queda?
I'm sure this will lead to me downmoded but frankly I don't give a rats ass. Often the moral position is also the unpopular one.
Do you have anything other than Microsoft's own FUD to back this up? We all know how reliable their Linux benchmarks are and what an incentive they have to get us to "upgrade."
I don't know why anyone would "upgrade" from Win 2K it's compatible with (90% ?)of XP apps, supports games that use direct x 9,and is relatively stable. It suffers from the usual Windows mediocre security, but that can rectified with the free zone alarm firewall, + the free avg anti-virus, + the free adaware and the free spybot search and destroy. Having a light interface it even is "teh snappy" on an old school Athlon 700 machine I found at a thrift store for 7 bucks. It also isn't encumbered with activation and DRM.
Would I rather use OS X on the desktop and Linux or BSD on a server? Yes of course, but I do think Win 2K pro was the best version of Windows Microsoft ever issued if one is forced to use Windows for games or work.
Vista I predict will be a resource hog and a DRM hell in exchange for transparent windows that won't be as classy as OS X. Who needs it the current games I can play on Windows suit me fine, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed rulz.:) Even recent games render OK on the geforce 5200 fx upgrade card.
The difference in intent is vast, the end of the year zeigest looks at overall patterns while disclosing NO personal information. It's tells us such trivia as the average American dumbass likes to do searches for Janet Jackson's breasts or whatever.
What the DOJ is looking to do is a whole other kettle of fish, linking together search queries to build dubious profiles of "terrorists."
For example if I search for "semi-automatic rifle" (which I have a second amendment right to own), falafel recipe, and Syria, does that make me a potential terrorist? It is just such dubious fishing expeditions that make it extremely important that the 4th amendment be vigorously protected if we are to remain a free society.
Perhaps eliminating the half trillion dollars a year that it costs to maintain a vast overseas empire that the founding fathers never intended our Republic to become would be a good a start.
Also don't assume I'm talking about a Federal single pay health system. Oregon had a state voucher HMO insurance system (perhaps still does?) that worked well when I lived there, and Washtenaw county in Michigan where I live now has an excellent county based health insurance system. It is possible to both eliminate big bloated centralized bureaucracies and take care of societies most vulnerable members with a little creativity.
If we have really come to value having a slightly newer car or another useless bathroom in our houses over the needs of the hungry and sick then our priorities have become quite misplaced. Certainly people who disdain the poor over their material possessions have no right to call themselves "Christians" as so many do.
"Health care is not a "fundamental human right". It is a service like any other service, your emotional proclamations notwithstanding. You are no more entitled to health care at other people's expense, than you are entitled to force other people to feed, clothe, or shelter you."
The above is easy to glibly say if you are comfortably employed NOW. I wonder if you would be so glib if your job was outsourced, all high paying jobs had migrated from your community, and you were homeless and sick. What may seem like altruistic compassion of helping sick poor people in your community may in fact turn out to be self interested if present trends continue.
Not to mention that advocating that people be left to get sick and die in the wealthiest country in the world makes you look like an utter prick. And people wonder why much of the rest of the world hates Americans when many portray cold self centered attitudes such as yours. Compassionate conservatives my ass. Your attitude would not be morally acceptable in any European country or Canada, where many are aghast at the way we treat our most vulnerable people.
And why yes I am an American citizen who so far has a first amendment protected right to criticize the country I live in.
The more I think about end to end to DRM the more troubled I get. Suppose the hardware vendors, Microsoft and Apple work it like this, every 18 months or so they announce that the current DRM has been broken by "evil haxor pirate terrorist funding pedophiles." So in order to view the "new improved" movies we are issuing you will need a new video card, new optical drive, and new monitor and you'll need to download the latest encryption key and drivers for all of the above. Or you can just buy a Dell or an entire new Mac system for 999.00 EVERY 18 months. Or in the consumer electronics realm a new home theater receiver and tv EVERY 18 MONTHS to see the latest movies and digital satelite transmissions.
While the average slash dotter might chose to upgrade their system that often for Joe consumer it's a disaster. The average person expects to get 4 or 5 years out of their p.c. and more from the tv. Yet the average consumer also wants the newest shiny toy, and to able to see thev latest movies at their highest quality.
Will the new upgrade cycle NOT be based on the capability of the hardware (the new dual core CPUs will probably easily handle the next 5 years or so of video advances) but on an artificially accelerated life cycle of DRM? If so will we stand for it? As I said in a previous post RMS's position of rejecting DRM for free software is starting to look in the long term wiser than Linus's pragmatic short term hard ware compatibility stance of allowing it in Linux.
Thinking about it, it REALLY pisses me off that my G5 tower Mac I bought LAST SUMMER with it's dual 64 bit processors, Tiger 10.4.3, an Nvidia 5200 FX "Ultra" with 64 megs of vram and 2.5 gigs of ram will be unable to display HDCP video on my BRAND NEW Samsung LCD monitor. I would not only have to upgrade the optical drive but put in a new overkill video card (I'm not a serious gamer), and replace the perfectly good Samsung monitor which has a 8 ms response time. That's at least 600 extra dollars even though the hardware is ALREADY capable of displaying high resoltion video. Grrrrr... Fuck the intellectual property lawyers costing me hundreds of dollars to watch LEGAL high resolution video.
Are the shiny new Imacs and Macbooks (that name groan) going to support HDCP out, or have Mac users been suxored or well? Well yet another reason to hang on to the old reliable ibook and G5 tower and not jump at the revision 1 macs.
It would be pretty funny if a 3 year old p.c. costing 150 with any monitor running a free operating system would be able to view content at a higher resolution (re-ripped) than a new Vista box which will probably cost at least 800 + a new 400 dollar LCD looking at LEGAL paid for content. Us dedicated hobbyists might get the last laugh after all.
Maybe Stallman is pretty smart to insist that DRM not be a part of GPL III after all. Do we really want to go down this path with Linux? A firm stand now might (I did say might) send the industry a wake up call that not everyone will accept intentionally crippled hardware.
You're leaving out the part of Buddhism that says we should have compassion for all sentient beings. If you leave that out your not really following Buddhism just putting a nice gloss on not giving a damn. Which is all well good as far as it goes but be honest about it, don't pretend it's anything noble.
I do protest the U.N., WTO, etc when I think they are fucking up. Clinton's sanctions against Iraq killed an estimated, 350,000 children under 5 by the conservative estimate:
"David Cortright's "A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions" [Dec. 3] was a slick attempt to defend a ten-year war against innocent civilians. Cortright charges that the number of dead is commonly overestimated by critics of sanctions, usually alleged to be a million. He claims the most reliable studies estimate that the number of Iraqi children under 5 who died is actually 350,000. Curiously, he makes no attempt to estimate the number of children over 5 who perished, or the elderly who died of malnutrition or the sick adults finished off by lack of medicine."
Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously said that the death of the number of children killed even by war criminal Bush II x 10 in Iraq was worth it:
"In 1996, she made highly controversial remarks in an interview with Leslie Stahl on CBS's Sixty Minutes. Asked by Stahl with regards to effect of sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." [2]. When asked about this remark in 2005 she said "I never should have made it, it was stupid", but she still supported the concept of tailored sanctions [3]."
Those of you who think the U.S. was a more moral country during the Clinton years are deluding yourselves. Clinton attacked more countries than Bush, (Sudan, Somalia, Serbia, Iraq), and through the sanctions was responsible for more civilian deaths than even evil war criminal Bush II. Further Clinton's draconian "anti-terrorism" legislation in the wake of Oklahoma city with it's joint terrorism task forces was the genesis of the "Patriot Act" and unconstitutional NSA spying we see today. And lets not even get started on the massacre of civilians at Waco under Clinton's "justice" department.
No the Democrats are not going to save us, only a grass roots coalition of true small government conservatives paleo-cons & Libertarians, Greens, anti-war activists, etc can stop the Washington establishment and it's bipartisan enthrallment to the military industrial complex. We aren't just looking at a traditional left right division anymore but the people standing to bullies BOTH Democrat and Republican (to get back to the original topic). I would say decentralist Greens have more in common with Pat Buchanan's "a republic not an empire," than with Democrats who consistently vote for imperialist war and an ever expanding Federal police state.
I have stood up to Bush for years now, written to my representatives, gone on non violent anti-war protest marches, done ground support for the Redwoods in Humboldt county California, was pepper sprayed at Bush's 2004 inauguration, have written political articles at my blog http://treefunk.net/forum , etc. Before that I stood up to Clinton for his murderous sanctions against Iraq, his incredibly destructive non U.N. approved war against Serbia, his salvage logging plan for the Pacific Northwest, etc. Before that I stood to Bush I against HIS war against Iraq, etc. My point is when you stand up to the bullies and it has little or no effect, you do start wonder if you are wasting the limited amount of time you have an earth and withdrawal from society does start to seem like reasonable response to try to milk a little joy out of the overall terrible condition U.S. society has fallen into. YMMV. I'm not there quite yet, and still have some fight left in me, but 20 years of kicking against the pricks Dem. and Rep. does get old after a while. And I have NO interest in, "if you can't beat them, join them."
I call bullshit that withdrawal is ALWAYS a sign of mental illness. Would withdrawal in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia have been a sign of mental illness? No it would be a sign of the mental strength to reject the underlying mental illness of the society. Watch the movie the Pianist which is about a Jew withdrawing from society for survival and tell me again withdrawal is ALWAYS a sign of mental illness.
Now note that "our" grand glorious leader Dubya engages in preemptive war based on lies, the crime the Nazis were charged with at Nuremberg. Protest and engagement is one obvious solution to the problem, but after 5 years of dealing with American dumbasses withdrawal from society does start to sound like a better and better reaction. If the people don't want to be saved from the terrible consequences that would come from say attacking Iran screw em' and flee for the hills.
And so you don't think it's just a p.c. reaction I'd say hanging out in your room by yourself is a fine reaction if you are a Muslim and your comrades are burning down the local embassy over a cartoon. Like being social and arguing with them is going to change them if they determined to be irrational.
How exactly is criticizing BOTH the neo-cons and radical sects of Muslims for being too hotheaded flamebait? Are calls for reconciliation, tolerance, understanding, and toning down the rhetoric really that controversial? And yes I really want to know if you are once who moded me flame bait feel free to leave me a message here or e-mail me at raven200 at gmail.com
Yes I'm whining about moderation, so sue me, now thaaaaat's flamebait
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That honestly wasn't clear to me when he uses language like "blown up." What I'm suggesting is that other people may misinterpret his sig (if that's what I've done which STILL isn't clear to me) IF that's what I've done then I apologize for the great, great, grandfather post.
In my defense though I would say clarity of language is absolutly critical in defense of liberties. These issues are far too important to play cute language games with that could possible be misintrrepreted.
And yes this is WAY off topic, burn karma, burn.
Speek instead of speak. I rest my case.
They already did, the editor of that Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is buddy, buddy, with American neo-con Daniel Pipes see:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8512
The U.S. DOES want to stay there, can you say permanent military bases boys and girls I knew you could. See this article:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/ and scroll down to the middle to:
"Tomgram: A Permanent Basis for Withdrawal?
Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?
The American Press Can't
By Tom Engelhardt"
If your sig is meant to support the right of people not to be hassled by a police state, the wording is unclear, and "blown up," is an emotionally loaded term that plays into the Bush agenda. Perhaps you ought to rethink the wording. Obviously I DIDN'T understand what you meant and I still don't.
I don't even know what that means. Care to elaborate?
Gfunk said in their sig:
.0125%
t ifier=4591
"Your right to walk the streets unmolested by the police outweighs my right not to get blown up."
Yet your chance of getting "blown up" by terrorists thus far
equals 3000/2,400,000 x 100=
meanwhile your chance of having a heart attack = 480,000/24000000 x 100=`20%
Source the American Heart association:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?iden
Thus your chance of having a hear attack is 2500 times greater than being "blown up by a terrorist." And the terrorist attack was a one time event where as heart attacks are ongoing. Over ten years that means you are 25,000 times more likely to die of a heart attack than from a terrorist attack. Perhaps what we need is a war on Burger King and not a war on terror.
Please THINK before you mindlessly spout off in favor of surrendering our civil liberties based on the neo-cons fear mongering in your sig, MM K?
And yes I do have karma to burn.
Is this the Iraqis fault for defending THEIR homeland against invading foreigners, or Bush's fault for invading Iraq on false pretenses (see Downing street memos) when they did exactly nothing to us having no WMDs and no connection to Al Queda?
I'm sure this will lead to me downmoded but frankly I don't give a rats ass. Often the moral position is also the unpopular one.
Someone should mod you up, I just don't have any mod points. Sorry. :)
Do you have anything other than Microsoft's own FUD to back this up? We all know how reliable their Linux benchmarks are and what an incentive they have to get us to "upgrade."
I don't know why anyone would "upgrade" from Win 2K it's compatible with (90% ?)of XP apps, supports games that use direct x 9,and is relatively stable. It suffers from the usual Windows mediocre security, but that can rectified with the free zone alarm firewall, + the free avg anti-virus, + the free adaware and the free spybot search and destroy. Having a light interface it even is "teh snappy" on an old school Athlon 700 machine I found at a thrift store for 7 bucks. It also isn't encumbered with activation and DRM.
:) Even recent games render OK on the geforce 5200 fx upgrade card.
Would I rather use OS X on the desktop and Linux or BSD on a server? Yes of course, but I do think Win 2K pro was the best version of Windows Microsoft ever issued if one is forced to use Windows for games or work.
Vista I predict will be a resource hog and a DRM hell in exchange for transparent windows that won't be as classy as OS X. Who needs it the current games I can play on Windows suit me fine, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed rulz.
The difference in intent is vast, the end of the year zeigest looks at overall patterns while disclosing NO personal information. It's tells us such trivia as the average American dumbass likes to do searches for Janet Jackson's breasts or whatever.
What the DOJ is looking to do is a whole other kettle of fish, linking together search queries to build dubious profiles of "terrorists."
For example if I search for "semi-automatic rifle" (which I have a second amendment right to own), falafel recipe, and Syria, does that make me a potential terrorist? It is just such dubious fishing expeditions that make it extremely important that the 4th amendment be vigorously protected if we are to remain a free society.
Perhaps eliminating the half trillion dollars a year that it costs to maintain a vast overseas empire that the founding fathers never intended our Republic to become would be a good a start.
Also don't assume I'm talking about a Federal single pay health system. Oregon had a state voucher HMO insurance system (perhaps still does?) that worked well when I lived there, and Washtenaw county in Michigan where I live now has an excellent county based health insurance system. It is possible to both eliminate big bloated centralized bureaucracies and take care of societies most vulnerable members with a little creativity.
If we have really come to value having a slightly newer car or another useless bathroom in our houses over the needs of the hungry and sick then our priorities have become quite misplaced. Certainly people who disdain the poor over their material possessions have no right to call themselves "Christians"
as so many do.
"Health care is not a "fundamental human right". It is a service like any other service, your emotional proclamations notwithstanding. You are no more entitled to health care at other people's expense, than you are entitled to force other people to feed, clothe, or shelter you."
The above is easy to glibly say if you are comfortably employed NOW. I wonder if you would be so glib if your job was outsourced, all high paying jobs had migrated from your community, and you were homeless and sick. What may seem like altruistic compassion of helping sick poor people in your community may in fact turn out to be self interested if present trends continue.
Not to mention that advocating that people be left to get sick and die in the wealthiest country in the world makes you look like an utter prick. And people wonder why much of the rest of the world hates Americans when many portray cold self centered attitudes such as yours. Compassionate conservatives my ass. Your attitude would not be morally acceptable in any European country or Canada, where many are aghast at the way we treat our most vulnerable people.
And why yes I am an American citizen who so far has a first amendment protected right to criticize the country I live in.
You mean the how many cores race don't you? Mhz race is sooooooo 2004. :)
The more I think about end to end to DRM the more troubled I get. Suppose the hardware vendors, Microsoft and Apple work it like this, every 18 months or so they announce that the current DRM has been broken by "evil haxor pirate terrorist funding pedophiles." So in order to view the "new improved" movies we are issuing you will need a new video card, new optical drive, and new monitor and you'll need to download the latest encryption key and drivers for all of the above. Or you can just buy a Dell or an entire new Mac system for 999.00 EVERY 18 months. Or in the consumer electronics realm a new home theater receiver and tv EVERY 18 MONTHS to see the latest movies and digital satelite transmissions.
While the average slash dotter might chose to upgrade their system that often for Joe consumer it's a disaster. The average person expects to get 4 or 5 years out of their p.c. and more from the tv. Yet the average consumer also wants the newest shiny toy, and to able to see thev latest movies at their highest quality.
Will the new upgrade cycle NOT be based on the capability of the hardware (the new dual core CPUs will probably easily handle the next 5 years or so of video advances) but on an artificially accelerated life cycle of DRM? If so will we stand for it? As I said in a previous post RMS's position of rejecting DRM for free software is starting to look in the long term wiser than Linus's pragmatic short term hard ware compatibility stance of allowing it in Linux.
Thinking about it, it REALLY pisses me off that my G5 tower Mac I bought LAST SUMMER with it's dual 64 bit processors, Tiger 10.4.3, an Nvidia 5200 FX "Ultra" with 64 megs of vram and 2.5 gigs of ram will be unable to display HDCP video on my BRAND NEW Samsung LCD monitor. I would not only have to upgrade the optical drive but put in a new overkill video card (I'm not a serious gamer), and replace the perfectly good Samsung monitor which has a 8 ms response time. That's at least 600 extra dollars even though the hardware is ALREADY capable of displaying high resoltion video. Grrrrr... Fuck the intellectual property lawyers costing me hundreds of dollars to watch LEGAL high resolution video.
Are the shiny new Imacs and Macbooks (that name groan) going to support HDCP out, or have Mac users been suxored or well? Well yet another reason to hang on to the old reliable ibook and G5 tower and not jump at the revision 1 macs.
It would be pretty funny if a 3 year old p.c. costing 150 with any monitor running a free operating system would be able to view content at a higher resolution (re-ripped) than a new Vista box which will probably cost at least 800 + a new 400 dollar LCD looking at LEGAL paid for content. Us dedicated hobbyists might get the last laugh after all.
Maybe Stallman is pretty smart to insist that DRM not be a part of GPL III after all. Do we really want to go down this path with Linux? A firm stand now might (I did say might) send the industry a wake up call that not everyone will accept intentionally crippled hardware.
You're leaving out the part of Buddhism that says we should have compassion for all sentient beings. If you leave that out your not really following Buddhism just putting a nice gloss on not giving a damn. Which is all well good as far as it goes but be honest about it, don't pretend it's anything noble.
I do protest the U.N., WTO, etc when I think they are fucking up. Clinton's sanctions against Iraq killed an estimated, 350,000 children under 5 by the conservative estimate:
"David Cortright's "A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions" [Dec. 3] was a slick attempt to defend a ten-year war against innocent civilians. Cortright charges that the number of dead is commonly overestimated by critics of sanctions, usually alleged to be a million. He claims the most reliable studies estimate that the number of Iraqi children under 5 who died is actually 350,000. Curiously, he makes no attempt to estimate the number of children over 5 who perished, or the elderly who died of malnutrition or the sick adults finished off by lack of medicine."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020121/letter
Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously said that the death of the number of children killed even by war criminal Bush II x 10 in Iraq was worth it:
"In 1996, she made highly controversial remarks in an interview with Leslie Stahl on CBS's Sixty Minutes. Asked by Stahl with regards to effect of sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." [2]. When asked about this remark in 2005 she said "I never should have made it, it was stupid", but she still supported the concept of tailored sanctions [3]."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Albright
Those of you who think the U.S. was a more moral country during the Clinton years are deluding yourselves. Clinton attacked more countries than Bush, (Sudan, Somalia, Serbia, Iraq), and through the sanctions was responsible for more civilian deaths than even evil war criminal Bush II. Further Clinton's draconian "anti-terrorism" legislation in the wake of Oklahoma city with it's joint terrorism task forces was the genesis of the "Patriot Act" and unconstitutional NSA spying we see today. And lets not even get started on the massacre of civilians at Waco under Clinton's "justice" department.
No the Democrats are not going to save us, only a grass roots coalition of true small government conservatives paleo-cons & Libertarians, Greens, anti-war activists, etc can stop the Washington establishment and it's bipartisan enthrallment to the military industrial complex. We aren't just looking at a traditional left right division anymore but the people standing to bullies BOTH Democrat and Republican (to get back to the original topic). I would say decentralist Greens have more in common with Pat Buchanan's "a republic not an empire," than with Democrats who consistently vote for imperialist war and an ever expanding Federal police state.
I have stood up to Bush for years now, written to my representatives, gone on non violent anti-war protest marches, done ground support for the Redwoods in Humboldt county California, was pepper sprayed at Bush's 2004 inauguration, have written political articles at my blog http://treefunk.net/forum , etc. Before that I stood up to Clinton for his murderous sanctions against Iraq, his incredibly destructive non U.N. approved war against Serbia, his salvage logging plan for the Pacific Northwest, etc. Before that I stood to Bush I against HIS war against Iraq, etc. My point is when you stand up to the bullies and it has little or no effect, you do start wonder if you are wasting the limited amount of time you have an earth and withdrawal from society does start to seem like reasonable response to try to milk a little joy out of the overall terrible condition U.S. society has fallen into. YMMV. I'm not there quite yet, and still have some fight left in me, but 20 years of kicking against the pricks Dem. and Rep. does get old after a while. And I have NO interest in, "if you can't beat them, join them."
I call bullshit that withdrawal is ALWAYS a sign of mental illness. Would withdrawal in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia have been a sign of mental illness? No it would be a sign of the mental strength to reject the underlying mental illness of the society. Watch the movie the Pianist which is about a Jew withdrawing from society for survival and tell me again withdrawal is ALWAYS a sign of mental illness.
Now note that "our" grand glorious leader Dubya engages in preemptive war based on lies, the crime the Nazis were charged with at Nuremberg. Protest and engagement is one obvious solution to the problem, but after 5 years of dealing with American dumbasses withdrawal from society does start to sound like a better and better reaction. If the people don't want to be saved from the terrible consequences that would come from say attacking Iran screw em' and flee for the hills.
And so you don't think it's just a p.c. reaction I'd say hanging out in your room by yourself is a fine reaction if you are a Muslim and your comrades are burning down the local embassy over a cartoon. Like being social and arguing with them is going to change them if they determined to be irrational.
How exactly is criticizing BOTH the neo-cons and radical sects of Muslims for being too hotheaded flamebait? Are calls for reconciliation, tolerance, understanding, and toning down the rhetoric really that controversial? And yes I really want to know if you are once who moded me flame bait feel free to leave me a message here or e-mail me at raven200 at gmail.com
Yes I'm whining about moderation, so sue me, now thaaaaat's flamebait