For your information I hate the Dems even more than the Repigs for being spineless suck up weasels for rubber stamping the "Patriot Act" 99-1 in the Senate, for not bothering to fillibuster Bush's apointees, for voting for a war we were lied into (see the Downing Street memos), etc.
Give me a good honest isolationist anti-golbalist paleo-con like Pat Buchanan or a serious Libetarian like Ron Paul, or Paul Craig Roberts, over a war mongering, globalist Dem suckup like Kerry or either Bill or Hilary (80,000 troops more) Clinton any day of the week.
In short nice try at slander better luck next time.
Switch: "There is no moderate Islam, because there is no voice for it. The entire religion is held hostage by the "few radical leaders"."
To: "There is no moderate Republican, because there is no voice for it. The entire party is held hostage by the "few radical leaders" and it's EQUALLY true.
A pox on BOTH the radical Muslims burning buildings over a cartoon AND the radical neo-cons demonizing all of Islam in the run up to the inevitable attack on Iran. The Dutch newspaper editor who originally published these cartoons is closely tied to the American neo-con Daniel Pipes who is viruantly anti Islamic and in cohoots with Rupert Murdoch of/The Weekly Standard/Fox/PNAC fame:
"Rose [editor of the Dutch newspaper that published the cartoons] is apparently a big fan of Daniel Pipes - the controversial anti-Arabist appointed by George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace - and authored an entirely uncritical profile of Pipes, originally published in Jyllands-Posten and translated here.
Pipes is the founder of Campus Watch, an organization devoted to stamping out any and all academic treatments of Middle Eastern affairs that don't conform to his narrow strictures, which might be mildly described as fanatically hostile to Islam, Arabs, and anyone who opposes his extreme Israeli nationalism. Campus Watch is engaged in compiling blacklists of professors who refuse to spout the pro-Israel party line, and actively encourages students to spy on their teachers and report miscreants."
"Racist, sacrilegious, cartoons help no one, whether it's intentional desecrations of Islam or anti-Semitic cartoons published in the Arab world BOTH should be morally condemned."
It's precisely this mindless hatred of Muslims that is exemplified by your post has me terrified. And no of course the radical Mullahs who are ALSO taking advantage of the situation aren't helping.
We are seeing a lot of bad players on BOTH sides, I know that's hard to swallow when our elected leader talks like a 3rd grader pretending to be a cowboy about "smokin' out dem bad guys." In the real world unfortunately there is a lot more gray that is missed by BOTH anti semitic racist Mullahs who inflame people to burn down buildings AND racist neo-cons who inflame hatred of all Muslims when 99% are not involved in this controversy at all. Again Qui bono, who gains by inflaming hatred against Muslims in the run up to a war against Iran?
I would note as well that racist cartoons were one of the mechanisms the Nazis used to inflame hatred against the Jews. BOTH the anti-Muslim right and the anti semitic Arabs need to cut it out before we wind up in a pointless war that mainly benefits a rich chosen few. You can bet the owners of the oil companies are laughing with glee at the stupid antics of both sides as they draw up their war plans. We can and must do better. And don't just think this is some sort of left issue of political correctness IMO some of the best critiques of the neo-cons war plans come from Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine
Another hero in our fight for rationality against mindless (unconstitutional) "patriotism" has been Republican Ron Paul, and former deputy treasury secretary under Reagan Paul Craig Roberts who has stretched himself enough to write for the leftist http://counterpunch.org/
We must approach this in a nuanced sophisticated fashion, allowing ourselves to be manipulated by EITHER simple minded mullahs or war mongering neo-cons will only lead to the world wide bloodshed of WWIII.
Yes, the Dutch and European papers have the free speech right to publish this cartoon, and I would vigorously defend that right, just as Salamon Rushdie was rightly defended against fatwas, etc. But we also have to ask are they using their freedom wisely? Racist, sacrilegious, cartoons help no one, whether it's intentional desecrations of Islam or anti-Semitic cartoons published in the Arab world BOTH should be morally condemned. Not censored by the government, but condemned as unworthy in a world that is capable of producing figures like Martin Luther King and Ghandi. Having the freedom to publish sacrilegious cartoons and saying it's a good idea or helpful to the world are very different things. We must simultaneously defend the right of the people publishing the cartoons while questioning their motives. Qui bono?
Know that the neo-cons are using this incident to inflame passions against Muslims in a build up to an attack upon on Iran. Think before you condemn all Muslims or their governments for the destructive acts of a few. If you do that you are playing into the hands of neo-cons who are counting on western hatred of Muslims to justify their imperialist plans to make over the middle east, most likely to prevent any country from trading oil in Euros, and to "defend" Israel who has angered the Arab world by violating international law by illegally expanding it's 1967 green line borders into the Palestinian territories.
Demonization of an entire people based on their religion is always a bad idea, did the holocaust teach us nothing?
1. The first is the government should respect the privacy of our e-mail which are our modern day letters that are protected by the wording of the 4th amendment.
2. I'm saying the government ought not to be able to declare us criminals based on our publicly stated OPINIONS on blogs and other web sites. Supporting the criminalization of public speech would be analogous to supporting the British attempts to criminalize the writers of the broadsides that became known as the Federalist papers. Broadsides and letters to the editor were the equivalent to our modern day blogs. Again it's fortunate the British government of the time didn't have the power to discover who "anonymous cowards" "Publis" and 'A Farmer," etc, were or we would have had no American revolution.
Do I get called a terrorist if I say I FUCKING HATE BUSH for abrogating the 4th amendment to the bill of rights?
"Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Wouldn't I be a coward if I didn't hate him for this breach of our fundamental rights? I assure you if the British had such a system for sifting all communications for treasonous intent we would still be the British commonwealth of the Americas. After all some of the original American REOVLUTIONARIES (can you say violent overthrow of the "legitimate" British government) communicated through committees of correspondence:
"In an era before modern communications, news was generally disseminated in hand-written letters that were carried aboard ships or by couriers on horseback. Those means were employed by the critics of British imperial policy in America to spread their interpretations of current events.
Special committees of correspondence were formed by the colonial assemblies and various lesser arms of local government. The committees were responsible for taking the sense of their parent body on a particular issue, committing it to a written form and then dispatching that view to other similar groups. Many correspondents were members of the colonial assemblies and also were active in the secret Sons of Liberty organizations."
Can you say secret terrorist organiztion boys and girls I knew you could. Of course the British had a right to monitor their public communications (letters), right? Afterall if they were doing nothing wrong...
Precisely my point is that some things like the beauty of a forest can't be quantified. Never assume everything can be quantified. Just because geeks like to benchmark doesn't mean EVERYTHING can be benchmarked and to believe that is the case is to miss some of the most profound things in the world like beauty, or the quality of light as the sun rises.
Would a Salieri symphony be better than Mozart because it has more notes per second? That is the sort of absurdity we get into when we try to measure qualities with quantities. The thing that makes a Mozart symphony isn't quantifiable, it's just a quality we know.
Not that quantities don't have their place, without them we wouldn't have physics, biology, etc, and we would fall prey to superstition like creationism. But the broadest epistemology that sees all of the world recognizes that there are things that can be quantified and qualities which can't be quantified. To destroy the qualities of the world like culture and the beauty of forests because they couldn't be quantified or monetized would be the greatest tragedy imaginable.
If it isn't obvious to you that the culture of the U.S.A. is in profound trouble a whole barrel of easy manipuable statistics isn't going to convince you otherwise. Anyone with any sensitivity and taste know though that our strip malled, tee vee intoxicated pop culture will not be remembered fondly. It may be enjoyable but it's not durable.
That "indefinable" quality is called genius, which is the trait of rigorously pushing an idea as far as it can possibly go whether on not that is the popular or safe thing to do. It's the genius of a Martin Luther King, Ghandi, to follow the logical implications of an idea to it's maximum logically consistent extent.
I would be the first to say that most people are not strong enough to live under those terms. For example I run OS X because it's much easier to use day to day than (gnu)/Linux, even though I also believe RMS is right about the morality of free software. I.e. I make an immoral choice because it's easier and more functional for me to do so. It is often the case that going with the flow is easier than making the moral choice. Who wanted to make waves in the south in the 40s? RMS's free software crusade may not be issue of the same magnitude as civil rights, but it's the same type of choices that we face.
Even if we cannot always live up to the ideals that are pioneered by geniuses it is important that they exist to show us what we ought to strive towards and what life looks like when we don't make compromises for the sake of expediency.
So what chat services don't log conversations? Anything other than irc? Along the same lines is there a pop accessable web mail service that doesn't scan e-mails? I'm thinking of ditching gmail if google continues it's privacy and human rights slide. Sigh "do no evil" was only more corporate propaganda, I should have known...
Producing "Nobel Prize" winners is NOT the same thing as producing thinkers who fundamentally alter everyones concept of space and time. Even if you say string theory or whatever is as deep as Einsteins insights, no one has bothered to explain that to public. My point is then that the U.S. no longer produces public intellectuals, i.e. that our culture is degraded. I do think that is strongly correlated with people in the U.S. correlating success with monetary wealth. We do not value thought for it's own sake anymore than we value a beautiful wilderness for it's own sake. IMO that is a tragedy.
There is more to life than Scrooge Mc Duck swimming around in a big pool of money. Such characters used to be figures of ridicule, alas not anymore, in our current culture we lionize the Donald Trumps who are our modern day Scrooges both in the Dickens and Disney sense of that character.
No I'm a disgusted American. Disgusted at how much America has destroyed whether it's 85+% of our our old growth forests:
"After 150 years of logging, about 15 percent of old-growth forest remains in the Pacific Northwest, about half of which is protected within Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks."
And that's in the west where are still forests at all, east of St; Louis the destruction of old growth forests is in essence 100% complete.
Or the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives in Afghanistan and Iraq we have destroyed through war and "sanctions" for oil and Israel. And yes under Clinton and his bloody sanctions as well, the so called "liberals" are no better. And for what so lard asses can watch American Idol and the super bowl on their big screen t.v.'s? Perhaps "efficient" from a monetary point of view but I suspect history will judge us harshly for having destroyed so much for so little of lasting value. Rome in the time of Caligula comes to mind. When is the last time America produced a towering intellect on the order of Martin Luther King or Einstein? So much "wealth," and such a paucity of lasting achievements to show for it. And please don't even try to tell me Jobs, Torvalds, or Gates are world changing figures like Dr. King or Eienstain who will be remembered for hundreds of years, they aren't.
Yes, with dollars as a benchmark we are doing well (or rather the upper 20& is doing well) quality of life, lasting cultural achievements, or a livable environment for our descendants? Not so much...
It's precisely the fact that American tend to measure EVERYTHING in dollars that makes for a whole world of trouble. After all it's all good until global warming drowns the coasts and warming kills the crops.
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can not eat money." Attributed to Chief Seattle
I sincerely hope your story is true. This is exactly the sort of treatment Orwellian assholes deserve. If they want to play rough like monitoring people all the time they shouldn't be suprised when those who are monitored play rough as well.
p.s Must we sacrifice EVERYTHING on the alter of "productivity." Is there no area of life that is to be left free, spontaneous, eccentric, creative and alive in the name of "efficiency?"
Remember Einstein discovered relativity while slacking off at the patent office. If he had been under 9-5 monitoring scheme at the turn of the century the world would be a poorer place. Many of our most profound insights are the product of daydreaming. I suspect the managerial class could do with reading a bit more C.S. Lewis and a bit less on "time management" theory.
I'm going to take a controversial stance here and say I think this is wrong even if it's only used to catch people slacking off at the pub. Why? Because it's a violation of our basic human dignity, and treats us as children who need to be constantly monitored. What ever happened to an idea of individual autonomy and the idea of freedom of movement? Wasn't the constant tracking of it's citizens within it's borders one of the things that really pissed people off about communism? Is it really "better" if it's done by the private sector? Don't the Brits read 1984 anymore? A constant surveillance society is stifling regardless of who's behind the cameras. The sociologist Weber said in the long term that western societies would be doomed by the iron cage of bureaucracy. If this is accepted practice now I fear his worries have already come to pass.
I wish I had some mode points to give you anonymous you have just described the problem not just with the Super Bowl but America in general since the Reagan era-error, that has only accelerated since 911.
No wonder the world hates us:
"Eleven of the 16 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center -- Britain, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Indonesia -- had a more favorable view of China than the U.S.
India and Poland were more upbeat about the U.S., while Canadians are as likely to see China favorably as they were the United States.
The poll, which was released Thursday, found suspicion and wariness of the United States in many countries where people question the war in Iraq and are growing wary of the U.S.-led war on terror.
"The Iraq war has left an enduring impression on the minds of people around the world in ways that make them very suspicious of U.S. intentions and makes the effort to win hearts and minds far more difficult," said Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution."
I far one don't welcome or new war based 1984ish (we've always been at war against Golstein Bin-Laden's east Asia) police states, "open source: secuirty sensors, or not.
Obviously kowtowing to lawyers is more important to you than how the operating system actually performs. It is just this sort of obsequious bowing to lawyers that is one of the biggest problems in the world today. Without i.p. lawyers throwing up roadblocks many more "tenacious hobbyists" would be producing free software for all of us to enjoy. Do gcc, firefox, gnome, ring a bell? It seems you are secretly sympathetic to the SCO lawyers as they give Solaris an ARTIFICIAL leg up on "tenacious hobbyists" such as RMS, who gave us the free software concept in the first place, and the tool (gcc) to compile that free software.
Note I do actually believe that is a place in the world for many different sorts of software licenses, for example I'm running OS X on the desktop and Ubuntu/Apache for my web server for http://treefunk.net/forum
What I object to is your sly underhanded dissing of React OS, Linux, and "tenacious hobbyists" not on the basis on technical merit, but on the basis of how well they can fend off lawyers. Surely we can do better than to fall back on arbitrary authority when technical performance is a better reason to accept or reject an operating system?
p.s. Never underestimate what a "tenacious and inexperienced hobbyist" can do. Linus Torvalds was just such a person who wanted a Unix like operating system for his 386, the rest is as they say history. Put that in your.000001% market share Solaris pipe and smoke it.
Since you mention Open Solaris in your sig perhaps you have a vested interest in a competing operating system not being licsensed in the U.S.? Perhaps you are a Sun employee or investor? Could be... Or perhaps it's just even an unconscious bias but it's rather curious that you dismiss React OS. being able to be licensed despite what TFA said.
The FBI and the military are spying on non violent politcal activists now. Given that we have Alito on the supreme court who supports the power of the "unitary executive," and given that Bush lied to us about always getting a warrant before engaging in phone tapping (in New Mexcio 2004 google it), it's utterly foolish to allow Bush to have the power to spy on anyone in violation of FISA.
Lists of links showing Bush's FBI and military spy on domestic activists now from a post to William Arkin's excellent early warning blog at the Washington Post:
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/ 01/nsa_expands_its.html
When someone says they are proud to drve an SUV I imagine them in a klein bottle shaped SUV
driving it up their own ass. YMMV but if your are driving an SUV it will be low.
George Washington and Sam Adams are turning over in their graves right now listening to the sort of sad immoral people produced by our business schools who put profit over freedom. They said give me LIBERTY or give me death, not give me venture capital or give me death. If repulsive immoral greedy cretins such as yourself had been the majority in 1776 we surely still be the British Colony of the Americas. I'm sure the "investment opportunities" were quite good in the British East India Company:
The slave trade was quite a gold rush too asshole. Angry, you bet people like yourself and Dubya are turning America into a fascist shit hole for a few greasy dollars. You make me ill. Take your "V.C." and goat sex it...
Slashdot Mirror
For your information I hate the Dems even more than the Repigs for being spineless suck up weasels for rubber stamping the "Patriot Act" 99-1 in the Senate, for not bothering to fillibuster Bush's apointees, for voting for a war we were lied into (see the Downing Street memos), etc.
Give me a good honest isolationist anti-golbalist paleo-con like Pat Buchanan or a serious Libetarian like Ron Paul, or Paul Craig Roberts, over a war mongering, globalist Dem suckup like Kerry or either Bill or Hilary (80,000 troops more) Clinton any day of the week.
In short nice try at slander better luck next time.
Switch: "There is no moderate Islam, because there is no voice for it. The entire
/The Weekly Standard/Fox/PNAC fame:
religion is held hostage by the "few radical leaders"."
To: "There is no moderate Republican, because there is no voice for it. The entire
party is held hostage by the "few radical leaders" and it's EQUALLY true.
A pox on BOTH the radical Muslims burning buildings over a cartoon AND the radical neo-cons demonizing all of Islam in the run up to the inevitable attack on Iran. The Dutch newspaper editor who originally published these cartoons is closely tied to the American neo-con Daniel Pipes who is viruantly anti Islamic and in cohoots with Rupert Murdoch of
"Rose [editor of the Dutch newspaper that published the cartoons] is apparently a big fan of Daniel Pipes - the controversial anti-Arabist appointed by George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace - and authored an entirely uncritical profile of Pipes, originally published in Jyllands-Posten and translated here.
Pipes is the founder of Campus Watch, an organization devoted to stamping out any and all academic treatments of Middle Eastern affairs that don't conform to his narrow strictures, which might be mildly described as fanatically hostile to Islam, Arabs, and anyone who opposes his extreme Israeli nationalism. Campus Watch is engaged in compiling blacklists of professors who refuse to spout the pro-Israel party line, and actively encourages students to spy on their teachers and report miscreants."
http://antiwar.com/justin/
Both the Mullahs and the neo-cons are setting us up for a war and only a fool believes ANY word from EITHER of their mouths even "a" "and" "the."
Dumbass did you read what I said?
"Racist, sacrilegious, cartoons help no one, whether it's intentional desecrations of Islam or anti-Semitic cartoons published in the Arab world BOTH should be morally condemned."
It's precisely this mindless hatred of Muslims that is exemplified by your post has me terrified. And no of course the radical Mullahs who are ALSO taking advantage of the situation aren't helping.
We are seeing a lot of bad players on BOTH sides, I know that's hard to swallow when our elected leader talks like a 3rd grader pretending to be a cowboy about "smokin' out dem bad guys." In the real world unfortunately there is a lot more gray that is missed by BOTH anti semitic racist Mullahs who inflame people to burn down buildings AND racist neo-cons who inflame hatred of all Muslims when 99% are not involved in this controversy at all. Again Qui bono, who gains by inflaming hatred against Muslims in the run up to a war against Iran?
I would note as well that racist cartoons were one of the mechanisms the Nazis used to inflame hatred against the Jews. BOTH the anti-Muslim right and the anti semitic Arabs need to cut it out before we wind up in a pointless war that mainly benefits a rich chosen few. You can bet the owners of the oil companies are laughing with glee at the stupid antics of both sides as they draw up their war plans. We can and must do better. And don't just think this is some sort of left issue of political correctness IMO some of the best critiques of the neo-cons war plans come from Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine
http://www.amconmag.com/
And the Libertarian right: http://antiwar.com/
Another hero in our fight for rationality against mindless (unconstitutional) "patriotism" has been Republican Ron Paul, and former deputy treasury secretary under Reagan Paul Craig Roberts who has stretched himself enough to write for the leftist http://counterpunch.org/
We must approach this in a nuanced sophisticated fashion, allowing ourselves to be manipulated by EITHER simple minded mullahs or war mongering neo-cons will only lead to the world wide bloodshed of WWIII.
Yes, the Dutch and European papers have the free speech right to publish this cartoon, and I would vigorously defend that right, just as Salamon Rushdie was rightly defended against fatwas, etc. But we also have to ask are they using their freedom wisely? Racist, sacrilegious, cartoons help no one, whether it's intentional desecrations of Islam or anti-Semitic cartoons published in the Arab world BOTH should be morally condemned. Not censored by the government, but condemned as unworthy in a world that is capable of producing figures like Martin Luther King and Ghandi. Having the freedom to publish sacrilegious cartoons and saying it's a good idea or helpful to the world are very different things. We must simultaneously defend the right of the people publishing the cartoons while questioning their motives. Qui bono?
Know that the neo-cons are using this incident to inflame passions against Muslims in a build up to an attack upon on Iran. Think before you condemn all Muslims or their governments for the destructive acts of a few. If you do that you are playing into the hands of neo-cons who are counting on western hatred of Muslims to justify their imperialist plans to make over the middle east, most likely to prevent any country from trading oil in Euros, and to "defend" Israel who has angered the Arab world by violating international law by illegally expanding it's 1967 green line borders into the Palestinian territories.
Demonization of an entire people based on their religion is always a bad idea, did the holocaust teach us nothing?
I'm saying two things:
1. The first is the government should respect the privacy of our e-mail which are our modern day letters that are protected by the wording of the 4th amendment.
2. I'm saying the government ought not to be able to declare us criminals based on our publicly stated OPINIONS on blogs and other web sites. Supporting the criminalization of public speech would be analogous to supporting the British attempts to criminalize the writers of the broadsides that became known as the Federalist papers. Broadsides and letters to the editor were the equivalent to our modern day blogs. Again it's fortunate the British government of the time didn't have the power to discover who "anonymous cowards" "Publis" and 'A Farmer," etc, were or we would have had no American revolution.
Is that really the way you to go?
Do I get called a terrorist if I say I FUCKING HATE BUSH for abrogating the 4th amendment to the bill of rights?
i on.billofrights.html
"Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut
Wouldn't I be a coward if I didn't hate him for this breach of our fundamental rights? I assure you if the British had such a system for sifting all communications for treasonous intent we would still be the British commonwealth of the Americas. After all some of the original American REOVLUTIONARIES (can you say violent overthrow of the "legitimate" British government) communicated through committees of correspondence:
"In an era before modern communications, news was generally disseminated in hand-written letters that were carried aboard ships or by couriers on horseback. Those means were employed by the critics of British imperial policy in America to spread their interpretations of current events.
Special committees of correspondence were formed by the colonial assemblies and various lesser arms of local government. The committees were responsible for taking the sense of their parent body on a particular issue, committing it to a written form and then dispatching that view to other similar groups. Many correspondents were members of the colonial assemblies and also were active in the secret Sons of Liberty organizations."
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h675.html
Can you say secret terrorist organiztion boys and girls I knew you could. Of course the British had a right to monitor their public communications (letters), right? Afterall if they were doing nothing wrong...
Precisely my point is that some things like the beauty of a forest can't be quantified. Never assume everything can be quantified. Just because geeks like to benchmark doesn't mean EVERYTHING can be benchmarked and to believe that is the case is to miss some of the most profound things in the world like beauty, or the quality of light as the sun rises.
Would a Salieri symphony be better than Mozart because it has more notes per second? That is the sort of absurdity we get into when we try to measure qualities with quantities. The thing that makes a Mozart symphony isn't quantifiable, it's just a quality we know.
Not that quantities don't have their place, without them we wouldn't have physics, biology, etc, and we would fall prey to superstition like creationism. But the broadest epistemology that sees all of the world recognizes that there are things that can be quantified and qualities which can't be quantified. To destroy the qualities of the world like culture and the beauty of forests because they couldn't be quantified or monetized would be the greatest tragedy imaginable.
If it isn't obvious to you that the culture of the U.S.A. is in profound trouble a whole barrel of easy manipuable statistics isn't going to convince you otherwise. Anyone with any sensitivity and taste know though that our strip malled, tee vee intoxicated pop culture will not be remembered fondly. It may be enjoyable but it's not durable.
That "indefinable" quality is called genius, which is the trait of rigorously pushing an idea as far as it can possibly go whether on not that is the popular or safe thing to do. It's the genius of a Martin Luther King, Ghandi, to follow the logical implications of an idea to it's maximum logically consistent extent.
I would be the first to say that most people are not strong enough to live under those terms. For example I run OS X because it's much easier to use day to day than (gnu)/Linux, even though I also believe RMS is right about the morality of free software. I.e. I make an immoral choice because it's easier and more functional for me to do so. It is often the case that going with the flow is easier than making the moral choice. Who wanted to make waves in the south in the 40s? RMS's free software crusade may not be issue of the same magnitude as civil rights, but it's the same type of choices that we face.
Even if we cannot always live up to the ideals that are pioneered by geniuses it is important that they exist to show us what we ought to strive towards and what life looks like when we don't make compromises for the sake of expediency.
So what chat services don't log conversations? Anything other than irc? Along the same lines is there a pop accessable web mail service that doesn't scan e-mails? I'm thinking of ditching gmail if google continues it's privacy and human rights slide. Sigh "do no evil" was only more corporate propaganda, I should have known...
Producing "Nobel Prize" winners is NOT the same thing as producing thinkers who fundamentally alter everyones concept of space and time. Even if you say string theory or whatever is as deep as Einsteins insights, no one has bothered to explain that to public. My point is then that the U.S. no longer produces public intellectuals, i.e. that our culture is degraded. I do think that is strongly correlated with people in the U.S. correlating success with monetary wealth. We do not value thought for it's own sake anymore than we value a beautiful wilderness for it's own sake. IMO that is a tragedy.
There is more to life than Scrooge Mc Duck swimming around in a big pool of money. Such characters used to be figures of ridicule, alas not anymore, in our current culture we lionize the Donald Trumps who are our modern day Scrooges both in the Dickens and Disney sense of that character.
No I'm a disgusted American. Disgusted at how much America has destroyed whether it's 85+% of our our old growth forests:
e s/index.html
"After 150 years of logging, about 15 percent of old-growth forest remains in the Pacific Northwest, about half of which is protected within Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks."
Source: http://www.americanparknetwork.com/parkinfo/ra/pr
And that's in the west where are still forests at all, east of St; Louis the destruction of old growth forests is in essence 100% complete.
Or the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives in Afghanistan and Iraq we have destroyed through war and "sanctions" for oil and Israel. And yes under Clinton and his bloody sanctions as well, the so called "liberals" are no better. And for what so lard asses can watch American Idol and the super bowl on their big screen t.v.'s? Perhaps "efficient" from a monetary point of view but I suspect history will judge us harshly for having destroyed so much for so little of lasting value. Rome in the time of Caligula comes to mind. When is the last time America produced a towering intellect on the order of Martin Luther King or Einstein? So much "wealth," and such a paucity of lasting achievements to show for it. And please don't even try to tell me Jobs, Torvalds, or Gates are world changing figures like Dr. King or Eienstain who will be remembered for hundreds of years, they aren't.
Yes, with dollars as a benchmark we are doing well (or rather the upper 20& is doing well) quality of life, lasting cultural achievements, or a livable environment for our descendants? Not so much...
It's precisely the fact that American tend to measure EVERYTHING in dollars that makes for a whole world of trouble. After all it's all good until global warming drowns the coasts and warming kills the crops.
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can not eat money." Attributed to Chief Seattle
http://www.cyberwolfman.com/quotes.htm
I sincerely hope your story is true. This is exactly the sort of treatment Orwellian assholes deserve. If they want to play rough like monitoring people all the time they shouldn't be suprised when those who are monitored play rough as well.
p.s Must we sacrifice EVERYTHING on the alter of "productivity." Is there no area of life that is to be left free, spontaneous, eccentric, creative and alive in the name of "efficiency?"
Remember Einstein discovered relativity while slacking off at the patent office. If he had been under 9-5 monitoring scheme at the turn of the century the world would be a poorer place. Many of our most profound insights are the product of daydreaming. I suspect the managerial class could do with reading a bit more C.S. Lewis and a bit less on "time management" theory.
I'm going to take a controversial stance here and say I think this is wrong even if it's only used to catch people slacking off at the pub. Why? Because it's a violation of our basic human dignity, and treats us as children who need to be constantly monitored. What ever happened to an idea of individual autonomy and the idea of freedom of movement? Wasn't the constant tracking of it's citizens within it's borders one of the things that really pissed people off about communism? Is it really "better" if it's done by the private sector? Don't the Brits read 1984 anymore? A constant surveillance society is stifling regardless of who's behind the cameras. The sociologist Weber said in the long term that western societies would be doomed by the iron cage of bureaucracy. If this is accepted practice now I fear his worries have already come to pass.
I wish I had some mode points to give you anonymous you have just described the problem not just with the Super Bowl but America in general since the Reagan era-error, that has only accelerated since 911.
l d-poll_x.htm
No wonder the world hates us:
"Eleven of the 16 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center -- Britain, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Indonesia -- had a more favorable view of China than the U.S.
India and Poland were more upbeat about the U.S., while Canadians are as likely to see China favorably as they were the United States.
The poll, which was released Thursday, found suspicion and wariness of the United States in many countries where people question the war in Iraq and are growing wary of the U.S.-led war on terror.
"The Iraq war has left an enduring impression on the minds of people around the world in ways that make them very suspicious of U.S. intentions and makes the effort to win hearts and minds far more difficult," said Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution."
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-06-23-wor
I far one don't welcome or new war based 1984ish (we've always been at war against Golstein Bin-Laden's east Asia) police states, "open source: secuirty sensors, or not.
Obviously kowtowing to lawyers is more important to you than how the operating system actually performs. It is just this sort of obsequious bowing to lawyers that is one of the biggest problems in the world today. Without i.p. lawyers throwing up roadblocks many more "tenacious hobbyists" would be producing free software for all of us to enjoy. Do gcc, firefox, gnome, ring a bell? It seems you are secretly sympathetic to the SCO lawyers as they give Solaris an ARTIFICIAL leg up on "tenacious hobbyists" such as RMS, who gave us the free software concept in the first place, and the tool (gcc) to compile that free software.
Note I do actually believe that is a place in the world for many different sorts of software licenses, for example I'm running OS X on the desktop and Ubuntu/Apache for my web server for http://treefunk.net/forum
What I object to is your sly underhanded dissing of React OS, Linux, and "tenacious hobbyists" not on the basis on technical merit, but on the basis of how well they can fend off lawyers. Surely we can do better than to fall back on arbitrary authority when technical performance is a better reason to accept or reject an operating system?
p.s. Never underestimate what a "tenacious and inexperienced hobbyist" can do. Linus Torvalds was just such a person who wanted a Unix like operating system for his 386, the rest is as they say history. Put that in your .000001% market share Solaris pipe and smoke it.
Since you mention Open Solaris in your sig perhaps you have a vested interest in a competing operating system not being licsensed in the U.S.? Perhaps you are a Sun employee or investor? Could be... Or perhaps it's just even an unconscious bias but it's rather curious that you dismiss React OS. being able to be licensed despite what TFA said.
You wouldn't have an agenda to push Open Solaris now would you? Hmmmm..
The FBI and the military are spying on non violent politcal activists now. Given that we have Alito on the supreme court who supports the power of the "unitary executive," and given that Bush lied to us about always getting a warrant before engaging in phone tapping (in New Mexcio 2004 google it), it's utterly foolish to allow Bush to have the power to spy on anyone in violation of FISA. Lists of links showing Bush's FBI and military spy on domestic activists now from a post to William Arkin's excellent early warning blog at the Washington Post: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/ 01/nsa_expands_its.html
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American Media Dodging U.N. Surveillance Story By Norman Solomon Media Beat March 6, 2003 http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2226&printer_f
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The unholy trinity of electronic snooping: Bolton, Negroponte and Hayden By Wayne Madsen Online Journal May 5, 2005
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NSA spy program hinges on state-of-the-art technology By Shane Harris National Journal January 20, 2006 http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=3
### NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance Fruit of Eavesdropping Was Processed and Cross-Checked With Databases By Walter Pincus Washington Post Sunday, January 1, 2006; A08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
### New Documents Show FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Targeting Peaceful Protest Activity in Colorado ACLU Press Release December 8, 2005 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/22884prs20051
### New Documents Show FBI Targeting Environmental and Animal Rights Groups Activities as "Domestic Terrorism" ACLU Press Release December 20, 2005 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23124prs20051
### Secret Pentagon Unit May Have Gathered and Kept Unauthorized Files on Thousands of Innocent Individuals and Organizations Newsweek Jan 23, 2006 http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/printer_307
### Protesters Subjected To 'Pretext Interviews' FBI Memo Shows No Specific Threats By Dan Eggen Washington Post Wednesday, May 18, 2005; A04 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
### Battlespace America: The new Pentagon can peruse intelligence on U.S.citizens and send Marines down Main Street Peter Byrne Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.
When someone says they are proud to drve an SUV I imagine them in a klein bottle shaped SUV driving it up their own ass. YMMV but if your are driving an SUV it will be low.
You said, "At least we don't throw excrement at each other. Mostly." And what exactly is Congres then pray tell?
George Washington and Sam Adams are turning over in their graves right now listening to the sort of sad immoral people produced by our business schools who put profit over freedom. They said give me LIBERTY or give me death, not give me venture capital or give me death. If repulsive immoral greedy cretins such as yourself had been the majority in 1776 we surely still be the British Colony of the Americas. I'm sure the "investment opportunities" were quite good in the British East India Company:
R evolution/TeaParty.htm
http://www.kidport.com/RefLib/UsaHistory/American
The slave trade was quite a gold rush too asshole. Angry, you bet people like yourself and Dubya are turning America into a fascist shit hole for a few greasy dollars. You make me ill. Take your "V.C." and goat sex it...
That's Kdifferently abled for KDE you insensitive clod.