representative government is best, seriously? Representative government was created primarily as a means of buffering the rich from the majority opinion (our views tend to diverge unless we're drunk on tea). It still does that. Representatives (the rich then, as the rich now) can listen to what their constituents (the majority) wants, and "balance" it with what the rich want, by and large, the rich get what they want. The only way to get laws that are not bought and paid for by corporate elites is to remove the buffer of representatives and let laws be voted on directly by the people (same with the President). I do agree that localized government would be best. National government should only be in place for defending external borders from armed attacks...
Not to be too rough or anything, but if you don't like the burden of living abroad, then, don't live abroad. I am also not too kind because I don't imagine you'll be living in China to help improve the industrial base of the US. I know, not your job, but, every little bit counts. You probably don't agree, which makes it not too relevant whether you vote or not...
You don't have to disagree, it appears though that you wanted to. I think though that you are asking for something to be proven which wholly impractical to prove without massive changes to the system. To illustrate, can you give a somewhat complete description of what proof would be required for you ( a presumed nonbeliever in the legitimacy and incorruptibility of the system) to be convinced?
I didn't catch the equation, could you point it out? I assume it is somewhere in the three statements you made but I couldn't find the equals sign anywhere either explicit or implied.
My sister just got a phone, she runs windows computers at her house, at work, etc, she is no geek, not by a long shot. She got an android phone, probably because everyone she knows has an android phone (she didn't consult me before buying, I would have said Android of course). Suck that, microshaft.
I didn't RTFA but, superficially thinking about it, it seems that other browsers would not be vulnerable to attacks aimed at IE9 and so would not detect anything malicious; hell, the attack might not even launch if it doesn't detect an IE9 browser.
uh, they have new customers being made every year. The trick is to make people more afraid of not taking them (giving them to their offspring) than of taking them. Their revenue stream is gua-ran-teed! Take that to the bank Mr. Investor, it is good as gold.
Interesting, so, you are saying that the drugs that wouldn't beat a placebo now were approved with some shenanigans? Or are you saying that the mind is able to improve the state of the body as some of the expensive and often dangerous chemical cocktails that are prescribed to have such an effect? I really can't tell where you're trying to go with that last sentence, could you clarify?
Which big vaccine scare are you talking about? Bird Flu? H1N1? I agree, I think we all learned that WHO (not The WHO), the FDA, and governments in general are more concerned with Big Pharma being profitable than really making sure people stay healthy. In both of those vaccine scares, the actual probability of infection and death were incredibly low yet billions were gifted to Big Pharma to "save us all!!". So yeah, lesson learned, thanks for the reminder. I think people upvoted him because generally speaking, doctors are nothing more than drug pushers (by and large), and Big Pharma is just another group of corporations mostly concerned with profits, healing not being very high on their list of concerns.
"Hello, Dr. John Doe, we heard you wanted to report unfortunate side-effects caused by one of our drugs. We'd like to talk about it in our new seminar, which will be held in the Bahamas, for two weeks, at a time of your choosing."
This is not a lie, a co-worker of mine whose wife is a doctor went to one of these "seminars" with her, that's right, to the Bahamas, a fully paid trip, for them and a bunch of other doctors and spouses. They did the legal minimum to make the boondoggle tax deductible for the company. What is mind-boggling is that this is legal and completely within the bounds of the law at all levels.
FDA bases its approvals on company submitted and sponsored data. FDA and pharmaceutical companies are infamous for their revolving door hiring. Screw the FDA, I don't trust them for shit.
Generally speaking, it is the more educated/affluent/informed parents who choose not to vaccinate. Thus your characterization of parents who choose not to vaccinate as an uneducated bunch is incorrect and tells more about you than it does them. It also does not add to the argument; cartooning those who hold views different from yours is an interesting tactic, usually taken when a coherent argument against can't be mustered. Do you work for a pharmaceutical company by any chance Mr. AC?
allright then I guess it's all good. I understand your basis, it sounds like you were just being devils advocate, fair enough, someone had to, I guess... I don't think you give yourself and other members of your species enough credit though, you might find that under the appropriate stresses you'd find your way through. Same drive that got you through college (I'm assuming since you're posting on slashdot) would likely get you through physical hardships. BTW, you could probably survive on less than an acre of land if you took care of that land like your life depended on it. Here's some discussion and a book it points at: http://ask.metafilter.com/77287/How-much-land-does-a-person-need http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580082335/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/
She does that so she can hand them out to friend/victims, kind of like religious pamphlets. I don't know this old lady just taking a guess at her motivations, it's not difficult with the simpletons that follow fox "news". Not sure if I'd be more embarrassed to be right or wrong, but, could you ask her and find out? Don't accept any paper from her though, it could give her the wrong idea (that you share her mindset).
Survival is not the same as "maintaining my comfortable way of life", I think you'd be quite capable of surviving without a complex banking system, literally, even if you're no Rambo. You literally claimed you required that for your survival, you stand by that claim too? Tool use and cyborgness, have never been confused, fuzzy or conflated generally, not sure where your notion of the existence of such fuzziness comes from. Also, going back to your original post I think you didn't notice that his artificial legs are strap ons, and thus not his legs were not "replaced" as you state, rather adequate functionality was restored through the use of prosthetics. I think though that you are trying to define cyborg very widely starting with your topic line "We are all mechanically augmented cyborgs." Even the most generous definitions of cyborgs do not include purely mechanical contraptions as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion. So, I reject your thesis statement but agree that if you are basing your arguments upon that flawed notion, there is an internal consistency to your argument. I just happen to think that you haven't got a leg to stand on, much like the topic of this thread. *rimshot*
Slashdot Mirror
representative government is best, seriously? Representative government was created primarily as a means of buffering the rich from the majority opinion (our views tend to diverge unless we're drunk on tea). It still does that. Representatives (the rich then, as the rich now) can listen to what their constituents (the majority) wants, and "balance" it with what the rich want, by and large, the rich get what they want. The only way to get laws that are not bought and paid for by corporate elites is to remove the buffer of representatives and let laws be voted on directly by the people (same with the President). I do agree that localized government would be best. National government should only be in place for defending external borders from armed attacks...
Not to be too rough or anything, but if you don't like the burden of living abroad, then, don't live abroad. I am also not too kind because I don't imagine you'll be living in China to help improve the industrial base of the US. I know, not your job, but, every little bit counts. You probably don't agree, which makes it not too relevant whether you vote or not...
You don't have to disagree, it appears though that you wanted to. I think though that you are asking for something to be proven which wholly impractical to prove without massive changes to the system. To illustrate, can you give a somewhat complete description of what proof would be required for you ( a presumed nonbeliever in the legitimacy and incorruptibility of the system) to be convinced?
I didn't catch the equation, could you point it out? I assume it is somewhere in the three statements you made but I couldn't find the equals sign anywhere either explicit or implied.
...and you really can't stop them by carrying a gun.
I beg to differ
Yeah, known solutions. War, starvation...
You're not going to be in the movie, good looking people will play your parts.
not really, not if you're doing say, bookkeeping, plumbing, computer support, or mail delivery and such.
My sister just got a phone, she runs windows computers at her house, at work, etc, she is no geek, not by a long shot. She got an android phone, probably because everyone she knows has an android phone (she didn't consult me before buying, I would have said Android of course). Suck that, microshaft.
uh, other than maybe some Nokias, aren't they all Chinese smart phones? I know for a fact that the iPhone is.
oh yeah? so?
I didn't RTFA but, superficially thinking about it, it seems that other browsers would not be vulnerable to attacks aimed at IE9 and so would not detect anything malicious; hell, the attack might not even launch if it doesn't detect an IE9 browser.
brave words AC
uh, they have new customers being made every year. The trick is to make people more afraid of not taking them (giving them to their offspring) than of taking them. Their revenue stream is gua-ran-teed! Take that to the bank Mr. Investor, it is good as gold.
why was this moderated troll? Did Astra Seneca get a bunch of mod points when they bought advertising space on slashdot?
Interesting, so, you are saying that the drugs that wouldn't beat a placebo now were approved with some shenanigans? Or are you saying that the mind is able to improve the state of the body as some of the expensive and often dangerous chemical cocktails that are prescribed to have such an effect? I really can't tell where you're trying to go with that last sentence, could you clarify?
Which big vaccine scare are you talking about? Bird Flu? H1N1? I agree, I think we all learned that WHO (not The WHO), the FDA, and governments in general are more concerned with Big Pharma being profitable than really making sure people stay healthy. In both of those vaccine scares, the actual probability of infection and death were incredibly low yet billions were gifted to Big Pharma to "save us all!!". So yeah, lesson learned, thanks for the reminder.
I think people upvoted him because generally speaking, doctors are nothing more than drug pushers (by and large), and Big Pharma is just another group of corporations mostly concerned with profits, healing not being very high on their list of concerns.
"Hello, Dr. John Doe, we heard you wanted to report unfortunate side-effects caused by one of our drugs. We'd like to talk about it in our new seminar, which will be held in the Bahamas, for two weeks, at a time of your choosing."
This is not a lie, a co-worker of mine whose wife is a doctor went to one of these "seminars" with her, that's right, to the Bahamas, a fully paid trip, for them and a bunch of other doctors and spouses. They did the legal minimum to make the boondoggle tax deductible for the company. What is mind-boggling is that this is legal and completely within the bounds of the law at all levels.
maybe time to find a new doctor?
FDA bases its approvals on company submitted and sponsored data. FDA and pharmaceutical companies are infamous for their revolving door hiring. Screw the FDA, I don't trust them for shit.
Generally speaking, it is the more educated/affluent/informed parents who choose not to vaccinate. Thus your characterization of parents who choose not to vaccinate as an uneducated bunch is incorrect and tells more about you than it does them. It also does not add to the argument; cartooning those who hold views different from yours is an interesting tactic, usually taken when a coherent argument against can't be mustered. Do you work for a pharmaceutical company by any chance Mr. AC?
allright then I guess it's all good. I understand your basis, it sounds like you were just being devils advocate, fair enough, someone had to, I guess... I don't think you give yourself and other members of your species enough credit though, you might find that under the appropriate stresses you'd find your way through. Same drive that got you through college (I'm assuming since you're posting on slashdot) would likely get you through physical hardships. BTW, you could probably survive on less than an acre of land if you took care of that land like your life depended on it. Here's some discussion and a book it points at:
http://ask.metafilter.com/77287/How-much-land-does-a-person-need
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580082335/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/
She does that so she can hand them out to friend/victims, kind of like religious pamphlets. I don't know this old lady just taking a guess at her motivations, it's not difficult with the simpletons that follow fox "news". Not sure if I'd be more embarrassed to be right or wrong, but, could you ask her and find out? Don't accept any paper from her though, it could give her the wrong idea (that you share her mindset).
Stop having kids now.
Funny, I think this is the default state for most slashdotters, thus as unnecessary to say as say "Keep breathing" under normal circumstances.
Survival is not the same as "maintaining my comfortable way of life", I think you'd be quite capable of surviving without a complex banking system, literally, even if you're no Rambo. You literally claimed you required that for your survival, you stand by that claim too? Tool use and cyborgness, have never been confused, fuzzy or conflated generally, not sure where your notion of the existence of such fuzziness comes from.
Also, going back to your original post I think you didn't notice that his artificial legs are strap ons, and thus not his legs were not "replaced" as you state, rather adequate functionality was restored through the use of prosthetics.
I think though that you are trying to define cyborg very widely starting with your topic line "We are all mechanically augmented cyborgs." Even the most generous definitions of cyborgs do not include purely mechanical contraptions as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion. So, I reject your thesis statement but agree that if you are basing your arguments upon that flawed notion, there is an internal consistency to your argument. I just happen to think that you haven't got a leg to stand on, much like the topic of this thread. *rimshot*