You forgot "newscaster". There are dozens of them now, who can't boil water without burning it. Can't pour piss out of a boot, if the instructions are written on the bottom of the sole. People who can fall of the Empire State Building, and get lost before they hit the ground. Dumber than any rock you've ever met. But, they've got great asses, and at least moderate cleavage, so they get on television!
Someone sits around tabulating all the stuff sent to the politicians. That someone makes a report periodically, informing Congress Critter Muckraker that all of 17 people have written this week, protesting ACTA. Or, maybe he reports once a month, or maybe even once a day.
I'll bet if Congress was debating the removal of 'American Idol' from the airwaves, they would get about 30 million letters, and 60 million phone calls, along with 120 million emails within 24 hours. But, anything important, like ACTA only gets a couple dozen organizations like EFF involved, and maybe two or three thousand private citizens.
"have worked well for centuries before the DMCA and other rubbish."
The beginnings of the current crisis predates the DMCA by about - ohhhh - 30 years, I'd say. Things started going out of kilter when the copyright laws started to be extended. And, let's blame Walt Disney and his company for much of that. In fact, I'll go further back, and say that things started to become unbalanced around 1950.
Since you point to the DMCA specifically, I would say that things started to accelerate downhill around the time that Microsoft stated that "This software is licensed, not sold." Without googling, it seems that at one point in time, one could actually "buy" a copy of MS Windows. Then with the next update to Windows, you could no longer "buy" it, you could only rent it, so long as you agreed to that stupid EULA, and understood that Microsoft owns everything on your PC - if not the physical PC itself.
Then, I hope that you've been writing to the White House, as well as the house and senate. I have been, for years now. Both George Bush and Barack Obama have heard from me, repeatedly on the subject of internet freedom. All of my representatives, as well as a number of representatives that aren't my own.
This, and all similar acts, treaties, regulations, or whatever name it might go by, need to be shot down. I'm steaming over ACTA - a piece of shit born in secrecy, and jammed up all our orifices, despite any and all objections.
MPAA, RIAA, and the other alphabet soup organizations OWN the US government. Said government does NOT represent the American people, anymore. That government represents only the wealth "rights holders". A mere citizen is unworthy of congress' attention, or concern.
I share your allergy, but I also have a more serious allergy. I am no person's "subject". I am a free man. No matter how the Brits argue the matter, no matter all the amendments etc to UK constitution, Brits remain subjects of some old woman in a castle. The only way that I would ever bow to the old girl, is if she first bowed to me. Figurehead or not, that "subject" thing would rub me raw, really, really fast.
Yes, your memory has hazed over a little bit. It took weeks before all of Iraq's radar sites were eliminated. That, in spite of the fact that we had already painted them in the runup to the war. Month after month, we flew into Iraqi territory, recording everything we could, including the locations of radar installations. Still, when the war started, mobile radar units had been moved, and some of the stationary units hadn't ever been mapped.
Military intelligence changes daily, if not hourly. You've got to stay on top of things, or your intel is shit.
I'm not the majority, but I have read about Operation Ajax. Yeah, I'm American, and I sorta think that we are special, and I like making money, yada yada yada. But, I can't justify what happened with Ajax. We destroyed a legitimate democracy, for the sake of a few cents per barrel of oil.
If I were Iranian, or Persian, or even Arabic, I'd be pretty pissed at the US too.
What's funny about attempts to visualize other types of life forms is, we tend to visualize those life forms in our own environmental terms. That is, we tend to assume some basic atmospheric conditions, pressure ranges, and temperature ranges. We "assume" certain basic conditions that resemble our own conditions.
Silicone? How about we break the cycle by trying to visualize silicone under hundreds of thousands of tons of pressure, and thousands of degrees, with and atmosphere of ammonia? Or, alternatively, in a vacuum at tens of thousands of degrees? Partial pressure atmospheres at near 0 degrees kelvin?
Of course, the question arises then, how and why are mankind interacting with such creatures under such conditions?
Of course, I was enamored with the idea of "living rock" as I child. Some story I read mentioned it, and I had the idea that some rock was really alive. Of course, it isn't - or IS IT?!?!? Nothing says that we are smart enough to recognize alien life when we see it. Geologic time and man's time are so different, that we might not even recognize that a rock actually breathes, or moves, or reproduces. Again, let's step outside our own familiar conditions. Assuming that time might be entirely different for some other life form in conditions that are inimical to us, why would we hang around long enough to collect the data necessary to determine that this or that rock really is alive?
I certainly don't have any answers about the existence of life outside our own experience. But, it amuses me to see the almost idiotic assumptions that people make when considering and debating the possibility. “It’s life, but not as we know it” How about the possibility that a face to face meeting with another life form might be fatal to one or both of the participants in the meeting? His environment is a poisonous atmosphere (to me) and my own body radiating heat might be fatal to him!
You're worse than nuts. You're bug fucking crazy. Samsung selling a damned phone that resembles Apple's phone is going to cause more women to be raped? Bug fucking crazy.
Maybe you didn't read all of the article either. The judge felt that Apple's patent was invalid. Meaning, the judge didn't "agree with Apple on almost all points, except the one . . . "
Alright - explain how Facebook is a pyramid scheme. Are people being paid to recruit more Facebook members, or what?
I'm no great fan of Facebook, but you seem to be talking about biology in a quantum physics class. Social networks might be used to create and to drive a pyramid scheme, but the network itself is not a pyramid scheme.
"Don't they realize that if it really was that simple, then something would have been done a long time ago?"
Change your perspective, just a little, then take another stab at that. The statement, as it stands, assumes that someone, somewhere actually wants to do something good about the situation. In reality, the budget isn't quite as complicated as we are led to believe. Maybe a couple of pie charts aren't enough, but the problem is, those people who are in charge don't WANT us to understand. A goodly percentage of the world's wealth is transferred between corporations, and between friends and friends of friends, and the common man isn't meant to understand any of it. Politicians go to great lengths to use language that only confuses the issues.
As Baloroth stated above: "Same sort of budget games that allow people (congress critters looking to defame their opponents, mainly) to call increases in a budget "cuts", whenever the increase is less than what was originally proposed (doesn't even have to be less than inflation)."
Note that in common dialogue today, ending the tax break that the extremely wealthy currently enjoy translates into "higher taxes" on the wealthy.
I'm a bit curious. Where do the prison systems fit in there? The nation which imprisons a greater percentage of it's population than any other nation has to budget for it somehow. Does that come under "Defense and wars", since it's mostly due to the "War on Drugs"? Or, would it come under "Social Security", since society is just taking care of a (huge) undesirable element (namely, dopeheads)? Or, maybe it comes under Federal Pensions. A guy can live a life of crime, then retire to prison, where the government will see to his needs as he ages.
I said almost the same thing, the first time I read that they were raiding the Social Security funds. SS was doomed to become insolvent sooner or later, but with all the raids on SS, that insolvency is going to be much, much sooner.
Cue someone who fallaciously points out that SS actually makes money on those raids . . .
Blue screens are lame, so how could a blue screen joke not be lame? Real operating systems don't crash and burn when a device stops working. In a real operating system, the worst thing that happens is, you get kicked to a console, where you can start collecting data, to see why your desktop environment quit working. Unless, of course, the device that stopped working was your local electric plant . . .
What's sad is, people still think like that. It's a shame that few people know where AIDS came from. Short version, it's a result of overpopulation. AIDS has always existed, but when population density was lower, it wasn't transmitted between humans. Go ahead, look it up. See where AIDS actually came from. It most definitely was not divine intervention, in retribution for homosexuality. If that were so, it would have killed off all the queers, and left everyone else alone, right?
Please, look at the name of our nation again. United STATES of America. Like Pete Venkman already said, a bunch of free and independent states united together for mutual support. I don't recall where in my history books that the states abdicated their rights, in deference to the Corporate American Empire. I guess it was around the time that the federal government decided to expand interstate commerce laws. (not all of the fed's interstate commerce regulations are wrong, just as not all of them are right)
Nope. I most definitely do not use Microsoft products by mistake. I run a Linux desktop, and I choose Google for my searches. I suppose that I use Microsoft servers while using the web. Some people can't set up a server on their own, so they get Microsoft to do it for them.
When a phone comes equipped with a quad core Opteron, and the graphics to drive any game that runs on Windows at hundreds of FPS, then I'll be interested. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see any phone rivaling the desktop for raw power in the next 10 years.
Go ahead, surprise me. Get someone to produce a smart phone for a thousand dollars or less that can outperform my desktop in all respects, and I'll buy one.
Slashdot Mirror
Something, after all. SOPA was shot down, wasn't it?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/explosion-opposition-internet-blacklist-bill
You forgot "newscaster". There are dozens of them now, who can't boil water without burning it. Can't pour piss out of a boot, if the instructions are written on the bottom of the sole. People who can fall of the Empire State Building, and get lost before they hit the ground. Dumber than any rock you've ever met. But, they've got great asses, and at least moderate cleavage, so they get on television!
See the first AC post in response to my post.
Someone sits around tabulating all the stuff sent to the politicians. That someone makes a report periodically, informing Congress Critter Muckraker that all of 17 people have written this week, protesting ACTA. Or, maybe he reports once a month, or maybe even once a day.
I'll bet if Congress was debating the removal of 'American Idol' from the airwaves, they would get about 30 million letters, and 60 million phone calls, along with 120 million emails within 24 hours. But, anything important, like ACTA only gets a couple dozen organizations like EFF involved, and maybe two or three thousand private citizens.
"have worked well for centuries before the DMCA and other rubbish."
The beginnings of the current crisis predates the DMCA by about - ohhhh - 30 years, I'd say. Things started going out of kilter when the copyright laws started to be extended. And, let's blame Walt Disney and his company for much of that. In fact, I'll go further back, and say that things started to become unbalanced around 1950.
Since you point to the DMCA specifically, I would say that things started to accelerate downhill around the time that Microsoft stated that "This software is licensed, not sold." Without googling, it seems that at one point in time, one could actually "buy" a copy of MS Windows. Then with the next update to Windows, you could no longer "buy" it, you could only rent it, so long as you agreed to that stupid EULA, and understood that Microsoft owns everything on your PC - if not the physical PC itself.
Then, I hope that you've been writing to the White House, as well as the house and senate. I have been, for years now. Both George Bush and Barack Obama have heard from me, repeatedly on the subject of internet freedom. All of my representatives, as well as a number of representatives that aren't my own.
This, and all similar acts, treaties, regulations, or whatever name it might go by, need to be shot down. I'm steaming over ACTA - a piece of shit born in secrecy, and jammed up all our orifices, despite any and all objections.
MPAA, RIAA, and the other alphabet soup organizations OWN the US government. Said government does NOT represent the American people, anymore. That government represents only the wealth "rights holders". A mere citizen is unworthy of congress' attention, or concern.
If you don't know what it does, how can you measure how well it does it?
I think what you meant to say, is that no one really knows what it does, but it continues to return answers that everyone likes.
I share your allergy, but I also have a more serious allergy. I am no person's "subject". I am a free man. No matter how the Brits argue the matter, no matter all the amendments etc to UK constitution, Brits remain subjects of some old woman in a castle. The only way that I would ever bow to the old girl, is if she first bowed to me. Figurehead or not, that "subject" thing would rub me raw, really, really fast.
I call "horseshit" on that story, and on that theory.
Yes, your memory has hazed over a little bit. It took weeks before all of Iraq's radar sites were eliminated. That, in spite of the fact that we had already painted them in the runup to the war. Month after month, we flew into Iraqi territory, recording everything we could, including the locations of radar installations. Still, when the war started, mobile radar units had been moved, and some of the stationary units hadn't ever been mapped.
Military intelligence changes daily, if not hourly. You've got to stay on top of things, or your intel is shit.
I'm not the majority, but I have read about Operation Ajax. Yeah, I'm American, and I sorta think that we are special, and I like making money, yada yada yada. But, I can't justify what happened with Ajax. We destroyed a legitimate democracy, for the sake of a few cents per barrel of oil.
If I were Iranian, or Persian, or even Arabic, I'd be pretty pissed at the US too.
Isaac - one of my heros. The man was one of mankind's greatest geniuses, IMHO.
What's funny about attempts to visualize other types of life forms is, we tend to visualize those life forms in our own environmental terms. That is, we tend to assume some basic atmospheric conditions, pressure ranges, and temperature ranges. We "assume" certain basic conditions that resemble our own conditions.
Silicone? How about we break the cycle by trying to visualize silicone under hundreds of thousands of tons of pressure, and thousands of degrees, with and atmosphere of ammonia? Or, alternatively, in a vacuum at tens of thousands of degrees? Partial pressure atmospheres at near 0 degrees kelvin?
Of course, the question arises then, how and why are mankind interacting with such creatures under such conditions?
Of course, I was enamored with the idea of "living rock" as I child. Some story I read mentioned it, and I had the idea that some rock was really alive. Of course, it isn't - or IS IT?!?!? Nothing says that we are smart enough to recognize alien life when we see it. Geologic time and man's time are so different, that we might not even recognize that a rock actually breathes, or moves, or reproduces. Again, let's step outside our own familiar conditions. Assuming that time might be entirely different for some other life form in conditions that are inimical to us, why would we hang around long enough to collect the data necessary to determine that this or that rock really is alive?
I certainly don't have any answers about the existence of life outside our own experience. But, it amuses me to see the almost idiotic assumptions that people make when considering and debating the possibility. “It’s life, but not as we know it” How about the possibility that a face to face meeting with another life form might be fatal to one or both of the participants in the meeting? His environment is a poisonous atmosphere (to me) and my own body radiating heat might be fatal to him!
You're worse than nuts. You're bug fucking crazy. Samsung selling a damned phone that resembles Apple's phone is going to cause more women to be raped? Bug fucking crazy.
Maybe you didn't read all of the article either. The judge felt that Apple's patent was invalid. Meaning, the judge didn't "agree with Apple on almost all points, except the one . . . "
Nice spin though.
Alright - explain how Facebook is a pyramid scheme. Are people being paid to recruit more Facebook members, or what?
I'm no great fan of Facebook, but you seem to be talking about biology in a quantum physics class. Social networks might be used to create and to drive a pyramid scheme, but the network itself is not a pyramid scheme.
"Don't they realize that if it really was that simple, then something would have been done a long time ago?"
Change your perspective, just a little, then take another stab at that. The statement, as it stands, assumes that someone, somewhere actually wants to do something good about the situation. In reality, the budget isn't quite as complicated as we are led to believe. Maybe a couple of pie charts aren't enough, but the problem is, those people who are in charge don't WANT us to understand. A goodly percentage of the world's wealth is transferred between corporations, and between friends and friends of friends, and the common man isn't meant to understand any of it. Politicians go to great lengths to use language that only confuses the issues.
As Baloroth stated above: "Same sort of budget games that allow people (congress critters looking to defame their opponents, mainly) to call increases in a budget "cuts", whenever the increase is less than what was originally proposed (doesn't even have to be less than inflation)."
Note that in common dialogue today, ending the tax break that the extremely wealthy currently enjoy translates into "higher taxes" on the wealthy.
I'm a bit curious. Where do the prison systems fit in there? The nation which imprisons a greater percentage of it's population than any other nation has to budget for it somehow. Does that come under "Defense and wars", since it's mostly due to the "War on Drugs"? Or, would it come under "Social Security", since society is just taking care of a (huge) undesirable element (namely, dopeheads)? Or, maybe it comes under Federal Pensions. A guy can live a life of crime, then retire to prison, where the government will see to his needs as he ages.
I said almost the same thing, the first time I read that they were raiding the Social Security funds. SS was doomed to become insolvent sooner or later, but with all the raids on SS, that insolvency is going to be much, much sooner.
Cue someone who fallaciously points out that SS actually makes money on those raids . . .
Blue screens are lame, so how could a blue screen joke not be lame? Real operating systems don't crash and burn when a device stops working. In a real operating system, the worst thing that happens is, you get kicked to a console, where you can start collecting data, to see why your desktop environment quit working. Unless, of course, the device that stopped working was your local electric plant . . .
What's sad is, people still think like that. It's a shame that few people know where AIDS came from. Short version, it's a result of overpopulation. AIDS has always existed, but when population density was lower, it wasn't transmitted between humans. Go ahead, look it up. See where AIDS actually came from. It most definitely was not divine intervention, in retribution for homosexuality. If that were so, it would have killed off all the queers, and left everyone else alone, right?
Uhhhh, yeah, right. Here, have some more Kool-Aid, pal.
Please, look at the name of our nation again. United STATES of America. Like Pete Venkman already said, a bunch of free and independent states united together for mutual support. I don't recall where in my history books that the states abdicated their rights, in deference to the Corporate American Empire. I guess it was around the time that the federal government decided to expand interstate commerce laws. (not all of the fed's interstate commerce regulations are wrong, just as not all of them are right)
Nope. I most definitely do not use Microsoft products by mistake. I run a Linux desktop, and I choose Google for my searches. I suppose that I use Microsoft servers while using the web. Some people can't set up a server on their own, so they get Microsoft to do it for them.
Since you did such a good job of picking this list apart http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ maybe you would like to do the same with this on? http://www.philb.com/webse.htm
When a phone comes equipped with a quad core Opteron, and the graphics to drive any game that runs on Windows at hundreds of FPS, then I'll be interested. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see any phone rivaling the desktop for raw power in the next 10 years.
Go ahead, surprise me. Get someone to produce a smart phone for a thousand dollars or less that can outperform my desktop in all respects, and I'll buy one.