Well - it doesn't say "Your rights online IN AMERICA", does it? It looks to me that some country is diddling around with their citizens rights to get online with the company of their choice. Rights. Online. OK, maybe it has little to do with YOUR rights, but then, who the hell are YOU?
Exactly. And, that is why millions around the world stand in line to come to the US, and more millions sneak across the border. They're all nuckin phuts!
I've kind of followed the story on CNN, and other "news" sites.
Oddly, almost no one knows anything about Julian. Stupid assed Americans seem to be divided along party lines. Liberals like him, because he thumbs his nose at the establishment. Conservatives hate him because he's a "hacker" and/or because he leaked sensitive information that might get American soldiers killed. But, almost NONE of them have ever visited Wikileaks, or know one damned thing about anything Julian has done BEFORE he released that video.
Bunch of damned jerkwads just don't have a clue what Assange is about.
If anyone is interested, I like Assange. I think he's done a lot more good with his site, than he has done bad. I disagree with his assessment of that frigging Apache video - but you can't explain shit to civilians. Leaking the video, in and of itself, shouldn't have hurt the US - it's those stupid goddamned opinions and assessments that are doing that.
The REST of the leaks about operations in Afghanistan? Well - I think Julian should have leaked little bits and pieces of that, after asking advice from the pentagon. But, that's just me. That isn't how Julian does business.
There is little to be gained from publicizing ALL of that tripe. It's like writing your biography, and including every trip to the bathroom. Enough has already been publicized to demonstrate that Pakistan's government is corrupt and ineffective, and that we've been a bunch of tools for dealing with them. Enough has been leaked to demonstrate that ineptitude and/or lack of coordination in the field get innocent people killed - but we've always known that.
No need to leak more.
And, oh yeah. None of that has ANYTHING to do with some trumped up rape charges. Wonder how much the bitch was paid, and by whom?
Alright - I'll be honest - the pay is a little higher than I thought it was. But, bear in mind that you are looking at before taxes. When Uncle takes his bite, those figures will drop some. Still - profiteering?
If Ricky Recruit only eats on base, never parties, and doesn't go on any dates, he can save up enough money to pay for a new car at the end of his enlistment. If that is profiteering, well - I'm all for profiteers. Now, we need a new name for those people and corporations that make millions, billions, and trillions off of bloodshed.
Personally, I would just LOVE to have RIAA invade my home, my place of business, or even to just shake me down at a flea market or some such thing. I'm armed. SOMEONE will die. Hey, it could be me. But, the day that a RIAA rent-a-cop kills a US citizen over a civil matter, all hell will break loose.
Come on, RIAA - try to take me down. I can't lose.
I gots no mod points - someone mod this guy to the moon, please.
We don't NEED no steenking rock stars. A couple dozen stars making gazillions of dollars, while the rest eat leftover beans just sucks. People who love making music should be able to make a living. The ones who are really good at it should make a great living. But, freaks running around buying up multi-million dollar condos, million dollar cars, and multi-million dollar jets and yachts is just ridiculous. None of them are WORTH IT!!
And, if any of them really were worth it, he/she/they would have made it without a major label backing them anyway.
So - how do YOU pronounce that? Early oughts? Early oh's? Early two thousands? I remember my grandparents and grand uncles and aunts talking about their younger days. Just like the prelude to the Mr. Bojangles song, it was "Back in 'ought six, we were so poor . . . "
Fair enough - if your OS works, don't upgrade. But, I'm a masochist, I guess. I upgrade and downgrade all the time. Or, maybe I'm just 'tarded, and I enjoy watching the progress counters telling me how soon my new (or old) OS will be ready to run.;^)
You're obviously not a sailor. The scuttlebutt is a good place to hang out, hear the gossip, swap lies, learn irrelevant stuff, and get a drink, while avoiding work.
Heh. Now there's a really pleasant picture. MS abandons IE, makes it open source, and some weekend warriors recode it into something TOTALLY AWESOME!! Someone who has actually decompiled IE should weigh in, and tell us if there's anything of value hidden in all the garbage.
Is there a line like, "If not Microsoft OS, reformat drive!"
Point releases? I'm slightly baffled. I joined the Firefox club around milestone.5 or so, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for each new milestone. Did I simply allow some of the jargon to fly over my head?
IE8 works fine on XP. Why would people continue to use IE6? In fact, the last time I used Windows, I had to admit that IE8 was almost a decent browser. It has tabs, and all sorts of things that all the other browsers have had forever. In fact, IE7 isn't terrible.
To be perfectly honest, I HATE IE, but I don't let my personal preferences blind me to the fact that IE has been improving for about - oh - is it three years now?
And, did you notice that ext4 wont work with old Linux kernels either? It's like Linus isn't even trying either. [/sarcasm]
Get over yourself. XP was a great system, and it ran a long long race. It's time to lay it aside now. Upgrade to Ubuntu or something. If you're still in love with Bill Gate's version of bling, upgrade to Win7. It's a decent operating system, after all.
I don't care about corporations being "up in arms". In the United States, the constitution gives the vote (and voice) to citizens. Corporations aren't citizens. Every law maker who represents a corporate interest, rather than citizens interests, is a prostitute. He whores himself to the corporation, rather than legitimately representing his constituents.
Corporations are happy to exploit people, along with the law.
And, the fact remains that activists in Washington can afford to promote those special interests who will profit from the program, while ignoring the needs of American workers.
Sounds a little like you are beating your own chest there. Much like the Mexicans who are undercutting the American job market. That purchasing power you mention makes it profitable for them to pay 5 or 10 thousand dollars for a coyote to sneak them into the country. They can recoup that payment in months, or at most a couple of years - then continue to live and work here ILLEGALLY for another 20 years. Sure, while they live here, they live below the average American's "standard of living". But, all that money they send home builds a mansion, while supporting dozens of relatives. Any pension they "earn" will make them fabulously wealthy when they retire.
And, who gets screwed over? American workers of course. Because, corporations are happy to exploit those Mexicans, even if they have to pay off a president so that he won't enforce the laws that he is sworn to uphold.
Of course it looks different when you change a couple key words. It's called "spin", and it's practiced daily by the newspapers and other media.
"Providing employment" suggests that people who had nothing can now make purchases, such as housing, automobiles, clothes, etc. In fact, "providing employment" often translates to a marginally better diet, and increased chances of survival. I point to Africa as a prime example. I'm quite sure that you can use Google to locate any number of stories about Gap jeans and other factories located in Africa. If anything, the overall quality of life has been degraded in some of those towns. Entire villages have been overwhelmed with unregulated refuse dumps, and their populations have been reduced to scavenging the dumps for survival.
China has it's own towns that have been inundated with waste dumps. I saw one set of photos from China of a home that nestled between piles of scrap and refuse, pretty much lost to view from any other home.
You call it "providing employment", I call it exploitation.
The US is not purely capitalist. Did you not read about all those banks that were "to big to fail"?? If we were to allow capitalism to rule, unfettered, those banks would have gone down. Instead, we had a taste of corporate socialism, the government stepped in and "saved" all those failures.
If things were run purely along capitalistic lines, there would be no Indians here at all. Travel expenses would negate any savings in labor costs.
Minimum wage laws are another example. They are completely contrary to capitalistic ideals. The government mandates that EVERYONE* (with a few key exemptions) must be paid x amount of dollars per hour, OR MORE.
If you'll research all the subsidies that the government has given to corporate America, you can only conclude that capitalism is really a failure. Today, it is little more than a catchword, which denotes the people who are really in power.
*exemptions involve almost everyone involved in growing, producing, processing, harvesting, or storing food and food products - the result of lobbying efforts by corporate agriculture
Let's think about this. The corporation has a job to be done. They look at the applicants, some of which come from thousands of miles away - India for example. If they hire local people, they have to pay local wages. They don't much like that, so they apply to the government for permits, allowing them to import cheap labor from thousands of miles away. The government may or may not care - but if they actually CARE about their constituents, they can always be bought.
With every foreigner approved, we have one job GIVEN AWAY to a foreign person, and TAKEN AWAY from a voting, taxpaying US citizen.
Taking advantage of the highest technological systems in the world, and at the same time exploiting poor peasants who will work for pennies per day just seems terribly unethical. Face it - without the infrastructure provided by past generations of American workers, NONE of today's name-brand manufacturers would be where they are today.
Think I'm wrong? Fine - take yourself to Africa, with nothing more than you can carry on an airplane and inside your head, and set up shop to compete with Apple.
What's that you say? You can't find people who are educated highly enough in the fields that you need? You can't find an honest government that will support your endeavor? You can't find logistics? You can't even find a reliable power supply for your plant? Well - imagine that.
The fact is, various populations around the world have worked for generations to provide the necessary infrastructure for Apple and other corporations to do what they do. Apple (and others) takes full advantage of that infrastructure, and returns little to nothing to maintaining that infrastructure.
I'll bet you haven't tried Midori browser either, then. twotoasts.de In my own informal testing (read, not disciplined in any manner, just diddling around) Midori was the FIRST browser to score 100 on the Acid3 test, and it's also the fastest GUI browser.
It's not my browser of choice, for two reasons - 1, it does break from time to time and 2, it lacks the customizations of Firefox. Also, Midori doesn't seem to be real happy on a system with any other Webkit engine installed.
Still - you should look at Midori, and drive it around a little.
This post might be more informative if you specified the speed of your connection. If you happen to live next door to a university, and have access to their fiberoptic trunk - you'll seldom wait for anything. I mean, can you download movies in less than a week? Less than a day? Less than an hour?
I can download an ISO in 12 to 20 hours, if I don't mind listening to the wife and kids bitching about the lack of internet on their machines. Throttling my download so that I don't have to listen to their bitching means that the ISO of BackTrack4 R1 takes about 3 days.
Actually - Firefox's strength hasn't been speed for quite some time. It's that ADDONS and personalizations that make fans now. Back in the day, Firefox was blazing fast when compared to IE. But, even IE has evolved since then.
Slashdot Mirror
Well - it doesn't say "Your rights online IN AMERICA", does it? It looks to me that some country is diddling around with their citizens rights to get online with the company of their choice. Rights. Online. OK, maybe it has little to do with YOUR rights, but then, who the hell are YOU?
"no sane person outside US likes US"
Exactly. And, that is why millions around the world stand in line to come to the US, and more millions sneak across the border. They're all nuckin phuts!
I've kind of followed the story on CNN, and other "news" sites.
Oddly, almost no one knows anything about Julian. Stupid assed Americans seem to be divided along party lines. Liberals like him, because he thumbs his nose at the establishment. Conservatives hate him because he's a "hacker" and/or because he leaked sensitive information that might get American soldiers killed. But, almost NONE of them have ever visited Wikileaks, or know one damned thing about anything Julian has done BEFORE he released that video.
Bunch of damned jerkwads just don't have a clue what Assange is about.
If anyone is interested, I like Assange. I think he's done a lot more good with his site, than he has done bad. I disagree with his assessment of that frigging Apache video - but you can't explain shit to civilians. Leaking the video, in and of itself, shouldn't have hurt the US - it's those stupid goddamned opinions and assessments that are doing that.
The REST of the leaks about operations in Afghanistan? Well - I think Julian should have leaked little bits and pieces of that, after asking advice from the pentagon. But, that's just me. That isn't how Julian does business.
There is little to be gained from publicizing ALL of that tripe. It's like writing your biography, and including every trip to the bathroom. Enough has already been publicized to demonstrate that Pakistan's government is corrupt and ineffective, and that we've been a bunch of tools for dealing with them. Enough has been leaked to demonstrate that ineptitude and/or lack of coordination in the field get innocent people killed - but we've always known that.
No need to leak more.
And, oh yeah. None of that has ANYTHING to do with some trumped up rape charges. Wonder how much the bitch was paid, and by whom?
Have you ever seen the pay scale for enlisted soldiers and sailors? Profiteering?
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/fy2010paycharts/a/basicpayenl.htm
Alright - I'll be honest - the pay is a little higher than I thought it was. But, bear in mind that you are looking at before taxes. When Uncle takes his bite, those figures will drop some. Still - profiteering?
If Ricky Recruit only eats on base, never parties, and doesn't go on any dates, he can save up enough money to pay for a new car at the end of his enlistment. If that is profiteering, well - I'm all for profiteers. Now, we need a new name for those people and corporations that make millions, billions, and trillions off of bloodshed.
Perhaps you should do some googling, before claiming that RIAA can't raid your house, or put you in jail.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070117/163531.shtml
http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4385453-1.html
http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2007/11/albumbase-down/
http://features.rr.com/article/0bAa6maaGCexM?q=North+Carolina
http://www.riaa.net/newsitem.php?news_month_filter=5&news_year_filter=2004&resultpage=&id=482BFD6A-C0C6-71B2-F544-6E181B92A80A
Personally, I would just LOVE to have RIAA invade my home, my place of business, or even to just shake me down at a flea market or some such thing. I'm armed. SOMEONE will die. Hey, it could be me. But, the day that a RIAA rent-a-cop kills a US citizen over a civil matter, all hell will break loose.
Come on, RIAA - try to take me down. I can't lose.
I gots no mod points - someone mod this guy to the moon, please.
We don't NEED no steenking rock stars. A couple dozen stars making gazillions of dollars, while the rest eat leftover beans just sucks. People who love making music should be able to make a living. The ones who are really good at it should make a great living. But, freaks running around buying up multi-million dollar condos, million dollar cars, and multi-million dollar jets and yachts is just ridiculous. None of them are WORTH IT!!
And, if any of them really were worth it, he/she/they would have made it without a major label backing them anyway.
Just do away with the labels, FFS
"back in the early '00s."
So - how do YOU pronounce that? Early oughts? Early oh's? Early two thousands? I remember my grandparents and grand uncles and aunts talking about their younger days. Just like the prelude to the Mr. Bojangles song, it was "Back in 'ought six, we were so poor . . . "
Fair enough - if your OS works, don't upgrade. But, I'm a masochist, I guess. I upgrade and downgrade all the time. Or, maybe I'm just 'tarded, and I enjoy watching the progress counters telling me how soon my new (or old) OS will be ready to run. ;^)
You're obviously not a sailor. The scuttlebutt is a good place to hang out, hear the gossip, swap lies, learn irrelevant stuff, and get a drink, while avoiding work.
Oh - wait - maybe you have it right after all?
Heh. Now there's a really pleasant picture. MS abandons IE, makes it open source, and some weekend warriors recode it into something TOTALLY AWESOME!! Someone who has actually decompiled IE should weigh in, and tell us if there's anything of value hidden in all the garbage.
Is there a line like, "If not Microsoft OS, reformat drive!"
Actually, my freind, I read an article today that suggests Opera should NOT be used on low-end machines. It's a memory hog, without decent memory management. Lemme find that link - - - - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/opera-chrome-firefox,2689.html
Opera has a lot of good things going for it, but compatibility with low end machines and low memory isn't one of them.
Point releases? I'm slightly baffled. I joined the Firefox club around milestone .5 or so, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for each new milestone. Did I simply allow some of the jargon to fly over my head?
IE8 works fine on XP. Why would people continue to use IE6? In fact, the last time I used Windows, I had to admit that IE8 was almost a decent browser. It has tabs, and all sorts of things that all the other browsers have had forever. In fact, IE7 isn't terrible.
To be perfectly honest, I HATE IE, but I don't let my personal preferences blind me to the fact that IE has been improving for about - oh - is it three years now?
And, did you notice that ext4 wont work with old Linux kernels either? It's like Linus isn't even trying either. [/sarcasm]
Get over yourself. XP was a great system, and it ran a long long race. It's time to lay it aside now. Upgrade to Ubuntu or something. If you're still in love with Bill Gate's version of bling, upgrade to Win7. It's a decent operating system, after all.
I don't care about corporations being "up in arms". In the United States, the constitution gives the vote (and voice) to citizens. Corporations aren't citizens. Every law maker who represents a corporate interest, rather than citizens interests, is a prostitute. He whores himself to the corporation, rather than legitimately representing his constituents.
Corporations are happy to exploit people, along with the law.
Fair enough - sorry to have brought illegal aliens into the argument.
But - the fact remains that Indians coming to the US are being subsidized in part by the US government. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/72848/H_1B_Is_Just_Another_Gov_t._Subsidy
And, the fact remains that activists in Washington can afford to promote those special interests who will profit from the program, while ignoring the needs of American workers.
Sounds a little like you are beating your own chest there. Much like the Mexicans who are undercutting the American job market. That purchasing power you mention makes it profitable for them to pay 5 or 10 thousand dollars for a coyote to sneak them into the country. They can recoup that payment in months, or at most a couple of years - then continue to live and work here ILLEGALLY for another 20 years. Sure, while they live here, they live below the average American's "standard of living". But, all that money they send home builds a mansion, while supporting dozens of relatives. Any pension they "earn" will make them fabulously wealthy when they retire.
And, who gets screwed over? American workers of course. Because, corporations are happy to exploit those Mexicans, even if they have to pay off a president so that he won't enforce the laws that he is sworn to uphold.
Of course it looks different when you change a couple key words. It's called "spin", and it's practiced daily by the newspapers and other media.
"Providing employment" suggests that people who had nothing can now make purchases, such as housing, automobiles, clothes, etc. In fact, "providing employment" often translates to a marginally better diet, and increased chances of survival. I point to Africa as a prime example. I'm quite sure that you can use Google to locate any number of stories about Gap jeans and other factories located in Africa. If anything, the overall quality of life has been degraded in some of those towns. Entire villages have been overwhelmed with unregulated refuse dumps, and their populations have been reduced to scavenging the dumps for survival.
China has it's own towns that have been inundated with waste dumps. I saw one set of photos from China of a home that nestled between piles of scrap and refuse, pretty much lost to view from any other home.
You call it "providing employment", I call it exploitation.
The US is not purely capitalist. Did you not read about all those banks that were "to big to fail"?? If we were to allow capitalism to rule, unfettered, those banks would have gone down. Instead, we had a taste of corporate socialism, the government stepped in and "saved" all those failures.
If things were run purely along capitalistic lines, there would be no Indians here at all. Travel expenses would negate any savings in labor costs.
Minimum wage laws are another example. They are completely contrary to capitalistic ideals. The government mandates that EVERYONE* (with a few key exemptions) must be paid x amount of dollars per hour, OR MORE.
If you'll research all the subsidies that the government has given to corporate America, you can only conclude that capitalism is really a failure. Today, it is little more than a catchword, which denotes the people who are really in power.
*exemptions involve almost everyone involved in growing, producing, processing, harvesting, or storing food and food products - the result of lobbying efforts by corporate agriculture
Let's think about this. The corporation has a job to be done. They look at the applicants, some of which come from thousands of miles away - India for example. If they hire local people, they have to pay local wages. They don't much like that, so they apply to the government for permits, allowing them to import cheap labor from thousands of miles away. The government may or may not care - but if they actually CARE about their constituents, they can always be bought.
With every foreigner approved, we have one job GIVEN AWAY to a foreign person, and TAKEN AWAY from a voting, taxpaying US citizen.
Taking advantage of the highest technological systems in the world, and at the same time exploiting poor peasants who will work for pennies per day just seems terribly unethical. Face it - without the infrastructure provided by past generations of American workers, NONE of today's name-brand manufacturers would be where they are today.
Think I'm wrong? Fine - take yourself to Africa, with nothing more than you can carry on an airplane and inside your head, and set up shop to compete with Apple.
What's that you say? You can't find people who are educated highly enough in the fields that you need? You can't find an honest government that will support your endeavor? You can't find logistics? You can't even find a reliable power supply for your plant? Well - imagine that.
The fact is, various populations around the world have worked for generations to provide the necessary infrastructure for Apple and other corporations to do what they do. Apple (and others) takes full advantage of that infrastructure, and returns little to nothing to maintaining that infrastructure.
Unethical? Of course it is.
I'll bet you haven't tried Midori browser either, then. twotoasts.de In my own informal testing (read, not disciplined in any manner, just diddling around) Midori was the FIRST browser to score 100 on the Acid3 test, and it's also the fastest GUI browser.
It's not my browser of choice, for two reasons - 1, it does break from time to time and 2, it lacks the customizations of Firefox. Also, Midori doesn't seem to be real happy on a system with any other Webkit engine installed.
Still - you should look at Midori, and drive it around a little.
This post might be more informative if you specified the speed of your connection. If you happen to live next door to a university, and have access to their fiberoptic trunk - you'll seldom wait for anything. I mean, can you download movies in less than a week? Less than a day? Less than an hour?
I can download an ISO in 12 to 20 hours, if I don't mind listening to the wife and kids bitching about the lack of internet on their machines. Throttling my download so that I don't have to listen to their bitching means that the ISO of BackTrack4 R1 takes about 3 days.
Would you consider breeding your ass with some nice quarterhorses? I'll split the profits I make when we start burning the barrels up at the rodeos!
Actually - Firefox's strength hasn't been speed for quite some time. It's that ADDONS and personalizations that make fans now. Back in the day, Firefox was blazing fast when compared to IE. But, even IE has evolved since then.