That was not socialism. If it had been socialism the government would have put some oversight in place to make sure that the telecommunications companies actually rolled the fat pipes that they promised to. There would have been regulation and some control over the companies that received this money to make sure that the money did not just vanish into shareholders' pockets. What happened in telecommunications in the US in the 1990s and 2000s was a classic example of what happens if you just let private companies do whatever they want with public money.
>So, what is "your type" anyway? And are you sure the person you >mentioned was a Libertarian, and not just claiming to be?
That is a general problem with any philosophy or ideology: just because someone claims to adhere to it does not mean that they actually do. The Libertarian who told me that I would be up against a wall when Libertarians came to power was fairly active in the campus Libertarian club. He was actually a nice guy, except for his loony social and political beliefs.
As for my type, at the time I was voting Progressive Conservative (back before Mulroney took that party off into nut-job land) , but I was in the process of drifting into the NDP camp. Hardly radical stuff (in any direction) for Canada in the early 1980s.
>Regional? Then why the $@&* is the rest of the country going to >pay for it. If this isn't a national rail system for some national >purpose. The federal government shouldn't pay for it.
Once the train crosses a state line then it makes perfect sense for the federal government to be involved in funding it. That is why the interstate system gets federal funding.
>>The US is too big for cross-country travel by train
>It's not too big for cross country travel by car. Why do you figure >trains have less of a useful range than a car?
Most people do not travel cross country by car in the US, they fly. In general people do not want to spend more than about a day to get where they want to go.
The US is too big for cross-country travel by train, but it is almost ideal for regional travel by train. The proposed high-speed rail corridors make a lot of sense, and the distances are small enough that taking the train will be faster than driving, and comparable to flying. Rail between NYC and DC, for example, makes a lot of sense. Rail between Denver and Boston, on the other hand, does not make a lot of sense. Most of the proposed regional routes are no longer than typical routes in Europe or east Asia.
>Strange when I lived in the US the TV was shit. TV evangelism, >reality TV, 10 minutes of adds every 15 minutes, censored >movies, FREAKY propagandized news. Mindless drama. Sorry but >in the US the lowest common denominator rules and it shows by >its TV.
That is still the case for a lot of US tv, but things have become a lot better over the past couple of decades. There is still a lot of rubbish, but there have been some brilliant tv show that have come out of the US recently. Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Smallville, and others are as good as (or better than) tv shows anywhere else in the world. The news shows (except for some of the PBS ones) should treated as entertainment, not news; and the reality shows are usually awful compared to the foreign versions that they are based on (Survivor being the classic example); but the drama shows can be quite good.
>Apparently these soldiers think it's OK to act like ten year olds >while acting in an official capacity, such that they don't see >anything wrong with bragging about it to the media. It will be >interesting to see whether their superiors think so too.
The worrying thing is, what happens in a couple of decades when some of the soldiers who think like this have worked their way through the ranks and start running the military.
Disclaimer: I have family members in the military. Most people in the military are intelligent, competent adults who do not behave in this way. But, some are not, and they are the ones who are causing the problems.
> Except when this group twice votes into power people who they > know damn well will be shamelessly and relentlessly brutal. > Shame on us all, as a people, for allowing a small group of thugs > to pillage this nation and its reputation for the past eight years.
Don't blame the American people for electing him the first time. The first time a majority of the American people voted for the other guy. Blame five politically-appointed judges for allowing a travesty of democracy to occur. The second time, however, the American people did vote for the guy and have no-one to blame but themselves.
I do not understand why this was moderated "troll". It should have been moderated "insightful". It is a very perceptive comment. Those of us who grew up during the Cold War faced the very real possibility of a large scale nuclear attack every day. Today's threats, while very real, are minor compared to the threat of 30,000 nuclear warheads raining down on your country.
>>Nothing say north korea will attack first either [...]
>Of course not. But, most people would agree that they are more >likely (no matter how small that probability may be) to launch a >first strike than the US, Russia, or China. They are a relatively >small, backward, unstable, and unpredictable nation. They simply >have less to lose.
Actually, North Korea has everything to lose. In fact, in some ways they have more to lose than Russia or China does. A single nuclear warhead would probably be enough to bring down the North Korean regime. A handful of strikes would certainly do it. They are simply too dependent on Pyong Penn. If that city were destroyed the rest of the country would probably collapse. Russia and China, on the other hand, are large enough, and their infrastructure is dispersed enough, that they could survive a nuclear attack (although the aftermass would be a mess). So far the North Korean government has shown a remarkably astute sense of how far they can push the rest of the world and get away with it. They seem to be well aware of where the boundaries really are, as opposed to where other nations publicly say the boundaries are. There is no reason to think that they will not be as astute about using nuclear weapons.
The first guns were made for military use. The earliest recorded military use of a firearm (that I know of) is 1327. Hunting came much later when firearms became small enough, and reliable enough, that they did not need several people to use them, and to protect the shooter while he was using the gun.
Actually, it is inexperienced drivers who are most likely to have a serious crash, not young drivers. The statistics get a bit muddied because younger drivers to be the inexperienced ones, but when you look at crash rate as a function of years since getting first license the trend jumps out.
No, speeding is driving too fast for road conditions. One can be driving significantly under the posted limit and still be speeding if the road conditions are bad. If you are outdriving your reaction time then you are speeding, and can be ticketed for speeding.
>But rather than look for ways to fight our nature, embrace it and >make the car a living room. Take the steering wheel out of the >hands of our admittedly poor hands and automate it.
This is the correct solution to bad driving, and least in countries like the US where most people have no choice but to drive. Ideally it will one day be possible to get where one needs to go in a fully automated car. It probably will not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen eventually, unless if Peak Oil gets us first.
>Speeding is not dangerous. If you hit something, you were doing >something wrong besides speeding, such as driving too fast for >conditions
That is almost the definition of speeding. The reality is that speeding reduces the amount of time that you have to react to whatever is happening on the road. Something can go wrong and not be your fault, but you still need to have sufficient time to react to it.
The thing that one needs to remember is that anyone, no matter who they are, who questions Apple or points out any problem with Apple's behaviour, is evil. Apple is always right. We are fortunate to be living at the same time that Apple exists.
I have the QT plugin, but I still can not get some videos to work. I suspect that it is a Safari 4 issue, but I have not really tried to track it down yet.
Slashdot Mirror
That was not socialism. If it had been socialism the government would have put some oversight in place to make sure that the telecommunications companies actually rolled the fat pipes that they promised to. There would have been regulation and some control over the companies that received this money to make sure that the money did not just vanish into shareholders' pockets. What happened in telecommunications in the US in the 1990s and 2000s was a classic example of what happens if you just let private companies do whatever they want with public money.
>>the Libertarian party (not to be confused with libertarians)
>A little off-topic, but what did you mean by this? I try to keep up
>with American politics, but the subtlety there seems to have
>escaped me.
Libertarians have enough infighting to make communists look like a happy tea party.
Perhaps the verification algorithm could reject any"one" who behaves too much like the algorithm expects a human to.
Seriously though, this sort of verification method seems like it would be easy to defeat.
>So, what is "your type" anyway? And are you sure the person you
>mentioned was a Libertarian, and not just claiming to be?
That is a general problem with any philosophy or ideology: just because someone claims to adhere to it does not mean that they actually do. The Libertarian who told me that I would be up against a wall when Libertarians came to power was fairly active in the campus Libertarian club. He was actually a nice guy, except for his loony social and political beliefs.
As for my type, at the time I was voting Progressive Conservative (back before Mulroney took that party off into nut-job land) , but I was in the process of drifting into the NDP camp. Hardly radical stuff (in any direction) for Canada in the early 1980s.
I remember once, several years ago, when a Libertarian told me that "my type" would be put up against the wall once they came to power.
>Regional? Then why the $@&* is the rest of the country going to
>pay for it. If this isn't a national rail system for some national
>purpose. The federal government shouldn't pay for it.
Once the train crosses a state line then it makes perfect sense for the federal government to be involved in funding it. That is why the interstate system gets federal funding.
>>The US is too big for cross-country travel by train
>It's not too big for cross country travel by car. Why do you figure
>trains have less of a useful range than a car?
Most people do not travel cross country by car in the US, they fly. In general people do not want to spend more than about a day to get where they want to go.
The US is too big for cross-country travel by train, but it is almost ideal for regional travel by train. The proposed high-speed rail corridors make a lot of sense, and the distances are small enough that taking the train will be faster than driving, and comparable to flying. Rail between NYC and DC, for example, makes a lot of sense. Rail between Denver and Boston, on the other hand, does not make a lot of sense. Most of the proposed regional routes are no longer than typical routes in Europe or east Asia.
>Yeah, because spammers are too stupid to s/+[^@]//.
I think that most serious spammers are too smart to do that.
Anonymous's ideology sounds intriguing. How does one go about joining them? I would like to subscribe to their newsletter.
>Strange when I lived in the US the TV was shit. TV evangelism,
>reality TV, 10 minutes of adds every 15 minutes, censored
>movies, FREAKY propagandized news. Mindless drama. Sorry but
>in the US the lowest common denominator rules and it shows by
>its TV.
That is still the case for a lot of US tv, but things have become a lot better over the past couple of decades. There is still a lot of rubbish, but there have been some brilliant tv show that have come out of the US recently. Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Smallville, and others are as good as (or better than) tv shows anywhere else in the world. The news shows (except for some of the PBS ones) should treated as entertainment, not news; and the reality shows are usually awful compared to the foreign versions that they are based on (Survivor being the classic example); but the drama shows can be quite good.
>Apparently these soldiers think it's OK to act like ten year olds
>while acting in an official capacity, such that they don't see
>anything wrong with bragging about it to the media. It will be
>interesting to see whether their superiors think so too.
The worrying thing is, what happens in a couple of decades when some of the soldiers who think like this have worked their way through the ranks and start running the military.
Disclaimer: I have family members in the military. Most people in the military are intelligent, competent adults who do not behave in this way. But, some are not, and they are the ones who are causing the problems.
> Except when this group twice votes into power people who they
> know damn well will be shamelessly and relentlessly brutal.
> Shame on us all, as a people, for allowing a small group of thugs
> to pillage this nation and its reputation for the past eight years.
Don't blame the American people for electing him the first time. The first time a majority of the American people voted for the other guy. Blame five politically-appointed judges for allowing a travesty of democracy to occur. The second time, however, the American people did vote for the guy and have no-one to blame but themselves.
> well, it's not like the guy treated his prisoners like honored
> guests.
But we are supposed to be better than he was.
I do not understand why this was moderated "troll". It should have been moderated "insightful". It is a very perceptive comment. Those of us who grew up during the Cold War faced the very real possibility of a large scale nuclear attack every day. Today's threats, while very real, are minor compared to the threat of 30,000 nuclear warheads raining down on your country.
>>Nothing say north korea will attack first either [...]
>Of course not. But, most people would agree that they are more
>likely (no matter how small that probability may be) to launch a
>first strike than the US, Russia, or China. They are a relatively
>small, backward, unstable, and unpredictable nation. They simply
>have less to lose.
Actually, North Korea has everything to lose. In fact, in some ways they have more to lose than Russia or China does. A single nuclear warhead would probably be enough to bring down the North Korean regime. A handful of strikes would certainly do it. They are simply too dependent on Pyong Penn. If that city were destroyed the rest of the country would probably collapse. Russia and China, on the other hand, are large enough, and their infrastructure is dispersed enough, that they could survive a nuclear attack (although the aftermass would be a mess). So far the North Korean government has shown a remarkably astute sense of how far they can push the rest of the world and get away with it. They seem to be well aware of where the boundaries really are, as opposed to where other nations publicly say the boundaries are. There is no reason to think that they will not be as astute about using nuclear weapons.
The first guns were made for military use. The earliest recorded military use of a firearm (that I know of) is 1327. Hunting came much later when firearms became small enough, and reliable enough, that they did not need several people to use them, and to protect the shooter while he was using the gun.
Ask a cop. Speeding is not just a legal term. I think that ultimately this is a quibble over semantics.
Actually, it is inexperienced drivers who are most likely to have a serious crash, not young drivers. The statistics get a bit muddied because younger drivers to be the inexperienced ones, but when you look at crash rate as a function of years since getting first license the trend jumps out.
No, speeding is driving too fast for road conditions. One can be driving significantly under the posted limit and still be speeding if the road conditions are bad. If you are outdriving your reaction time then you are speeding, and can be ticketed for speeding.
>But rather than look for ways to fight our nature, embrace it and
>make the car a living room. Take the steering wheel out of the
>hands of our admittedly poor hands and automate it.
This is the correct solution to bad driving, and least in countries like the US where most people have no choice but to drive. Ideally it will one day be possible to get where one needs to go in a fully automated car. It probably will not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen eventually, unless if Peak Oil gets us first.
>Speeding is not dangerous. If you hit something, you were doing
>something wrong besides speeding, such as driving too fast for
>conditions
That is almost the definition of speeding. The reality is that speeding reduces the amount of time that you have to react to whatever is happening on the road. Something can go wrong and not be your fault, but you still need to have sufficient time to react to it.
The thing that one needs to remember is that anyone, no matter who they are, who questions Apple or points out any problem with Apple's behaviour, is evil. Apple is always right. We are fortunate to be living at the same time that Apple exists.
I have the QT plugin, but I still can not get some videos to work. I suspect that it is a Safari 4 issue, but I have not really tried to track it down yet.
Most of Hulu's content runs under Mac OS X 10.5, but there are a few videos that do not work.