I don't hate America. I love America. However, our definitions of 'love' may be different. Your version seems to be the love of an abused spouse who will defend their abusive mate whatever the cost. I see love more as an action than a feeling.
Funny, you have not mentioned a country that actually had socialism. The ones you mention had tyrannies. Not socialism, not communism: tyranny.
Read up on what the CIA did to Chile and Allende. How we supported Saddam Hussein. How we supported Suharto. How we stuck our fingers into dozens of Central and South American countries democratically elected governments. Remember Iran Contra? Remember Ferdinand Markos? Manuel Noriega? Alfredo Stroessner? Remember how invaded the Dominican Republic because they elected a socialist? No, of course you don't.
Mi is a hard core anti-government libertarian. For him, there is no excuse to thin to turn into an opportunity to bash the government. He's one of those people who think government can never, ever do anything good. If it looks good, you aren't looking hard enough. To people like Mi, NASA is just socialism for scientists and engineers who should be working in private industry.
Yeah, so if you run into one of these idiots, and she happens to be cute, just tell her that you are a Mao Shan master and you know the perfect ceremony to stop Nibiru from hitting the Earth, if you could just get a little help from her...
Citation needed. This is just your opinion until you present, you know, some actual evidence besides your baseless assertions. The article cites research. You cite opinions. You do know the difference, right?
Oh, and you have some facts wrong. Female children with their genetic father in home reach menarche later, but female children with a non genetic father figure in home reach it MUCH earlier. Which says NOTHING about the emotional development.
In my opinion, the norm, based on tens of thousands of years of prehistoric human culture, is small tribal groups where everyone raises everyone and no one knows who fathered who for sure. That's what how we evolved. Anything less than that, including the one man one woman hetero-normative nuclear family, is sub-optimal. It takes a village to raise a child. Insulated one man one woman nuclear families pass on serious crazy to defenseless children. In a larger group, children see individual craziness for what it is, and can put it in perspective, but in a nuclear family, crazy is often just normal.
Men and women may be different, but gender is a fuzzy concept. There is physical gender, emotional gender, intellectual gender, and sexual gender, and any one person can get a mix. For instance, I'm pretty sure this one friend of mine got the physical and sexual gender of a male (he likes girls) but the emotional and intellectual gender of a woman (he is a hard core metrosexual who most people assume is gay) Often in heterosexual relationships, you will get one partner with a preponderance of gender traits in the female column, and one with the preponderance in the male column. The lipstick lez and the bull dyke. The mincing pillow biter and the rugged daddy. Stereotypes, yes, but I've had more gay friends than I can count and there's something to those stereotypes. And in hetero relationships, you can get two of the same type, or even get them reversed. My metrosexual friend dated a tomboy for a while. If they'd married, the kids would have had to ask mom to play catch, and dad for fashion advice.
In short, your arguments are biased, and not based in reality. You have this fantasy of how the world should be in your head. It must either hurt you very badly when the world refuses to go along with your illusions, or make you stick your fingers in your ears and shout "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU EVERYTHING IS THE WAY I THINK IT SHOULD BE LALALA." Or both.
Wait, what? You mean, we can spend some of the money we didn't spend on the bailout to reduce the debt instead of keeping it around for an emergency? That's crazy talk.
I was referring to the US deposing Allende in Chile. However, there are many, many other cases of extreme US interventionism. Here's a partial list for you to suck on:
We are not the good guys. We are not the global police. We are a nation of brutal, arrogant, power hungry thugs, destroying anything that displeases us. You want to know why socialism fails? US. We do it. We infiltrate, kill, lie, steal, rape, and do whatever we have to to "protect" our interests, which really means protecting the interests of rich, owning class Americans, not the peons.
The thing is, we could be the shining beacon of freedom and democracy we pretend to be if it weren't for people like you sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" every time someone constructively criticizes the US.
You "sign it" by continuing to use the service. If you don't like the changes, stop using the service. As soon as they changed your original contract, you were no longer bound by it. By using the service, they claim you are bound by the new contract, usually they say they send out some kind of a note hidden somewhere on the 23rd and a half page of your bill. They have to give you an out, though. If you haven't been using the service under the new contract for too long, you can just call up and tell them you don't accept the terms.
But you have to stop using the service. There is nothing in the contract stating that you get to keep using the service under the terms you initially agreed to.
I wonder, was Project Cybersyn open source? Seems that if you are the elected leader of a Central or South American country, you'd better not do anything Socialist that, you know, might actually work better than the free market, or we will kill you and install a brutal military dictator who will slaughter your people for generations to come.
So, your suggestion is to either a.) assume the worst about your boss, sneak around behind his back, don't give him a chance to mend his ways, and screw the company over for profit after you've got your exit strategy in place; or b.) be a good little drone (and potential scapegoat) and let the Powerful People do whatever they want.
Wrong. Extortion and blackmail are both defined by profit or benefit on the part of the perpetrator. Forcing someone to obey the law is not personal profit, and threatening to turn someone in unless they stop is neither blackmail or extortion.
Sorry, you are wrong. Blackmail and extortion both entail profit of some sort on the part of the blackmailer. Threatening to go to the police unless you get paid is blackmail. Giving a criminal a chance to stop their criminal activity before you go to the police is not blackmail.
Right? I mean, either the joke was funny or it wasn't. If it wasn't, go ahead and mod the whole thread down or just ignore it. But most of the thread got modded up quickly, so for our AC friend to claim it wasn't funny flies in the face of all evidence.
IMHO, people recognizing the point of the joke (look, we're stupid! We misinterpret naughty sounding words!) and playing along is what makes it funny. Out of context, it's pretty dumb grade school humor, but then again, a lot of nerd humor is. But the theme behind these threads (and they happen a lot) is both to make a funny, and to set up the next guy to make his funny. Examples include themed pun-runs and the infamous 'back in my day/onion on my belt' meme. The longer they go on, the funnier they are... at least to the participants inflicting their humor on everyone else.;)
Whoever modded you flamebait was an idiot and obviously didn't get that you were playing along. It wasn't that it was unfunny, it was that they were dumb. Thus the angry AC denial, "Nuh uh! It wasn't that I was stupid, it's just that, despite every other post in the thread getting modded +5 funny, it... uhm... isn't."
Because it's the right thing to do? Because it may avoid the hassle of moving to a new job? Because it puts the SOB in his place and lets him know you won't let him fuck with you?
Sure, you could slink off and have your revenge anonymously, but where's the fun in that? This way, you're up in his face making him do the right thing. Way more fun.
Wow. What a great justification of illegal activity. Sorry, but djheru is right. Threatening to report illegal activity unless it is stopped is not blackmail. Threatening to report it unless I get some money is, but blackmail involves the blackmailer benefiting.
You've basically made the argument that no one ever has the right to threaten to go to the police if the criminal activity doesn't stop. That's beyond absurd.
The boss may be a sociopath, but even sociopaths can do the right thing if it happens to benefit them the most. Tell the boss that the BSA offers rewards for turning in companies that pirate software. Tell the boss that anyone can turn the company in. Tell him that, if that happens, based on his response to your initial reports and the fact that you are the software guy, you fully expect him to use you as his scapegoat.
Then tell him you can only see two ways out of this dilemma: one, he does the right thing and gets the licenses. Two, you report the company, collect the reward, and find another job. Tell him you don't want to choose the second option, but if he doesn't do the right thing, it is the only way you can protect yourself. Finally, remind him that option two is by far the more expensive option for the company.
At this point he will either become furious and fire you on the spot, gaining you some unemployment, or he will fix things. If he's a real sociopath, though, he may just fix things and then fire you anyway. It's probably best to pull this after you have another potential job lined up.
You replied to the wrong guy. But I'll take a shot anyway.
You imply that price signals are the only way for anyone to know anything about the economy. This is untrue. With our telecommunications and electronics technology, we can find out anything we need to know about the economy and people's desires. More than price signals alone could ever give us.
In fact, the problem with a free market economy is that, in itself, it has no way of knowing what people want. Only what they don't want. And you actually have to produce something and bring it to market to find out that people don't want it. That is horribly inefficient.
You now the real reason we invaded Chile and deposed Allende? He piloted a computer system back in 1970 that collected more information about desires, resources, and production than any price signals could ever give. He was about to show the world how a democratic, non-totalitarian planned economy could really work. So we killed him and installed a brutal military dictator instead. Look up Project Cybersyn.
Beyond a certain level, all wealth does is give a person greater control over other people, and a greater share of the fruits of other people's labor. Why should we voluntarily give up so much freedom and control over our lives to other people? Why should we allow the rich to take the fruits of our labor, simply because they have the capital? They have it because they stole it from us, not because they earned it.
I've volunteered quite a bit with Food not Bombs, and I can tell you that hunger is an issue in America. And it isn't just crazy homeless people, it's people who have to make a choice between medicine, heating, and food for their family. All while we throw megatons of perfectly good food out every day. I don't think the free market is doing as good of a job as you think it is.
There is not as much mobility as you think. One study I read said it takes, on average, five generations for a family to move from the bottom percentile to the middle. The top 1% owns 38% of the wealth, and there isn't much moving in and out of the top 1%. That leaves 62% for the remaining 99% of us.
Adam Smith is one of my favorite authors. Here's a few quotes you might not remember.
# As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. --Book I, Chapter VI, pg.60
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.
--Book I, Chapter VIII, pg.80
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
--III.iv.10
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. --V.i.b.12 (Part II)
What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can be flourishing and happy if the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. --Chapter VIII.
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. --V.ii.ii.286
Yeah, I love me some Adam Smith.
I never said Hoover fixed the depression. Hoover screwed things up worse. FDR fixed the depression.
Don't quote Mises at me. Mises is the last refuge of a loonitarian without an argument. Think for yourself and phrase your own arguments, or don't bother.
Who said anything about who shut down the service? Not me. Furthermore, you imply the reason the service was shut down was lack of knowledge of the law. You have no reason to suspect this was the case. The public servant in question could have been bribed.
I don't understand how your angry little outburst even applies to what I said. It's just raining idiots with reading comprehension problems today. Sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
GP post gets +5 insightful, proving your persecution complex is delusional. You see, Slashdot has nothing against religious people.
Only against stupid people.
I don't hate America. I love America. However, our definitions of 'love' may be different. Your version seems to be the love of an abused spouse who will defend their abusive mate whatever the cost. I see love more as an action than a feeling.
Funny, you have not mentioned a country that actually had socialism. The ones you mention had tyrannies. Not socialism, not communism: tyranny.
Read up on what the CIA did to Chile and Allende. How we supported Saddam Hussein. How we supported Suharto. How we stuck our fingers into dozens of Central and South American countries democratically elected governments. Remember Iran Contra? Remember Ferdinand Markos? Manuel Noriega? Alfredo Stroessner? Remember how invaded the Dominican Republic because they elected a socialist? No, of course you don't.
Damn straight. I'm sorry, but any 19 year old dumb enough to believe the 'suck it for good luck' line deserves what she gets.
I note where I am giving my opinions. Tell me what, in particular, would you like citations for and I'll find them for you.
Mi is a hard core anti-government libertarian. For him, there is no excuse to thin to turn into an opportunity to bash the government. He's one of those people who think government can never, ever do anything good. If it looks good, you aren't looking hard enough. To people like Mi, NASA is just socialism for scientists and engineers who should be working in private industry.
Yeah, so if you run into one of these idiots, and she happens to be cute, just tell her that you are a Mao Shan master and you know the perfect ceremony to stop Nibiru from hitting the Earth, if you could just get a little help from her...
Citation needed. This is just your opinion until you present, you know, some actual evidence besides your baseless assertions. The article cites research. You cite opinions. You do know the difference, right?
Oh, and you have some facts wrong. Female children with their genetic father in home reach menarche later, but female children with a non genetic father figure in home reach it MUCH earlier. Which says NOTHING about the emotional development.
In my opinion, the norm, based on tens of thousands of years of prehistoric human culture, is small tribal groups where everyone raises everyone and no one knows who fathered who for sure. That's what how we evolved. Anything less than that, including the one man one woman hetero-normative nuclear family, is sub-optimal. It takes a village to raise a child. Insulated one man one woman nuclear families pass on serious crazy to defenseless children. In a larger group, children see individual craziness for what it is, and can put it in perspective, but in a nuclear family, crazy is often just normal.
Men and women may be different, but gender is a fuzzy concept. There is physical gender, emotional gender, intellectual gender, and sexual gender, and any one person can get a mix. For instance, I'm pretty sure this one friend of mine got the physical and sexual gender of a male (he likes girls) but the emotional and intellectual gender of a woman (he is a hard core metrosexual who most people assume is gay) Often in heterosexual relationships, you will get one partner with a preponderance of gender traits in the female column, and one with the preponderance in the male column. The lipstick lez and the bull dyke. The mincing pillow biter and the rugged daddy. Stereotypes, yes, but I've had more gay friends than I can count and there's something to those stereotypes. And in hetero relationships, you can get two of the same type, or even get them reversed. My metrosexual friend dated a tomboy for a while. If they'd married, the kids would have had to ask mom to play catch, and dad for fashion advice.
In short, your arguments are biased, and not based in reality. You have this fantasy of how the world should be in your head. It must either hurt you very badly when the world refuses to go along with your illusions, or make you stick your fingers in your ears and shout "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU EVERYTHING IS THE WAY I THINK IT SHOULD BE LALALA." Or both.
Wait, what? You mean, we can spend some of the money we didn't spend on the bailout to reduce the debt instead of keeping it around for an emergency? That's crazy talk.
I was referring to the US deposing Allende in Chile. However, there are many, many other cases of extreme US interventionism. Here's a partial list for you to suck on:
http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/resources/interventions.html
Here's another, because I know how much you love having the facts regarding US interventionism shoved in your face:
http://www.zompist.com/latam.html
Here's a general list of interventions, not Latin America specific:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
We are not the good guys. We are not the global police. We are a nation of brutal, arrogant, power hungry thugs, destroying anything that displeases us. You want to know why socialism fails? US. We do it. We infiltrate, kill, lie, steal, rape, and do whatever we have to to "protect" our interests, which really means protecting the interests of rich, owning class Americans, not the peons.
The thing is, we could be the shining beacon of freedom and democracy we pretend to be if it weren't for people like you sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" every time someone constructively criticizes the US.
You "sign it" by continuing to use the service. If you don't like the changes, stop using the service. As soon as they changed your original contract, you were no longer bound by it. By using the service, they claim you are bound by the new contract, usually they say they send out some kind of a note hidden somewhere on the 23rd and a half page of your bill. They have to give you an out, though. If you haven't been using the service under the new contract for too long, you can just call up and tell them you don't accept the terms.
But you have to stop using the service. There is nothing in the contract stating that you get to keep using the service under the terms you initially agreed to.
And you'd be screwed because of the documentation I'd sent to my lawyer.
It almost sounds as if you are rooting for the boss on this one...
I wonder, was Project Cybersyn open source? Seems that if you are the elected leader of a Central or South American country, you'd better not do anything Socialist that, you know, might actually work better than the free market, or we will kill you and install a brutal military dictator who will slaughter your people for generations to come.
So, your suggestion is to either a.) assume the worst about your boss, sneak around behind his back, don't give him a chance to mend his ways, and screw the company over for profit after you've got your exit strategy in place; or b.) be a good little drone (and potential scapegoat) and let the Powerful People do whatever they want.
Somehow, I still fell my advice is better.
Wrong. Extortion and blackmail are both defined by profit or benefit on the part of the perpetrator. Forcing someone to obey the law is not personal profit, and threatening to turn someone in unless they stop is neither blackmail or extortion.
But thanks for playing.
Sorry, you are wrong. Blackmail and extortion both entail profit of some sort on the part of the blackmailer. Threatening to go to the police unless you get paid is blackmail. Giving a criminal a chance to stop their criminal activity before you go to the police is not blackmail.
Right? I mean, either the joke was funny or it wasn't. If it wasn't, go ahead and mod the whole thread down or just ignore it. But most of the thread got modded up quickly, so for our AC friend to claim it wasn't funny flies in the face of all evidence.
IMHO, people recognizing the point of the joke (look, we're stupid! We misinterpret naughty sounding words!) and playing along is what makes it funny. Out of context, it's pretty dumb grade school humor, but then again, a lot of nerd humor is. But the theme behind these threads (and they happen a lot) is both to make a funny, and to set up the next guy to make his funny. Examples include themed pun-runs and the infamous 'back in my day/onion on my belt' meme. The longer they go on, the funnier they are... at least to the participants inflicting their humor on everyone else. ;)
Whoever modded you flamebait was an idiot and obviously didn't get that you were playing along. It wasn't that it was unfunny, it was that they were dumb. Thus the angry AC denial, "Nuh uh! It wasn't that I was stupid, it's just that, despite every other post in the thread getting modded +5 funny, it... uhm... isn't."
Because it's the right thing to do? Because it may avoid the hassle of moving to a new job? Because it puts the SOB in his place and lets him know you won't let him fuck with you?
Sure, you could slink off and have your revenge anonymously, but where's the fun in that? This way, you're up in his face making him do the right thing. Way more fun.
Wow. What a great justification of illegal activity. Sorry, but djheru is right. Threatening to report illegal activity unless it is stopped is not blackmail. Threatening to report it unless I get some money is, but blackmail involves the blackmailer benefiting.
You've basically made the argument that no one ever has the right to threaten to go to the police if the criminal activity doesn't stop. That's beyond absurd.
The boss may be a sociopath, but even sociopaths can do the right thing if it happens to benefit them the most. Tell the boss that the BSA offers rewards for turning in companies that pirate software. Tell the boss that anyone can turn the company in. Tell him that, if that happens, based on his response to your initial reports and the fact that you are the software guy, you fully expect him to use you as his scapegoat.
Then tell him you can only see two ways out of this dilemma: one, he does the right thing and gets the licenses. Two, you report the company, collect the reward, and find another job. Tell him you don't want to choose the second option, but if he doesn't do the right thing, it is the only way you can protect yourself. Finally, remind him that option two is by far the more expensive option for the company.
At this point he will either become furious and fire you on the spot, gaining you some unemployment, or he will fix things. If he's a real sociopath, though, he may just fix things and then fire you anyway. It's probably best to pull this after you have another potential job lined up.
You replied to the wrong guy. But I'll take a shot anyway.
You imply that price signals are the only way for anyone to know anything about the economy. This is untrue. With our telecommunications and electronics technology, we can find out anything we need to know about the economy and people's desires. More than price signals alone could ever give us.
In fact, the problem with a free market economy is that, in itself, it has no way of knowing what people want. Only what they don't want. And you actually have to produce something and bring it to market to find out that people don't want it. That is horribly inefficient.
You now the real reason we invaded Chile and deposed Allende? He piloted a computer system back in 1970 that collected more information about desires, resources, and production than any price signals could ever give. He was about to show the world how a democratic, non-totalitarian planned economy could really work. So we killed him and installed a brutal military dictator instead. Look up Project Cybersyn.
Beyond a certain level, all wealth does is give a person greater control over other people, and a greater share of the fruits of other people's labor. Why should we voluntarily give up so much freedom and control over our lives to other people? Why should we allow the rich to take the fruits of our labor, simply because they have the capital? They have it because they stole it from us, not because they earned it.
I've volunteered quite a bit with Food not Bombs, and I can tell you that hunger is an issue in America. And it isn't just crazy homeless people, it's people who have to make a choice between medicine, heating, and food for their family. All while we throw megatons of perfectly good food out every day. I don't think the free market is doing as good of a job as you think it is.
There is not as much mobility as you think. One study I read said it takes, on average, five generations for a family to move from the bottom percentile to the middle. The top 1% owns 38% of the wealth, and there isn't much moving in and out of the top 1%. That leaves 62% for the remaining 99% of us.
Adam Smith is one of my favorite authors. Here's a few quotes you might not remember.
# As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
--Book I, Chapter VI, pg.60
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.
--Book I, Chapter VIII, pg.80
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
--III.iv.10
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
--V.i.b.12 (Part II)
What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can be flourishing and happy if the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
--Chapter VIII.
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
--V.ii.ii.286
Yeah, I love me some Adam Smith.
I never said Hoover fixed the depression. Hoover screwed things up worse. FDR fixed the depression.
Don't quote Mises at me. Mises is the last refuge of a loonitarian without an argument. Think for yourself and phrase your own arguments, or don't bother.
Way to miss the joke, moderators. Jayme was just playing along.
Can we mention cunning linguist in there somewhere?
I don't need to stoop that low, as I am a master debater.
Who said anything about who shut down the service? Not me. Furthermore, you imply the reason the service was shut down was lack of knowledge of the law. You have no reason to suspect this was the case. The public servant in question could have been bribed.
I don't understand how your angry little outburst even applies to what I said. It's just raining idiots with reading comprehension problems today. Sigh.
You keep your filthy talk to yourself, mister!
Hey, now, that's unfair. I know Angina, she's a talented thespian with a very fine epidermis.