What these "intellectuals" and "researchers" have to keep in mind, is that in reality, no one would ever dream of committing election fraud.
We all live in a utopia, where everyone has equal say, no one would ever coerce others and there's a kitten on every lap. That's why there are no such things as secret ballots. In every voting booth there will be three heavily armed guards who will watch you vote to ensure that you won't be doing anything you shouldn't do.
Have a cotton candy, drink your beer and turn on the TV. The shiny shiny is on again, you like that. You have always liked that.
In total? Per user? Per km^2? If you have 3x the number of towers per km^2 (than whom, btw), why do we always hear people complaining about the horrible coverage?
By landmass you're about twice the size of the EU, but smaller than Canada. So, why is Canada cheaper than the US?
Why is it so difficult for people in the US to admit that they're being gouged by companies? In the EU we don't mind saying that we are, if we feel that we are. We don't feel a need to defend the poor companies, who are only trying their best to maximize rectums, sorry profits at the cost, sorry to the benefit of their consumers.
Denmark (population 5.5 million) has seven different cellphone providers. Three of whom have the actual towers that are used, the others pay for access).
If anything, a country that has 50 times as many people, ought to have more choices to pick from. But then again, Denmark also has eight political parties in its congress and a two party minority government, and would be classified as a liberal socialist country. I guess that's communism for you, eh?
As someone else pointed out, Finland has a population density of 16/km2) (40/mile2) whereas the US has 31/km2 (80/mile2).
Some will say "apples to oranges" so let's compare comparative things then: California vs Sweden
Size: Sweden is 449,964 km2, California is 423,970km^2. Population density: Sweden: 20.6/km2, California 90.49
Or how about the fact that every single EU country is at a lower price than the US?
Stop making weak excuses about how tough it is in the US, and how it's unfair to compare it to anywhere else. The US cell companies are quite obviously gouging you - make them stop. The US claims to be the greatest country in the world, so it's time to either walk the walk or not talk the talk.
Quit riding the coat tails of previous generations and start acting like grown ups instead of kindergarten kids.
You, as a country, decided it was more interesting and important to argue over whether or not Obama was born in Kenya or Hawaii [1] instead of making sure that not only were the people directly responsible for the economic collapse [2] held responsible, along with the enablers of this [3].
We could argue that those who profited from it (short trading I think?) should be punished, but that might be going too far.
You were number one when it came to being great. Now you're mostly just number one when it comes to military spending, lawsuits, obesity (though the EU is quickly catching up) and ignoring the real problems. Oh, and you're probably the greatest nation in the world when it comes to gouging the consumers and employers. Okay, maybe not employers. I'm sure there are nation worse than you, but it's not a good thing when you have to improve your game just to be better than some 3rd world country.
[1] Ignoring the extensive background check that I'm sure the CIA, FBI and US Secret Service does - obviously they're incompetent and stupid as they didn't realise he wouldn't be eligible for the position of president [2] It's not a crisis when 500 billion dollars disappears, that's a collapse [3] Like the congress people who thought it'd be a great idea to make it mandatory to give loans who clearly wouldn't be able to pay them back
True competition? Then why are your prices so high?
In a truly competitive market prices for comparable items converge towards a low price, as long as they aren't luxury items.
Look around in your supermarket. You can probably find ten different brands of bread, all costing roughly the same per unit of weight. The price will be fairly comparative to European prices (should be lower in the US as you have lower taxes and lower wages). That's true competition.
I seem to recall quite a few incidents where the RIAA, MPAA and their members and brethren have been caught using unlicensed code on their websites.
Now, if this code is part of the navigation, chances are it'll be included on every single page served. Now, even if say http://www.riaa.com only got 100 visitors per day, and each visitor only visited two pages, that'd be 200 counts of breach of copyright.
At an average $22,500 per copyright violation, that comes up at $4,500,000... per day.
Step 1) Write code Step 2) Find RIAA using that code unlicensed Step 3) Profit
Even if they somehow get the damages reduced in court, they'll be arguing that their own claims for damages are completely out of proportion.
Plus, as a group who is supposedly on the side of the creators, it'd look really bad if they tried to claim ignorance, unfair damages, that code isn't worth as much as songs etc.
Basically it's a win-win situation.
So, to all you bright people out there, I urge you to get hacking!
But don't go putting code onto their webservers without them knowing it - that defence doesn't fly well in RIAA cases, and it'd be unfair to use it against them;)
You can get a long way towards the goal with OLED displays. I've posted about that before.
You can get OLED displays that are flexible as well as partly transparent, so you've already built the display into the glasses. Obviously compute functionality needs to be elsewhere, as you don't want to have too much weight hanging on your ears and nose. The DPI probably needs to increase on them as well, before they get really good.
As for how to see what is being displayed without removing your focus from the 'background', that's beyond my own knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised if you can either use some kind of infinite focus trick (like with BoCode, where what is displayed on screen is out of focus if you look at it, but looking 'through' it puts it into focus. Obviously that'd require that your compute device knows where you're looking, but we already have technology for that. Not sure about the size though.
I'm completely with you on the "looks stupid" point of view. First of all, it needs to be see-through. The ones that blocks out your direct view of the outside world ruin your peripheral vision. Personally I wouldn't want to walk down the street wearing a pair of these
They don't have to be stylish, just don't make me look like an idiot. A pair of decent safety glasses would work nicely as a building block, as they're designed to handle high stresses without breaking. And as such they're usually designed to keep from ruining your ears and nose and thus rather comfortable.
There is a chance I used "original poster" in a slightly misleading way. I wasn't talking about the story submitter but the guy whose post I replied to:
I am Canadien and I really want to be able to record my HD cable with my PVR. Where do I sign ? Right now Canadian cable company are working with these rules : 1. Block way's to record with third party PVR 2. Sell their really crippled and overpriced PRV 3. $$$ Seriously, what can we do ?
It's HIS words that he cannot get this type of PVR. I'm telling him that the only way to get that fixed is telling the company that this is the reason they won't be getting his money.
This is true for ANY type of service you buy.
And since I'm neither a Canadian, a cable subscriber or owner of a TV, I have absolutely no interest in checking if his claim is correct or not. The interest I have in this discussion is how you change the behaviour of companies.
For all I care, he could be talking about how the local North Korean ISP is upping their prices and reducing their access. The answer would be the same: Cut off the money flow from you to them and tell them why.
I do not how they are supposed to convey these facts in a more unbiased manner. I'm interested in seeing how you would do it.
On Wikipedia those two things (indecency and pot) would have a cite needed note on them.
This is fairly simple to do in a modern society with public access to court records.
As it happens you can find Shawn Thomas Powell in the Texas Sex Offender list. I'm curious about the Ending Registration Date NON-EXPIRE bit though. Haven't looked at any other people on the list, but it would be interesting to know how many are on a non-expiring list. Especially considering that he has a Risk Level LOW note on his sheet.
In the interest of fairness I decided to do a little digging, and I haven't been able to find a non-pay site for the non-sexual offence, so I coughed up the money to search that registry: COURT OFFENSE 35620008 ( POSS MARIJ < 2OZ ). Btw, paying for automated access to a public database? WTF? Since when did public interest become a matter of profit?
He's obviously a really really scary pusher. Less than 2 ounces. That's an arbitrarily high limit to set. I don't smoke, but I suspect that a packet of cigarettes has less tobacco than that.
Now, the pot history has the court date, cause number, tracking number etc. Why isn't any of that on the sex offenders list? Surely, if they are as bad as we are led to believe (and some of them probably are), wouldn't it be in the best interest of the public, that we get easy access to public court records, like how the person pleaded, possible testimony, evidence etc.?
The sex offenders registry says TX:36010001 INDECENCY W/CHILD SEXUAL CONTACT on his info. The Smoking Gun says he took pictures of a nude child. Where did they get that info? Why not share it with the rest of the world?
Back to the question:
I do not how they are supposed to convey these facts in a more unbiased manner. I'm interested in seeing how you would do it.
I would have liked them to show their sources. The sex offender registry in Texas is available free of charge, so that would have required what - 10 seconds more to write the article. And since they obviously have access to something more detailed than the sex offender registry why not link to that? If it's a fax or letter - post a copy of it. It's really not that hard.
I do not how they are supposed to convey these facts in a more unbiased manner. I'm interested in seeing how you would do it.
On Wikipedia those two things (indecency and pot) would have a cite needed note on them.
This is fairly simple to do in a modern society with public access to court records.
As it happens you can find Shawn Thomas Powell in the Texas Sex Offender list. I'm curious about the Ending Registration Date NON-EXPIRE bit though. Haven't looked at any other people on the list, but it would be interesting to know how many are on a non-expiring list. Especially considering that he has a Risk Level LOW.
In the interest of fairness I decided to do a little digging, and I haven't been able to find a non-pay site for the non-sexual offence, so I coughed up the money to search that registry: COURT OFFENSE 35620008 ( POSS MARIJ . Btw, paying for automated access to a public database? WTF? Since when did public interest become a matter of profit?
He's obviously a really really scary pusher. Less than 2 ounces. That's an arbitrarily high limit to set. I don't smoke, but I suspect that a packet of cigarettes has less tobacco than that.
Now, the pot history has the court date, cause number, tracking number etc. Why isn't any of that on the sex offenders list? Surely, if they are as bad as we are led to believe (and some of them probably are), wouldn't it be in the best interest of the public, that we get easy access to public court records, like how the person pleaded, possible testimony, evidence etc.?
The sex offenders registry says TX:36010001 INDECENCY W/CHILD SEXUAL CONTACT on his info. The Smoking Gun says he took pictures of a nude child. Where did they get that info? Why not share it with the rest of the world?
Back to the question:
I do not how they are supposed to convey these facts in a more unbiased manner. I'm interested in seeing how you would do it.
I would have liked them to show their sources. The sex offender registry in Texas is available free of charge, so that would have required what - 10 seconds more to write the article. And since they obviously have access to something more detailed than the sex offender registry why not link to that? If it's a fax or letter - post a copy of it. It's really not that hard.
Who the hell is "stunned and dissapointed" when the murderer's of a family member are indicted for murder?
The same kind of person who arranges a press conference for national television to apologize to the guy who shot him for all the pain and anguish he and his family suffered in those trying times?
"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week," Whittington said.
"I'm so terribly sorry that you were too blind and drunk off your ass to not see the difference between a guy wearing an orange vest and a quail, and we hope for the sake of his family, friends, coworkers as well as all of society that he will get his eyes fixed, and that right soon!"
Actually, the bit with the one who took pictures of his nude relative somewhat pissed me off. Not because he might be a paedophile, but because of how it's written:
Shawn Powell, known as "Slipknotpsycho," is a 24-year-old Texan on that state's sex offender registry. In May 2002, he was sentenced to 13 months in custody following his conviction on a felony charge of indecency with a minor (he admitted taking naked photos of an eight-year-old female relative).
It's written in such a way that we're supposed to think "and after that he raped her and jerked off to the pictures afterwards", but nothing indicates that this is the case. For all we know he may have been taking pictures of the kids playing with the water hose in the yard at a summer family reunion, and some neighbour saw him take pictures and got offended.
Just like "$person's a registered sex offender" and no mention that it's because they were caught pissing on a police car (not the case here). Go look through your family photo album and see how many pictures you'll find of nude children. Obviously your family is made entirely from paedophiles.
It really pissed me off in this article, because it was a great and well thought out article up to that point, and after hitting that bit I couldn't help but thinking "great, another scaremongering article. They even follow up the paedophile angle with an overblown drug user angle:
The unemployed Powell, whose rap sheet also includes a 2003 pot possession conviction
Oh, the horror. Pot possesion?!? He's clearly the right hand man of a Columbian drug baron!
Doing pot places him in a group of people that include such notorious delinquents as Michael Phelps, Barack Obama, Peter Fonda and a shitload of other degenerates who should've been a stain on the bedsheets instead...
I haven't bothered to look at Shawn Powell's indecency trial. Considering how the US has prosecutors who see fit to permanently ruin the lives of 14-year-old kids who take nude pictures of themselves, I can't really get my panties in a twist over the stuff The Smoking Gun lists for Powell.
For all I know Powell may be the lowest of low, but nothing that The Smoking Gun lists convinces me that he is. I love this tidbit as well:
Nothing speaks more to the execrable nature of Malik's rank and file than the fact that the sex offender who took naked photos of a little girl is not the most loathsome guy in the chat room.
Now, what did this guy do that so much, much worse than being a trainee kiddie fiddler? He tricked someone into drinking urine. Now, either The Smoking Gun considers drinking a sterile although disgusting liquid much much much more despicable than child molestation, or they themselves don't really believe that Powell's pictures were more than someone completely overreacting.
They did some great work on that article, and I wouldn't mind seeing all of those guys get their just deserts, but why the perceived need to fluff up the piece like that?
This seems to be rather prevalent amongst the white supremacist groups as well.
"We're the master race!" "Really? Have you looked in the mirror lately? You've shaved your head and molested your skin with tattoos and piercings. Obviously you believe that you and your unemployed beer belly are superior to everybody else by birth, so why fuck with it in the first place?"
The original poster has already tried that route. He's willing to pay for a PVR that can record HD shows in HD quality - the company just isn't willing to provide one.
So, care to try again with a better solution for our ill-stricken friend?
Write to the company and inform that you are droppng your cable subscription because you are completely unable to record your HD shows in HD quality, and that until they fix this issue you will be enjoying your HD on dvd and/or bluray.
And if they contact you trying to offer you a discount or something, stick to your guns. If they aren't willing to offer you the ability to record HD shows in HD quality, you aren't willing to subscribe to their service.
Give it a go. You'd be amazed at how quickly you stop worrying about what's on the TV anyway.
Aren't they, as cosigners, required to honour the original contract?
Someone else wrote "great, now I can get out of my contract for free", but are you really required to rip up the contract you already have? That they won't renew the existing contract is fine, but... telling you to rip the one you have up?
I'm fairly certain you couldn't do it the other way around.
"AT&T? Hi, I'm just calling you to tell you, that I've faxed over the new terms of our contract, stipulating that I get to spank your CEO in public every Saturday afternoon. You can either sign it or release me from my contract. Yours truly $name."
Somehow I think that'd just be ignored by AT&T and the courts alike.
Obviously I haven't read that paper, nor any related papers on the subject...
But wouldn't you expect to see pieces of the rings coalesces into larger objects (I'm guessing under the same forces that make planets) and then be destroyed by gravity continually?
Obviously the dictionary he's using has a rather different definition of reasonable people than mine does.
Mine says reasonable people aren't upset by words, especially the ones they write themselves. Reasonable people also have no expectation of going through life without encountering something they might find offensive, as they know that that idea itself is offensive to some people.
Why can't we, as a group, start using the names of idiots like that as slang for 'offensive' things? Like...
Schiller - verb: To use ones tongue to clean a toilet bowl. Intelligent Design - noun: The act of writing ones name in faeces.
I can tell you frankly that the medical profession is split in two. There are people who are in it for the human aspect - usually the doctors. Then there's the people who are in it for the money: The pharmaceutical companies.
Where does that leave the HMOs from the USA?
Or are they just not in the medical profession but in the bureaucrat/paper work business? On the plus side, they aren't government bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor.
I wonder what the FUD flowchart for HMO coverage and treatment looks like.
'found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke.'
They sold two billion dollars worth of a product (in 2001 alone) that they manipulated into being not only harmless (like tobacco companies), but manufactured evidence that it was healthy and beneficial (something even the tobacco companies didn't stoop to).
Essentially they ran a multi billion dollar scam, caused serious damage to the health of how many people exactly? From 2001 (last year before the sales plummeted) until 2008 they sold a minimum of 210 million prescriptions (from the graph in the article).
And yet, the likelihood of the senior staff (including board members) getting punished is low to non-existent and even if the company is forced to close down its doors, I wouldn't want to lay odds against them not getting some cushy job again.
Maybe it's time we reintroduced corporal punishment for stuff like this? We can go easy on them. 100 lashes per 'victim' by this to the people directly responsible (including the ghost writers), 10 lashes per 'victim' to those indirectly involved (i.e. board members who merely signed off on the idea or didn't care). That's in addition to the massive fines and compensation the company should be forced to pay.
And if the company goes bankrupt in the process? Tough shit. Profit is not more important than public health. If you think it is, you're not a capitalist, you're a fascist.
Don't they get most of their stuff from Twitter these days?
Granted, I don't watch CNN and get my impression of them from The Daily Show, but judging by that coverage it seems like CNN is reduced to just reading aloud stuff from Twitter.
I'm still waiting for The Daily Show showing a clip showing a CNN host trying to read out "OMG PWNIES!!1!!111oneONE"
Slashdot Mirror
What these "intellectuals" and "researchers" have to keep in mind, is that in reality, no one would ever dream of committing election fraud.
We all live in a utopia, where everyone has equal say, no one would ever coerce others and there's a kitten on every lap. That's why there are no such things as secret ballots. In every voting booth there will be three heavily armed guards who will watch you vote to ensure that you won't be doing anything you shouldn't do.
Have a cotton candy, drink your beer and turn on the TV. The shiny shiny is on again, you like that. You have always liked that.
</sarcasm>
In total? Per user? Per km^2? If you have 3x the number of towers per km^2 (than whom, btw), why do we always hear people complaining about the horrible coverage?
By landmass you're about twice the size of the EU, but smaller than Canada. So, why is Canada cheaper than the US?
Why is it so difficult for people in the US to admit that they're being gouged by companies? In the EU we don't mind saying that we are, if we feel that we are. We don't feel a need to defend the poor companies, who are only trying their best to maximize rectums, sorry profits at the cost, sorry to the benefit of their consumers.
Denmark (population 5.5 million) has seven different cellphone providers. Three of whom have the actual towers that are used, the others pay for access).
If anything, a country that has 50 times as many people, ought to have more choices to pick from. But then again, Denmark also has eight political parties in its congress and a two party minority government, and would be classified as a liberal socialist country. I guess that's communism for you, eh?
As someone else pointed out, Finland has a population density of 16/km2) (40/mile2) whereas the US has 31/km2 (80/mile2).
Some will say "apples to oranges" so let's compare comparative things then:
California vs Sweden
Size: Sweden is 449,964 km2, California is 423,970km^2.
Population density: Sweden: 20.6/km2, California 90.49
Or how about the fact that every single EU country is at a lower price than the US?
Stop making weak excuses about how tough it is in the US, and how it's unfair to compare it to anywhere else. The US cell companies are quite obviously gouging you - make them stop. The US claims to be the greatest country in the world, so it's time to either walk the walk or not talk the talk.
Quit riding the coat tails of previous generations and start acting like grown ups instead of kindergarten kids.
You, as a country, decided it was more interesting and important to argue over whether or not Obama was born in Kenya or Hawaii [1] instead of making sure that not only were the people directly responsible for the economic collapse [2] held responsible, along with the enablers of this [3].
We could argue that those who profited from it (short trading I think?) should be punished, but that might be going too far.
You were number one when it came to being great. Now you're mostly just number one when it comes to military spending, lawsuits, obesity (though the EU is quickly catching up) and ignoring the real problems. Oh, and you're probably the greatest nation in the world when it comes to gouging the consumers and employers. Okay, maybe not employers. I'm sure there are nation worse than you, but it's not a good thing when you have to improve your game just to be better than some 3rd world country.
[1] Ignoring the extensive background check that I'm sure the CIA, FBI and US Secret Service does - obviously they're incompetent and stupid as they didn't realise he wouldn't be eligible for the position of president
[2] It's not a crisis when 500 billion dollars disappears, that's a collapse
[3] Like the congress people who thought it'd be a great idea to make it mandatory to give loans who clearly wouldn't be able to pay them back
True competition? Then why are your prices so high?
In a truly competitive market prices for comparable items converge towards a low price, as long as they aren't luxury items.
Look around in your supermarket. You can probably find ten different brands of bread, all costing roughly the same per unit of weight. The price will be fairly comparative to European prices (should be lower in the US as you have lower taxes and lower wages). That's true competition.
Not so in your cellphone market.
I seem to recall quite a few incidents where the RIAA, MPAA and their members and brethren have been caught using unlicensed code on their websites.
Now, if this code is part of the navigation, chances are it'll be included on every single page served. Now, even if say http://www.riaa.com only got 100 visitors per day, and each visitor only visited two pages, that'd be 200 counts of breach of copyright.
At an average $22,500 per copyright violation, that comes up at $4,500,000 ... per day.
Step 1) Write code
Step 2) Find RIAA using that code unlicensed
Step 3) Profit
Even if they somehow get the damages reduced in court, they'll be arguing that their own claims for damages are completely out of proportion.
Plus, as a group who is supposedly on the side of the creators, it'd look really bad if they tried to claim ignorance, unfair damages, that code isn't worth as much as songs etc.
Basically it's a win-win situation.
So, to all you bright people out there, I urge you to get hacking!
But don't go putting code onto their webservers without them knowing it - that defence doesn't fly well in RIAA cases, and it'd be unfair to use it against them ;)
You can get a long way towards the goal with OLED displays. I've posted about that before.
You can get OLED displays that are flexible as well as partly transparent, so you've already built the display into the glasses. Obviously compute functionality needs to be elsewhere, as you don't want to have too much weight hanging on your ears and nose. The DPI probably needs to increase on them as well, before they get really good.
As for how to see what is being displayed without removing your focus from the 'background', that's beyond my own knowledge, but I wouldn't be surprised if you can either use some kind of infinite focus trick (like with BoCode, where what is displayed on screen is out of focus if you look at it, but looking 'through' it puts it into focus. Obviously that'd require that your compute device knows where you're looking, but we already have technology for that. Not sure about the size though.
I'm completely with you on the "looks stupid" point of view. First of all, it needs to be see-through. The ones that blocks out your direct view of the outside world ruin your peripheral vision. Personally I wouldn't want to walk down the street wearing a pair of these
They don't have to be stylish, just don't make me look like an idiot. A pair of decent safety glasses would work nicely as a building block, as they're designed to handle high stresses without breaking. And as such they're usually designed to keep from ruining your ears and nose and thus rather comfortable.
You thought Bear Grylls had a weird name? You should meet his brother-in-law, Wolf Stir-Fry
There is a chance I used "original poster" in a slightly misleading way. I wasn't talking about the story submitter but the guy whose post I replied to:
It's HIS words that he cannot get this type of PVR. I'm telling him that the only way to get that fixed is telling the company that this is the reason they won't be getting his money.
This is true for ANY type of service you buy.
And since I'm neither a Canadian, a cable subscriber or owner of a TV, I have absolutely no interest in checking if his claim is correct or not. The interest I have in this discussion is how you change the behaviour of companies.
For all I care, he could be talking about how the local North Korean ISP is upping their prices and reducing their access. The answer would be the same: Cut off the money flow from you to them and tell them why.
Crap, that other post got screwed up:
On Wikipedia those two things (indecency and pot) would have a cite needed note on them.
This is fairly simple to do in a modern society with public access to court records.
As it happens you can find Shawn Thomas Powell in the Texas Sex Offender list. I'm curious about the Ending Registration Date NON-EXPIRE bit though. Haven't looked at any other people on the list, but it would be interesting to know how many are on a non-expiring list. Especially considering that he has a Risk Level LOW note on his sheet.
In the interest of fairness I decided to do a little digging, and I haven't been able to find a non-pay site for the non-sexual offence, so I coughed up the money to search that registry: COURT OFFENSE 35620008 ( POSS MARIJ < 2OZ ). Btw, paying for automated access to a public database? WTF? Since when did public interest become a matter of profit?
He's obviously a really really scary pusher. Less than 2 ounces. That's an arbitrarily high limit to set. I don't smoke, but I suspect that a packet of cigarettes has less tobacco than that.
Now, the pot history has the court date, cause number, tracking number etc. Why isn't any of that on the sex offenders list? Surely, if they are as bad as we are led to believe (and some of them probably are), wouldn't it be in the best interest of the public, that we get easy access to public court records, like how the person pleaded, possible testimony, evidence etc.?
The sex offenders registry says TX:36010001 INDECENCY W/CHILD SEXUAL CONTACT on his info. The Smoking Gun says he took pictures of a nude child. Where did they get that info? Why not share it with the rest of the world?
Back to the question:
I would have liked them to show their sources. The sex offender registry in Texas is available free of charge, so that would have required what - 10 seconds more to write the article. And since they obviously have access to something more detailed than the sex offender registry why not link to that? If it's a fax or letter - post a copy of it. It's really not that hard.
On Wikipedia those two things (indecency and pot) would have a cite needed note on them.
This is fairly simple to do in a modern society with public access to court records.
As it happens you can find Shawn Thomas Powell in the Texas Sex Offender list. I'm curious about the Ending Registration Date NON-EXPIRE bit though. Haven't looked at any other people on the list, but it would be interesting to know how many are on a non-expiring list. Especially considering that he has a Risk Level LOW.
In the interest of fairness I decided to do a little digging, and I haven't been able to find a non-pay site for the non-sexual offence, so I coughed up the money to search that registry: COURT OFFENSE 35620008 ( POSS MARIJ . Btw, paying for automated access to a public database? WTF? Since when did public interest become a matter of profit?
He's obviously a really really scary pusher. Less than 2 ounces. That's an arbitrarily high limit to set. I don't smoke, but I suspect that a packet of cigarettes has less tobacco than that.
Now, the pot history has the court date, cause number, tracking number etc. Why isn't any of that on the sex offenders list? Surely, if they are as bad as we are led to believe (and some of them probably are), wouldn't it be in the best interest of the public, that we get easy access to public court records, like how the person pleaded, possible testimony, evidence etc.?
The sex offenders registry says TX:36010001 INDECENCY W/CHILD SEXUAL CONTACT on his info. The Smoking Gun says he took pictures of a nude child. Where did they get that info? Why not share it with the rest of the world?
Back to the question:
I would have liked them to show their sources. The sex offender registry in Texas is available free of charge, so that would have required what - 10 seconds more to write the article. And since they obviously have access to something more detailed than the sex offender registry why not link to that? If it's a fax or letter - post a copy of it. It's really not that hard.
The same kind of person who arranges a press conference for national television to apologize to the guy who shot him for all the pain and anguish he and his family suffered in those trying times?
"I'm so terribly sorry that you were too blind and drunk off your ass to not see the difference between a guy wearing an orange vest and a quail, and we hope for the sake of his family, friends, coworkers as well as all of society that he will get his eyes fixed, and that right soon!"
Actually, the bit with the one who took pictures of his nude relative somewhat pissed me off. Not because he might be a paedophile, but because of how it's written:
It's written in such a way that we're supposed to think "and after that he raped her and jerked off to the pictures afterwards", but nothing indicates that this is the case. For all we know he may have been taking pictures of the kids playing with the water hose in the yard at a summer family reunion, and some neighbour saw him take pictures and got offended.
Just like "$person's a registered sex offender" and no mention that it's because they were caught pissing on a police car (not the case here). Go look through your family photo album and see how many pictures you'll find of nude children. Obviously your family is made entirely from paedophiles.
It really pissed me off in this article, because it was a great and well thought out article up to that point, and after hitting that bit I couldn't help but thinking "great, another scaremongering article. They even follow up the paedophile angle with an overblown drug user angle:
Oh, the horror. Pot possesion?!? He's clearly the right hand man of a Columbian drug baron!
Doing pot places him in a group of people that include such notorious delinquents as Michael Phelps, Barack Obama, Peter Fonda and a shitload of other degenerates who should've been a stain on the bedsheets instead ...
I haven't bothered to look at Shawn Powell's indecency trial. Considering how the US has prosecutors who see fit to permanently ruin the lives of 14-year-old kids who take nude pictures of themselves, I can't really get my panties in a twist over the stuff The Smoking Gun lists for Powell.
For all I know Powell may be the lowest of low, but nothing that The Smoking Gun lists convinces me that he is. I love this tidbit as well:
Now, what did this guy do that so much, much worse than being a trainee kiddie fiddler? He tricked someone into drinking urine. Now, either The Smoking Gun considers drinking a sterile although disgusting liquid much much much more despicable than child molestation, or they themselves don't really believe that Powell's pictures were more than someone completely overreacting.
They did some great work on that article, and I wouldn't mind seeing all of those guys get their just deserts, but why the perceived need to fluff up the piece like that?
This seems to be rather prevalent amongst the white supremacist groups as well.
"We're the master race!"
"Really? Have you looked in the mirror lately? You've shaved your head and molested your skin with tattoos and piercings. Obviously you believe that you and your unemployed beer belly are superior to everybody else by birth, so why fuck with it in the first place?"
The original poster has already tried that route. He's willing to pay for a PVR that can record HD shows in HD quality - the company just isn't willing to provide one.
So, care to try again with a better solution for our ill-stricken friend?
Write to the company and inform that you are droppng your cable subscription because you are completely unable to record your HD shows in HD quality, and that until they fix this issue you will be enjoying your HD on dvd and/or bluray.
And if they contact you trying to offer you a discount or something, stick to your guns. If they aren't willing to offer you the ability to record HD shows in HD quality, you aren't willing to subscribe to their service.
Give it a go. You'd be amazed at how quickly you stop worrying about what's on the TV anyway.
Wouldn't it be fun if that's how they taught you a new language in schools?
Hand you an English to Chinese dictionary (but without phonetics) and then punch you in the face whenever you made a mistake?
Aren't they, as cosigners, required to honour the original contract?
Someone else wrote "great, now I can get out of my contract for free", but are you really required to rip up the contract you already have? That they won't renew the existing contract is fine, but ... telling you to rip the one you have up?
I'm fairly certain you couldn't do it the other way around.
"AT&T? Hi, I'm just calling you to tell you, that I've faxed over the new terms of our contract, stipulating that I get to spank your CEO in public every Saturday afternoon. You can either sign it or release me from my contract. Yours truly $name."
Somehow I think that'd just be ignored by AT&T and the courts alike.
Obviously I haven't read that paper, nor any related papers on the subject ...
But wouldn't you expect to see pieces of the rings coalesces into larger objects (I'm guessing under the same forces that make planets) and then be destroyed by gravity continually?
Did you stuff and mount her?
Well, he DID learn that line of reasoning from Fox News.
Obviously the dictionary he's using has a rather different definition of reasonable people than mine does.
Mine says reasonable people aren't upset by words, especially the ones they write themselves. Reasonable people also have no expectation of going through life without encountering something they might find offensive, as they know that that idea itself is offensive to some people.
Why can't we, as a group, start using the names of idiots like that as slang for 'offensive' things? Like ...
Schiller - verb: To use ones tongue to clean a toilet bowl.
Intelligent Design - noun: The act of writing ones name in faeces.
Where does that leave the HMOs from the USA?
Or are they just not in the medical profession but in the bureaucrat/paper work business? On the plus side, they aren't government bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor.
I wonder what the FUD flowchart for HMO coverage and treatment looks like.
That one I could see them getting a patent on, but on something that uses the abbreviation for "eXtensible Markup Language"?
Extending the use of it is what it was designed to do in the fist place.
Seriously.
They sold two billion dollars worth of a product (in 2001 alone) that they manipulated into being not only harmless (like tobacco companies), but manufactured evidence that it was healthy and beneficial (something even the tobacco companies didn't stoop to).
Essentially they ran a multi billion dollar scam, caused serious damage to the health of how many people exactly? From 2001 (last year before the sales plummeted) until 2008 they sold a minimum of 210 million prescriptions (from the graph in the article).
And yet, the likelihood of the senior staff (including board members) getting punished is low to non-existent and even if the company is forced to close down its doors, I wouldn't want to lay odds against them not getting some cushy job again.
Maybe it's time we reintroduced corporal punishment for stuff like this? We can go easy on them. 100 lashes per 'victim' by this to the people directly responsible (including the ghost writers), 10 lashes per 'victim' to those indirectly involved (i.e. board members who merely signed off on the idea or didn't care). That's in addition to the massive fines and compensation the company should be forced to pay.
And if the company goes bankrupt in the process? Tough shit. Profit is not more important than public health. If you think it is, you're not a capitalist, you're a fascist.
Don't they get most of their stuff from Twitter these days?
Granted, I don't watch CNN and get my impression of them from The Daily Show, but judging by that coverage it seems like CNN is reduced to just reading aloud stuff from Twitter.
I'm still waiting for The Daily Show showing a clip showing a CNN host trying to read out "OMG PWNIES!!1!!111oneONE"