"Global" lack of food is when the supply of food is so short that middle class can't afford it. If that's not the problem, it means it's an economic problem, not a shortage one.
Did you mean that enough food was available elsewhere and if only we could ship it to those poor Africans they'd be OK?
No, I mean that if those starving people were earning a third as much as I do they wouldn't be starving. We need to focus on education and development of those nations, and then the food problem will solve itself.
hope you realize that global is meaningless in this context,this is just like saying that there is no "global" fresh water crisis because there is a shitload of fresh water just sitting there in Antarctica.
There isn't a global fresh water crisis, and not just because of Antarctica. Saudi Arabia has no access to fresh water, but money from oil allows them to get their fresh water through desalination plants.
It's not a food crisis. It's a population crisis. In fact, most of the worlds problems today are population related. I wish people could see beyond all these other things and get down to the real problem.
It's not a food crisis. And the food problem is not a population crisis. It's an economic problem. There's no shortage of food, but people in the starving regions don't have any money. It's a type of poverty most of us can't really understand.
However, you're right. There is a population crisis. The energy crisis is a population problem. The environmentalists tells us that we need to individually do really stupid shit like unplug our TV's when not watching to prevent it from using any power in its sleep state. It's true that if we all did that it would add up to make a difference in the short term, but in the long term increasing population and the industrialization of third world nations are going to increase energy usage to such extremes that it simply won't matter.
The solution to the energy crisis is two-fold: better education and economic conditions for everyone will help with the population problem (first world nations usually have a negative population growth if you exclude immigration), and more energy, not less, of the type that is pretty low in emissions. Like nuclear. We need a bunch of breeder nuclear power plants that can reuse its own fuel. This means the amount of radioactive waste we need to deal would actually be pretty manageable.
The definition of a "solution" depends on what side are you analysing. If you consider the palestinian side, a solution will certainly consider educating a large mass of people and providing them the adequate means of living. Sure, some idiots will certainly call that "westernization", as if achieving proper education and respect for one another is something exclusively western, but it's a solution.
No doubt. Complete agreement there.
But if you're on the other side of the conflict, a solution might consider on just not being attacked anymore.
Again, complete agreement. The problem is finding out how to accomplish that goal. Obviously, not easy.
The real catch is: helping any side of the conflict to achieve a better life is not, and never will be, an obligation.
Never said otherwise. I mentioned the type of person they need as a leader, the type of government they must have to foster change. I never said anything about anyone from the outside helping.
You're still wrong. I still live on a society that preaches and practices respect on a daily basis. There is continous discussion about the problems of society, about tolerance, about minorities, about giving people equal opportunities.
Yes, we're doing much better now. Which was precisely a point I mentioned. It wasn't that long ago when segregation was in full swing in the US, though.
When I walk on the street, I interact with white people, black people, asian people, poor people, rich people. And everybody gets along. Violence is never considered to be a solution to any problem and we work hard to actually provide means for people to achieve a better life.
If you think violence is never considered to be a solution, you're not paying much attention. Just because the front is a little farther from your home doesn't mean the war isn't going on.
There's no comparison between a western man giving cheap ideas from behind his keyboard to a sand monkey firing an AK-47 to a jewish family just because they're jewish
No shit?
or a hate-filled idiot teaching kids that jews should be beheaded
Well, let's see...
But even genocide, if discussed and decided by a civilizated society that sees no other solution to the conflict, is superior than living at stone age and teaching kids to hate people based on their ethnicity or religion.
Congratulations. You've just made it comparable.
Besides, any society that considers genocide as an option is not civilized by definition: "showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; humane, ethical, and reasonable."
but you forgot to account the fact that hate and war is the result coming from their "side". The internal issues of their society that are causing the creation of this troubled interface with other societies is their problem, not ours.
Placing the blame on any side doesn't solve the issue in question. What the hell are you going to do about it? Attack them back? Will that cause their hate against you to subside?
Perfect! I really hope that such a nice and caring leader arises and lead them into the light.
As do I. I say this without sarcasm.
Until then, whoever is being attacked by the result of the collective ignorance of the said people will continue to pursue violent actions to defend its own people. Or did you expected everyone else to just wait and sacrifice so these people can solve their own internal issues?
Have you read what this discussion is about? The original poster I replied to said that Egypt is justified in stopping speech on facebook because the content is disagreeable. I replied saying that speec
People need to be inclined to talking for this kind of solution to be an option in the first place.
I don't disagree. I disagree that there is any solution that doesn't involve talking. It's either that or a continuation of hostilities and no peace. Trying to do anything else is futile.
No, it doesn't. That's just a PETA-like simplification of the process. No armchair expert suggestion from a civilizated westerner will ever make the said person similar to a hate-filled and ignorant citizen from a stone age region.
Allow me to clarify:
Them: "Evil Jews have taken our homeland. Talking with them is not an option, they'll just continue killing us, starving us, harassing us, kicking us out of places that belong to us."
You: "The western world is "civilized" and they are not. We might be capable of listening to grievances and applying logic to our problem, but they are hate-filled and ignorant citizens from a stone-age region. All they care about is killing who they perceive is their current enemy."
Like I said, you are more alike than you care to admit. You have also pigeonholed an entire people into a characterization that, although applies to some (and perhaps even most, depending on the region), prevents you from even attempting a peaceful solution to a problem, because you believe a peaceful solution cannot exist.
I'm not saying it's a matter of having somebody give a speech that will cause every last one of them to drop their weapons and hug their Israeli brothers. I'm saying that a leader needs to talk and try to convince their people to find a peaceful solution. Most will ignore this leader, some (especially from the younger generation) will listen. Given time and effort the peaceful population may outnumber the mostly older prejudiced and combative one.
It took time in the US, but the KKK went from an organization that had quite a lot of admiration from the public (watch the movie Birth of a Nation...it's hilarious to see how they are glorified in that film), to a complete joke today. It's not because we have removed their rights to gather and talk--they still publicly march to this day. However, when they do it now, they are ridiculed. The population of non-racists simply overwhelm the population of racist individuals (at least violently racist). It wasn't an instant change, and the road was a pretty tough one, but we managed to get this far, and we're continuing to make strides.
Oh no, wait... We're talking about a place where half of the population (women) is forbidden of participating in any kind of educational process and the other half only goes to school to learn religious aspects of life, with a disturbing share of time being dedicated to hate speech against whoever is their current enemy.
So you're condemning them for their lack of freedoms and for their tendency towards oppression while advocating further suppressing their freedoms as a solution?
That makes you more similar to them than you are willing to admit.
In this case, the Egyptian government wants to bring peace to the Middle East, whereas the activists want more violence.
Irrelevant. The violence needs to be prevented, but not the talking. If anything, if the talk is made public, it's easier to know what they're planning and do something about it.
We, people from more peaceful parts of the world, generally assume that more democracy is always good.
That's because it is.
We fail to realize that at times, the majority is wrong.
How do you decide who is "right"?
The only way to break out is with strong leaders on both sides who are willing to step up and refuse to fight. Giving the vengeful mob tools to undermine that is not a good thing.
Almost right. The only way to break out is with strong leaders who convince their people that violence is not the way to get what they want. There is never going to be peace while the people want violence. It only takes one rogue bastard to attack someone. If the majority of the people agree with what he did, they'll protect and hide him from the authorities. If they don't agree, he won't have as many places to hide.
You need to get all the arguments out in the open and have a leader who can address the concerns of the people logically and convince them not to fight. You can't force them not to fight. If you do that, at best you have an underground that is still fighting, at worst you have have a coup on your hands when they turn against the government and treat their own government as an enemy for standing against them.
In two years I've accumulated more than enough money (at 3% interest too!) to have a baby AND pay the $4500 deductible all at one time.
So, it took you two years to accumulate the money to pay for one year's worth of the deductible, and you don't see a problem with that? What happens if you have large medical expenses two years in a row? Or get a disease that requires extended treatment that rolls into the next year? What happens if the insurance raises your premium to something harder to manage than $25/month because of a condition you have?
What about the part where he promised to help stabilize Iraq?
Well, that's the biggest failure of them all. What's your point?
What about where he promised we'd see no new terrorist attacks on American soil?
Lisa:By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer:Hmm; how does it work? Lisa:It doesn't work; it's just a stupid rock! Homer:Uh-huh. Lisa:But I don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer:Lisa, I want to buy your rock...
Before 9/11, when was the last time we had a terrorist attack on American soil that wasn't performed by an American citizen (so Oklahoma bombing and Olympics excluded)? What's your basis for saying that not being attacked in the past 8 years is a Bush accomplishment?
Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?
I don't see the conflict, that's exactly as it should be. A TV is a luxury and most certainly shouldn't be subsidized by the government, while health costs are a necessary part of life. You can choose not to buy an HDTV, but you can be forced into seeing a doctor.
I will concede that having a baby is a bad example. If you can't afford $4,000 to spend on the birth, you probably shouldn't be having a baby. Plus, like you said, you have a lot of time to prepare for it. On the other hand, people have no control over whether or not they are going to get cancer, and they'll have no time to prepare. Some people aren't earning as much as you or I and can't afford health insurance. Even if they can afford it, deductibles will kill you (I spent $2500 on medical costs last year, all in deductibles. Thankfully, I could afford it, but you and I are the lucky ones. Not everyone has enough left over after food to save $4,000 in 9 months)
You can always track [politifact.com] his campaign promises. As of right now, 7 are kept, 1 stalled, 14 in the works, and no status on 488. Not a bad start after 3 days.
Holy shit, did you take a look at the promise that was stalled? It reads, "During 2009 and 2010, existing businesses will receive a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each additional full-time employee hired."
This is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but...companies like Microsoft and IBM who actually reported quarterly profits (not losses), but didn't meet expectations. You think they might be exaggerating their condition and going with mass layoffs in anticipation of that tax credit? They would get to hire in large numbers to get their workforce back up to normal levels and reign in a huge tax credit.
You may think that's preposterous, but in my government experience at the FAA, over 50% of the workers don't do anything. They surf the net all day & collect a paycheck. It's like burning $200,000* times however many non-working employers exist.
I worked a job like that. I had about two hours of real work a week, the rest I just sort of browsed and chatted over IM. Then I collected my paycheck for my 40 hours. It's not that I was slacking off, it's that work was slow and the employer was paying for me to be on location ready to go when work became available.
That was in the private sector.
That said, I wasn't replying to you, and I specifically mentioned in my post that arguing the government is less efficient than the private industry is fair game. I was just saying that the assertion, from the person I was replying to, that the government does not create any wealth is false. The FAA for example, however inefficient it might be, provides a useful and necessary service necessary for the existence of certain private industries, such as airlines.
Repeat after me: government does not create wealth. Even if it makes some men wealthy.
Repeat after me: the economy is not a zero-sum game.
If the government (or anyone else) is paying a salary of $100,000 and collecting a $30,000 in taxes, the man receiving the salary is doing some work for the government (or somebody else) that is generating wealth. When they fire him, they're not losing the $30,000 in taxes (after all, it doesn't matter who he's working for...he needs to eat, he'll find another job, he'll still pay taxes). They are, however, losing an employee that was performing some work which was generating wealth.
It's not like there's some set total amount of wealth in the entire world that just gets redistributed between people. Labor is a resource for generating wealth, just like any other. There's no difference between a government or a private job in that sense, as long as people are working. You may argue that the government is less efficient with its resources than private business, and therefore generates less wealth with its available resources than a private business would. I'm not going to get into that discussion on one side or another, but you can't argue the government generates no wealth or that an unemployed person is better for the economy than a government-employed person.
i accept that, if they ban all encyclopedia then that can make sense, but that is not the norm IFAIK
Really? I guess it depends on where you went to school. I wasn't allowed to use encyclopedias as a source in elementary school, much less any school beyond that.
Please note that at no time have I mentioned unbricking the router.
Oh, I understand. I was just pointing out that other people did use the term back in the late 90's. It didn't come about after this new very lax usage that seems to be spreading today.
Now, I'll grant you the possibility that the term was already being diluted by then. It was about '96-'97 when I became familiar with the term. As I've learned it, you can only brick something by doing something in software such as flashing a device that causes it to cease working, doesn't allow you to reflash it or otherwise undo the damage through normal means, and forces you to perform a physical repair. Changing jumpers doesn't count, hotswapping would (so I would consider that bad flashing example of yours as you having bricked your computer, but not the cmos settings one).
Dropping your router on the floor doesn't brick it, it breaks it. It wasn't a software process that caused it to cease functioning. Same for your other examples.
I think the way you're defining it makes the term a bit useless, because you're never sure of what it means. By your definition, a user can most definitely "brick" his device by changing cmos settings, as long as he doesn't know how to reset it. A user can "brick" his computer by leaving a non-bootable floppy in, if he doesn't realize "not a system disk" refers to the floppy and doesn't know that he needs to remove it.
On the other side of the spectrum, nothing can ever be bricked. No matter what the problem is, you can always replace the damaged parts until you have a functioning device again regardless of how bad the damage was. You could get the chassis of the wrt54g, build a whole new router inside, replace all the boards and say it was never bricked, because you fixed it.
I think that if you define the term by the relative knowledge of the users in question, it becomes useless as a description of the state of the device. You might as well throw out the term.
I hate it when people say "literally" for things that are actually far from literal, but in this case, the submitter deserves some leeway. Not only did they figuratively sugarcoat it by making a drug-dealing game a candy-dealing game, but they transformed drugs into candy. Which you could do by literally sugar coating drugs and making them sweet.
It's still not literally sugarcoating, because there were no actual drugs and no actual candy, but it was quite clever wordplay, so I would say the usage is valid for the purpose of the joke.
I'm the happy owner of an HDHomeRun. It's a fantastic device, and I highly recommend it, but it's not a coupon-eligible converter. Normally, I would say to chuck the coupon aside and get it anyway, but the reason why the HDHomeRun isn't coupon-eligible is its lack of an RF output. You have to get the stream off the network, you can't connect it straight to the tv.
Now, I have a mythtv box connected to my TV, so that's not an issue for me. If you have a computer serving as a media center I most definitely recommend it, but if you just want the streaming as a bonus, and still want RF output, then it's not for you.
Again, this is not a criticism of the device. I absolutely love mine, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a way to stream unencrypted HD to their computers. Silicon Dust also has excellent forum support to help you set it up if you need it. However, if you want a converter box to hook directly up to your TV, this is not the device for you.
The definition of "bricked" depends on the ability of the speaker.
Not really. It's bricked if it cannot be repaired by non-physical means. If you have to open the device up and start soldering leads, the device is bricked. You're just capable of unbricking it.
The term "unbrick" has been around even in the old days when "brick" was being used correctly. I think that may have been what caused the new definition to come about. People would go into forums and see things like, "I've bricked my router, anyone know if it's possible to unbrick it?" The people asking the question were looking for hardware solutions such as the one you've accomplished, but the ones new to the terminology started inferring the meaning of the term "brick" as "currently not functioning" since it was obviously possible to bring them back to life in some cases.
I know for me, that pleasure was priceless when I bought an unopened copy of Sonic CD for the Sega CD off of eBay just a few years ago. The reaction of some random person on the internet when I told them that continues to give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Fair enough. That would be a very logical (even if strangely sadistic) choice. However, you should realize that by doing that you're not actually proving me wrong. On the contrary, you're arguing in my favor.
You could have bought a used and opened copy of Sonic CD for less money. Instead, you were willing to pay more for an unopened box in order to annoy random people on the internet and get a "warm, fuzzy feeling." By doing this, not only you acknowledge that the unopened box has more value to others (since they wouldn't get upset otherwise), but you acknowledge that it has more value to you
Of course, I suspect that you didn't actually get your unopened copy for that purpose (probably got a good deal, and it was rather cheap), and telling people about it was just a bonus. However, that bonus only exists because other people value it more. And the bonus you got from the purchase is one that you wouldn't have gotten from a used copy, so again, it had greater value to you.
Your problem is that you're holding on to outdated views of that some people are "normal" and others are not. Psychology has done away with that a long time ago. Nobody is "normal".
Now we only consider something to be a disorder if it interferes with the normal life of the person in question. It doesn't matter if a soldier is ecstatic after killing others in battle, as long as he never has the need to "get that feeling again" and starts considering killing people he's not supposed to. That would be interfering with his normal life, and he would be a psychopath.
On the other hand, if a soldier gets excited and a sense of adventure in battle, but is completely normal in order circumstances while another is completely distraught at having killed and has nightmares every day since, the person with a disorder is the one that is distraught (its interfering with his life). The one who got excited and giddy and has now adapted just fine to his life after service is perfectly healthy.
it's actually a well-done platform that's great for developers. You may dislike its single-platform outlook, but as programming languages, the.NET languages are top-notch.
Well said. That's precisely why it annoys me when people attack Mono. The only thing I dislike (and I do dislike it a lot) about.net is the fact that it's a windows only language. The mono guys are fixing that.
This is definitely something that needs to be curtailed -- these are not adults making a rational decision about these pictures, these are teenagers who think it is exciting.
That's because it is exciting. It's a nude body, a perfectly natural thing, what can possibly be the harm of showing it?
Just to clarify, I don't have anything against you for holding those beliefs, I just disagree with them and wanted to voice my own position. You're obviously a reasonable person for not wanting them to be arrested for behavior you don't approve of.
Hey, wait, are we talking about tulips [wikipedia.org]?
Not exactly. It's not that there's a bubble that inflates the price of the unopened peripheral due to speculation. It's that the unopened box is always demonstrably worth more than the opened box. It's a limited supply thing. There are less unopened tablets then there are open ones. By opening up you are literally removing value.
You know, oddly enough, making teh bux isn't the most important thing in life. If I get my hands on a new-in-box peripheral for one of my older computers, screw resale. I'm opening the box, hooking it up, and using it. That's the real value.
Do you not see the flaw in your reasoning, though? If the real value to you is in the use of the tablet, then you wouldn't mind buying an used one that does the same thing. However, since other people value the mint condition device and are willing to pay you more for it then you are denying others of what they want and denying yourself the different in price between the mint condition product and the used product you want to hook up to your computer. If you sell it, both you and the buyer get more out of it.
Frankly, the entire "minty-mint" collection mania is pathological. The perceived sale value boils down to "how much can I fleece a clueless schlub for?". And that's illogical.
That's not true. It's not always a clueless schlub, sometimes you're selling it to the guy who doesn't want to resell it AND doesn't want to open it. The final collector. I collect some stuff that I never intend to resell, not for profit but because I want it. It has value to me, and who are you to tell me I shouldn't value it if I'm willing to pay for it?
No, it is completely logical if the utility that you gain by enjoying the use of the item exceeds the utility you would have gotten from the money gained by auctioning it to the highest bidder.
Not really. You can sell to the highest bidder, buy a cheaper used product, and still get all the enjoyment of using it AS well as getting a profit. Win-win.
If you're going to argue that there's a greater utility to opening the box and using the new product, then you are admitting that the unopened box is worth more.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly is "global" lack of food?
"Global" lack of food is when the supply of food is so short that middle class can't afford it. If that's not the problem, it means it's an economic problem, not a shortage one.
Did you mean that enough food was available elsewhere and if only we could ship it to those poor Africans they'd be OK?
No, I mean that if those starving people were earning a third as much as I do they wouldn't be starving. We need to focus on education and development of those nations, and then the food problem will solve itself.
hope you realize that global is meaningless in this context,this is just like saying that there is no "global" fresh water crisis because there is a shitload of fresh water just sitting there in Antarctica.
There isn't a global fresh water crisis, and not just because of Antarctica. Saudi Arabia has no access to fresh water, but money from oil allows them to get their fresh water through desalination plants.
It's not a food crisis. It's a population crisis. In fact, most of the worlds problems today are population related. I wish people could see beyond all these other things and get down to the real problem.
It's not a food crisis. And the food problem is not a population crisis. It's an economic problem. There's no shortage of food, but people in the starving regions don't have any money. It's a type of poverty most of us can't really understand.
However, you're right. There is a population crisis. The energy crisis is a population problem. The environmentalists tells us that we need to individually do really stupid shit like unplug our TV's when not watching to prevent it from using any power in its sleep state. It's true that if we all did that it would add up to make a difference in the short term, but in the long term increasing population and the industrialization of third world nations are going to increase energy usage to such extremes that it simply won't matter.
The solution to the energy crisis is two-fold: better education and economic conditions for everyone will help with the population problem (first world nations usually have a negative population growth if you exclude immigration), and more energy, not less, of the type that is pretty low in emissions. Like nuclear. We need a bunch of breeder nuclear power plants that can reuse its own fuel. This means the amount of radioactive waste we need to deal would actually be pretty manageable.
The definition of a "solution" depends on what side are you analysing. If you consider the palestinian side, a solution will certainly consider educating a large mass of people and providing them the adequate means of living. Sure, some idiots will certainly call that "westernization", as if achieving proper education and respect for one another is something exclusively western, but it's a solution.
No doubt. Complete agreement there.
But if you're on the other side of the conflict, a solution might consider on just not being attacked anymore.
Again, complete agreement. The problem is finding out how to accomplish that goal. Obviously, not easy.
The real catch is: helping any side of the conflict to achieve a better life is not, and never will be, an obligation.
Never said otherwise. I mentioned the type of person they need as a leader, the type of government they must have to foster change. I never said anything about anyone from the outside helping.
You're still wrong. I still live on a society that preaches and practices respect on a daily basis. There is continous discussion about the problems of society, about tolerance, about minorities, about giving people equal opportunities.
Yes, we're doing much better now. Which was precisely a point I mentioned. It wasn't that long ago when segregation was in full swing in the US, though.
When I walk on the street, I interact with white people, black people, asian people, poor people, rich people. And everybody gets along. Violence is never considered to be a solution to any problem and we work hard to actually provide means for people to achieve a better life.
If you think violence is never considered to be a solution, you're not paying much attention. Just because the front is a little farther from your home doesn't mean the war isn't going on.
There's no comparison between a western man giving cheap ideas from behind his keyboard to a sand monkey firing an AK-47 to a jewish family just because they're jewish
No shit?
or a hate-filled idiot teaching kids that jews should be beheaded
Well, let's see...
But even genocide, if discussed and decided by a civilizated society that sees no other solution to the conflict, is superior than living at stone age and teaching kids to hate people based on their ethnicity or religion.
Congratulations. You've just made it comparable.
Besides, any society that considers genocide as an option is not civilized by definition: "showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; humane, ethical, and reasonable."
but you forgot to account the fact that hate and war is the result coming from their "side". The internal issues of their society that are causing the creation of this troubled interface with other societies is their problem, not ours.
Placing the blame on any side doesn't solve the issue in question. What the hell are you going to do about it? Attack them back? Will that cause their hate against you to subside?
Perfect! I really hope that such a nice and caring leader arises and lead them into the light.
As do I. I say this without sarcasm.
Until then, whoever is being attacked by the result of the collective ignorance of the said people will continue to pursue violent actions to defend its own people. Or did you expected everyone else to just wait and sacrifice so these people can solve their own internal issues?
Have you read what this discussion is about? The original poster I replied to said that Egypt is justified in stopping speech on facebook because the content is disagreeable. I replied saying that speec
People need to be inclined to talking for this kind of solution to be an option in the first place.
I don't disagree. I disagree that there is any solution that doesn't involve talking. It's either that or a continuation of hostilities and no peace. Trying to do anything else is futile.
No, it doesn't. That's just a PETA-like simplification of the process. No armchair expert suggestion from a civilizated westerner will ever make the said person similar to a hate-filled and ignorant citizen from a stone age region.
Allow me to clarify:
Them: "Evil Jews have taken our homeland. Talking with them is not an option, they'll just continue killing us, starving us, harassing us, kicking us out of places that belong to us."
You: "The western world is "civilized" and they are not. We might be capable of listening to grievances and applying logic to our problem, but they are hate-filled and ignorant citizens from a stone-age region. All they care about is killing who they perceive is their current enemy."
Like I said, you are more alike than you care to admit. You have also pigeonholed an entire people into a characterization that, although applies to some (and perhaps even most, depending on the region), prevents you from even attempting a peaceful solution to a problem, because you believe a peaceful solution cannot exist.
I'm not saying it's a matter of having somebody give a speech that will cause every last one of them to drop their weapons and hug their Israeli brothers. I'm saying that a leader needs to talk and try to convince their people to find a peaceful solution. Most will ignore this leader, some (especially from the younger generation) will listen. Given time and effort the peaceful population may outnumber the mostly older prejudiced and combative one.
It took time in the US, but the KKK went from an organization that had quite a lot of admiration from the public (watch the movie Birth of a Nation...it's hilarious to see how they are glorified in that film), to a complete joke today. It's not because we have removed their rights to gather and talk--they still publicly march to this day. However, when they do it now, they are ridiculed. The population of non-racists simply overwhelm the population of racist individuals (at least violently racist). It wasn't an instant change, and the road was a pretty tough one, but we managed to get this far, and we're continuing to make strides.
Oh no, wait... We're talking about a place where half of the population (women) is forbidden of participating in any kind of educational process and the other half only goes to school to learn religious aspects of life, with a disturbing share of time being dedicated to hate speech against whoever is their current enemy.
So you're condemning them for their lack of freedoms and for their tendency towards oppression while advocating further suppressing their freedoms as a solution?
That makes you more similar to them than you are willing to admit.
In this case, the Egyptian government wants to bring peace to the Middle East, whereas the activists want more violence.
Irrelevant. The violence needs to be prevented, but not the talking. If anything, if the talk is made public, it's easier to know what they're planning and do something about it.
We, people from more peaceful parts of the world, generally assume that more democracy is always good.
That's because it is.
We fail to realize that at times, the majority is wrong.
How do you decide who is "right"?
The only way to break out is with strong leaders on both sides who are willing to step up and refuse to fight. Giving the vengeful mob tools to undermine that is not a good thing.
Almost right. The only way to break out is with strong leaders who convince their people that violence is not the way to get what they want. There is never going to be peace while the people want violence. It only takes one rogue bastard to attack someone. If the majority of the people agree with what he did, they'll protect and hide him from the authorities. If they don't agree, he won't have as many places to hide.
You need to get all the arguments out in the open and have a leader who can address the concerns of the people logically and convince them not to fight. You can't force them not to fight. If you do that, at best you have an underground that is still fighting, at worst you have have a coup on your hands when they turn against the government and treat their own government as an enemy for standing against them.
In two years I've accumulated more than enough money (at 3% interest too!) to have a baby AND pay the $4500 deductible all at one time.
So, it took you two years to accumulate the money to pay for one year's worth of the deductible, and you don't see a problem with that? What happens if you have large medical expenses two years in a row? Or get a disease that requires extended treatment that rolls into the next year? What happens if the insurance raises your premium to something harder to manage than $25/month because of a condition you have?
What about the part where he promised to help stabilize Iraq?
Well, that's the biggest failure of them all. What's your point?
What about where he promised we'd see no new terrorist attacks on American soil?
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Hmm; how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work; it's just a stupid rock!
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock...
Before 9/11, when was the last time we had a terrorist attack on American soil that wasn't performed by an American citizen (so Oklahoma bombing and Olympics excluded)? What's your basis for saying that not being attacked in the past 8 years is a Bush accomplishment?
I'm positive our government did this type of thing prior to the current terror threats (you bet during the Cold War!).
As am I. But it was never right, never legal, and "we've always done it" is not an acceptable excuse to continue doing something wrong.
Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?
I don't see the conflict, that's exactly as it should be. A TV is a luxury and most certainly shouldn't be subsidized by the government, while health costs are a necessary part of life. You can choose not to buy an HDTV, but you can be forced into seeing a doctor.
I will concede that having a baby is a bad example. If you can't afford $4,000 to spend on the birth, you probably shouldn't be having a baby. Plus, like you said, you have a lot of time to prepare for it. On the other hand, people have no control over whether or not they are going to get cancer, and they'll have no time to prepare. Some people aren't earning as much as you or I and can't afford health insurance. Even if they can afford it, deductibles will kill you (I spent $2500 on medical costs last year, all in deductibles. Thankfully, I could afford it, but you and I are the lucky ones. Not everyone has enough left over after food to save $4,000 in 9 months)
You can always track [politifact.com] his campaign promises. As of right now, 7 are kept, 1 stalled, 14 in the works, and no status on 488. Not a bad start after 3 days.
Holy shit, did you take a look at the promise that was stalled? It reads, "During 2009 and 2010, existing businesses will receive a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each additional full-time employee hired."
This is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but...companies like Microsoft and IBM who actually reported quarterly profits (not losses), but didn't meet expectations. You think they might be exaggerating their condition and going with mass layoffs in anticipation of that tax credit? They would get to hire in large numbers to get their workforce back up to normal levels and reign in a huge tax credit.
You may think that's preposterous, but in my government experience at the FAA, over 50% of the workers don't do anything. They surf the net all day & collect a paycheck. It's like burning $200,000* times however many non-working employers exist.
I worked a job like that. I had about two hours of real work a week, the rest I just sort of browsed and chatted over IM. Then I collected my paycheck for my 40 hours. It's not that I was slacking off, it's that work was slow and the employer was paying for me to be on location ready to go when work became available.
That was in the private sector.
That said, I wasn't replying to you, and I specifically mentioned in my post that arguing the government is less efficient than the private industry is fair game. I was just saying that the assertion, from the person I was replying to, that the government does not create any wealth is false. The FAA for example, however inefficient it might be, provides a useful and necessary service necessary for the existence of certain private industries, such as airlines.
Repeat after me: government does not create wealth. Even if it makes some men wealthy.
Repeat after me: the economy is not a zero-sum game.
If the government (or anyone else) is paying a salary of $100,000 and collecting a $30,000 in taxes, the man receiving the salary is doing some work for the government (or somebody else) that is generating wealth. When they fire him, they're not losing the $30,000 in taxes (after all, it doesn't matter who he's working for...he needs to eat, he'll find another job, he'll still pay taxes). They are, however, losing an employee that was performing some work which was generating wealth.
It's not like there's some set total amount of wealth in the entire world that just gets redistributed between people. Labor is a resource for generating wealth, just like any other. There's no difference between a government or a private job in that sense, as long as people are working. You may argue that the government is less efficient with its resources than private business, and therefore generates less wealth with its available resources than a private business would. I'm not going to get into that discussion on one side or another, but you can't argue the government generates no wealth or that an unemployed person is better for the economy than a government-employed person.
i accept that, if they ban all encyclopedia then that can make sense, but that is not the norm IFAIK
Really? I guess it depends on where you went to school. I wasn't allowed to use encyclopedias as a source in elementary school, much less any school beyond that.
I disagree
Please note that at no time have I mentioned unbricking the router.
Oh, I understand. I was just pointing out that other people did use the term back in the late 90's. It didn't come about after this new very lax usage that seems to be spreading today.
Now, I'll grant you the possibility that the term was already being diluted by then. It was about '96-'97 when I became familiar with the term. As I've learned it, you can only brick something by doing something in software such as flashing a device that causes it to cease working, doesn't allow you to reflash it or otherwise undo the damage through normal means, and forces you to perform a physical repair. Changing jumpers doesn't count, hotswapping would (so I would consider that bad flashing example of yours as you having bricked your computer, but not the cmos settings one).
Dropping your router on the floor doesn't brick it, it breaks it. It wasn't a software process that caused it to cease functioning. Same for your other examples.
I think the way you're defining it makes the term a bit useless, because you're never sure of what it means. By your definition, a user can most definitely "brick" his device by changing cmos settings, as long as he doesn't know how to reset it. A user can "brick" his computer by leaving a non-bootable floppy in, if he doesn't realize "not a system disk" refers to the floppy and doesn't know that he needs to remove it.
On the other side of the spectrum, nothing can ever be bricked. No matter what the problem is, you can always replace the damaged parts until you have a functioning device again regardless of how bad the damage was. You could get the chassis of the wrt54g, build a whole new router inside, replace all the boards and say it was never bricked, because you fixed it.
I think that if you define the term by the relative knowledge of the users in question, it becomes useless as a description of the state of the device. You might as well throw out the term.
Huh. Ethernet video is a prohibited output, which means the very thing the submitter was asking for he's not going to get.
I guess, "chuck the coupons" is the best advice for him
To literally sugarcoat means to coat with sugar
I hate it when people say "literally" for things that are actually far from literal, but in this case, the submitter deserves some leeway. Not only did they figuratively sugarcoat it by making a drug-dealing game a candy-dealing game, but they transformed drugs into candy. Which you could do by literally sugar coating drugs and making them sweet.
It's still not literally sugarcoating, because there were no actual drugs and no actual candy, but it was quite clever wordplay, so I would say the usage is valid for the purpose of the joke.
I'm the happy owner of an HDHomeRun. It's a fantastic device, and I highly recommend it, but it's not a coupon-eligible converter. Normally, I would say to chuck the coupon aside and get it anyway, but the reason why the HDHomeRun isn't coupon-eligible is its lack of an RF output. You have to get the stream off the network, you can't connect it straight to the tv.
Now, I have a mythtv box connected to my TV, so that's not an issue for me. If you have a computer serving as a media center I most definitely recommend it, but if you just want the streaming as a bonus, and still want RF output, then it's not for you.
Again, this is not a criticism of the device. I absolutely love mine, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a way to stream unencrypted HD to their computers. Silicon Dust also has excellent forum support to help you set it up if you need it. However, if you want a converter box to hook directly up to your TV, this is not the device for you.
The definition of "bricked" depends on the ability of the speaker.
Not really. It's bricked if it cannot be repaired by non-physical means. If you have to open the device up and start soldering leads, the device is bricked. You're just capable of unbricking it.
The term "unbrick" has been around even in the old days when "brick" was being used correctly. I think that may have been what caused the new definition to come about. People would go into forums and see things like, "I've bricked my router, anyone know if it's possible to unbrick it?" The people asking the question were looking for hardware solutions such as the one you've accomplished, but the ones new to the terminology started inferring the meaning of the term "brick" as "currently not functioning" since it was obviously possible to bring them back to life in some cases.
I know for me, that pleasure was priceless when I bought an unopened copy of Sonic CD for the Sega CD off of eBay just a few years ago. The reaction of some random person on the internet when I told them that continues to give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Fair enough. That would be a very logical (even if strangely sadistic) choice. However, you should realize that by doing that you're not actually proving me wrong. On the contrary, you're arguing in my favor.
You could have bought a used and opened copy of Sonic CD for less money. Instead, you were willing to pay more for an unopened box in order to annoy random people on the internet and get a "warm, fuzzy feeling." By doing this, not only you acknowledge that the unopened box has more value to others (since they wouldn't get upset otherwise), but you acknowledge that it has more value to you
Of course, I suspect that you didn't actually get your unopened copy for that purpose (probably got a good deal, and it was rather cheap), and telling people about it was just a bonus. However, that bonus only exists because other people value it more. And the bonus you got from the purchase is one that you wouldn't have gotten from a used copy, so again, it had greater value to you.
if i enjoyed it, i'm a sociopath
Your problem is that you're holding on to outdated views of that some people are "normal" and others are not. Psychology has done away with that a long time ago. Nobody is "normal".
Now we only consider something to be a disorder if it interferes with the normal life of the person in question. It doesn't matter if a soldier is ecstatic after killing others in battle, as long as he never has the need to "get that feeling again" and starts considering killing people he's not supposed to. That would be interfering with his normal life, and he would be a psychopath.
On the other hand, if a soldier gets excited and a sense of adventure in battle, but is completely normal in order circumstances while another is completely distraught at having killed and has nightmares every day since, the person with a disorder is the one that is distraught (its interfering with his life). The one who got excited and giddy and has now adapted just fine to his life after service is perfectly healthy.
it's actually a well-done platform that's great for developers. You may dislike its single-platform outlook, but as programming languages, the .NET languages are top-notch.
Well said. That's precisely why it annoys me when people attack Mono. The only thing I dislike (and I do dislike it a lot) about .net is the fact that it's a windows only language. The mono guys are fixing that.
This is definitely something that needs to be curtailed -- these are not adults making a rational decision about these pictures, these are teenagers who think it is exciting.
That's because it is exciting. It's a nude body, a perfectly natural thing, what can possibly be the harm of showing it?
Just to clarify, I don't have anything against you for holding those beliefs, I just disagree with them and wanted to voice my own position. You're obviously a reasonable person for not wanting them to be arrested for behavior you don't approve of.
Hey, wait, are we talking about tulips [wikipedia.org]?
Not exactly. It's not that there's a bubble that inflates the price of the unopened peripheral due to speculation. It's that the unopened box is always demonstrably worth more than the opened box. It's a limited supply thing. There are less unopened tablets then there are open ones. By opening up you are literally removing value.
You know, oddly enough, making teh bux isn't the most important thing in life. If I get my hands on a new-in-box peripheral for one of my older computers, screw resale. I'm opening the box, hooking it up, and using it. That's the real value.
Do you not see the flaw in your reasoning, though? If the real value to you is in the use of the tablet, then you wouldn't mind buying an used one that does the same thing. However, since other people value the mint condition device and are willing to pay you more for it then you are denying others of what they want and denying yourself the different in price between the mint condition product and the used product you want to hook up to your computer. If you sell it, both you and the buyer get more out of it.
Frankly, the entire "minty-mint" collection mania is pathological. The perceived sale value boils down to "how much can I fleece a clueless schlub for?". And that's illogical.
That's not true. It's not always a clueless schlub, sometimes you're selling it to the guy who doesn't want to resell it AND doesn't want to open it. The final collector. I collect some stuff that I never intend to resell, not for profit but because I want it. It has value to me, and who are you to tell me I shouldn't value it if I'm willing to pay for it?
No, it is completely logical if the utility that you gain by enjoying the use of the item exceeds the utility you would have gotten from the money gained by auctioning it to the highest bidder.
Not really. You can sell to the highest bidder, buy a cheaper used product, and still get all the enjoyment of using it AS well as getting a profit. Win-win.
If you're going to argue that there's a greater utility to opening the box and using the new product, then you are admitting that the unopened box is worth more.