>>>Many American Christians truly believe that God® has commissioned us here in the land of milk and honey to spread democracy to the rest of the world. >>>
It sounds like you are quoting Democratic President Woodrow Wilson ("make the world safe for democracy"), and he was no Christian. He was a member of the KKK. Furthermore he was hardly democratic since he rounded-up folks and threw them in prison for daring to cricitize his adminstration. Example: Alice Paul, the suffragette.
Also you misuse the word Manifest Destiny, which referred to a U.S. that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It had nothing to do with world affairs beyond those borders.
As I recall, from history, it was the Europeans that believed it okay to colonize the whole world and suppress everyone to European ideas for 400-some years. Including China. Apparently the Euros think we've forgotten that, but we have not. We and our Canadian/South American neighbors used to be suppressed colonies too. --
Uh oh. Somebody opened a political can of worms. And he was marked +5 Insightful besides. Alright. I'll bite.
>>> >>>Damn Obama, first healthcare and now cutting nukes whilst keeping your shield intact. You're good. >>>
I'm going to be fined $1000 for not belonging to an HMO, and my personal taxes will increase $1500 (according to a CNN Sunday Morning report). If you think I'm going to praise Obama for that, then please think again.
Yes Obama is good for having eliminated some of those missiles. Good job.
But IMHO the number of things he's done wrong outweight the good. Like renewing the Patriot Act. Given himself (or any future leader) power to turnoff the internet, and so on. In general I view Obama as just a continuance of Bush's policies.
Russia is #1 with the fastest internet at 9.6 Mbit/s (relative to other continent-sized federations). The average Russian citizen's connection is about 2 Mbit/s faster than the average US citizen and 3 Mbit/s faster than the average EU citizen. The Russian Federation is well-poised for the technological revolution.
Those numbers don't really mean much. Saddam Hussein had the second largest army in 1990 (yes even bigger than ours), but we beat it in just five days. Just like in manufacturing, it's the technology that matters more than the number of men.
Uh. Somebody opened a political can of worms. And he was marked +3 Insightful besides. Alright. I'll bite.
>>>Damn Obama, first healthcare and now cutting nukes whilst keeping your shield intact. You're good.
I'm going to be fined $1000 for not belonging to an HMO, and my personal taxes will increase $1500 (according to a CNN Sunday Morning report). If you think I'm going to praise Obama for that, then please think again.
Yes Obama is good for having eliminated some of those missiles. Good job.
But there are other things I could criticize Obama for, like his decision to track cellphones, turnoff the internet whenever the president (either him or some future dude) feels like it, and also signing the Patriot Renewal Act. PLUS: If I lived in the EU, I'd be asking why America is building a shield instead of the Europeans?
In general I view Obama as just a continuance of Bush's policies.
USA, TNT, et cetera beat networks because they are willing to take risks, because they have a captive audience. Even if you don't watch, they still collect their ~50 cent subscriber fee each month. Broadcast networks lose money when you don't watch.
>>>Weeds, Burn Notice, BSG, Leverage, CYE, Daily Show
- Never seen Weeds. - Watched Burn Notice for about 3 episodes then lost interest. - Leverage didn't appeal to me. - CYE? - Daily Show - I'd rather watch real "news" programs like Beck and Maddow as they are educational. - BSG - Great show, but it no longer exists. It was one of the few bright spots of the post-2005 era.
I don't know why people keep saying "Ironic" is not ironic, so I went off to wikipedia:
(1) That song was released in 1996. 14 years ago! Man time flies by fast. I was still just a college kid.
(2) Wikipedia says, "Two situations that Morissette describes in the song are arguably examples of cosmic irony: events that, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, appear "as if in mockery of the fitness or rightness of things", such as "a death row pardon..... two minutes too late".
(3) I always figured Morisette was just using the slang that was popular at the time with teens. Like "Psych!" Or "Spaz!" Or "Ironic!" Per usual with teen catchphrases, they are not used in proper fashion.
(4) Ironic was Alanis Morisette's most popular song, and yet it only peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her other songs peaked much lower. I'm surprised since I thought her songs had achieved higher popularity than that, considering how much I heard them played on the radio.
>>>(Crazy week in WA., what with our rogue AG and all...)
I was wondering what you meant so I did a quick Bing search. "Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna plans to join a multi-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recently signed health care law."
I don't see this as rogue. He and other State Attorneys/Governors are merely asking the U.S. Court to enforce the Constitutional Law (specifically parts 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights). They swore an oath to uphold that law, and now they are following through with it.
Good for them.
As for the topic - I already commented below that rather than raises taxes 300 million dollars, politicians should CUT 300 million dollars. Abracadabra - balanced budget. I also think they should go after Microsoft to pay their backtaxes, but at the same time I figure MS would just move to another state if they pushed too hard.
Cut 300 million dollars worth of government workers.
Done.
Those who remain would therefore have to work 8 hours a day, instead of wasting 4 hours each day surfing the net (as they did in my government office).
Given that Youtube is low-quality anyway, why would I want to watch it on a big-screen TV?
>>>What happens when I want to show visitors a Wikipedia article?
Hand them your laptop or cellphone with the wiki-article already pulled up. At least that's what I do. It's just like if you read an interesting newspaper article, you pass around the paper.
That it's a waste of time to contribute because your hard work is so easily erased by people pushing an agenda. I can understand people not liking HD Radio and adding criticisms to the article (it does in fact interfere with AM Radio during night hours).
What I can not understand is people erasing useful information, like the stream's datarate (300 kbit/s), or how many channels can be carried per station (7), or its capabilities (text, stereo, and surround sound). Why erase that useful info? It makes me wonder why I even bothered.
With the quality of movies I've downloaded (shhh) off the net these past 2 years..... no I'm really not missing anything. I can't think of a single movie from 2008-10 that I'd want to watch a second time via my surround sound system. .
>>>there are few TV shows these days I feel worth my undivided attention for 30-60 minutes...
Yeah. Think about that for a second.
Not worth paying attention == not really worth watching in the first place. The Second Golden Age of Television (circa 1993 to 2005) has ended. There are still a few shows I tune-in like Supernatural or Smallville or Caprica, but for the most part they seem "somehow lesser" than what we had before..... as if the creative spark has gone dim.
I note the end of the "golden age" seems to coincide with the death of UPN and WB. I wonder if that means something, or if it's mere coincidence? I know I miss the non-network, syndicated shows like Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Xena, Hercules, Time Trax. That was an avenue of creativity that has forever disappeared.
>>>SDTV, you may need an even more obscure piece of hardware to turn VGA signals into composite or S-Video signals.
Even cheaper option: Point camcorder at computer screen. Run cables to TV. I honestly don't remember when I ever needed to do that, since my family almost never sits together.
-or-
Buy DVD. Watch it with family and friends. Easier.
If there's some kind of bold feature list that says "free downloadable content" on the game's cover, then GameSpot and other sellers need to take a marker or sticker and block it out, because otherwise it's false advertising.
It's just like when I bought a Used Xbox 360. The description said "turn on the wireless controller and start playing immediately" but when I receive the X360 no controller was included. I contacted the seller and he tried to deny responsibility because "that was just a generic description from Microsoft and only applies to new consoles not used." However when I complained to Paypal they sided with me and gave me a $20 refund (which I then used to buy the missing controller).
Used or new, sellers are responsible for what they advertise. If it's on the cover's description it either must be included, or if excluded, blacked-out of the cover.
Another approach would be to ban
ridiculous gigantic.sig files, complete with
name, email address, snail-mail, address,
three phone numbers, URL, twitter link,
facebook link, linkedin link, blog link,
some kind of logo and a giant block of text
mandated by legal. Oh yeah, and coded in
HTML so it matches corporate colours. Ugh.
Sometimes I get emails where the sig is longer than the body of the freakin' email.
Yes. You're right. It's also annoying when people quote without trimming.;-)
- c64_love
Fred Haddad - via
FidoNet node 1:270/411
UUCP:...!eds1!devon
!rhutch!Fred.Haddad
Fred.Haddad
@rhutch.FIDONET.ORG .. . __ . ./// NOW PLAYING: __/// CD quality music \\/// Over 1 million colors .\X/ "Only Amiga makes it possible!"
(Yes these are my actual sigs from the 1980s, when I was young and stupid and made them ridiculously long.)
It has "holes" in the letters to save ink. So instead of 30% less ink usage this college would have about 45% less ink usage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofont
I don't have one of those anymore. Well, I do, but it's in the basement. Lately I've been watching everything directly on my computer, because I got tired of the broadcast/cable schedule and prefer on-demand instant gratification (via the internet, or via stored videos on my hard drive).
If I did want to watch something on TV, I'd just use the HDMI out connector.
Women don't like whores because they steal-way their boyfriends or husbands. Women spit on whores mainly reacting from fear.
Boyfriends and husbands like whores, but they pretend they don't, and pass laws to outlaw whores, in order to keep harmony at home.
There.
By the way I never bought the "they sell their bodies and that's wrong" argument. I'm selling my body right now, to the corporation. For 9-10 hours a day I am selling myself as a temporary slave to their whims. So there's no real difference.
It depends upon how much damage is done. I spent of time researching HD Radio prior to buying one, and then decided to share what I found with wikipedia. I rewrote the article and received a lot of praise.
I came back about 6 months later and discovered most of my work had been deleted, and replaced with anti-HD propaganda (like "HD Radio blocks AM Radio reception" and "The FCC will soon remove HDR as a standard."). It was not as simple as clicking "undo" to restore my original contributions. It took about two hours to dig through the old versions and copy/paste the deleted references, engineering citations, and so.
What's the difference between Mono and.NET? How does the liberated open source software community connect to these standards? Where does De Icaza fit in the puzzle?
I'm confused because pro-GW folks like Gore keep contradicting themselves. LAST year he said the lack-of-snow in the Baltimore-Washington area was proof of global warming. THIS year he said the record snow was also proof of global warming.
>>>Given that where I live was under a glacier 11,000 years ago IMO a little extra help warming wouldn't hurt...
It might not have been that long ago. During the Mini-Ice Age from 1200-1850 the glaciers moved forward again, covering various places that are today dry.
Imagine if this were the year 1800, and the former Vice-president was warning us about global warming. Technically he would be right, but the warming wasn't humans fault. It was merely a natural cycle, and a return to the climate that existed pre-1200.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>Many American Christians truly believe that God® has commissioned us here in the land of milk and honey to spread democracy to the rest of the world.
>>>
It sounds like you are quoting Democratic President Woodrow Wilson ("make the world safe for democracy"), and he was no Christian. He was a member of the KKK. Furthermore he was hardly democratic since he rounded-up folks and threw them in prison for daring to cricitize his adminstration. Example: Alice Paul, the suffragette.
Also you misuse the word Manifest Destiny, which referred to a U.S. that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It had nothing to do with world affairs beyond those borders.
As I recall, from history, it was the Europeans that believed it okay to colonize the whole world and suppress everyone to European ideas for 400-some years. Including China. Apparently the Euros think we've forgotten that, but we have not. We and our Canadian/South American neighbors used to be suppressed colonies too.
--
Cut 300 million dollars worth of government workers.
Done.
Uh oh. Somebody opened a political can of worms. And he was marked +5 Insightful besides. Alright. I'll bite.
>>>
>>>Damn Obama, first healthcare and now cutting nukes whilst keeping your shield intact. You're good.
>>>
I'm going to be fined $1000 for not belonging to an HMO, and my personal taxes will increase $1500 (according to a CNN Sunday Morning report). If you think I'm going to praise Obama for that, then please think again.
Yes Obama is good for having eliminated some of those missiles. Good job.
But IMHO the number of things he's done wrong outweight the good. Like renewing the Patriot Act. Given himself (or any future leader) power to turnoff the internet, and so on. In general I view Obama as just a continuance of Bush's policies.
Also:
Russia is #1 with the fastest internet at 9.6 Mbit/s (relative to other continent-sized federations). The average Russian citizen's connection is about 2 Mbit/s faster than the average US citizen and 3 Mbit/s faster than the average EU citizen. The Russian Federation is well-poised for the technological revolution.
Source: speedtest.net
Those numbers don't really mean much. Saddam Hussein had the second largest army in 1990 (yes even bigger than ours), but we beat it in just five days. Just like in manufacturing, it's the technology that matters more than the number of men.
Uh. Somebody opened a political can of worms. And he was marked +3 Insightful besides. Alright. I'll bite.
>>>Damn Obama, first healthcare and now cutting nukes whilst keeping your shield intact. You're good.
I'm going to be fined $1000 for not belonging to an HMO, and my personal taxes will increase $1500 (according to a CNN Sunday Morning report). If you think I'm going to praise Obama for that, then please think again.
Yes Obama is good for having eliminated some of those missiles. Good job.
But there are other things I could criticize Obama for, like his decision to track cellphones, turnoff the internet whenever the president (either him or some future dude) feels like it, and also signing the Patriot Renewal Act. PLUS: If I lived in the EU, I'd be asking why America is building a shield instead of the Europeans?
In general I view Obama as just a continuance of Bush's policies.
USA, TNT, et cetera beat networks because they are willing to take risks, because they have a captive audience. Even if you don't watch, they still collect their ~50 cent subscriber fee each month. Broadcast networks lose money when you don't watch.
>>>Weeds, Burn Notice, BSG, Leverage, CYE, Daily Show
- Never seen Weeds.
- Watched Burn Notice for about 3 episodes then lost interest.
- Leverage didn't appeal to me.
- CYE?
- Daily Show - I'd rather watch real "news" programs like Beck and Maddow as they are educational.
- BSG - Great show, but it no longer exists. It was one of the few bright spots of the post-2005 era.
I don't know why people keep saying "Ironic" is not ironic, so I went off to wikipedia:
(1) That song was released in 1996. 14 years ago! Man time flies by fast. I was still just a college kid.
(2) Wikipedia says, "Two situations that Morissette describes in the song are arguably examples of cosmic irony: events that, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, appear "as if in mockery of the fitness or rightness of things", such as "a death row pardon..... two minutes too late".
(3) I always figured Morisette was just using the slang that was popular at the time with teens. Like "Psych!" Or "Spaz!" Or "Ironic!" Per usual with teen catchphrases, they are not used in proper fashion.
(4) Ironic was Alanis Morisette's most popular song, and yet it only peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her other songs peaked much lower. I'm surprised since I thought her songs had achieved higher popularity than that, considering how much I heard them played on the radio.
Precisely. I should be laid off. You could cut 75% of government workers and not notice any reduction in work output.
>>>(Crazy week in WA., what with our rogue AG and all...)
I was wondering what you meant so I did a quick Bing search. "Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna plans to join a multi-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recently signed health care law."
I don't see this as rogue. He and other State Attorneys/Governors are merely asking the U.S. Court to enforce the Constitutional Law (specifically parts 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights). They swore an oath to uphold that law, and now they are following through with it.
Good for them.
As for the topic - I already commented below that rather than raises taxes 300 million dollars, politicians should CUT 300 million dollars. Abracadabra - balanced budget. I also think they should go after Microsoft to pay their backtaxes, but at the same time I figure MS would just move to another state if they pushed too hard.
Cut 300 million dollars worth of government workers.
Done.
Those who remain would therefore have to work 8 hours a day, instead of wasting 4 hours each day surfing the net (as they did in my government office).
Given that Youtube is low-quality anyway, why would I want to watch it on a big-screen TV?
>>>What happens when I want to show visitors a Wikipedia article?
Hand them your laptop or cellphone with the wiki-article already pulled up. At least that's what I do. It's just like if you read an interesting newspaper article, you pass around the paper.
Yep.
That it's a waste of time to contribute because your hard work is so easily erased by people pushing an agenda. I can understand people not liking HD Radio and adding criticisms to the article (it does in fact interfere with AM Radio during night hours).
What I can not understand is people erasing useful information, like the stream's datarate (300 kbit/s), or how many channels can be carried per station (7), or its capabilities (text, stereo, and surround sound). Why erase that useful info? It makes me wonder why I even bothered.
>>>you're really missing out for movies...
With the quality of movies I've downloaded (shhh) off the net these past 2 years..... no I'm really not missing anything. I can't think of a single movie from 2008-10 that I'd want to watch a second time via my surround sound system.
.
>>>there are few TV shows these days I feel worth my undivided attention for 30-60 minutes...
Yeah. Think about that for a second.
Not worth paying attention == not really worth watching in the first place. The Second Golden Age of Television (circa 1993 to 2005) has ended. There are still a few shows I tune-in like Supernatural or Smallville or Caprica, but for the most part they seem "somehow lesser" than what we had before..... as if the creative spark has gone dim.
I note the end of the "golden age" seems to coincide with the death of UPN and WB. I wonder if that means something, or if it's mere coincidence? I know I miss the non-network, syndicated shows like Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Xena, Hercules, Time Trax. That was an avenue of creativity that has forever disappeared.
>>>SDTV, you may need an even more obscure piece of hardware to turn VGA signals into composite or S-Video signals.
Even cheaper option: Point camcorder at computer screen. Run cables to TV. I honestly don't remember when I ever needed to do that, since my family almost never sits together.
-or-
Buy DVD. Watch it with family and friends. Easier.
If there's some kind of bold feature list that says "free downloadable content" on the game's cover, then GameSpot and other sellers need to take a marker or sticker and block it out, because otherwise it's false advertising.
It's just like when I bought a Used Xbox 360. The description said "turn on the wireless controller and start playing immediately" but when I receive the X360 no controller was included. I contacted the seller and he tried to deny responsibility because "that was just a generic description from Microsoft and only applies to new consoles not used." However when I complained to Paypal they sided with me and gave me a $20 refund (which I then used to buy the missing controller).
Used or new, sellers are responsible for what they advertise. If it's on the cover's description it either must be included, or if excluded, blacked-out of the cover.
>>>Cause those holes are really distracting in the Wikipedia example
Only because they are on a screen. When printed the Ecofont's holes disappear due to the way ink "flows" into the paper.
Another approach would be to ban .sig files, complete with
ridiculous gigantic
name, email address, snail-mail, address,
three phone numbers, URL, twitter link,
facebook link, linkedin link, blog link,
some kind of logo and a giant block of text
mandated by legal. Oh yeah, and coded in
HTML so it matches corporate colours. Ugh.
Sometimes I get emails where the sig is longer than the body of the freakin' email.
Yes. ;-)
You're right.
It's also annoying when people quote without trimming.
- c64_love
Fred Haddad - via ...!eds1!devon
.. . __ /// NOW PLAYING: /// CD quality music
.\X/ "Only Amiga makes it possible!"
FidoNet node 1:270/411
UUCP:
!rhutch!Fred.Haddad
Fred.Haddad
@rhutch.FIDONET.ORG
. .
__
\\/// Over 1 million colors
(Yes these are my actual sigs from the 1980s, when I was young and stupid and made them ridiculously long.)
It has "holes" in the letters to save ink. So instead of 30% less ink usage this college would have about 45% less ink usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofont
I don't have one of those anymore. Well, I do, but it's in the basement. Lately I've been watching everything directly on my computer, because I got tired of the broadcast/cable schedule and prefer on-demand instant gratification (via the internet, or via stored videos on my hard drive).
If I did want to watch something on TV, I'd just use the HDMI out connector.
Women don't like whores because they steal-way their boyfriends or husbands. Women spit on whores mainly reacting from fear.
Boyfriends and husbands like whores, but they pretend they don't, and pass laws to outlaw whores, in order to keep harmony at home.
There.
By the way I never bought the "they sell their bodies and that's wrong" argument. I'm selling my body right now, to the corporation. For 9-10 hours a day I am selling myself as a temporary slave to their whims. So there's no real difference.
It depends upon how much damage is done. I spent of time researching HD Radio prior to buying one, and then decided to share what I found with wikipedia. I rewrote the article and received a lot of praise.
I came back about 6 months later and discovered most of my work had been deleted, and replaced with anti-HD propaganda (like "HD Radio blocks AM Radio reception" and "The FCC will soon remove HDR as a standard."). It was not as simple as clicking "undo" to restore my original contributions. It took about two hours to dig through the old versions and copy/paste the deleted references, engineering citations, and so.
I read both articles, but I'm still confused.
What's the difference between Mono and .NET? How does the liberated open source software community connect to these standards? Where does De Icaza fit in the puzzle?
Most of ye seemed to have missed the point.
I'm confused because pro-GW folks like Gore keep contradicting themselves. LAST year he said the lack-of-snow in the Baltimore-Washington area was proof of global warming. THIS year he said the record snow was also proof of global warming.
What?!?!?
>>>Given that where I live was under a glacier 11,000 years ago IMO a little extra help warming wouldn't hurt...
It might not have been that long ago. During the Mini-Ice Age from 1200-1850 the glaciers moved forward again, covering various places that are today dry.
Imagine if this were the year 1800, and the former Vice-president was warning us about global warming. Technically he would be right, but the warming wasn't humans fault. It was merely a natural cycle, and a return to the climate that existed pre-1200.