The higher ups were somewhat aware of what he was doing.
RISK Magazine awarded them Equity Derivatives House of the Year award for 2007, for their performance, largely due to the $73 Billion in profits this guy leveraged on his $7 Billion. (The award issue was published 2 days before the news of this guy went public, heh).
It was only when his trades started losing the bank money that they raised a stink.
But money spent on "cancer research" is all fiat money also.
The value of that research is set by the patents on the products of that research - (cures) - which is GRANTED by the government. As long as there is a patent, the drug company can charge whatever the fuck they want for the lifesaving drug (not necessarily what the market can bear - it should be obvious by now that the market can no longer bear the prices charged for medications in America; which is why health insurance was created in the first place, and why THAT scam is now bankrupting pretty much all other industries).
So; $100 Billion for research? Why not $100 Trillion? $100 Zillion-Jillion? It's all fiat money. The producers are going to set whatever price they want.
And honestly, the "investment" for network buildout is EXACTLY the same. Because the cable/telecom monopolies are going to charge whatever the fuck they want for access. And they're going to throttle, filter, and wiretap it as much as they please.
$100 Billion is a completely meaningless figure, because it is not attached to any real, tangible cost, nor is it bound by any realistic sense of what the ROI could be.
your comment sort of reminds me of the movie Hellraiser; where S&M people go to Hell, and end up liking it, because they enjoy all the sex and pain and torture.
. . . then I tried to imagine what "spammer heaven" would be like. I'm not sure whether I should call M. Knight Shamalyan or Quentin Tarantino with my idea. . . (more likely, I should try to animate the corpse of Stanley Kubrick, and see if he'll produce it.)
. . . and with their new web mail client (buggy, slow, crashes and hangs my browser), I was already considering dropping their service. At least they let me switch back to the old interface.
But if Microsoft buys them - I will absolutely end my use of this service.
It is a FREE service.
Microsoft can not BUY my "eyeballs". They can buy Yahoo stock all they want. But they can't make me stay, as a customer.
One thing that was terrifying for me; is that I was on a medication for about 6 months, as part of a trial for weight loss. (yes, it worked - great). But one side effect of this medication was that it made me feel always "high". And when I stopped taking it - it was like coming out of a fog over the period of about 3-5 days; it was as if I was picking up 30 IQ points, bit-by-bit.
The unnerving thing was, I had not even realized how stupid I was on this medication. They warned about this side effect. . . ("cognitive effects, possible short term memory deficit.") - but I didn't even notice it until I was off of it. It wasn't just power of recall. It was reasoning. It was ability to solve problems. It was especially, my ability to concentrate. It was subtle, going into it, but very stark, coming out.
I was reminded of the story, Flowers for Algernon.
I know a person who was on an SSRI for a number of years.
Originally, it was due to "irritability from PMS".
Now, if that wasn't a fucking insane misdiagnosis and prescription, I don't know what is.
Anyway; while on Zoloft, she was less irritable. That was true.
But also, she was more "compliant" and "pleasant"; and unfortunately, became an easy mark for a con artist, who ended up stealing over $10,000 from her and her husband. She came to realize, after some months in therapy, that other people were taking advantage of her in her relationships as well. Friends, associates, even her kids.
So she got off the Zoloft - but this, too, was a mistake - because there are some pretty severe withdrawl symptoms when you quit an SSRI cold-turkey. She didn't see a doctor to get off the medication, because she was afraid she'd encounter the same incompetence that got her onto it in the first place. A lot of her anger and anxiety that she had numbed-out, or bottled up over the prior years, due to the medication, all came out at once, basically, and caused her a great deal of friction in her friendships. Almost ended her marriage. There were other symptoms; dizziness, nausea, sleeplessness, headaches, vivid, disturbing dreams, etc. These lasted a few weeks, and I can happily say, that even though she can now be a crabby, unpleasant bitch - she's actually much nicer to be around - because she is GENUINE. And also because she's a lot more sweet, and caring, when she's in a good mood.
I would advise ANYONE who is on an SSRI to re-evaluate WHY you got onto it in the first place, and if you decide to get off it, taper your dosage over several weeks. You just may find the real *you* that's been in hiding.
There is a parallel to this in the Cell Phone market.
Verizon will pretty much GIVE AWAY a phone, with all these nifty, but locked-down features.
You pay your monthly subscription, which subsidizes the hardware, and phone OS.
A lot of people are happy with this model.
But the kind of people who are NOT happy with this model - are EXACTLY the kind of people who buy Personal Computers in the first place. Because a Personal Computer is not *just* a locked-down communication device. It is a multi-purpose and versatile tool. You take away that versatility, and you take away the very reason people are willing to drop $1000 on hardware, and an additional $500 on OS and another $500 on other software (and then turn around and pay $60/month for internet hook up).
Microsoft is trying to force the lock-down functionality model, onto the open-functionality price model.
Incidentally - Apple is trying to do the OPPOSITE to the cell phone market in the US.
(5 million iPhones later. . . from a starting install-base of. . . ZERO - who do you think has the more appealing model?)
Well, the conventional wisdom says that it's the GUI objects.
Your Windows 3.11 GDI was working at a resolution of 800x600 pixels, with 256 colors, no anti-aliasing, no alpha blending, etc. But then again, there weren't dedicated GPUs either.
Honestly, I don't understand it. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in the background, services, logging, network processes, etc. that weren't running in 3.11. But the orders of magnitude higher hardware capabilities available now; it just doesn't add-up.
They've got every right to insist on reproducibility, verifiability, reliability, consistent object model, etc. There's early-1990's cruft left over in Windows XP, written to a different set of requirements, a different set of standards for performance, security, reusability, (etc.)
Maintaining this code, and supporting the products based upon it, were costing Microsoft money - so I can't blame them for wanting to move their code-base forward.
But based on what I've read (how late-in-the-game this initiative came on for Vista), and from what I've seen in USING Vista, I think Microsoft somehow botched it. They decided upon this really bold move, but they decided too late, so they either put a half-hearted effort into it, or they didn't do a complete job in QA. The story behind the network-bandwidth-throttling issue on audio-play alone, tells a lot.
Perhaps Microsoft *did* get a lot of internal pushback from their FYIFV*-entrenched "cowboy coders" who said: "don't tell me how to code, just tell me what features you want." - and this is a Failure of Management. I'm not saying that Microsoft should fire that expertise. But at some point, you've got to either teach your old dogs some new tricks, or you get stuck with a sick, smelly old dog that needs to be put down. Which is an excellent description of Vista.
The overall experience is frustrating although I'm hoping that it will get better with a service pack or two.
I swear you Vista people sound like "Battered-wife-syndrome":
"Yeah, he drinks, and sleeps around, and beats me, but I'm hoping that after he starts attending his regular AA meetings, things will get better."
- Well, I just make my living off of Windows' shortcomings. (yeah, that makes me a whore. . . ). I have for 15 years. And my customers are afraid to commit to Vista. Time I've spent learning any new Windows technology in the past 2 years has been largely time wasted. Largely, of no use. And I don't bring Windows home with me. Back in the early 1990's, I used to spend unpaid weekends screwing around trying to get the home-LAN to work right. (never mind how much I'd be spending on licensing legitimate Microsoft small/home-network products).
I just thank god for VMWare, so I can do other things while I'm waiting for Vista to boot. I can't imagine what my blood pressure would be like if I couldn't be multitasking on my host OS while I was waiting for my Vista Virtual Machine to do stuff, like open an explorer window, or display an event log.
I can say one (and only one) good thing about Vista: It has been a great justification for my boss to buy me more RAM for my test systems.
This is a cultural problem, and you could run into resistance from just about any direction, from; "I don't want to do it" to (LITERALLY!) "If I write this down, then anyone else could do MY job!" - and yes, I have heard people literally make that argument, word-for-word, without realizing how they sound. (while for most people, this is just the underlying argument, and they come up with a more complex rationalization).
The way to beat the rationalizations is: Get GOOD TOOLS. The better your tools, the less people can use bad tools as an excuse to not comply.
Worse than having non-compliant staff, is a management that SAYS they're on board, but when it comes to doing their share (authoring, reviewing, authorizing documentation) - or when it comes to doing the VERY hard work of enforcing rules (" you _SHALL_ write-up the changes to this process in a revised document, hold a review-board meeting, get buy-in, and approval, or you _WILL_ be fired.") - then you get a half-assed solution, and let me tell you, when half of your staff is working hard to document processes and manage your company's brain-trust, and the other half is slacking off, all that documentation is not worth the effort, because the documented process differs from practice.
When this stuff works; when everyone is competent, and everyone co-operates, it works really well. You also need to TRAIN your staff. You also need to COMPENSATE your staff well; in order to retain that expertise. High employee turnover is the kiss-of-death for this business methodology!
When this stuff does not work, it will paralyze, then strangle your business into a slow death.
Actually, all the fraud and waste of the WoT was actually a stealth-anti-immigration plan.
The amount of money that was borrowed and frankly, burned, has so de-valued our currency, that illegal immigration is already slowing down (okay - so this is a joke, but that last bit is actually TRUE! Bush will be remembered as the GENIUS that actually reversed the flood of people illegally crossing the border between the US and Mexico looking for jobs!).
It's the guy with the British accent the women like. Has nothing to do with all that other touchy-feely "listening" and "paying attention" stuff. It's the British accent. (any variant will do - including the "down-under" types; I've even seen 'em flock to a damn lousy CANADIAN just from hearing "aboooot").
And even worse - it *IS* against the law, to classify something as "Secret" or "Top Secret" (etc.) if the purpose is to prevent embarrassment - that is, if there is no functional security component to the classification. This was made law back in the 1960's after abuses were exposed. And yet, this law is routinely ignored.
National Security is often nothing more than a tool for fearmongering, to keep citizens from asking embarrassing questions about how their money is being misspent. The careers of whistleblowers are being ruined, they are even going to jail; possibly even being compromised to foreign governments (in the case of Brewster Jennings, Ltd.) - and we'll never know about it.
Lying is one thing. Using National Security as cover for lying, is an abuse that has gotten people killed, has started wars, perpetuated immoral policy, and cost our nation trillions of dollars.
If you're a fascist, and you still nominally need domestic approval to remain in power, you tell your people what they want to hear.
So if you tell them that they're the Master Race, some of them are likely to buy into that, and continue to support you.
This is a common political tactic - it is used today, all over the world (as well as America; in terms of our "exceptionalism" - we're the "Last Bastion of Freedom" don'tchyknow. ..) - and has been used even as far back as Rome, where Romans were "civilized" and everyone else was "barbarians".
The simple solution, of course is: if you really ARE a member of the Master Race, you don't let your politicians shine you on, and stroke your ego in exchange for a vote, and your tax dollars (and deficit spending obligations - currency inflation is just another tax. . . ).
I was actually shocked when I pointed it at Jupiter, and saw, for the first time, with my own eye(s), the moons around Jupiter, and I realized, that I had just taken it for granted all these years.
This duality is responsible for both the great success AND great failure of Christianity.
But basically all of the Abrahamic religions suffer from this. Either that, or Pi = 3.0. The scriptural inerrancists are making a lot of money, and a lot of wars out of their faith in infallible scripture - but in fact, it's really just idol-worship; attributing divine properties to, LITERALLY, a graven-image.
In fact - I've long held that we (Americans) should adopt a proud tradition on July 4, of burning a flag: To Celebrate The Fact That We Have The Right To!
(In fact - I think that most "dirty hippies" who burn American flags, really ought to be burning Confederate flags: because THAT is what they're really protesting (influence of "south will rise again"-types - *that* mindset.) - if you sit down and think about it for a while. IN FACT: In the State of Florida - it is legal to burn the US flag. It is not legal to burn a Confederate flag. I am not making this silly shit up.)
I don't think these legal issues are going to go away after Bush leaves office. We are going to see a constant attempt to suppress government papers that implicate Bush in the criminality of his administration.
Have we all forgotten Bush's FIRST ACT as President?
To secure the papers from his father's administration, which were about to become public as mandated by law?
In their minds - they have every right to TAX us, in order to BRIBE the Telecom (Government Granted) Monopolies, to gather all of our personal electronic communications, for them to indefinitely archive, peruse, and examine, without any oversight, review, or accountability, and we have NO right, to lawfully subpoena evidence from them when there is clear probably cause of massive lawbreaking on their part.
America got precisely the government we chose. Precisely the government we deserve.
The Fully-Loaded Diesel Rabbit of yesteryear may have been noisy, only had AM radio, etc. But the Fully-Loaded Diesel Rabbit of TODAY will get you significantly more than 45 mpg highway (I've heard as high as 60, but I get 45 mpg in my Jetta).
And for what it's worth, I was getting 36 mpg in my 1972 VW Karmann Ghia.
With the top down.
Fuel economy standards have really gone NOWHERE in the gas-burner space, with the exception of hybrids.
No; The most probably way to reduce CO2 emissions is: Mass extinction of humans from; War, disease, famine, or ecological disaster (Global warming?).
Fortunately, the folks who seem to be "running things" these days seem to be very much in favor of this option.
So, look forward to this, and frankly, I'd also be looking for investment/business opportunities. (assuming I don't get caught up in this mass extinction thing with the rest of you mooks. If I do, well, then I don't have to worry, do I?).
While I agree with most of your post, and the general tone; 49 million (Gore votes) is not "Half of America" -
Yes, nearly HALF the people who were eligible to vote, who got off their fat, lazy foxnews-watching asses, voted against The W.
What is incredibly depressing about the US - is that of the number of people who COULD have voted against George W Bush - of the number of people who SHOULD have voted against George W Bush - even Texans ALONE, who *knew better* after seeing their state budget surplus driven into a massive deficit; only a tiny fraction of those actually voted.
THAT is the depressing fact about my countrymen, my fellow fat, lazy, intellectually dishonest, Americans.
The only justice in all of this, is that they got precisely the government they chose.
Nobody gets fooled this badly, unless they WANT to be fooled. Unless they're TOO WEAK to face the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
He did not just "sneak past controls".
The higher ups were somewhat aware of what he was doing.
RISK Magazine awarded them Equity Derivatives House of the Year award for 2007, for their performance, largely due to the $73 Billion in profits this guy leveraged on his $7 Billion. (The award issue was published 2 days before the news of this guy went public, heh).
It was only when his trades started losing the bank money that they raised a stink.
But money spent on "cancer research" is all fiat money also.
The value of that research is set by the patents on the products of that research - (cures) - which is GRANTED by the government. As long as there is a patent, the drug company can charge whatever the fuck they want for the lifesaving drug (not necessarily what the market can bear - it should be obvious by now that the market can no longer bear the prices charged for medications in America; which is why health insurance was created in the first place, and why THAT scam is now bankrupting pretty much all other industries).
So; $100 Billion for research? Why not $100 Trillion? $100 Zillion-Jillion? It's all fiat money. The producers are going to set whatever price they want.
And honestly, the "investment" for network buildout is EXACTLY the same.
Because the cable/telecom monopolies are going to charge whatever the fuck they want for access.
And they're going to throttle, filter, and wiretap it as much as they please.
$100 Billion is a completely meaningless figure, because it is not attached to any real, tangible cost, nor is it bound by any realistic sense of what the ROI could be.
your comment sort of reminds me of the movie Hellraiser; where S&M people go to Hell, and end up liking it, because they enjoy all the sex and pain and torture.
. . . then I tried to imagine what "spammer heaven" would be like.
I'm not sure whether I should call M. Knight Shamalyan or Quentin Tarantino with my idea. . .
(more likely, I should try to animate the corpse of Stanley Kubrick, and see if he'll produce it.)
. . . and with their new web mail client (buggy, slow, crashes and hangs my browser), I was already considering dropping their service. At least they let me switch back to the old interface.
But if Microsoft buys them - I will absolutely end my use of this service.
It is a FREE service.
Microsoft can not BUY my "eyeballs".
They can buy Yahoo stock all they want.
But they can't make me stay, as a customer.
One thing that was terrifying for me; is that I was on a medication for about 6 months, as part of a trial for weight loss. (yes, it worked - great). But one side effect of this medication was that it made me feel always "high". And when I stopped taking it - it was like coming out of a fog over the period of about 3-5 days; it was as if I was picking up 30 IQ points, bit-by-bit.
The unnerving thing was, I had not even realized how stupid I was on this medication. They warned about this side effect. . . ("cognitive effects, possible short term memory deficit.") - but I didn't even notice it until I was off of it. It wasn't just power of recall. It was reasoning. It was ability to solve problems. It was especially, my ability to concentrate. It was subtle, going into it, but very stark, coming out.
I was reminded of the story, Flowers for Algernon.
I know a person who was on an SSRI for a number of years.
Originally, it was due to "irritability from PMS".
Now, if that wasn't a fucking insane misdiagnosis and prescription, I don't know what is.
Anyway; while on Zoloft, she was less irritable. That was true.
But also, she was more "compliant" and "pleasant"; and unfortunately, became an easy mark for a con artist, who ended up stealing over $10,000 from her and her husband. She came to realize, after some months in therapy, that other people were taking advantage of her in her relationships as well. Friends, associates, even her kids.
So she got off the Zoloft - but this, too, was a mistake - because there are some pretty severe withdrawl symptoms when you quit an SSRI cold-turkey. She didn't see a doctor to get off the medication, because she was afraid she'd encounter the same incompetence that got her onto it in the first place. A lot of her anger and anxiety that she had numbed-out, or bottled up over the prior years, due to the medication, all came out at once, basically, and caused her a great deal of friction in her friendships. Almost ended her marriage. There were other symptoms; dizziness, nausea, sleeplessness, headaches, vivid, disturbing dreams, etc. These lasted a few weeks, and I can happily say, that even though she can now be a crabby, unpleasant bitch - she's actually much nicer to be around - because she is GENUINE. And also because she's a lot more sweet, and caring, when she's in a good mood.
I would advise ANYONE who is on an SSRI to re-evaluate WHY you got onto it in the first place, and if you decide to get off it, taper your dosage over several weeks. You just may find the real *you* that's been in hiding.
There is a parallel to this in the Cell Phone market.
Verizon will pretty much GIVE AWAY a phone, with all these nifty, but locked-down features.
You pay your monthly subscription, which subsidizes the hardware, and phone OS.
A lot of people are happy with this model.
But the kind of people who are NOT happy with this model - are EXACTLY the kind of people who buy Personal Computers in the first place. Because a Personal Computer is not *just* a locked-down communication device. It is a multi-purpose and versatile tool. You take away that versatility, and you take away the very reason people are willing to drop $1000 on hardware, and an additional $500 on OS and another $500 on other software (and then turn around and pay $60/month for internet hook up).
Microsoft is trying to force the lock-down functionality model, onto the open-functionality price model.
Incidentally - Apple is trying to do the OPPOSITE to the cell phone market in the US.
(5 million iPhones later. . . from a starting install-base of. . . ZERO - who do you think has the more appealing model?)
Well, the conventional wisdom says that it's the GUI objects.
Your Windows 3.11 GDI was working at a resolution of 800x600 pixels, with 256 colors, no anti-aliasing, no alpha blending, etc. But then again, there weren't dedicated GPUs either.
Honestly, I don't understand it. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in the background, services, logging, network processes, etc. that weren't running in 3.11. But the orders of magnitude higher hardware capabilities available now; it just doesn't add-up.
They've got every right to insist on reproducibility, verifiability, reliability, consistent object model, etc. There's early-1990's cruft left over in Windows XP, written to a different set of requirements, a different set of standards for performance, security, reusability, (etc.)
Maintaining this code, and supporting the products based upon it, were costing Microsoft money - so I can't blame them for wanting to move their code-base forward.
But based on what I've read (how late-in-the-game this initiative came on for Vista), and from what I've seen in USING Vista, I think Microsoft somehow botched it. They decided upon this really bold move, but they decided too late, so they either put a half-hearted effort into it, or they didn't do a complete job in QA. The story behind the network-bandwidth-throttling issue on audio-play alone, tells a lot.
Perhaps Microsoft *did* get a lot of internal pushback from their FYIFV*-entrenched "cowboy coders" who said: "don't tell me how to code, just tell me what features you want." - and this is a Failure of Management. I'm not saying that Microsoft should fire that expertise. But at some point, you've got to either teach your old dogs some new tricks, or you get stuck with a sick, smelly old dog that needs to be put down. Which is an excellent description of Vista.
(*FYIFV=Fuck You, I'm Fully Vested)
The overall experience is frustrating although I'm hoping that it will get better with a service pack or two.
I swear you Vista people sound like "Battered-wife-syndrome":
"Yeah, he drinks, and sleeps around, and beats me, but I'm hoping that after he starts attending his regular AA meetings, things will get better."
- Well, I just make my living off of Windows' shortcomings. (yeah, that makes me a whore. . . ). I have for 15 years. And my customers are afraid to commit to Vista. Time I've spent learning any new Windows technology in the past 2 years has been largely time wasted. Largely, of no use. And I don't bring Windows home with me. Back in the early 1990's, I used to spend unpaid weekends screwing around trying to get the home-LAN to work right. (never mind how much I'd be spending on licensing legitimate Microsoft small/home-network products).
I just thank god for VMWare, so I can do other things while I'm waiting for Vista to boot. I can't imagine what my blood pressure would be like if I couldn't be multitasking on my host OS while I was waiting for my Vista Virtual Machine to do stuff, like open an explorer window, or display an event log.
I can say one (and only one) good thing about Vista:
It has been a great justification for my boss to buy me more RAM for my test systems.
This is a cultural problem, and you could run into resistance from just about any direction, from; "I don't want to do it" to (LITERALLY!) "If I write this down, then anyone else could do MY job!" - and yes, I have heard people literally make that argument, word-for-word, without realizing how they sound. (while for most people, this is just the underlying argument, and they come up with a more complex rationalization).
The way to beat the rationalizations is: Get GOOD TOOLS. The better your tools, the less people can use bad tools as an excuse to not comply.
Worse than having non-compliant staff, is a management that SAYS they're on board, but when it comes to doing their share (authoring, reviewing, authorizing documentation) - or when it comes to doing the VERY hard work of enforcing rules (" you _SHALL_ write-up the changes to this process in a revised document, hold a review-board meeting, get buy-in, and approval, or you _WILL_ be fired.") - then you get a half-assed solution, and let me tell you, when half of your staff is working hard to document processes and manage your company's brain-trust, and the other half is slacking off, all that documentation is not worth the effort, because the documented process differs from practice.
When this stuff works; when everyone is competent, and everyone co-operates, it works really well.
You also need to TRAIN your staff.
You also need to COMPENSATE your staff well; in order to retain that expertise. High employee turnover is the kiss-of-death for this business methodology!
When this stuff does not work, it will paralyze, then strangle your business into a slow death.
Actually, all the fraud and waste of the WoT was actually a stealth-anti-immigration plan.
The amount of money that was borrowed and frankly, burned, has so de-valued our currency, that illegal immigration is already slowing down (okay - so this is a joke, but that last bit is actually TRUE! Bush will be remembered as the GENIUS that actually reversed the flood of people illegally crossing the border between the US and Mexico looking for jobs!).
Trust me.
It's the guy with the British accent the women like. Has nothing to do with all that other touchy-feely "listening" and "paying attention" stuff. It's the British accent. (any variant will do - including the "down-under" types; I've even seen 'em flock to a damn lousy CANADIAN just from hearing "aboooot").
Agreed;
And even worse - it *IS* against the law, to classify something as "Secret" or "Top Secret" (etc.) if the purpose is to prevent embarrassment - that is, if there is no functional security component to the classification. This was made law back in the 1960's after abuses were exposed. And yet, this law is routinely ignored.
National Security is often nothing more than a tool for fearmongering, to keep citizens from asking embarrassing questions about how their money is being misspent. The careers of whistleblowers are being ruined, they are even going to jail; possibly even being compromised to foreign governments (in the case of Brewster Jennings, Ltd.) - and we'll never know about it.
Lying is one thing.
Using National Security as cover for lying, is an abuse that has gotten people killed, has started wars, perpetuated immoral policy, and cost our nation trillions of dollars.
"Master Race" ?
.) - and has been used even as far back as Rome, where Romans were "civilized" and everyone else was "barbarians".
It was simple POLITICAL BULLSHIT -
If you're a fascist, and you still nominally need domestic approval to remain in power, you tell your people what they want to hear.
So if you tell them that they're the Master Race, some of them are likely to buy into that, and continue to support you.
This is a common political tactic - it is used today, all over the world (as well as America; in terms of our "exceptionalism" - we're the "Last Bastion of Freedom" don'tchyknow. .
The simple solution, of course is: if you really ARE a member of the Master Race, you don't let your politicians shine you on, and stroke your ego in exchange for a vote, and your tax dollars (and deficit spending obligations - currency inflation is just another tax. . . ).
I got my first REAL telescope at age 35.
I was actually shocked when I pointed it at Jupiter, and saw, for the first time, with my own eye(s), the moons around Jupiter, and I realized, that I had just taken it for granted all these years.
It was a very sobering moment for me.
Because, yeah, they really are out there.
And Galileo really *did* kick ass.
This duality is responsible for both the great success AND great failure of Christianity.
But basically all of the Abrahamic religions suffer from this. Either that, or Pi = 3.0.
The scriptural inerrancists are making a lot of money, and a lot of wars out of their faith in infallible scripture - but in fact, it's really just idol-worship; attributing divine properties to, LITERALLY, a graven-image.
I'm with you on Flag Burning.
In fact - I've long held that we (Americans) should adopt a proud tradition on July 4, of burning a flag: To Celebrate The Fact That We Have The Right To!
(In fact - I think that most "dirty hippies" who burn American flags, really ought to be burning Confederate flags: because THAT is what they're really protesting (influence of "south will rise again"-types - *that* mindset.) - if you sit down and think about it for a while. IN FACT: In the State of Florida - it is legal to burn the US flag. It is not legal to burn a Confederate flag. I am not making this silly shit up.)
This administration has already commuted the sentence of a convicted perjurer and obstructor of justice.
Why should anyone be surprised that they would do the same again?
I don't think these legal issues are going to go away after Bush leaves office. We are going to see a constant attempt to suppress government papers that implicate Bush in the criminality of his administration.
Have we all forgotten Bush's FIRST ACT as President?
To secure the papers from his father's administration, which were about to become public as mandated by law?
In their minds - they have every right to TAX us, in order to BRIBE the Telecom (Government Granted) Monopolies, to gather all of our personal electronic communications, for them to indefinitely archive, peruse, and examine, without any oversight, review, or accountability, and we have NO right, to lawfully subpoena evidence from them when there is clear probably cause of massive lawbreaking on their part.
America got precisely the government we chose. Precisely the government we deserve.
Pay attention next time?
Take Note:
The Fully-Loaded Diesel Rabbit of yesteryear may have been noisy, only had AM radio, etc.
But the Fully-Loaded Diesel Rabbit of TODAY will get you significantly more than 45 mpg highway (I've heard as high as 60, but I get 45 mpg in my Jetta).
And for what it's worth, I was getting 36 mpg in my 1972 VW Karmann Ghia.
With the top down.
Fuel economy standards have really gone NOWHERE in the gas-burner space, with the exception of hybrids.
No;
The most probably way to reduce CO2 emissions is:
Mass extinction of humans from;
War, disease, famine, or ecological disaster (Global warming?).
Fortunately, the folks who seem to be "running things" these days seem to be very much in favor of this option.
So, look forward to this, and frankly, I'd also be looking for investment/business opportunities. (assuming I don't get caught up in this mass extinction thing with the rest of you mooks. If I do, well, then I don't have to worry, do I?).
For some tasks, a lot of that code has been ported over to VB.NET and the ABOMINATION that is PowerShell. (especially the Exchange Server Automation).
Out with the old, in with the new.
No matter what.
yeh.
.NET won't support those scripting languages on Solaris, BSD, Linux, or Macintosh.
Unfortunately,
Java does.
Oops.
Sorry.
While I agree with most of your post, and the general tone;
49 million (Gore votes) is not "Half of America" -
Yes, nearly HALF the people who were eligible to vote, who got off their fat, lazy foxnews-watching asses, voted against The W.
What is incredibly depressing about the US - is that of the number of people who COULD have voted against George W Bush - of the number of people who SHOULD have voted against George W Bush - even Texans ALONE, who *knew better* after seeing their state budget surplus driven into a massive deficit; only a tiny fraction of those actually voted.
THAT is the depressing fact about my countrymen, my fellow fat, lazy, intellectually dishonest, Americans.
The only justice in all of this, is that they got precisely the government they chose.
Nobody gets fooled this badly, unless they WANT to be fooled. Unless they're TOO WEAK to face the truth.