Maybe because the wii was as disappointing as the Obama administration. It seemed revolutionary, everything that was wrong was going to be changed, it was like nothing before it. And it had a few hits, and was generally a positive experience, but looking back it didn't quite live up to our expectations. And especially as of late, we can't remember the last time we were impressed.
If I had to do it again, I'd probably make the same choice in both categories, but I'm not jazzed up about it. And in the case of the wii, I've already made the switch to PC gaming. I guess the equivalent would be had I moved to a different country for politics.
PS. Obamacare isn't mutually exclusive with doing anything more to lower healthcare costs. If it doesn't solve the problem, then we haven't lost the opportunity to fix it, if the republicans allow it.
All three issues, education, energy independence, and healthcare reform, are obviously extremely complex issues. I don't think it's reasonable to think that Obama could have chosen one to solve, and had he gone with, say, energy independence, that would have been solved instead. And, honestly, I think healthcare was the one he had the best opportunity to improve on. Education is a local issue with local factors weighing much more heavily than the federal government. I don't expect the federal government to do much besides set national standards, tell schools they can't intrude on student's rights and can't force religion on them, and fund the schools, and that's about it. I'd like to see school funding be set by need rather than local property taxes, but THAT truly would be a waste of political capital, trying to take funding away from rich suburban schools and divert them to poorer schools.
Energy I don't know much about, but it seems to me that there's no obvious solution.
From what I've read, it's not clear whether it will reduce healthcare costs or not. There are predictions that it will. It's a complex package, I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I know it does more than "simply takes the current system and mandates that everyone participate in it." That might describe the individual mandate part of it, but not all of it. And the mandate could lower healthcare costs as well. People skipping out on their bill, not getting preventative care, or having to deal with collections agencies, these are things which could be reduced or eliminated with the mandate.
It's also hard for me to care about people being "forced" to get health insurance, given the fact that people who skipped getting health insurance generally didn't curl up and die in their homes when they got sick, they just forced others to pay for it.
Healthcare being politicized, I think it already was, given how much we spend on it, medicare, and health insurance lobby. Anyway, I'll take that as a cost of no longer having to worry about preexisting health conditions being used by the health insurance industry to skip out on paying medical bills.
I think you'll find that the voters do too. Tweedledee and tweedledum are giving the customers what they want, and all tweedledees and tweedledums will until we, the customers, change that.
Not to defend them, just suggesting that blaming them is blaming the effect, not the cause.
A man cannot volunteer himself to be subject to coercion
I wasn't making that claim. I was saying the voters traded rights for a false sense of security willingly. The voters were not coerced into giving up their rights: they cheered it on. It's possible: I watched it happen.
If I've misinterpreted your point, maybe make it clearer and less grand sounding.
Well, some of us effectively got health insurance because the health insurance companies will no longer be able to discriminate against us for having illnesses they need to pay for. And Obama did try to get us something close to national healthcare, but was unable to overcome republicans and conservative democrats. He pushed very hard for the public option and look where that got him. I'd give him credit for making an honest effort and expending political capital to do so, I don't fault him for the end result being less than ideal: that I blame republicans and some democrats for.
I know everyone is frustrated with the election and disillusioned with Obama, but really... "+5 insightful?"
I believe the OP was trying to make the point that there's no fucking difference between Republicans and Democrats, their all beholden to their political sponsors
With an example that does not in any way support his claim.
You, on the other hand, are trying to defend your party of choice...
He brought up a fact. How is that trying to defend anything other than reality?
by bringing up some obscure appointment that happened 30 years ago
An obscure appointment that happened thirty years ago which just happens to be relevant to the discussion right now.
as if the current administrations hands were tied and they could do nothing to stop it... when you know for a fact that's not the case.
Speaking for me, it's possible, but I don't know it's a fact. I don't know anything about the library of congress or much about the Obama administration's influence over it.
Keep towing that party line and the next thing you know we'll all be monitored 24/7 by our government overlords and the president will be able to order US citizens deaths without so much as a pen stroke... oh wait... fuck... Good job buddy. Hope your children enjoy the world you made them.
I think you argued against yourself there: you suggest that he shouldn't justify the administration because things will happen that already are happening.
I think there are a few steps you skipped over from thinking that Obama was better than McCain to 1984. I'd suggest that Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, Communist, whatever is not the problem. Nor are special interests. The problem is the voters. They willingly gave up their rights. You could have zero lobbyists, no parties, a million parties... doesn't matter. If voters are scared into being willing to give up their rights for security against some boogeyman like terrorists, someone is going to offer them that deal in exchange for votes.
Obama and McCain were both willing to do that, sure, but given that situation, I'm glad we at least got healthcare out of it. I also suspect McCain and the republicans would have repeated Bush's play of cutting taxes without reducing spending. "No fucking difference?" This is the same slashdot that thinks there's a world of difference between Windows Vista and Windows 7, right? There are differences between anything. Neither option may be completely perfect, but that doesn't mean there aren't important distinctions between the two.
Get 10 achievement points for responding to instantaneous polls 10 times? Absolutely kids will be watching and participating. Understanding, quite possibly not. And, lest you think this is a good thing, studies would be needed to see if button pushing during debates correlated to more informed chad-punching on election day. I doubt they will, and that's likely not the goal here anyway. This polling was no doubt one or both of the campaigns wanting more data on what sound-bites voters would respond to.
So... the lesson to take here is that in the 2012 election... I should run a write-in campaign for someone who I liked better than either of the two candidates?
Or is there no suggestion here and you're just being cheeky?
A real surprise would be apple saying "iOS 7 is... cancelled. The next iPhone is just going to run android key lime pie. Because we all really like key lime pie. Also we tried android, and you know, we all kinda liked it!"
Your anger is thus noted. I'm writing "anonymous coward say fuck you RE the two party system" in my list of people who are angry at me because they disagree with my views. Putting you right under "Angry muslims" in fact.
Stop right there: that's patently untrue. In general and whatever problem you're talking about specifically as well. There are no problems outside of math which only have one solution.
Sure, it might cause your least favourite party to win this election, but how big is the difference anyway?
The differences between the candidates. For one thing, taxes, Romney seems likely to lead the right wing to another orgy of tax cuts for the rich, which will eventually need to be paid for by us, the peons. No, the differences are not as big as I'd like, I'd prefer we were debating how much to cut the military budget rather than how much to cut taxes and spending on scientific research, but my ideal candidate wouldn't win anyway. Not in the primaries, certainly not in the general election. Politics is a compromise, and most people in this country are far to the right of me. Pretending that because I don't get my ideal issues there is no difference strikes me as petulant.
if you keep up the strategic voting crap, nothing will ever change.
Right, because the problem liberals in this country have had is that they strategize while their opponents don't. (/s) Being idealistic while the other side plays the game is exactly what lead us to the situation we're in now.
I'll be voting Gary Johnson. Even though I think Obama is the slightly lesser of two evils, I am sick of voting for evil.
Please tell me you don't live in a swing state.
It is sometimes your duty as a thinking individual to choose between two evils. No one wants to have to, but it is sometimes the choice that is in front of you.
It will only break the majority if and when the republican (or democrat) parties completely collapse.
I really don't understand how so many slashdotters fail to grasp that the two party system doesn't just happen by chance. It's not just that voters consider only two parties before their brains explode. It's first-past-the-post voting. Get a parlimentary system in place if you want a third party. Otherwise, just vote in the primaries and realize that the same people who are getting elected now are the same people who would get elected under a multiparty system.
Assuming the information is used to hack into a secret government computer, and you choose to play "Global Thermonuclear War." If you decide to play chess instead, not really.
They're gigantic multinational corporations dealing with patent law, not two kids going to prom. Neither executive board should suffer any illusion that the other one is going anywhere anytime soon, or that they are the good guys and the other are the bad guys. Neither should be holding grudges.
Now, trying to leverage their positions makes more sense "If you don't drop that lawsuit over patents X and Y, we're going to raise the rates on our screens." And if that doesn't work, that obviously could lead to deals being ended.
Also, that's a big "should." Obviously there may be and probably are some arrogant morons at one or both companies that DO take it as a personal affront.
Perhaps the tablet market is more lucrative for apple, and they want to try to stop losing the market to android. Maybe they figure that the ipod is competing with the iphone, that if they price the ipod higher, more people will opt for an iphone instead of an ipod and a cheap phone?
I've always suspected that if companies stoped playing such stupid games, and just made pricing rational, they'd probably do just as well if not better in the long run, than annoying people with shenanigans like this.
Get a new microscope from some company that doesn't force you to use an extremely shitty propietary file format and an extremely shitty program for operating you expensive confocal or other microscope. Instead, buy a microscope that uses open source software.
Oh, wait, such a company doesn't seem to exist. From my experiences with Olympus, they seem to constantly update their software specifically to break features and prevent you from using 3rd party analysis tools like Imaris, let alone FOSS software. One would think that since you bought a fancy new spinning disc from them, they'd let you run the analysis software, which is generally not worth paying for on it's own, on your computer. But no, they also like to make you use dongles on any other computer too. It's fucking ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe because the wii was as disappointing as the Obama administration. It seemed revolutionary, everything that was wrong was going to be changed, it was like nothing before it. And it had a few hits, and was generally a positive experience, but looking back it didn't quite live up to our expectations. And especially as of late, we can't remember the last time we were impressed.
If I had to do it again, I'd probably make the same choice in both categories, but I'm not jazzed up about it. And in the case of the wii, I've already made the switch to PC gaming. I guess the equivalent would be had I moved to a different country for politics.
PS. Obamacare isn't mutually exclusive with doing anything more to lower healthcare costs. If it doesn't solve the problem, then we haven't lost the opportunity to fix it, if the republicans allow it.
All three issues, education, energy independence, and healthcare reform, are obviously extremely complex issues. I don't think it's reasonable to think that Obama could have chosen one to solve, and had he gone with, say, energy independence, that would have been solved instead. And, honestly, I think healthcare was the one he had the best opportunity to improve on. Education is a local issue with local factors weighing much more heavily than the federal government. I don't expect the federal government to do much besides set national standards, tell schools they can't intrude on student's rights and can't force religion on them, and fund the schools, and that's about it. I'd like to see school funding be set by need rather than local property taxes, but THAT truly would be a waste of political capital, trying to take funding away from rich suburban schools and divert them to poorer schools.
Energy I don't know much about, but it seems to me that there's no obvious solution.
From what I've read, it's not clear whether it will reduce healthcare costs or not. There are predictions that it will. It's a complex package, I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I know it does more than "simply takes the current system and mandates that everyone participate in it." That might describe the individual mandate part of it, but not all of it. And the mandate could lower healthcare costs as well. People skipping out on their bill, not getting preventative care, or having to deal with collections agencies, these are things which could be reduced or eliminated with the mandate.
It's also hard for me to care about people being "forced" to get health insurance, given the fact that people who skipped getting health insurance generally didn't curl up and die in their homes when they got sick, they just forced others to pay for it.
Healthcare being politicized, I think it already was, given how much we spend on it, medicare, and health insurance lobby. Anyway, I'll take that as a cost of no longer having to worry about preexisting health conditions being used by the health insurance industry to skip out on paying medical bills.
I think you'll find that the voters do too. Tweedledee and tweedledum are giving the customers what they want, and all tweedledees and tweedledums will until we, the customers, change that.
Not to defend them, just suggesting that blaming them is blaming the effect, not the cause.
A man cannot volunteer himself to be subject to coercion
I wasn't making that claim. I was saying the voters traded rights for a false sense of security willingly. The voters were not coerced into giving up their rights: they cheered it on. It's possible: I watched it happen.
If I've misinterpreted your point, maybe make it clearer and less grand sounding.
Well, some of us effectively got health insurance because the health insurance companies will no longer be able to discriminate against us for having illnesses they need to pay for. And Obama did try to get us something close to national healthcare, but was unable to overcome republicans and conservative democrats. He pushed very hard for the public option and look where that got him. I'd give him credit for making an honest effort and expending political capital to do so, I don't fault him for the end result being less than ideal: that I blame republicans and some democrats for.
I believe the OP was trying to make the point that there's no fucking difference between Republicans and Democrats, their all beholden to their political sponsors
With an example that does not in any way support his claim.
You, on the other hand, are trying to defend your party of choice...
He brought up a fact. How is that trying to defend anything other than reality?
by bringing up some obscure appointment that happened 30 years ago
An obscure appointment that happened thirty years ago which just happens to be relevant to the discussion right now.
as if the current administrations hands were tied and they could do nothing to stop it... when you know for a fact that's not the case.
Speaking for me, it's possible, but I don't know it's a fact. I don't know anything about the library of congress or much about the Obama administration's influence over it.
Keep towing that party line and the next thing you know we'll all be monitored 24/7 by our government overlords and the president will be able to order US citizens deaths without so much as a pen stroke... oh wait... fuck... Good job buddy. Hope your children enjoy the world you made them.
I think you argued against yourself there: you suggest that he shouldn't justify the administration because things will happen that already are happening.
I think there are a few steps you skipped over from thinking that Obama was better than McCain to 1984. I'd suggest that Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, Communist, whatever is not the problem. Nor are special interests. The problem is the voters. They willingly gave up their rights. You could have zero lobbyists, no parties, a million parties... doesn't matter. If voters are scared into being willing to give up their rights for security against some boogeyman like terrorists, someone is going to offer them that deal in exchange for votes.
Obama and McCain were both willing to do that, sure, but given that situation, I'm glad we at least got healthcare out of it. I also suspect McCain and the republicans would have repeated Bush's play of cutting taxes without reducing spending. "No fucking difference?" This is the same slashdot that thinks there's a world of difference between Windows Vista and Windows 7, right? There are differences between anything. Neither option may be completely perfect, but that doesn't mean there aren't important distinctions between the two.
"Do you support sexy attacks on suspected terrorists?"
"I... am deeply conflicted on that question."
I guess that depends on the format.
Get 10 achievement points for responding to instantaneous polls 10 times? Absolutely kids will be watching and participating. Understanding, quite possibly not. And, lest you think this is a good thing, studies would be needed to see if button pushing during debates correlated to more informed chad-punching on election day. I doubt they will, and that's likely not the goal here anyway. This polling was no doubt one or both of the campaigns wanting more data on what sound-bites voters would respond to.
On netflix, they take out the music as well. So I miss out on such notable musical acts as Lana Del Ray, Ke$ha, and One Direction.
I don't know if it's due to copyright, but if so, thank you, copyright law. Fast-forwarding every time would get annoying.
So... the lesson to take here is that in the 2012 election... I should run a write-in campaign for someone who I liked better than either of the two candidates?
Or is there no suggestion here and you're just being cheeky?
A real surprise would be apple saying "iOS 7 is ... cancelled. The next iPhone is just going to run android key lime pie. Because we all really like key lime pie. Also we tried android, and you know, we all kinda liked it!"
Your anger is thus noted. I'm writing "anonymous coward say fuck you RE the two party system" in my list of people who are angry at me because they disagree with my views. Putting you right under "Angry muslims" in fact.
Nothing will ever change...
Stop right there: that's patently untrue. In general and whatever problem you're talking about specifically as well. There are no problems outside of math which only have one solution.
Sure, it might cause your least favourite party to win this election, but how big is the difference anyway?
The differences between the candidates. For one thing, taxes, Romney seems likely to lead the right wing to another orgy of tax cuts for the rich, which will eventually need to be paid for by us, the peons. No, the differences are not as big as I'd like, I'd prefer we were debating how much to cut the military budget rather than how much to cut taxes and spending on scientific research, but my ideal candidate wouldn't win anyway. Not in the primaries, certainly not in the general election. Politics is a compromise, and most people in this country are far to the right of me. Pretending that because I don't get my ideal issues there is no difference strikes me as petulant.
if you keep up the strategic voting crap, nothing will ever change.
Right, because the problem liberals in this country have had is that they strategize while their opponents don't. (/s) Being idealistic while the other side plays the game is exactly what lead us to the situation we're in now.
They've been campaigning for how long now? Anyone who is somewhat intelligent made up their mind a long time ago.
I'll be voting Gary Johnson. Even though I think Obama is the slightly lesser of two evils, I am sick of voting for evil.
Please tell me you don't live in a swing state.
It is sometimes your duty as a thinking individual to choose between two evils. No one wants to have to, but it is sometimes the choice that is in front of you.
It will only break the majority if and when the republican (or democrat) parties completely collapse.
I really don't understand how so many slashdotters fail to grasp that the two party system doesn't just happen by chance. It's not just that voters consider only two parties before their brains explode. It's first-past-the-post voting. Get a parlimentary system in place if you want a third party. Otherwise, just vote in the primaries and realize that the same people who are getting elected now are the same people who would get elected under a multiparty system.
No, there are some that are supported by linux. The Deltavision deconvolution microscope, for instance, is run using linux.
But... but... the song tells me to paint it black...
Assuming the information is used to hack into a secret government computer, and you choose to play "Global Thermonuclear War." If you decide to play chess instead, not really.
If this lasts all week, and slashdot goes down, who knows what heights I could attain! Maybe two or three levels in borderlands 2!
They're gigantic multinational corporations dealing with patent law, not two kids going to prom. Neither executive board should suffer any illusion that the other one is going anywhere anytime soon, or that they are the good guys and the other are the bad guys. Neither should be holding grudges.
Now, trying to leverage their positions makes more sense "If you don't drop that lawsuit over patents X and Y, we're going to raise the rates on our screens." And if that doesn't work, that obviously could lead to deals being ended.
Also, that's a big "should." Obviously there may be and probably are some arrogant morons at one or both companies that DO take it as a personal affront.
Perhaps the tablet market is more lucrative for apple, and they want to try to stop losing the market to android. Maybe they figure that the ipod is competing with the iphone, that if they price the ipod higher, more people will opt for an iphone instead of an ipod and a cheap phone?
I've always suspected that if companies stoped playing such stupid games, and just made pricing rational, they'd probably do just as well if not better in the long run, than annoying people with shenanigans like this.
Get a new microscope from some company that doesn't force you to use an extremely shitty propietary file format and an extremely shitty program for operating you expensive confocal or other microscope. Instead, buy a microscope that uses open source software.
Oh, wait, such a company doesn't seem to exist. From my experiences with Olympus, they seem to constantly update their software specifically to break features and prevent you from using 3rd party analysis tools like Imaris, let alone FOSS software. One would think that since you bought a fancy new spinning disc from them, they'd let you run the analysis software, which is generally not worth paying for on it's own, on your computer. But no, they also like to make you use dongles on any other computer too. It's fucking ridiculous.