Monsanto's crude sledgehammer approach to farming practice has gone a long way towards discrediting the biotechnology industry in general.
Monsanto in particular and agri-business in general are the ONLY reason why I'm against genetic engineering.
it's not that there's anything wrong with genetic engineering of plants, animals, or even humans (i *want* more efficient lungs, heart, kidneys, muscles, etc). there's lots of things that just evolved through natural selection that could be vastly improved by some intelligent design:)
the problem with GE is that you can't trust evil bastards like Monsanto or any other corporation. You can't trust them not to poison you (or even the entire world) by taking short-cuts in the engineering or in the testing and/or ignoring warning signs if they get in the way of profit, and you especially can't trust them not to attempt to own the entire food supply of the planet by claiming patents on every single gene they can possibly get away with...and eventually, *inevitably*, the release of engineered organisms to wipe out "natural" competing crops that they don't control.
here's what it would take to gain my support for genetic engineering:
1. abolish all gene patents 2. outlaw and completely destroy Monsanto. start by hanging the board and senior management. the bastards deserve it.
if there is such a thing as actual malevolent "evil" in this world, then Monsanto is the paragon.
who cares? santa claus is a communist plot designed to make people think that giving is good, and it will lead to the destruction of the united states!!1!!
which ever technology makes the most profit and has the best ROI is the one any real free market company will use.
what gives you the crazy idea that there's anything like a "free market" in operation, anywhere in the world? or that corporations are "free market companies"? or that they're "rational" in any meaningful sense (i.e. significantly beyond the next quarterly results).
The "Free Market" is a mythical *ideal*, not an accurate description of anything possible in reality.
it's only when you get government involved and disturbing the free market that you have issues with political moves and motivations. such as shelving something to make a point.
1. libertarian notions that government is the only source of evil and coercion (or even bureaucratic idiocy) are just plain stupid.
2. government regulation is *essential* to prevent, or at least slow, the tendency towards monopolies and monopsonies.
3. technologies aren't shelved to "make a point". they're shelved to prop up the position of the dominant incumbents for as long as possible. new technologies, especially disruptive ones that shake up the status quo, are far more likely to harm the incumbents and favour new entrants, which is more than enough incentive for the incumbents to use whatever means necessary to bury them as long as possible.
Your original quote was a couple of centuries of wars and european (and, post-WW2, american) imperialism fucked up their culture and sent them into their version of the Dark Ages
yes. and who do you think it has been fucking them over for the last century and a half or so? european imperialists (esp. british and french) and, later, american imperialism.
1. The Mongol invasions were 800 years ago, and the Crusades 900-1000 years ago.
2. The Europeans were in an almost-constant state of war for a millenia, yet still somehow managed a Renaissance, Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.
3. Up until 90 years ago, most of the Islamic world was controlled by Ottoman Turkey, not Europe.
you say that as if it somehow contradicts anything i said. instead, it just demonstrates that your knowledge of history is limited, at best.
btw, the Crusades were from 1095 - 1291 AD (that's 700-900 years ago - roughly contemporary with the Mongol invasion, approx 1205 to 1337 AD). also btw, the Crusades were neither the beginning nor the end of the hostilities and battles between the european/christian and arabic/islamic cultures.
things don't happen in a vacuum. there's a long - very long - historical context to everything that happens - even the shit's that's happening today. the arabs didn't just suddenly decide out of the blue that they hate america, the palestinians didn't wake up one morning and decide to hate the israelis for no reason. there are reasons. whether you or i or anyone else agrees with those reasons, or think that they justify any action is irrelevent - those reasons exist regardless of opinions.
but really, your rhetorical question "if it was the Arabs who had mathematics, navigation, and a technological understanding far superior to that of anyone else, how come they have to import every damn thing they need (technical expertise, labour, doctors, nurses, etc) from all over the world ?" was meant to imply either that their discovery/invention of these things is a lie (perpertrated by the Great Left Wing Conspiracy<TM>, no doubt) or that they were a bunch of lazy retards for having these things and fucking up. and then you descended into overt racist crap with "Your basic Arab wants to sit smoking shisha and drinking coffee" and "...but since then they have degenerated into a pack of savages".
My point was that like many civilisations before them, they were fucked by war, not by some inherent moral failure (even if they did have the supreme "moral failing" of being arab and islamic rather than white and christian).
in short, your redneck bullshit irked me, so i called you on it.
oh, BTW, i think your "johnny-come-lately" religion is just as fucked up as theirs. and, like all religions, just as cretinous.
how does the fact they were invaded by the mongols prior to the europeans make the european imperialism "bullshit?"
it's not either/or - both those things happened. one does not invalidate or make impossible the other. quite the opposite, in fact...the mongol invasion weakened the arabic/islamic empires and made the later european invasions possible.
or, to put it another way, the point of kicking someone when they're down is to make sure they don't get back up again.
On a more non-Pratchett note, if it was the Arabs who had mathematics, navigation, and a technological understanding far superior to that of anyone else, how come they have to import every damn thing they need (technical expertise, labour, doctors, nurses, etc) from all over the world ?
a couple of centuries of wars and european (and, post-WW2, american) imperialism fucked up their culture and sent them into their version of the Dark Ages - which they're still in now....and unlikely to get out of it any time soon because we (the "West") keep on undermining their secular, progressive political movements and propping up loony religious dictators to keep them there.
what, exactly, is so fascist about suspending or terminating the driving license of someone who has proved that their driving habits are a danger to pedestrians and other drivers?
sounds like common sense to me.
(and if losing their license causes some fuckwit to lose their job - and whatever goes along with that - then so be it. fuck 'em.)
you don't have a right to drive. you don't have a right to endanger the lives of others because you're too fucking stupid to realise that drunk driving (or driving while distracted by cell-phones, video screens, or whatever) is dangerous.
drink all you like in your own home or when you're not going to be driving. in fact, take whatever drugs you like. your body, your life, your choice to do whatever you like to/with it. but you don't have any right to endanger others.
Some catholics have done a lot of good to mankind recently (Mother Theresa of course,
actually, Mother Teresa wasn't all that "good". If anyone bothers to look behind the propaganda and into her actual practices, and the company she kept, there's a lot of evidence to support the belief that she was actually a cruel, sadistic, evil bitch who wanted the dying to suffer horribly because suffering would bring them closer to jesus.
(this is not to dispute your argument that some religions/cults are worse than others - Scientology is definitely far worse than Catholicism - but Mother Teresa was *NOT* a good example for your point, she contradicts it)
yes, of course there was corporate anti-socialism propaganda, agitation, and rabble-rousing from the very early days. american corporate leaders like Edsel Ford, Prescott Bush, Lindbergh, and many others were against socialism for the same reason that they supported fascism and the german nazi party.
but, as i said, neither socialism nor communism were dirty words in the US until the 1950s. before then, they were elements of legitimate mainstream political and social movements....it wasn't political suicide to express support for socialist practices or even socialist ideology. careers couldn't be destroyed merely by claiming someone was a socialist.
the McCarthy era made socialism a thought-crime in america. before then it was an accepted part of the diversity of political opinion.
Skynet was an "evil computer", but HAL wasn't. HAL just had conflicting programming that resulted in him killing anyone he perceived as threatening the secret mission.
i've always thought that the american fascination with zombies was because they combined a representation of the "mindless hordes of communism" with america's favourite paranoia about Fifth Column subversion of the American Way Of Life
plus, of course, americans love the Lawless West mythology, that a single good man with a gun can save the day. add to that the survivalist wet-dream of A World Gone Mad and you have the perfect fantasy fuel for everyone, especially the RKBA nutters.
(that said, i love a good zombie flick myself. or even a bad one)
oh yeah, while i'm dissecting the american zeitgeist, i'll also mention that the american obsession with robots from the 1950s onwards is due to the white middle class desire to have an obedient slave race that won't revolt....indeed, CAN'T revolt due to Asimov's Three Laws being built-in. robots are proxy black slaves with all the uppitiness removed.
1. many addict's lives are fucked up, so you think society should fuck them up some more? sadist.
btw, correlation is not causation. most addicts aren't fucked up because they're junkies - they became junkies because they were fucked up already and started using drugs to self-medicate the pain of being abused.
2. not all drug users are addicts. in fact, most users aren't. use != abuse. and self-medication is far from the only reason people take recreational drugs - most people take them because they enjoy them.
3. many recreational drugs don't even have any potential for addiction. some even have what is called short-term tolerance which prevents them from having more than negligible affect for a few days after taking them.
4. "pharmacologically impossible to take highly addictive drugs without risking becoming an addict". weasel words. there is a risk, sure...but a) the risk is low, and b) the way you phrased it, you're trying to give the false impression that it's certain. many people take highly addictive drugs for years without becoming addicts, and without it fucking up their lives. opiate use, for example, is common in the medical professions
4. your self-righteous pseudo-economic arguments are pure bullshit. it's *exactly* as valid as saying that some car drivers crash their cars and end up in hospital, so as a taxpayer you should have the right to ban cars and ban driving. i.e. not valid at all.
5. you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. if you're going to express an opinion on drugs, then at least get off your arse and bother to do some research on the subject. in the modern internet era, it's not even hard to find good information sources that aren't just hysterical propaganda.
you're just another ignorant fucking wowser with the same small-minded, vindictive excuses for why you and your kind should have the right to dictate what OTHER people do with THEIR bodies and minds.
i'm not american, but even i know 20th century american history better than you.
neither communism nor socialism were dirty words in america until the 1950s with all the scare propaganda about the Red Menace.
right up until then, there was an active, large, and popular socialist movement in america. it wasn't likely to hold government in its own right but was strong enough to provide a moderating influence on the growing corporate control of american government.
after mccarthy, socialism became a thought-crime in america and corporate control had no effective opposition.
i'm constantly astounded by the mindless american hostility to the idea of government - it's like children denying reality. the fact is that government is inevitable and unavoidable, you can't deny its existence or power by just subscribing to some moronic "rugged individualist" mythology. so, if government is inevitable, then only sane thing for citizens do is to ensure that it works for THEM....because if it doesn't work for the citizens, it will be controlled by the rich and powerful for their own benefit. which is *exactly* what you've got. as a whole, the people of america have abdicated and the power vacuum has been filled by corporate interests, which is precisely why there is so much corporate-sponsored propaganda brainwashing citizens into believing that socialist principles like universal health care are bad for them.
PS - For clarification, and to correct something from my above post, I don't know enough about the FOSS movement to say, "It's sexist." I shouldn't have uniformly referred to "the FOSS movement," because I'm painting with a broader brush than I really have knowledge to do fairly.
That's good...otherwise you'd be being FOSSist. blaming all FOSS community members for the actions of a few.
But I do think the comments and examples linked to throughout this discussion, and the original articles, indicate that some people within the FOSS display sexist behavior, and the movement as a whole doesn't seem to be - as far as I can see - willing to acknowledge that.
in my experience (primarily within the debian developer community) instances of overt sexism are extremely rare and the occasional misogynist nutter that comes along is very quickly stomped on and told to shut up and fuck off.
And that's the point - debian as a whole is welcoming of women and even has a debian-women team to help and support female involvement in debian and FOSS in general, but there will always be individual prejudiced nutcases and trolls who represent an insignificantly tiny minority but who generate a huge amount of heat and noise while they're active. They're noticeable partly because of the flamewars their misogynist comments create and partly because of their rarity. they stand out *because* they're rare and unusual in the community and because the majority vehemently disagree with them.
on a more general note - my partner is a programmer (and a damn good one - better than me, anyway). she's never had any difficulties in either work or geek circles due to her gender, certainly far less than in "real life" (i.e. outside of programming/tech). her recurring complaint is not that women are excluded from tech fields but that so few women *want* to participate, or even think in the right kind of ways to be any good at it. if there is sexism problem, it's not within FOSS itself, it's within the general society where women are generally discouraged from a very young age to avoid scary science and technology.
Of course, now that the US has gone about and socialized/intervened in so much of their economy (auto makers, banks, insurance companies, real estate) they make us look like wild crazy capitalist swine. United Statist Amerika.
that's not unusual for america, and never has been.
1. america's popular understanding of socialism is:
"socialism is evil. it's all about freedom-hating satanist mother-rapers who want to steal your apple pie and destroy your way of life."
americans know this for a fact because the TV tells them several times per day in a variety of ways, both subtle and unsubtle.
this is why it's impossible to have any kind of rational discussion with americans when the word socialism or any related concepts are involved. and it's probably unfixable...there are too many decades of propaganda and brain-washing in the way.
2. and america's guiding principal about socialist practices is:
"socialise all expenses, privatise all profits."
(and by privatise, they don't mean for individuals. they mean that profits belong naturally to corporations).
this is the natural order of things to the american mind-set. government exists solely to cater to business needs. anything else is unnatural and evil.
I live in a European country with socialized medicine and suffer from a condition for which I must buy what I've been prescribed every three months and the receipt says 2 000+ EUR (almost $ 3 000) but I pay only 3 EUR (about $ 4).
I live in a country with socialized medicine. All my prescriptions state the purchase price, and none of them have any number other than that. I'm curious where you are that they give you a receipt that doesn't match what you pay. What's the drug? Perhaps someone else who gets it in the US could say what it costs there.
I also live in a country with a decent health care system (Australia), including the excellent Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (which pharma companies have been trying to destroy for years...fortunately govts here know it would be political suicide to do that - even that verminous lick-spittle Howard didn't have the guts to do it, although he tried weakening it a few times). The PBS doesn't cover all drugs, but it does cover most...and there's a constant review process for getting new drugs onto the scheme (they have to prove that they are really new or are better, more effective, less side-effects, cheaper, etc than similar drugs).
anyway, for the last few years, the box of pills shows both the price we pay for the drug (a maximum of $32.90 for any prescription for the employed, or about $5 for pensioners, unemployed, students, etc - although many common/generic drugs cost less than that) AND the actual price that it costs the government. for example, one of my prescriptions costs me $32.90. it costs the govt about $700.
the price labelling is done like that so that people know the actual cost of the medicine...presumably to discourage waste. it's a reasonable idea - don't know if that works but it certainly doesn't hurt for people to know just how good the PBS is for them, otherwise they might get suckered by big pharma propaganda against the scheme.
does that make any sense in your native universe? it certainly makes no sense here. i try to be tolerant of bizarre alien thought processes but there is a limit.
The main reason why everybody didn't switch to a SSD yet is that the cost per MB is too high.
not for me, it isn't. as Unoti said in the post you're replying to, it's the price of the unit. i'd quite happily buy one of the high-end Intel (or equivalent) 64 or even 32GB SSD drive as my boot/OS drive if the price was between AUD $100 and $200 rather than over $600 (32GB) or $1000 (64GB).
For the OS drive, i *really* don't care about the size or the cost per GB for this purpose - my OS (debian) can easily fit into 15GB, even with hundreds of desktop apps installed...for a server, it can easily fit in a GB or so. and for a laptop, 32 or 64 GB would be enough for the entire system.
Flying the flag outside your home is not at all *common* here in Australia. It happens, but it's very rare. it's probably more common to see the Eureka flag outside of or on non-government buildings than the Australian flag, and that's usually a symbol of union movement solidarity rather than patriotism. and private display of the aboriginal flag is probably more common too (at least in the cities where most of the au population lives) - again as a symbol of solidarity.
while Howard tried very hard during his decade as PM to introduce american-style nationalistic jingoism here, it only really worked with a small segment of the population...extreme rednecks and racists and other low-brow types. and even then it mostly only comes out at certain times of year, like around Anzac day (which, unfortunately, Howard successfully managed to convert from a day of remembrance for those who died, to a day of nationalistic propaganda for flag-waving cretins...taking advantage of the fact that there are none of the old WWI diggers left alive to undermine the glorification propaganda with their inconvenient comments)
you're confusing the fuckwit fanboys who just love to flame with the actual linux community - which is made up of the people who actually DO shit rather than just TALK shit.
an easy enough mistake to make since there are far too many of the former and not enough of the latter.
same as in any field - the talkers far outnumber to do-ers (and mostly the talkers just talk crap).
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Monsanto in particular and agri-business in general are the ONLY reason why I'm against genetic engineering.
it's not that there's anything wrong with genetic engineering of plants, animals, or even humans (i *want* more efficient lungs, heart, kidneys, muscles, etc). there's lots of things that just evolved through natural selection that could be vastly improved by some intelligent design :)
the problem with GE is that you can't trust evil bastards like Monsanto or any other corporation. You can't trust them not to poison you (or even the entire world) by taking short-cuts in the engineering or in the testing and/or ignoring warning signs if they get in the way of profit, and you especially can't trust them not to attempt to own the entire food supply of the planet by claiming patents on every single gene they can possibly get away with...and eventually, *inevitably*, the release of engineered organisms to wipe out "natural" competing crops that they don't control.
here's what it would take to gain my support for genetic engineering:
1. abolish all gene patents
2. outlaw and completely destroy Monsanto. start by hanging the board and senior management. the bastards
deserve it.
if there is such a thing as actual malevolent "evil" in this world, then Monsanto is the paragon.
they dont own the word android or the word nexus.
i don't care if P. K. Dick did write some excellent SF stories, his estate are just another bunch scumbags trying to own the language.
copyright over a story - or any other work - does NOT give rights to anything and everything even vaguely related to that work.
who cares? santa claus is a communist plot designed to make people think that giving is good, and it will lead to the destruction of the united states!!1!!
what gives you the crazy idea that there's anything like a "free market" in operation, anywhere in the world? or that corporations are "free market companies"? or that they're "rational" in any meaningful sense (i.e. significantly beyond the next quarterly results).
The "Free Market" is a mythical *ideal*, not an accurate description of anything possible in reality.
1. libertarian notions that government is the only source of evil and coercion (or even bureaucratic idiocy) are just plain stupid.
2. government regulation is *essential* to prevent, or at least slow, the tendency towards monopolies and monopsonies.
3. technologies aren't shelved to "make a point". they're shelved to prop up the position of the dominant incumbents for as long as possible. new technologies, especially disruptive ones that shake up the status quo, are far more likely to harm the incumbents and favour new entrants, which is more than enough incentive for the incumbents to use whatever means necessary to bury them as long as possible.
yes. and who do you think it has been fucking them over for the last century and a half or so? european imperialists (esp. british and french) and, later, american imperialism.
you say that as if it somehow contradicts anything i said. instead, it just demonstrates that your knowledge of history is limited, at best.
btw, the Crusades were from 1095 - 1291 AD (that's 700-900 years ago - roughly contemporary with the Mongol invasion, approx 1205 to 1337 AD). also btw, the Crusades were neither the beginning nor the end of the hostilities and battles between the european/christian and arabic/islamic cultures.
things don't happen in a vacuum. there's a long - very long - historical context to everything that happens - even the shit's that's happening today. the arabs didn't just suddenly decide out of the blue that they hate america, the palestinians didn't wake up one morning and decide to hate the israelis for no reason. there are reasons. whether you or i or anyone else agrees with those reasons, or think that they justify any action is irrelevent - those reasons exist regardless of opinions.
but really, your rhetorical question "if it was the Arabs who had mathematics, navigation, and a technological understanding far superior to that of anyone else, how come they have to import every damn thing they need (technical expertise, labour, doctors, nurses, etc) from all over the world ?" was meant to imply either that their discovery/invention of these things is a lie (perpertrated by the Great Left Wing Conspiracy<TM>, no doubt) or that they were a bunch of lazy retards for having these things and fucking up. and then you descended into overt racist crap with "Your basic Arab wants to sit smoking shisha and drinking coffee" and "...but since then they have degenerated into a pack of savages".
My point was that like many civilisations before them, they were fucked by war, not by some inherent moral failure (even if they did have the supreme "moral failing" of being arab and islamic rather than white and christian).
in short, your redneck bullshit irked me, so i called you on it.
oh, BTW, i think your "johnny-come-lately" religion is just as fucked up as theirs. and, like all religions, just as cretinous.
how does the fact they were invaded by the mongols prior to the europeans make the european imperialism "bullshit?"
it's not either/or - both those things happened. one does not invalidate or make impossible the other. quite the opposite, in fact...the mongol invasion weakened the arabic/islamic empires and made the later european invasions possible.
or, to put it another way, the point of kicking someone when they're down is to make sure they don't get back up again.
a couple of centuries of wars and european (and, post-WW2, american) imperialism fucked up their culture and sent them into their version of the Dark Ages - which they're still in now....and unlikely to get out of it any time soon because we (the "West") keep on undermining their secular, progressive political movements and propping up loony religious dictators to keep them there.
what, exactly, is so fascist about suspending or terminating the driving license of someone who has proved that their driving habits are a danger to pedestrians and other drivers?
sounds like common sense to me.
(and if losing their license causes some fuckwit to lose their job - and whatever goes along with that - then so be it. fuck 'em.)
you don't have a right to drive. you don't have a right to endanger the lives of others because you're too fucking stupid to realise that drunk driving (or driving while distracted by cell-phones, video screens, or whatever) is dangerous.
drink all you like in your own home or when you're not going to be driving. in fact, take whatever drugs you like. your body, your life, your choice to do whatever you like to/with it. but you don't have any right to endanger others.
fuck you and your sense of entitlement.
wrong. patents are not for ideas that no-one has had before. they are for inventions that no-one has made before.
patents do not cover ideas, they cover specific inventions. there's a HUGE difference.
actually, Mother Teresa wasn't all that "good". If anyone bothers to look behind the propaganda and into her actual practices, and the company she kept, there's a lot of evidence to support the belief that she was actually a cruel, sadistic, evil bitch who wanted the dying to suffer horribly because suffering would bring them closer to jesus.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mother+teresa+cruel+sadistic
(this is not to dispute your argument that some religions/cults are worse than others - Scientology is definitely far worse than Catholicism - but Mother Teresa was *NOT* a good example for your point, she contradicts it)
huh? what? there are ads on the intertubes?
i knew there was a reason i ran adblock and noscript.
yes, of course there was corporate anti-socialism propaganda, agitation, and rabble-rousing from the very early days. american corporate leaders like Edsel Ford, Prescott Bush, Lindbergh, and many others were against socialism for the same reason that they supported fascism and the german nazi party.
but, as i said, neither socialism nor communism were dirty words in the US until the 1950s. before then, they were elements of legitimate mainstream political and social movements....it wasn't political suicide to express support for socialist practices or even socialist ideology. careers couldn't be destroyed merely by claiming someone was a socialist.
the McCarthy era made socialism a thought-crime in america. before then it was an accepted part of the diversity of political opinion.
Skynet was an "evil computer", but HAL wasn't. HAL just had conflicting programming that resulted in him killing anyone he perceived as threatening the secret mission.
i've always thought that the american fascination with zombies was because they combined a representation of the "mindless hordes of communism" with america's favourite paranoia about Fifth Column subversion of the American Way Of Life
plus, of course, americans love the Lawless West mythology, that a single good man with a gun can save the day. add to that the survivalist wet-dream of A World Gone Mad and you have the perfect fantasy fuel for everyone, especially the RKBA nutters.
(that said, i love a good zombie flick myself. or even a bad one)
oh yeah, while i'm dissecting the american zeitgeist, i'll also mention that the american obsession with robots from the 1950s onwards is due to the white middle class desire to have an obedient slave race that won't revolt....indeed, CAN'T revolt due to Asimov's Three Laws being built-in. robots are proxy black slaves with all the uppitiness removed.
1. many addict's lives are fucked up, so you think society should fuck them up some more? sadist.
btw, correlation is not causation. most addicts aren't fucked up because they're junkies - they became junkies because they were fucked up already and started using drugs to self-medicate the pain of being abused.
2. not all drug users are addicts. in fact, most users aren't. use != abuse. and self-medication is far from the only reason people take recreational drugs - most people take them because they enjoy them.
3. many recreational drugs don't even have any potential for addiction. some even have what is called short-term tolerance which prevents them from having more than negligible affect for a few days after taking them.
4. "pharmacologically impossible to take highly addictive drugs without risking becoming an addict". weasel words. there is a risk, sure...but a) the risk is low, and b) the way you phrased it, you're trying to give the false impression that it's certain. many people take highly addictive drugs for years without becoming addicts, and without it fucking up their lives. opiate use, for example, is common in the medical professions
4. your self-righteous pseudo-economic arguments are pure bullshit. it's *exactly* as valid as saying that some car drivers crash their cars and end up in hospital, so as a taxpayer you should have the right to ban cars and ban driving. i.e. not valid at all.
5. you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. if you're going to express an opinion on drugs, then at least get off your arse and bother to do some research on the subject. in the modern internet era, it's not even hard to find good information sources that aren't just hysterical propaganda.
you're just another ignorant fucking wowser with the same small-minded, vindictive excuses for why you and your kind should have the right to dictate what OTHER people do with THEIR bodies and minds.
i'm not american, but even i know 20th century american history better than you.
neither communism nor socialism were dirty words in america until the 1950s with all the scare propaganda about the Red Menace.
right up until then, there was an active, large, and popular socialist movement in america. it wasn't likely to hold government in its own right but was strong enough to provide a moderating influence on the growing corporate control of american government.
after mccarthy, socialism became a thought-crime in america and corporate control had no effective opposition.
i'm constantly astounded by the mindless american hostility to the idea of government - it's like children denying reality. the fact is that government is inevitable and unavoidable, you can't deny its existence or power by just subscribing to some moronic "rugged individualist" mythology. so, if government is inevitable, then only sane thing for citizens do is to ensure that it works for THEM....because if it doesn't work for the citizens, it will be controlled by the rich and powerful for their own benefit. which is *exactly* what you've got. as a whole, the people of america have abdicated and the power vacuum has been filled by corporate interests, which is precisely why there is so much corporate-sponsored propaganda brainwashing citizens into believing that socialist principles like universal health care are bad for them.
That's good...otherwise you'd be being FOSSist. blaming all FOSS community members for the actions of a few.
in my experience (primarily within the debian developer community) instances of overt sexism are extremely rare and the occasional misogynist nutter that comes along is very quickly stomped on and told to shut up and fuck off.
And that's the point - debian as a whole is welcoming of women and even has a debian-women team to help and support female involvement in debian and FOSS in general, but there will always be individual prejudiced nutcases and trolls who represent an insignificantly tiny minority but who generate a huge amount of heat and noise while they're active. They're noticeable partly because of the flamewars their misogynist comments create and partly because of their rarity. they stand out *because* they're rare and unusual in the community and because the majority vehemently disagree with them.
on a more general note - my partner is a programmer (and a damn good one - better than me, anyway). she's never had any difficulties in either work or geek circles due to her gender, certainly far less than in "real life" (i.e. outside of programming/tech). her recurring complaint is not that women are excluded from tech fields but that so few women *want* to participate, or even think in the right kind of ways to be any good at it. if there is sexism problem, it's not within FOSS itself, it's within the general society where women are generally discouraged from a very young age to avoid scary science and technology.
that's not unusual for america, and never has been.
1. america's popular understanding of socialism is:
"socialism is evil. it's all about freedom-hating satanist mother-rapers who want to steal your apple pie and destroy your way of life."
americans know this for a fact because the TV tells them several times per day in a variety of ways, both subtle and unsubtle.
this is why it's impossible to have any kind of rational discussion with americans when the word socialism or any related concepts are involved. and it's probably unfixable...there are too many decades of propaganda and brain-washing in the way.
2. and america's guiding principal about socialist practices is:
"socialise all expenses, privatise all profits."
(and by privatise, they don't mean for individuals. they mean that profits belong naturally to corporations).
this is the natural order of things to the american mind-set. government exists solely to cater to business needs. anything else is unnatural and evil.
I also live in a country with a decent health care system (Australia), including the excellent Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (which pharma companies have been trying to destroy for years...fortunately govts here know it would be political suicide to do that - even that verminous lick-spittle Howard didn't have the guts to do it, although he tried weakening it a few times). The PBS doesn't cover all drugs, but it does cover most...and there's a constant review process for getting new drugs onto the scheme (they have to prove that they are really new or are better, more effective, less side-effects, cheaper, etc than similar drugs).
anyway, for the last few years, the box of pills shows both the price we pay for the drug (a maximum of $32.90 for any prescription for the employed, or about $5 for pensioners, unemployed, students, etc - although many common/generic drugs cost less than that) AND the actual price that it costs the government. for example, one of my prescriptions costs me $32.90. it costs the govt about $700.
the price labelling is done like that so that people know the actual cost of the medicine...presumably to discourage waste. it's a reasonable idea - don't know if that works but it certainly doesn't hurt for people to know just how good the PBS is for them, otherwise they might get suckered by big pharma propaganda against the scheme.
does that make any sense in your native universe? it certainly makes no sense here. i try to be tolerant of bizarre alien thought processes but there is a limit.
not for me, it isn't. as Unoti said in the post you're replying to, it's the price of the unit. i'd quite happily buy one of the high-end Intel (or equivalent) 64 or even 32GB SSD drive as my boot/OS drive if the price was between AUD $100 and $200 rather than over $600 (32GB) or $1000 (64GB).
For the OS drive, i *really* don't care about the size or the cost per GB for this purpose - my OS (debian) can easily fit into 15GB, even with hundreds of desktop apps installed...for a server, it can easily fit in a GB or so. and for a laptop, 32 or 64 GB would be enough for the entire system.
Flying the flag outside your home is not at all *common* here in Australia. It happens, but it's very rare. it's probably more common to see the Eureka flag outside of or on non-government buildings than the Australian flag, and that's usually a symbol of union movement solidarity rather than patriotism. and private display of the aboriginal flag is probably more common too (at least in the cities where most of the au population lives) - again as a symbol of solidarity.
while Howard tried very hard during his decade as PM to introduce american-style nationalistic jingoism here, it only really worked with a small segment of the population...extreme rednecks and racists and other low-brow types. and even then it mostly only comes out at certain times of year, like around Anzac day (which, unfortunately, Howard successfully managed to convert from a day of remembrance for those who died, to a day of nationalistic propaganda for flag-waving cretins...taking advantage of the fact that there are none of the old WWI diggers left alive to undermine the glorification propaganda with their inconvenient comments)
you might have to wait 16 years for the cry of anguish, but it will be worth it.
or save her some penis-enlargement spam so she can see that the internet way back in 2009 was exactly the same as the internet in 2025.
you're confusing the fuckwit fanboys who just love to flame with the actual linux community - which is made up of the people who actually DO shit rather than just TALK shit.
an easy enough mistake to make since there are far too many of the former and not enough of the latter.
same as in any field - the talkers far outnumber to do-ers (and mostly the talkers just talk crap).
i remember seeing a docco about that a few years ago too. IIRC, the idea was borrowed from observations of exits in ant nests, or something like that.