Removing operatives for fucking up is one thing, sending them back to the country where they operated to face charges is another. Removing incompetent operatives improves the spying program. Sending them to face jail in a foreign country for failure kills your spying program as few people are going to voluntarily sign up for such insanity. Rule number one in any covert operation is to protect your people. If you ask people to risk imprisonment or death, you at the very least need to give them the assurance that you will do everything in your power to keep them safe should they get caught.
Few nations will negotiate with terrorist, yet nearly all nations will exchange captured spies, even though the captured spies might have important state secrets locked in their head. Why? A few lost state secrets in exchange for one of your own captured spies is a good deal. It lets everyone else that works for you know that if they get into shit, you are going to make a reasonable attempt to free them. This means that they not only are going to be more confident and willing to take the risks you ask of them, but they are also much less likely to crack under questioning if they think that freedom is simply a matter of time.
I am not saying that the actions US operatives performed in Italy were right. I am saying that refusing to hand over their operatives absolutely was the right thing to do. If someone needs to pay a price, it is the US government that gave the orders, not the loyal operatives working for it.
Given the US track record on treatment of detainees...
He isn't a detainee. He is being sought after by the US legal system. Once you are in the US legal system, you are in. If the CIA wanted him, I could understand some worries. In this case, he is being sought after by the US legal system what DOES have a good track record and gives more rights to the accused then most western democracies.
The US has no extradition treaty with China because it doesn't consider China lawful. The point of an extradition treaty is to only deport people that break laws in other nations that both nations agree are "lawful". In the case of China, the US would never extradite because it doesn't consider such a law to be lawful. On the other hand, if I was to go out and murder someone in the UK and then go to the US, the US would happily send me back to the UK to face trial because both nations agree that murder is wrong, regardless of where it is committed.
Generally speaking, extradition treaties are setup such that you can only be extradited for breaking a law in another country if your mother country has an equivalent law. Even then, there is no guarantee of extradition. Spain currently holds a handful of terrorist that the US wants to try, but Spain wont hand them over because their extradition treaty with the US doesn't require them to hand over people that might face the death penalty in another nation.
The US legal system is fine. The US legal system is about as independent as they come and the laws havily favor the accused. In fact, the British legal system looks down right draconian compared to the US in many respects in how they treat the accused. Further, this is trial by jury. It doesn't matter what the US government wants. It is up to the jury to decide what happens. As was recently show in the Moussaoui case, the jury is more then happy to be fair, even in extreme cases. In the case of Moussaoui, you had a guy who was admited that his intent was to take part in 9/11 and could have stopped the entire incident by telling the police of the plot. The government wanted to execute him. The jury gave him life instead because the guy was clearly unstable.
I am not saying the US legal system is perfect, but to argue that it is more broken then any other western democracy is laughable. The only time the US legal system 'breaks' is when actions are conducted outside of the US legal system. Even then, the US legal system tends to step in and try and correct the mistakes. In the case of the warrentless wiretaping, there are already a dozen suits working their way up to the Supreme Court. I would be completely unsurprised to see the execuative smacked down by the judicial branch.
You miss the point of extradition. The point of an extradition is such that two countries that have roughly equivalent legal system can obtain people accused of committing crimes in their respective countries with the permission. The US has no problem handing over someone who murders in the UK because both countries agree that murder is wrong. Extradition is just the legal way in which they set up the framework to pass accused from nation to nation. Extradition allows for people to contest deportation and set up the instances in which they will refuse extradition. Of the four instances you mentioned, I can tell you that at least in three of those everything worked the way it was supposed to. As for the fourth, the legal groups of extradition are shaky at best.
Or, say, Italy? Oh, but we just can't let them have 22 CIA operatives charged with kidnapping and torture on Italian soil.
No country gives up its spies and operatives. The CIA operatives charged were working for the US government when they committed the crimes that they committed. All nations spy on each other and break the laws of the respective nations that they are spying against. I can promise you that there are Italian, French, and UK spies in the US right now breaking US laws. That is the game. We don't really expect them to send their spies to our prisons if they get caught and escape.
No sane government would ever jail operatives following orders and breaking laws in a foreign country. That is an excellent way to completely destroy your spying program. Italy would behave exactly as the US has if the roles were reversed and the US caught a pile of Italian spies.
If Italty has a problem with what happened (and it is entirely reasonable that they might), they proper course of action is to conduct government to government talks. If they want restitution, then they should seek it from the US government. Blaming the actual operatives for following orders and demanding they be returned is like blaming and airplane for dropping a bomb and demanding that the airplane be junked.
Or Venezuela, seeking the extradition of a KNOWN terrorist the US has decided to harbor, because he only terrorized Cuba? How well would that fly if the UK responded to the US request "Oh, well, we'd love to, and normally we disapprove of cracking military computers, but well, he only attacked the US, not anyone that matters"?
I can't tell you how the US would respond if the UK tried this, but I can tell you for a fact that Spain holds more then one person that the US wants, but they refuse to hand them over. Why? The US uses the death sentence for certain crimes, and Spain refuses to hand over terrorist that might have to face such a sentence. Does it make the US grumpy? Certainly. Is the US doing anything more then grumbling, nope.
In this specific instance, the terrorist that Venezuela wants WAS arrested once it was realized that he had snuck into the US. Last I heard he was being held for extradition hearings. Granted, the US government is dragging its feet because in this case this was an anti-Castro terrorist, but the extradition hearing is proceeding anyways.
Or Spain, currently seeking the extradition of three US soldiers for the murder of a Spanish reporter?
Like spies, the US (and all other nations) don't extradite their soldiers for the things they do on a battlefield. Soldiers are given a lot of leeway in the actions that they are allowed to take on a battlefield and generally are not severely punished except in instances of gross willful misconduct. In the gas of the Spanish reporter, it was a misunderstanding. They were driving fast towards a US checkpoint, there was a miscommunication, and people ended up dead. Now, it could be argued that the US soldiers failed to follow proper protocol before opening fire, but it wouldn't change the fact that it happened on a battlefield under stressful conditions. The US is no more willing to hand over soldiers for harming civilia
Look, these electric cars are neat for R&D, but this is like reporting that someone has cured aging in a single celled creature for a million dollars. I will be moderatly impressed when someone makes a Honda Civic (i.e. a standard small car that is still functional) with a heater, AC, and radio that has a crash survivability of any other honda civic. The car needs at least a 300 mile range when traveling at 70 mph with heater, radio, and headlights on, or it needs to be able to be charged in under 10 minutes at a gas station and have at least a 100 mile range.
In Europe there might be a small market for small insta-death on crash cars with ranges under 100 miles if they were reasonably priced. Even then, if someone is willing to throw safty to the wind and save the environment, they would already be driving a motorcycle. In the US though, until you can match a Honda civic in terms of capability, you are wasting your breath. In the US you could get away with a moderaly expensive civic sized car IF it was functional (heater, radio, doesn't kill everyone if another car taps it). Until there cars start to get within the same range of distance, performance, and safety (notice the AND, it needs them all) , this sort of stuff is just a novalty car for few very rich folks looking to add another car to their collection of cars they don't ever use.
Personally, I would be much more impressed with cheaper hybrids with bigger batteries and the ability to plug in. If you could get a car to run for the first 20 miles on the grid, then have it kick over to a gas powered engine, that would do a LOT for the environment. Then imagine if you could plug this car in or if it had a few cheap solar panals on the roof that would charge the car while you were at work. We desperatly need stuff that thinks about practicality first, the zero emissions second. Making 20 miles of a drive pollution free (besides what the grid pumps out) would go a LONG ways to cleaning up the air.
Are you joking me? Did you forget the D&D scares of the 80's? What about the comic book stupidity of the 60's and 70's? Computer gaming censorship has a LONG way to fall before it can catch with the mind numbing stupidity of what happened to comics. If the stupid fucking rules that were once applied to comic books were applied to computer games you could only play a hero, never break the law, the game wouldn't let you lose because the good guy always has to win, and good guys couldn't kill bad guys except in self defense.
Look, I am not saying I am not happy with the state of things as they are. I fucking loath the FCC. I hate that our culture is so uptight that that the ESBR throws a fit when it realizes that people are naked under their clothes (slap an M for mature on my ass, because I am naked under my clothes too). My point is that you shouldn't look back to the past with this warm fuzzy nostalgia. The past sucked. These are the good new days of communication. If you really want to, you can see more porn in an hour of internet surfing then you the all the porn combined since the dawn of time to the 90's (hyperbole perhaps, but not by much).
Further, to be honest, I would happily take the voluntary rating system stupidity that goes on now over a draft, not being able to merry my non-white girlfriend, and all the other shitty things that happened in the not so distant past.
Today is not a shiny utopia, but neither was the past. Fuck the past, look to the future.
I would be a-okay if the ESRB rated everything that can touch the Internet or be modded as M. If that was the case, then the vast majority of the games out there would be M, and developers would stop feeling the need to pander to the ESRB rating system. If you are going to get an M anyways, why not throw in a little extra gore and nudity?
I have a feeling, judging by your tone, if me and you had a long conversation, we'd end up disagreeing severely and it would probably end in a fistfight
I would hope not. Nothing disheartens me more then to find people so set in their opinions that they are offended by the opinions of others. I grew up in a family where each family member had radically different political views that swung from godless libertarians and socialist to staunchly religious conservatives. It was never a problem because no one took offense at the opinions of the others and were willing to listen and concede when they realized they were in error. One of the things I miss the most about home is dinner time conversation that last until well after the food was cold. We could easily play devils advocate and argue from point of views we didn't agree with. Voices never got raised and discussions were always civil.
In the real world though, this acceptance of others opinions and willingness to discuss them seems close to nonexistent. People either become upset and angry at disagreement or simply claim stupidity and declare they have no opinion and no wish to think any further. The closest I have seen to a good political discussion outside of a few rare occasions in years is a group of like minded people with the exact same ideology arguing about the semantics of their ideology.
All of that said, judging by your tone I imagine we wouldn't end up in a fist fight and this was just a long winded rant.
I agree with parent. Remember the good old days of freedom? Can you recall how pleasant this world was when women stayed in the kitchen cooking a man his supper instead of going off to college and getting a job? Remember back when anarchists were jailed during World War I? Remember during the great depression when the federal government sweeped up a massive amount of power? Recall the good old days of World War II when the entire economy was turned to war and everyone of age was drafted? Recall how much more pleasant things were when we rounded up every single Japanese American on the west coast and put them in internment camps? Remember the pleasant days before the civil rights movement when them negros stayed with their own? Remember when we had nice clean segregated schools, buses, and water fountains? Remember the good old days of McCarthy when we hunted down those evil communist? How about the pleasant days of the Korean War where we drafted and killed Americans (to say nothing of Koreans) in the tens of thousands? Or how about the wonderful days of the Vietnam war where we drafted an entire generation and left our soldiers so fucked up that they would line up men, women, and children on the side of a road and shoot them all.
Get a grip. I'll take today over pretty much any time in 20th century. I am not saying today is a utopia either. I am saying that all eras had their problems. In fact, I would say that this era is far less fucked up, even with Bush drunk at the wheel, then most of the 20th century. 50 years ago I wouldn't have been able to merry my current girlfriend in the south because she isn't white. Up until 30 years ago since the 1900, I would have stood the risk of being drafted and sent off into a meat grinder of a war.
I am not saying you shouldn't be pissed at how things are, but don't hold up the past like it was some magical fairyland utopia because in a word or four, the past fucking sucked.
Uh, the RIAA and MPAA are both evil and all, but they are not THE source of evil in the world. I would say it is pretty safe to say that the reason why they want to shoot down satellites has far more to do with Iran, North Korea, and China then it does IP. Is this a stupid waste of money? Hell yes. Is this an evil plot having anything to do with IP. No.
Nipples are good things to have on a mesh. Why? It makes fitting clothing a hell of a lot easier. If you know where the nipples are, when you are working on clothing that goes over the chest you know where to drop cloth. Personally, I am glad that they made real human bodies. I know the human body is evil and all and your eyes burn out of your skull if you see a pair of breast, people need to get the fuck over it. Yes, naked women have breast. The human body is not evil. Being naked is not automatically vulgar.
My advice is this. If you see a naked person and they are not being lewd, chill out and realize that you too are naked under your clothing. If you see a woman in the park breast feeding her child, don't call your congressmen worked up in hysteria. If you see a woman at the beach without a top on, chill the fuck out because if you are a dude, you probably don't have a top on either. People just need to chill out. Witnessing breast won't cause your head to explode.
And if possible implement some image recognition to "filter" skins/mods that appear nude. The ESRB apparently takes itself very seriously (too seriously), and if you really are interested in being able to sell your games at Wal-Mart to teens without having them to bring an adult along then you really have to play ball with these prudish rating boards.
That is, no offense, fucking idiotic. I don't want a damn game to actively try and prevent me from slapping a pair of tits in. If some modder wants to make a new mesh with topless women, the game should not try and stop him. I play these games and I am an adult. I can see a pair of breast at this age without humping the screen or having my parents send angry letters to congress. It is one thing to not include content, it is an entirely different thing to actively cripple the game so that if some stupid image recognition software thinks it is seeing breast, it blacks it out.
Video game developers are not there to baby-proof video games. There isn't a game out there that you couldn't add a pair of breast to. I am sure some modder for Need for Speed with enough knowledge could add a pair of boobs with wheels on them and call it a car.
It pisses me off that my content needs to be censored because a few prudish parents are too stupid to realize that if their kids are modding games to include breast, you better believe that they are downloading internet porn by the gigabyte. Whatever few pixilated breast they are seeing in video games is pocket change to the crap they can get off the Internet.
If your kid can unlock the art file, it is time to get a fucking clue and realize that your kid is more then capable of downloading more pr0n then you can possibly imagine. Further, these are just tits. This is not a sex mod. This is a human fucking body. I know the human body is evil and all, but grow the fuck up. Human females have tits. OMFG!!!11!!! Your mom has tits under her shirt and bra. That is right, even your mom has a little round circle of pink or brown skin with a raised pump. Guess what, your dad has a penis. Why in the hell are we so terrified that a kid might see what 50% of the population has? I know breasts are evil, but denying their existence doesn't make them go away.
If Oblivion had S&M mod locked away, I would understand the concern. They don't. They have nude models because all the characters in the game are dressed from the nude... you know, like real people. Maybe we should slap an M for mature on everyone's ass in the real world, just so that parents know that underneath all of their clothing they are naked, and nudity is the devils work.
I love America. I really do. There is no place on this Earth I would rather live. That said, some times we are so fucking uptight that if you shoved a lump a coal up the average American's ass, in two weeks you would have a diamond.*
Right, if we just don't show the kids tits, they won't want to have sex. Hello! Our bodies are designed to be fucking machines at that age. The reason why 15 year old kids are horney isn't because they see tits, it is because their bodies are pumped up on enough hormones that they can't pass an Olympic drug screening (hyperbole people).
Now, we as a culture might have decided that it is socially unacceptable to have sex until you are 18, but that doesn't change the reality of the hormones rushing their every adolescent kids' veins. Video games are not going to cause a kid to run off and have sex. If anything, being able to see a nice pair of fake digital tits and a few minutes in the bathroom might offer some temporary relief.
How is Apple so sucessfull with exspensive hardware, restrictive DRM and counter intuitive software?
Aesthetics, marketing, marketing, and more marketing. Apple is damn good at marketing. iPods are absolutely "cool" these days. iPods look good, as do their computers. Once they have good looking functional products, they do an awesome job marketing them.
I am not saying that their products are inherently good or bad. The touch bad for the iPod was in fact was masterfully executed and their PC software is arguably very good. That said, other companies have come out with good interfaces and neat looking products before. What makes Apple so damn good is marketing. I don't mean marketing in the blitzing every TV station with the same fucking commercial marketing, I mean in the very broad sense of the word. They sell their product extremely well.
My mother went out and bought an iPod for my younger brother. She didn't buy that iPod because he asked for it, nor because she knew that iPods were a good MP3 player. She bought my little brother an iPod because the marketing had worked. When my little brother asked for an MP3 player for Christmas, her technology illiterate brain stretched back to think what would make my little brother happy. When she thought about MP3 players, an iPod commercial, a blurb about iPods she had heard on Good Morning America, or the vision of a kid she had seen on the sidewalk with one of these sleek little devices popped into her head. She went into a best buy, told someone she wanted an iPod, the sales rep eyes lit up, and he quickly took her to the most expensive iPod and worked his way down through sticker shock to the one she finally agreed upon. Best Buy took a cut of the profits and Apple took theirs.
Apple wins because of marketing. I can almost bet you that if you take marketing or business 10 years from now, you will read Apple's iPod as a case study.
Clearly the analogy is flawed, but the bigger issue is more the anti-competative hide-behind-the-DRM laws way that Apple operates. DRM is an irritation, but not something I think that should be made illegal. DRM is fine for throwing the minimal of road blocks in front of pirates. What irritates me is when DRM and DRM laws are combined to do something that has absolutely nothing to do with piracy.
What Apple (and I don't mean to pick on Apple, many other companies do this too) is to throw in a bare minimum of DRM that reduces the functionality of the device to anyone but Apple. Normally this would not be a big deal because Napster or Rhapsody could, with a little effort, find ways to unlike what has been DRMed away. The issue is that the law prevents these companies (or individuals for that matter) from working around the DRM. This DRM is NOT preventing illegal activity. The DRM is preventing others from using the device. The DRM is there for the singular purpose of crippling the functionality of the device to anyone but Apple. Despite the fact that the DRM is there only to cripple functionality and NOT to prevent piracy, it gets piracy law protection.
In essence, laws that say you can't temper with DRM have created a new law. That new law is that you can't tamper with devices that you own, even if piracy is in no way shape or form your intent. This is the same law that makes modding your X-Box, making your robot dog dance jazz, or using Napster with an iPod illegal. It isn't that modifying these devices is illegal and that companies have an inherent right of monopoly over everything they produce, it is that tampering with DRM is illegal. If you need to tamper with DRM in order to make any modification, that modification is illegal.
I know we are supposed to have one big love fest for Apple these days, but I loath Apple. They use some of the most abusive and monopolistic tactics out there to retain domain over all of their products.
This is not widely known, but Americans are not one uniformed cloned person. In fact, like most nations around the world (and probably more so then many other nations), they are a very diverse bunch.
You could probably point to the American public's support for the Iraq war as sympathy for Iraqi's. Many Americans really were convinced that with a few bombs and bullets they could make Iraq a nice shinny democracy for the Iraqi people.
Unfortunately (as in the case of Iraq), some times having the sympathy of the Americans is like giving a three year old kid a gerbil. He isn't really out to kill the gerbil, but that is generally what happens more times then not. In the American's case, getting American help is like asking a 10 ton giant to help you dress. His intentions might be the best, but good intentions are not going to put your arms back on after they have been ripped off.
I agree France's approach is wrong. However, I disagree with the "you know what you are getting" idea. The issue here is DRM. Apple is both the man selling you your car and the man at the pump.
Imagine if Henry Ford was operating today in this day and age. He develops the first mass produced car and it is a big hit. Let's pretend that he also develops the first fuel service to fill said cars. Would it be okay if Ford cars could only run on Ford gas because Ford gas is spiked with a chemical that will prevent other cars from using it? I wouldn't be all that bothered by this, but lets follow this line of logic a little further.
Anachronisms aside, now let's pretend that Chrysler sees the success of Ford and wants to build off of it. Ford owns the best gas stations, so Chrysler decides that instead of competing in both cars and fuel, it will only compete with cars. Chrysler decides to build cars that will run off of Ford gas and reverse engineers a Ford car to figure out how. Is this okay? The equivalent of this would be if someone reverse engineered an iPod to figure out how to get AAC files to run on any MP3 player.
Throwing historical consistency to the wind, now perhaps Exxon decides it wants to compete in the fuel market. Most people use Ford cars that run Ford fuel. They can run other fuel, non-Ford fuel just doesn't run as well. Exxon realizes that it can't compete head to head, so Exxon offers an "all the gas you can guzzle" service at a flat rate using Ford fuel. Would it be okay if Exxon then decided make a Ford fuel equivalent and sell it to Ford users? This is like Napster making AAC files and selling their all you can eat service to iPod users (something they wish they could do).
The issue here is that it is insane to declare that Apple has some god given right to prevent competition on its products. For some insane reason, with this digital age we have blindly accepted that a product made by corporation is forever that corporations property even after it is sold, and therefore they can dictate its use. This is simply wrong. This sort monopolistic practice should be stopped.
Should Apple have to hand over how AAC files work? No. Should everyone and their dog be able to reverse engineer equivalents that will work on an iPod, you better believe it. The idea that only Apple can make a.AAC product for their iPod is as insane as declaring that only Ford can make fuel for Ford cars. That sort of insanity would never have been allowed in the past, so why do we allow it today?
Once a corporation sells you its product, that product should be yours, period. If you want to tear it open, rewrite its software, or whatever, that should be your right. If another company decides it wants to release peripheries for your product, that should be their right. Apple should not be allowed to use a law that says you can not circumvent DRM as a shield to hold a monopoly over what can be put onto their products once their products are sold. Hell, Napster should be able to write a "patch" for the iPod that allows it to play WMA if that is what tickles their fancy. Once the iPod is no longer in an Apple warehouse and is sitting on my desktop, it should be mine to do with as I please, end of story.
But then if you believe that afghanistan was instantly a successfull war and that its all over now, Im guessing your reading a bit too much into fox news in general.
Where in the hell did I say Afghanistan was "instantly a successful war"? Go ahead, find my quote, I'll wait. Oh hell, don't bother looking because I didn't say Afghanistan was good, and I certainly didn't say that it was successful. I said that a "publicity stunt" (i.e. 9/11) brought "awareness" to American Imperialism. It also convinced people that normally would never be for invading another nation and occupying it to go along with it simply because they were so disgusted with the methods used to bring awareness.
This point seems to have flown way over your head in favor of your made up point that I like war in Afghanistan and watch Fox News, but my point wasn't that Afghanistan was good or bad. My point was that not all methods of brining attention to a problem are good methods because disgust at the methods used can result in a violently negative response. In the same way ramming airplanes into buildings is a poor way to convince Americans that imperialism is bad an in fact tends to make them crazier and even more blood thirsty, Greenpeace trespassing and vandalizing private property doesn't help their cause. It makes environmentalist look like a bunch of stupid and bored college kids with far too much time on their hands who get their shit off by vandalizing.
Your fellow quasi-religious-enviro-fanatics might all cheer when Greenpeace goes and vandalizes some property, but your average dead center American voter is disgusted. Your average politician that is even a step right of center doesn't went to be associated with such vandals. It makes every environmentalist out there look like a bored college kid who gets his shit off vandalizing property in publicity stunts.
Calling someone an "environmentalist" used to be a curse because it was tied to extremist groups like Greenpeace. Thankfully, the word "environmentalist" has managed to shake of its stigma in the US in recent years, no thanks to Greenpeace. Through dialogue with scientist, economist, and non-publicity stunt whoring environmentalist organizations, the public has become aware of the need to be greener. Today, even Bush can admit to global warming. Believe me though it wasn't a bunch of rich ass hole college kids vandalizing property, that convinced a right wing president that maybe he too should at least pay lip services to the environment. Greenpeace is a pox on the entire environmentalist movement. I am just glad that REAL environmentalist in the from of economist and scientist have started to take over the spot light and shut these nuts out.
Terrorist attacks get coverage too. Last time I checked the last time someone tired that sort of publicity stunt in the US it resulted in one nation being instantly beaten into submission. I doubt that the goal of 9/11 was to get the Taliban government, which used to be safe haven for all manner of Jihadist, kicked over. Despite that, that is exactly what happened. People who would never have normally supported kicking over another government went along with it because the publicity stunt designed to call attention to American imperialism ended up uniting people against the tactics used.
Greenpeace, while certainly an order of magnitude less extreme, does roughly the same thing. They use tactics that your average person is disgusted by to get press coverage. What they fail to realize is that the disgust in their actions often far outweighs the 'awareness' they have spread.
There is a growing environmentalist movement in the United States. Greenpeace is not leading this movement with their various acts of vandalism. This movement is being led by scientist and economist who are communicating the need for environmental action. The crap that Greenpeace does sullies the reputation of all environmentalist. It is only through the hard work of scientist and economist that the environmentalist movement is starting to overcome the damage that Greenpeace has done. Hell, even Bush can admit to global warming these days. The fact that you have Republicans who can at least pay lips services to the environment is because lunatic vandal groups like Greenpeace are being sidelined by scientist and economist.
Having Thomas Friedman (a very famous quasi-libertarian that right wing folks love) come out and declare that oil is the devil and that we need to take proactive steps to get off of it has done far more to get people to look up and take the environment seriously then all the stupid acts of vandalism that bored rich college kids under the guise of Greenpeace have performed.
I have gone the same way. I am disgusted with the music industry these days. I have not bought a CD for myself in 5 years. I still listen to music, I just find free alternatives. Last.fm has done me some good, as have some podcasts.
These are old sci-fi radio programs. I know what you are thinking, cheese upon cheese. I thought the same until I gave them a try. These old radio shows are damn fine. As it turns out violence WASN'T invented in the 21st century. I have not had so much good sci-fi in ages. Far from being cheesy, some of these tales are down right terrifying or surprisingly deep.
I had to twist the arm of my friends to give these radio shows a try, but now we have one going every time we need to make a long trip.
I am not sure if you joke, but I personally LOVE it when the executive and legislative branches are split. Nothing puts a bigger smile on my face then gridlock. Sadly though, in the case of DRM you are shit out luck from both parties. Neither of them have a coherent policy on DRM.
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Removing operatives for fucking up is one thing, sending them back to the country where they operated to face charges is another. Removing incompetent operatives improves the spying program. Sending them to face jail in a foreign country for failure kills your spying program as few people are going to voluntarily sign up for such insanity. Rule number one in any covert operation is to protect your people. If you ask people to risk imprisonment or death, you at the very least need to give them the assurance that you will do everything in your power to keep them safe should they get caught.
Few nations will negotiate with terrorist, yet nearly all nations will exchange captured spies, even though the captured spies might have important state secrets locked in their head. Why? A few lost state secrets in exchange for one of your own captured spies is a good deal. It lets everyone else that works for you know that if they get into shit, you are going to make a reasonable attempt to free them. This means that they not only are going to be more confident and willing to take the risks you ask of them, but they are also much less likely to crack under questioning if they think that freedom is simply a matter of time.
I am not saying that the actions US operatives performed in Italy were right. I am saying that refusing to hand over their operatives absolutely was the right thing to do. If someone needs to pay a price, it is the US government that gave the orders, not the loyal operatives working for it.
Given the US track record on treatment of detainees...
He isn't a detainee. He is being sought after by the US legal system. Once you are in the US legal system, you are in. If the CIA wanted him, I could understand some worries. In this case, he is being sought after by the US legal system what DOES have a good track record and gives more rights to the accused then most western democracies.
The US has no extradition treaty with China because it doesn't consider China lawful. The point of an extradition treaty is to only deport people that break laws in other nations that both nations agree are "lawful". In the case of China, the US would never extradite because it doesn't consider such a law to be lawful. On the other hand, if I was to go out and murder someone in the UK and then go to the US, the US would happily send me back to the UK to face trial because both nations agree that murder is wrong, regardless of where it is committed.
Generally speaking, extradition treaties are setup such that you can only be extradited for breaking a law in another country if your mother country has an equivalent law. Even then, there is no guarantee of extradition. Spain currently holds a handful of terrorist that the US wants to try, but Spain wont hand them over because their extradition treaty with the US doesn't require them to hand over people that might face the death penalty in another nation.
The US legal system is fine. The US legal system is about as independent as they come and the laws havily favor the accused. In fact, the British legal system looks down right draconian compared to the US in many respects in how they treat the accused. Further, this is trial by jury. It doesn't matter what the US government wants. It is up to the jury to decide what happens. As was recently show in the Moussaoui case, the jury is more then happy to be fair, even in extreme cases. In the case of Moussaoui, you had a guy who was admited that his intent was to take part in 9/11 and could have stopped the entire incident by telling the police of the plot. The government wanted to execute him. The jury gave him life instead because the guy was clearly unstable.
I am not saying the US legal system is perfect, but to argue that it is more broken then any other western democracy is laughable. The only time the US legal system 'breaks' is when actions are conducted outside of the US legal system. Even then, the US legal system tends to step in and try and correct the mistakes. In the case of the warrentless wiretaping, there are already a dozen suits working their way up to the Supreme Court. I would be completely unsurprised to see the execuative smacked down by the judicial branch.
You miss the point of extradition. The point of an extradition is such that two countries that have roughly equivalent legal system can obtain people accused of committing crimes in their respective countries with the permission. The US has no problem handing over someone who murders in the UK because both countries agree that murder is wrong. Extradition is just the legal way in which they set up the framework to pass accused from nation to nation. Extradition allows for people to contest deportation and set up the instances in which they will refuse extradition. Of the four instances you mentioned, I can tell you that at least in three of those everything worked the way it was supposed to. As for the fourth, the legal groups of extradition are shaky at best.
Or, say, Italy? Oh, but we just can't let them have 22 CIA operatives charged with kidnapping and torture on Italian soil.
No country gives up its spies and operatives. The CIA operatives charged were working for the US government when they committed the crimes that they committed. All nations spy on each other and break the laws of the respective nations that they are spying against. I can promise you that there are Italian, French, and UK spies in the US right now breaking US laws. That is the game. We don't really expect them to send their spies to our prisons if they get caught and escape.
No sane government would ever jail operatives following orders and breaking laws in a foreign country. That is an excellent way to completely destroy your spying program. Italy would behave exactly as the US has if the roles were reversed and the US caught a pile of Italian spies.
If Italty has a problem with what happened (and it is entirely reasonable that they might), they proper course of action is to conduct government to government talks. If they want restitution, then they should seek it from the US government. Blaming the actual operatives for following orders and demanding they be returned is like blaming and airplane for dropping a bomb and demanding that the airplane be junked.
Or Venezuela, seeking the extradition of a KNOWN terrorist the US has decided to harbor, because he only terrorized Cuba? How well would that fly if the UK responded to the US request "Oh, well, we'd love to, and normally we disapprove of cracking military computers, but well, he only attacked the US, not anyone that matters"?
I can't tell you how the US would respond if the UK tried this, but I can tell you for a fact that Spain holds more then one person that the US wants, but they refuse to hand them over. Why? The US uses the death sentence for certain crimes, and Spain refuses to hand over terrorist that might have to face such a sentence. Does it make the US grumpy? Certainly. Is the US doing anything more then grumbling, nope.
In this specific instance, the terrorist that Venezuela wants WAS arrested once it was realized that he had snuck into the US. Last I heard he was being held for extradition hearings. Granted, the US government is dragging its feet because in this case this was an anti-Castro terrorist, but the extradition hearing is proceeding anyways.
Or Spain, currently seeking the extradition of three US soldiers for the murder of a Spanish reporter?
Like spies, the US (and all other nations) don't extradite their soldiers for the things they do on a battlefield. Soldiers are given a lot of leeway in the actions that they are allowed to take on a battlefield and generally are not severely punished except in instances of gross willful misconduct. In the gas of the Spanish reporter, it was a misunderstanding. They were driving fast towards a US checkpoint, there was a miscommunication, and people ended up dead. Now, it could be argued that the US soldiers failed to follow proper protocol before opening fire, but it wouldn't change the fact that it happened on a battlefield under stressful conditions. The US is no more willing to hand over soldiers for harming civilia
Look, these electric cars are neat for R&D, but this is like reporting that someone has cured aging in a single celled creature for a million dollars. I will be moderatly impressed when someone makes a Honda Civic (i.e. a standard small car that is still functional) with a heater, AC, and radio that has a crash survivability of any other honda civic. The car needs at least a 300 mile range when traveling at 70 mph with heater, radio, and headlights on, or it needs to be able to be charged in under 10 minutes at a gas station and have at least a 100 mile range.
In Europe there might be a small market for small insta-death on crash cars with ranges under 100 miles if they were reasonably priced. Even then, if someone is willing to throw safty to the wind and save the environment, they would already be driving a motorcycle. In the US though, until you can match a Honda civic in terms of capability, you are wasting your breath. In the US you could get away with a moderaly expensive civic sized car IF it was functional (heater, radio, doesn't kill everyone if another car taps it). Until there cars start to get within the same range of distance, performance, and safety (notice the AND, it needs them all) , this sort of stuff is just a novalty car for few very rich folks looking to add another car to their collection of cars they don't ever use.
Personally, I would be much more impressed with cheaper hybrids with bigger batteries and the ability to plug in. If you could get a car to run for the first 20 miles on the grid, then have it kick over to a gas powered engine, that would do a LOT for the environment. Then imagine if you could plug this car in or if it had a few cheap solar panals on the roof that would charge the car while you were at work. We desperatly need stuff that thinks about practicality first, the zero emissions second. Making 20 miles of a drive pollution free (besides what the grid pumps out) would go a LONG ways to cleaning up the air.
Are you joking me? Did you forget the D&D scares of the 80's? What about the comic book stupidity of the 60's and 70's? Computer gaming censorship has a LONG way to fall before it can catch with the mind numbing stupidity of what happened to comics. If the stupid fucking rules that were once applied to comic books were applied to computer games you could only play a hero, never break the law, the game wouldn't let you lose because the good guy always has to win, and good guys couldn't kill bad guys except in self defense.
Look, I am not saying I am not happy with the state of things as they are. I fucking loath the FCC. I hate that our culture is so uptight that that the ESBR throws a fit when it realizes that people are naked under their clothes (slap an M for mature on my ass, because I am naked under my clothes too). My point is that you shouldn't look back to the past with this warm fuzzy nostalgia. The past sucked. These are the good new days of communication. If you really want to, you can see more porn in an hour of internet surfing then you the all the porn combined since the dawn of time to the 90's (hyperbole perhaps, but not by much).
Further, to be honest, I would happily take the voluntary rating system stupidity that goes on now over a draft, not being able to merry my non-white girlfriend, and all the other shitty things that happened in the not so distant past.
Today is not a shiny utopia, but neither was the past. Fuck the past, look to the future.
I would be a-okay if the ESRB rated everything that can touch the Internet or be modded as M. If that was the case, then the vast majority of the games out there would be M, and developers would stop feeling the need to pander to the ESRB rating system. If you are going to get an M anyways, why not throw in a little extra gore and nudity?
I have a feeling, judging by your tone, if me and you had a long conversation, we'd end up disagreeing severely and it would probably end in a fistfight
I would hope not. Nothing disheartens me more then to find people so set in their opinions that they are offended by the opinions of others. I grew up in a family where each family member had radically different political views that swung from godless libertarians and socialist to staunchly religious conservatives. It was never a problem because no one took offense at the opinions of the others and were willing to listen and concede when they realized they were in error. One of the things I miss the most about home is dinner time conversation that last until well after the food was cold. We could easily play devils advocate and argue from point of views we didn't agree with. Voices never got raised and discussions were always civil.
In the real world though, this acceptance of others opinions and willingness to discuss them seems close to nonexistent. People either become upset and angry at disagreement or simply claim stupidity and declare they have no opinion and no wish to think any further. The closest I have seen to a good political discussion outside of a few rare occasions in years is a group of like minded people with the exact same ideology arguing about the semantics of their ideology.
All of that said, judging by your tone I imagine we wouldn't end up in a fist fight and this was just a long winded rant.
This is not all true, in oblivion the females are naked under there tops in the relece of the game, the mod just removes the bra.
Yeah? And I am naked under my clothes too. Quick, someone slap an M for mature on my ass.
I agree with parent. Remember the good old days of freedom? Can you recall how pleasant this world was when women stayed in the kitchen cooking a man his supper instead of going off to college and getting a job? Remember back when anarchists were jailed during World War I? Remember during the great depression when the federal government sweeped up a massive amount of power? Recall the good old days of World War II when the entire economy was turned to war and everyone of age was drafted? Recall how much more pleasant things were when we rounded up every single Japanese American on the west coast and put them in internment camps? Remember the pleasant days before the civil rights movement when them negros stayed with their own? Remember when we had nice clean segregated schools, buses, and water fountains? Remember the good old days of McCarthy when we hunted down those evil communist? How about the pleasant days of the Korean War where we drafted and killed Americans (to say nothing of Koreans) in the tens of thousands? Or how about the wonderful days of the Vietnam war where we drafted an entire generation and left our soldiers so fucked up that they would line up men, women, and children on the side of a road and shoot them all.
Get a grip. I'll take today over pretty much any time in 20th century. I am not saying today is a utopia either. I am saying that all eras had their problems. In fact, I would say that this era is far less fucked up, even with Bush drunk at the wheel, then most of the 20th century. 50 years ago I wouldn't have been able to merry my current girlfriend in the south because she isn't white. Up until 30 years ago since the 1900, I would have stood the risk of being drafted and sent off into a meat grinder of a war.
I am not saying you shouldn't be pissed at how things are, but don't hold up the past like it was some magical fairyland utopia because in a word or four, the past fucking sucked.
Uh, the RIAA and MPAA are both evil and all, but they are not THE source of evil in the world. I would say it is pretty safe to say that the reason why they want to shoot down satellites has far more to do with Iran, North Korea, and China then it does IP. Is this a stupid waste of money? Hell yes. Is this an evil plot having anything to do with IP. No.
Nipples are good things to have on a mesh. Why? It makes fitting clothing a hell of a lot easier. If you know where the nipples are, when you are working on clothing that goes over the chest you know where to drop cloth. Personally, I am glad that they made real human bodies. I know the human body is evil and all and your eyes burn out of your skull if you see a pair of breast, people need to get the fuck over it. Yes, naked women have breast. The human body is not evil. Being naked is not automatically vulgar.
My advice is this. If you see a naked person and they are not being lewd, chill out and realize that you too are naked under your clothing. If you see a woman in the park breast feeding her child, don't call your congressmen worked up in hysteria. If you see a woman at the beach without a top on, chill the fuck out because if you are a dude, you probably don't have a top on either. People just need to chill out. Witnessing breast won't cause your head to explode.
And if possible implement some image recognition to "filter" skins/mods that appear nude. The ESRB apparently takes itself very seriously (too seriously), and if you really are interested in being able to sell your games at Wal-Mart to teens without having them to bring an adult along then you really have to play ball with these prudish rating boards.
That is, no offense, fucking idiotic. I don't want a damn game to actively try and prevent me from slapping a pair of tits in. If some modder wants to make a new mesh with topless women, the game should not try and stop him. I play these games and I am an adult. I can see a pair of breast at this age without humping the screen or having my parents send angry letters to congress. It is one thing to not include content, it is an entirely different thing to actively cripple the game so that if some stupid image recognition software thinks it is seeing breast, it blacks it out.
Video game developers are not there to baby-proof video games. There isn't a game out there that you couldn't add a pair of breast to. I am sure some modder for Need for Speed with enough knowledge could add a pair of boobs with wheels on them and call it a car.
It pisses me off that my content needs to be censored because a few prudish parents are too stupid to realize that if their kids are modding games to include breast, you better believe that they are downloading internet porn by the gigabyte. Whatever few pixilated breast they are seeing in video games is pocket change to the crap they can get off the Internet.
If your kid can unlock the art file, it is time to get a fucking clue and realize that your kid is more then capable of downloading more pr0n then you can possibly imagine. Further, these are just tits. This is not a sex mod. This is a human fucking body. I know the human body is evil and all, but grow the fuck up. Human females have tits. OMFG!!!11!!! Your mom has tits under her shirt and bra. That is right, even your mom has a little round circle of pink or brown skin with a raised pump. Guess what, your dad has a penis. Why in the hell are we so terrified that a kid might see what 50% of the population has? I know breasts are evil, but denying their existence doesn't make them go away.
If Oblivion had S&M mod locked away, I would understand the concern. They don't. They have nude models because all the characters in the game are dressed from the nude... you know, like real people. Maybe we should slap an M for mature on everyone's ass in the real world, just so that parents know that underneath all of their clothing they are naked, and nudity is the devils work.
I love America. I really do. There is no place on this Earth I would rather live. That said, some times we are so fucking uptight that if you shoved a lump a coal up the average American's ass, in two weeks you would have a diamond.*
*thank you Ferris Bueller.
Right, if we just don't show the kids tits, they won't want to have sex. Hello! Our bodies are designed to be fucking machines at that age. The reason why 15 year old kids are horney isn't because they see tits, it is because their bodies are pumped up on enough hormones that they can't pass an Olympic drug screening (hyperbole people).
Now, we as a culture might have decided that it is socially unacceptable to have sex until you are 18, but that doesn't change the reality of the hormones rushing their every adolescent kids' veins. Video games are not going to cause a kid to run off and have sex. If anything, being able to see a nice pair of fake digital tits and a few minutes in the bathroom might offer some temporary relief.
Video games don't make kids horney, hormons do.
How is Apple so sucessfull with exspensive hardware, restrictive DRM and counter intuitive software?
Aesthetics, marketing, marketing, and more marketing. Apple is damn good at marketing. iPods are absolutely "cool" these days. iPods look good, as do their computers. Once they have good looking functional products, they do an awesome job marketing them.
I am not saying that their products are inherently good or bad. The touch bad for the iPod was in fact was masterfully executed and their PC software is arguably very good. That said, other companies have come out with good interfaces and neat looking products before. What makes Apple so damn good is marketing. I don't mean marketing in the blitzing every TV station with the same fucking commercial marketing, I mean in the very broad sense of the word. They sell their product extremely well.
My mother went out and bought an iPod for my younger brother. She didn't buy that iPod because he asked for it, nor because she knew that iPods were a good MP3 player. She bought my little brother an iPod because the marketing had worked. When my little brother asked for an MP3 player for Christmas, her technology illiterate brain stretched back to think what would make my little brother happy. When she thought about MP3 players, an iPod commercial, a blurb about iPods she had heard on Good Morning America, or the vision of a kid she had seen on the sidewalk with one of these sleek little devices popped into her head. She went into a best buy, told someone she wanted an iPod, the sales rep eyes lit up, and he quickly took her to the most expensive iPod and worked his way down through sticker shock to the one she finally agreed upon. Best Buy took a cut of the profits and Apple took theirs.
Apple wins because of marketing. I can almost bet you that if you take marketing or business 10 years from now, you will read Apple's iPod as a case study.
Clearly the analogy is flawed, but the bigger issue is more the anti-competative hide-behind-the-DRM laws way that Apple operates. DRM is an irritation, but not something I think that should be made illegal. DRM is fine for throwing the minimal of road blocks in front of pirates. What irritates me is when DRM and DRM laws are combined to do something that has absolutely nothing to do with piracy.
What Apple (and I don't mean to pick on Apple, many other companies do this too) is to throw in a bare minimum of DRM that reduces the functionality of the device to anyone but Apple. Normally this would not be a big deal because Napster or Rhapsody could, with a little effort, find ways to unlike what has been DRMed away. The issue is that the law prevents these companies (or individuals for that matter) from working around the DRM. This DRM is NOT preventing illegal activity. The DRM is preventing others from using the device. The DRM is there for the singular purpose of crippling the functionality of the device to anyone but Apple. Despite the fact that the DRM is there only to cripple functionality and NOT to prevent piracy, it gets piracy law protection.
In essence, laws that say you can't temper with DRM have created a new law. That new law is that you can't tamper with devices that you own, even if piracy is in no way shape or form your intent. This is the same law that makes modding your X-Box, making your robot dog dance jazz, or using Napster with an iPod illegal. It isn't that modifying these devices is illegal and that companies have an inherent right of monopoly over everything they produce, it is that tampering with DRM is illegal. If you need to tamper with DRM in order to make any modification, that modification is illegal.
I know we are supposed to have one big love fest for Apple these days, but I loath Apple. They use some of the most abusive and monopolistic tactics out there to retain domain over all of their products.
This is not widely known, but Americans are not one uniformed cloned person. In fact, like most nations around the world (and probably more so then many other nations), they are a very diverse bunch.
You could probably point to the American public's support for the Iraq war as sympathy for Iraqi's. Many Americans really were convinced that with a few bombs and bullets they could make Iraq a nice shinny democracy for the Iraqi people.
Unfortunately (as in the case of Iraq), some times having the sympathy of the Americans is like giving a three year old kid a gerbil. He isn't really out to kill the gerbil, but that is generally what happens more times then not. In the American's case, getting American help is like asking a 10 ton giant to help you dress. His intentions might be the best, but good intentions are not going to put your arms back on after they have been ripped off.
I agree France's approach is wrong. However, I disagree with the "you know what you are getting" idea. The issue here is DRM. Apple is both the man selling you your car and the man at the pump.
.AAC product for their iPod is as insane as declaring that only Ford can make fuel for Ford cars. That sort of insanity would never have been allowed in the past, so why do we allow it today?
Imagine if Henry Ford was operating today in this day and age. He develops the first mass produced car and it is a big hit. Let's pretend that he also develops the first fuel service to fill said cars. Would it be okay if Ford cars could only run on Ford gas because Ford gas is spiked with a chemical that will prevent other cars from using it? I wouldn't be all that bothered by this, but lets follow this line of logic a little further.
Anachronisms aside, now let's pretend that Chrysler sees the success of Ford and wants to build off of it. Ford owns the best gas stations, so Chrysler decides that instead of competing in both cars and fuel, it will only compete with cars. Chrysler decides to build cars that will run off of Ford gas and reverse engineers a Ford car to figure out how. Is this okay? The equivalent of this would be if someone reverse engineered an iPod to figure out how to get AAC files to run on any MP3 player.
Throwing historical consistency to the wind, now perhaps Exxon decides it wants to compete in the fuel market. Most people use Ford cars that run Ford fuel. They can run other fuel, non-Ford fuel just doesn't run as well. Exxon realizes that it can't compete head to head, so Exxon offers an "all the gas you can guzzle" service at a flat rate using Ford fuel. Would it be okay if Exxon then decided make a Ford fuel equivalent and sell it to Ford users? This is like Napster making AAC files and selling their all you can eat service to iPod users (something they wish they could do).
The issue here is that it is insane to declare that Apple has some god given right to prevent competition on its products. For some insane reason, with this digital age we have blindly accepted that a product made by corporation is forever that corporations property even after it is sold, and therefore they can dictate its use. This is simply wrong. This sort monopolistic practice should be stopped.
Should Apple have to hand over how AAC files work? No. Should everyone and their dog be able to reverse engineer equivalents that will work on an iPod, you better believe it. The idea that only Apple can make a
Once a corporation sells you its product, that product should be yours, period. If you want to tear it open, rewrite its software, or whatever, that should be your right. If another company decides it wants to release peripheries for your product, that should be their right. Apple should not be allowed to use a law that says you can not circumvent DRM as a shield to hold a monopoly over what can be put onto their products once their products are sold. Hell, Napster should be able to write a "patch" for the iPod that allows it to play WMA if that is what tickles their fancy. Once the iPod is no longer in an Apple warehouse and is sitting on my desktop, it should be mine to do with as I please, end of story.
But then if you believe that afghanistan was instantly a successfull war and that its all over now, Im guessing your reading a bit too much into fox news in general.
Where in the hell did I say Afghanistan was "instantly a successful war"? Go ahead, find my quote, I'll wait. Oh hell, don't bother looking because I didn't say Afghanistan was good, and I certainly didn't say that it was successful. I said that a "publicity stunt" (i.e. 9/11) brought "awareness" to American Imperialism. It also convinced people that normally would never be for invading another nation and occupying it to go along with it simply because they were so disgusted with the methods used to bring awareness.
This point seems to have flown way over your head in favor of your made up point that I like war in Afghanistan and watch Fox News, but my point wasn't that Afghanistan was good or bad. My point was that not all methods of brining attention to a problem are good methods because disgust at the methods used can result in a violently negative response. In the same way ramming airplanes into buildings is a poor way to convince Americans that imperialism is bad an in fact tends to make them crazier and even more blood thirsty, Greenpeace trespassing and vandalizing private property doesn't help their cause. It makes environmentalist look like a bunch of stupid and bored college kids with far too much time on their hands who get their shit off by vandalizing.
Your fellow quasi-religious-enviro-fanatics might all cheer when Greenpeace goes and vandalizes some property, but your average dead center American voter is disgusted. Your average politician that is even a step right of center doesn't went to be associated with such vandals. It makes every environmentalist out there look like a bored college kid who gets his shit off vandalizing property in publicity stunts.
Calling someone an "environmentalist" used to be a curse because it was tied to extremist groups like Greenpeace. Thankfully, the word "environmentalist" has managed to shake of its stigma in the US in recent years, no thanks to Greenpeace. Through dialogue with scientist, economist, and non-publicity stunt whoring environmentalist organizations, the public has become aware of the need to be greener. Today, even Bush can admit to global warming. Believe me though it wasn't a bunch of rich ass hole college kids vandalizing property, that convinced a right wing president that maybe he too should at least pay lip services to the environment. Greenpeace is a pox on the entire environmentalist movement. I am just glad that REAL environmentalist in the from of economist and scientist have started to take over the spot light and shut these nuts out.
Terrorist attacks get coverage too. Last time I checked the last time someone tired that sort of publicity stunt in the US it resulted in one nation being instantly beaten into submission. I doubt that the goal of 9/11 was to get the Taliban government, which used to be safe haven for all manner of Jihadist, kicked over. Despite that, that is exactly what happened. People who would never have normally supported kicking over another government went along with it because the publicity stunt designed to call attention to American imperialism ended up uniting people against the tactics used.
Greenpeace, while certainly an order of magnitude less extreme, does roughly the same thing. They use tactics that your average person is disgusted by to get press coverage. What they fail to realize is that the disgust in their actions often far outweighs the 'awareness' they have spread.
There is a growing environmentalist movement in the United States. Greenpeace is not leading this movement with their various acts of vandalism. This movement is being led by scientist and economist who are communicating the need for environmental action. The crap that Greenpeace does sullies the reputation of all environmentalist. It is only through the hard work of scientist and economist that the environmentalist movement is starting to overcome the damage that Greenpeace has done. Hell, even Bush can admit to global warming these days. The fact that you have Republicans who can at least pay lips services to the environment is because lunatic vandal groups like Greenpeace are being sidelined by scientist and economist.
Having Thomas Friedman (a very famous quasi-libertarian that right wing folks love) come out and declare that oil is the devil and that we need to take proactive steps to get off of it has done far more to get people to look up and take the environment seriously then all the stupid acts of vandalism that bored rich college kids under the guise of Greenpeace have performed.
I have gone the same way. I am disgusted with the music industry these days. I have not bought a CD for myself in 5 years. I still listen to music, I just find free alternatives. Last.fm has done me some good, as have some podcasts.
If you want to try something really awesome, I highly suggest this:
http://scififriday.libsyn.com/
These are old sci-fi radio programs. I know what you are thinking, cheese upon cheese. I thought the same until I gave them a try. These old radio shows are damn fine. As it turns out violence WASN'T invented in the 21st century. I have not had so much good sci-fi in ages. Far from being cheesy, some of these tales are down right terrifying or surprisingly deep.
I had to twist the arm of my friends to give these radio shows a try, but now we have one going every time we need to make a long trip.
I am not sure if you joke, but I personally LOVE it when the executive and legislative branches are split. Nothing puts a bigger smile on my face then gridlock. Sadly though, in the case of DRM you are shit out luck from both parties. Neither of them have a coherent policy on DRM.
If you really want to impress me, find that on google video.