Way too many people are hung up on the idea of Microsoft "abusing its monopoly" by accidentally blocking the FSF's donation page. Let's pretend Microsoft had a monopoly on web filters or something. Does preventing people from donating to the FSF make it more likely that people will donate to Microsoft's Open Source charity? Since Microsoft doesn't have an Open Source charity, I'd guess no.
What is wrong with you? Most of your points are insane?
economic collapse: at least the EU is working to have its budget deficit removed.
No they aren't. They're rejecting so-called austerity measures. (Note: Just raising taxes is not austerity. Spending cuts have to be part of the deal.) France just replaced a centrist with a socialist.
- xenophobia: the USA doesn't have a Westborough church, KKK, private militias, and people from the USA can generally point out any given country on a world map. right?
"Point to countries on a map" is a pretty stupid test of geography. It doesn't have anything to do with xenophobia. The WBC is not a xenophobic organization. They're an anti-gay organization, and they hate Americans for "supporting" gays. Also there's like 50 of them, tops. pointing to them and saying "this is what's wrong with America" is kind of dopey. The KKK and similar organizations (e.g. the Black Panthers) exist, but they don't have the ability to cause race riots, such as the ones France had a few years back?
discrimination: the US was the last civilized country to have institutionalized discrimination. Ms Rosa Parks anyone?
No, actually it wasn't. What about South Africa? Hell, France bans women from wearing Muslim headdresses and bans Mosques from being above a certain height, even while not banning Christian churches from being above that height. These laws are on the books TODAY!!!
feudalism: won't even touch the subject with regard to US society but think of how you treat your (former) criminals.
We don't make ex-cons work on land owned by a noble, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to be thinking about.
imperialism: no no sir the US does not have imperialist politics! no international army presence no sir!
With one exception, US troops are in other countries at the invitation of the host nation. In the case of Afghanistan, people attacked us and then hid in Afghanistan with the support of the Afghan government. We have the right to defend ourselves from attackers. Sorry.
religious wars: didn't we have a decade of the USA vs Islam?
No. See above.
genocide: there is a debate if killing 1000s of unsuspecting soldiers (drafted by their dictators) by just sending in very advanced weaponry, missiles is a form of genocide.
No there isn't. If they're uniformed enemy soldiers, killing them with non-barbaric weapons is by definition not a war crime. Also, in a genocide, you would have to be targeting an entire ethnic group, not just an army,
totalitarianism: there are no states in the US trying to control what science can be taught in schools, right?
Not totalitarianism. According to the Constitution, the states should be in charge of deciding EVERYTHING that is taught in schools. The federal government should have no part in it.
Or try to be different in the US, like being openly gay, leftish or green.
If you're a leftist in this country you can expect the media to cover for your mistakes and promote your moronic causes even when normal people hate you (like Occupy or Fast and Furious.) If you're green, you can expect 500 million in taxpayer loans that you never have to pay back because you have a stupid idea (Solyndra.) And if you're openly gay (and an asshole, mind you. Normal gay people don't do this) you can have support from the President while you bully schoolchildren for being religious.
They were first used at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, but thanks for trying.
As if that invalidates any point I made...
Well, you ascribed them to George W. Bush. In 1988, Bush was not an elected official. He was also never a Democrat. Not every bad thing is the fault of the Bush administration. Given the extent to which Democrat groups are trying to control the Occupy protests, the fact that Democrats came up with the tactic of "Free Speech Zones" (and still use them liberally) is kind of relevant, no?
What? No. There's a Republican plan (that involves cutting spending elsewhere to pay for the lower interest rates) that Democrats are blocking debate on. But God forbid Slashdot cover that.
You're crazy. The DEMOCRATS passed the original bill in 2007. The DEMOCRATS set it to expire this year so they could accuse Republicans of being evil, and hoped that nobody would notice the fact that the Democrats passed the bill in the first place.
Republicans seem to vote against anything that Democrats propose. I'm 50 and I've never seen this in my entire life.
When you were 45 (in 2007), Democrats proposed raising the student loan interest rate in 2012. The Republicans were against it, but Democrats wouldn't compromise and did it anyway.
Anyone can call anyone else a thug on the internet, thug or not. Some people on the list are clearly thugs. (Sharpton starts race riots. Holder sells assault weapons to narco-terroists.) Others are clearly not. (Are Bush or Gonzalez thugs? Why?) All six people have tons of references to them being thugs, despite whether they're actually thugs.
Reminds me of the time Newt Gingrich called Obama a "food stamp president." No reference to race, but somehow all the racists understand exactly what he's talking about. Look up "dogwhistle" for me.
More white people are on food stamps than black people, as Gingrich pointed out when he made the comment. The economy has gotten worse for people of every color under Obama (hence requiring more people on food stamps.) So Gingrich was accusing Obama of being bad for the econo-...
Oh, wait. When you said "racist" you meant "anyone who doesn't agree with your crazy world view." Sorry about that.
The comments about Strauss-Khan are a red herring. The man is a politician who is the alleged target of a conspiracy by his political enemies. I don't know enough about French/European politics to comment on whether he was in fact set up.
But back to Clinton. Paula Jones accused Clinton of sexually harassing her, which Clinton denied. How do you prove anything in that kind of he said, she said?
Jones's lawyers tried to show that Clinton had had sexual relationships with a large number of other government employees, one of whom was Lewinsky. Clinton lied about having sex with Lewinsky, which potentially got him off the hook for a serious tort. (He would later settle with Jones when her appeal went better than her initial suit.) That's what he was impeached for. Lying under oath.
The problem is that he lied under oath. He was accused of sexually harassing an intern, and was being sued for it. Isn't the fact that he got a blowjob from a different intern relevant as evidence in that case?
"Must Carry" is a broadcaster right. ABC can go to a cable provider and say, "You must carry us." If they do that, they can't charge the cable company. They don't. Instead, they waive their must carry right and negotiate payment and concessions.
Your civics class is wrong in most cases. A taxation bill has to start in the House. Any other kind of bill can start in either the House or the Senate.
Also, ACTA is a treaty, which only needs ratification by the Senate.
We also have regional holidays, such as an NASCAR Cup race in the south.
Yeah, I don't get this one. I worked with some people in Pennsylvania last year who didn't want to schedule anything on the Monday following the three February holidays: Presidents' Day, Super Bowl Sunday, and the Daytona 500. I grew up 200 miles east of there (in NJ) and never heard of anyone "celebrating" for a NASCAR race.
A lot of people came on here to claim that the Super Bowl is a national holiday. Duh. I'm an American. I like my beer shitty, my job out of walking distance, and my football 11 1/2 inches long.
I assume that the Premier League has a championship game every season. Does any British person want to comment on whether everyone assumes that everyone will show up to work drunk the day after that?
A Gridiron ("American") football is so named because when the game was invented, the ball was 12 inches long.
Interestingly, Association football is named after the fact that it was originally played by peasants, on foot. (The comparison was to polo, which was played by rich people on horseback.)
As for the importance of our respective footballs, is the championship game of your football season essentially a national holiday?
The article you're quoting from (and certainly the portion you're quoting) primarily covers Association Football (i.e. soccer.)
Gridiron football is a closer relative to rugby than either association football or the peasants playing on foot games from which association derives its names.
Given the fact that the word "soccer" was beginning to be popularized (whether by Charles Wrenford-Brown or not) around the 1880s, and that era's version of Gridiron Football was very close to rugby with a larger ball, Gridiron players decided to name the game after its defining characteristic. The ball that is 12 inches long. The "Foot"ball.
a North American game in which a ball is normally carried by hand and passed from hand-to-hand;
The North American game ("Gridiron Football") is so named because when the game was invented, the ball was 12 inches (1 foot) long from tip to tip. The modern ball is 11.5 inches because it makes the forward pass easier.
or:
a rest-of-the-world game in which a ball is controlled and passed by use of foot or head.
The game you're talking about ("Association Football") gets its name from being played on foot. (As opposed to on horseback, like polo.)
and this is why as part of said system you have a camera and can pan it about to show them gun toting crazy criminals whom want you to vote for mick romney won't get elected.
This is why I hope that the next President, whoever it is, makes education reform a priority. The fact that someone thought this was a coherent sentence shows that the current system isn't working.
I've searched and searched and found no reports that she is 23. I found many, many articles claiming she was reported to be 23, but not one of them mentions a source for that claim.
Because they fixed it now because she's obviously 30 and not 23. ABC Radio News and MSNBC both reported her as being 23 when it happened. No links, because they're not online sources. Sorry.
part of her testimony was that she was "shocked" to find out (while already a student) that her Georgetown health insurance didn't cover birth control. Since she has said she went to Georgetown SPECIFICALLY to challenge this policy, that means that she lied in her press conference.
First off, testifying in front of Congress is not the same as a press conference. Second, I've read (and searched) her testimony. The word shocked is nowhere to be found.
Those were scare quotes and a typo. I had meant to put the quotes around "testimony." My bad. That said, look at the part of her testimony at the end, where she said she "expected" them to cover birth control various times, couched in phrases like “We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us." (This is a direct response to "some conservative Catholic organizations [who] have been asking 'What did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?'")
Fluke DIDN'T testify before Congress, remember? Issa turned her down because the Democrats said that they wanted someone else, and then tried to switch at the last minute. The speech we've been arguing over was given at a press conference. There were no Republicans present to ask her questions, which would have happened at the legitimate hearing. She was also not under oath. Her remarks were also not entered in the Congressional Record. It was NOT a real hearing.
Oh, so she's a "plant" because she's been a professional activist in addition to being a student. By your definition, almost every politician in Washington is a "plant."
If a paid lobbyist doesn't disclose the fact that they're a paid lobbyist, then yes, they're a plant. (Hint: Everyone who actually testified before the committee was a professional lobbyist too. The difference is that they disclosed that fact.)
Seriously, though, you've never bought birth control? In the circles I travel in, a guy is a douche (and probably also a moron asking for drama) if he doesn't provide his own condoms.
Nice, a red herring and an ad hominem at the same time. You get double logical fallacy bonus points! We haven't been talking about condoms -- we've been talking about hormonal birth control.
I wasn't calling you a douche (or probably a moron asking for drama) for not buying condoms. You most likely don't travel in the same circles I do, that's all. Still, condoms are a valid form of birth control, and should be taken into account when discussing forms of birth control.
You are talking like she said [$3000 over three years] is the minimum cost. And I'm supposed to believe she is the liar?
$3000 is so far away from the average that portraying that as normal the way she did is a mindblowing lie.
In fact, half her point was that even though the insurance technically covers non-contraceptive use of birth control, it can be difficult to get it to cover such use in practice.
What I heard reported is that that isn't true, and Georgetown insurance is a lot better with this than Fluke was saying. Again, I heard this in a radio interview, for which I don't have a link. If they had someone who was actually affected by this policy, they would have used her.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple has religious fanatics?
Your reply has nothing to do with monopoly abuse. If you want to post about some crazy conspiracy, write your own post. Don't piggyback off of mine.
Way too many people are hung up on the idea of Microsoft "abusing its monopoly" by accidentally blocking the FSF's donation page. Let's pretend Microsoft had a monopoly on web filters or something. Does preventing people from donating to the FSF make it more likely that people will donate to Microsoft's Open Source charity? Since Microsoft doesn't have an Open Source charity, I'd guess no.
economic collapse: at least the EU is working to have its budget deficit removed.
No they aren't. They're rejecting so-called austerity measures. (Note: Just raising taxes is not austerity. Spending cuts have to be part of the deal.) France just replaced a centrist with a socialist.
- xenophobia: the USA doesn't have a Westborough church, KKK, private militias, and people from the USA can generally point out any given country on a world map. right?
"Point to countries on a map" is a pretty stupid test of geography. It doesn't have anything to do with xenophobia. The WBC is not a xenophobic organization. They're an anti-gay organization, and they hate Americans for "supporting" gays. Also there's like 50 of them, tops. pointing to them and saying "this is what's wrong with America" is kind of dopey. The KKK and similar organizations (e.g. the Black Panthers) exist, but they don't have the ability to cause race riots, such as the ones France had a few years back?
discrimination: the US was the last civilized country to have institutionalized discrimination. Ms Rosa Parks anyone?
No, actually it wasn't. What about South Africa? Hell, France bans women from wearing Muslim headdresses and bans Mosques from being above a certain height, even while not banning Christian churches from being above that height. These laws are on the books TODAY!!!
feudalism: won't even touch the subject with regard to US society but think of how you treat your (former) criminals.
We don't make ex-cons work on land owned by a noble, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to be thinking about.
imperialism: no no sir the US does not have imperialist politics! no international army presence no sir!
With one exception, US troops are in other countries at the invitation of the host nation. In the case of Afghanistan, people attacked us and then hid in Afghanistan with the support of the Afghan government. We have the right to defend ourselves from attackers. Sorry.
religious wars: didn't we have a decade of the USA vs Islam?
No. See above.
genocide: there is a debate if killing 1000s of unsuspecting soldiers (drafted by their dictators) by just sending in very advanced weaponry, missiles is a form of genocide.
No there isn't. If they're uniformed enemy soldiers, killing them with non-barbaric weapons is by definition not a war crime. Also, in a genocide, you would have to be targeting an entire ethnic group, not just an army,
totalitarianism: there are no states in the US trying to control what science can be taught in schools, right?
Not totalitarianism. According to the Constitution, the states should be in charge of deciding EVERYTHING that is taught in schools. The federal government should have no part in it.
Or try to be different in the US, like being openly gay, leftish or green.
If you're a leftist in this country you can expect the media to cover for your mistakes and promote your moronic causes even when normal people hate you (like Occupy or Fast and Furious.) If you're green, you can expect 500 million in taxpayer loans that you never have to pay back because you have a stupid idea (Solyndra.) And if you're openly gay (and an asshole, mind you. Normal gay people don't do this) you can have support from the President while you bully schoolchildren for being religious.
Are we talking about the same America?
They were first used at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, but thanks for trying.
As if that invalidates any point I made...
Well, you ascribed them to George W. Bush. In 1988, Bush was not an elected official. He was also never a Democrat. Not every bad thing is the fault of the Bush administration. Given the extent to which Democrat groups are trying to control the Occupy protests, the fact that Democrats came up with the tactic of "Free Speech Zones" (and still use them liberally) is kind of relevant, no?
It's really no different than the "Free Speech Zones" they started breaking out during W.'s term.
They were first used at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, but thanks for trying.
Gridiron football derives its name from the fact that the ball was historically 12 inches long.
I have a friend that is doing top of the line voting de-duplication and he sees fraud in them already, but no one wants to listen to him.
Jim's Friend: Sir, I've finished my voting de-duplication process. We've got one vote for Bush, one vote for Gore, and one vote for Nader.
Election official: NOW what are we going to do?
What? No. There's a Republican plan (that involves cutting spending elsewhere to pay for the lower interest rates) that Democrats are blocking debate on. But God forbid Slashdot cover that.
Congratulations, benjfowler. You didn't notice.
Republicans seem to vote against anything that Democrats propose. I'm 50 and I've never seen this in my entire life.
When you were 45 (in 2007), Democrats proposed raising the student loan interest rate in 2012. The Republicans were against it, but Democrats wouldn't compromise and did it anyway.
Look how that turned out.
Republicans have been opposed to this since before Obama took office.
Anyone can call anyone else a thug on the internet, thug or not. Some people on the list are clearly thugs. (Sharpton starts race riots. Holder sells assault weapons to narco-terroists.) Others are clearly not. (Are Bush or Gonzalez thugs? Why?) All six people have tons of references to them being thugs, despite whether they're actually thugs.
Reminds me of the time Newt Gingrich called Obama a "food stamp president." No reference to race, but somehow all the racists understand exactly what he's talking about. Look up "dogwhistle" for me.
More white people are on food stamps than black people, as Gingrich pointed out when he made the comment. The economy has gotten worse for people of every color under Obama (hence requiring more people on food stamps.) So Gingrich was accusing Obama of being bad for the econo-...
Oh, wait. When you said "racist" you meant "anyone who doesn't agree with your crazy world view." Sorry about that.
Asshole.
But back to Clinton. Paula Jones accused Clinton of sexually harassing her, which Clinton denied. How do you prove anything in that kind of he said, she said?
Jones's lawyers tried to show that Clinton had had sexual relationships with a large number of other government employees, one of whom was Lewinsky. Clinton lied about having sex with Lewinsky, which potentially got him off the hook for a serious tort. (He would later settle with Jones when her appeal went better than her initial suit.) That's what he was impeached for. Lying under oath.
Or is perjury not illegal in Europe?
There is no similiar right for cable companies.
Also, ACTA is a treaty, which only needs ratification by the Senate.
We also have regional holidays, such as an NASCAR Cup race in the south.
Yeah, I don't get this one. I worked with some people in Pennsylvania last year who didn't want to schedule anything on the Monday following the three February holidays: Presidents' Day, Super Bowl Sunday, and the Daytona 500. I grew up 200 miles east of there (in NJ) and never heard of anyone "celebrating" for a NASCAR race.
Different strokes, I guess.
I assume that the Premier League has a championship game every season. Does any British person want to comment on whether everyone assumes that everyone will show up to work drunk the day after that?
Interestingly, Association football is named after the fact that it was originally played by peasants, on foot. (The comparison was to polo, which was played by rich people on horseback.)
As for the importance of our respective footballs, is the championship game of your football season essentially a national holiday?
Gridiron football is a closer relative to rugby than either association football or the peasants playing on foot games from which association derives its names.
Given the fact that the word "soccer" was beginning to be popularized (whether by Charles Wrenford-Brown or not) around the 1880s, and that era's version of Gridiron Football was very close to rugby with a larger ball, Gridiron players decided to name the game after its defining characteristic. The ball that is 12 inches long. The "Foot"ball.
Either:
a North American game in which a ball is normally carried by hand and passed from hand-to-hand;
The North American game ("Gridiron Football") is so named because when the game was invented, the ball was 12 inches (1 foot) long from tip to tip. The modern ball is 11.5 inches because it makes the forward pass easier.
or:
a rest-of-the-world game in which a ball is controlled and passed by use of foot or head.
The game you're talking about ("Association Football") gets its name from being played on foot. (As opposed to on horseback, like polo.)
and this is why as part of said system you have a camera and can pan it about to show them gun toting crazy criminals whom want you to vote for mick romney won't get elected.
This is why I hope that the next President, whoever it is, makes education reform a priority. The fact that someone thought this was a coherent sentence shows that the current system isn't working.
I've searched and searched and found no reports that she is 23. I found many, many articles claiming she was reported to be 23, but not one of them mentions a source for that claim.
Because they fixed it now because she's obviously 30 and not 23. ABC Radio News and MSNBC both reported her as being 23 when it happened. No links, because they're not online sources. Sorry.
part of her testimony was that she was "shocked" to find out (while already a student) that her Georgetown health insurance didn't cover birth control. Since she has said she went to Georgetown SPECIFICALLY to challenge this policy, that means that she lied in her press conference.
First off, testifying in front of Congress is not the same as a press conference. Second, I've read (and searched) her testimony. The word shocked is nowhere to be found.
Those were scare quotes and a typo. I had meant to put the quotes around "testimony." My bad. That said, look at the part of her testimony at the end, where she said she "expected" them to cover birth control various times, couched in phrases like “We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us." (This is a direct response to "some conservative Catholic organizations [who] have been asking 'What did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?'")
Fluke DIDN'T testify before Congress, remember? Issa turned her down because the Democrats said that they wanted someone else, and then tried to switch at the last minute. The speech we've been arguing over was given at a press conference. There were no Republicans present to ask her questions, which would have happened at the legitimate hearing. She was also not under oath. Her remarks were also not entered in the Congressional Record. It was NOT a real hearing.
Oh, so she's a "plant" because she's been a professional activist in addition to being a student. By your definition, almost every politician in Washington is a "plant."
If a paid lobbyist doesn't disclose the fact that they're a paid lobbyist, then yes, they're a plant. (Hint: Everyone who actually testified before the committee was a professional lobbyist too. The difference is that they disclosed that fact.)
Seriously, though, you've never bought birth control? In the circles I travel in, a guy is a douche (and probably also a moron asking for drama) if he doesn't provide his own condoms.
Nice, a red herring and an ad hominem at the same time. You get double logical fallacy bonus points! We haven't been talking about condoms -- we've been talking about hormonal birth control.
I wasn't calling you a douche (or probably a moron asking for drama) for not buying condoms. You most likely don't travel in the same circles I do, that's all. Still, condoms are a valid form of birth control, and should be taken into account when discussing forms of birth control.
You are talking like she said [$3000 over three years] is the minimum cost. And I'm supposed to believe she is the liar?
$3000 is so far away from the average that portraying that as normal the way she did is a mindblowing lie.
In fact, half her point was that even though the insurance technically covers non-contraceptive use of birth control, it can be difficult to get it to cover such use in practice.
What I heard reported is that that isn't true, and Georgetown insurance is a lot better with this than Fluke was saying. Again, I heard this in a radio interview, for which I don't have a link. If they had someone who was actually affected by this policy, they would have used her.