Two part question:
1) What, specifically, are you referring to as "psychic nonsense, paranormal, and pseudoscience?"
2) What scientific, empirical evidence can you present that proves your contention that what you label as supernatural phenomenon is always fraudulent? I.e., have you yourself conducted sufficient experimentation to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no such thing?
you're the clueless one, there are time tested and proven ways of attacking, killing, imprisoning those portions of a country's populace that are deemed troublesome. And the rest of the people will believe it their patriotic duty to make sacrificies of time, energy, money, means of production to support that government.
Yea, and we see how well that worked out for Hitler's Nazi's and the U.S.S.R., as both are now dominant world superpowers, right?
need a few links to get a clue?
Apparently I do, since history indicates otherwise.
Hey, numbnuts - How would the American government fund a war against Americans, if it caused us to stop paying taxes? Where do you think the U.S. Military's funding comes from, anyway? Magical unicorn farts?
Logistics - they ain't yer strong suit.
With debt? Something that our government is well acquainted with?
Just like with home loans, I'm betting it's going to be awful difficult to get war loans when your primary source of income happens to be the very people you're fighting against. In fact, I'd guess there's probably a fair amount of historical precedent when it comes to what happens to a nation that attempts a prolonged, armed conflict with it's own people; the U.S.S.R. comes readily to mind.
That's cool, but not problematic for a determined force in an urban setting - why bother trying to destroy the tank (or column of tanks), when I can much more easily demo a couple buildings around it, and bury the fucker in the rubble?
Demoing building reliably is way harder, as buildings are usually somewhat balanced. You need all sorts of carefully plaed explosive charges. At that point you may as well make an IED out of them instead.
Demoing buildings safely is hard, as they have to place the charges strategically around the building to ensure that it falls straight down. Demoing a building so it falls to one particular side isn't all that different from chainsawing down a tree.
Also, if the tank isn't destroyed then expect reinforcements to come with an engineering vehicle and extract the tank.
They have to get out of the engineering vehicle to set up the tow straps and whatnot, correct? Sniper fodder.
My point, which you've inadvertently helped me make, is that an inferior force can very much harry and harm a larger, more well equipped force; they (the inferior ones) just have to level the playing field. Here's some recommended reading that reinforces my stance.
Recently I've noticed a marked increase in A-10's practicing strafing runs over Highway's 65 and 54 in mid-Missouri (within range of Whitman AFB).
Awesome as it is to watch the pilots throw these monster machines around like toys, I do find it a bit unnerving when they "strafe" the highway in front of me, and have to wonder just what scenario they're practicing for...
Even wargamers know tanks are dead meat in cities under any circumstances other than a peaceful show of force, and more generally without infantry support they don't last long even in the "open" countryside.
I think dead meat may be a bit of an exaggeration, depending on who it is fighting against. Modern tanks (e.g. the Challenger II---the Abrams is somewhat older) are quite resistant to a variety of ordnance. Apparently they are essentially immune to RPG7s now (surviving 70 hits). While not invulnerable, none of those has been knocked out by enemy action, though the occupants have been injured.
That's cool, but not problematic for a determined force in an urban setting - why bother trying to destroy the tank (or column of tanks), when I can much more easily demo a couple buildings around it, and bury the fucker in the rubble?
Ok, you mine an area. Slows down tanks, gets a few kills, cost effectively destroys some equipment. Congrats.
Exactly how is that going to win a war though? I mean, great, now you get to live in a fucking minefield, until they finally get around to sweeping it. I know sweeping mines is dangerous, because i play the mine sweeping simulator that came with windows, but still. They can bring in helicopters. If you have shit that can shoot down helicopters, congratulations, you have yourselves a military target that is not against any conventions to shoot tomahawks at from the fucking ocean. How many fucking attack subs does your revolution have?
And you recruited the people to fight this war from the most affluent country in the world, that has a public health problem of obesity.
You realize that every country in the fucking world is going to contribute to the U.S. governments side, because there are enough nukes at stake to blow up the world 20 times over?
The whole thing is fucking stupid. A meaningful revolution cannot be fought with small arms alone, anyone that tells you otherwise is trying to sell you an assault rifle. These same people say we should have more tanks, and gunships, and bombers, and cruise missiles, and fighter jets, because they want to sell your government more tanks, and gunships, and bombers, and cruise missiles, and fighter jets.
Hey, numbnuts - How would the American government fund a war against Americans, if it caused us to stop paying taxes? Where do you think the U.S. Military's funding comes from, anyway? Magical unicorn farts?
And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.
I would take it differently. Jabba was incredibly intelligent, fat, lazy and ruthless.
Putting your newest unwilling slave on a leash long enough that she can choke your fat ass with it is not what I would consider a hallmark of superior intellect.
You don't come to control a major criminal element without being intelligent.
Again, I offer American politicians ans as a sterling counter-argument to that theory.
And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.
>If they really wanted to deliver a nuke, they'd ship it in on a tramp freighter or submarine, land on some remote area of the coast, and walk the thing in somewhere.
Since you can't have a colonoscopy and cross a bridge in the US without getting pulled over by DHS, I'm *sure* the above is going to work. You'd much rather have one of your give nukes delivered in 2.5 months, over a route filled with inspections and radiation detectors, than have it delivered in 12 minutes via missle.
An estimated 1,000,000 people secretly cross the border into the US every year; that's about 2,700 people per day.
I fear your confidence in the success rate of American border agents is overly optimistic.
Actually, it should be "Raise taxes and those taxed will find legal ways to avoid them; ways that the morons in Congress never anticipated."
(not legals)
Not sure about the semi-colon, maybe a comma?
Perhaps a Grammar Nazi could offer some insight.
Semi-colon would be right, although I think a hyphen would be more appropriate; also, there's a comma missing from the beginning of the phrase:
Raise taxes, and those taxed will find legal ways to avoid them - ways that the morons in Congress never anticipated
Ask the Fed why interest rates are low-- to encourage the taking of loans and spending of money. So the Fed wants us to spend money, to stimulate a still-stagnant economy.
Great idea.
Too bad the Fed only loans money to banks, who are still stuck in "hoard every penny" mode.
Are you really that stupid? Who do you think buys luxury cars & homes? The poor?
Um.
How many dollars worth of luxury cars and mansions are sold in this country each year?
Now take that figure and compare it to the dollars worth of regular cars and homes sold in this country each year.
It doesn't take a fucking Oxford fellow to understand that the wealthy actually spend less money on goods than the rest of us, and thus, would have a lower tax burden than the average American under the UnFair Tax proposal.
... and that's not even taking into account the myriad of luxury items that are tax-exempted, like yachts above a certain size.
Were I you, I'd refrain from denigrating the intellect of others, considering your own apparent inability to posit rational thought.
I am not even interested in watching HD, why do they think I'll care about this? Most people I know are pretty happy streaming onto their laptop something that looks pretty low res. I see plenty of details on zombies already.
If you're a grown adult and can't afford anything more than a laptop (we all have those) to watch your movies or whatever on, you need to close the laptop, and start working a bit harder to get a real job.
Damn, but you're being a judgmental prick today, aren't ya?
FYI, he never said anything finances; he was talking of personal preference. For all you know, OP may just think of HD as the latest, greatest money-grab (which it kinda is). Hell, with an attitude like that, I wouldn't be surprised to find out he's rich as fuck.
I dunno, I voted for the Dems and got Healthcare out of it.
Did you? I voted for Obama in '08, partially because of his promise to completely socialize health care (as a real, hardline fiscal conservative able to see beyond the end of my own nose, I find myself supporting programs that many people who claim to be fiscal conservatives balk at).
Thing is, that didn't happen - not only did the "compromise" do nothing to fix the massive cost issues associated with healthcare, it really didn't do anything good for anyone who doesn't own an insurance company.
So, in short, yea, you got "healthcare," but not the healthcare you voted for.
Unfortunately I also got a GOP minority that has flat out admitted they only intended to stop Obama, not actually govern.
Yea, that's just dumb, regardless of political philosophy.
Only thing more amazing that that bit of anti-American politicizing is the fact that they admitted it on record!
Please don't use that term - it's indicative of a subjective, completely emotional thought process that eschews reason in favor of sensationalism.
And yes, that applies to pretty much every single instance in which that term is used.
Does anyone really believe the Dems would have instituted the pseudo secret police state we have now on their own?
Libertarians have been lamenting the psuedo-duopolistic oligarchy's slow march towards authoritarian fascism for as long as I've been alive, probably longer.
Not their fault nobody listened before now.
Granted Obama and Dems have kept it mostly so they get strikes for that, but we're a boatload better now than in 2008.
Depends on how you define "better."
Fiscally, yes, the country isn't quite as tits-up as it was 4 years ago (still pretty fucked, just not as fucked), but from a human rights standpoint, we were better off with Bush*.
Think NDAA, PATRIOT Act renewal, attacks on the 2nd Amendment (yes, that counts, regardless of your personal opinion regarding firearms), rampant prosecutorial abuse, the straight-up assaults by police on peaceful protestors, the increase in deportations, and of course, the President's personal hit list, or as he prefers to call it, his "disposition matrix," which has included at least one American citizen; an American citizen who was executed summarily, with not even a semblance of due process.
*OK, technically we were better off before Bush, but you specifically mentioned the end of his Presidency, so I feel mentioning anyone prior to that would be non sequitur to this particular discussion.
The more I read about this, the less it seems such a simple, black-and-white issue. For example, according to TFA, the Obama campaign team based their work on existing open source software - If the aforementioned base software was licensed* as GPLv3, wouldn't that mean that all derivative works must also be licensed as GPLv3, and thus, be open source and publicly available?
Murky waters...
* As far as I can tell, TFA doesn't mention what the base software was licensed under, only that it was open source.
Get a Camcorder and hook it up to their TV. Seriously, it's that simple, Get a camcorder with HDMI out, mount it on a tripod, and run and HDMI cord under the rug.
No software needed. $300 for a camcorder and $40 for a tripod, $30 for a long HDMI cable. The camcorder has the light built in.
I'll second this, with the caveat that you don't need the newest, most expensive stuff to make it work - I've achieved perfectly usable results with nothing more than a $50 hi-8 camcorder and component cables (televisions do still have component hookups, right?).
Slashdot Mirror
Two part question:
1) What, specifically, are you referring to as "psychic nonsense, paranormal, and pseudoscience?"
2) What scientific, empirical evidence can you present that proves your contention that what you label as supernatural phenomenon is always fraudulent? I.e., have you yourself conducted sufficient experimentation to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no such thing?
you're the clueless one, there are time tested and proven ways of attacking, killing, imprisoning those portions of a country's populace that are deemed troublesome. And the rest of the people will believe it their patriotic duty to make sacrificies of time, energy, money, means of production to support that government.
Yea, and we see how well that worked out for Hitler's Nazi's and the U.S.S.R., as both are now dominant world superpowers, right?
need a few links to get a clue?
Apparently I do, since history indicates otherwise.
Hey, numbnuts - How would the American government fund a war against Americans, if it caused us to stop paying taxes? Where do you think the U.S. Military's funding comes from, anyway? Magical unicorn farts?
Logistics - they ain't yer strong suit.
With debt? Something that our government is well acquainted with?
Just like with home loans, I'm betting it's going to be awful difficult to get war loans when your primary source of income happens to be the very people you're fighting against. In fact, I'd guess there's probably a fair amount of historical precedent when it comes to what happens to a nation that attempts a prolonged, armed conflict with it's own people; the U.S.S.R. comes readily to mind.
That's cool, but not problematic for a determined force in an urban setting - why bother trying to destroy the tank (or column of tanks), when I can much more easily demo a couple buildings around it, and bury the fucker in the rubble?
Demoing building reliably is way harder, as buildings are usually somewhat balanced. You need all sorts of carefully plaed explosive charges. At that point you may as well make an IED out of them instead.
Demoing buildings safely is hard, as they have to place the charges strategically around the building to ensure that it falls straight down. Demoing a building so it falls to one particular side isn't all that different from chainsawing down a tree.
Also, if the tank isn't destroyed then expect reinforcements to come with an engineering vehicle and extract the tank.
They have to get out of the engineering vehicle to set up the tow straps and whatnot, correct? Sniper fodder.
My point, which you've inadvertently helped me make, is that an inferior force can very much harry and harm a larger, more well equipped force; they (the inferior ones) just have to level the playing field. Here's some recommended reading that reinforces my stance.
Shame on you for using epithets such as trooferism. Propaganda to marginalize certain opinions is a bloody dangerous and slippery slope.
Not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic here, but you make a good point.
If an opinion is truly stupid, it should marginalize itself, without the need for personal and ad hominem attacks.
I would have banned him too, for all we know they were stress testing the login servers.
Then you're probably one of those pointy-headed idiots that has no business being in charge of anything.
Obviously they were shooting energy burst rounds at an invisible alien ghost and now they're covering it up.
Holy shit, Scientology is right!!!
Recently I've noticed a marked increase in A-10's practicing strafing runs over Highway's 65 and 54 in mid-Missouri (within range of Whitman AFB).
Awesome as it is to watch the pilots throw these monster machines around like toys, I do find it a bit unnerving when they "strafe" the highway in front of me, and have to wonder just what scenario they're practicing for...
Because dudes with rifles can take down a machinegun-totin' helicopter.
Indeed they can
Even wargamers know tanks are dead meat in cities under any circumstances other than a peaceful show of force, and more generally without infantry support they don't last long even in the "open" countryside.
I think dead meat may be a bit of an exaggeration, depending on who it is fighting against. Modern tanks (e.g. the Challenger II---the Abrams is somewhat older) are quite resistant to a variety of ordnance. Apparently they are essentially immune to RPG7s now (surviving 70 hits). While not invulnerable, none of those has been knocked out by enemy action, though the occupants have been injured.
That's cool, but not problematic for a determined force in an urban setting - why bother trying to destroy the tank (or column of tanks), when I can much more easily demo a couple buildings around it, and bury the fucker in the rubble?
Ok, you mine an area. Slows down tanks, gets a few kills, cost effectively destroys some equipment. Congrats.
Exactly how is that going to win a war though? I mean, great, now you get to live in a fucking minefield, until they finally get around to sweeping it. I know sweeping mines is dangerous, because i play the mine sweeping simulator that came with windows, but still. They can bring in helicopters. If you have shit that can shoot down helicopters, congratulations, you have yourselves a military target that is not against any conventions to shoot tomahawks at from the fucking ocean. How many fucking attack subs does your revolution have?
And you recruited the people to fight this war from the most affluent country in the world, that has a public health problem of obesity.
You realize that every country in the fucking world is going to contribute to the U.S. governments side, because there are enough nukes at stake to blow up the world 20 times over?
The whole thing is fucking stupid. A meaningful revolution cannot be fought with small arms alone, anyone that tells you otherwise is trying to sell you an assault rifle. These same people say we should have more tanks, and gunships, and bombers, and cruise missiles, and fighter jets, because they want to sell your government more tanks, and gunships, and bombers, and cruise missiles, and fighter jets.
Hey, numbnuts - How would the American government fund a war against Americans, if it caused us to stop paying taxes? Where do you think the U.S. Military's funding comes from, anyway? Magical unicorn farts?
Logistics - they ain't yer strong suit.
Gotta love unsecured, web-facing peripherals.
Personally, I prefer searching for IP cameras
And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.
I would take it differently. Jabba was incredibly intelligent, fat, lazy and ruthless.
Putting your newest unwilling slave on a leash long enough that she can choke your fat ass with it is not what I would consider a hallmark of superior intellect.
You don't come to control a major criminal element without being intelligent.
Again, I offer American politicians ans as a sterling counter-argument to that theory.
It puts its stereotypes in the basket!
Perhaps with some fava beans and a nice chianti...
Is there anything left in the world that the big bad white man hasn't destroyed through 'racism'?
...
Porn?
Huh.
And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.
An estimated 1,000,000 people secretly cross the border into the US every year; that's about 2,700 people per day. ...
It must not be much of a secret then...
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/secretly
The word has more than one definition, you know.
>If they really wanted to deliver a nuke, they'd ship it in on a tramp freighter or submarine, land on some remote area of the coast, and walk the thing in somewhere.
Since you can't have a colonoscopy and cross a bridge in the US without getting pulled over by DHS, I'm *sure* the above is going to work. You'd much rather have one of your give nukes delivered in 2.5 months, over a route filled with inspections and radiation detectors, than have it delivered in 12 minutes via missle.
An estimated 1,000,000 people secretly cross the border into the US every year; that's about 2,700 people per day.
I fear your confidence in the success rate of American border agents is overly optimistic.
Actually, it should be "Raise taxes and those taxed will find legal ways to avoid them; ways that the morons in Congress never anticipated." (not legals)
Not sure about the semi-colon, maybe a comma?
Perhaps a Grammar Nazi could offer some insight.
Semi-colon would be right, although I think a hyphen would be more appropriate; also, there's a comma missing from the beginning of the phrase:
Raise taxes, and those taxed will find legal ways to avoid them - ways that the morons in Congress never anticipated
Ask the Fed why interest rates are low-- to encourage the taking of loans and spending of money. So the Fed wants us to spend money, to stimulate a still-stagnant economy.
Great idea.
Too bad the Fed only loans money to banks, who are still stuck in "hoard every penny" mode.
Are you really that stupid? Who do you think buys luxury cars & homes? The poor?
Um.
... and that's not even taking into account the myriad of luxury items that are tax-exempted, like yachts above a certain size.
How many dollars worth of luxury cars and mansions are sold in this country each year?
Now take that figure and compare it to the dollars worth of regular cars and homes sold in this country each year.
It doesn't take a fucking Oxford fellow to understand that the wealthy actually spend less money on goods than the rest of us, and thus, would have a lower tax burden than the average American under the UnFair Tax proposal.
Were I you, I'd refrain from denigrating the intellect of others, considering your own apparent inability to posit rational thought.
If you're a grown adult and can't afford anything more than a laptop (we all have those) to watch your movies or whatever on, you need to close the laptop, and start working a bit harder to get a real job.
Damn, but you're being a judgmental prick today, aren't ya?
FYI, he never said anything finances; he was talking of personal preference. For all you know, OP may just think of HD as the latest, greatest money-grab (which it kinda is). Hell, with an attitude like that, I wouldn't be surprised to find out he's rich as fuck.
I dunno, I voted for the Dems and got Healthcare out of it.
Did you? I voted for Obama in '08, partially because of his promise to completely socialize health care (as a real, hardline fiscal conservative able to see beyond the end of my own nose, I find myself supporting programs that many people who claim to be fiscal conservatives balk at).
Thing is, that didn't happen - not only did the "compromise" do nothing to fix the massive cost issues associated with healthcare, it really didn't do anything good for anyone who doesn't own an insurance company.
So, in short, yea, you got "healthcare," but not the healthcare you voted for.
Unfortunately I also got a GOP minority that has flat out admitted they only intended to stop Obama, not actually govern.
Yea, that's just dumb, regardless of political philosophy.
Only thing more amazing that that bit of anti-American politicizing is the fact that they admitted it on record!
Please don't use that term - it's indicative of a subjective, completely emotional thought process that eschews reason in favor of sensationalism.
And yes, that applies to pretty much every single instance in which that term is used.
Does anyone really believe the Dems would have instituted the pseudo secret police state we have now on their own?
Libertarians have been lamenting the psuedo-duopolistic oligarchy's slow march towards authoritarian fascism for as long as I've been alive, probably longer.
Not their fault nobody listened before now.
Granted Obama and Dems have kept it mostly so they get strikes for that, but we're a boatload better now than in 2008.
Depends on how you define "better."
Fiscally, yes, the country isn't quite as tits-up as it was 4 years ago (still pretty fucked, just not as fucked), but from a human rights standpoint, we were better off with Bush*.
Think NDAA, PATRIOT Act renewal, attacks on the 2nd Amendment (yes, that counts, regardless of your personal opinion regarding firearms), rampant prosecutorial abuse, the straight-up assaults by police on peaceful protestors, the increase in deportations, and of course, the President's personal hit list, or as he prefers to call it, his "disposition matrix," which has included at least one American citizen; an American citizen who was executed summarily, with not even a semblance of due process.
*OK, technically we were better off before Bush, but you specifically mentioned the end of his Presidency, so I feel mentioning anyone prior to that would be non sequitur to this particular discussion.
The more I read about this, the less it seems such a simple, black-and-white issue. For example, according to TFA, the Obama campaign team based their work on existing open source software - If the aforementioned base software was licensed* as GPLv3, wouldn't that mean that all derivative works must also be licensed as GPLv3, and thus, be open source and publicly available?
Murky waters...
* As far as I can tell, TFA doesn't mention what the base software was licensed under, only that it was open source.
Get a Camcorder and hook it up to their TV. Seriously, it's that simple, Get a camcorder with HDMI out, mount it on a tripod, and run and HDMI cord under the rug. No software needed. $300 for a camcorder and $40 for a tripod, $30 for a long HDMI cable. The camcorder has the light built in.
I'll second this, with the caveat that you don't need the newest, most expensive stuff to make it work - I've achieved perfectly usable results with nothing more than a $50 hi-8 camcorder and component cables (televisions do still have component hookups, right?).