Whether you worry or not is your choice. Grow up. We all have to be adults here and face the real world. A world where like it or not, be at peace or not, people are just going to come out of the woodwork and try and kill you. This is NOT a "live and let live" world. You think it is? Talk to Neville Chamberlain.
No, it's not a live and let live world. Neither we nor the terrorists are allowing it to be. The Iraqi civilian whose house has been carpet bombed was trying to live and let live, but it doesn't work very well when we kill him. Incidently, you might also talk to Mahatma Ghandi.
The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us. You know how we fix this problem? We MUST destroy BOTH their ability and desire to wage war with us, and we don't stop until those have been absolutely achieved. The Japanese were a far more brave and zealous enemy than the fascist militant Islamics are, and we won.
Hitler wanted to destroy all the terrorist threats to the Third Reich too. His justification for invading Poland was to root out the Polish threat. Your thinking seems very much in-line with his. Also, do you actually know what 'fascist' means?
Our current enemy is far more dangerous because of their tactics and capability. Wishing for the threat of new attacks to go away will not take them away. Myself and hundreds of millions of other American citizens are not going to let snide "armchair quarterback" academics try and reason-away responsibilities.
Snide "armchair quarterback" academics are the ones running the show in the Bush administration.
We're not going to let them establish moral equivilance between the U.S. and it's current aggressors, brutal murderous terrorists.
Killing is killing. Terrorists killing innocent Americans is wrong. Americans killing innocent Iraqis is wrong. There's no justification for it on either side.
Re:It didn't kill Fry
on
Death by Coffee?
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
That's right. After your 100th cup you'll not only be able to see the cork pop off the champagne bottle in slow motion but also you'll be able to watch a hummingbird's wings flap and save your friends from a burning building.
Why is Bush's crowd always 'troubled' about these things?.. as if they were dainty sensitive little people.
"Ouch, you're troubling my poor little mind with your big sciency words and all your facts."
"Gee, I'm just so troubled that you noticed that we're lying through our teeth. It just hurts so much when point this out to everyone. Please let us deceive in peace so that we won't be troubled."
... is it possible to outsource CEOs? I bet the CEOs doing the outsourcing (and getting paid at rates magnitudes higher than their workers) might have a change of attitude if this was the case.
Are you sure you're talking about the same shows as everyone else?!?
I like the Family Guy a lot. But how can you possibly be a big fan of it and not love the Simpsons or Futurama? The Simpsons did go through a dry spell, but it's been pretty good lately. And Futurama's had a few episodes that weren't quite as good as the others, but overall the writing and animation is brilliant.
Maybe I should have asked this at the get-go but are you just a troll?
"Is it better for security researchers to avoid publicly criticizing e-voting flaws? Is public faith in the system more important than overall system security?"
Yeah, it's really better that we keep our concerns about the voting system to ourselves. We wouldn't want to upset all those fragile, sensitive voters by letting them find out their democracy's a sham.
"No; I won it as a lucky door prize at the Star Trek convention. Though I must say that I find their choice of size highly illogical, as the average Trekker has no use for a medium sized belt."
1. Brushed metal borders IMO are too large... especially at the top. I don't have a problem with the look... I think the aesthetic is ok. I just think there's a lot of wasted screen real-estate.
2. No "UP" button for going up a directory. Why not have three buttons instead of two, as in this really bad ascii diagram: <-/|\ -> Currently the Back button takes you to the last directory you were in, which is not always the same as "Up". I know you can use the path pulldown or Command-click on the title bar to access your full path, but going up one directory is just such a common task that it really seems like there should be a one-click way to do it.
3. Column view: IMO, the default behavior when moving the partitions, should be to move only the partion you're currently moving... not all of them. I.e. The behavior when you "Alt" drag should be the default, and "Alt" drag should perform the current default behavior.
4. Also column view. Would be really cool to have selected directories align in the vertical middle of the finder. (almost the way slot machine symbols do but without the spinning). That would have a nice visual appearance, and also allow the user to read the path along a straight line.
5. Is there a way to get a display of the current path on the title bar? Static text would be ok, or even better, maybe something along the lines of CocoaTech's path finder. http://www.cocoatech.com/screenshots/pathfinder
This is nice both because you always know where you are when you're navigating, and also because you can navigate immediately to any directory in your current path with one click.
6. As far as I can tell, there's no way to resize finder windows except for the bottom right corner. With all the extra brushed metal... or even a little bit less;-)... there's a perfect opportunity to add resizing elements on the top, bottom, right, and left edges of the window. (I know, I know, it's a Windows idiom;-) but it's still a good one).
7. Is there a way to change the font in the finder? This was possible in OS 9 but seems missing in OSX.
"I think the concerns being raised are 100 percent valid. However, they're being raised by people who have little idea about what actually goes on."
Mr. Radke of Diebold (on voter confidence):added that voters have more, not less, confidence in electronic machines. He pointed to a study conducted in February at the University of Georgia that found that 70 percent of voters in the state's November 2002 elections, which were conducted on Diebold machines, reported being very confident that their vote was accurately counted. When this question was asked in September 2001, before electronic voting was in place in the state, only 56 percent of Georgia voters reported being very confident.
The first essentially dismisses the opinions of computer scientist because they don't have enough info. The second uses the opinions of the general public to support validity of the machines.
You can't have it both ways! Certainly the general public isn't more informed about this process than a Stanford computer science professor. Maybe they feel confident that they touched the write box on the screen, but that's not really the issue here is it?
The Dividend tax cut is going to save me around 20 cents a year if that. Woo hoo! Now I can finally get that kidney transplant!
The average out of work techie does not have any high dividend paying stocks because if they did they might still be able to afford to pay rent. Anyone who tells you that this isn't a payout to the wealthy is using that famous "Voodoo" form of economics.
This about sums it up for me...
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 1
D. Heil: 'Message to America: Don't come crying...' Date: Wednesday, November 06 @ 09:37:58 EST Topic: 2002 Elections
By D. Heil
Last night's election was a clear victory for Republicans as they took control of the Senate and increased their lead in the House of Representatives. It is clear that the President's popularity polls were not wrong or misleading as we had hoped. It is also clear that Democratic Party leaders lack enough courage or intelligence to deserve the vote of the electorate. Rather than blame the mean-spirited and united, far right Republicans or criticize the spineless Democrats, it is more instructive to acknowledge that we are still a democracy and that Americans DID choose to give this President and his Party control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial.
So then, we must ask: what did tonight's election tell us about Americans?
1. The election results tell us that too few voters exercise their rights. With less than four in ten showing up to cast their ballots, election results reflect not the overall will of Americans, but how creative the two parties were in energizing their base of voters. The Republican base contains two basic constituencies: on one hand they rely on rural, gun totin', Iraq ass kickin', bible belters who would ignore the disaster this country is in just to protect the unborn fetuses and every citizen's right to own assault weapons. This constituency dominates rural America, or predominantly southern states, central American states and the wild west. Geographically and politically, that covers a lot of ground in this nation. The other major Republican constituency represents all those folks who place self over community as evidenced by their desire for wealth and acceptance of corporate greed. This group rationalizes their greed by arguing against government regulation - either environmental or financial. They argue the world will be a better place once its citizens have tasted the fruits of capitalism, period.
The Republicans obviously did a better job of "marketing" to their constituencies than the Democrats did by sheepishly handing George Bush a free ride on every issue from Iraq to taxes and the environment. Democratic supporters apparently stayed home last evening.
2. American voters either want George Bush to replace at least three retiring Supreme Court justices with far right, neo-Nazis, or they're too naive to understand that very real danger that comes with no Democrats to challenge the Republican majority. Sandra Day O'Connor postponed her announced retirement upon the switch of Jim Jeffords, since the new Democratic controlled Senate would be sure to nix Bush's nomination of an ultra conservative justice. There are certainly at least two other, aging conservative justices prepared to retire during the Bush term. With last night's Republican trouncing, it is hard to argue Americans didn't see or didn't want such judicial appointments.
3. American voters apparently are pleased with the state of our nation's War on Terrorism. Never mind our swiss cheese borders or entirely exposed chemical and nuclear power plants. Forget that our nation's ports only inspect - sort of - less than 1 percent of cargo containers coming into major cities like Baltimore/Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Americans apparently don't care that this President can't even exercise his terrorism mandate to pass a Homeland Security bill or hire a half qualified person to lead the Homeland Security effort. Truth is, this administration hasn't done jack to advance our Homeland Security, but Americans are too attention deficit to notice or care.
4. Americans apparently are happy to have corporations pollute our air and drinking water in the name of higher stock prices. They've either slept through the news reports that this President has emasculated the EPA and told the rest of the world, screw Kyoto, or they simply don't care about Mother Nature. There's never been a more environmentally destructive President than George "W" but that's ok, as long as we kick Saddam's booty.
5. Apparently Americans are happy to have a President whose only efforts to rebuild the economy have been a poorly constructed, bankrupting tax cut and the Waco Economic Summit where Presidential "arss kissers" met to tell Mr. Bush what a fine job he's doing. Oh yeah, and the President DID use his bully pulpit to instruct Americans to ignore unemployment figures and the worst bull market since the Great Depression. "It's a good time to buy stocks," he says. "Trust me on this, citizens."
6. Americans obviously enjoy the level of corporate campaign donations streaming into political parties. They ignore how this President fought campaign finance reform, and reluctantly signed it into law in the middle of the night, and then instructed the Republican dominated Federal Election Committee to blast holes right into the new law. To be fair, Democrats didn't complain too loudly either.
7. Our nation's citizens apparently don't mind corporate corruption either. Enron? Worldcom? They are sooooo passe'. Harvey Pitt? The President recommended him and sabotaged Mr. Biggs as the new Accounting Board Chairman who actually might do a decent job on reigning in corporate cronyism. That's ok. Harken? Halliburton? Those are simply "alleged" crimes, not real ones. Any President who bombed the hell out of Afghanistan, thereby forcing Al Qaeda to simply change addresses, is "ok" with me.
8. Americans support the use of Air Force One to run a Presidential campaign two years early. Americans like the fact our President only works half the time - at best - and seems to prefer a day complete with exercise, a photo op, a few choice stump speeches in front of "friendly" audiences and month long vacations on the ranch. All this time off is acceptable, even required for a President with so many dangerous issues on his plate: Iraq, North Korea, the Economy, Terrorism, rising unemployment, worldwide hatred of our country by allies and enemies alike? Poor Mr. President needs lots of rest.
9. Who needs the rest of the world? Who cares that less than twenty months ago, most of our allies and enemies at least respected our President and now they all hate us? Bomb Iraq now, dammit! Who cares what happens after we stick Saddam's head on a pole? Millions of murdered innocents during the civil war most experts predict will result after Saddam's departure? That's called "collateral damage." Oh yeah, and we've done such a fine job of building a new democracy in Afghanistan which is a cake walk compared to Iraq. Americans don't need our President or Republican leaders to tell us what they'd do in the aftermath of an attack on Iraq. Take Mr. Rumsfeld's word for it - we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
10. Americans couldn't understand or accept that Bill Clinton would dare lie about an extramarital affair, but they respect a lying President who would lie on issues of healthcare, world war, and his own business dealings. They prefer a President who will ignore those ninnies in the CIA when they advise us against a war with Saddam and that our nation is entirely unprepared for further acts of mass terror within our borders.
The list of things we learned, last night, about Americans could go on, but I think you get the point. Don't believe the pundits who say this election wasn't about national issues or the Bush Presidency. It is clear this election was ALL about George Bush and what a great President he's been. If, like me, you don't think George "W" is anything but the worst President this nation has ever had in office, you, my friend, are in the minority.
If you were eligible to vote yesterday, but didn't, don't you come crying to those of us who fought like hell to counter balance the Republican juggernaut. If you actually support George W. Bush and the corporate cronies who make up the Republican party, don't come crying when your sons and daughters die in Iraq - which can only be considered as the next Vietnam. If you voted for a Republican senator on November 5th, don't come crying when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, and your daughter has to secretly contract with a witch doctor for her abortion. If your son or daughter is accused of breaking the law, but doesn't get to talk with an attorney, or you're not happy your phone lines have been tapped, don't come crying to me. If arsenic in your drinking water leads to your pancreatic cancer, live with it or don't. If you don't like strip mines in your national parks, don't expect violins or kleenex.
You knew what you were getting when you voted on November 5th. Or you should have known. Ignorance is not a valid excuse. This is what America wants. When other people in other nations criticize Americans as self-centered and arrogant, they may not be talking about you or me. But they ARE talking about the majority of Americans. And I am beginning to think they're right. By the way, Mssrs. Daschle and Gephardt: resign. Your sit on your thumbs, butt kissing of the President predictably backfired. Apparently, a minority of Americans - but enough of them - decided that even a bad set of solutions is better than your disappearing act.
I think this is a great concept and I applaud GM for attempting to bring such an environmentally friendly vehicle to the masses, but I couldn't help laughing at this quote:
"All of AUTOnomy's essential systems, including the fuel cell stack and on-board hydrogen storage system, are neatly packaged in the skateboard-like chassis. The unit is intended to last for years, much longer than a conventional vehicle."
So their conventional vehicles are designed to last for what? 6 months? I'll keep my Toyota, thanks!
Clearly, you had no argument against everything I said except for the oil comment.
Regarding that:
Ever heard of pipelines? or the Caspian Sea? or Unocal? or the Carlyle Group? or that the entire Bush Administration is filled with oil company executives? Ever noticed that the sky is blue?
Try looking this stuff up.. I dare you. I'm sure you won't believe a "Blustering Idiot" like myself, but maybe after you do a little homework, you'll connect a few dots. Good luck.
"Given the Bush administration's commendable interest in favoring American interests over the opinions of the post-national bureaucrats and chattering classes..."
Nothing this "president" has done since day 1 has been commendable. Kyoto, ABMT, Arctic Wildlife Drilling, an assault on the constitution, turning what should have been a surgical international police effort into a civilian-killing war for oil!
I just want to apologize to the rest of the world for these things. I didn't vote for him and neither did the majority of Americans. We need to impeach this ignorant, spoiled frat-boy before it's too late... if it's not already.
-A concerned American patriot who's not falling for the propaganda.
I've been wanting something like this for years... avoids all the neck aches, back aches, etc. But this one is way too expensive, not beefy enough of a machine to develop on, and is in desperate need of some pants with built in split keyboard.
VRML's really not that bad an idea.. especially for simple, static, 3D worlds. It's reasonably compact, fairly easy to use, and is text-based, so that anyone can view its source and get first-hand examples of how it works. Plus you can export it from tons of 3D modelling apps.
Everyone seems to be complaining about VRML's speed.. which I don't quite get. I've used perl to create VRML worlds from databases, outputting thousands of objects to the 3d world, and it still runs at pretty reasonable speed on any respectable modern machine.
VRML was certainly born too early, and it's 1.0 version didn't have enough functionality, but with an update to the language, and with today's technology and bandwidth, VRML is a great way to create static 3D content.
But it seems to me that no one's mentioned VRML's biggest flaw.. and that is that VRML is just not effective at specifying complex animations or character interaction. It can certainly be done, using a little inlined javascript or even java. But try creating the kind of gui widgetry that you get practically for free anywhere else. You have to write it all from scratch. Or try using that aforementioned javascript or java to do anything less conventional than specifying a motion path, and it's a real headache.
VRML's realiance on a data-flow model is unique. And were there a decent gui-based editor - something like a Houdini or an IBM Data Explorer - for creating VRML, you might see some truly amazing content. But the passing data through nodes analogy is just not efficient when you're writing code. You end up constantly thinking how much easier everything would be if you were just using C++ and OpenGL.
I like VRML. I wish it had a future. But, unfortunately, it's a clunky invention that, despite its virtues, does not fill the evolutionary niche well enough to survive.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not a live and let live world. Neither we nor the terrorists are allowing it to be. The Iraqi civilian whose house has been carpet bombed was trying to live and let live, but it doesn't work very well when we kill him. Incidently, you might also talk to Mahatma Ghandi.
Hitler wanted to destroy all the terrorist threats to the Third Reich too. His justification for invading Poland was to root out the Polish threat. Your thinking seems very much in-line with his. Also, do you actually know what 'fascist' means?
Snide "armchair quarterback" academics are the ones running the show in the Bush administration.
Killing is killing. Terrorists killing innocent Americans is wrong. Americans killing innocent Iraqis is wrong. There's no justification for it on either side.
That's right. After your 100th cup you'll not only be able to see the cork pop off the champagne bottle in slow motion but also you'll be able to watch a hummingbird's wings flap and save your friends from a burning building.
MmmmmmmThat's good coffee.
Parentheses!!! Swarms of parentheses!!! Oh God!! NOoooooo!!!! AAAAaaaaarrrggghhhh!!!
As long as you don't ask me to smell Uranus.
Why is Bush's crowd always 'troubled' about these things? .. as if they were dainty sensitive little people.
"Ouch, you're troubling my poor little mind with your big sciency words and all your facts."
"Gee, I'm just so troubled that you noticed that we're lying through our teeth. It just hurts so much when point this out to everyone. Please let us deceive in peace so that we won't be troubled."
We need to fix this system or they'll "fix" our elections (and not in a good way).
... is it possible to outsource CEOs? I bet the CEOs doing the outsourcing (and getting paid at rates magnitudes higher than their workers) might have a change of attitude if this was the case.
Are you sure you're talking about the same shows as everyone else?!?
I like the Family Guy a lot. But how can you possibly be a big fan of it and not love the Simpsons or Futurama? The Simpsons did go through a dry spell, but it's been pretty good lately. And Futurama's had a few episodes that weren't quite as good as the others, but overall the writing and animation is brilliant.
Maybe I should have asked this at the get-go but are you just a troll?
Futurama...
And I even like the Family Guy. But Dammit, more Futurama!!!!
Futurama.
Yeah, it's really better that we keep our concerns about the voting system to ourselves. We wouldn't want to upset all those fragile, sensitive voters by letting them find out their democracy's a sham.
... and I was gonna boycott Panther until they added an 'up' button to the Finder. Oh, well..
Please take a look at this and this and then write your congress creatures and tell them to support HR 2239.
"Yes, I would like to return this utility belt."
"Do you have a receipt?"
"No; I won it as a lucky door prize at the Star Trek convention. Though I must say that I find their choice of size highly illogical, as the average Trekker has no use for a medium sized belt."
1. Brushed metal borders IMO are too large... especially at the top. I don't have a problem with the look... I think the aesthetic is ok. I just think there's a lot of wasted screen real-estate.
/|\ ->
;-) ... there's a perfect opportunity to add resizing elements on the top, bottom, right, and left edges of the window. (I know, I know, it's a Windows idiom ;-) but it's still a good one).
2. No "UP" button for going up a directory. Why not have three buttons instead of two, as in this really bad ascii diagram:
<-
Currently the Back button takes you to the last directory you were in, which is not always the same as "Up". I know you can use the path pulldown or Command-click on the title bar to access your full path, but going up one directory is just such a common task that it really seems like there should be a one-click way to do it.
3. Column view: IMO, the default behavior when moving the partitions, should be to move only the partion you're currently moving... not all of them. I.e. The behavior when you "Alt" drag should be the default, and "Alt" drag should perform the current default behavior.
4. Also column view. Would be really cool to have selected directories align in the vertical middle of the finder. (almost the way slot machine symbols do but without the spinning). That would have a nice visual appearance, and also allow the user to read the path along a straight line.
5. Is there a way to get a display of the current path on the title bar? Static text would be ok, or even better, maybe something along the lines of CocoaTech's path finder. http://www.cocoatech.com/screenshots/pathfinder
This is nice both because you always know where you are when you're navigating, and also because you can navigate immediately to any directory in your current path with one click.
6. As far as I can tell, there's no way to resize finder windows except for the bottom right corner. With all the extra brushed metal... or even a little bit less
7. Is there a way to change the font in the finder? This was possible in OS 9 but seems missing in OSX.
"I think the concerns being raised are 100 percent valid. However, they're being raised by people who have little idea about what actually goes on."
Mr. Radke of Diebold (on voter confidence):added that voters have more, not less, confidence in electronic machines. He pointed to a study conducted in February at the University of Georgia that found that 70 percent of voters in the state's November 2002 elections, which were conducted on Diebold machines, reported being very confident that their vote was accurately counted. When this question was asked in September 2001, before electronic voting was in place in the state, only 56 percent of Georgia voters reported being very confident.
The first essentially dismisses the opinions of computer scientist because they don't have enough info. The second uses the opinions of the general public to support validity of the machines.
You can't have it both ways! Certainly the general public isn't more informed about this process than a Stanford computer science professor. Maybe they feel confident that they touched the write box on the screen, but that's not really the issue here is it?
The Dividend tax cut is going to save me around 20 cents a year if that. Woo hoo! Now I can finally get that kidney transplant!
The average out of work techie does not have any high dividend paying stocks because if they did they might still be able to afford to pay rent. Anyone who tells you that this isn't a payout to the wealthy is using that famous "Voodoo" form of economics.
Come on! Ashcroft would kick everyone's ass.
D. Heil: 'Message to America: Don't come crying...'
Date: Wednesday, November 06 @ 09:37:58 EST
Topic: 2002 Elections
By D. Heil
Last night's election was a clear victory for Republicans as they took control of the Senate and increased their lead in the House of Representatives. It is clear that the President's popularity polls were not wrong or misleading as we had hoped. It is also clear that Democratic Party leaders lack enough courage or intelligence to deserve the vote of the electorate. Rather than blame the mean-spirited and united, far right Republicans or criticize the spineless Democrats, it is more instructive to acknowledge that we are still a democracy and that Americans DID choose to give this President and his Party control of all three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial.
So then, we must ask: what did tonight's election tell us about Americans?
1. The election results tell us that too few voters exercise their rights. With less than four in ten showing up to cast their ballots, election results reflect not the overall will of Americans, but how creative the two parties were in energizing their base of voters. The Republican base contains two basic constituencies: on one hand they rely on rural, gun totin', Iraq ass kickin', bible belters who would ignore the disaster this country is in just to protect the unborn fetuses and every citizen's right to own assault weapons. This constituency dominates rural America, or predominantly southern states, central American states and the wild west. Geographically and politically, that covers a lot of ground in this nation. The other major Republican constituency represents all those folks who place self over community as evidenced by their desire for wealth and acceptance of corporate greed. This group rationalizes their greed by arguing against government regulation - either environmental or financial. They argue the world will be a better place once its citizens have tasted the fruits of capitalism, period.
The Republicans obviously did a better job of "marketing" to their constituencies than the Democrats did by sheepishly handing George Bush a free ride on every issue from Iraq to taxes and the environment. Democratic supporters apparently stayed home last evening.
2. American voters either want George Bush to replace at least three retiring Supreme Court justices with far right, neo-Nazis, or they're too naive to understand that very real danger that comes with no Democrats to challenge the Republican majority. Sandra Day O'Connor postponed her announced retirement upon the switch of Jim Jeffords, since the new Democratic controlled Senate would be sure to nix Bush's nomination of an ultra conservative justice. There are certainly at least two other, aging conservative justices prepared to retire during the Bush term. With last night's Republican trouncing, it is hard to argue Americans didn't see or didn't want such judicial appointments.
3. American voters apparently are pleased with the state of our nation's War on Terrorism. Never mind our swiss cheese borders or entirely exposed chemical and nuclear power plants. Forget that our nation's ports only inspect - sort of - less than 1 percent of cargo containers coming into major cities like Baltimore/Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Americans apparently don't care that this President can't even exercise his terrorism mandate to pass a Homeland Security bill or hire a half qualified person to lead the Homeland Security effort. Truth is, this administration hasn't done jack to advance our Homeland Security, but Americans are too attention deficit to notice or care.
4. Americans apparently are happy to have corporations pollute our air and drinking water in the name of higher stock prices. They've either slept through the news reports that this President has emasculated the EPA and told the rest of the world, screw Kyoto, or they simply don't care about Mother Nature. There's never been a more environmentally destructive President than George "W" but that's ok, as long as we kick Saddam's booty.
5. Apparently Americans are happy to have a President whose only efforts to rebuild the economy have been a poorly constructed, bankrupting tax cut and the Waco Economic Summit where Presidential "arss kissers" met to tell Mr. Bush what a fine job he's doing. Oh yeah, and the President DID use his bully pulpit to instruct Americans to ignore unemployment figures and the worst bull market since the Great Depression. "It's a good time to buy stocks," he says. "Trust me on this, citizens."
6. Americans obviously enjoy the level of corporate campaign donations streaming into political parties. They ignore how this President fought campaign finance reform, and reluctantly signed it into law in the middle of the night, and then instructed the Republican dominated Federal Election Committee to blast holes right into the new law. To be fair, Democrats didn't complain too loudly either.
7. Our nation's citizens apparently don't mind corporate corruption either. Enron? Worldcom? They are sooooo passe'. Harvey Pitt? The President recommended him and sabotaged Mr. Biggs as the new Accounting Board Chairman who actually might do a decent job on reigning in corporate cronyism. That's ok. Harken? Halliburton? Those are simply "alleged" crimes, not real ones. Any President who bombed the hell out of Afghanistan, thereby forcing Al Qaeda to simply change addresses, is "ok" with me.
8. Americans support the use of Air Force One to run a Presidential campaign two years early. Americans like the fact our President only works half the time - at best - and seems to prefer a day complete with exercise, a photo op, a few choice stump speeches in front of "friendly" audiences and month long vacations on the ranch. All this time off is acceptable, even required for a President with so many dangerous issues on his plate: Iraq, North Korea, the Economy, Terrorism, rising unemployment, worldwide hatred of our country by allies and enemies alike? Poor Mr. President needs lots of rest.
9. Who needs the rest of the world? Who cares that less than twenty months ago, most of our allies and enemies at least respected our President and now they all hate us? Bomb Iraq now, dammit! Who cares what happens after we stick Saddam's head on a pole? Millions of murdered innocents during the civil war most experts predict will result after Saddam's departure? That's called "collateral damage." Oh yeah, and we've done such a fine job of building a new democracy in Afghanistan which is a cake walk compared to Iraq. Americans don't need our President or Republican leaders to tell us what they'd do in the aftermath of an attack on Iraq. Take Mr. Rumsfeld's word for it - we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
10. Americans couldn't understand or accept that Bill Clinton would dare lie about an extramarital affair, but they respect a lying President who would lie on issues of healthcare, world war, and his own business dealings. They prefer a President who will ignore those ninnies in the CIA when they advise us against a war with Saddam and that our nation is entirely unprepared for further acts of mass terror within our borders.
The list of things we learned, last night, about Americans could go on, but I think you get the point. Don't believe the pundits who say this election wasn't about national issues or the Bush Presidency. It is clear this election was ALL about George Bush and what a great President he's been. If, like me, you don't think George "W" is anything but the worst President this nation has ever had in office, you, my friend, are in the minority.
If you were eligible to vote yesterday, but didn't, don't you come crying to those of us who fought like hell to counter balance the Republican juggernaut. If you actually support George W. Bush and the corporate cronies who make up the Republican party, don't come crying when your sons and daughters die in Iraq - which can only be considered as the next Vietnam. If you voted for a Republican senator on November 5th, don't come crying when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, and your daughter has to secretly contract with a witch doctor for her abortion. If your son or daughter is accused of breaking the law, but doesn't get to talk with an attorney, or you're not happy your phone lines have been tapped, don't come crying to me. If arsenic in your drinking water leads to your pancreatic cancer, live with it or don't. If you don't like strip mines in your national parks, don't expect violins or kleenex.
You knew what you were getting when you voted on November 5th. Or you should have known. Ignorance is not a valid excuse. This is what America wants. When other people in other nations criticize Americans as self-centered and arrogant, they may not be talking about you or me. But they ARE talking about the majority of Americans. And I am beginning to think they're right. By the way, Mssrs. Daschle and Gephardt: resign. Your sit on your thumbs, butt kissing of the President predictably backfired. Apparently, a minority of Americans - but enough of them - decided that even a bad set of solutions is better than your disappearing act.
I think this is a great concept and I applaud GM for attempting to bring such an environmentally friendly vehicle to the masses, but I couldn't help laughing at this quote:
"All of AUTOnomy's essential systems, including the fuel cell stack and on-board hydrogen storage system, are neatly packaged in the skateboard-like chassis. The unit is intended to last for years, much longer than a conventional vehicle."
So their conventional vehicles are designed to last for what? 6 months? I'll keep my Toyota, thanks!
Hope you don't think BBC News is run by "Blustering Idiots". :-P
Clearly, you had no argument against everything I said except for the oil comment.
Regarding that:
Ever heard of pipelines? or the Caspian Sea? or Unocal? or the Carlyle Group? or that the entire Bush Administration is filled with oil company executives? Ever noticed that the sky is blue?
Try looking this stuff up.. I dare you. I'm sure you won't believe a "Blustering Idiot" like myself, but maybe after you do a little homework, you'll connect a few dots. Good luck.
Slightly off topic, but...
"Given the Bush administration's commendable interest in favoring American interests over the opinions of the post-national bureaucrats and chattering classes..."
Nothing this "president" has done since day 1 has been commendable. Kyoto, ABMT, Arctic Wildlife Drilling, an assault on the constitution, turning what should have been a surgical international police effort into a civilian-killing war for oil!
I just want to apologize to the rest of the world for these things. I didn't vote for him and neither did the majority of Americans. We need to impeach this ignorant, spoiled frat-boy before it's too late... if it's not already.
-A concerned American patriot who's not falling for the propaganda.
I've been wanting something like this for years... avoids all the neck aches, back aches, etc. But this one is way too expensive, not beefy enough of a machine to develop on, and is in desperate need of some pants with built in split keyboard.
Everyone seems to be complaining about VRML's speed.. which I don't quite get. I've used perl to create VRML worlds from databases, outputting thousands of objects to the 3d world, and it still runs at pretty reasonable speed on any respectable modern machine.
VRML was certainly born too early, and it's 1.0 version didn't have enough functionality, but with an update to the language, and with today's technology and bandwidth, VRML is a great way to create static 3D content.
But it seems to me that no one's mentioned VRML's biggest flaw.. and that is that VRML is just not effective at specifying complex animations or character interaction. It can certainly be done, using a little inlined javascript or even java. But try creating the kind of gui widgetry that you get practically for free anywhere else. You have to write it all from scratch. Or try using that aforementioned javascript or java to do anything less conventional than specifying a motion path, and it's a real headache.
VRML's realiance on a data-flow model is unique. And were there a decent gui-based editor - something like a Houdini or an IBM Data Explorer - for creating VRML, you might see some truly amazing content. But the passing data through nodes analogy is just not efficient when you're writing code. You end up constantly thinking how much easier everything would be if you were just using C++ and OpenGL.
I like VRML. I wish it had a future. But, unfortunately, it's a clunky invention that, despite its virtues, does not fill the evolutionary niche well enough to survive.
In short, VRML = BETA