Re:Backups shouldn't be fair use.
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Region-free PS3
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My roommate listens to one of his favorite band's CDs all the time. He's had to buy three because they get scratched from use (normal use, not rolling over it with his office chair). That seems a bit absurd. Normal use can destroy most electronic media. That doesn't apply to the media of the "good ol' days". I've read an 1898 version of my favorite book over and over again (and, presumambly, so did the previous owner(s) of it) and it still is intact.
I had the same exact problem: after weeks of working with Gmail and Adblock with no problems, suddenly and without warning Gmail would just get stuck at a blank page or the "Loading..." page infinitely. The only way to get around it would be to force it into plain HTML mode (no amount of the clearing of the cache would help). The Google help page, as linked above, recommended Adblock Plus and that has worked fine since then. Basically, I doubt this is an attempt to stop people from blocking their ads (my Google Customization and Adblock Plus, the latter as recommended by them, do that fine), but instead is the result of a genuine and ongoing bug between Adblock and Gmail.
Or just use the Adblock extension for Firefox. It is by far the greatest way to block advertisers. With some use of a few wildcard you can browse nearly ad free. One of the more useful extensions, in my opinion.
Re:Why there is a privacy issue..
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The Webmail Wars
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"porn"
If they wanted all of the e-mail addresses on gmail, why didn't they just say so in the first place?
How many of those quoted were using issuing such statements to support a plan of theirs to launch an American invasion of a Iraq that would end up costing at least over 1,000 American soldiers lives just in the first few years? The statements you make carrier a graver responsibility when you're the guy actually telling the country "let's go to war" and also happen to have that power.
I think, for example, the NY Times article did a good job of pointing out that both Kerry and Edwards were morons who didn't check up on information that was handed to them and just relied on the brief from Tenet. Then they voted for the war.
This is a stupid move by both of them (one of many that will make sure they don't get my vote), but it's not comparable to Bush's stupid move. Kerry/Edwards were voting on a case based on bullshit evidence and didn't investigate further. Bush/Cheney were vital to making that case out of bullshit evidence. Neither group is getting my vote, but I can still point out that the responsibility is heavier on the commander-in-chief when he leads the country into war.
"Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges."
Not that I buy it, but the claim the Bush administration is going to be making (and this is covered in the article) is that the CIA didn't highlight or even mention the debate going on in the intelligence community over the use of these aluminum tubes. Condoleeza Rice appeared on a lot of Sunday shows today (I saw the CNN one) claiming that back when she claimed that the tubes could "only really be used for nuclear weapons", she knew of the debate but thought it was a marginalized dissent and that the overwhelming consensus in the intelligence community was that these tubes were to be used for nukes.
Of course, the response to these claims is: you couldn't have afford to have just based your information on the CIA briefings. If you're leading the nation to war, call in the advice of every relevant department and organization. The path to war shouldn't be a light one. And of course, since the nuclear issue was one of the major ones that drove us to war, supposedly, then the Energy Department clearly should have been consulted. And their overwhelming views were that the tubes were to be used for rockets.
Two points that are interesting in this article (that deserve a read)...
#1: The fact that the CIA endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the aluminum tube evidence, knowing the yellowcake evidence was bullshit. Meanwhile, the Energy Department endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the yellowcake evidence, knowing the aluminum tube evidence was bullshit. And yet, this was just read as a double endorsement.
#2: Dick Cheney's roll throughout all this (the fact that he was basically demanding evidence before any surfaced, or at least any that he was aware of).
I'll undo my moderation done to these discussions just to refute one of your points.
"And as you mentioned, he apologized. I'm not sure how you want him to express distrust, but he doesn't give the president a pass on anything."
Read his editorial on the interview, found here. The man sounds like a walking hard-on for George W Bush. My favorite quote out of the whole thing:
"For example, I am known for confrontational interviews, but you simply cannot tell a sitting President that you, the interviewer, know more than he does. That would make you look like a moron. So open confrontation goes right out the window."
This is funny. If you ever saw O'Reilly and what he did to that kid Jeremy Glick (transcript can be found here, you know that he really has no qualms in letting his confrontational interviews lapse into inappropriate areas. Jeremy Glick, for those of you who don't know, was the kid of a September 11th victim who was part of an organization that opposed aspects of the Bush administrations "War against Terrorism". Specifically, he criticized the lack of responsibility being put on previous administrations for the funding of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the lack of a promise to never make the same mistake again (a look at the situation in Iraq can tell you that, yes, the US is making the mistake of funding a potential enemy again).
Anyway, O'Reilly goes on to rip through Glick, evoke the memory of his dead father and widowed mother to counter his arguments and cuts Glick's mic, despite the fact that Glick throughout the whole interview was very calm and composed. O'Reilly then had Glick escorted by security, but not before telling him that he would tear the shit out of him. Later, O'Reilly claimed in other shows that Glick claimed that George W. Bush planned September 11, though that was clearly not what Glick said.
Suddenly, however, there is a limit to his confrontational interviewing style. Of course, one could argue that it's just because Bush is the president. But it takes just one look at O'Reilly's treatment of Clinton, and his treatment of Kerry will be much the same if he ends up winning the presidency, to realize that such arguments are bullshit. O'Reilly is clearly a huge Bush supporter. Which would be fine, if he didn't insist that he was this unbiased guy (Al Franken's discovery of previous Republican registration by O'Reilly is further proof of that).
Just a side note: at the end of the editorial, O'Reilly says:
"In the middle of my talk with the President, my mind flashed back for just a second to my childhood in Levittown, N.Y."
Though O'Reilly always makes this claim (and indeed has produced a deed to try to prove it) that he lived in some modest, working-class home in Levittown, in actuallity he lived in the Westbury part of Levittown, now known as Salisbury, which is not quite Levittown. The stakes of pointing this out? Well, Westbury wasn't exactly "modest". It was rick kid suburbia. Another one of O'Reilly's many lies.
Actually, if you read the article, they claim that the company offers a free-service too, with the limitation of just one e-mail. Still a ridiculous idea, but...
I'm assuming your whole spiel here is based solely on the one statement I made that you could possibly misinterpret, which is:
"But to equate the occasional election to overthrowing a government is absurd. American elections are choosing between two meals a cook offers you. Rebellion is storming the kitchen and making our own food."
At what point of time, in this statement, or for that matter anywhere in my comments, did I advocate "violent overthrow and anarchy"? There isn't just one alternative to elections, firstly. Secondly, at no point of time did I say that true elections wouldn't suffice. What we have now, though, an occasional choice between two shitty candidates, is not what I can point to as participatory democracy. This is all beyond the point. Of course, for you, once I criticize that the current electoral system, well, clearly I'm an anarchist who advocates violent overthrow! However, if you truly analyze my argument with a perspective that isn't black and white, and without this pretense that your "arguments are strong" (I wonder how strong an argument made on inaccurate assumptions could really be), maybe you could see my point. My metaphor of storming in and making the food ourselves didn't mention killing the cook. Or even hurting anyone in the process. You put that all in yourself.
I was talking about this to some people today, actually. Recently, there was a poll where voters preferred the idea of having Bush flipping burgers at their barbecue, and having Kerry teach their children. Which is microcosmic of what the differences between Bush and Kerry are in fact. Bush seems like he would be a funny guy to have over for lunch, despite the fact that he could be an asshole at times and generally was close-minded, uneducated, loud and obnoxious. Kerry, on the other hand, would be a stuck-up prick of a guest, with his nose high in the air, subtly critcizing your choice in wine. There is no doubt about it, Kerry is a jerk-off (which is of course why websites like this were made).
But as far as job qualification goes, he's got it in spades over Bush. And what is ultimately more important (seeing on how our presidents of the last few decades have been nothing more than symbols, like the Queen of England), the people Kerry would surround himself with and would be making the policies would be infinitely better than Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and the bunch.
That is exactly one of the major points in that new book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", written by an anonymous senior US intelligence official (now thought to be Michael Scheuer).
The book claims that bin Laden may strike the US before November to get the public to rally around Bush, as the anonymous official is "very sure [the terrorists] can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now" (the Bush Administration). Read more at this Guardian Article.
Are you serious? Voting Kerry or Bush means I'm overthrowing the government? Just because one out of every 1,460 days I get to go pull one of two levers, or check one of two boxes, doesn't mean anything. The fact remains that America is governed by a two-party system that allows for little alternatives. Moreover, the differences between the two parties are not all that impressive. While as Western European countries, for example, have seriously contending political parties all over the spectrum, we have had two that could be described by global standards as a center-right party (democrats) and a right party.
Not to say that we're bad off as, say, the Chinese. But to equate the occasional election to overthrowing a government is absurd. American elections are choosing between two meals a cook offers you. Rebellion is storming the kitchen and making our own food.
Warning: there may be a few minor "spoilers" here, but nothing you couldn't handle.
I read through the list and, though some of the points are highly interesting (for example, the "My Pet Goat" scene [by the way, the book is actually called "The Pet Goat", so I guess Michael Moore tried to deceive us again!] and how the teacher actually comended Bush's actions), most of the points are irrelevant. Take the one straight off the top. Fahrenheit 9/11 opens with a scene of Ben Affleck, Al Gore, etc. all celebrating under a banner that says "Florida Victory". The link you sent us to points out that the celebration was pre-election results in Florida and that Michael Moore is thus deceitful in trying to paint it like it's not.
But the stakes of the claim are zero. Who cares if it was pre-election? It's not deceitful, it's a matter of making a movie that's interesting. What is important, in the documentary, are the real facts asserted. For example, if the scene where members of congress futilely protested Bush's appointment to the presidency turned out to be fake or something, then an important argument had been made.
Plus, some of the "Deceit" claims are just plain ol' wrong. For example: "Moore Claimed that Osama bin Laden Might be Innocent and Opposed the Afghanistan War". I saw the movie a few days ago, and I don't think I forgot or missed much, but at no point of time do I remember Moore making the claim in the movie. Outside the movie, he didn't claim Osama bin Laden was innocent, but that the American way means we have to assume so until the facts come out against him. When Christopher Hitchens said "Something--I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now--has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell", he's full of it. We obviously have learned a lot more since the initial September 11 attacks, including more evidence to implicate Osama bin Laden. That may have fulfilled Moore's requirements for "till proven guilty".
The list goes on and on. Much of the "deceits" consist of agreeing that what Moore says is right (about the PATRIOT act, for example) but then saying "well, Clinton was involved/did something similar/etc" which is a common defense to any criticism of the Bush administration. Just because someone crticizies the Bush administration doesn't mean they love Clinton. Moore included.
Plus, how is this argument: "He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren't a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side." the exposition of a deceitful aspect of Moore's film? He wasn't trying to hide the fact that they did, nor did he push an implication that they didn't. Obviously the movie is going to better represent his "side".
Take the documentary "Fog of War", for example. There was a driving theme to that whole documentary. Therefore, all the clips from McNamara and from elsewhere were chosen to promote that theme. If I say down and made an argument that everything should have been put in full context and every detail included, then the theme crumbles. Obviously there is another side for every assertion. I didn't see Fahrnheit 9/11 to learn that. I wanted to here one side make it's argument. The other side can have it's chance too.
"China was never really communist, and they aren't even playing at it anymore."
And this, to a large degree, where the Sino-Soviet split came from. While the Soviet Union claimed that it had already gotten past capitalism and was now working from socialism to communism, China never made this claim. Ideologically, they claimed that class struggle was to continue in China and that there would be a ruling class and an antagonistic serving class, which the Soviet Union claimed was impossible after revolution. This difference in ideologies allowed China to carry out a lot of "capitalist" reform by simply pointing out to their notion that, until the world-economy was a socialsit one, it was futile to try not to be capitalist in some senses.
"You know what pisses me off most? Not naive idiots like you, but that George Bush was a pussy. If we had treated Iraq like we did Germany or France at the end of WWII there would be *no* uprisings, car bombs, or anyother getting out of line. But no. Jr. had to go and do a 'humane' war. Dont bomb infrastructure.. dont bomb civies. Uncle."
That's right. Because, as we know, the repressive tactics the Soviets used in Eastern Europe translated into "no uprisings, car bombs, or anyother getting out of line".
"2) Iraq had something like the 3rd largest army in the world back in 1991, which the US effectively neutralized in a month or so. Again, airpower is king. The country isn't large or exceptionally modern, but it was quite a military foe."
What? First off, let's remember that if an olympic runner races against a bunch of 5 year olds, we can still point to a 5 year old and label him the third best runner. Doesn't mean he's a threat to the olympic runner at all.
During the 80s, Iraq had both Soviet and US support (weapons, intelligence, etc) and attacked Iran, creating the infamous Iran-Iraq war. Despite the fact that Iran had cut much of its military after the Islamic revolution in 1979, and resorted to using minors to fight the war, they still beat Iraq back. This was that formidable "military foe" you spoke about, back when two superpowers supported them and no one said a thing.
Since then? The Soviet Union has collapsed, the United States has withdrawn their aid and has since launched an embargo on the country that has reaked havok on it. Iraq wasn't "quite a military foe".
To return to your general issue, the big problem now for the US isn't fighting a one-on-one battle with some nation... clearly, the US will win. Foreign Affairs last year gave a statistic around the lines that just our military research and development funding is ahead, multiplied by a few times, of the next 5 major countries TOTAL military spending.
The problem is, however, exactly what we see in Iraq. Guerrilla warfare, suicide bombings, whatever. It doesn't matter what technology you have, a random person in a crowd throwing a grade towards soldiers is going to cause some trouble. The only way to really avoid attacks like that is get the people of the country you're attacking (Iraqis in this case) to support you. And the US hasn't developed that trick just yet. They're finding out, again, that waving American flags and giving out some chocolate bars isn't adequate.
I'm happy courts give leighway on arguments like this, even with the potential for abuse in mind. It's like the idea of pleading insanity, or temporary insanity. Most people don't like the idea because what they've seen on TV, but in actual statistics, as far as the US is concerned, the plea is rarely used and it's even more rare for it to be accepted.
Same idea with computers. While an insanity plea means you couldn't control your mind, the virus plea means you couldn't control your computer, and it's totally plausible. I just bought a new laptop and was browsing through some sites, being bombarded with pop-ups. I was going to click a button, but the pop-ups kept... well, popping up, and just as I went to click the button, a pop-up sprung up and I clicked yes on that instead. (This was before I could install Mozilla or anything else to get around that kind of situation.) Almost immediately, there was all this porn-ware and spyware installed on my machine. I used ad-aware and spybot but, still not satisfied with the clean-up job, just formatted and reinstalled. The average user would not have even heard of ad-aware or spybot or thing that it was that big of a deal.
Use the computer of a friend of yours who is an average computer user. Downloads music, checks e-mail, chats... that kind of thing. Run ad-aware or spybot on their computers. When I do this to help clean up friends computers and improve performance, the programs find something like a thousand files that are in suspicion. Sure, it'd be great if they could be more educated about the situation, but the education isn't readily avalible unless you're looking for it. To compare the use of a computer to driving a car is absurd. The system for licenses is very organized and infractions can clearly be observed, and then punished, as they're in public. You drive outside so it's relatively easy to make sure you're doing the right thing and even then, not everyone who doesn't signal as they change lanes or stop at red lights gets caught. Now image trying to apply such a thing to people while they're in the privacy of their own home.
A solution (maybe it's temporary) will be to hear these exceptions in court and I could only hope that further courts will follow such examples.
A jury is instructed by a judge on how to deal with DNA evidence, as well as a legal scientific advisor that would explain, prior to the case, how to deal with the statistical part of DNA.
Well, you're forgetting the fact that it's a country. Which means you've got location to deal with. Those other 29 people are going to be spread out over the country. If the crime was committed in Alaska, and the other 29 are throughout East Coast, you can bet you're not innocent.
Furthermore, while it's easy to use DNA to acquit, using it for conviction is harder to do. You can't use a statistic like 1 in 30 million. The prosecutor has to prove that the chances it could be someone else are neglibile, something like 1 in 3 billion. The system is actually being used quite responsibily, at least in the United States, which might be surprising.
I suppose you didn't notice that the Ashcroft comment was modded up to funny. But that aside, you don't find the fact that you have to classify the nature of your e-mails weird? I mean, confirm your e-mail is a good way to counter spam and bullshit e-mailers, but you have to tell them essentially what side you support?
What if other people started doing this? You start with Senators and you end up with congressmen and women. Take the small, off-chance you had at a grassroots letter working and rip it up because it's now been filtered out by the "do their opinions agree with us" filter.
You fools! Surely the computers will be exploited for this! This could lead to something completely unprecedented like one man being backed by the majority of American voters for the presidency and then the other man winning, as crazy as that example is!
Yes, sure does come with "great responsibility". I can see how the US is making the world a better place.
The thing is that the US continues to make mistakes in foreign policy. As does Russia, England, etc. And they suffer for it. England for what it does in Ireland, and now in Iraq, Russia for what they do to the Chechens and so on. Sweden has a higher rated freedom of the press, for example, as do many other countries. Slashdot had an article about this a while ago. The US is not, unfortunately, as high up in the freedom game as we used to be. And yet, these other countries don't get attacked or are not the target of such severe hatred by so many groups. "Look at the places in the world that hate us the most?" It'd good that you kept in "the most" as a qualifier. With the way our country is acting, almost everyone is starting to hate us, including free people. As much as I love this country, I'd like to travel outside of it every now and then.
Fortunately, we still have the basis of a country built on the spirit of freedom, so all isn't doomed. But legislation like the Patriot Act, all conjured up in the fear of terrorism, are making things worse. Just because other countries have been imperialistic in the past, including France, China, etc. doesn't excuse the US and it's new, unprecedented brand of unchallenged imperialism that will damage it's citizens and the freedom it was built on.
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My roommate listens to one of his favorite band's CDs all the time. He's had to buy three because they get scratched from use (normal use, not rolling over it with his office chair). That seems a bit absurd. Normal use can destroy most electronic media. That doesn't apply to the media of the "good ol' days". I've read an 1898 version of my favorite book over and over again (and, presumambly, so did the previous owner(s) of it) and it still is intact.
I had the same exact problem: after weeks of working with Gmail and Adblock with no problems, suddenly and without warning Gmail would just get stuck at a blank page or the "Loading..." page infinitely. The only way to get around it would be to force it into plain HTML mode (no amount of the clearing of the cache would help). The Google help page, as linked above, recommended Adblock Plus and that has worked fine since then. Basically, I doubt this is an attempt to stop people from blocking their ads (my Google Customization and Adblock Plus, the latter as recommended by them, do that fine), but instead is the result of a genuine and ongoing bug between Adblock and Gmail.
Or just use the Adblock extension for Firefox. It is by far the greatest way to block advertisers. With some use of a few wildcard you can browse nearly ad free. One of the more useful extensions, in my opinion.
"porn"
If they wanted all of the e-mail addresses on gmail, why didn't they just say so in the first place?
Playing online must be really fun with those two other douschebags that paid over 200 for a videogame that costs 50.
How many of those quoted were using issuing such statements to support a plan of theirs to launch an American invasion of a Iraq that would end up costing at least over 1,000 American soldiers lives just in the first few years? The statements you make carrier a graver responsibility when you're the guy actually telling the country "let's go to war" and also happen to have that power.
I think, for example, the NY Times article did a good job of pointing out that both Kerry and Edwards were morons who didn't check up on information that was handed to them and just relied on the brief from Tenet. Then they voted for the war.
This is a stupid move by both of them (one of many that will make sure they don't get my vote), but it's not comparable to Bush's stupid move. Kerry/Edwards were voting on a case based on bullshit evidence and didn't investigate further. Bush/Cheney were vital to making that case out of bullshit evidence. Neither group is getting my vote, but I can still point out that the responsibility is heavier on the commander-in-chief when he leads the country into war.
"Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges."
Not that I buy it, but the claim the Bush administration is going to be making (and this is covered in the article) is that the CIA didn't highlight or even mention the debate going on in the intelligence community over the use of these aluminum tubes. Condoleeza Rice appeared on a lot of Sunday shows today (I saw the CNN one) claiming that back when she claimed that the tubes could "only really be used for nuclear weapons", she knew of the debate but thought it was a marginalized dissent and that the overwhelming consensus in the intelligence community was that these tubes were to be used for nukes.
Of course, the response to these claims is: you couldn't have afford to have just based your information on the CIA briefings. If you're leading the nation to war, call in the advice of every relevant department and organization. The path to war shouldn't be a light one. And of course, since the nuclear issue was one of the major ones that drove us to war, supposedly, then the Energy Department clearly should have been consulted. And their overwhelming views were that the tubes were to be used for rockets.
Two points that are interesting in this article (that deserve a read)...
#1: The fact that the CIA endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the aluminum tube evidence, knowing the yellowcake evidence was bullshit. Meanwhile, the Energy Department endorsed the nuclear threat theory through the yellowcake evidence, knowing the aluminum tube evidence was bullshit. And yet, this was just read as a double endorsement.
#2: Dick Cheney's roll throughout all this (the fact that he was basically demanding evidence before any surfaced, or at least any that he was aware of).
I'll undo my moderation done to these discussions just to refute one of your points.
"And as you mentioned, he apologized. I'm not sure how you want him to express distrust, but he doesn't give the president a pass on anything."
Read his editorial on the interview, found here. The man sounds like a walking hard-on for George W Bush. My favorite quote out of the whole thing:
"For example, I am known for confrontational interviews, but you simply cannot tell a sitting President that you, the interviewer, know more than he does. That would make you look like a moron. So open confrontation goes right out the window."
This is funny. If you ever saw O'Reilly and what he did to that kid Jeremy Glick (transcript can be found here, you know that he really has no qualms in letting his confrontational interviews lapse into inappropriate areas. Jeremy Glick, for those of you who don't know, was the kid of a September 11th victim who was part of an organization that opposed aspects of the Bush administrations "War against Terrorism". Specifically, he criticized the lack of responsibility being put on previous administrations for the funding of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the lack of a promise to never make the same mistake again (a look at the situation in Iraq can tell you that, yes, the US is making the mistake of funding a potential enemy again).
Anyway, O'Reilly goes on to rip through Glick, evoke the memory of his dead father and widowed mother to counter his arguments and cuts Glick's mic, despite the fact that Glick throughout the whole interview was very calm and composed. O'Reilly then had Glick escorted by security, but not before telling him that he would tear the shit out of him. Later, O'Reilly claimed in other shows that Glick claimed that George W. Bush planned September 11, though that was clearly not what Glick said.
Suddenly, however, there is a limit to his confrontational interviewing style. Of course, one could argue that it's just because Bush is the president. But it takes just one look at O'Reilly's treatment of Clinton, and his treatment of Kerry will be much the same if he ends up winning the presidency, to realize that such arguments are bullshit. O'Reilly is clearly a huge Bush supporter. Which would be fine, if he didn't insist that he was this unbiased guy (Al Franken's discovery of previous Republican registration by O'Reilly is further proof of that).
Just a side note: at the end of the editorial, O'Reilly says:
"In the middle of my talk with the President, my mind flashed back for just a second to my childhood in Levittown, N.Y."
Though O'Reilly always makes this claim (and indeed has produced a deed to try to prove it) that he lived in some modest, working-class home in Levittown, in actuallity he lived in the Westbury part of Levittown, now known as Salisbury, which is not quite Levittown. The stakes of pointing this out? Well, Westbury wasn't exactly "modest". It was rick kid suburbia. Another one of O'Reilly's many lies.
Actually, if you read the article, they claim that the company offers a free-service too, with the limitation of just one e-mail. Still a ridiculous idea, but...
I'm assuming your whole spiel here is based solely on the one statement I made that you could possibly misinterpret, which is:
"But to equate the occasional election to overthrowing a government is absurd. American elections are choosing between two meals a cook offers you. Rebellion is storming the kitchen and making our own food."
At what point of time, in this statement, or for that matter anywhere in my comments, did I advocate "violent overthrow and anarchy"? There isn't just one alternative to elections, firstly. Secondly, at no point of time did I say that true elections wouldn't suffice. What we have now, though, an occasional choice between two shitty candidates, is not what I can point to as participatory democracy. This is all beyond the point. Of course, for you, once I criticize that the current electoral system, well, clearly I'm an anarchist who advocates violent overthrow! However, if you truly analyze my argument with a perspective that isn't black and white, and without this pretense that your "arguments are strong" (I wonder how strong an argument made on inaccurate assumptions could really be), maybe you could see my point. My metaphor of storming in and making the food ourselves didn't mention killing the cook. Or even hurting anyone in the process. You put that all in yourself.
I was talking about this to some people today, actually. Recently, there was a poll where voters preferred the idea of having Bush flipping burgers at their barbecue, and having Kerry teach their children. Which is microcosmic of what the differences between Bush and Kerry are in fact. Bush seems like he would be a funny guy to have over for lunch, despite the fact that he could be an asshole at times and generally was close-minded, uneducated, loud and obnoxious. Kerry, on the other hand, would be a stuck-up prick of a guest, with his nose high in the air, subtly critcizing your choice in wine. There is no doubt about it, Kerry is a jerk-off (which is of course why websites like this were made).
But as far as job qualification goes, he's got it in spades over Bush. And what is ultimately more important (seeing on how our presidents of the last few decades have been nothing more than symbols, like the Queen of England), the people Kerry would surround himself with and would be making the policies would be infinitely better than Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice and the bunch.
That is exactly one of the major points in that new book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror", written by an anonymous senior US intelligence official (now thought to be Michael Scheuer).
The book claims that bin Laden may strike the US before November to get the public to rally around Bush, as the anonymous official is "very sure [the terrorists] can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now" (the Bush Administration). Read more at this Guardian Article.
Are you serious? Voting Kerry or Bush means I'm overthrowing the government? Just because one out of every 1,460 days I get to go pull one of two levers, or check one of two boxes, doesn't mean anything. The fact remains that America is governed by a two-party system that allows for little alternatives. Moreover, the differences between the two parties are not all that impressive. While as Western European countries, for example, have seriously contending political parties all over the spectrum, we have had two that could be described by global standards as a center-right party (democrats) and a right party.
Not to say that we're bad off as, say, the Chinese. But to equate the occasional election to overthrowing a government is absurd. American elections are choosing between two meals a cook offers you. Rebellion is storming the kitchen and making our own food.
Warning: there may be a few minor "spoilers" here, but nothing you couldn't handle.
I read through the list and, though some of the points are highly interesting (for example, the "My Pet Goat" scene [by the way, the book is actually called "The Pet Goat", so I guess Michael Moore tried to deceive us again!] and how the teacher actually comended Bush's actions), most of the points are irrelevant. Take the one straight off the top. Fahrenheit 9/11 opens with a scene of Ben Affleck, Al Gore, etc. all celebrating under a banner that says "Florida Victory". The link you sent us to points out that the celebration was pre-election results in Florida and that Michael Moore is thus deceitful in trying to paint it like it's not.
But the stakes of the claim are zero. Who cares if it was pre-election? It's not deceitful, it's a matter of making a movie that's interesting. What is important, in the documentary, are the real facts asserted. For example, if the scene where members of congress futilely protested Bush's appointment to the presidency turned out to be fake or something, then an important argument had been made.
Plus, some of the "Deceit" claims are just plain ol' wrong. For example: "Moore Claimed that Osama bin Laden Might be Innocent and Opposed the Afghanistan War". I saw the movie a few days ago, and I don't think I forgot or missed much, but at no point of time do I remember Moore making the claim in the movie. Outside the movie, he didn't claim Osama bin Laden was innocent, but that the American way means we have to assume so until the facts come out against him. When Christopher Hitchens said "Something--I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now--has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell", he's full of it. We obviously have learned a lot more since the initial September 11 attacks, including more evidence to implicate Osama bin Laden. That may have fulfilled Moore's requirements for "till proven guilty".
The list goes on and on. Much of the "deceits" consist of agreeing that what Moore says is right (about the PATRIOT act, for example) but then saying "well, Clinton was involved/did something similar/etc" which is a common defense to any criticism of the Bush administration. Just because someone crticizies the Bush administration doesn't mean they love Clinton. Moore included.
Plus, how is this argument: "He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren't a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side." the exposition of a deceitful aspect of Moore's film? He wasn't trying to hide the fact that they did, nor did he push an implication that they didn't. Obviously the movie is going to better represent his "side".
Take the documentary "Fog of War", for example. There was a driving theme to that whole documentary. Therefore, all the clips from McNamara and from elsewhere were chosen to promote that theme. If I say down and made an argument that everything should have been put in full context and every detail included, then the theme crumbles. Obviously there is another side for every assertion. I didn't see Fahrnheit 9/11 to learn that. I wanted to here one side make it's argument. The other side can have it's chance too.
"China was never really communist, and they aren't even playing at it anymore."
And this, to a large degree, where the Sino-Soviet split came from. While the Soviet Union claimed that it had already gotten past capitalism and was now working from socialism to communism, China never made this claim. Ideologically, they claimed that class struggle was to continue in China and that there would be a ruling class and an antagonistic serving class, which the Soviet Union claimed was impossible after revolution. This difference in ideologies allowed China to carry out a lot of "capitalist" reform by simply pointing out to their notion that, until the world-economy was a socialsit one, it was futile to try not to be capitalist in some senses.
"You know what pisses me off most? Not naive idiots like you, but that George Bush was a pussy. If we had treated Iraq like we did Germany or France at the end of WWII there would be *no* uprisings, car bombs, or anyother getting out of line. But no. Jr. had to go and do a 'humane' war. Dont bomb infrastructure.. dont bomb civies. Uncle."
That's right. Because, as we know, the repressive tactics the Soviets used in Eastern Europe translated into "no uprisings, car bombs, or anyother getting out of line".
"2) Iraq had something like the 3rd largest army in the world back in 1991, which the US effectively neutralized in a month or so. Again, airpower is king. The country isn't large or exceptionally modern, but it was quite a military foe."
What? First off, let's remember that if an olympic runner races against a bunch of 5 year olds, we can still point to a 5 year old and label him the third best runner. Doesn't mean he's a threat to the olympic runner at all.
During the 80s, Iraq had both Soviet and US support (weapons, intelligence, etc) and attacked Iran, creating the infamous Iran-Iraq war. Despite the fact that Iran had cut much of its military after the Islamic revolution in 1979, and resorted to using minors to fight the war, they still beat Iraq back. This was that formidable "military foe" you spoke about, back when two superpowers supported them and no one said a thing.
Since then? The Soviet Union has collapsed, the United States has withdrawn their aid and has since launched an embargo on the country that has reaked havok on it. Iraq wasn't "quite a military foe".
To return to your general issue, the big problem now for the US isn't fighting a one-on-one battle with some nation... clearly, the US will win. Foreign Affairs last year gave a statistic around the lines that just our military research and development funding is ahead, multiplied by a few times, of the next 5 major countries TOTAL military spending.
The problem is, however, exactly what we see in Iraq. Guerrilla warfare, suicide bombings, whatever. It doesn't matter what technology you have, a random person in a crowd throwing a grade towards soldiers is going to cause some trouble. The only way to really avoid attacks like that is get the people of the country you're attacking (Iraqis in this case) to support you. And the US hasn't developed that trick just yet. They're finding out, again, that waving American flags and giving out some chocolate bars isn't adequate.
Did you see the face of that damn robot? If that's an accurate resemblance of his girlfriend, I think he should be the one worrying.
My advice? Spend time making the robot resemble Elizabeth Hurley or someone instead. He might find it more useful.
How do I check to see if my campus network is on internet2?
I'm happy courts give leighway on arguments like this, even with the potential for abuse in mind. It's like the idea of pleading insanity, or temporary insanity. Most people don't like the idea because what they've seen on TV, but in actual statistics, as far as the US is concerned, the plea is rarely used and it's even more rare for it to be accepted.
Same idea with computers. While an insanity plea means you couldn't control your mind, the virus plea means you couldn't control your computer, and it's totally plausible. I just bought a new laptop and was browsing through some sites, being bombarded with pop-ups. I was going to click a button, but the pop-ups kept... well, popping up, and just as I went to click the button, a pop-up sprung up and I clicked yes on that instead. (This was before I could install Mozilla or anything else to get around that kind of situation.) Almost immediately, there was all this porn-ware and spyware installed on my machine. I used ad-aware and spybot but, still not satisfied with the clean-up job, just formatted and reinstalled. The average user would not have even heard of ad-aware or spybot or thing that it was that big of a deal.
Use the computer of a friend of yours who is an average computer user. Downloads music, checks e-mail, chats... that kind of thing. Run ad-aware or spybot on their computers. When I do this to help clean up friends computers and improve performance, the programs find something like a thousand files that are in suspicion. Sure, it'd be great if they could be more educated about the situation, but the education isn't readily avalible unless you're looking for it. To compare the use of a computer to driving a car is absurd. The system for licenses is very organized and infractions can clearly be observed, and then punished, as they're in public. You drive outside so it's relatively easy to make sure you're doing the right thing and even then, not everyone who doesn't signal as they change lanes or stop at red lights gets caught. Now image trying to apply such a thing to people while they're in the privacy of their own home.
A solution (maybe it's temporary) will be to hear these exceptions in court and I could only hope that further courts will follow such examples.
A jury is instructed by a judge on how to deal with DNA evidence, as well as a legal scientific advisor that would explain, prior to the case, how to deal with the statistical part of DNA.
Well, you're forgetting the fact that it's a country. Which means you've got location to deal with. Those other 29 people are going to be spread out over the country. If the crime was committed in Alaska, and the other 29 are throughout East Coast, you can bet you're not innocent.
Furthermore, while it's easy to use DNA to acquit, using it for conviction is harder to do. You can't use a statistic like 1 in 30 million. The prosecutor has to prove that the chances it could be someone else are neglibile, something like 1 in 3 billion. The system is actually being used quite responsibily, at least in the United States, which might be surprising.
I suppose you didn't notice that the Ashcroft comment was modded up to funny. But that aside, you don't find the fact that you have to classify the nature of your e-mails weird? I mean, confirm your e-mail is a good way to counter spam and bullshit e-mailers, but you have to tell them essentially what side you support?
What if other people started doing this? You start with Senators and you end up with congressmen and women. Take the small, off-chance you had at a grassroots letter working and rip it up because it's now been filtered out by the "do their opinions agree with us" filter.
You fools! Surely the computers will be exploited for this! This could lead to something completely unprecedented like one man being backed by the majority of American voters for the presidency and then the other man winning, as crazy as that example is!
Yes, sure does come with "great responsibility". I can see how the US is making the world a better place.
The thing is that the US continues to make mistakes in foreign policy. As does Russia, England, etc. And they suffer for it. England for what it does in Ireland, and now in Iraq, Russia for what they do to the Chechens and so on. Sweden has a higher rated freedom of the press, for example, as do many other countries. Slashdot had an article about this a while ago. The US is not, unfortunately, as high up in the freedom game as we used to be. And yet, these other countries don't get attacked or are not the target of such severe hatred by so many groups. "Look at the places in the world that hate us the most?" It'd good that you kept in "the most" as a qualifier. With the way our country is acting, almost everyone is starting to hate us, including free people. As much as I love this country, I'd like to travel outside of it every now and then.
Fortunately, we still have the basis of a country built on the spirit of freedom, so all isn't doomed. But legislation like the Patriot Act, all conjured up in the fear of terrorism, are making things worse. Just because other countries have been imperialistic in the past, including France, China, etc. doesn't excuse the US and it's new, unprecedented brand of unchallenged imperialism that will damage it's citizens and the freedom it was built on.