What really gets me about these Republican TrollMods is that they are so robotic that we can depend on them showing up whenever there's something bad to say about Bush. I'd love to see the relative proportions of anonymous rightwing TrollMods to explicit AC rightwing posts to Bush's sinking approval ratings. All in proportion to identified people posting something actually rebutting the posts they don't like. Or even in proportion to actual flames, when mod'ed "Flamebait".
So I'm not going to accept your "perspective", of an insurance adjuster in a devastated, but insured city who arrived only to work in the worst disaster. I'm not surprised a guy whose job is to save insurance companies as much money as possible returns from the biggest claimant ever without sympathy. I'm surprised only that you'd admit it, and have lost touch with sympathy so much that you'd think I'd respect your opinion as "fair" when your interest conflict is so clear.
BTW, 1/3 of those police officers deserted in the hurricane - and they weren't so great in "good times", either. As for Nagin, his reelection is part of what's still wrong with New Orleans. But that doesn't make the city deserve more destruction. It deserves more help.
A British diplomat (to Uzbekistan, an actual center of the Qaeda War) warns us to be skeptical of the plot. Especially its timing, which was premature for destroying a possible network, but right on time to steal headlines from a primary defeat from a leading neocon that drew defensive scare propaganda from Bush and Cheney even though it's a Democratic primary.
I lived in New Orleans for years before Katrina created Lake George, and I've returned several times since the storm and flood. I talk with people living there all the time.
New Orleans is not "bouncing back". As usual, some rich people are getting extra care and money, like the people getting the fat contracts in this article. The local poor people, though desperate for jobs and rebuilding, are cut out by imported Mexican and Central American workers, mostly illegal, all subsidized by living cheap in their own countries when they leave. Imported by fat American contractors, also mostly from out of state. Meanwhile, they still haven't hauled away the trash from the storm 355 days ago.
New Orleans isn't on TV much anymore. But it's still screwed. It's still a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. I hope these new infrastructures are worthwhile investments in its future, but it's certainly not "bouncing" yet. What it really needs is more of you to come visit, spend some time and money seeing it for yourself. It's cheap and easy to get to by plane, rail and road, it's cheap to eat, party and learn there. And even if it never bounces back, at least you'll have seen America's most magical city for yourself before it's finally gone after 300 years - on our watch.
Yeah, let's just let a major, ancient American city get destroyed by our government's incompetence and just let it rot, because we just don't care. Later, when the tornadoes/earthquakes/droughts/locusts come through your town, we'll cut our losses by writing you off.
Who the hell are these fake "Americans" who don't understand even the most basic concept of Union? They hate America, and must be kept away from any kind of power or influence. Or we'll all be left with our own post-katrina cities.
I don't see analysts criticizing Microsoft just because most individual features (by menu item) in, say, MS Office, aren't popular or "successful". It's the bundle that gives the total value in the brand, which then funnels money through even just the most successful features. Google's features and rollouts don't even cost much or commit people to much ownership or even brand association. It just makes Google more than searching, so is a more persistent feature of the landscape.
Google owns the "Web" app brand as much as Microsoft owns the "Windows" brand. Whatever they do to appear big enough to deserve that ownership is worth doing.
Not only wasn't Bush charged with AWOL, the records that showed he was guilty were thrown out by the Texas NG commander fairly recently. That's part of the benefits package for family of a president/VP/DCI/GOP-chair/Congressman, when you're the Texas governor heading to a couple of terms as president yourself.
If I were a judge or jury in a court I'd be more rigorous in specific charges and evidence. I'm not, I'm just an American who can tell what the truth is on sufficient evidence. Bush shirked and even dodged his Vietnam service obligations. I don't care if it's imprecise to say that he was a draft dodger - he was, and worse.
Except that there is no other evidence for those hoaxes other than the stuff manufactured by their promoters. Bush's AWOL is documented and witnessed, with practically no evidence to the contrary where there should be a lot. Bush was AWOL, but a Texas Republican gave Rather simualted memos to be later exposed. Which turned the "issue" from Bush and his desertion to Rather and his deception, even when it was more like his failure to authenticate.
I hate Rather because his lazy arrogance blew the story during the election. We all love PT Barnum, though he exploited fake fossils whenever he could cook them up.
I like to reinforce the image of the tyrannical Bush Dynasty. Americans got rid of the first one relatively quickly. And we've got Tom Kean Jr running for senator in NJ, while his father makes the TV rounds pimping his book where he finally admits he let Republicans off easy on his 9/11 Commission. Nepotism is part of the Republican attack on America and "Jr/Sr" is a quick, easy reference to it. But "Wimp and Chimp" certainly have their place.
Is there a CDMA+GSM+WiFi phone yet? That runs Linux, or has HW similar enough to a Linux arch that a port is straightforward? Maybe a Windows phone that can be targeted?
Besides, I'm not interested in trivia that forces me to dignify either Bush. If ever there was a "close enough" moron, it's Bush Jr. And the "Jr" is descriptive in much more than their names.
The crappy NY Times graph of national evolution beliefs is rigged to make the US look like antievolutionists outnumber the evolutionists. They moved the 50% mark that's accurate near the top of the scale towards the 0%, so us antievolutionists look like they've got 50%, "don't know" has a chunk of the remaining 50%, and evolutionists have a much smaller share than antievolutionists. But measure the bars, and you can see that anti/evolutionists are the same in number, around 40%.
They link to only the briefest abstract from the actual research, with no stats. I wonder if the Times is lying about the whole thing to puff up the antievolutionists, who could be a small minority of Americans, like in the rest of the countries.
Ha ha, you fell for the fake "Bush Mars mission" designed to get science believers to quiet down their skepticism about Bush Sr in an election year. Bush Sr pulled the same thing, but Americans weren't as gullible then.
I replaced a big old oak desktop, about with a half dozen hanging file drawers and a Selectric with VMS on a VAX 11/780 via a VT320. We went from a 4'x6' hardwood work area to a 15' diagonal screen of 80x24 columns of green text. But we got email!
Last year on Slashdot, a christian told me about fellow believers of theirs who don't believe that nonbelievers are affected by any of the spirituality in the bible or their religion at all. That brings their religion into my own beliefs about self-metaprogramming, and has my total respect. Especially as their morals mostly coincide with my ethics.
Learning about them also encouraged me to invest some time in these religious arguments on Slashdot. Because sometimes I really do learn something worthwhile that I probably wouldn't somewhere else.
I metamoderated every time I got offered for months. I always metamod'ed everything on which I could form an opinion, though I skipped a few percent of the questions. I don't know the effect, but I did get modbombed last Fall, for weeks. Despite responding to what I call "TrollMods" with brief reasons why I thought the mod was unfair, and often with specific suggestions to the Slashdot operators for better meta/moderation accountability. And without responding to every negative mod with whining. But I got modbombed pretty hard, and decided metamoderation wasn't giving the return in "moderation moderation" on my time investment that I needed to justify participating.
If Slashdot included some accountability in its moderation beyond metamod'ing, which can clearly be gamed in enough ways that the mod system is widely abused to suppress disliked content, I'd participate again. Like if negative mods required a reason which the mod'ed poster could view, if only to learn what pisses people off. Or if there were a web of trust that made moderation less absolute, but rather weighted moderation by the reader's agreement with different moderators over time.
I don't know how you know that your metamods kicked people from mod'ing. I'd love to see the results of my metamods, or even just the results of metamods on my mods.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to post as I actually feel. Somehow, despite the attacks, I've consistently got enough karma to post as much as I like, except once in a while when I'm probably wasting too much time posting anyway.
"PC" is not some relative term. It is "Politically Correct": official truths defined by politics. Whether state politics, as traditionally in the Soviet Union, or indeed in academic politics. America's politics is democratic, and the origin of human life is not an official policy. So this poll, if accurate, shows that evolution is indeed "politically incorrect", and Creationism is PC.
I'm intolerant of jihadists, too, as well as people who step on my feet on the subway. That doesn't make me a bigot. I'm intolerant of people who treat me badly, as I specified. I don't care what you think, until you try tell me what to think or do myself, or obviously threaten my freedom or wellbeing. Like you - not all religious people. You hide behind religion, demanding tolerance for your intolerance and agressive ignorance, as if all religious people are like you. I don't play that game, even if you're not used to losing your figleaf.
I made no mistake. You can make the usual religious mistake of declaring you accept the Big Bang theory, but get it wrong. The Big Bang theory doesn't say "it just happened" like a miracle; you got it wrong because you don't understand the science. So I don't merely assume your rejection of the actual Big Bang: I can see that you do. Stop crowing about some kind of mistake that is all yours, from your pit of ignorance.
Logic? Cut the crap. Your argument tries to say that because some people don't accept their childhood training until adulthood, that it didn't have an effect. That because some people become theists without childhood training (like who?) that theism is valid - without accounting for the other reasons why they become theists, like peer pressure or alcoholism. You want to use logic to justify your brand of faith, tell me the logical reason people choose faith. Don't bother - that's a contradiction, though I'm sure you love it anyway.
No, I didn't go to biz school, and all the MBAs I've ever worked for or against were good for little more than papering some actual business decision or calling their rolodex of MBAs. Instead I have made a fortune of my own actually running businesses and producing tech for businesses and government. With a specialty in equities infosystems during the bubble, starting in 1994 and selling out in 1999Q3. So I don't need some mere MBA telling me about "best predictors".
Especially when you say things like "if Saudi Arabia can decide tommorow to lower the prices back to $20 per barrel". Running at capacity production while demand increases at unprecedented rates, SA can't just "decide", unless they wanted to throw away their GDP. Which they obviously can't - the chaos would cause revolution and anarchy in the most sensitive, essential tyranny on the planet. It's that kind of thinking that MBAs can entertain, but which the real world doesn't tolerate. Like thinking the SP500 is actually a proxy for the US economy. Or that the reasons China buys our debt is merely "very interesting", and not one of America's most serious threats, risking crisis any day.
I'm not learning anything about economics from this discussion except that little has changed in the naivete of people making short-term money on trades at the expense of serious medium term costs and risks. No fun.
I'll see what results I have for you on the "leading indicators" of Americans "kicking everyone's butts", the actual topic of this subthread.
How is "freaky mathematical geniuses", the fun they offer and our love for them, Offtopic to this discussion of the freaky mathematical genius who solved the Poincare Conjecture? It's not. TrollMods control the tolls on the Slashdot bridge to nowhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Moderation +1
70% Interesting
30% Flamebait
What really gets me about these Republican TrollMods is that they are so robotic that we can depend on them showing up whenever there's something bad to say about Bush. I'd love to see the relative proportions of anonymous rightwing TrollMods to explicit AC rightwing posts to Bush's sinking approval ratings. All in proportion to identified people posting something actually rebutting the posts they don't like. Or even in proportion to actual flames, when mod'ed "Flamebait".
Louisiana is the only entitlement state? The Red States are all Welfare States. And that's just the most superficial example of White Privilege.
So I'm not going to accept your "perspective", of an insurance adjuster in a devastated, but insured city who arrived only to work in the worst disaster. I'm not surprised a guy whose job is to save insurance companies as much money as possible returns from the biggest claimant ever without sympathy. I'm surprised only that you'd admit it, and have lost touch with sympathy so much that you'd think I'd respect your opinion as "fair" when your interest conflict is so clear.
BTW, 1/3 of those police officers deserted in the hurricane - and they weren't so great in "good times", either. As for Nagin, his reelection is part of what's still wrong with New Orleans. But that doesn't make the city deserve more destruction. It deserves more help.
Bruce Schneier, the dean of crypto and security processes generally, yesterday debunked this plot as "implausible".
A British diplomat (to Uzbekistan, an actual center of the Qaeda War) warns us to be skeptical of the plot. Especially its timing, which was premature for destroying a possible network, but right on time to steal headlines from a primary defeat from a leading neocon that drew defensive scare propaganda from Bush and Cheney even though it's a Democratic primary.
As we see more and more of our Republican government terrorizing us on their campaign schedule, we have more chances to turn against them, and fight our own war against terror ourselves, in our own minds and at the polls. We can replace anyone in the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.
More Anonymous Coward hatred of an America you see as disposable.
I lived in New Orleans for years before Katrina created Lake George, and I've returned several times since the storm and flood. I talk with people living there all the time.
New Orleans is not "bouncing back". As usual, some rich people are getting extra care and money, like the people getting the fat contracts in this article. The local poor people, though desperate for jobs and rebuilding, are cut out by imported Mexican and Central American workers, mostly illegal, all subsidized by living cheap in their own countries when they leave. Imported by fat American contractors, also mostly from out of state. Meanwhile, they still haven't hauled away the trash from the storm 355 days ago.
New Orleans isn't on TV much anymore. But it's still screwed. It's still a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. I hope these new infrastructures are worthwhile investments in its future, but it's certainly not "bouncing" yet. What it really needs is more of you to come visit, spend some time and money seeing it for yourself. It's cheap and easy to get to by plane, rail and road, it's cheap to eat, party and learn there. And even if it never bounces back, at least you'll have seen America's most magical city for yourself before it's finally gone after 300 years - on our watch.
Yeah, let's just let a major, ancient American city get destroyed by our government's incompetence and just let it rot, because we just don't care. Later, when the tornadoes/earthquakes/droughts/locusts come through your town, we'll cut our losses by writing you off.
Who the hell are these fake "Americans" who don't understand even the most basic concept of Union? They hate America, and must be kept away from any kind of power or influence. Or we'll all be left with our own post-katrina cities.
I don't see analysts criticizing Microsoft just because most individual features (by menu item) in, say, MS Office, aren't popular or "successful". It's the bundle that gives the total value in the brand, which then funnels money through even just the most successful features. Google's features and rollouts don't even cost much or commit people to much ownership or even brand association. It just makes Google more than searching, so is a more persistent feature of the landscape.
Google owns the "Web" app brand as much as Microsoft owns the "Windows" brand. Whatever they do to appear big enough to deserve that ownership is worth doing.
Not only wasn't Bush charged with AWOL, the records that showed he was guilty were thrown out by the Texas NG commander fairly recently. That's part of the benefits package for family of a president/VP/DCI/GOP-chair/Congressman, when you're the Texas governor heading to a couple of terms as president yourself.
If I were a judge or jury in a court I'd be more rigorous in specific charges and evidence. I'm not, I'm just an American who can tell what the truth is on sufficient evidence. Bush shirked and even dodged his Vietnam service obligations. I don't care if it's imprecise to say that he was a draft dodger - he was, and worse.
Except that there is no other evidence for those hoaxes other than the stuff manufactured by their promoters. Bush's AWOL is documented and witnessed, with practically no evidence to the contrary where there should be a lot. Bush was AWOL, but a Texas Republican gave Rather simualted memos to be later exposed. Which turned the "issue" from Bush and his desertion to Rather and his deception, even when it was more like his failure to authenticate.
I hate Rather because his lazy arrogance blew the story during the election. We all love PT Barnum, though he exploited fake fossils whenever he could cook them up.
I like to reinforce the image of the tyrannical Bush Dynasty. Americans got rid of the first one relatively quickly. And we've got Tom Kean Jr running for senator in NJ, while his father makes the TV rounds pimping his book where he finally admits he let Republicans off easy on his 9/11 Commission. Nepotism is part of the Republican attack on America and "Jr/Sr" is a quick, easy reference to it. But "Wimp and Chimp" certainly have their place.
Is there a CDMA+GSM+WiFi phone yet? That runs Linux, or has HW similar enough to a Linux arch that a port is straightforward? Maybe a Windows phone that can be targeted?
I think Rather is the expert in telling the truth despite simulated evidence.
Er, that would be "Bushes", not "Bush's".
Besides, I'm not interested in trivia that forces me to dignify either Bush. If ever there was a "close enough" moron, it's Bush Jr. And the "Jr" is descriptive in much more than their names.
Moderation 0
50% Troll
50% Insightful
TrollMods certainly are diligent. But they don't have enough power yet to totally control which stories are read by people with default settings.
The crappy NY Times graph of national evolution beliefs is rigged to make the US look like antievolutionists outnumber the evolutionists. They moved the 50% mark that's accurate near the top of the scale towards the 0%, so us antievolutionists look like they've got 50%, "don't know" has a chunk of the remaining 50%, and evolutionists have a much smaller share than antievolutionists. But measure the bars, and you can see that anti/evolutionists are the same in number, around 40%.
They link to only the briefest abstract from the actual research, with no stats. I wonder if the Times is lying about the whole thing to puff up the antievolutionists, who could be a small minority of Americans, like in the rest of the countries.
Ha ha, you fell for the fake "Bush Mars mission" designed to get science believers to quiet down their skepticism about Bush Sr in an election year. Bush Sr pulled the same thing, but Americans weren't as gullible then.
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
So now confronting TrollMods is Flamebait. Slashdot's moderation system is more broken than working.
I replaced a big old oak desktop, about with a half dozen hanging file drawers and a Selectric with VMS on a VAX 11/780 via a VT320. We went from a 4'x6' hardwood work area to a 15' diagonal screen of 80x24 columns of green text. But we got email!
Last year on Slashdot, a christian told me about fellow believers of theirs who don't believe that nonbelievers are affected by any of the spirituality in the bible or their religion at all. That brings their religion into my own beliefs about self-metaprogramming, and has my total respect. Especially as their morals mostly coincide with my ethics.
Learning about them also encouraged me to invest some time in these religious arguments on Slashdot. Because sometimes I really do learn something worthwhile that I probably wouldn't somewhere else.
I metamoderated every time I got offered for months. I always metamod'ed everything on which I could form an opinion, though I skipped a few percent of the questions. I don't know the effect, but I did get modbombed last Fall, for weeks. Despite responding to what I call "TrollMods" with brief reasons why I thought the mod was unfair, and often with specific suggestions to the Slashdot operators for better meta/moderation accountability. And without responding to every negative mod with whining. But I got modbombed pretty hard, and decided metamoderation wasn't giving the return in "moderation moderation" on my time investment that I needed to justify participating.
If Slashdot included some accountability in its moderation beyond metamod'ing, which can clearly be gamed in enough ways that the mod system is widely abused to suppress disliked content, I'd participate again. Like if negative mods required a reason which the mod'ed poster could view, if only to learn what pisses people off. Or if there were a web of trust that made moderation less absolute, but rather weighted moderation by the reader's agreement with different moderators over time.
I don't know how you know that your metamods kicked people from mod'ing. I'd love to see the results of my metamods, or even just the results of metamods on my mods.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to post as I actually feel. Somehow, despite the attacks, I've consistently got enough karma to post as much as I like, except once in a while when I'm probably wasting too much time posting anyway.
Speculation is knowledge, too. It's better than nothing sometimes, when something is necessary. It's not as good as proof.
"PC" is not some relative term. It is "Politically Correct": official truths defined by politics. Whether state politics, as traditionally in the Soviet Union, or indeed in academic politics. America's politics is democratic, and the origin of human life is not an official policy. So this poll, if accurate, shows that evolution is indeed "politically incorrect", and Creationism is PC.
I'm intolerant of jihadists, too, as well as people who step on my feet on the subway. That doesn't make me a bigot. I'm intolerant of people who treat me badly, as I specified. I don't care what you think, until you try tell me what to think or do myself, or obviously threaten my freedom or wellbeing. Like you - not all religious people. You hide behind religion, demanding tolerance for your intolerance and agressive ignorance, as if all religious people are like you. I don't play that game, even if you're not used to losing your figleaf.
I made no mistake. You can make the usual religious mistake of declaring you accept the Big Bang theory, but get it wrong. The Big Bang theory doesn't say "it just happened" like a miracle; you got it wrong because you don't understand the science. So I don't merely assume your rejection of the actual Big Bang: I can see that you do. Stop crowing about some kind of mistake that is all yours, from your pit of ignorance.
Logic? Cut the crap. Your argument tries to say that because some people don't accept their childhood training until adulthood, that it didn't have an effect. That because some people become theists without childhood training (like who?) that theism is valid - without accounting for the other reasons why they become theists, like peer pressure or alcoholism. You want to use logic to justify your brand of faith, tell me the logical reason people choose faith. Don't bother - that's a contradiction, though I'm sure you love it anyway.
No, I didn't go to biz school, and all the MBAs I've ever worked for or against were good for little more than papering some actual business decision or calling their rolodex of MBAs. Instead I have made a fortune of my own actually running businesses and producing tech for businesses and government. With a specialty in equities infosystems during the bubble, starting in 1994 and selling out in 1999Q3. So I don't need some mere MBA telling me about "best predictors".
Especially when you say things like "if Saudi Arabia can decide tommorow to lower the prices back to $20 per barrel". Running at capacity production while demand increases at unprecedented rates, SA can't just "decide", unless they wanted to throw away their GDP. Which they obviously can't - the chaos would cause revolution and anarchy in the most sensitive, essential tyranny on the planet. It's that kind of thinking that MBAs can entertain, but which the real world doesn't tolerate. Like thinking the SP500 is actually a proxy for the US economy. Or that the reasons China buys our debt is merely "very interesting", and not one of America's most serious threats, risking crisis any day.
I'm not learning anything about economics from this discussion except that little has changed in the naivete of people making short-term money on trades at the expense of serious medium term costs and risks. No fun.
I'll see what results I have for you on the "leading indicators" of Americans "kicking everyone's butts", the actual topic of this subthread.
Moderation 0
50% Offtopic
30% Funny
20% Interesting
How is "freaky mathematical geniuses", the fun they offer and our love for them, Offtopic to this discussion of the freaky mathematical genius who solved the Poincare Conjecture? It's not. TrollMods control the tolls on the Slashdot bridge to nowhere.