It's been a while since we last disagreed in a Slashdot thread. I was concerned that this time would be just a battle - but you have the dignity to care more about the serious facts than argument. I respect that.
If we're going to look at a "next level", there's no evidence to direct our gaze laterally to Democrats - though there are certainly partisan reasons to try. We need to look deeper - at the officials Abramoff bribed, who are guilty of more serious crimes than Abramoff. Although Abramoff's crimes apparently do include complicity in the murder of a casino business associate, with Abramoff's partner directly implicated. But one of Abramoff's bribed officials, David Safavian, was arrested for obstructing justice while impeding an Abramoff investigation. Safavian oversaw $300B in procurement, and further implicates Ohio Republican Congressmember Ney. These are the people we should be examining - the criminals associated with Abramoff and each other, who sell out our country for golf trips and other bribes yet to be uncovered.
You and I have our differences, but our mutual interest in uncovering these criminal gangs rotting our country is clearly more important.
'Repeating things over and over again for "the truth" to sink in' doesn't imply there's opposing propaganda. That inference requires that all information be propaganda - no truth, no personally verified experience, no independent thinking by the receiver.
"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." -- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 184
When you look at the Bush administration, you notice that their propaganda has two tiers: constant leaks, press releases, a steady buzz of propaganda from "anonymous sources" to the Press Secretary. Then there's spokesmodel Bush, whose delivery of the propaganda is more like a catapult. The only reason to invent some opposing propaganda in this scene, especially from Bush's words only about himself and his operation, is to insist on the presence of an equal opponent to justify Bush's actions. It's the fake "balance" propaganda, invoked only to defend some Bush misdeed.
The Washington Post has been busily spinning Abramoff's Republican bribery scandal. But even after the WP deleting hundreds of critical emails on the pretense of "obscenity", the fact remains that the WP has only fabricated images of false reports of Abramoff wish lists - far from evidence that Abramoff directed any money. And in light of the longstanding history of tribal representation by Democrats, and longterm donations, the only evidence of Abramoff's involvement is that Democrats got less money than previously.
And much more importantly, far from evidence that Democrats took bribes. Abramoff has now pleaded guilty to bribing Republicans. That is solid. The rest is spin, and worse.
Bush said his job is to "catapult the propaganda". That's "project the bullshit" in more familiar terms. The propaganda needs a catapult because it won't otherwise get very far on its own - truth, common sense and reality are pretty good barriers. ceejayoz came up with some kind of "balance", inventing "opposing propaganda", in a completely circular self-justification. Without pointing out that such an invention is a circular self-justification. Without even saying that the opposing propaganda was their guess at Bush's rationalization: therefore it's presented as actual, or their own idea - not Bush's. Charity does not require creating new entities to justify someone's bad behavior when even they don't mention it. And there's no reason to turn to charity, as if there are no other explanations for why Bush projects the bullshit as hard as he can: it covers up all the catastrophic acts over which he presides.
Of course the "propaganda race" is a popular kind of argument. In this case, there's no reason to invent one, especially when everyone involved in this discussion knows that Bush is a liar without remorse, without necessity except to cover up his terrible acts. And that he's so arrogant that he often brags about how he abuses us.
Humans don't even express our world in mutually exclusive pure truth/falsity, except in the most abstract discussions of philosophers like Aristotle and Boole. When we started making machines to operate according to those kinds of expressions, we found they only roughly corresponded to our world except in cases of extreme simplicity and wide error tolerance. And even our most precise and accurate descriptions of our world are statistical: ambiguous, uncertain. Binary depictions of our world don't survive beyond the ideal confines of our minds.
Well, you're pretty confused when you're dragging out imaginary rationalizations for Bush's blatant confession to being merely a spokesmodel, when you oppose him so strongly. If you think Bush thinks that, and you're going to make up apologies for him, you might as well note that your proposed reason is jackass logic. Otherwise, you're the only one to blame for appearing to tacitly endorse it by articulating it unopposed.
I don't have time to research the background of people helping to catapult the propaganda, to look for mitigating past actions that might contradict their simple action. It's your job to communicate clearly, or not at all. And to accept that you betrayed your own good sense when you do. I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but you've already done that in just a couple of posts in this thread.
It's fun to watch you primitives twist in your ignorance of how science is different from religion.
I'll poke you again: NASA is not some invisible spirit; it selects its heads through proof and rigorous analysis. Those leaders' work is constantly questioned, and tested by application to engineering that's used in the real world.
I don't know about this hell you're describing, these sins that are the only way you understand how to act in the world. But you've done this forum a great service by screaming your obviously discrediting nonsense at us. Next deluded science hater, please.
"Only 35% [of Americans] are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States; 65% are dissatisfied. This is consistent with Americans' generally dour mood on this measure for the past year."
"[N]early two-thirds of Americans say things have gotten worse. Only 28% say they have improved."
Maybe we're just not delusional fascists like you.
He is Dr. Hansen of NASA. Their chief climate scientist. Who cites the scientific conclusions that reducing emissions is the only chance we have to stop destroying our climate, and ourselves.
You have a right to worship your Greenhouse denial religion. But the facts are against you, even if facts aren't important in your religion.
No, there are plenty of people like you. Who hear undeniable proof that Bush is a liar, that all he cares about is fooling enough people like you, then you all immediately think of nothing else but inventing some imaginary reason why Bush "has to lie". Even when that reason is only in your mind. You and all the other people struggling to be lied to as often as possible. It doesn't make you any better that there are a lot of you.
No, actually I say that our country, including you, has been violated, by an unlimited government. But of course you see it as "crying", because that's what you do when you lose what you see as a game, of side vs. side. Those are some dangerous frames you're wearing, with the mirrored lenses pointing inwards.
Well, at least you caught on to the point that the biased question I posed was the parallel of the biased question asked in the poll.
You might try applying your apparent faculties to tell whether the domestic spying breaks the law. It's not that complicated: the only power to tap American phones is under FISA, which Bush admits he ignored. That's illegal. You can look at other claims, like the NSA director's claim that the 4th Amendment doesn't require probable cause for searches, to see they don't protect their spying with actual law. You can look at any other official analyses which don't report to those responsible for the spying - they all say that the spying was illegal. Or you can look for any argument that just backs up the president, no matter how weak or selfserving.
"The poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush's authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism"; 46 percent disapproved. When the question was asked stripped of any mention of terrorism, 46 percent of those respondents approved, and 50 percent said they disapproved."
7% margin "to reduce the threat of terrorism", -4% margin just on the wiretapping. That hefty 11% (which is 24% of either "side") is why Bush will lie about the wiretaps "reducing terrorism".
How about the results of a poll asking "support Bush's illegal spying on Americans?" I'd expect more like up to 35% approval (20% of Americans believe we were born yesterday), 60% disapproval. But I'd still expect the media to describe that opposition as "mixed support".
This media blur between data "loss" and data "disclosure" is bad news. Just because some data is disclosed outside an organization, does not mean that it is lost to the organization. Sometimes disclosed data loses its value, even if it is still available inside. And of course disclosure of some data can cause more damage than its loss. But the two terms are not interchangeable.
The blur is probably enabled by the same lack of insight that confuses software "piracy" with software "theft". This distinction is even more important than the long-lost battle to distinguish "hacker" from "cracker". The normals didn't know what either one meant, and usually can't appreciate the distinction even when explained. But if they don't learn the difference between disclosure and loss now, before they're permanently equated, they won't be able to deal with the consequences. And we'll be stuck with them like that.
Who's got reliable info on Asterisk scaling requirements? Eg. what hardware is needed in a cluster to support 10,000 corporate users (with a featurelist), or even 10,000 simultaneous phonecalls? Or, how many simultaneous users can a 2-Xeon/4GHz/4GB/250GB server support?
The useful answer to this question for a real network design is pretty detailed. Where are some actual scaled usage/support results?
Around the last week of December I got TrollMod bombed. Dozens of "Troll" and "Flamebait" mods on posts which obviously earned nothing but a target from TrollMods who can't respond any other way than with thuggish suppression. I also got pretty busy with other activities, and took advantage of the new perspective on Slashdot's troll-friendly moderation system to take a break. But I've had some more time lately, and some stories seemed worth commenting on. Thanks for the welcome:).
Seth Goldstein's Bubble startup, also called "Root", was an "online concierge" service. Root would store your personal data at its server, using it to deal with all your customer service requests to any companies you had business with. Root would also market services from those businesses to its members. The problem was that "one man's synergy is another man's conflict of interest". Root folded before it went fully live, but its conflict of interest in protecting members' private info would have interfered with their other business interests: selling that info. If Goldstein's new venture is to be trusted, protecting its members' data must be verifiable, and breaches of that protection must be accountable. The new version incents members to give out their data, but members must be sure that all those releases are authorized - and that the costs of longterm exposed privacy are worth the benefits of immediate marketing perks.
Thanks for the advice, but I think you missed my point. I bought those GD DVDs, because I downloaded a firstclass copy of a different video for free (that cost the GD nothing to make, market or distribute). While the GD and the entertainment industry fight the P2P process that was responsible for me buying their product. Which sucked, unlike the free one. Clearly the entertainment industry is wasting its time on exactly the wrong work.
BTW, you might be interested in how Christianity's "merger" with the Roman Empire changed the religion. In my view, from a DIY faith, a reformation of Judaism, into a dogma that damaged both the theology and the empire. But I'm not much on faith myself, certainly not any that's taught, or empires for that matter.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been a while since we last disagreed in a Slashdot thread. I was concerned that this time would be just a battle - but you have the dignity to care more about the serious facts than argument. I respect that.
If we're going to look at a "next level", there's no evidence to direct our gaze laterally to Democrats - though there are certainly partisan reasons to try. We need to look deeper - at the officials Abramoff bribed, who are guilty of more serious crimes than Abramoff. Although Abramoff's crimes apparently do include complicity in the murder of a casino business associate, with Abramoff's partner directly implicated. But one of Abramoff's bribed officials, David Safavian, was arrested for obstructing justice while impeding an Abramoff investigation. Safavian oversaw $300B in procurement, and further implicates Ohio Republican Congressmember Ney. These are the people we should be examining - the criminals associated with Abramoff and each other, who sell out our country for golf trips and other bribes yet to be uncovered.
You and I have our differences, but our mutual interest in uncovering these criminal gangs rotting our country is clearly more important.
'Repeating things over and over again for "the truth" to sink in' doesn't imply there's opposing propaganda. That inference requires that all information be propaganda - no truth, no personally verified experience, no independent thinking by the receiver.
The repetition is the basic rule of propaganda: repetition gets people to believe something is the truth, even when it's not:
"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." -- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 184
And the Reagan progaganda policy was "if you tell the same story five times, it's true."
When you look at the Bush administration, you notice that their propaganda has two tiers: constant leaks, press releases, a steady buzz of propaganda from "anonymous sources" to the Press Secretary. Then there's spokesmodel Bush, whose delivery of the propaganda is more like a catapult. The only reason to invent some opposing propaganda in this scene, especially from Bush's words only about himself and his operation, is to insist on the presence of an equal opponent to justify Bush's actions. It's the fake "balance" propaganda, invoked only to defend some Bush misdeed.
If I put in another wooden nickel into your cultomatic, will you froth some more? Speak, Pazuzu!
The Washington Post has been busily spinning Abramoff's Republican bribery scandal. But even after the WP deleting hundreds of critical emails on the pretense of "obscenity", the fact remains that the WP has only fabricated images of false reports of Abramoff wish lists - far from evidence that Abramoff directed any money. And in light of the longstanding history of tribal representation by Democrats, and longterm donations, the only evidence of Abramoff's involvement is that Democrats got less money than previously.
And much more importantly, far from evidence that Democrats took bribes. Abramoff has now pleaded guilty to bribing Republicans. That is solid. The rest is spin, and worse.
Bush said his job is to "catapult the propaganda". That's "project the bullshit" in more familiar terms. The propaganda needs a catapult because it won't otherwise get very far on its own - truth, common sense and reality are pretty good barriers. ceejayoz came up with some kind of "balance", inventing "opposing propaganda", in a completely circular self-justification. Without pointing out that such an invention is a circular self-justification. Without even saying that the opposing propaganda was their guess at Bush's rationalization: therefore it's presented as actual, or their own idea - not Bush's. Charity does not require creating new entities to justify someone's bad behavior when even they don't mention it. And there's no reason to turn to charity, as if there are no other explanations for why Bush projects the bullshit as hard as he can: it covers up all the catastrophic acts over which he presides.
Of course the "propaganda race" is a popular kind of argument. In this case, there's no reason to invent one, especially when everyone involved in this discussion knows that Bush is a liar without remorse, without necessity except to cover up his terrible acts. And that he's so arrogant that he often brags about how he abuses us.
Of course you'd say that - you just said it. But would you link to some proof that Abramoff gave $millions to Democrats?
Humans don't even express our world in mutually exclusive pure truth/falsity, except in the most abstract discussions of philosophers like Aristotle and Boole. When we started making machines to operate according to those kinds of expressions, we found they only roughly corresponded to our world except in cases of extreme simplicity and wide error tolerance. And even our most precise and accurate descriptions of our world are statistical: ambiguous, uncertain. Binary depictions of our world don't survive beyond the ideal confines of our minds.
Well, you're pretty confused when you're dragging out imaginary rationalizations for Bush's blatant confession to being merely a spokesmodel, when you oppose him so strongly. If you think Bush thinks that, and you're going to make up apologies for him, you might as well note that your proposed reason is jackass logic. Otherwise, you're the only one to blame for appearing to tacitly endorse it by articulating it unopposed.
I don't have time to research the background of people helping to catapult the propaganda, to look for mitigating past actions that might contradict their simple action. It's your job to communicate clearly, or not at all. And to accept that you betrayed your own good sense when you do. I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but you've already done that in just a couple of posts in this thread.
It's fun to watch you primitives twist in your ignorance of how science is different from religion.
I'll poke you again: NASA is not some invisible spirit; it selects its heads through proof and rigorous analysis. Those leaders' work is constantly questioned, and tested by application to engineering that's used in the real world.
I don't know about this hell you're describing, these sins that are the only way you understand how to act in the world. But you've done this forum a great service by screaming your obviously discrediting nonsense at us. Next deluded science hater, please.
CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Jan. 20-22
Maybe we're just not delusional fascists like you.
He is Dr. Hansen of NASA. Their chief climate scientist. Who cites the scientific conclusions that reducing emissions is the only chance we have to stop destroying our climate, and ourselves.
You have a right to worship your Greenhouse denial religion. But the facts are against you, even if facts aren't important in your religion.
No, there are plenty of people like you. Who hear undeniable proof that Bush is a liar, that all he cares about is fooling enough people like you, then you all immediately think of nothing else but inventing some imaginary reason why Bush "has to lie". Even when that reason is only in your mind. You and all the other people struggling to be lied to as often as possible. It doesn't make you any better that there are a lot of you.
No, actually I say that our country, including you, has been violated, by an unlimited government. But of course you see it as "crying", because that's what you do when you lose what you see as a game, of side vs. side. Those are some dangerous frames you're wearing, with the mirrored lenses pointing inwards.
Well, at least you caught on to the point that the biased question I posed was the parallel of the biased question asked in the poll.
You might try applying your apparent faculties to tell whether the domestic spying breaks the law. It's not that complicated: the only power to tap American phones is under FISA, which Bush admits he ignored. That's illegal. You can look at other claims, like the NSA director's claim that the 4th Amendment doesn't require probable cause for searches, to see they don't protect their spying with actual law. You can look at any other official analyses which don't report to those responsible for the spying - they all say that the spying was illegal. Or you can look for any argument that just backs up the president, no matter how weak or selfserving.
"The poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush's authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism"; 46 percent disapproved. When the question was asked stripped of any mention of terrorism, 46 percent of those respondents approved, and 50 percent said they disapproved."
7% margin "to reduce the threat of terrorism", -4% margin just on the wiretapping. That hefty 11% (which is 24% of either "side") is why Bush will lie about the wiretaps "reducing terrorism".
How about the results of a poll asking "support Bush's illegal spying on Americans?" I'd expect more like up to 35% approval (20% of Americans believe we were born yesterday), 60% disapproval. But I'd still expect the media to describe that opposition as "mixed support".
Exuberance, like the Wired front pages trumpeting uncritical announcements of a Bubble^Wboom that would last forever?
This media blur between data "loss" and data "disclosure" is bad news. Just because some data is disclosed outside an organization, does not mean that it is lost to the organization. Sometimes disclosed data loses its value, even if it is still available inside. And of course disclosure of some data can cause more damage than its loss. But the two terms are not interchangeable.
The blur is probably enabled by the same lack of insight that confuses software "piracy" with software "theft". This distinction is even more important than the long-lost battle to distinguish "hacker" from "cracker". The normals didn't know what either one meant, and usually can't appreciate the distinction even when explained. But if they don't learn the difference between disclosure and loss now, before they're permanently equated, they won't be able to deal with the consequences. And we'll be stuck with them like that.
Who's got reliable info on Asterisk scaling requirements? Eg. what hardware is needed in a cluster to support 10,000 corporate users (with a featurelist), or even 10,000 simultaneous phonecalls? Or, how many simultaneous users can a 2-Xeon/4GHz/4GB/250GB server support?
The useful answer to this question for a real network design is pretty detailed. Where are some actual scaled usage/support results?
DNA methylathion isn't just reversible, it's also modifiable through diet and other environmental factors.
Around the last week of December I got TrollMod bombed. Dozens of "Troll" and "Flamebait" mods on posts which obviously earned nothing but a target from TrollMods who can't respond any other way than with thuggish suppression. I also got pretty busy with other activities, and took advantage of the new perspective on Slashdot's troll-friendly moderation system to take a break. But I've had some more time lately, and some stories seemed worth commenting on. Thanks for the welcome :).
And the DoJ's boss invaded Iraq to find WMD.
Seth Goldstein's Bubble startup, also called "Root", was an "online concierge" service. Root would store your personal data at its server, using it to deal with all your customer service requests to any companies you had business with. Root would also market services from those businesses to its members. The problem was that "one man's synergy is another man's conflict of interest". Root folded before it went fully live, but its conflict of interest in protecting members' private info would have interfered with their other business interests: selling that info. If Goldstein's new venture is to be trusted, protecting its members' data must be verifiable, and breaches of that protection must be accountable. The new version incents members to give out their data, but members must be sure that all those releases are authorized - and that the costs of longterm exposed privacy are worth the benefits of immediate marketing perks.
First hacker to optimize the Sparc design in FPGA wins a prize! Or integrate it with a DSP...
Thanks for the advice, but I think you missed my point. I bought those GD DVDs, because I downloaded a firstclass copy of a different video for free (that cost the GD nothing to make, market or distribute). While the GD and the entertainment industry fight the P2P process that was responsible for me buying their product. Which sucked, unlike the free one. Clearly the entertainment industry is wasting its time on exactly the wrong work.
Thanks for the candor.
BTW, you might be interested in how Christianity's "merger" with the Roman Empire changed the religion. In my view, from a DIY faith, a reformation of Judaism, into a dogma that damaged both the theology and the empire. But I'm not much on faith myself, certainly not any that's taught, or empires for that matter.