You don't have a facebook account because you don't like keeping in touch with your family?
Correct.
And should you ever become a widower or divorced you never want to go on dates again? Especially not with someone you knew.
Not that. I'm just not interested in having people from my past stumble upon public information of mine and hit me up. It happens every once in a while even without Facebook and it's always an unpleasant experience for me. I always feel obligated to exchange kind words and try to get some kind of ball rolling as if it was a crime that we fell out of touch to begin with, and I'm very rarely interested in actually becoming acquainted with those people again. If I ignore them or be honest I feel like an asshole. So I try to avoid the situation in the first place.
I have a MySpace account that I used mostly for business / promotional reasons but I let a bit of personal stuff flow in. It's been ages since I've even logged in. There's thousands of pending friend requests and messages etc. that haven't been looked at. I just can't be bothered. I find social networking sites to be far too much of a drain. I prefer e-mail. Quick and to the point. In fact, e-mail is pretty much the only way I really like to communicate (besides face-to-face of course) at all. Every thing else (including phone) annoys the hell out of me (and no I do not own a cell phone).
What percentage of the MySpace, Facebook and YouTube audience are old enough to actually vote? My guess is the answer to both these questions are relatively low numbers.
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but most of my family (all adults) have Facebook accounts and keep bugging me to create one since it's how they keep in touch these days.
My mother also recently went on her first date in years. It was an ex-high-school-boyfriend that she hadn't seen in 30 years who had run across her Facebook profile.
Both are reasons that I *don't* have a Facebook account but pretty much everyone I know seems to have one these days it seems.
The odd thing is that due to the strong CAD vs. weak USD the prices in Canada should come down due to decreased cost of importing. But it hasn't happened yet.
We don't even have the shipping excuse that European imports from the US have (crossing an ocean). There is absolutely no logical reason for prices to be higher in Canada anymore except, perhaps, for increased costs due to border crossings. Which, while the costs are real, is still bullshit since those borders are entirely territorial (ie: line of chalk drawn across a room) and not physical.
VMWare will not run Mac OSX. Well, it will but not very well.
First off, it's not supported by VMWare (I've heard due to legal reasons but I don't know for sure). So there are no VMWare tools and it runs rather slow. Plus I couldn't get sound or networking to work at all. Sound I can happily live without but no networking + the extreme sluggishness made it completely useless.
If you've gotten OSX to work with networking, sound and no sluggishness then please correct me and link to a "how to" because I would love to get it working.
I want show them that the world is a violent place, but I don't want to have to show them using national media or ogrish.com or some place like that.
Show them the reality of our violent world via video games (as opposed to supposedly factual media) and then expect them to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality.
Sounds like a great plan.
P.S - FWIW I agree with the spirit and message of your post. I just couldn't help but point out the irony.
What I find hilarious is that Cobain gets one or two mentions (in parentheses, as a mere example among a few others no less) and it sparks a huge discussion that no one, including myself, seems to be able to stfu about even though it had very little to do with TFA or the point he was trying to make.
He also mentioned Tupac's murder but oddly no one took issue with that.
Although this is/. so most people are probably bitching solely based on reading the summary.
So what you're saying is... even if I do manage to escape this blistering cold version of hell that is called "Canada" and move somewhere tropical with no snow that I'm not going to be able to get rid of all of the annoying holiday crap ? It's only going to be worse ?
Actually I used to have Cable TV but don't anymore. My wife and I had talked about going Satellite but it's not really worth the money for us.
I'm probably in the worst position, I live in a border town in Canada. So pretty much 100% of the channels we watch are American but since I don't think the Canadian government is mandating any kind of switch I'm also pretty sure they're not subsidizing the receivers.
So I'm not sure what we're going to do. We've either got to pay for Satellite, pay for a digital receiver 100% out of pocket (which I'm assuming would be cheaper than Satellite) or, well, just go without TV. It will be a cold day in hell before we pay for Cable TV again due to the way the local monopoly treated us.
Quite a few of the bands that I like (Nickelback) are signed to RIAA members.
No offense intended, I know it's all subjective anyway... but IMO Nickelback is one of the most perfect examples of "pop-esque crap" that RIAA labels spit out.
I'm an indie artist and I listen to a massive variety of music. There is a lot of great stuff coming out today, but when it comes to "mainstream / RIAA-signed / radio station" it's pretty much all the same regardless of what genre it is. Even country has gotten so pop and static. If you hear one country song you've heard them all. One pop song you've heard them all. One "rock" song you've heard them all.
Most of the new "modern rock" songs that I hear on the radio these days remind me of Justin Timberlake. The male acts sound like they took the N'Sync vocalists and put a few power chords behind them. The female acts fit into one of two cliches: the solo chick with an acoustic guitar or the rocker goth chick with a testosterone all-male combo of guitar bass and drums behind her.
There is a massive amount of real talent out there being creative and doing different things. They just don't get a lot of radio play. And just so I'm not accused of spouting the same/. cliches with nothing to back it up I can list many examples: Esthero, Circa Survive, Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, Joe Satriani (older but still making kick ass albums, can't remember the last time I heard one of his songs on the radio) etc.
Imagine - no more cops using radar to give out tickets. They can do it from a central computer.
In my city (in southern Ontario Canada) they're putting cameras on traffic lights. If a car runs a red light the camera takes a picture of the license plate and the driver gets a ticket in the mail.
And to go along with your analogy, you would expect that person to be immediately fired once they were found incompetent. Clearly your analogy is really of no comparison to our political system.
I didn't make an analogy. But I can see where your confusion might come from.
In capitalist systems the distinction between public and private sectors is drawn quite concretely. It's part of the founding principle of the system. And there are clearly aspects of working in each that make them unique from one another. But that's irrelevant to what I was saying.
In a socialist system there is no private sector and thus no distinction and I think, were we discussing one, it would be easier for you to see how every person is "elected" to their position since everyone works for the public. The thing that changes in a capitalist system is the creation of the private sector. Which still elects it's members. That was my point. Which is a fact. Not an analogy. It's just one that people seem to forget since capitalism draws such a thick line between public and private.
Your blurb about whether or not politicians get enough scrutiny is an entirely different topic.
So... if you write up a resume, throw it around to various companies; phone them to follow up and make sure they got it; have some former co-workers or bosses ready to tell someone a bunch of good things about you and then go to an interview to brag about your skills and end up finally getting the job because a group of individuals sat down and decided that your campaign for the position was the most impressive (or at least the most convincing and impressive series of exaggerations, false promises and downright lies) how is exactly is that different then campaigning to get elected for a government position ?
The way I see it campaigning for any "regular" job and campaigning for an "elected" government position is pretty much the same thing. The only difference is the number of people voting for you and the number of people you will be working for if you get the position.
I remember the "group" who used Win2k and didn't see the point in switching the XP. XP wasn't an upgrade or a downgrade. It was a "new" Desktop-targeted OS that was based on NT instead of DOS/9x. So there was no reason for Win2k users to switch to XP since Win2k was already that.
But that completely forgets all of the 98 and ME users that XP was made for. XP was definitely "the second coming" for those users. It was a HUGE upgrade. In terms of both stability and features. No more blue screens. No more FAT filesystem etc. Most desktop users didn't use Win2k. It was mostly developers and power users. So yeah, there was probably a lot of/. users using Win2k, myself included, but the average desktop was running 9x/ME and there was huge incentive for those users to upgrade to XP.
Now everyone is using XP for the most part. I haven't used Vista yet, but from what I've heard it doesn't really offer any reason to "upgrade". I was, and still am, curious and am kind of anxious to try it out. But I'm happy with XP and haven't heard any compelling reasons to feel any kind of need to switch.
Yeah really. I have 3 (computer gear, music gear and cooking - fresh meat and herbs + top of the line cooking gear can get really expensive). I'm extremely lucky that the cooking and music are things that attract my wife so she forgives the expenses (most of the time). If it was 100% computer gear I'd have been single a long time ago:(
Culture can change dramatically in a very short time, though.
Just look at the last 20 - 30 years. Gradually the 70's stereotypical "jock vs. nerd" cliche is only prominent in certain rural areas. Since the rise of the Internet, mass media and pop culture has started to put the nerd up on the pedestal. Especially in the last 5 years. Look at TV shows such as "Beauty and the Geek", "Chuck", "The Big Bang Theory" etc. Being a geek is becoming sexy and mainstream. And that's only one recent example.
It only takes one offspring to decide "I don't want to live like my parents" to change things and raise his/her kid's differently. My mother was very well educated and intelligent, but she was also a lazy hedonist and I grew up very poor. She gave me and my brother the impression that education is useless because she spent over 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars on acquiring various University degrees but she never applied them and was unemployed more often than employed. Now she's pushing 50 and working in a call center that's closing with no idea what she's going to do and absolutely nothing saved for retirement. I've chosen a completely different path for my life and my children. I work my ass off every single day running my own business, trying to pay off my mortgage so I can own my home and being in debt is my worst nightmare. My kids have new clothes and fresh food to eat before we pay for luxuries such as cable television etc.
Not every child is a direct clone of his/her parents and there will always be people who don't fit in with current culture or their parents ideals and move to change it for themselves and their families.
Based on the other comments claiming how obvious this is, I'm starting to feel like a complete freak.
I would pay extra to get a theater to myself. Not just because of people talking or cell phones or sticky floors etc. but because I actually prefer to be left alone when I'm watching a movie, or television etc.
Even at home I get annoyed when my wife wants to watch TV with me. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my wife, I just do not feel that watching TV is a social activity. I much prefer to watch it alone. I feel that other people being present sours the experience, even when they're being perfectly silent.
I've heard of people cutting themselves accidentally while chopping vegetables and instinctively pulling their cut hand away making the wound much worse, instead of thinking about the situation and acting logically to minimize damage.
Of course we're talking about robots here which some may want to be "better" than humans in some areas.
Point being that people do not always perform the "proper" logical analysis required to prevent making a bad situation worse. We're as much victims of our instincts as a robot is to it's programming.
When I can watch a show online, why bother waiting for our networks to dub it? Yes, I "have to" watch it in English, but then again, usually that's the better version anyway. Anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons in German will agree.
Surely there are Germans who can't speak English that wouldn't agree ?
I know that I get completely lost when I watch a show in say, Japanese, and I have no idea what the dialogue is saying. While bi/multi-lingual people who also understand English undoubtedly feel the same way as you, there has to be a market for dubs, still, comprised of people who don't speak English.
I don't normally respond to AC's but for some reason I feel compelled to state that my only moral issue with the Lewinsky "scandal" was all the media attention it received. As far as I was concerned that was a matter between Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Lewinsky. Frankly it was no one else's fucking business. The perjury issue was something else. A President should not lie under oath, but I had taken such issue with the impeachment hearing to begin with that I find it almost forgivable. It was simply no one's god damned business and while I do hold a President to a higher esteem than a civilian, I, personally, would have told them all to fuck right off and refuse to answer the question.
But I don't remember Whitewater. I'll have to google/wiki that.
Clinton was by far my favourite US President (at least out of those who served during my lifetime). While I don't blame everything on GW, it just feel like the whole country started to go to shit in the year 2000. I grew up in the 90's and perhaps my rising pessimism over the last 7 years has more do with getting older than actual world events. But Clinton saw the US in the 90's through some awesome prosperity. I don't agree with everything he did, such as his getting involved in Kosovo and bombing Baghdad in '98. But for the most part I feel he was one of the better Presidents.
Politicains shouldn't be a life time job, but a temp job, maybe a decade or so of service.
I support term limits for various positions. But I think it would be very foolish to force someone out of politics all together after so long. The wisest and most competent people are usually the people with the most experience.
That's one of the reasons why, though I don't agree with everything Hillary Clinton stands for or did as Governor, I think that she is one of your better choices. She lived in the White House and had, presumably, very close contact with the President on both a personal and a professional level for 8 years. That's an insight into the job that few other prospective candidates possess. The only other person who would be in a similar position would be a former Vice President or someone else who worked closely with a former President on a daily basis.
Of course experience alone isn't something to base your decision entirely on either. You need to look at a whole plethora of various criteria. But experience does count for a lot. Imposing time limits on every position in politics all together will limit you to people with no experience. There is no reason why an ex-president who has used up both his terms should not be able to work as an advisor for a current President. I can't really think of anyone more qualified (assuming they weren't a horrible President with no idea what they were doing, obviously there are exceptions to every rule).
The real trick is getting the women to want to inject the venom into themselves.
That's where the jocks have excelled (only with alcohol instead of venom). Force a person to consume any toxic substance against their will / knowledge and I'm pretty sure you'll be facing criminal charges shortly thereafter.
There's no guarantee that splitting the company will produce what you want. IMO the most likely scenario is that the Office company still continues to produce office just for Windows while the OS company continues to produce only Windows and use Windows' dominance as pressure on the PC manufacturers to agree to terms don't allow them to sell competing products.
How many software companies are there that produce products for Linux ? There are certainly more that produce for Linux and Mac but last I checked MS Office was available for Mac. Even IE was available for Mac before Safari came out and MS dropped it. Hell, I remember an older version of IE being available for Solaris many years ago. My point is, what makes you think that if the company was split that the non-OS companies would produce software for other OS's besides Windows ?
I kind of suspect that every single person who hears this news reacts the same way, as I just did as well.
I can even imagine the screen writer trying to pitch it to the various production companies only to be told "WTF?!?"
To which he replies:
"Ok ok ok... I know it sounds stupid at first... but hear me out...
Pleasantview is one of the most delightful neighbourhoods to live in, everybody is happy, the grass is always green, children are always well-mannered. But newcomer Andie starts to uncover the 'real' pleasantview, for not only are Pleasantville full of cheating, lying, decieving, secret-ridden people like the Goths, Don Lothario and the struggling Newbies, but they are being ruled by a greater power. Andie is terrified to discover they are stuck in a video game being played by millions universally....
A young woman, Mary Waldeck who is a budding reporter,moves to Pleasantview too. She soon realizes to her horror that everyone in pleasantview is being subjected to a great new live human experiment, and have had their brains implanted with the idea that they're actually in a universally popular video game, and that their names even are the names of the people from the game itself. All except for Andie who becomes Mary's poor insane accomplice driven out of his mind from what the scientists of the world had been doing to him, but also determined to save himself and the other citizens of Pleasantview."
I'm not picking sides here. Only making a correction. None of his accusations went anywhere near CP. He accused the guy of distributing porn to minors. A very big difference between the two.
The point is that the law is to the point where you violate it in your daily activities. If you steal, lie, kill, or commit adultery in your daily activities then I think that being subject to punishment would be justice.
I'm sorry but the government has absolutely no business in my relationships. If I commit adultery then my wife might have every right to 'punish' me as she sees fit, but the government can stay right out of it because it's none of their business.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have a facebook account because you don't like keeping in touch with your family?
Correct.
And should you ever become a widower or divorced you never want to go on dates again? Especially not with someone you knew.
Not that. I'm just not interested in having people from my past stumble upon public information of mine and hit me up. It happens every once in a while even without Facebook and it's always an unpleasant experience for me. I always feel obligated to exchange kind words and try to get some kind of ball rolling as if it was a crime that we fell out of touch to begin with, and I'm very rarely interested in actually becoming acquainted with those people again. If I ignore them or be honest I feel like an asshole. So I try to avoid the situation in the first place.
I have a MySpace account that I used mostly for business / promotional reasons but I let a bit of personal stuff flow in. It's been ages since I've even logged in. There's thousands of pending friend requests and messages etc. that haven't been looked at. I just can't be bothered. I find social networking sites to be far too much of a drain. I prefer e-mail. Quick and to the point. In fact, e-mail is pretty much the only way I really like to communicate (besides face-to-face of course) at all. Every thing else (including phone) annoys the hell out of me (and no I do not own a cell phone).
What percentage of the MySpace, Facebook and YouTube audience are old enough to actually vote? My guess is the answer to both these questions are relatively low numbers.
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but most of my family (all adults) have Facebook accounts and keep bugging me to create one since it's how they keep in touch these days.
My mother also recently went on her first date in years. It was an ex-high-school-boyfriend that she hadn't seen in 30 years who had run across her Facebook profile.
Both are reasons that I *don't* have a Facebook account but pretty much everyone I know seems to have one these days it seems.
The odd thing is that due to the strong CAD vs. weak USD the prices in Canada should come down due to decreased cost of importing. But it hasn't happened yet.
We don't even have the shipping excuse that European imports from the US have (crossing an ocean). There is absolutely no logical reason for prices to be higher in Canada anymore except, perhaps, for increased costs due to border crossings. Which, while the costs are real, is still bullshit since those borders are entirely territorial (ie: line of chalk drawn across a room) and not physical.
VMWare will not run Mac OSX. Well, it will but not very well.
First off, it's not supported by VMWare (I've heard due to legal reasons but I don't know for sure). So there are no VMWare tools and it runs rather slow. Plus I couldn't get sound or networking to work at all. Sound I can happily live without but no networking + the extreme sluggishness made it completely useless.
If you've gotten OSX to work with networking, sound and no sluggishness then please correct me and link to a "how to" because I would love to get it working.
I want show them that the world is a violent place, but I don't want to have to show them using national media or ogrish.com or some place like that.
Show them the reality of our violent world via video games (as opposed to supposedly factual media) and then expect them to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality.
Sounds like a great plan.
P.S - FWIW I agree with the spirit and message of your post. I just couldn't help but point out the irony.
What I find hilarious is that Cobain gets one or two mentions (in parentheses, as a mere example among a few others no less) and it sparks a huge discussion that no one, including myself, seems to be able to stfu about even though it had very little to do with TFA or the point he was trying to make.
/. so most people are probably bitching solely based on reading the summary.
He also mentioned Tupac's murder but oddly no one took issue with that.
Although this is
So what you're saying is ... even if I do manage to escape this blistering cold version of hell that is called "Canada" and move somewhere tropical with no snow that I'm not going to be able to get rid of all of the annoying holiday crap ? It's only going to be worse ?
:(
Thanks for crushing my hopes and dreams.
Actually I used to have Cable TV but don't anymore. My wife and I had talked about going Satellite but it's not really worth the money for us.
I'm probably in the worst position, I live in a border town in Canada. So pretty much 100% of the channels we watch are American but since I don't think the Canadian government is mandating any kind of switch I'm also pretty sure they're not subsidizing the receivers.
So I'm not sure what we're going to do. We've either got to pay for Satellite, pay for a digital receiver 100% out of pocket (which I'm assuming would be cheaper than Satellite) or, well, just go without TV. It will be a cold day in hell before we pay for Cable TV again due to the way the local monopoly treated us.
Quite a few of the bands that I like (Nickelback) are signed to RIAA members.
... but IMO Nickelback is one of the most perfect examples of "pop-esque crap" that RIAA labels spit out.
/. cliches with nothing to back it up I can list many examples: Esthero, Circa Survive, Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, Joe Satriani (older but still making kick ass albums, can't remember the last time I heard one of his songs on the radio) etc.
No offense intended, I know it's all subjective anyway
I'm an indie artist and I listen to a massive variety of music. There is a lot of great stuff coming out today, but when it comes to "mainstream / RIAA-signed / radio station" it's pretty much all the same regardless of what genre it is. Even country has gotten so pop and static. If you hear one country song you've heard them all. One pop song you've heard them all. One "rock" song you've heard them all.
Most of the new "modern rock" songs that I hear on the radio these days remind me of Justin Timberlake. The male acts sound like they took the N'Sync vocalists and put a few power chords behind them. The female acts fit into one of two cliches: the solo chick with an acoustic guitar or the rocker goth chick with a testosterone all-male combo of guitar bass and drums behind her.
There is a massive amount of real talent out there being creative and doing different things. They just don't get a lot of radio play. And just so I'm not accused of spouting the same
Imagine - no more cops using radar to give out tickets. They can do it from a central computer.
In my city (in southern Ontario Canada) they're putting cameras on traffic lights. If a car runs a red light the camera takes a picture of the license plate and the driver gets a ticket in the mail.
It's a slippery slope.
And to go along with your analogy, you would expect that person to be immediately fired once they were found incompetent. Clearly your analogy is really of no comparison to our political system.
I didn't make an analogy. But I can see where your confusion might come from.
In capitalist systems the distinction between public and private sectors is drawn quite concretely. It's part of the founding principle of the system. And there are clearly aspects of working in each that make them unique from one another. But that's irrelevant to what I was saying.
In a socialist system there is no private sector and thus no distinction and I think, were we discussing one, it would be easier for you to see how every person is "elected" to their position since everyone works for the public. The thing that changes in a capitalist system is the creation of the private sector. Which still elects it's members. That was my point. Which is a fact. Not an analogy. It's just one that people seem to forget since capitalism draws such a thick line between public and private.
Your blurb about whether or not politicians get enough scrutiny is an entirely different topic.
So ... if you write up a resume, throw it around to various companies; phone them to follow up and make sure they got it; have some former co-workers or bosses ready to tell someone a bunch of good things about you and then go to an interview to brag about your skills and end up finally getting the job because a group of individuals sat down and decided that your campaign for the position was the most impressive (or at least the most convincing and impressive series of exaggerations, false promises and downright lies) how is exactly is that different then campaigning to get elected for a government position ?
The way I see it campaigning for any "regular" job and campaigning for an "elected" government position is pretty much the same thing. The only difference is the number of people voting for you and the number of people you will be working for if you get the position.
I remember the "group" who used Win2k and didn't see the point in switching the XP. XP wasn't an upgrade or a downgrade. It was a "new" Desktop-targeted OS that was based on NT instead of DOS/9x. So there was no reason for Win2k users to switch to XP since Win2k was already that.
/. users using Win2k, myself included, but the average desktop was running 9x/ME and there was huge incentive for those users to upgrade to XP.
But that completely forgets all of the 98 and ME users that XP was made for. XP was definitely "the second coming" for those users. It was a HUGE upgrade. In terms of both stability and features. No more blue screens. No more FAT filesystem etc. Most desktop users didn't use Win2k. It was mostly developers and power users. So yeah, there was probably a lot of
Now everyone is using XP for the most part. I haven't used Vista yet, but from what I've heard it doesn't really offer any reason to "upgrade". I was, and still am, curious and am kind of anxious to try it out. But I'm happy with XP and haven't heard any compelling reasons to feel any kind of need to switch.
Yeah really. I have 3 (computer gear, music gear and cooking - fresh meat and herbs + top of the line cooking gear can get really expensive). I'm extremely lucky that the cooking and music are things that attract my wife so she forgives the expenses (most of the time). If it was 100% computer gear I'd have been single a long time ago :(
Culture can change dramatically in a very short time, though.
Just look at the last 20 - 30 years. Gradually the 70's stereotypical "jock vs. nerd" cliche is only prominent in certain rural areas. Since the rise of the Internet, mass media and pop culture has started to put the nerd up on the pedestal. Especially in the last 5 years. Look at TV shows such as "Beauty and the Geek", "Chuck", "The Big Bang Theory" etc. Being a geek is becoming sexy and mainstream. And that's only one recent example.
It only takes one offspring to decide "I don't want to live like my parents" to change things and raise his/her kid's differently. My mother was very well educated and intelligent, but she was also a lazy hedonist and I grew up very poor. She gave me and my brother the impression that education is useless because she spent over 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars on acquiring various University degrees but she never applied them and was unemployed more often than employed. Now she's pushing 50 and working in a call center that's closing with no idea what she's going to do and absolutely nothing saved for retirement. I've chosen a completely different path for my life and my children. I work my ass off every single day running my own business, trying to pay off my mortgage so I can own my home and being in debt is my worst nightmare. My kids have new clothes and fresh food to eat before we pay for luxuries such as cable television etc.
Not every child is a direct clone of his/her parents and there will always be people who don't fit in with current culture or their parents ideals and move to change it for themselves and their families.
Based on the other comments claiming how obvious this is, I'm starting to feel like a complete freak.
I would pay extra to get a theater to myself. Not just because of people talking or cell phones or sticky floors etc. but because I actually prefer to be left alone when I'm watching a movie, or television etc.
Even at home I get annoyed when my wife wants to watch TV with me. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my wife, I just do not feel that watching TV is a social activity. I much prefer to watch it alone. I feel that other people being present sours the experience, even when they're being perfectly silent.
I've heard of people cutting themselves accidentally while chopping vegetables and instinctively pulling their cut hand away making the wound much worse, instead of thinking about the situation and acting logically to minimize damage.
Of course we're talking about robots here which some may want to be "better" than humans in some areas.
Point being that people do not always perform the "proper" logical analysis required to prevent making a bad situation worse. We're as much victims of our instincts as a robot is to it's programming.
When I can watch a show online, why bother waiting for our networks to dub it? Yes, I "have to" watch it in English, but then again, usually that's the better version anyway. Anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons in German will agree.
Surely there are Germans who can't speak English that wouldn't agree ?
I know that I get completely lost when I watch a show in say, Japanese, and I have no idea what the dialogue is saying. While bi/multi-lingual people who also understand English undoubtedly feel the same way as you, there has to be a market for dubs, still, comprised of people who don't speak English.
I don't normally respond to AC's but for some reason I feel compelled to state that my only moral issue with the Lewinsky "scandal" was all the media attention it received. As far as I was concerned that was a matter between Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Lewinsky. Frankly it was no one else's fucking business. The perjury issue was something else. A President should not lie under oath, but I had taken such issue with the impeachment hearing to begin with that I find it almost forgivable. It was simply no one's god damned business and while I do hold a President to a higher esteem than a civilian, I, personally, would have told them all to fuck right off and refuse to answer the question.
But I don't remember Whitewater. I'll have to google/wiki that.
Clinton was by far my favourite US President (at least out of those who served during my lifetime). While I don't blame everything on GW, it just feel like the whole country started to go to shit in the year 2000. I grew up in the 90's and perhaps my rising pessimism over the last 7 years has more do with getting older than actual world events. But Clinton saw the US in the 90's through some awesome prosperity. I don't agree with everything he did, such as his getting involved in Kosovo and bombing Baghdad in '98. But for the most part I feel he was one of the better Presidents.
Politicains shouldn't be a life time job, but a temp job, maybe a decade or so of service.
I support term limits for various positions. But I think it would be very foolish to force someone out of politics all together after so long. The wisest and most competent people are usually the people with the most experience.
That's one of the reasons why, though I don't agree with everything Hillary Clinton stands for or did as Governor, I think that she is one of your better choices. She lived in the White House and had, presumably, very close contact with the President on both a personal and a professional level for 8 years. That's an insight into the job that few other prospective candidates possess. The only other person who would be in a similar position would be a former Vice President or someone else who worked closely with a former President on a daily basis.
Of course experience alone isn't something to base your decision entirely on either. You need to look at a whole plethora of various criteria. But experience does count for a lot. Imposing time limits on every position in politics all together will limit you to people with no experience. There is no reason why an ex-president who has used up both his terms should not be able to work as an advisor for a current President. I can't really think of anyone more qualified (assuming they weren't a horrible President with no idea what they were doing, obviously there are exceptions to every rule).
The real trick is getting the women to want to inject the venom into themselves.
That's where the jocks have excelled (only with alcohol instead of venom). Force a person to consume any toxic substance against their will / knowledge and I'm pretty sure you'll be facing criminal charges shortly thereafter.
There's no guarantee that splitting the company will produce what you want. IMO the most likely scenario is that the Office company still continues to produce office just for Windows while the OS company continues to produce only Windows and use Windows' dominance as pressure on the PC manufacturers to agree to terms don't allow them to sell competing products.
How many software companies are there that produce products for Linux ? There are certainly more that produce for Linux and Mac but last I checked MS Office was available for Mac. Even IE was available for Mac before Safari came out and MS dropped it. Hell, I remember an older version of IE being available for Solaris many years ago. My point is, what makes you think that if the company was split that the non-OS companies would produce software for other OS's besides Windows ?
I kind of suspect that every single person who hears this news reacts the same way, as I just did as well.
... I know it sounds stupid at first ... but hear me out...
...
I can even imagine the screen writer trying to pitch it to the various production companies only to be told "WTF?!?"
To which he replies:
"Ok ok ok
Pleasantview is one of the most delightful neighbourhoods to live in, everybody is happy, the grass is always green, children are always well-mannered. But newcomer Andie starts to uncover the 'real' pleasantview, for not only are Pleasantville full of cheating, lying, decieving, secret-ridden people like the Goths, Don Lothario and the struggling Newbies, but they are being ruled by a greater power. Andie is terrified to discover they are stuck in a video game being played by millions universally.
A young woman, Mary Waldeck who is a budding reporter,moves to Pleasantview too. She soon realizes to her horror that everyone in pleasantview is being subjected to a great new live human experiment, and have had their brains implanted with the idea that they're actually in a universally popular video game, and that their names even are the names of the people from the game itself. All except for Andie who becomes Mary's poor insane accomplice driven out of his mind from what the scientists of the world had been doing to him, but also determined to save himself and the other citizens of Pleasantview."
Plot synopsis taken from IMDB
It actually sounds kind of intriguing. Though if past video games turned movies are any indication it will blow.
I'm not picking sides here. Only making a correction. None of his accusations went anywhere near CP. He accused the guy of distributing porn to minors. A very big difference between the two.
The point is that the law is to the point where you violate it in your daily activities. If you steal, lie, kill, or commit adultery in your daily activities then I think that being subject to punishment would be justice.
I'm sorry but the government has absolutely no business in my relationships. If I commit adultery then my wife might have every right to 'punish' me as she sees fit, but the government can stay right out of it because it's none of their business.