You'd think this a golden opportunity for some entrepreneur to move in with a cut-price operation and make off with some of their customers. I'm almost certain I could do it for thirty grand - thirty-five, tops - and maybe throw in a free scalp massage for customers whose hair wasn't too greasy.
> Here is the document that Slashdot removed when COS threatened them with the DMCA: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/o t3-summary.html
Yeah, I can kinda see why they wouldn't want anyone to see that. Out of context it could leave the impression that they were some kind of k00ks or something.
> Scientology = a satanic cult. They never call it that, but that's what all of the teachings really are. Their basic ideas is that you are the center of the universe, and anything you do to anybody to obtain your goals is OK.
How do you know they aren't just politicians instead of satanists?
> Ought to deal with Scientologists the same way. If their work is so secret that they cannot have it published, then perhaps they are consorting with Baphomet too!
Nah, Baphy told them to stuff it. Standards to maintain, kind of thing.
> Well, it surely wasn't legal, however they got them. More laws aren't the answer, enforcement is.
Yeah, but "more laws" is a convenient "solution" for politicians to peddle to the public.
Look at the TIA crap offered as the "solution" to the 9/11 problem. The reason we didn't preempt 9/11 (ignoring any conspiracy theories) is that our police and intelligence agencies already gather so much information that they have to pick and choose what gets forwarded toward the center for putting bigger pictures together, and unfortunately some really important material didn't make the cut. IMO the DoHS/TIA "solution" is more likely to aggravate the problem than to solve it, but since the problem is genuinely hard it's much easier and more profitable for politicians to peddle a big expensive snake-oil "solution" that will convince us rubes that they're really going to take care of us.
> This is the guy who said that the DC snipers were gamers and got nearly every mainstream media outlet to beleive it. This is also the guy who sent a 13 year old (possibly his son, I don't remember exactly) into Best Buy to guy M rated games. He has very good PR and is very good at getting media coverage beacuse he gives the media the kind of hysteria laden sound bites they love. This guy has an agenda and he needs to be watched out for.
Yeah, someone needs to pop a ca-... uhm, nevermind.
> > "The industry needs to cough up money so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain,"
> Ahh, I see. you mean FINANCIAL pain, as in "God damn, my neighbor got a bigger car then me and my wife's life insurance still won't get me a new Dodge! Hey, let's sue the makers of the game that the people who killed her played!". By Eris, all this 'financial compensation for emotional pain 'crap is making me so sick, especially in a case like this.
The whole sentiment has an odd history. (Well, odd to some of us!) It apparently traces back to old common law among the Germanic tribes, where if someone killed your brother you'd try to kill them or one of their kin under the old and probabably universal rule of talion ("an eye for an eye"), but with the innovation of "unless of course you give me a small sack of gold, in which case we'll forget the whole thing".
Surely a great social innovation for controlling rampant feuding in violent primitive societies, but some of us with more modern social values wonder just how a spending spree is supposed to console us for the loss of loved ones.
I'd certainly take someone to the cleaners as punishment for a wrongful death, but I guess I'd have to donate the money to charity... I can't even imagine getting any pleasure driving around in a fancy car that was bought on the proceeds of the death of someone in my family.
> The burglar who was injured is filing suit for loss of earnings, which considering his legal earnings were non-existent does sound like a spurious case
"Your Honor, I was looking forward to a life-long five-figure income from burgling one house a night five nights a week, but now I'll have to subsist on the proceeds of a bit of petty shoplifting, move to a downscale neighborhood, and - who knows - maybe turn to crime as a result of the poverty and bad influences!"
> Now, not to be one to go and say that machines don't know anything about essays. But it really doesn't seem that efficient of a process simply because whenever a teacher assigns an essay they also assign with it certain criteria that the essay needs to follow.
Even if the goal was only to do the grammar checking, 450 examples are pathetically inadequate for a task that amounts to learning to use a language at an expert level. It's hard to imagine this being anything more than a buzzword checker.
> If the State dept lends itself to promote microsoft they will just show themselves off as ignorant pawnsand be perceived as such by foreign govts. The US is not imperialist but MS certainly is.
Surely this is just a manifestation of the age-old political philosophy that "What is good for $COMPANY is good for $COUNTRY".
> Carter was absolutely, undeniably, one of the worst presidents this country has ever seen.
That's a puzzling thing to say, given the likes of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II. Carter was no superstar, but I'd rate him among the top half of most recent eight.
> If you're trying to argue free speech, bravo. I agree that free speech and free thought are (or should be) universal rights... but that's not what we are talking about here. We're talking about meddling in affairs one has no business meddling in, and making other people's jobs harder.
I disagree. Ex-presidents have about as good a set of credentials for International Troubleshooter as anyone on the planet does, and since they're no longer playing the do-what-gets-me-reelected game they can at least potentially operate as statesmen rather than politicians.
In a democracy speaking your mind isn't just a right, it's a civic responsibility. If ex-presidents are in a position to give more, maybe they're under more obligation to speak rather than less.
> Jimmy Carter is not a "joe citizen"... his opinions can affect world events, and not necessarily for the better.
Republican Rome had this nifty notion of the cursus honorum, the "course of honors", by which their leaders would (ideally) step through a series of offices of increasing power and exit at the top to enter the Senate, where their experience and personal reputations made them uniquely qualified to advise the executives on public and international affairs.
It's absurd to expect our most qualified to sit down and shut up at the end of the run... modulo a recent problem with electing jerks and morons to our top offices.
> Sadly, since 1960, only 3 presidents have any real military experience. Kennedy, Carter, and George Bush. Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush all evaded the real military in one fashion or another.
Yeah, and in particular Clinton's refusal to inhale was positively un-American! The typical Viet Nam vet probably despised him more for refusing to inhale than for everything else together.
> This is the US Seccession War all over, one hundred fifty years later.
IANAExpertOnThis, but as far as I can tell from my historical atlases and articles like this, the ethnic and historical connection between Taiwan and China are actually somewhat weak and mostly recent.
Slashdot Mirror
> Out of context? I scanned the whole thing. I can't imagine a context in which it would *not* sound k00ky
Surely you don't think I'm fool enough to say - or even imply by innuendo - that Scientologists are a bunch of k00ks.
> but that's because, in the reading of it, I dropped about 50 IQ points.
Ah, saved for half damage. Always Identify a scroll before reading it!
> That'll be $40,000 please!
You'd think this a golden opportunity for some entrepreneur to move in with a cut-price operation and make off with some of their customers. I'm almost certain I could do it for thirty grand - thirty-five, tops - and maybe throw in a free scalp massage for customers whose hair wasn't too greasy.
> I, for one, welcome our new Xenu overlords.
s/Xenu/Dutch/
> Here is the document that Slashdot removed when COS threatened them with the DMCA: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/
Yeah, I can kinda see why they wouldn't want anyone to see that. Out of context it could leave the impression that they were some kind of k00ks or something.
> Scientology = a satanic cult. They never call it that, but that's what all of the teachings really are. Their basic ideas is that you are the center of the universe, and anything you do to anybody to obtain your goals is OK.
How do you know they aren't just politicians instead of satanists?
> Ought to deal with Scientologists the same way. If their work is so secret that they cannot have it published, then perhaps they are consorting with Baphomet too!
Nah, Baphy told them to stuff it. Standards to maintain, kind of thing.
> It was investigated by all the best labs in the world. Result: they have no theory; they have no data.
Never stopped other varieties of kook from sticking to their story.
What the heck kind of shoulder did you expect cold fusion to get?
> Maybe it still gets the cold shoulder because there didn't turn out to be anything to it?
"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't."
That's what I said to a friend the day after the "discovery" hit the news, and I haven't had any cause to reconsider my position since.
> Well, it surely wasn't legal, however they got them. More laws aren't the answer, enforcement is.
Yeah, but "more laws" is a convenient "solution" for politicians to peddle to the public.
Look at the TIA crap offered as the "solution" to the 9/11 problem. The reason we didn't preempt 9/11 (ignoring any conspiracy theories) is that our police and intelligence agencies already gather so much information that they have to pick and choose what gets forwarded toward the center for putting bigger pictures together, and unfortunately some really important material didn't make the cut. IMO the DoHS/TIA "solution" is more likely to aggravate the problem than to solve it, but since the problem is genuinely hard it's much easier and more profitable for politicians to peddle a big expensive snake-oil "solution" that will convince us rubes that they're really going to take care of us.
> This is the guy who said that the DC snipers were gamers and got nearly every mainstream media outlet to beleive it. This is also the guy who sent a 13 year old (possibly his son, I don't remember exactly) into Best Buy to guy M rated games. He has very good PR and is very good at getting media coverage beacuse he gives the media the kind of hysteria laden sound bites they love. This guy has an agenda and he needs to be watched out for.
Yeah, someone needs to pop a ca-
> > "The industry needs to cough up money so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain,"
> Ahh, I see. you mean FINANCIAL pain, as in "God damn, my neighbor got a bigger car then me and my wife's life insurance still won't get me a new Dodge! Hey, let's sue the makers of the game that the people who killed her played!". By Eris, all this 'financial compensation for emotional pain 'crap is making me so sick, especially in a case like this.
The whole sentiment has an odd history. (Well, odd to some of us!) It apparently traces back to old common law among the Germanic tribes, where if someone killed your brother you'd try to kill them or one of their kin under the old and probabably universal rule of talion ("an eye for an eye"), but with the innovation of "unless of course you give me a small sack of gold, in which case we'll forget the whole thing".
Surely a great social innovation for controlling rampant feuding in violent primitive societies, but some of us with more modern social values wonder just how a spending spree is supposed to console us for the loss of loved ones.
I'd certainly take someone to the cleaners as punishment for a wrongful death, but I guess I'd have to donate the money to charity... I can't even imagine getting any pleasure driving around in a fancy car that was bought on the proceeds of the death of someone in my family.
> The burglar who was injured is filing suit for loss of earnings, which considering his legal earnings were non-existent does sound like a spurious case
"Your Honor, I was looking forward to a life-long five-figure income from burgling one house a night five nights a week, but now I'll have to subsist on the proceeds of a bit of petty shoplifting, move to a downscale neighborhood, and - who knows - maybe turn to crime as a result of the poverty and bad influences!"
> "The industry needs to cough up money so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain," Thompson said.
Yeah, and the lawyers probably need a "small" portion of that salve too.
I feel pain over living in a world full of fuckwits... am I entitled to a little compensation too?
> who? who?
I'd be more concerned with where they got the guns.
> Now, not to be one to go and say that machines don't know anything about essays. But it really doesn't seem that efficient of a process simply because whenever a teacher assigns an essay they also assign with it certain criteria that the essay needs to follow.
Even if the goal was only to do the grammar checking, 450 examples are pathetically inadequate for a task that amounts to learning to use a language at an expert level. It's hard to imagine this being anything more than a buzzword checker.
And you can all protest this by downloading lots of pr0n this weekend.
> If the State dept lends itself to promote microsoft they will just show themselves off as ignorant pawnsand be perceived as such by foreign govts. The US is not imperialist but MS certainly is.
Surely this is just a manifestation of the age-old political philosophy that "What is good for $COMPANY is good for $COUNTRY".
> wow. Thats the most Wishful thinking I've seen all year!
Don't you have a television? You should have seen the stuff Comical A[lr]i were putting out a few months ago.
> Carter was absolutely, undeniably, one of the worst presidents this country has ever seen.
That's a puzzling thing to say, given the likes of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II. Carter was no superstar, but I'd rate him among the top half of most recent eight.
> From you grammar and spelling it's obvious that you're not an American. Who are you to criticize our country and presidents?
I guess you don't think Americans should criticize other countries and their leaders either, eh?
> If you're trying to argue free speech, bravo. I agree that free speech and free thought are (or should be) universal rights... but that's not what we are talking about here. We're talking about meddling in affairs one has no business meddling in, and making other people's jobs harder.
I disagree. Ex-presidents have about as good a set of credentials for International Troubleshooter as anyone on the planet does, and since they're no longer playing the do-what-gets-me-reelected game they can at least potentially operate as statesmen rather than politicians.
In a democracy speaking your mind isn't just a right, it's a civic responsibility. If ex-presidents are in a position to give more, maybe they're under more obligation to speak rather than less.
> Jimmy Carter is not a "joe citizen"... his opinions can affect world events, and not necessarily for the better.
Republican Rome had this nifty notion of the cursus honorum, the "course of honors", by which their leaders would (ideally) step through a series of offices of increasing power and exit at the top to enter the Senate, where their experience and personal reputations made them uniquely qualified to advise the executives on public and international affairs.
It's absurd to expect our most qualified to sit down and shut up at the end of the run... modulo a recent problem with electing jerks and morons to our top offices.
> Just because he can, doesn't mean he should.
Because he can, he should.
> Sadly, since 1960, only 3 presidents have any real military experience. Kennedy, Carter, and George Bush. Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush all evaded the real military in one fashion or another.
Yeah, and in particular Clinton's refusal to inhale was positively un-American! The typical Viet Nam vet probably despised him more for refusing to inhale than for everything else together.
> This is the US Seccession War all over, one hundred fifty years later.
IANAExpertOnThis, but as far as I can tell from my historical atlases and articles like this, the ethnic and historical connection between Taiwan and China are actually somewhat weak and mostly recent.
> > Funny how my posts get ranked (-1, Troll) five times as often when I throw the "Esq." at the end of my name.
> Man! so that's why my karma's suddenly in the toilet! Makes so much sense!
Think how bad it would be if you put "Troll" at the end of your name.