Honestly, why do people get their panties in such a bind over these arguments? Every time there is an Apple article on slashdot, the conversations quickly devolves into a flamewar over whether Apple is ripping you off or not, how good or bad their products are, and so on. I mean with your reply--who gives a crap? If you like the Acer--buy the Acer. If you like the MBA--buy the MBA. Think of this as an optimization spectrum with points such as price, weight and size, appearance, computing power, software, flexibility, build quality, and so on. Believe it or not, not everybody is going to optimize in the same directions!
I just don't get why it seems to bother some people so very much that different people might like different products. If somebody likes Apple products, what's the big deal--why are they automatically a fanboy who you seem to hate?
How much meaning does acre have for the average person? Not a lot. I live on.25 acres, so I can roughly figure out how big 1 acre is, but it doesn't extrapolate well for me. Then think of your average city-dweller who lives in a townhouse, condo, or apartment and doesn't have a clue what an acre is? Plus house lots (where most people run into acres) are often very irregularly shaped, thus acres aren't even useful for distance.
A football field, on the otherhand, is something that almost all Americas know something about. Even if you've never played football (eg, me) you've been on a football field, watched football, jogged around one, and so on. How about a mile? Almost everybody has experience with miles, driving, etc, but a football field as a smaller unit has the virtue that you can see the entire thing at once. It's very graspable.
I don't see what the problem with using it to make distances/sizes more accessible is? Obviously nobody is advocating doing math or physics using such units, but then again metric has been standard throughout many occupations and the sciences in America for a long time...
Why do people need a compiler? Just use an assembler, all that C bloat makes everything slower.
Can handcoded assembly be faster than C be faster than Java? Sure. The reverse is true as well, and with today's multicores, complicated pipelines, etc, chances are that compilers (or VMs) are going to be better at it than you are.
There's something to be said for JIT optimization and profiling, and the runtime information that virtual machines can gather and then optimize for.
Just FWIW, I think a lot of those "gold-hoarding doomsday-libertarians" are really more "gold-hoarding libertarians and others who think the US dollar is doomed" (or at least to fall drastically vis-a-vis other forex pairs.
I'm not giving up on the usd yet but eur, aud, chf, gbp, and others do seem pretty strong in comparison.
Makes sense to me on one logical level -- the US is not the world's unquestioned superpower anymore. Countries like Brazil, China, and India are growing incredibly rapidly, countries like Australia are booming as a result, and so far forex traders seem to think the Europeans are doing a decent job of defending the Euro (we'll see if that holds up). There's nothing especially special about the dollar anymore, the way there was say 50 years ago.
Actually you are not explicit here in where your friend was. The implication is that he is in one of the two places, but nothing is explicit
I don't see how you can say that. Here's exactly what was said:
we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place,
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
Parse that again. I agree with the OP that we've "retreated in Iraq." I then say (present tense) "Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan" (you'll note the following clause is past tense)... "A family friend has [sic] hit by an IED in the last week or two"... "I think something like 17 dead in the last two days"
So, I agree we're done in Iraq. I say we're still engaged in Afghanistan. I add that a family friend was hurt in the last week or two. I say there have been 17 dead in the last two days.
Even if you really couldn't follow from the OP to my sentence 1 to sentence 2, there's only one place where we are still engaged in combat and there's only one place where 17 American solders died in two days.
So, even _if_ it wasn't explicitly clear--which I think it was--it was perfectly clear from the rest of the context.
This is an even more pedantic conversation than the other one I am currently in. And none of my points have been addressed at all.
But because I'm explaining why your post was bad you're just assuming everything I say is an insult to you
No, I assumed that you were trying to be snarky and disingenuous when you said "Apophasis. Thanks man, I was looking for that." I think you can see how that phrasing could possibly come across that way? As such things can be ambiguous on the Internet, I did, however, give you the benefit of the doubt and comment on your point. More benefit than you've given me this entire thread!
And the reason I felt it might be snarky--because you litter your posts with snippets such as "I don't care what you have to say" and "you can grow to be a better person" and "There, that ought to stand for a little while." When somebody selectively responds to only fractional parts of posts and snarks back, yeah, I'm sometimes unsure if even the genuine points are snark free or not!
That's bias creeping in, tainting everything you read towards a certain viewpoint. To be fair, it's something we all have to keep an eye on.
Yes, we should always read things in context and keep an eye on our own biases.
Yes. I imagine that getting modded as a troll, then then the guy explaining WHY getting modded +5 insightful wouldn't be the best day.
Indeed, it's disheartening to see both how the slashdot moderation system is gamed, and how people use the mod system for their POV, especially when it comes to anything political. I'm not sure if this is your original account or not, but the discussion threads on Slashdot did not used to be so flamefilled in the past. Not to look back with too rosy glasses, slashdot always had some great flamefests, but snr is lower now.
I'm just explaining the moderation to you because you seem to be confused about why you got the troll mod
It's actually apparent what happened (though I WAS surprised that people would read what I wrote in an extremely partisan wa). 30% of the mod is for Troll and 30% is for interesting (30% overrated, for net -1). If at any point troll gets the post to 0, the vast majority of slashdot viewers never see the post anymore. I still think the reading of my post that you and one other have offered is inaccurate and seems as if you didn't read what I was replying to, but hey, I think we're going to agree to disagree on everything by now.
Try making a new account sometime and on the first political thread that comes along, post something unrelated to the story, but that slanders $other_side. Chances are good no matter the content you get to 0/-1 or +5 quickly. Chances are higher for +5 if you're on the left, 0 for right, but either are possible.
No. Not really. You're a troll because: 1) You use passive aggressive pseudo-politically-correct attacks.
What did I say that's "politically correct" -- we may have different definition of this term...
2) You complain about what the president does while claiming to not care.
What did I complain about? I think all I said was that I thought being on Mythbusters was "stupid" and that some of my friends had expressed discomfort with some of President Obama's media appearances? With regards to that last statement, I -- as I've said like 5 times now! -- don't care about his Mythbusters appearance, but I DO think (since I hadn't mentioned my opinion on the matter aye or nay) the talkshow was a bit much. I don't think it's a BIG deal, but I don't approve. Fair?
3) You think that being called a troll just means I disagree with you.
Recursive definition of troll huh? Interesting... Well, it was a good run. I seriously think you're the first person on slashdot in however many years who has accused me of being a Troll. Maybe my second or third troll mod of all time. ~shrug~ I absolutely do think people on slashdot sling the troll term around without any care, and the mod as well. Anybody who disagrees is a troll. Particularly rife on political threads. One of the reasons so many conversations turn into shitflinging adhoms rather than actually discussing points.
Do I disagree with you? Well yes. I don't really care about the pomp and circumstance. You do. But conversely, you don't like the fluffy stuff that politicians do. Do I like it? Eh, not really. Usually it's meaningless things like busting the sun-beam-death-ray myth for the third time, but it's important to be a public figurehead. If they just got elected and disappeared to CSPAN, then they're missing part of their job. The whole "fire-side chat" thing that FDR tried was a good idea.
I really don't care as I've said in numerous posts. So who's right? You--who claim to know what I believe, or Me--who really does know what I believe? It seems that you can't find it in yourself to believe me, believing me to just be a troll. I can't convince you otherwise, so that's all I can say.
Apophasis. Thanks man, I was looking for that.
I'm assuming you're trying to be snarky and disingenuous, but if you're curious it's a Latin (originally Greek) rhetorical term. Cicero was known for it.
That's.... exactly like your first post. You claim to NOT condemn him. Then you point out how others have condemned him. Apophasis. Same tactics, still trollish.
A comparison is not an apophasis. In case you didn't read any of this thread, here's what started it:
I know Obama is a messianic figure for some, but I don't think even he can change the reality that this just never happened. I don't understand why so many people seem to have invested so much in this obvious myth being true.
THAT'S condemning of Obama. I'm not saying that. I disagree with that. I think that's stupid. Makes sense to you?
Blunt. To the point. Less whiny and pussy-footed.
When people start flinging ad homs and clearly not reading my posts, I usually stop replying. I think this is pretty much done anyway, you're clearly not going to try to see another point of view. This has definitely been one my more disheartening conversations on Slashdot...
I've already explained this like 3 times now. If you're going to be partisan-minded enough to not believe what I say, that's fine, I can't do anything but explain.
So anyway, as I've said before, people have different standards. The standards you hold the President to are probably not the standards you hold a Senator to, are probably not the same standards you hold your partner to, are probably not the same standards you hold yourself to. Thus in response to the OP, just because Person A is criticized for something while Person B is not criticized for the same thing is--without context--utterly meaningless.
In regards to normative rules, normative rules are interesting for what they tell us about people and what they tell us about society.
If I'm a teetotaler, what does that tell you about me? If I cross myself what does that tell you about me? You may not care about the fact that somebody is a teetotaler or crosses themselves, but that doesn't mean that information is meaningless. It may, in the case of a politician, show that that person is trying to appeal to a certain audience. Exactly what Bush and Reagan had the stated jacket rule.
That rule may be meaningless to YOU, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless to everybody.
And now we're right back to the original point -- different people have different standards for different people. That's why some people can complain about Obama appearing on TV while NOT complaining about Palin appearing on TV, and be totally internally consistent--no hypocrisy required.
I put in disclaimers, because I genuinely don't care if President Obama appears on TV. To put it explicitly for you, I don't think it's a sin or a negative mark on his character. I DO think it's useless, but that's different from a negative mark on the President.
Oh ok, because your post didn't say the word Iraq once, while mine explicitly discussed Afghanistan.
Secondly why are you so intent on framing this as a d vs r problem?
Reread my post, I think it's pretty clear what I said. The problem is clearly both parties. Republicans took us in, Democrats have kept us there.
And yes Muslim extremists are out to destablize the western world,
I think that's an extremely simplistic, and by-and-by, wrong view.
Muslim extremists worldwide were not produced in a vacuum nor were they created solely by the West. Look at what countries supplied the 9/11 terrorists and those countries' political systems, etc. The extremists have ridden on a wave of internal discontent that through religion has been channeled in other directions. True many extremists view the West as decadent and sinful and an enemy of the Muslim word (and thus deserving attacking). They're "out" to do a lot of things. You know Hezbollah builds hospitals?
specifically the us
Absolutely false.
from economic and personal freedom standpoints
Citation needed. Where does UBL or anyone else talk about wanting to deny Westerners (or anybody--ignore Muslims as the extremists DO want to limit their civil rights) their civil liberties? Obviously those terrorists who view the situation as a war want to attack and hurt the West, but what evidence do you have that this includes reducing civil liberties?
And they are winning
Disagree. By what metric are they winning? A fantasy metric like "they want us to lose our civil liberties" doesn't count without proof. That statement is just as ignorant as someone I knew after 9/11 who proclaimed that "they hate us for our freedoms."
The second we invaded Iraq they had their biggest victory.
This is perhaps an arguable point because Iraq was able to act as a rallying point for potential jihadists worldwide. Thus from that perspective, you can view Iraq as a a advertising campaign for extremists. From the Western point of view, even if terrorists are being recruited, they're dying in IRAQ, not on the streets of Madrid, London, NYC, wherever else. A huge win for the those the terrorists target. It's happened several times now--Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, etc. Some conflict begins, the jihadists worldwide are drawn in, and the other conflicts dim down. Meanwhile once a certain number of jihadists are done dying, the new conflict tends to calm down.
How much money have we spent in the last 8 years in the aftermath of 9/11, and what have we accomplished beyond eroding personal freedoms, killing some of our own soldiers, and devastating our own economy?
So you think the Muslim extremists goals are to erode American's personal freedoms? Kill some soldiers, yes. Devastate that economy? I think, again, that's a very hard point to argue. The rest of the world economy took large hits too. Are they because of Bushco?
but realize that his getting hurt over there has nothing to do with the current administration
I don't blame President Obama nor do I blame President Bush. After 9/11 American had no choice but to go into Afghanistan. I think even Jimmy Carter would have done that. How long we've stayed is perhaps up in the air, but notice that Democrats since 2006 and President Obama since 2008 have only increased our presence there. I see no indication that had Bush not been president in 2001 that things in Afghanistan would have gone any differently. Iraq, perhaps.
You realize that roughly half of the entire time our troops have been in Afghanistan has been while Democrats controlled Congress by large margins? In fact Democrats in 2006 and 2008 were propelled into power largely on anti-war sentiment.
Yes. For certain it's trollish. A pansy-ass passive agressive sort of troll, but troll ye be.
So the way I take your message is, if you don't agree with somebody's point, they're a troll?
Second you cite this sentence of mine:
I think it's kind of stupid, but I'm not going to criticize him by saying he shouldn't be on a TV show or anything like that... But, I think that most people think there are different standards for the President versus a private citizen.
Perhaps I should phrase this more clearly for the overly partisan-minded.
I think a LOT of crap that Presidents do is stupid as hell. Calling basketball teams. Signing bills with children in the Rose Garden. Ceremonial gifts. Photo ops on carriers. Heck, ANY photo op. I think the Mythbuster thing is STUPID for that reason. I also think it's useless and isn't going to "encourage" science or anything else.
I'm not going to condemn President Obama for DOING it however. Heck, on this very thread on slashdot you saw people condemning President Obama for doing it. I think it's stupid, I don't think it's a sin. How about that?
AHAHAHAHAaaaah. Yeah, you must have been crying your ass off since, oh, George Washington left office.
You again completely miss the point and apparently the part where I said "Of course that's rarely met, but it's an ideal." It IS an ideal. Heck, look back at President Obama's rhetoric during the election. Look back at the poll results that showed a lot of people were tired of partisanship, and the poll results that showed a lot of people voted for Obama because they thought he would decrease partisanship after the Bush years. Were they stupid? Of course they were, but being non-partisan is an IDEAL for the president. I thought this was beyond obvious, do you really think that being non-partisan is NOT something people want in a President?
I don't think you raped and murdered a girl in 1990, in fact I don't think you did, and I wouldn't care one itoa if you did. But OTHER people might care and think you shouldn't be hanging around their children. You see, it's the act of mentioning something by mentioning how you're not mentioning it. It's classic weaselese, and that'll get you a troll point right there.
1) No, it's not "classic weaelese" it's classic rhetoric and it's called apophasis. 2) That's not what I did!
I gave an example of something that two of the last conservative presidents have put forth of examples of normative behavior. Don't you think it's telling that Bush and Reagan both claimed that kind of respect for the Oval Office (even if not always following it) while neither Presidents Obama nor Clinton did? That should tell you something very important--different people (or different political factions) have different ideals about the office of the Presidency.
As I said before, I personally don't care one iota about Obama's media appearances of Bush's jacket wearing. Utterly irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that it does matter to a lot of people.
And while Regan and Bush (both of them maybe?) somehow get a free-ride for appealing to, ah, wait, not YOU of course, but to YOUR FRIENDS views of the presidency for "always wearing formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office", your OTHER friends (see, I've got liberal friends, I'm not partisan as I'm accusing other of being) have had an issue with it.
I think you're confused here -- I didn't even reference anybody caring about that (other than my own NOT caring).
But hey, maybe you were just trying to be polite. But inserting your complaints within layers of bullshit doesn't really make it any more polite. It adds a veneer of political correctness, but that in turn just pisses some people off even more. And if you truly, honestly, just don't care about it... then why did you post anything at all?
I think this is hard to argue. That is, you can make a very strong argument either way. We'll know in a couple of years, but for now, who knows.
we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place,
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
civil rights are for the most part being restored
?
there's been actual focus on real world problems
Because terrorism isn't a real world problem? I may not like many of Bush's actions post-9/11, but as someone who worked in Intel in the mid-2000s, a lot of very necessary changes were made. Look at it this way--numerous European (and other) countries have been hit since 9/11. Nothing so spectacular as 9/11 of course but hit nonetheless. We haven't. IMHO, that ain't peanuts.
Secondly, the obvious answer from polls is, most people don't like Obama's solutions.
Sure he's not perfect, but at least he's trying to get it right. He'd be doing a lot better at this point if the Republicans were actually trying to contribute rather than find ridiculous excuses to shoot down every possible piece of legislation.
Right. No need to be such a party loyalist. You're either with us or against us? Republicans are against Democrat bills and they're the bad guys. Ok.
What baffles me is that I didn't even think my post was negative to Obama? I mean, I guess because I said I thought appearing on Mythbusters was stupid, it's an attack on Obama? Beats me...
I'd probably agree with that...never been a fan of dressing up either. I used to work at government office in DC and the contrast was always funny to me--some people dressed to the 9s every day, some people (ie me) had a jacket stuffed into a locker/closet somewhere if I had to put it on in an "emergency."
Presidents really don't even spend that much time in the oval office the way I hear it. I actually might be in favor of anything that makes politicians do less work!
I wasn't 100% sure of that statement, thus both the "i think" and the "afaik." Again, FWIW a distant cousin of mine had a staffer job in the White House during 2-3 years of President Bush's second term and he said he had never seen the President without a jacket on in the oval office. Maybe he changed his rule, I don't know. Big surprise--there are exceptions to all rules.;)
Mostly though, I think you totally missed the point of my post. Different people have different standards regarding the Presidency. That one example may be demonstrably not always true (and again, as I clearly stated in the original post, I don't care one iota about whether the President wears a jacket or not) nonetheless it cited as a normative rule. President Obama (afaik) has never cited an adherence to that rule. He has different standards (or if yo want to be pedantic, different stated standards). So do people! Some people think President Obama shouldn't go on talk shows...some don't care. But pretty much everybody has standards for the president that are both different from their own standards and different than the standards applied to other politicians.
Any way, in fairness to your single pictures of Presidents Reagan and Bush in the oval office without a jacket on, I will amend my statement to:
"Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) _claimed to always_ wear formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik."
Perhaps we can extrapolate from your attack to a more general form:
"The only people I ever hear calling $HATED_POLITICIAN "$STUPID_TERM" are $PEOPLE_I_HATE. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
Let's try a few...
"The only people I ever hear calling Bush "Chimpie" are left-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
"The only people I ever hear calling Tea Party members "teabaggers" are left-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
And so on! Guess what -- everybody who is a blind-partisan and uses such terms sounds like an ass to everybody who doesn't agree with him/her. This includes people who offer disingenuous little tidbits of snide advice that are really meant to insult others, FYI.
FWIW, I don't have a problem with President Obama being on Mythbusters -- I mean, I think it's kind of stupid, but I'm not going to criticize him by saying he shouldn't be on a TV show or anything like that... But, I think that most people think there are different standards for the President versus a private citizen. I don't buy into many of the ideals of the presidency, but the president is supposed to be above partisanship, be a leader of both the country and the government--not just his own party, etc. Of course that's rarely met, but it's an ideal. There are a lot of ideals, and some people view them differently. Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) always wore formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik. I'm not saying I care one iota about that, but people have very different ideas of what's expected of the president. I HAVE heard from even a lot of my liberal friends that at times they have been uncomfortable with some of President Obama's media appearances. ~shrug~
In my city,when there are crimes in some parts of town, the police organize community responses where civilians help police canvas the area and talk to possible witnesses. In some minority (especially latino areas) a lot of people are VERY wary of speaking to the police, but they are more willing to talk to an average civilian. These are organized by police PR.
Another thing that's really nice in my city is that there are a number of mailing lists--my ~150 home neighborhood home owners association listserv for example, where police are members--when there is crime or questions about crime, the police pr people can quickly answer questions or provide information. They is is also linked in to that national night out thing, regardless of ho you feel about that. PR also helps organizing sending officers / others to community meetings, schools, etc. Neighborhood watch as an example.
Police PR also get information more generally about police accomplishments or problems, ongoing cases, etc. Basically, and obviously, anywhere where the police need to interact with the greater public, PR can help there. With a question like yours, why does ANYBODY needs a PR department?
Personally I'd rather have PR people doing this type of work than more expensive and more trained (and BUSIER) officers spending time tweeting, emailing, etc rather than being on the street!
Very interesting stuff, thanks for the details. May have to check out rdesktop. I hadn't liked it the last time I used it but that was years ago. I use the MS program which I find VERY painful. I find it completely indeterminate what username/password/host combo it is going to use. I really don't understand what's going on with that program. CoRD as a gui program is nice.
And I didn't even know about.term files -- that is really cool. I'll have to play around with them. Thanks!
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, why do people get their panties in such a bind over these arguments? Every time there is an Apple article on slashdot, the conversations quickly devolves into a flamewar over whether Apple is ripping you off or not, how good or bad their products are, and so on. I mean with your reply--who gives a crap? If you like the Acer--buy the Acer. If you like the MBA--buy the MBA. Think of this as an optimization spectrum with points such as price, weight and size, appearance, computing power, software, flexibility, build quality, and so on. Believe it or not, not everybody is going to optimize in the same directions!
I just don't get why it seems to bother some people so very much that different people might like different products. If somebody likes Apple products, what's the big deal--why are they automatically a fanboy who you seem to hate?
How much meaning does acre have for the average person? Not a lot. I live on .25 acres, so I can roughly figure out how big 1 acre is, but it doesn't extrapolate well for me. Then think of your average city-dweller who lives in a townhouse, condo, or apartment and doesn't have a clue what an acre is? Plus house lots (where most people run into acres) are often very irregularly shaped, thus acres aren't even useful for distance.
A football field, on the otherhand, is something that almost all Americas know something about. Even if you've never played football (eg, me) you've been on a football field, watched football, jogged around one, and so on. How about a mile? Almost everybody has experience with miles, driving, etc, but a football field as a smaller unit has the virtue that you can see the entire thing at once. It's very graspable.
I don't see what the problem with using it to make distances/sizes more accessible is? Obviously nobody is advocating doing math or physics using such units, but then again metric has been standard throughout many occupations and the sciences in America for a long time...
So since it's not designed by committee, that's bad?
What about java? Or C for the first 20 years of its existence?
Why do people need a compiler? Just use an assembler, all that C bloat makes everything slower.
Can handcoded assembly be faster than C be faster than Java? Sure. The reverse is true as well, and with today's multicores, complicated pipelines, etc, chances are that compilers (or VMs) are going to be better at it than you are.
There's something to be said for JIT optimization and profiling, and the runtime information that virtual machines can gather and then optimize for.
Just FWIW, I think a lot of those "gold-hoarding doomsday-libertarians" are really more "gold-hoarding libertarians and others who think the US dollar is doomed" (or at least to fall drastically vis-a-vis other forex pairs.
I'm not giving up on the usd yet but eur, aud, chf, gbp, and others do seem pretty strong in comparison.
Makes sense to me on one logical level -- the US is not the world's unquestioned superpower anymore. Countries like Brazil, China, and India are growing incredibly rapidly, countries like Australia are booming as a result, and so far forex traders seem to think the Europeans are doing a decent job of defending the Euro (we'll see if that holds up). There's nothing especially special about the dollar anymore, the way there was say 50 years ago.
Actually you are not explicit here in where your friend was. The implication is that he is in one of the two places, but nothing is explicit
I don't see how you can say that. Here's exactly what was said:
we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place,
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
Parse that again. I agree with the OP that we've "retreated in Iraq." I then say (present tense) "Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan" (you'll note the following clause is past tense) ... "A family friend has [sic] hit by an IED in the last week or two" ... "I think something like 17 dead in the last two days"
So, I agree we're done in Iraq. I say we're still engaged in Afghanistan. I add that a family friend was hurt in the last week or two. I say there have been 17 dead in the last two days.
Even if you really couldn't follow from the OP to my sentence 1 to sentence 2, there's only one place where we are still engaged in combat and there's only one place where 17 American solders died in two days.
So, even _if_ it wasn't explicitly clear--which I think it was--it was perfectly clear from the rest of the context.
This is an even more pedantic conversation than the other one I am currently in. And none of my points have been addressed at all.
But because I'm explaining why your post was bad you're just assuming everything I say is an insult to you
No, I assumed that you were trying to be snarky and disingenuous when you said "Apophasis. Thanks man, I was looking for that." I think you can see how that phrasing could possibly come across that way? As such things can be ambiguous on the Internet, I did, however, give you the benefit of the doubt and comment on your point. More benefit than you've given me this entire thread!
And the reason I felt it might be snarky--because you litter your posts with snippets such as "I don't care what you have to say" and "you can grow to be a better person" and "There, that ought to stand for a little while." When somebody selectively responds to only fractional parts of posts and snarks back, yeah, I'm sometimes unsure if even the genuine points are snark free or not!
That's bias creeping in, tainting everything you read towards a certain viewpoint. To be fair, it's something we all have to keep an eye on.
Yes, we should always read things in context and keep an eye on our own biases.
Yes. I imagine that getting modded as a troll, then then the guy explaining WHY getting modded +5 insightful wouldn't be the best day.
Indeed, it's disheartening to see both how the slashdot moderation system is gamed, and how people use the mod system for their POV, especially when it comes to anything political. I'm not sure if this is your original account or not, but the discussion threads on Slashdot did not used to be so flamefilled in the past. Not to look back with too rosy glasses, slashdot always had some great flamefests, but snr is lower now.
I'm just explaining the moderation to you because you seem to be confused about why you got the troll mod
It's actually apparent what happened (though I WAS surprised that people would read what I wrote in an extremely partisan wa). 30% of the mod is for Troll and 30% is for interesting (30% overrated, for net -1). If at any point troll gets the post to 0, the vast majority of slashdot viewers never see the post anymore. I still think the reading of my post that you and one other have offered is inaccurate and seems as if you didn't read what I was replying to, but hey, I think we're going to agree to disagree on everything by now.
Try making a new account sometime and on the first political thread that comes along, post something unrelated to the story, but that slanders $other_side. Chances are good no matter the content you get to 0/-1 or +5 quickly. Chances are higher for +5 if you're on the left, 0 for right, but either are possible.
If you're still confused after this message, read my other post, I think I've made the order of things simple enough there:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1826966&cid=33950070
No. Not really. You're a troll because:
1) You use passive aggressive pseudo-politically-correct attacks.
What did I say that's "politically correct" -- we may have different definition of this term...
2) You complain about what the president does while claiming to not care.
What did I complain about? I think all I said was that I thought being on Mythbusters was "stupid" and that some of my friends had expressed discomfort with some of President Obama's media appearances? With regards to that last statement, I -- as I've said like 5 times now! -- don't care about his Mythbusters appearance, but I DO think (since I hadn't mentioned my opinion on the matter aye or nay) the talkshow was a bit much. I don't think it's a BIG deal, but I don't approve. Fair?
3) You think that being called a troll just means I disagree with you.
Recursive definition of troll huh? Interesting... Well, it was a good run. I seriously think you're the first person on slashdot in however many years who has accused me of being a Troll. Maybe my second or third troll mod of all time. ~shrug~ I absolutely do think people on slashdot sling the troll term around without any care, and the mod as well. Anybody who disagrees is a troll. Particularly rife on political threads. One of the reasons so many conversations turn into shitflinging adhoms rather than actually discussing points.
Do I disagree with you? Well yes. I don't really care about the pomp and circumstance. You do. But conversely, you don't like the fluffy stuff that politicians do. Do I like it? Eh, not really. Usually it's meaningless things like busting the sun-beam-death-ray myth for the third time, but it's important to be a public figurehead. If they just got elected and disappeared to CSPAN, then they're missing part of their job. The whole "fire-side chat" thing that FDR tried was a good idea.
I really don't care as I've said in numerous posts. So who's right? You--who claim to know what I believe, or Me--who really does know what I believe? It seems that you can't find it in yourself to believe me, believing me to just be a troll. I can't convince you otherwise, so that's all I can say.
Apophasis. Thanks man, I was looking for that.
I'm assuming you're trying to be snarky and disingenuous, but if you're curious it's a Latin (originally Greek) rhetorical term. Cicero was known for it.
That's.... exactly like your first post. You claim to NOT condemn him. Then you point out how others have condemned him. Apophasis. Same tactics, still trollish.
A comparison is not an apophasis. In case you didn't read any of this thread, here's what started it:
I know Obama is a messianic figure for some, but I don't think even he can change the reality that this just never happened. I don't understand why so many people seem to have invested so much in this obvious myth being true.
THAT'S condemning of Obama. I'm not saying that. I disagree with that. I think that's stupid. Makes sense to you?
Blunt. To the point. Less whiny and pussy-footed.
When people start flinging ad homs and clearly not reading my posts, I usually stop replying. I think this is pretty much done anyway, you're clearly not going to try to see another point of view. This has definitely been one my more disheartening conversations on Slashdot...
I've already explained this like 3 times now. If you're going to be partisan-minded enough to not believe what I say, that's fine, I can't do anything but explain.
So anyway, as I've said before, people have different standards. The standards you hold the President to are probably not the standards you hold a Senator to, are probably not the same standards you hold your partner to, are probably not the same standards you hold yourself to. Thus in response to the OP, just because Person A is criticized for something while Person B is not criticized for the same thing is--without context--utterly meaningless.
In regards to normative rules, normative rules are interesting for what they tell us about people and what they tell us about society.
If I'm a teetotaler, what does that tell you about me? If I cross myself what does that tell you about me? You may not care about the fact that somebody is a teetotaler or crosses themselves, but that doesn't mean that information is meaningless. It may, in the case of a politician, show that that person is trying to appeal to a certain audience. Exactly what Bush and Reagan had the stated jacket rule.
That rule may be meaningless to YOU, but that doesn't mean it's meaningless to everybody.
And now we're right back to the original point -- different people have different standards for different people. That's why some people can complain about Obama appearing on TV while NOT complaining about Palin appearing on TV, and be totally internally consistent--no hypocrisy required.
I put in disclaimers, because I genuinely don't care if President Obama appears on TV. To put it explicitly for you, I don't think it's a sin or a negative mark on his character. I DO think it's useless, but that's different from a negative mark on the President.
You said "but realize that his getting hurt over there has nothing to do with the current administration."
Afghanistan is explicitly what I was referred to and what i was talking about. your taking things out of order and out of context.
If you're not going to dispute a single one of my points, that's fine, but it's silly to pull things out of order to try to make your point.
You got context wrong I believe--the op said the us war on terror devastated our economy. That's what I disagree with n
First of all I'm referring to Iraq
Oh ok, because your post didn't say the word Iraq once, while mine explicitly discussed Afghanistan.
Secondly why are you so intent on framing this as a d vs r problem?
Reread my post, I think it's pretty clear what I said. The problem is clearly both parties. Republicans took us in, Democrats have kept us there.
And yes Muslim extremists are out to destablize the western world,
I think that's an extremely simplistic, and by-and-by, wrong view.
Muslim extremists worldwide were not produced in a vacuum nor were they created solely by the West. Look at what countries supplied the 9/11 terrorists and those countries' political systems, etc. The extremists have ridden on a wave of internal discontent that through religion has been channeled in other directions. True many extremists view the West as decadent and sinful and an enemy of the Muslim word (and thus deserving attacking). They're "out" to do a lot of things. You know Hezbollah builds hospitals?
specifically the us
Absolutely false.
from economic and personal freedom standpoints
Citation needed. Where does UBL or anyone else talk about wanting to deny Westerners (or anybody--ignore Muslims as the extremists DO want to limit their civil rights) their civil liberties? Obviously those terrorists who view the situation as a war want to attack and hurt the West, but what evidence do you have that this includes reducing civil liberties?
And they are winning
Disagree. By what metric are they winning? A fantasy metric like "they want us to lose our civil liberties" doesn't count without proof. That statement is just as ignorant as someone I knew after 9/11 who proclaimed that "they hate us for our freedoms."
The second we invaded Iraq they had their biggest victory.
This is perhaps an arguable point because Iraq was able to act as a rallying point for potential jihadists worldwide. Thus from that perspective, you can view Iraq as a a advertising campaign for extremists. From the Western point of view, even if terrorists are being recruited, they're dying in IRAQ, not on the streets of Madrid, London, NYC, wherever else. A huge win for the those the terrorists target. It's happened several times now--Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, etc. Some conflict begins, the jihadists worldwide are drawn in, and the other conflicts dim down. Meanwhile once a certain number of jihadists are done dying, the new conflict tends to calm down.
How much money have we spent in the last 8 years in the aftermath of 9/11, and what have we accomplished beyond eroding personal freedoms, killing some of our own soldiers, and devastating our own economy?
So you think the Muslim extremists goals are to erode American's personal freedoms? Kill some soldiers, yes. Devastate that economy? I think, again, that's a very hard point to argue. The rest of the world economy took large hits too. Are they because of Bushco?
but realize that his getting hurt over there has nothing to do with the current administration
I don't blame President Obama nor do I blame President Bush. After 9/11 American had no choice but to go into Afghanistan. I think even Jimmy Carter would have done that. How long we've stayed is perhaps up in the air, but notice that Democrats since 2006 and President Obama since 2008 have only increased our presence there. I see no indication that had Bush not been president in 2001 that things in Afghanistan would have gone any differently. Iraq, perhaps.
You realize that roughly half of the entire time our troops have been in Afghanistan has been while Democrats controlled Congress by large margins? In fact Democrats in 2006 and 2008 were propelled into power largely on anti-war sentiment.
So what specifically do you have a problem with? Always easier to slander other people than make actual arguments.
Yes. For certain it's trollish. A pansy-ass passive agressive sort of troll, but troll ye be.
So the way I take your message is, if you don't agree with somebody's point, they're a troll?
Second you cite this sentence of mine:
I think it's kind of stupid, but I'm not going to criticize him by saying he shouldn't be on a TV show or anything like that... But, I think that most people think there are different standards for the President versus a private citizen.
Perhaps I should phrase this more clearly for the overly partisan-minded.
I think a LOT of crap that Presidents do is stupid as hell. Calling basketball teams. Signing bills with children in the Rose Garden. Ceremonial gifts. Photo ops on carriers. Heck, ANY photo op. I think the Mythbuster thing is STUPID for that reason. I also think it's useless and isn't going to "encourage" science or anything else.
I'm not going to condemn President Obama for DOING it however. Heck, on this very thread on slashdot you saw people condemning President Obama for doing it. I think it's stupid, I don't think it's a sin. How about that?
AHAHAHAHAaaaah. Yeah, you must have been crying your ass off since, oh, George Washington left office.
You again completely miss the point and apparently the part where I said "Of course that's rarely met, but it's an ideal." It IS an ideal. Heck, look back at President Obama's rhetoric during the election. Look back at the poll results that showed a lot of people were tired of partisanship, and the poll results that showed a lot of people voted for Obama because they thought he would decrease partisanship after the Bush years. Were they stupid? Of course they were, but being non-partisan is an IDEAL for the president. I thought this was beyond obvious, do you really think that being non-partisan is NOT something people want in a President?
I don't think you raped and murdered a girl in 1990, in fact I don't think you did, and I wouldn't care one itoa if you did. But OTHER people might care and think you shouldn't be hanging around their children.
You see, it's the act of mentioning something by mentioning how you're not mentioning it. It's classic weaselese, and that'll get you a troll point right there.
1) No, it's not "classic weaelese" it's classic rhetoric and it's called apophasis. 2) That's not what I did!
I gave an example of something that two of the last conservative presidents have put forth of examples of normative behavior. Don't you think it's telling that Bush and Reagan both claimed that kind of respect for the Oval Office (even if not always following it) while neither Presidents Obama nor Clinton did? That should tell you something very important--different people (or different political factions) have different ideals about the office of the Presidency.
As I said before, I personally don't care one iota about Obama's media appearances of Bush's jacket wearing. Utterly irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that it does matter to a lot of people.
And while Regan and Bush (both of them maybe?) somehow get a free-ride for appealing to, ah, wait, not YOU of course, but to YOUR FRIENDS views of the presidency for "always wearing formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office", your OTHER friends (see, I've got liberal friends, I'm not partisan as I'm accusing other of being) have had an issue with it.
I think you're confused here -- I didn't even reference anybody caring about that (other than my own NOT caring).
But hey, maybe you were just trying to be polite. But inserting your complaints within layers of bullshit doesn't really make it any more polite. It adds a veneer of political correctness, but that in turn just pisses some people off even more. And if you truly, honestly, just don't care about it... then why did you post anything at all?
Because, as I said:
The economy is picking up, albeit slowly
I think this is hard to argue. That is, you can make a very strong argument either way. We'll know in a couple of years, but for now, who knows.
we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place,
By "wars" I assume you mean singular Iraq? Because we're certainly still engaged in Afghanistan, and those are the only two places that we went into under President Bush (right?). A family friend has hit by an IED in the last week or two...alive but his face was virtually blown off apparently. I think something like 17 dead in the last two days? That's not much of a retreat.
civil rights are for the most part being restored
?
there's been actual focus on real world problems
Because terrorism isn't a real world problem? I may not like many of Bush's actions post-9/11, but as someone who worked in Intel in the mid-2000s, a lot of very necessary changes were made. Look at it this way--numerous European (and other) countries have been hit since 9/11. Nothing so spectacular as 9/11 of course but hit nonetheless. We haven't. IMHO, that ain't peanuts.
Secondly, the obvious answer from polls is, most people don't like Obama's solutions.
Sure he's not perfect, but at least he's trying to get it right. He'd be doing a lot better at this point if the Republicans were actually trying to contribute rather than find ridiculous excuses to shoot down every possible piece of legislation.
Right. No need to be such a party loyalist. You're either with us or against us? Republicans are against Democrat bills and they're the bad guys. Ok.
Believe me, I completely agree with you.
What baffles me is that I didn't even think my post was negative to Obama? I mean, I guess because I said I thought appearing on Mythbusters was stupid, it's an attack on Obama? Beats me...
I'd probably agree with that...never been a fan of dressing up either. I used to work at government office in DC and the contrast was always funny to me--some people dressed to the 9s every day, some people (ie me) had a jacket stuffed into a locker/closet somewhere if I had to put it on in an "emergency."
Presidents really don't even spend that much time in the oval office the way I hear it. I actually might be in favor of anything that makes politicians do less work!
Sheesh? That got modded troll?
I would have thought that was one of the least controversial or trollish things relating to politics that I've ever written on slashdot!
I wasn't 100% sure of that statement, thus both the "i think" and the "afaik." Again, FWIW a distant cousin of mine had a staffer job in the White House during 2-3 years of President Bush's second term and he said he had never seen the President without a jacket on in the oval office. Maybe he changed his rule, I don't know. Big surprise--there are exceptions to all rules. ;)
Mostly though, I think you totally missed the point of my post. Different people have different standards regarding the Presidency. That one example may be demonstrably not always true (and again, as I clearly stated in the original post, I don't care one iota about whether the President wears a jacket or not) nonetheless it cited as a normative rule. President Obama (afaik) has never cited an adherence to that rule. He has different standards (or if yo want to be pedantic, different stated standards). So do people! Some people think President Obama shouldn't go on talk shows...some don't care. But pretty much everybody has standards for the president that are both different from their own standards and different than the standards applied to other politicians.
Any way, in fairness to your single pictures of Presidents Reagan and Bush in the oval office without a jacket on, I will amend my statement to:
"Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) _claimed to always_ wear formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik."
Perhaps we can extrapolate from your attack to a more general form:
"The only people I ever hear calling $HATED_POLITICIAN "$STUPID_TERM" are $PEOPLE_I_HATE. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
Let's try a few...
"The only people I ever hear calling Bush "Chimpie" are left-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
"The only people I ever hear calling Tea Party members "teabaggers" are left-wingers. They sound pretty ridiculous and juvenile when they do it. Just FYI."
And so on! Guess what -- everybody who is a blind-partisan and uses such terms sounds like an ass to everybody who doesn't agree with him/her. This includes people who offer disingenuous little tidbits of snide advice that are really meant to insult others, FYI.
(wait..crap!)
FWIW, I don't have a problem with President Obama being on Mythbusters -- I mean, I think it's kind of stupid, but I'm not going to criticize him by saying he shouldn't be on a TV show or anything like that... But, I think that most people think there are different standards for the President versus a private citizen. I don't buy into many of the ideals of the presidency, but the president is supposed to be above partisanship, be a leader of both the country and the government--not just his own party, etc. Of course that's rarely met, but it's an ideal. There are a lot of ideals, and some people view them differently. Reagan and I think Bush (for instance) always wore formal clothes (suit jacket) in the oval office, afaik. I'm not saying I care one iota about that, but people have very different ideas of what's expected of the president. I HAVE heard from even a lot of my liberal friends that at times they have been uncomfortable with some of President Obama's media appearances. ~shrug~
There are a lot of reasons.
In my city,when there are crimes in some parts of town, the police organize community responses where civilians help police canvas the area and talk to possible witnesses. In some minority (especially latino areas) a lot of people are VERY wary of speaking to the police, but they are more willing to talk to an average civilian. These are organized by police PR.
Another thing that's really nice in my city is that there are a number of mailing lists--my ~150 home neighborhood home owners association listserv for example, where police are members--when there is crime or questions about crime, the police pr people can quickly answer questions or provide information. They is is also linked in to that national night out thing, regardless of ho you feel about that. PR also helps organizing sending officers / others to community meetings, schools, etc. Neighborhood watch as an example.
Police PR also get information more generally about police accomplishments or problems, ongoing cases, etc. Basically, and obviously, anywhere where the police need to interact with the greater public, PR can help there. With a question like yours, why does ANYBODY needs a PR department?
Personally I'd rather have PR people doing this type of work than more expensive and more trained (and BUSIER) officers spending time tweeting, emailing, etc rather than being on the street!
I think I would be tempted to agree that this should be an error, not a warning, but if you use the -Wall flag it's caught.
Very interesting stuff, thanks for the details. May have to check out rdesktop. I hadn't liked it the last time I used it but that was years ago. I use the MS program which I find VERY painful. I find it completely indeterminate what username/password/host combo it is going to use. I really don't understand what's going on with that program. CoRD as a gui program is nice.
And I didn't even know about .term files -- that is really cool. I'll have to play around with them. Thanks!