I have had both XM and Sirius radio; I currently have Sirius.
There were two main reasons why I stopped listening to ordinary radio and jumped to satellite. The first problem with ordinary radio is the endless onslaught of commercials. The second problem is the endless gobbling of retarded DJs. Collectively, most DJs have the IQ of a soap dish. That doesn't keep them from voicing their opinion on everything from economics to cultural imperialism. The XM DJs were kind enough to be silent, for the most part, but the Sirius DJs don't share that fortunate habit.
An example: a few nights ago one of the Sirius morons described the movie "Starship Troopers" as a cheesy "Star Trek-like" film, named after the song by the group "Yes." She then observed that the rock group must be singularly irked that such a sucky film had been named after their song.
That's just a minuscule example on a totally meaningless pop culture topic, but it's a reasonable illustration of why I prefer silent DJs.
When the new XM/Sirius channels have lousy music, babbling DJs and (some channels) commercials, I have to ask myself why I'm subscribing to their service.
I now find myself listening to regular radio again, just so I can find some decent music which doesn't bode well for satellite radio.
Soldiers are supposed to want to fight. If you want the Peace Corps, send in the Peace Corps. If you want the Marine Corps, send in the Marine Corps.
The whole things sounds like a bunch of Leftist grad students angling for funding. The concept, given the current state of technology, is a pathetic attempt at political correctness.
Politicians are supposed to create policy, not the military. Once the decision has been made by lawfully elected officials to use military force, it is the duty of the military to implement that decision, not second guess it.
The way the intro to the article is framed indicates a complete knowledge vacuum on the part of the framer. This is the exact equivalent of having your nuclear defense program run by Martin Sheen.
Whenever you get another charger, write something descriptive on it with a silver sharpie, then toss it in a box with your other chargers. You'll always be able to tell what the darn thing is for.
"The teachers unions also play pivotal roles in state legislative races, local school district races, and ballot questions on education. The battle over California's 1993 Voucher Initiative (Proposition 174), for example, may have been the most intensive campaign over a state educational initiative in U.S. history," the authors report. The measure would have provided families vouchers worth $2,600 to enroll each child in any public or private school of their choice. Fearing that the vouchers would drain children from public school systems, the California Teachers Association, the state affiliate of the NEA, spent an astounding $12.3 million to defeat the proposition."
The problem is easily solvable; it's just the NEA in California bought an election to kill it. Break the monopoly of the public school system and give parents real choice in education and values.
It's nice to see everyone leap up on the bandwagon and accept the notion that this creepy woman drove an innocent kid to suicide. I'm I the only one who thinks the story entirely too pat?
Nasty postings on myspace.com are hardly going to make me do myself in. If this girl killed herself over something so utterly trivial, I should think that a little investigation would uncover someone with a pre-existing case of severe depression.
I'm not saying the woman wasn't an awful, scheming witch; I'm sure she was and is. But charging her with manslaughter as some have suggested in other posts is absurd. Most of the charges appear to be largely trumped-up political offenses; she's unpopular and must therefore be punished.
Nobody wants to discuss the issue, but the girl clearly had serious mental health problems.
War is about imposing YOUR will on your enemy. If you read von Clausewitz, or Sun Tsu, you will find nothing but a ringing endorsement of the techniques described in your indignant lead in.
Even beyond the observation that the manual describes nothing but techniques used in war since the dawn of time, I'll observe that it is the insurgents who cynically hide behind an unarmed populace. They make the fundamental decision to deliberately cause civilian casualties when they refuse to abide by the Geneva Convention and fight in uniform, away from civilian population centers.
A uniformed military must counter the insurgents in some way; would you prefer that we burn down the house to kill the bed bugs? What do you suggest? Asking the insurgents nicely to go home? Take a long hard look at places like Somalia or the disaster in Bosnia and then tell me there are realistic options other than the judicious application of force.
But if the BSD organizations make a serious attempt to re-implement GPL3 apps with BSD licenses, and the Linux organizations stick with GPL3, then I'll switch to BSD and away from Linux (used since 1995...).
The BSD license is my idea of free software. But that's just me; as they say, ymmv.
Let me get this straight. You want to make the IT department pick up the slack for all the half-assed projects that some newb MBA deploys because he's a big fan of Kevin Rose and thinks it's cool? And that's a problem? The "resistance" mentioned in the lead-in exists because responsible parties within the organization don't want to follow behind the puppy cleaning up the dog poop.
If the MBA doggies had to clean up their own poop, the IT staff would be all in favor of the new projects. It's easy to be cavalier when you aren't paying the bills with YOUR time and effort.
You know of course, that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?
This sounds so nice and sweet on the surface: the government is going to protect your children by filtering the Internet content to which they have access. What could be wrong with that?
Of course, once you have an official filtering mechanism in place, it can be used to filter other "anti-social" content. And it will. It's just a matter of time. The next step will be the restriction of some universally loathed faction, like the Nazis. Neo-fascist sites will be banned as will sites from other "extremist" groups, terrorists, etc. Then illegal drug related sites will be banned, and later hard alcohol sites.
Eventually, you can be expect to be protected from Twinkies and Ding-dongs. But not the Ding-dongs that you voted into office. Somehow they will always be exempt from filtering.
Well, I downloaded the PDF and waded my way through the turgid prose. The sad truth is that the subject is very interesting and timely. Unfortunately, the author really has nothing insightful to say on the subject. The 25 pages of text are clunky and directly focused on academic publication. He writes a great deal, but doesn't SAY anything. How can he say so little with so many words?
The only thing that I took from his publication is that he doesn't like the Bush Administration. That's fine with me; everyone is entitled to his own opinion. My problem is that this issue as such is far greater than any current administration. It's one of the fundamental questions about the relationship between the individual and the state, and deserves to be treated as an issue of profound significance.
If this is the best justification of our right to privacy, then we're in serious trouble.
The real problem at the heart of the whole controversy is state controlled education. In a nutshell, it is impossible to educate without instilling values of some kind. Since the state controls the curriculum, it largely controls the content of the values being instilled in children during their formative years. This is the very crux of the problem.
People disagree with each others on the subject of basic values. Essentially, there can be only two options as to the who has the right to select the values to be instilled in children: it's either the state or the parents. Since strong opinions of any kind tend to be controversial, children educated by the state are taught watered-down values, because the educational infrastructure prefers to avoid controversy at all cost. The only strong values taught are acceptance and conformity; in other words, submission to the primacy of the state.
The state should be a reflection of the values of the electorate and their values. It should not select nor be in a position to select the values being inculcated in the children of the electorate. Simply put, if you want your children to be taught real values, of whatever nature, you must have the right to do so and not subordinate that right to the powers of the state, in the form of a state controlled educational system.
Intelligent Design is so much window dressing around an irrational rejection of Evolution. That should be self-evident to anyone with any form of intellectual integrity. But the fact remains that parents who believe in the ID voodoo have the right to have their children educated with an ID curriculum, as long as the children remain minors. Conversely, parents who reject the ID fallacy have the right to keep their children's education free of such nonsense.
In short, this subject can only be controversial and command such public traction when we are debating who should control the curriculum of a state controlled education. In a sane society, there is no controversy, since parents control the values being instilled in their children.
Which is why you should reject state controlled values and support school-voucher programs.
Given the disastrous track record of the French economy under Socialist policies, one would think the French economic gurus might want to focus more on economic fundamentals and basic Capitalist theory rather than indulge in paranoid conspiracy theories.
Of course, then they might be held accountable for their policy failures...
Well, England is a country that believes firmly that firearms cause murder and that the best way to promote civil rights is to have 100,000 cameras filming the public at all times. Whatever happened to punishing the guilty and letting the rest of us move on with our lives? You can't protect people from themselves.
Nobody needs the government to tell them what games to play. They're just games, and what people do after playing the game is THEIR responsibility. No video game is going to MAKE someone commit a murder. It's FANTASY and a healthy way to release aggression in a harmless way. Sigh.
I love Britain, and have visited many times; but they look like they are heading down the slow road to Hell.
Why on Earth did someone mod you down to 0? I don't agree with everything that you said (as I would expect you to disagree with me in turn), but I found your comments very thoughtful and relevant.
FWIW, at least someone read your response and thought well of it.
Blizzard et al have vilified gold farmers for one simple reason: they don't want to report virtual gold transactions to the IRS. The record keeping is expensive and fraught with legal peril. It's easier for them to ban gold trading albeit nominally, than it is to keep transaction records for the IRS.
The real problem is the intrusive nature of the Income Tax, not Blizzard or the gold farmers.
The human capacity for willful self-deception is almost infinite. The facts are overwhelming that Creationism as a rational belief system is completely invalid, but that doesn't prevent individuals who don't regard the primacy of facts as the basis for their beliefs from believing what they choose.
The Creationists are just like the Socialists, in the sense that they adamantly refuse to come to terms with the impartial facts that dispute their beliefs. They reach a point where they mentally blank out anything that conflicts with the imaginary structure of reality (aka, sand castle) they have created in their heads...
You can't use facts to change an opinion that wasn't derived from facts.
I used to believe a bunch of the conspiracy bs until I actually visited the site of the shooting in person. Once you've been to the Book Repository and seen the location in person, it becomes painfully obvious that it was almost trivially easy for Oswald to have done the shooting. Quite frankly, the conditions make it very easy (almost convenient) for Oswald to kill Kennedy.
In a nutshell, the location is **small**. Everything is very close together, distances are modest and the shooting was very, very easy from the window to the traveling automobile. The angle was just about ideal for Oswald. The "grassy knoll" is a joke, and the angle from the "knoll" was much less favorable for an assassination attempt.
Seriously folks, go visit the Book Repository yourself. All the conspiracy FUD is just anger and disappointment that something exciting and pretty was destroyed by something ugly and small.
Slashdot Mirror
I have had both XM and Sirius radio; I currently have Sirius.
There were two main reasons why I stopped listening to ordinary radio and jumped to satellite. The first problem with ordinary radio is the endless onslaught of commercials. The second problem is the endless gobbling of retarded DJs. Collectively, most DJs have the IQ of a soap dish. That doesn't keep them from voicing their opinion on everything from economics to cultural imperialism. The XM DJs were kind enough to be silent, for the most part, but the Sirius DJs don't share that fortunate habit.
An example: a few nights ago one of the Sirius morons described the movie "Starship Troopers" as a cheesy "Star Trek-like" film, named after the song by the group "Yes." She then observed that the rock group must be singularly irked that such a sucky film had been named after their song.
That's just a minuscule example on a totally meaningless pop culture topic, but it's a reasonable illustration of why I prefer silent DJs.
When the new XM/Sirius channels have lousy music, babbling DJs and (some channels) commercials, I have to ask myself why I'm subscribing to their service.
I now find myself listening to regular radio again, just so I can find some decent music which doesn't bode well for satellite radio.
for defeat on the battlefield.
Soldiers are supposed to want to fight. If you want the Peace Corps, send in the Peace Corps. If you want the Marine Corps, send in the Marine Corps.
The whole things sounds like a bunch of Leftist grad students angling for funding. The concept, given the current state of technology, is a pathetic attempt at political correctness.
Politicians are supposed to create policy, not the military. Once the decision has been made by lawfully elected officials to use military force, it is the duty of the military to implement that decision, not second guess it.
The way the intro to the article is framed indicates a complete knowledge vacuum on the part of the framer. This is the exact equivalent of having your nuclear defense program run by Martin Sheen.
Maybe if you paid more attention to her character and personality and less to her looks, you'd understand why her boyfriend played WoW all the time.
Just a thought.
Whenever you get another charger, write something descriptive on it with a silver sharpie, then toss it in a box with your other chargers. You'll always be able to tell what the darn thing is for.
with my .45.
Get over it. He'll be gone in six months.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n6_v27/ai_17040690
"The teachers unions also play pivotal roles in state legislative races, local school district races, and ballot questions on education. The battle over California's 1993 Voucher Initiative (Proposition 174), for example, may have been the most intensive campaign over a state educational initiative in U.S. history," the authors report. The measure would have provided families vouchers worth $2,600 to enroll each child in any public or private school of their choice. Fearing that the vouchers would drain children from public school systems, the California Teachers Association, the state affiliate of the NEA, spent an astounding $12.3 million to defeat the proposition."
I wish that I had written this.
The problem is easily solvable; it's just the NEA in California bought an election to kill it. Break the monopoly of the public school system and give parents real choice in education and values.
It's nice to see everyone leap up on the bandwagon and accept the notion that this creepy woman drove an innocent kid to suicide. I'm I the only one who thinks the story entirely too pat?
Nasty postings on myspace.com are hardly going to make me do myself in. If this girl killed herself over something so utterly trivial, I should think that a little investigation would uncover someone with a pre-existing case of severe depression.
I'm not saying the woman wasn't an awful, scheming witch; I'm sure she was and is. But charging her with manslaughter as some have suggested in other posts is absurd. Most of the charges appear to be largely trumped-up political offenses; she's unpopular and must therefore be punished.
Nobody wants to discuss the issue, but the girl clearly had serious mental health problems.
Think about it.
War is about imposing YOUR will on your enemy. If you read von Clausewitz, or Sun Tsu, you will find nothing but a ringing endorsement of the techniques described in your indignant lead in.
Even beyond the observation that the manual describes nothing but techniques used in war since the dawn of time, I'll observe that it is the insurgents who cynically hide behind an unarmed populace. They make the fundamental decision to deliberately cause civilian casualties when they refuse to abide by the Geneva Convention and fight in uniform, away from civilian population centers.
A uniformed military must counter the insurgents in some way; would you prefer that we burn down the house to kill the bed bugs? What do you suggest? Asking the insurgents nicely to go home? Take a long hard look at places like Somalia or the disaster in Bosnia and then tell me there are realistic options other than the judicious application of force.
and tell me that it's ice cream.
Link to article at the FoxNews web site:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321567,00.html
I found the comments from the Greens very enlightening. Notice the lack of joy for the poor who will now be able to drive.
Their comments fall in the "let them eat cake" category.
It's funny how Google sounds more and more like Microsoft as time goes by ...
But if the BSD organizations make a serious attempt to re-implement GPL3 apps with BSD licenses, and the Linux organizations stick with GPL3, then I'll switch to BSD and away from Linux (used since 1995 ...).
The BSD license is my idea of free software. But that's just me; as they say, ymmv.
Let me get this straight. You want to make the IT department pick up the slack for all the half-assed projects that some newb MBA deploys because he's a big fan of Kevin Rose and thinks it's cool? And that's a problem? The "resistance" mentioned in the lead-in exists because responsible parties within the organization don't want to follow behind the puppy cleaning up the dog poop.
If the MBA doggies had to clean up their own poop, the IT staff would be all in favor of the new projects. It's easy to be cavalier when you aren't paying the bills with YOUR time and effort.
You know of course, that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?
This sounds so nice and sweet on the surface: the government is going to protect your children by filtering the Internet content to which they have access. What could be wrong with that?
Of course, once you have an official filtering mechanism in place, it can be used to filter other "anti-social" content. And it will. It's just a matter of time. The next step will be the restriction of some universally loathed faction, like the Nazis. Neo-fascist sites will be banned as will sites from other "extremist" groups, terrorists, etc. Then illegal drug related sites will be banned, and later hard alcohol sites.
Eventually, you can be expect to be protected from Twinkies and Ding-dongs. But not the Ding-dongs that you voted into office. Somehow they will always be exempt from filtering.
Well, I downloaded the PDF and waded my way through the turgid prose. The sad truth is that the subject is very interesting and timely. Unfortunately, the author really has nothing insightful to say on the subject. The 25 pages of text are clunky and directly focused on academic publication. He writes a great deal, but doesn't SAY anything. How can he say so little with so many words?
The only thing that I took from his publication is that he doesn't like the Bush Administration. That's fine with me; everyone is entitled to his own opinion. My problem is that this issue as such is far greater than any current administration. It's one of the fundamental questions about the relationship between the individual and the state, and deserves to be treated as an issue of profound significance.
If this is the best justification of our right to privacy, then we're in serious trouble.
The real problem at the heart of the whole controversy is state controlled education. In a nutshell, it is impossible to educate without instilling values of some kind. Since the state controls the curriculum, it largely controls the content of the values being instilled in children during their formative years. This is the very crux of the problem.
People disagree with each others on the subject of basic values. Essentially, there can be only two options as to the who has the right to select the values to be instilled in children: it's either the state or the parents. Since strong opinions of any kind tend to be controversial, children educated by the state are taught watered-down values, because the educational infrastructure prefers to avoid controversy at all cost. The only strong values taught are acceptance and conformity; in other words, submission to the primacy of the state.
The state should be a reflection of the values of the electorate and their values. It should not select nor be in a position to select the values being inculcated in the children of the electorate. Simply put, if you want your children to be taught real values, of whatever nature, you must have the right to do so and not subordinate that right to the powers of the state, in the form of a state controlled educational system.
Intelligent Design is so much window dressing around an irrational rejection of Evolution. That should be self-evident to anyone with any form of intellectual integrity. But the fact remains that parents who believe in the ID voodoo have the right to have their children educated with an ID curriculum, as long as the children remain minors. Conversely, parents who reject the ID fallacy have the right to keep their children's education free of such nonsense.
In short, this subject can only be controversial and command such public traction when we are debating who should control the curriculum of a state controlled education. In a sane society, there is no controversy, since parents control the values being instilled in their children.
Which is why you should reject state controlled values and support school-voucher programs.
Given the disastrous track record of the French economy under Socialist policies, one would think the French economic gurus might want to focus more on economic fundamentals and basic Capitalist theory rather than indulge in paranoid conspiracy theories.
...
Of course, then they might be held accountable for their policy failures
Well, England is a country that believes firmly that firearms cause murder and that the best way to promote civil rights is to have 100,000 cameras filming the public at all times. Whatever happened to punishing the guilty and letting the rest of us move on with our lives? You can't protect people from themselves.
Nobody needs the government to tell them what games to play. They're just games, and what people do after playing the game is THEIR responsibility. No video game is going to MAKE someone commit a murder. It's FANTASY and a healthy way to release aggression in a harmless way. Sigh.
I love Britain, and have visited many times; but they look like they are heading down the slow road to Hell.
Why on Earth did someone mod you down to 0? I don't agree with everything that you said (as I would expect you to disagree with me in turn), but I found your comments very thoughtful and relevant.
FWIW, at least someone read your response and thought well of it.
Blizzard et al have vilified gold farmers for one simple reason: they don't want to report virtual gold transactions to the IRS. The record keeping is expensive and fraught with legal peril. It's easier for them to ban gold trading albeit nominally, than it is to keep transaction records for the IRS.
The real problem is the intrusive nature of the Income Tax, not Blizzard or the gold farmers.
Just a thought.
Sigh.
...
The human capacity for willful self-deception is almost infinite. The facts are overwhelming that Creationism as a rational belief system is completely invalid, but that doesn't prevent individuals who don't regard the primacy of facts as the basis for their beliefs from believing what they choose.
The Creationists are just like the Socialists, in the sense that they adamantly refuse to come to terms with the impartial facts that dispute their beliefs. They reach a point where they mentally blank out anything that conflicts with the imaginary structure of reality (aka, sand castle) they have created in their heads
You can't use facts to change an opinion that wasn't derived from facts.
I used to believe a bunch of the conspiracy bs until I actually visited the site of the shooting in person. Once you've been to the Book Repository and seen the location in person, it becomes painfully obvious that it was almost trivially easy for Oswald to have done the shooting. Quite frankly, the conditions make it very easy (almost convenient) for Oswald to kill Kennedy.
In a nutshell, the location is **small**. Everything is very close together, distances are modest and the shooting was very, very easy from the window to the traveling automobile. The angle was just about ideal for Oswald. The "grassy knoll" is a joke, and the angle from the "knoll" was much less favorable for an assassination attempt.
Seriously folks, go visit the Book Repository yourself. All the conspiracy FUD is just anger and disappointment that something exciting and pretty was destroyed by something ugly and small.