Dude, I was like 12 when I read it the first time. Do people lurk on this board waiting for the opportunity to lash out and prove their intellectual superiority?
Personally, I hated the book the first time I read it. Unlike The Hobbit, which is filled with action and adventure, the vast majority of Lord of the Rings consists of traveling to somewhere where something might happen, and having a sense of dread and foreboding about it. When I read it the second time, I knew that nothing was going to happen for long stretches of the book, so I was able to have greater patience with the whole thing, and get more out of it. Although I still found the endless talk of destiny and family trees and Elven racial superiority to be extremely tedious. (Incidentally, I'll be interested to see if the dark-complexioned evil men of Harad and their war elephants will show up in the next two movies.)
OK, thus far you've responded to every single damned post that criticized big N in the slightest by spouting fanboy gibberish. Give it a rest, man. Evangelism just creeps the rest of us out.
You're right, it is an interesting problem. In some cases, I might even admire a leader who would employ a man of Poindexter's intelligence or experience in spite of his criminal past. In fact, I might even admire our present leadership for doing so, if only they employed him in a different context. Even if it's not admirable, it is sometimes acceptable: for instance, while the crimes they helped to commit were rephrehensible, it might be argued that making use of former Nazi intelligence agents in Europe early in the Cold War was necessary in the fight against tyranny. (I don't argue it, but I don't disagree with those who might.)
In this case, however, I find the thought of Poindexter being anywhere near a project like this incredibly disturbing. Between blatantly lying to Congress, and displaying an amoral ("just following orders") attitude about his actions, he would not seem to be the sort of man we could trust in a situation where the potential for abuse is so very high. Consider: if such a system were adopted, what defense would we have against unconstitutional invasions of privacy other than Congressional oversight? And what good is oversight, when the architect of the project is the poster boy for lying to Congress and getting away with it?
No, his testimony itself was immunized; that is, his testimony before Congress could not be used as evidence against him during trial. It wasn't that he testified after having been given carte blanche protection against anything he might confess to in front of Congress, but that if he did confess, that confession couldn't be used during trial. Any indictment would have to be based entirely on other evidence.
The problem this created for prosecutors was that the appellate court bought the argument that his immunized testimony influenced witnesses used during trial to convict him. This matter is indeed subject to debate, because any relationship between his conviction and his testimony is indirect.
Indeed, the convictions were overturned by a court of law; however, the source that you cite would seem to indicate that they were overturned not because he wasn't guilty of the crimes, but rather based on the debatable premise that immunized testimony he gave to Congress concerning Iran-Contra was used against him during trial.
It's also worth noting that, during said trial, his defense was essentially based upon the claim that he lied to Congress: he had claimed full responsibility for Iran-Contra before Congress, claiming that he had deliberately kept the president in the dark about his activities, while during trial he declared that he was innocent because he was just following the orders of the commander-in-chief. Either he lied to the court or he lied to Congress; neither possibility makes him seem particularly trustworthy. Regardless of his intelligence or experience, this is the sort of man that we really ought to be trying to keep out of the halls of power. At least, it seems so to me.
I wouldn't be so sure. Private enterprises will surely object to the inconvenience, not to mention the huge potential for abuse; this is not to mention the fact that I'm sure many companies don't want it slipping out exactly what details of your life they know. For once the corruption of the government should work for us: lobbyists from major private firms will hopefully be enough to counterbalance the military's influence in this matter.
The problem with Fallout Tactics was that it abandoned the aspects of Fallout that made it so cool. Not just in the lack of roleplaying (which is certainly excusable), but also in the lack of sidequests, and the single-track nature of the game. Instead of handing you a problem and giving you the option of solving it half a dozen different ways, it always came down to "shoot everything that you see." In a "Tactics" game, that too might be excusable, if not for the crappy dungeon design (yes, raider bases and hostile wasteland towns are just dungeons with a different tileset). How often did the game really give you the option of outflanking the other guy or pull off a daring ambush? And the fact that you always had to wander through some maze before you could kill/rescue/whatever your mission objective really pissed me off...
Uh, OK, how does that count as evidence that they're actually being used in non-trivial quantities? I agree with the original poster that it's most likely that, as in China, African computer users are more likely to simply use a pirated copy of Windows, than to bother with Linux.
It's a strange day when a troll (not just a troll, but a troll who's doing an impression of a more classic troll) comes out and makes a reasonable argument in opposition to some idiot making a REAL troll-like argument with a straight face.
Well, I really enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, although admittedly it's the only anime that I've cared about. But the mind boggles at the fact that CB is going to be on four nights a week. There were only 26 episodes! They're going to be cycling through the show every six weeks! That's gonna get tiresome...
You know, we've been sticking mostly to the DC comics in this conversation, but I'm thinking that given two of the X-Men, Superman would be toast. Hell, Storm could beat him herself, just by blocking out the sun.
Oh, ooh, I know, Superman vs. Goku! Exactly same character vs. Exactly same character!
Whoa, that's a point that I haven't seen anyone else bring up with regards to XBox Live. Microsoft really is positioning itself to be the center of the universe with their electronics division, aren't they?
Such is the way of things, isn't it? History is a pattern -- should we really be surprised that the capitalism of the late 19th century is returning? Did we think that the progressives had won the fight for good?
Ah, yes, Para Para Paradise. Admittedly, it's not much of a game, but I'd like to get one of the machines and use it as an interface for my computer, pretend that I was a character out of Johnny Mnmemonic or something.
That's really interesting. One obvious workaround is to actually buy DDR for PC -- they've started selling it at Fry's and Outpost.com (it's an exclusive offer, or something). The only way to play is with a USB converter, and apparently they've coded a fix directly into the game.
On the minus side, thousands would die, and the overall quality of life of millions would decline dramatically. On the plus side, it would be very, very cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Me too. That joke sucked. For future reference, jokes are supposed to be funny.
Dude, I was like 12 when I read it the first time. Do people lurk on this board waiting for the opportunity to lash out and prove their intellectual superiority?
Personally, I hated the book the first time I read it. Unlike The Hobbit, which is filled with action and adventure, the vast majority of Lord of the Rings consists of traveling to somewhere where something might happen, and having a sense of dread and foreboding about it. When I read it the second time, I knew that nothing was going to happen for long stretches of the book, so I was able to have greater patience with the whole thing, and get more out of it. Although I still found the endless talk of destiny and family trees and Elven racial superiority to be extremely tedious. (Incidentally, I'll be interested to see if the dark-complexioned evil men of Harad and their war elephants will show up in the next two movies.)
OK, thus far you've responded to every single damned post that criticized big N in the slightest by spouting fanboy gibberish. Give it a rest, man. Evangelism just creeps the rest of us out.
Oh, let's not forget their half-assed performance during the Franco-Prussian war, too.
Q: Why is Paris lined with trees?
A: Because the German army likes to march in the shade.
You're right, it is an interesting problem. In some cases, I might even admire a leader who would employ a man of Poindexter's intelligence or experience in spite of his criminal past. In fact, I might even admire our present leadership for doing so, if only they employed him in a different context. Even if it's not admirable, it is sometimes acceptable: for instance, while the crimes they helped to commit were rephrehensible, it might be argued that making use of former Nazi intelligence agents in Europe early in the Cold War was necessary in the fight against tyranny. (I don't argue it, but I don't disagree with those who might.)
In this case, however, I find the thought of Poindexter being anywhere near a project like this incredibly disturbing. Between blatantly lying to Congress, and displaying an amoral ("just following orders") attitude about his actions, he would not seem to be the sort of man we could trust in a situation where the potential for abuse is so very high. Consider: if such a system were adopted, what defense would we have against unconstitutional invasions of privacy other than Congressional oversight? And what good is oversight, when the architect of the project is the poster boy for lying to Congress and getting away with it?
No, his testimony itself was immunized; that is, his testimony before Congress could not be used as evidence against him during trial. It wasn't that he testified after having been given carte blanche protection against anything he might confess to in front of Congress, but that if he did confess, that confession couldn't be used during trial. Any indictment would have to be based entirely on other evidence.
The problem this created for prosecutors was that the appellate court bought the argument that his immunized testimony influenced witnesses used during trial to convict him. This matter is indeed subject to debate, because any relationship between his conviction and his testimony is indirect.
Indeed, the convictions were overturned by a court of law; however, the source that you cite would seem to indicate that they were overturned not because he wasn't guilty of the crimes, but rather based on the debatable premise that immunized testimony he gave to Congress concerning Iran-Contra was used against him during trial.
It's also worth noting that, during said trial, his defense was essentially based upon the claim that he lied to Congress: he had claimed full responsibility for Iran-Contra before Congress, claiming that he had deliberately kept the president in the dark about his activities, while during trial he declared that he was innocent because he was just following the orders of the commander-in-chief. Either he lied to the court or he lied to Congress; neither possibility makes him seem particularly trustworthy. Regardless of his intelligence or experience, this is the sort of man that we really ought to be trying to keep out of the halls of power. At least, it seems so to me.
I wouldn't be so sure. Private enterprises will surely object to the inconvenience, not to mention the huge potential for abuse; this is not to mention the fact that I'm sure many companies don't want it slipping out exactly what details of your life they know. For once the corruption of the government should work for us: lobbyists from major private firms will hopefully be enough to counterbalance the military's influence in this matter.
This guy still has a job? Wasn't he implicated in some Reagan scandals way back in the day? Shouldn't he have resigned in disgrace by now?
The problem with Fallout Tactics was that it abandoned the aspects of Fallout that made it so cool. Not just in the lack of roleplaying (which is certainly excusable), but also in the lack of sidequests, and the single-track nature of the game. Instead of handing you a problem and giving you the option of solving it half a dozen different ways, it always came down to "shoot everything that you see." In a "Tactics" game, that too might be excusable, if not for the crappy dungeon design (yes, raider bases and hostile wasteland towns are just dungeons with a different tileset). How often did the game really give you the option of outflanking the other guy or pull off a daring ambush? And the fact that you always had to wander through some maze before you could kill/rescue/whatever your mission objective really pissed me off...
Uh, OK, how does that count as evidence that they're actually being used in non-trivial quantities? I agree with the original poster that it's most likely that, as in China, African computer users are more likely to simply use a pirated copy of Windows, than to bother with Linux.
It's a strange day when a troll (not just a troll, but a troll who's doing an impression of a more classic troll) comes out and makes a reasonable argument in opposition to some idiot making a REAL troll-like argument with a straight face.
Well, I really enjoyed Cowboy Bebop, although admittedly it's the only anime that I've cared about. But the mind boggles at the fact that CB is going to be on four nights a week. There were only 26 episodes! They're going to be cycling through the show every six weeks! That's gonna get tiresome...
You know, we've been sticking mostly to the DC comics in this conversation, but I'm thinking that given two of the X-Men, Superman would be toast. Hell, Storm could beat him herself, just by blocking out the sun.
Oh, ooh, I know, Superman vs. Goku! Exactly same character vs. Exactly same character!
Geez, another amateur. It's guys like you that gives professional dealers like me a bad name!
Uh, you know, I'm pretty sure that this is something subjective.
Whoa, that's a point that I haven't seen anyone else bring up with regards to XBox Live. Microsoft really is positioning itself to be the center of the universe with their electronics division, aren't they?
Oooh! Oooh! Me! Finally, a philosophy major comes in handy...
Just because there's a correlation between kiddie porn and child molestation, doesn't mean that there's any sort of causual link between the two.
Now, time to sit back and wait another few years for philosophy to come in handy again...
Such is the way of things, isn't it? History is a pattern -- should we really be surprised that the capitalism of the late 19th century is returning? Did we think that the progressives had won the fight for good?
Ah, yes, Para Para Paradise. Admittedly, it's not much of a game, but I'd like to get one of the machines and use it as an interface for my computer, pretend that I was a character out of Johnny Mnmemonic or something.
That's really interesting. One obvious workaround is to actually buy DDR for PC -- they've started selling it at Fry's and Outpost.com (it's an exclusive offer, or something). The only way to play is with a USB converter, and apparently they've coded a fix directly into the game.
I'd say that she just looks sort of skanky in that picture, which is not quite the same as being adult.
Lord, what if LW reads these posts? I'm gonna play it safe and be anonymous here...
Quandry? I don't think so, I'm pretty sure the scale tips pretty heavily in the "pro" direction.
On the minus side, thousands would die, and the overall quality of life of millions would decline dramatically. On the plus side, it would be very, very cool.