as long as our country is split like it is, "spoilers" are going to be a problem.
The major parties can either keep trying to stand in the way of their potential "spoilers", or they can wake up and institute reform that gets rid of "spoilers"... that won't happen until the other efforts fail though.
I bet if kerry loses this time by small percentage points that went somewhere else, the dems will have to start thinking about condorcet voting or IRV. How many will they lose before going for it?
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And wow, who ran the debates back then? That's right...... the same group that does now, that kow tows to the candidates and does not challenge them no matter what, thank you for further illustrating the problem we have facing us here.
A citizen based NON partisan group running the debates can rectify that. But the big boys don't want to be challenged. So they can play games like they have been. A NON (emphasis on not BI, but NON) partisan group can make big strides in ending that bullshit that obviously angers both you and I.
I do assume the president should know more about most issues than I do. Not that he should have the perfect answer for everything, but he can AT LEAST explain how he would go about getting the answers he needs. "I'm not sure, but" is a viable answer. At least tell me where you're coming from on the issue! What factors are you interested in, mr candidate? You don't know what the cut off for abortion should be, but you do know that there is a line at some point, or no? You don't know exactly what to do about our trade deficit, but you are for or against NAFTA? Why?
These are people whose lives are typically focused on politics. To expect them to have SOME ideas on a wide range of topics without having to consult a committee is not unreasonable. If they have to consult a committee every time they turn around, why are they running? They aren't leaders. We aren't electing managers. We're electing leaders.
Finally, if you could theoretically win the election, you deserve to be heard. I see nothing in any of your statements that argue against that. If enough people think the politicians need to be made fun of to put a comedian on the ballot, they have spoken, that's it. What line could be less arbitrary than "can you win"? "Can you win with an XX% probability"??? fuck that.
_breather_ nice debating with you, btw.
Re:And this is an issue because?
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Alright, come up with a SANE requirement. The one the others have noted is idiotic. If someone is on the ballot in eleven key states, they can win the election, assuming they carry all eleven. Is it SANE to allow someone on the ballot in those states to be in the debate, and not someone on the ballot in the other 39 states? Note that in case of an election going to the Congress, noone will win who has no Congressional representation. And three viable candidates really ups the chances for Congressional resolution of the election.
I love it when people fall back to state counting. 39 is more than 11! Oh NO! Ridiculous. There are 11 key states, because more people live there. Yes, if you get on the ballot in those 11 key states, you deserve to be heard. You have the support of a significant portion of the public, enough that their chosen voice deserves to be heard by others, end of story.
And don't forget to plan around the fact that the two major parties can (and likely will) jigger with local election laws if needed to keep people from qualifying.
Will? they already do this. Maybe eventually some guidelines will need to be put in place on a federal level. In the meantime, the courts can decide any abuses of the system.
Not especially. Quick thinking is useful to me personally. I don't want a quick thinker to have his hand on the Big Red Button. I'd prefer someone who never acts in haste in that case. KNowing your stances is irrelevant to debate, really. A good debater can argue persuasively for any point of view at all. Eloquence is a plus for a President, when it comes to convincing people and Congress to go along with them. Since I prefer King Log to King Stork, this is not that desirable to me.
It's fine to not do anything in haste. However if you are running for president and you cannot speak definitively about your stances on a wide range of issues, you should not be president.
Yah, sure. WHo gets to bias this debate? Who picks the questions, who picks the follow-ups? You? Me? Some randomly chosen stranger? Can't do that without bias, frankly.
Frankly, debates would only be useful if there were some way to hold the Candidates to their statements. And there isn't. If I were in the debate, I could promise the moon, the stars, and a big lollipop to everyone, then do whatever I liked afterwards. Just as every other President can and does. And then plead "the circumstances have changed since then" when I am called on it. Note that people have no problem with their favorite doing that, but are offended when the other guy gets elected, and does it.
First off, the citizen's debate comission is a truly non partisan group with members ranging all across the political spectrum. If they are biased in some way, I for one am much more comfortable with whatever bias they may have vs those of the entrenched parties and their corporate sponsors.
Secondly, sure, politicians will always lie. However, intelligent debate can expose some unrealistic assumptions, challenge the pie in the sky bullshit, and help counteract such crap. Right nothing there is NOTHING to counteract it. Solid debates would be SOMETHING, which is better than NOTHING.
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yes, it's funny what happens when people drop out of races.
Putting someone in a debate increases their viability. It also improves the discourse and more fully educates the american public as to the issues being discussed and potentially different viewpoints on those issues. For all of those reasons, it's important to let candidates in the debates after a SANE requirement is met. As others have noted, a potentially good marker is, is the candidate on enough ballots to theoretically win the election? If so, they have enough support to be heard. Easy.
And the personality characteristics that make for good debators are what, quick thinking? Knowing your stances and being able to eloquently discuss them? Those aren't important qualities for the leader of the free world to have?
You could care less about the debate... well without it, the only exposure most people have to the candidates (not you, perhaps, but most) are all those lovely ads. It's time to get back to a little substance, and make the candidates answer questions. even FOLLOW UP questions! Horrors!!
Re:And this is an issue because?
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"Very rarely" but it almost happened in recent memory. "Very rarely" is not "won't".
I won't even get into why we need electoral reform. But even in our current system, "very rarely" is not a reason to exclude a potentially viable candidate from the most important part of the election, the debate!
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No, they aren't. They are masterful spin doctors when they have a captive spoonfed moderator who will not challenge them when they REFUSE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS over and over and over again, spitting out tired, irrelevant rhetoric instead and never getting called on it.
Having a moderator with the balls to call a spade a spade would make a huge difference especially, as you've mentioned, if they are educated in the field being questioned on. I really, really like that idea of set theme debates or a couple of set themes per debate with an open Q and A or "miscellaneous" debate.
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He had a lead at one point during one of the races. It looked like he was going to win. I forget exactly what happened... him dropping out the first time, I think... that killed his numbers.
And you missed my qualifier, you need 50% of the people who bother to vote in a two party vote. With perot in there obviously it was more than two parties.
And drop your tired line about Perot costing Bush the election:
"Perot's vote totals in themselves likely did not cause Clinton to win. Even if all of these states had shifted to Bush and none of Bush's victories had been reversed (as seems plausible, in fact, as Bush won by less than 5% only in states that a Republican in a close election could expect to carry, particularly before some of the partisan shifts that took place later in the 1990s - Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia), Clinton still would have won the electoral college vote by 281 to 257. But such a result obviously would have made the race a good deal closer."
from www.fairvote.org/plurality/perot.htm
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this is what you are not getting. Neither candidate, indeed neither PARTY wants to risk getting burned in the debate. So they just decide on what's safe and rely on their own campaign strategies to pull through.
This is what has been going on for more than a decade now. The debates are a joke. Viewpoints and issues that the parties have not decided to hype are simply not addressed. This is not a good thing, end of story.
whether they include other parties or not, the moderators need to be able to play hardball, and at the very least they need to be able to ask follow up questions, and candidates need more than 90 seconds to answer some questions.
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again, you show you have no idea what democracy is about. It's not about what high profile candidate we can elect this year. It's about who would be the best candidate for the job.
Let's point out a few more facts. You don't need 50% to win. You need 50% of the populace who bothers to vote, which is about 40-60% of the populace. So let's be charitable and say you need about 30% to win; IN A TWO PARTY ELECTION.
15% is a very sizable base to start from. Debates can swing entire elections, if they are actually debates, and if they actually have candidates in them.
You seriously need to read this report: http://www.opendebates.org/news/pressreleases/pro- democracy.html
This belief that you only matter if your party can start you off at 30% of polled people or higher is total bullshit man.
Take another look; as the previous poster said, 15% would have eliminated Perot. Perot could have won an election. He was very close to doing so. What more will it take for you to realize that 15% is truly detrimental to democracy?
Take the flip side: what's the worst that would happen if there were more people in the debates? HEY, DEBATES WOULD BE LONGER OR THERE WOULD BE MORE OF THEM, O NOES, I WON'T GET TO WATCH "FRIENDS"!!!!!
Suck it up.
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You're an idiot, you have the percentages wrong, but the problem is not that the "US media" insists on being able to ask the questions. They are NOT the ones asking the questions. What we have RIGHT NOW is what you are saying we *should* have: the candidates are working back room deals before the debates to decide what will be talked about.
The LAST thing you want is the candidates able to completely dictate the information given to the american public. You WANT the candidates to be asked questions they don't want to answer!! don't you!?!?!?
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and what's with this two hour limit?
isn't the future of our country worth more time to educate the people?
How about a debate week, two hours a night?
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first off, the bipartisan (not non partisan) commission has set 15% as the bar for entry to the debates. This is staggeringly beyond any kind of ballot access or entrance requirements in any state. It's also blindingly high for any non major party candidate.
As Jesse Ventura shows, however, if allowed to debate, one can go from below that 15% marker to win an election.
There is no reason why there cannot be multiple debates. There is no reason why any debate should suffer the agreements and back door dealings of the two major players as to format, content, LACK OF FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS, and innumerable other deals made by the D and R coalition here, designed to reduce the debate into a two hour recital of practiced sound bites as it currently is, because the major parties want it that way.
Remember Perot? 3 person or larger debates are doable. Even if we still only had two candidates in the debates, at the very least we could pretend it was a format for real question, answer, you know, DEBATE, instead of a recital on prearranged talking points.
Are you trying to show a possible trend with a single data point?
Well gee, I thought we'd have INFINITE ATTACKS PER MINUTE after 9/11, so YEAH, we're doing GREAT!!!!!
Or maybe I thought that since the last terrorist large scale action on our soil (oklahoma city 1995) occurred six years earlier, that we could expect another attack within six years! We're over halfway now, so far so good huh!
Or maybe I thought that sine the last FOREIGN large scale attack on our soil (pearl harbor, 1941) that we'd see another one within SIXTY years.
What are you, an idiot? We're doing pretty well because there hasn't been another attack here? Tell you what; when we get Iraq calmed down, let me know, and I'll agree we've done anything to calm down terrorism. Until then, all we know is that we haven't been attacked again yet. We are in no way secure from such an attack, nor will we ever be. Pretending we are is just wishful thinking.
so if you sample a "C" note, and only a "C" note on a particular instrument, does that mean everyone who ever recorded a song with that note and that instrument gets to sue you since the actual original work is, by definition, unrecognizable?
what do you men plan to do with 3 breasts and 2 hands?
Top ten things to do with 3 breasts and 2 hands:
10. 9. Smack side breast, watch force transfer between breasts in an organic approximation of a perpetual-motion ball toy. 8. Use center load-bearing breast, outside breasts for stability 7. Push in two outside breasts, watch them force middle breast into a humorous "Breast erection" 6. Frantically twist nipples playing "mad scientist time machine" while laughing maniacally. 5. Make a killing designing exclusive three breast bikini tops with the see/hear/speak no evil monkeys. 4. Open fetish site to profit from thousands of three breast obsessed slashdotters 3. Profit!!! 2. ????? 1. Use your mouth, dipshit.
as an example, you might want to recall that after the great depression, we have not had a major depression in a country that exercised moderate keysnian economic policy, ever. That is unprecedented, AFAIK.
engineering economics works. markets require tinkering sometimes. The free market is not a sufficient entity to meet the needs of human beings on its own.
You're speaking to an ex-libertarian. I'm quite familiar with the concepts behind the movement.
Hate to break it to you, business and free markets do not, have not, and will never exist. they are great on paper. In the real world, this thing called money can override nearly everything else that should be a factor in a free market, usually to the detraction of the welfare of the people.
See business is inherently organized, and controls large amounts of money. The only way to counterbalance that power is by organizing. government is the de facto organizing of people for their own well-being, at least in the modern pseudo democratic paradigm we live in. It does go too far sometimes. Libertarians and many other right wing people go far too far the other way as well. They pretend the market is self correcting. It is not. It is far more complex than that.
Much like we don't still live in caves and trust nature to meet our needs on her own, and instead engineer and produce improvements to ensure our own well being, likewise a "wild" market is not suitable for a stable society.
No, but you'd sure as fuck want to ask my dad where he think I might have gone to hide out, wouldn't you?
And wouldn't someone want to ask you the same thing?
If it were a simple murder investigation, that would be S.O.P. yet for a massive terrorist attack we flew the family members out without so much as a questioning?
yeah, questioning your leaders is definitely treason.
In a country in which more than 40% of the voters have been so disenfranchised that they don't even bother to vote anymore, and a significant portion of the rest feel trapped into voting for the "lesser of two evils" in election after election, I would think questioning and challenging such a system that is supposed to be "Of, By and For the People" and is plainly NOT would be considered quite patriotic.
But then, I guess any level of discussion of our government in negative terms is only ok if it involves a democratic president getting a blowjob, right? Certainly we have no room to be negative when we're at war, even if we can't generate one solid reason as to why we are at war and what good we are actually doing in a country that never threatened us directly, while giving up on and letting run free a terrorist that has attacked us several times including the largest foreign attack on our soil ever, who happens to be related to the business partners of our president.
Obviously our priorities are out of whack for questioning that. What ARE we thinking?
This is very similiar to the right wing's "trust" in "free market" forces to benevolently serve the best interets of man with minimal, if any regulation. It's also very similar to the right's clinging to "trickle down" economic policies, that have zero evidence of working better than the more standard alternatives. It's ALSO very similiar to the right's belief that you can leglislate morality without causing more harm than you solve.
The sooner you realize that both wings of ideology are not rational in their beliefs, the sooner you can realize that both have some very valid portions in their arguements, and you can start sifting out the bullshit without having to assume left = hippy and right = nazi.
rejecting "leftism wholesale" is exactly the kind of unthinking, superstitious, emotional response you are attacking.
It's the Cyberathelete Professional League; they play more than just counterstrike.
It's a problem only if you are very competitive. As a former organizer for some high profile (relatively speaking) Unreal Tournament competitions, it's about passion in a sense. Being constrained by the things that constrain us all; work, school, etc.. means you don't really have the time to truly hone your teamwork or skills to a professional level. And the games out there today provide enough depth of gameplay that you can always take it further.
Many people want to do just that. And if it's made spectator friendly, it can even be dazzling to watch a truly stellar team do their stuff.
Restricting the competitions to only those who want bragging rights and will pay for a plane ticket to prove it means the gameplay is not as good. For many games there are currently a handful of truly exemplary teams that just dominate everyone else; that's not fun, nor interesting to watch. But if the incentive and ability to support oneself were there, there would be a whole league of top notch teams hammerring each other for hard fought victories.
Which, I imagine, is exactly the same reason regular professional sports exist. Some people want to take their gameplay to the highest possible level, and others like to watch excellence in action.
And having that top tier action should mean there is a trickle down effect; more exposure means more players. More players is good for any multiplayer game. It allows for a larger, deeper, more interesting community as well as more games.
If you've never been so absorbed by a multiplayer game that you wanted to see how far it could go, or been inspired by another player who had just done something really amazing in the paradigm of the game you are playing, then you probably just don't empathize. That's fine. But a lot of people do, which is how the CPL and WCG (World Cyber Games) and QuakeCon and those huge european LAN competitions get their purse money from sponsors.
The only question is, will the interest continue to grow to the point where a true professional scene exists? I think as games progress it's inevitable that the answer will be yes. But probably not until games are closer to simulated worlds than they currently are.
But then, South Korea shows that isn't necessarily even a prerequisite, that's just my gut feeling. They already have professional gaming, televised and popular gaming shows and competitions, and games that register entire percentage points of their population in active gameplay. So who knows?
Maybe he's wrong about OSS, but there is no doubt he's on the money about big boys in free markets running the show to a greater degree than they should. Take the RIAA as the most convenient example of such.
Slashdot Mirror
So let's keep costing the big boys elections until they start pushing for run-offs then, shall we?
as long as our country is split like it is, "spoilers" are going to be a problem.
The major parties can either keep trying to stand in the way of their potential "spoilers", or they can wake up and institute reform that gets rid of "spoilers"... that won't happen until the other efforts fail though.
I bet if kerry loses this time by small percentage points that went somewhere else, the dems will have to start thinking about condorcet voting or IRV. How many will they lose before going for it?
And wow, who ran the debates back then? That's right...... the same group that does now, that kow tows to the candidates and does not challenge them no matter what, thank you for further illustrating the problem we have facing us here.
A citizen based NON partisan group running the debates can rectify that. But the big boys don't want to be challenged. So they can play games like they have been. A NON (emphasis on not BI, but NON) partisan group can make big strides in ending that bullshit that obviously angers both you and I.
I do assume the president should know more about most issues than I do. Not that he should have the perfect answer for everything, but he can AT LEAST explain how he would go about getting the answers he needs. "I'm not sure, but" is a viable answer. At least tell me where you're coming from on the issue! What factors are you interested in, mr candidate? You don't know what the cut off for abortion should be, but you do know that there is a line at some point, or no? You don't know exactly what to do about our trade deficit, but you are for or against NAFTA? Why?
These are people whose lives are typically focused on politics. To expect them to have SOME ideas on a wide range of topics without having to consult a committee is not unreasonable. If they have to consult a committee every time they turn around, why are they running? They aren't leaders. We aren't electing managers. We're electing leaders.
Finally, if you could theoretically win the election, you deserve to be heard. I see nothing in any of your statements that argue against that. If enough people think the politicians need to be made fun of to put a comedian on the ballot, they have spoken, that's it. What line could be less arbitrary than "can you win"? "Can you win with an XX% probability"??? fuck that.
_breather_ nice debating with you, btw.
Alright, come up with a SANE requirement. The one the others have noted is idiotic. If someone is on the ballot in eleven key states, they can win the election, assuming they carry all eleven. Is it SANE to allow someone on the ballot in those states to be in the debate, and not someone on the ballot in the other 39 states? Note that in case of an election going to the Congress, noone will win who has no Congressional representation. And three viable candidates really ups the chances for Congressional resolution of the election.
I love it when people fall back to state counting. 39 is more than 11! Oh NO! Ridiculous. There are 11 key states, because more people live there. Yes, if you get on the ballot in those 11 key states, you deserve to be heard. You have the support of a significant portion of the public, enough that their chosen voice deserves to be heard by others, end of story.
And don't forget to plan around the fact that the two major parties can (and likely will) jigger with local election laws if needed to keep people from qualifying.
Will? they already do this. Maybe eventually some guidelines will need to be put in place on a federal level. In the meantime, the courts can decide any abuses of the system.
Not especially. Quick thinking is useful to me personally. I don't want a quick thinker to have his hand on the Big Red Button. I'd prefer someone who never acts in haste in that case. KNowing your stances is irrelevant to debate, really. A good debater can argue persuasively for any point of view at all. Eloquence is a plus for a President, when it comes to convincing people and Congress to go along with them. Since I prefer King Log to King Stork, this is not that desirable to me.
It's fine to not do anything in haste. However if you are running for president and you cannot speak definitively about your stances on a wide range of issues, you should not be president.
Yah, sure. WHo gets to bias this debate? Who picks the questions, who picks the follow-ups? You? Me? Some randomly chosen stranger? Can't do that without bias, frankly.
Frankly, debates would only be useful if there were some way to hold the Candidates to their statements. And there isn't. If I were in the debate, I could promise the moon, the stars, and a big lollipop to everyone, then do whatever I liked afterwards. Just as every other President can and does. And then plead "the circumstances have changed since then" when I am called on it. Note that people have no problem with their favorite doing that, but are offended when the other guy gets elected, and does it.
First off, the citizen's debate comission is a truly non partisan group with members ranging all across the political spectrum. If they are biased in some way, I for one am much more comfortable with whatever bias they may have vs those of the entrenched parties and their corporate sponsors.
Secondly, sure, politicians will always lie. However, intelligent debate can expose some unrealistic assumptions, challenge the pie in the sky bullshit, and help counteract such crap. Right nothing there is NOTHING to counteract it. Solid debates would be SOMETHING, which is better than NOTHING.
yes, it's funny what happens when people drop out of races.
Putting someone in a debate increases their viability. It also improves the discourse and more fully educates the american public as to the issues being discussed and potentially different viewpoints on those issues. For all of those reasons, it's important to let candidates in the debates after a SANE requirement is met. As others have noted, a potentially good marker is, is the candidate on enough ballots to theoretically win the election? If so, they have enough support to be heard. Easy.
And the personality characteristics that make for good debators are what, quick thinking? Knowing your stances and being able to eloquently discuss them? Those aren't important qualities for the leader of the free world to have?
You could care less about the debate... well without it, the only exposure most people have to the candidates (not you, perhaps, but most) are all those lovely ads. It's time to get back to a little substance, and make the candidates answer questions. even FOLLOW UP questions! Horrors!!
"Very rarely" but it almost happened in recent memory. "Very rarely" is not "won't".
I won't even get into why we need electoral reform. But even in our current system, "very rarely" is not a reason to exclude a potentially viable candidate from the most important part of the election, the debate!
No, they aren't. They are masterful spin doctors when they have a captive spoonfed moderator who will not challenge them when they REFUSE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS over and over and over again, spitting out tired, irrelevant rhetoric instead and never getting called on it.
Having a moderator with the balls to call a spade a spade would make a huge difference especially, as you've mentioned, if they are educated in the field being questioned on. I really, really like that idea of set theme debates or a couple of set themes per debate with an open Q and A or "miscellaneous" debate.
He had a lead at one point during one of the races. It looked like he was going to win. I forget exactly what happened... him dropping out the first time, I think... that killed his numbers.
And you missed my qualifier, you need 50% of the people who bother to vote in a two party vote. With perot in there obviously it was more than two parties.
And drop your tired line about Perot costing Bush the election:
"Perot's vote totals in themselves likely did not cause Clinton to win. Even if all of these states had shifted to Bush and none of Bush's victories had been reversed (as seems plausible, in fact, as Bush won by less than 5% only in states that a Republican in a close election could expect to carry, particularly before some of the partisan shifts that took place later in the 1990s - Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia), Clinton still would have won the electoral college vote by 281 to 257. But such a result obviously would have made the race a good deal closer."
from www.fairvote.org/plurality/perot.htm
this is what you are not getting. Neither candidate, indeed neither PARTY wants to risk getting burned in the debate. So they just decide on what's safe and rely on their own campaign strategies to pull through.
This is what has been going on for more than a decade now. The debates are a joke. Viewpoints and issues that the parties have not decided to hype are simply not addressed. This is not a good thing, end of story.
whether they include other parties or not, the moderators need to be able to play hardball, and at the very least they need to be able to ask follow up questions, and candidates need more than 90 seconds to answer some questions.
again, you show you have no idea what democracy is about. It's not about what high profile candidate we can elect this year. It's about who would be the best candidate for the job.
- democracy.html
Let's point out a few more facts. You don't need 50% to win. You need 50% of the populace who bothers to vote, which is about 40-60% of the populace. So let's be charitable and say you need about 30% to win; IN A TWO PARTY ELECTION.
15% is a very sizable base to start from. Debates can swing entire elections, if they are actually debates, and if they actually have candidates in them.
You seriously need to read this report: http://www.opendebates.org/news/pressreleases/pro
This belief that you only matter if your party can start you off at 30% of polled people or higher is total bullshit man.
Take another look; as the previous poster said, 15% would have eliminated Perot. Perot could have won an election. He was very close to doing so. What more will it take for you to realize that 15% is truly detrimental to democracy?
Take the flip side: what's the worst that would happen if there were more people in the debates? HEY, DEBATES WOULD BE LONGER OR THERE WOULD BE MORE OF THEM, O NOES, I WON'T GET TO WATCH "FRIENDS"!!!!!
Suck it up.
You're an idiot, you have the percentages wrong, but the problem is not that the "US media" insists on being able to ask the questions. They are NOT the ones asking the questions. What we have RIGHT NOW is what you are saying we *should* have: the candidates are working back room deals before the debates to decide what will be talked about.
The LAST thing you want is the candidates able to completely dictate the information given to the american public. You WANT the candidates to be asked questions they don't want to answer!! don't you!?!?!?
and what's with this two hour limit?
isn't the future of our country worth more time to educate the people?
How about a debate week, two hours a night?
first off, the bipartisan (not non partisan) commission has set 15% as the bar for entry to the debates. This is staggeringly beyond any kind of ballot access or entrance requirements in any state. It's also blindingly high for any non major party candidate.
As Jesse Ventura shows, however, if allowed to debate, one can go from below that 15% marker to win an election.
There is no reason why there cannot be multiple debates. There is no reason why any debate should suffer the agreements and back door dealings of the two major players as to format, content, LACK OF FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS, and innumerable other deals made by the D and R coalition here, designed to reduce the debate into a two hour recital of practiced sound bites as it currently is, because the major parties want it that way.
Remember Perot? 3 person or larger debates are doable. Even if we still only had two candidates in the debates, at the very least we could pretend it was a format for real question, answer, you know, DEBATE, instead of a recital on prearranged talking points.
ah, but this ruling includes samples that are "minor and unrecognizable" as related to any existing composition.
Are you trying to show a possible trend with a single data point?
Well gee, I thought we'd have INFINITE ATTACKS PER MINUTE after 9/11, so YEAH, we're doing GREAT!!!!!
Or maybe I thought that since the last terrorist large scale action on our soil (oklahoma city 1995) occurred six years earlier, that we could expect another attack within six years! We're over halfway now, so far so good huh!
Or maybe I thought that sine the last FOREIGN large scale attack on our soil (pearl harbor, 1941) that we'd see another one within SIXTY years.
What are you, an idiot? We're doing pretty well because there hasn't been another attack here? Tell you what; when we get Iraq calmed down, let me know, and I'll agree we've done anything to calm down terrorism. Until then, all we know is that we haven't been attacked again yet. We are in no way secure from such an attack, nor will we ever be. Pretending we are is just wishful thinking.
so if you sample a "C" note, and only a "C" note on a particular instrument, does that mean everyone who ever recorded a song with that note and that instrument gets to sue you since the actual original work is, by definition, unrecognizable?
doh, PREVIEW, PREVIEW POSTS before posting.
10. Increase nipple clamp inventory and sales by 50%
what do you men plan to do with 3 breasts and 2 hands?
Top ten things to do with 3 breasts and 2 hands:
10.
9. Smack side breast, watch force transfer between breasts in an organic approximation of a perpetual-motion ball toy.
8. Use center load-bearing breast, outside breasts for stability
7. Push in two outside breasts, watch them force middle breast into a humorous "Breast erection"
6. Frantically twist nipples playing "mad scientist time machine" while laughing maniacally.
5. Make a killing designing exclusive three breast bikini tops with the see/hear/speak no evil monkeys.
4. Open fetish site to profit from thousands of three breast obsessed slashdotters
3. Profit!!!
2. ?????
1. Use your mouth, dipshit.
as an example, you might want to recall that after the great depression, we have not had a major depression in a country that exercised moderate keysnian economic policy, ever. That is unprecedented, AFAIK.
engineering economics works. markets require tinkering sometimes. The free market is not a sufficient entity to meet the needs of human beings on its own.
You're speaking to an ex-libertarian. I'm quite familiar with the concepts behind the movement.
Hate to break it to you, business and free markets do not, have not, and will never exist. they are great on paper. In the real world, this thing called money can override nearly everything else that should be a factor in a free market, usually to the detraction of the welfare of the people.
See business is inherently organized, and controls large amounts of money. The only way to counterbalance that power is by organizing. government is the de facto organizing of people for their own well-being, at least in the modern pseudo democratic paradigm we live in. It does go too far sometimes. Libertarians and many other right wing people go far too far the other way as well. They pretend the market is self correcting. It is not. It is far more complex than that.
Much like we don't still live in caves and trust nature to meet our needs on her own, and instead engineer and produce improvements to ensure our own well being, likewise a "wild" market is not suitable for a stable society.
No, but you'd sure as fuck want to ask my dad where he think I might have gone to hide out, wouldn't you?
And wouldn't someone want to ask you the same thing?
If it were a simple murder investigation, that would be S.O.P. yet for a massive terrorist attack we flew the family members out without so much as a questioning?
Must be nice.
yeah, questioning your leaders is definitely treason.
In a country in which more than 40% of the voters have been so disenfranchised that they don't even bother to vote anymore, and a significant portion of the rest feel trapped into voting for the "lesser of two evils" in election after election, I would think questioning and challenging such a system that is supposed to be "Of, By and For the People" and is plainly NOT would be considered quite patriotic.
But then, I guess any level of discussion of our government in negative terms is only ok if it involves a democratic president getting a blowjob, right? Certainly we have no room to be negative when we're at war, even if we can't generate one solid reason as to why we are at war and what good we are actually doing in a country that never threatened us directly, while giving up on and letting run free a terrorist that has attacked us several times including the largest foreign attack on our soil ever, who happens to be related to the business partners of our president.
Obviously our priorities are out of whack for questioning that. What ARE we thinking?
This is very similiar to the right wing's "trust" in "free market" forces to benevolently serve the best interets of man with minimal, if any regulation. It's also very similar to the right's clinging to "trickle down" economic policies, that have zero evidence of working better than the more standard alternatives. It's ALSO very similiar to the right's belief that you can leglislate morality without causing more harm than you solve.
The sooner you realize that both wings of ideology are not rational in their beliefs, the sooner you can realize that both have some very valid portions in their arguements, and you can start sifting out the bullshit without having to assume left = hippy and right = nazi.
rejecting "leftism wholesale" is exactly the kind of unthinking, superstitious, emotional response you are attacking.
It's the Cyberathelete Professional League; they play more than just counterstrike.
It's a problem only if you are very competitive. As a former organizer for some high profile (relatively speaking) Unreal Tournament competitions, it's about passion in a sense. Being constrained by the things that constrain us all; work, school, etc.. means you don't really have the time to truly hone your teamwork or skills to a professional level. And the games out there today provide enough depth of gameplay that you can always take it further.
Many people want to do just that. And if it's made spectator friendly, it can even be dazzling to watch a truly stellar team do their stuff.
Restricting the competitions to only those who want bragging rights and will pay for a plane ticket to prove it means the gameplay is not as good. For many games there are currently a handful of truly exemplary teams that just dominate everyone else; that's not fun, nor interesting to watch. But if the incentive and ability to support oneself were there, there would be a whole league of top notch teams hammerring each other for hard fought victories.
Which, I imagine, is exactly the same reason regular professional sports exist. Some people want to take their gameplay to the highest possible level, and others like to watch excellence in action.
And having that top tier action should mean there is a trickle down effect; more exposure means more players. More players is good for any multiplayer game. It allows for a larger, deeper, more interesting community as well as more games.
If you've never been so absorbed by a multiplayer game that you wanted to see how far it could go, or been inspired by another player who had just done something really amazing in the paradigm of the game you are playing, then you probably just don't empathize. That's fine. But a lot of people do, which is how the CPL and WCG (World Cyber Games) and QuakeCon and those huge european LAN competitions get their purse money from sponsors.
The only question is, will the interest continue to grow to the point where a true professional scene exists? I think as games progress it's inevitable that the answer will be yes. But probably not until games are closer to simulated worlds than they currently are.
But then, South Korea shows that isn't necessarily even a prerequisite, that's just my gut feeling. They already have professional gaming, televised and popular gaming shows and competitions, and games that register entire percentage points of their population in active gameplay. So who knows?
Maybe he's wrong about OSS, but there is no doubt he's on the money about big boys in free markets running the show to a greater degree than they should. Take the RIAA as the most convenient example of such.