Um. I'll take blue-collar workers over christian fundamentalists thank you.
Also, you would do well the check your facts, the intelligencia abandonned the Republican party during the Nixon years. Ever since then they've had "problem" to appeal to the religious right for support.
The Republicans used to the be science and technology party, but now they're the church and war party. I would throw corporations into the mix, except the Democrats are also in bed with corporate interests.
hey want a weaker or less assertive superpower, or at least to have some control. Well tough.
Err, no. We think Dubbya is a wanker who doesn't deserve to win. Kerry as president might make the U.S. government slightly more reasonable, but we're not counting on it.
"The coordination that you infer between Kerry and CBS is b.s., but CBS's rose colored glasses tainted their judgment. The story itself was true, and not legimately desputed. But why was it a story? Who didn't already think/know that Pres. Bush got special treatment in the National Guard? Who didn't know that Pres. Bush was irresponsible when he was a young man? None of these things are relevant in this election. Pres."
Just a note, as I understand it, if it turned out that Bush was dishonourably discharged from the national guard, according to American laws he would not be eligible to sit as President.
If it turns out that intervention from political interests were the only reason he wasn't dishonourably discharged it brings up the question of whether those rules are fair and whether Bush should be allowed to circumvent them in such an obvious faction.
Do you think that maybe that was the point? That there weren't any hard questions (that mattered) to give to Kerry that weren't covered everywhere else? That his coverage was exactly as topical, hard-hitting and insightful as any other coverage?
I think the political hacks essentially falls into the realm of false advertising. If you're going to tell me what I want to hear, it's not news, it's pandering to my ego. If you're going to tell the public what you think they want to hear, that's not news either. News implies that it's based on facts, otherwise it should be called opinion or fiction.
You seem to misunderstand the argument. It's not "Americans are greedy bastards" as GWB and associates would have you believe but rather "GWB and associates are using the war as an opportunity to line their own pockets". It's not the really the reason for the invasion, but since the opportunity is there, thy'er taking it.
They really do have valid, but unethical, political reasons to invade Iraq, that they don't tell the public. These reasons involve establishing American political hegemony in the Middle East to establish a reliable oil supply for the 21st century. If you really want to know why they invaded Iraq, take a look at the 30 years of documentation of reasons why the U.S. should invade the Middle East written by Cheney himself.
GWB and associates don't care what it costs taxpayers for the war, because they're busy exempting their own income streams from taxes. They won't be the ones who end up paying the bill.
That's circular logic there. If you define the average computer user as someone who uses Windows, then of course, you will find that 100% of average users use Windows.
On the other hand, I've seen Open Office handle Word documents more reliably than Office. The only reasons I have Windows at home are I'm lazy and don't want to install a new operating system, and the games.
However your parent post has a point, I don't want to run Windows, I'd rather not actually. My next computer will not have Windows on it, and I have no intention of ever installing Windows on it.
It's not just the parties, it's the system too. There are two many convenient ways to exclude third parties built into the American system. Gerrymandering and winner takes all electoral votes being the two primary ones. The US used to have more than 2 parties before McCarthyism destroyed the left and centrist parties, however once there were only 2 parties it became easy to prevent the rise of a 3rd party.
Actually, without abolishing the Electoral college you could get a significantly better system by forcing all states to switch to a proportional elector system. Where they split the electors they select based on the percentage of votes. So in a state with 10 electors if it's 51% to 49% they send 5 democratic electors and 5 repulican electors, rather then 10 of one or the other. That should reduce some disenfranchisement because even in a state that's 80% for one party, that 20% would still be important in the grander scheme.
That's because they carefully sift for only the facts that support their viewpoint. It's very easy to build a strong argument when you ignore any and all contrary facts.
But thanks, for pointing that out, now I know where some loonies I've argued with before are getting their "facts" from.
Since when? The U.S. nominated itself world Cop in the post-U.S.S.R. world. But don't pretend it's behalf of the rest of the world, it's to protect economic interests abroad. Cheney's been saying the U.S. should topple governments in the middle east to protect U.S. economic interests since the 70s.
"I think this is the general problem with politics today. We seem to think its the norm to have a career politician. I think the founding fathers would have intended a baker, a butcher, a sailor, and a bank owner to all be equally feasible politicians. These individuals don't like something so they say their ideas and if people like what they say the office selects the person. The way we have it now, the politician(which is a valid "career") looks around for offices that he/she is likely to win and they go for it."
Interestingly enough, the rise of career politicians is practically inevitable. Some people will have a talent for politics and/or a desire to be in politics and they will specialize and simply be better at garnering votes than non-specialists. It's practically the same mechanism that dictates specialization in economics.
Or how every "history" movie (especially WWII) is ahistoric and highly pro-American. With the exception of Vietnam movies.
Why wouldn't a histoical movie of WWII be highly pro-American? If you remember, the US was attacked without cause on December 7. Not only was the war effort in response to that unprovoked attack, but it was also to remove from power one of history's worst criminal to humanity, Adolf Hitler, who had killed millions of Jews. Now when you consider that the effort the US took both militarily and industrially to pull off such a thing, it should make one sit back and awe at the pure ability of a people to come together for a common goal.
It would help if you addressed your attention to the entire sentence not merely the part you'd like to respond to, perhaps you are unaware of what "ahistoric" is supposed to mean?
There's a huge problem when history is being rewritten (changed) to enlarge and enliven the role of the United States. It's not the pro-American sentiment that's the problem it's the modification of history to justify it.
No, the key here is monkeys are a random string generator. You can't replace a random string generator with a stupid string generator and expect to get the same result.
Re:"you're co-authors of this review."
on
We the Media
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"One thing professional news sources can contribute is professional-grade investigative research, proper referencing and citation, along with providing identifiable reporters, employers, etc. thus allowing one a chance to ascertain whose self-interest might be being served, to assess the quality of the research and to evaluate the evidence. Bloggers rarely follow such a rigorous method."
Actually, professional news sources rarely seem to be rigorous. The exception is magazine articles which usually seem to have been researched and have appropriate references and citations. Newspaper articles are rarely more than either an opinion or a summary. Television is worse, in that it's usually a summary of an opinion.
I think the difference is the longer publication time means they stop trying to compete on "faster" and instead focus on "better".
Personally, I think it's a little late to try and learn how to travel in space after we've run into them. The best reason for space travel to Mars and withing the Solar system are four-fold:
Humans are better equiped to deal with problems in real time than through a hours-delayed robot feed.
Humanity needs to practice travelling around the solar system, and develop better technology that allows us to do so, before we attempt to leave it.
Humanity needs experience with the physical and psycological implications of long term space habitation.
Lastly, humanity needs to put some eggs in other baskets. As long as we're all here on one mudball, we face the daunting possibility of being wiped out by one stroke of bad luck or stupidity.
Combined those are compelling reasons for humanity to engage in space exploration. And if people actually want to pay to go to space for a vacation, that's really fine by me.
It's simple, really, Google is one of the next round of targets. Microsoft has realized that if they want to win the search war, they're going to have to cut off every avenue of revenue for Google. I'd expect a Froogle imitation to be announced soon.
Microsoft's goal isn't to beat Google by offering the best software. Instead they will try to simply drown Google by flooding the field of competition until everyone is loosing money. They'll do it with the power of Windows and pre-installed IE. So since Microsoft is propped up by very profitable monopolies, they can afford to loose money longer than anyone else. In the end it's classic Microsoft.
Re:uh,, Black and White anyone?
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 1
Um, considering that seriously telling someone "believe or die" defines you as a fanatic, no. Though, you have to admit that there are entire countries where changing your religion from the state religion carries a death sentence. They aren't Christian countries, though.
Of course, the religious right, still tries to impose it's morality on the rest of the world whether or not they want it. And you certainly could be executed for not being a Christian in the middle ages. So overall, his criticism is spot on, when you don't close your eyes to the history you don't like.
The xbox 2 won't be able to store mp3s or play xbox games because it won't have a hard drive. It doesn't have a hard drive because Microsoft needs to make money on the xbox 2 to prop up the stock value. So therefore they can't underprice the hardware anymore. This means you won't be able to "tinker" with alternative dashboards, launchers or applications.
Honestly, the more I hear about it, the more it looks like the xbox 2 is going to be a huge bomb. The only thing it can hope to salvage it is Halo 3, which probably won't be released until the PS3 hits the market (it might be even later). I'm guessing it will be a deliberate attempt to steal the PS3 launch thunder.
" Do they make sure they buy fair-trade coffee? Refuse Nike shoes? Purchase food that wasn't grown by a factory-farming corporation? Buy 'dolphin-safe' tuna?"
What's wrong with Nike again? They pay people in a third world country very little to make shoes? Isn't that still four times (or more) the average income of those countries? The people who work for Nike would rather work there than at the alternatives. Somehow, that doesn't fit my definition of evil.
"Microsoft doesn't have an army of children it's exploiting..."
This may be a radical opinion but this is a pretty relative thing, which is worse for the child? Starvation or working in a sweatshop? The company that is paying the children to work is only as evil as the parents who allow their children to work, the government that allows companies to employ children, and the children who choose to work.
In general, it is not evil to pay someone a rate they are willing to accept to perform work they are willing to do.
In some areas, some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto church.
Maybe you should be embarassed to admit you go to church. If you told a psychiatrist: " I think someone is watching me at all times and monitoring my every move and judging me constantly", the psychiatrist would be halfway finished writing your prescription before you got to " and his name is God". Then the psychiatrist would throw out the prescription and tell you that you're the good kind of crazy.
This could be amusing if this message gains any traction and someone has the insight to ask "Who wrote MS-DOS" at the right time. It would be very amusing if Microsoft managed to discredit itself... again...
Slashdot Mirror
Um. I'll take blue-collar workers over christian fundamentalists thank you.
Also, you would do well the check your facts, the intelligencia abandonned the Republican party during the Nixon years. Ever since then they've had "problem" to appeal to the religious right for support.
The Republicans used to the be science and technology party, but now they're the church and war party. I would throw corporations into the mix, except the Democrats are also in bed with corporate interests.
hey want a weaker or less assertive superpower, or at least to have some control. Well tough.
Err, no. We think Dubbya is a wanker who doesn't deserve to win. Kerry as president might make the U.S. government slightly more reasonable, but we're not counting on it.
"The coordination that you infer between Kerry and CBS is b.s., but CBS's rose colored glasses tainted their judgment. The story itself was true, and not legimately desputed. But why was it a story? Who didn't already think/know that Pres. Bush got special treatment in the National Guard? Who didn't know that Pres. Bush was irresponsible when he was a young man? None of these things are relevant in this election. Pres."
Just a note, as I understand it, if it turned out that Bush was dishonourably discharged from the national guard, according to American laws he would not be eligible to sit as President.
If it turns out that intervention from political interests were the only reason he wasn't dishonourably discharged it brings up the question of whether those rules are fair and whether Bush should be allowed to circumvent them in such an obvious faction.
Do you think that maybe that was the point? That there weren't any hard questions (that mattered) to give to Kerry that weren't covered everywhere else? That his coverage was exactly as topical, hard-hitting and insightful as any other coverage?
I think the political hacks essentially falls into the realm of false advertising. If you're going to tell me what I want to hear, it's not news, it's pandering to my ego. If you're going to tell the public what you think they want to hear, that's not news either. News implies that it's based on facts, otherwise it should be called opinion or fiction.
You seem to misunderstand the argument. It's not "Americans are greedy bastards" as GWB and associates would have you believe but rather "GWB and associates are using the war as an opportunity to line their own pockets". It's not the really the reason for the invasion, but since the opportunity is there, thy'er taking it.
They really do have valid, but unethical, political reasons to invade Iraq, that they don't tell the public. These reasons involve establishing American political hegemony in the Middle East to establish a reliable oil supply for the 21st century. If you really want to know why they invaded Iraq, take a look at the 30 years of documentation of reasons why the U.S. should invade the Middle East written by Cheney himself.
GWB and associates don't care what it costs taxpayers for the war, because they're busy exempting their own income streams from taxes. They won't be the ones who end up paying the bill.
That's circular logic there. If you define the average computer user as someone who uses Windows, then of course, you will find that 100% of average users use Windows.
On the other hand, I've seen Open Office handle Word documents more reliably than Office. The only reasons I have Windows at home are I'm lazy and don't want to install a new operating system, and the games.
However your parent post has a point, I don't want to run Windows, I'd rather not actually. My next computer will not have Windows on it, and I have no intention of ever installing Windows on it.
It's not just the parties, it's the system too. There are two many convenient ways to exclude third parties built into the American system. Gerrymandering and winner takes all electoral votes being the two primary ones. The US used to have more than 2 parties before McCarthyism destroyed the left and centrist parties, however once there were only 2 parties it became easy to prevent the rise of a 3rd party.
Actually, without abolishing the Electoral college you could get a significantly better system by forcing all states to switch to a proportional elector system. Where they split the electors they select based on the percentage of votes. So in a state with 10 electors if it's 51% to 49% they send 5 democratic electors and 5 repulican electors, rather then 10 of one or the other. That should reduce some disenfranchisement because even in a state that's 80% for one party, that 20% would still be important in the grander scheme.
Mr Bush, why has your administration hired over 3,000 people to administer the draft and when are you planning to begin conscription?
I think you missed the words:
..."
"... well regulated militia
That's because they carefully sift for only the facts that support their viewpoint. It's very easy to build a strong argument when you ignore any and all contrary facts.
But thanks, for pointing that out, now I know where some loonies I've argued with before are getting their "facts" from.
"The world asked the US to play World Cop."
Since when? The U.S. nominated itself world Cop in the post-U.S.S.R. world. But don't pretend it's behalf of the rest of the world, it's to protect economic interests abroad. Cheney's been saying the U.S. should topple governments in the middle east to protect U.S. economic interests since the 70s.
"I think this is the general problem with politics today. We seem to think its the norm to have a career politician. I think the founding fathers would have intended a baker, a butcher, a sailor, and a bank owner to all be equally feasible politicians. These individuals don't like something so they say their ideas and if people like what they say the office selects the person. The way we have it now, the politician(which is a valid "career") looks around for offices that he/she is likely to win and they go for it."
Interestingly enough, the rise of career politicians is practically inevitable. Some people will have a talent for politics and/or a desire to be in politics and they will specialize and simply be better at garnering votes than non-specialists. It's practically the same mechanism that dictates specialization in economics.
Why wouldn't a histoical movie of WWII be highly pro-American? If you remember, the US was attacked without cause on December 7. Not only was the war effort in response to that unprovoked attack, but it was also to remove from power one of history's worst criminal to humanity, Adolf Hitler, who had killed millions of Jews. Now when you consider that the effort the US took both militarily and industrially to pull off such a thing, it should make one sit back and awe at the pure ability of a people to come together for a common goal.
It would help if you addressed your attention to the entire sentence not merely the part you'd like to respond to, perhaps you are unaware of what "ahistoric" is supposed to mean?
There's a huge problem when history is being rewritten (changed) to enlarge and enliven the role of the United States. It's not the pro-American sentiment that's the problem it's the modification of history to justify it.
Personally, I prefer "Senator Hatch". Why be coy about it?
No, AOL has already disproved this hypothesis.
No, the key here is monkeys are a random string generator. You can't replace a random string generator with a stupid string generator and expect to get the same result.
"One thing professional news sources can contribute is professional-grade investigative research, proper referencing and citation, along with providing identifiable reporters, employers, etc. thus allowing one a chance to ascertain whose self-interest might be being served, to assess the quality of the research and to evaluate the evidence. Bloggers rarely follow such a rigorous method."
Actually, professional news sources rarely seem to be rigorous. The exception is magazine articles which usually seem to have been researched and have appropriate references and citations. Newspaper articles are rarely more than either an opinion or a summary. Television is worse, in that it's usually a summary of an opinion.
I think the difference is the longer publication time means they stop trying to compete on "faster" and instead focus on "better".
- Humans are better equiped to deal with problems in real time than through a hours-delayed robot feed.
- Humanity needs to practice travelling around the solar system, and develop better technology that allows us to do so, before we attempt to leave it.
- Humanity needs experience with the physical and psycological implications of long term space habitation.
- Lastly, humanity needs to put some eggs in other baskets. As long as we're all here on one mudball, we face the daunting possibility of being wiped out by one stroke of bad luck or stupidity.
Combined those are compelling reasons for humanity to engage in space exploration. And if people actually want to pay to go to space for a vacation, that's really fine by me.It's simple, really, Google is one of the next round of targets. Microsoft has realized that if they want to win the search war, they're going to have to cut off every avenue of revenue for Google. I'd expect a Froogle imitation to be announced soon.
Microsoft's goal isn't to beat Google by offering the best software. Instead they will try to simply drown Google by flooding the field of competition until everyone is loosing money. They'll do it with the power of Windows and pre-installed IE. So since Microsoft is propped up by very profitable monopolies, they can afford to loose money longer than anyone else. In the end it's classic Microsoft.
Um, considering that seriously telling someone "believe or die" defines you as a fanatic, no. Though, you have to admit that there are entire countries where changing your religion from the state religion carries a death sentence. They aren't Christian countries, though.
Of course, the religious right, still tries to impose it's morality on the rest of the world whether or not they want it. And you certainly could be executed for not being a Christian in the middle ages. So overall, his criticism is spot on, when you don't close your eyes to the history you don't like.
- No hard drive
- No backwards compatibility
- No more underpriced hardware
The xbox 2 won't be able to store mp3s or play xbox games because it won't have a hard drive. It doesn't have a hard drive because Microsoft needs to make money on the xbox 2 to prop up the stock value. So therefore they can't underprice the hardware anymore. This means you won't be able to "tinker" with alternative dashboards, launchers or applications.Honestly, the more I hear about it, the more it looks like the xbox 2 is going to be a huge bomb. The only thing it can hope to salvage it is Halo 3, which probably won't be released until the PS3 hits the market (it might be even later). I'm guessing it will be a deliberate attempt to steal the PS3 launch thunder.
" Do they make sure they buy fair-trade coffee? Refuse Nike shoes? Purchase food that wasn't grown by a factory-farming corporation? Buy 'dolphin-safe' tuna?"
What's wrong with Nike again? They pay people in a third world country very little to make shoes? Isn't that still four times (or more) the average income of those countries? The people who work for Nike would rather work there than at the alternatives. Somehow, that doesn't fit my definition of evil.
"Microsoft doesn't have an army of children it's exploiting..."
This may be a radical opinion but this is a pretty relative thing, which is worse for the child? Starvation or working in a sweatshop? The company that is paying the children to work is only as evil as the parents who allow their children to work, the government that allows companies to employ children, and the children who choose to work.
In general, it is not evil to pay someone a rate they are willing to accept to perform work they are willing to do.
In some areas, some people are almost embarassed to admit they goto church.
Maybe you should be embarassed to admit you go to church. If you told a psychiatrist: " I think someone is watching me at all times and monitoring my every move and judging me constantly", the psychiatrist would be halfway finished writing your prescription before you got to " and his name is God". Then the psychiatrist would throw out the prescription and tell you that you're the good kind of crazy.
This could be amusing if this message gains any traction and someone has the insight to ask "Who wrote MS-DOS" at the right time. It would be very amusing if Microsoft managed to discredit itself... again...