I know he's trying to be charitable, but there's no need.
"Sure, LibreOffice does not provide the same level of features and finesse Microsoft's suite may boast..." Who cares? My guess is that most users don't use at least 90% of the "features" in MS Office; if we're talking only about features that Office has an LO doesn't, I'd lift that to 99%.
LibreOffice is terrific, and I wish I could convince my company to switch.
"I have never understood the blatant lies coming out of the Russian military or their proxies..."
Did you miss (pretty much) everything about the Soviet Union from 1923 until 1991? The entire system was based on the premise of the "big lie". It is a major, persistent technique used by governments generally but elevated by Russians to an art form. I'm not sure if it's their cultural history of totalitarianism, some desperate nationalism that makes their people particularly gullible, or more likely a Slavic nihilism that doesn't really believe anything matters much anyway, but really, the "big lie" has been a staple of Russian government, well, FOREVER.
Probably because it works; their people don't care (or support the government blindly regardless of what they know to be true) and the west sees them as all barely-civilized savages *anyway* so how would the admission of some new barbarity surprise anyone? In any case, the West's attention-span is far shorter than Russia's, so ultimately the Big Lie becomes the story everyone accepts, in polite company, at least.
Viz: http://www.thedailybeast.com/a... (Quote of the day: Kingsley Amis aphorism about Robert Conquest, that "...(he) told his American publisher that the first reissue of The Great Terror be titled, âoeI Told You So, You Fucking Fools,â)
Yeah, sure: he only wants radical leftists as 'running mates'.
Fuck you Larry for marginalizing what's otherwise a reasonably non partisan position on the 'brokenness' of government.
Of course, the last time someone tried attacking the machine, the Left Wing, the Media, and the "bosses" of the Right decided that none of them wanted such a message to succeed, so they cheerfully and successfully painted the Tea Party as right wing, racist, radicals.
I'm still waiting for someone on the anti-GMO food side to explain what, precisely, they mean by "GMO" foods.
- Is it any genetically-altered food? In that case, EVERY apple, corn, grain, etc that's not entirely synthetic is technically "genetically modified" from its original wild form. Humans have been doing that long before Mendel explained the mechanisms. - is it lab-modified plants? Because then that would EXclude Roundup-Ready, which I believe the first generations were developed by (more or less) drenching plants in Roundup and just re-breeding the ones that lived.
I can't quite seem to understand what GMO means, exactly, except by a very subjective yardstick of "that icky franken food" which is meaningless, claddistically.
It's not high sugar, high fat foods, it's the weak willed that can't stop consuming them.
We ALL (in the US) have fatty, sugary foods easily available. SOME (ok, many) of us are obese. Ergo, the presence/availability of sugary/fatty foods is NOT the cause of obesity.
"they all seem pretty happy" The sort of patronizing crap that allows westerners to sleep at night.
Tell you what: we'll take 100 of those "pretty happy" people, and ask them if they want to stay there or move to the United States, vilified as the worst cesspool of racism, sexism, violence, etc and see if they stay in their "pretty happy" situation or move to the US.
I bet you 99 choose to move. Because I think you're confusing happiness with acceptance.
Please give us the employment data that you otherwise aren't in any way obligated to, so if it doesn't show the results we prefer, we can attack you publicly.
What's so strange is the constant "conventional wisdom" assumption that violence, crime, and brutality are somehow "modern evils", when in fact we're living in the most sustained peaceful and violence-free times ever, both on the macro (globally & interstate) and micro (interpersonal) level. Of course, this doesn't change how bad it is PERSONALLY to people confronted/victimized by violence, but the % of population globally at risk of violent death is a fraction of what it used to be historically, and likely that was already a fraction of what it was pre-historically.
And while I know this is going to catch flames: This is even more true if one is female; as much as it seems that everything is a source of complaint today, it's by FAR the best time ever in history to be a woman.
Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience
on
Twilight of the Bomb
·
· Score: 1
And this is the same sort of pollyanna turd that ALSO floats to the surface whenever the conversation comes up.
I'm certain there was NO eagerness across the military to invade Japan. None. Have you read anything about Iwo Jima? Okinawa? The level of fanaticism displayed in their defense terrified US planners. It could only be imagined that Japan would be exponentially more-bitterly defended, brutal, and drawn-out affair.
And what's your alternative: we were going to beseige the island(s) of Japan? Do you *really* think that would have resulted in FEWER civilian casualties? The Japanese high command resisted surrendering after two of their cities had been vaporized. What makes you plausibly believe that Japan would have ever surrendered before their entire country had been pummeled into dust?
You also seem to conveniently forget that there *was* a time-imperative: Soviet involvement in the war. It was perceived in the West that the Soviets were grabbing literally ever hectare they could put under Soviet control before hostilities ended. The war needed to end NOW, before they had a chance to turn to really participate in the east. Ask Japan if they were better off outside the iron curtain than in; or maybe better, ask East Germany, Poland, or North Korea.
This is even setting aside the entirely-human desire to punish Japan for what was seen as a dirty way to start the fight. I don't blame Japan for trying to win however they could, but they had to have seen (indeed, Yamamoto very much foretold the consequences of the attack and subsequent war, based on his familiarity with Americans) that there would be a reckoning, if they didn't win.
I'm sure you've heard all the arguments against the "demonstration" and already dismissed them. That's irrational, because given the incomplete knowledge available to political leaders in summer 1945, they were credible: we didn't have many bombs, we couldn't even be certain that they would reliably work. Not to mention, you would of course not been faced with the job of explaining to thousands of American families who lost young men in the span of time while the war 'idled' between Aug 6 and whenever your "demonstration" would have allegedly convinced the Japanese to surrender. I don't believe it would have, frankly; it's not like Japan was an open-information consensual democracy.
It's very, very easy for someone sitting comfortably in their easy chair in 2015 to pass enlightened moral judgement on decisions made 70 years ago. Hindsight is 20/20. It's also complete bullshit.
And off topic, but to your final point: there IS no such thing as being 'overly ruthless' in war, particularly for the attacked. It's that sort of thinking - that war can be fought within boundaries - that allows dilettantes in Washington and other world capitals believe that they can control events and keep it 'humane' from which it's only a short step to 'plausible' to 'useful'. War is a fucking atrocity, full stop. Anyone who believes it can be otherwise is actually encouraging it.
If those things appeal to you, you don't/haven't traveled much.
I want: - to get to my room - sleep in a clean bed with minimal thoughts about the copious amounts of jizz on everything that's not regularly soaked in causting cleansing chemistry - a bathroom with decent light & a shower with decent water pressure that sprays me somewhere above the sternum - a reasonable compromise between price and location.
Is there tech that can deliver these things? Already the web basically has 1 and 4 covered, I don't think the others are 'reachable' by a smartwatch or whatever magic tech bullet they're deploying today.
...but I still don't really understand AT ALL the desire to hook everything up to the "Internet of Things".
Why the fuck would I want/need to set my front door lock, my thermostat, my refrigerator, etc all connected to the internet? Certainly, there may be some trivial utility, with the cost that some of the basic functionality of my life is now exposed to the malice of bored script kiddies (or the data gathering of even more malignant marketers)?
Is this the "bad times" where they: - are one of the very few MMOs that sustain the subscription model, and - even if their numbers fall by 50%, they're still comparable if not greater populations than every other MMO out there?
Seriously, if they fall to 2 million players (unlikely) that's STILL an income of $360 million/year. Yes, they won't be able to afford a staff of thousands and big fancy digs, but mainly what that means is they'll have less 'gravy' to carry other feeble projects.
Of course, some people might point out that comparing the generous social programs of a country suffused with petrodollars to others would be pointless.
"Drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, crime,"...are an effect of being poor?
I know some people whose families were poor. (I work with the local food shelves and boy scouts.) Some of them avoided drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, crime, and in most cases are going to a decent-or-better college, largely free of charge, and look like they're headed for a better life. Some of them didn't avoid drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, and/or crime, and look like they're going to make children who get to grow up in the same shitty circumstances they did.
Not to get all Kantian, but to assert that drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, crime are all "the result of poverty" and not the actual choices made by humans is to deny their agency, to deny their very humanity.
The way to get them out of poverty isn't to assert that poverty falls on them like a piano from the sky in a Roadrunner cartoon. How do you logically avoid that? No, the way to help these people out of poverty is to RECOGNIZE the causes, and address them (stop them from making shitty choices, and teaching their children to make similar shitty choices).
Asserting that poverty is "simply the lack of money" is why we have a shitty, useless welfare system that breeds nothing but larger groups of dependents every generation.
Yeah, as long as you were in the sole "computer room". But yeah, honestly, I mentally pictured rows of desks with CRT tubes, which is, as you pointed out, a dated concept itself.
Just another example of the classically American naive conceit that "poverty happens" to people randomly, like a strike of lightning from the blue, and not (mostly) from a series of really bad life choices, something which is plausibly heritable.
My point isn't that poor people can't enjoy Macbeth, but teaching them to code isn't going to make a person like something they didn't enjoy before,, either.
...instead of "going after" the infection, you go after the humans that deployed it. Recognize the MASSIVE damage/vulnerability these people are exploiting, and the threat it poses to our modern society. Act accordingly.
When you have them arrested, randomly decimate them.
If they are arrested a 2nd time for the same offense, they will be the first in line to be decimated.
Not to mention that there's ample research suggesting that people are more active, alert, and productive at cooler temperatures compared to warmer.
Finally, while they certainly had electric typewriters, I doubt that the 1960s office had anywhere near the 'typical' warming-load of multiple 100+W heaters (computer, monitor, maybe printer, etc) at nearly every desk.
"Or paid to have their house wired using the special cable?"
I really, really, really would like to find out how one starts such a contracting business. I would be *delighted* to rewire your house with "cost is no object" cables. My service invoice will be comparable.
Slashdot Mirror
I know he's trying to be charitable, but there's no need.
"Sure, LibreOffice does not provide the same level of features and finesse Microsoft's suite may boast..."
Who cares? My guess is that most users don't use at least 90% of the "features" in MS Office; if we're talking only about features that Office has an LO doesn't, I'd lift that to 99%.
LibreOffice is terrific, and I wish I could convince my company to switch.
"I have never understood the blatant lies coming out of the Russian military or their proxies ..."
Did you miss (pretty much) everything about the Soviet Union from 1923 until 1991? The entire system was based on the premise of the "big lie".
It is a major, persistent technique used by governments generally but elevated by Russians to an art form. I'm not sure if it's their cultural history of totalitarianism, some desperate nationalism that makes their people particularly gullible, or more likely a Slavic nihilism that doesn't really believe anything matters much anyway, but really, the "big lie" has been a staple of Russian government, well, FOREVER.
Probably because it works; their people don't care (or support the government blindly regardless of what they know to be true) and the west sees them as all barely-civilized savages *anyway* so how would the admission of some new barbarity surprise anyone? In any case, the West's attention-span is far shorter than Russia's, so ultimately the Big Lie becomes the story everyone accepts, in polite company, at least.
Viz:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
(Quote of the day: Kingsley Amis aphorism about Robert Conquest, that "...(he) told his American publisher that the first reissue of The Great Terror be titled, âoeI Told You So, You Fucking Fools,â)
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
"...instead of the straight and patently obvious one."
I see what you did there.
So, no answer then?
Got it.
Yeah, sure: he only wants radical leftists as 'running mates'.
Fuck you Larry for marginalizing what's otherwise a reasonably non partisan position on the 'brokenness' of government.
Of course, the last time someone tried attacking the machine, the Left Wing, the Media, and the "bosses" of the Right decided that none of them wanted such a message to succeed, so they cheerfully and successfully painted the Tea Party as right wing, racist, radicals.
So wait, giving something away for free isn't a sustainable business model?
But this is the "New economy" isn't it?
I'm still waiting for someone on the anti-GMO food side to explain what, precisely, they mean by "GMO" foods.
- Is it any genetically-altered food? In that case, EVERY apple, corn, grain, etc that's not entirely synthetic is technically "genetically modified" from its original wild form. Humans have been doing that long before Mendel explained the mechanisms.
- is it lab-modified plants? Because then that would EXclude Roundup-Ready, which I believe the first generations were developed by (more or less) drenching plants in Roundup and just re-breeding the ones that lived.
I can't quite seem to understand what GMO means, exactly, except by a very subjective yardstick of "that icky franken food" which is meaningless, claddistically.
It's not high sugar, high fat foods, it's the weak willed that can't stop consuming them.
We ALL (in the US) have fatty, sugary foods easily available.
SOME (ok, many) of us are obese.
Ergo, the presence/availability of sugary/fatty foods is NOT the cause of obesity.
"they all seem pretty happy"
The sort of patronizing crap that allows westerners to sleep at night.
Tell you what: we'll take 100 of those "pretty happy" people, and ask them if they want to stay there or move to the United States, vilified as the worst cesspool of racism, sexism, violence, etc and see if they stay in their "pretty happy" situation or move to the US.
I bet you 99 choose to move. Because I think you're confusing happiness with acceptance.
Dear Apple,
Please give us the employment data that you otherwise aren't in any way obligated to, so if it doesn't show the results we prefer, we can attack you publicly.
Thanks,
Stupid democrats
HUMANS are violent creatures.
What's so strange is the constant "conventional wisdom" assumption that violence, crime, and brutality are somehow "modern evils", when in fact we're living in the most sustained peaceful and violence-free times ever, both on the macro (globally & interstate) and micro (interpersonal) level. Of course, this doesn't change how bad it is PERSONALLY to people confronted/victimized by violence, but the % of population globally at risk of violent death is a fraction of what it used to be historically, and likely that was already a fraction of what it was pre-historically.
And while I know this is going to catch flames: This is even more true if one is female; as much as it seems that everything is a source of complaint today, it's by FAR the best time ever in history to be a woman.
If they don't name that frog after Moe from the Simpsons, then I just don't want to know about it.
(Moe Sizlak: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/B... )
And this is the same sort of pollyanna turd that ALSO floats to the surface whenever the conversation comes up.
I'm certain there was NO eagerness across the military to invade Japan. None. Have you read anything about Iwo Jima? Okinawa? The level of fanaticism displayed in their defense terrified US planners. It could only be imagined that Japan would be exponentially more-bitterly defended, brutal, and drawn-out affair.
And what's your alternative: we were going to beseige the island(s) of Japan? Do you *really* think that would have resulted in FEWER civilian casualties? The Japanese high command resisted surrendering after two of their cities had been vaporized. What makes you plausibly believe that Japan would have ever surrendered before their entire country had been pummeled into dust?
You also seem to conveniently forget that there *was* a time-imperative: Soviet involvement in the war. It was perceived in the West that the Soviets were grabbing literally ever hectare they could put under Soviet control before hostilities ended. The war needed to end NOW, before they had a chance to turn to really participate in the east. Ask Japan if they were better off outside the iron curtain than in; or maybe better, ask East Germany, Poland, or North Korea.
This is even setting aside the entirely-human desire to punish Japan for what was seen as a dirty way to start the fight. I don't blame Japan for trying to win however they could, but they had to have seen (indeed, Yamamoto very much foretold the consequences of the attack and subsequent war, based on his familiarity with Americans) that there would be a reckoning, if they didn't win.
I'm sure you've heard all the arguments against the "demonstration" and already dismissed them. That's irrational, because given the incomplete knowledge available to political leaders in summer 1945, they were credible: we didn't have many bombs, we couldn't even be certain that they would reliably work. Not to mention, you would of course not been faced with the job of explaining to thousands of American families who lost young men in the span of time while the war 'idled' between Aug 6 and whenever your "demonstration" would have allegedly convinced the Japanese to surrender. I don't believe it would have, frankly; it's not like Japan was an open-information consensual democracy.
It's very, very easy for someone sitting comfortably in their easy chair in 2015 to pass enlightened moral judgement on decisions made 70 years ago. Hindsight is 20/20. It's also complete bullshit.
And off topic, but to your final point: there IS no such thing as being 'overly ruthless' in war, particularly for the attacked. It's that sort of thinking - that war can be fought within boundaries - that allows dilettantes in Washington and other world capitals believe that they can control events and keep it 'humane' from which it's only a short step to 'plausible' to 'useful'. War is a fucking atrocity, full stop. Anyone who believes it can be otherwise is actually encouraging it.
If those things appeal to you, you don't/haven't traveled much.
I want:
- to get to my room
- sleep in a clean bed with minimal thoughts about the copious amounts of jizz on everything that's not regularly soaked in causting cleansing chemistry
- a bathroom with decent light & a shower with decent water pressure that sprays me somewhere above the sternum
- a reasonable compromise between price and location.
Is there tech that can deliver these things? Already the web basically has 1 and 4 covered, I don't think the others are 'reachable' by a smartwatch or whatever magic tech bullet they're deploying today.
...but I still don't really understand AT ALL the desire to hook everything up to the "Internet of Things".
Why the fuck would I want/need to set my front door lock, my thermostat, my refrigerator, etc all connected to the internet? Certainly, there may be some trivial utility, with the cost that some of the basic functionality of my life is now exposed to the malice of bored script kiddies (or the data gathering of even more malignant marketers)?
Is this the "bad times" where they:
- are one of the very few MMOs that sustain the subscription model, and
- even if their numbers fall by 50%, they're still comparable if not greater populations than every other MMO out there?
Seriously, if they fall to 2 million players (unlikely) that's STILL an income of $360 million/year.
Yes, they won't be able to afford a staff of thousands and big fancy digs, but mainly what that means is they'll have less 'gravy' to carry other feeble projects.
Of course, some people might point out that comparing the generous social programs of a country suffused with petrodollars to others would be pointless.
"Drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, crime,"...are an effect of being poor?
I know some people whose families were poor. (I work with the local food shelves and boy scouts.)
Some of them avoided drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, crime, and in most cases are going to a decent-or-better college, largely free of charge, and look like they're headed for a better life.
Some of them didn't avoid drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, and/or crime, and look like they're going to make children who get to grow up in the same shitty circumstances they did.
Not to get all Kantian, but to assert that drugs, smoking, alcohol, pregnancy, poor studying, leaving school, leaving home, truancy, crime are all "the result of poverty" and not the actual choices made by humans is to deny their agency, to deny their very humanity.
The way to get them out of poverty isn't to assert that poverty falls on them like a piano from the sky in a Roadrunner cartoon. How do you logically avoid that? No, the way to help these people out of poverty is to RECOGNIZE the causes, and address them (stop them from making shitty choices, and teaching their children to make similar shitty choices).
Asserting that poverty is "simply the lack of money" is why we have a shitty, useless welfare system that breeds nothing but larger groups of dependents every generation.
Yeah, as long as you were in the sole "computer room". But yeah, honestly, I mentally pictured rows of desks with CRT tubes, which is, as you pointed out, a dated concept itself.
Just another example of the classically American naive conceit that "poverty happens" to people randomly, like a strike of lightning from the blue, and not (mostly) from a series of really bad life choices, something which is plausibly heritable.
My point isn't that poor people can't enjoy Macbeth, but teaching them to code isn't going to make a person like something they didn't enjoy before,, either.
...instead of "going after" the infection, you go after the humans that deployed it.
Recognize the MASSIVE damage/vulnerability these people are exploiting, and the threat it poses to our modern society. Act accordingly.
When you have them arrested, randomly decimate them.
If they are arrested a 2nd time for the same offense, they will be the first in line to be decimated.
I suspect that botnet attacks would decrease.
Not to mention that there's ample research suggesting that people are more active, alert, and productive at cooler temperatures compared to warmer.
Finally, while they certainly had electric typewriters, I doubt that the 1960s office had anywhere near the 'typical' warming-load of multiple 100+W heaters (computer, monitor, maybe printer, etc) at nearly every desk.
https://www.linux.com/
Just sayin'.
My point was that it's a compound word, and that can help parse out saying foreign words sometimes.
"Or paid to have their house wired using the special cable?"
I really, really, really would like to find out how one starts such a contracting business.
I would be *delighted* to rewire your house with "cost is no object" cables. My service invoice will be comparable.