Dude, George Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4000 US troops DIED as a result of *that* lie. But nobody seems to be irked about that one. Everyone in the USA jokes about that one. Yeah it's a big joke.
100,000 dead -- that's like you having 9/11 happen every week or so. Hope you can sleep at night.
So, if I go through this backscatter machine wearing my tinfoil hat and I make another tinfoil hat for my groin (tinfoil underwear?), I take it that I'll be immediately tackled by security? Or does backscatter go right through tin foil?
It seems my choices are : wear a lead-suit, or go naked, since they are going to see you naked anyhow.
Also, let's say you're wearing an althetic cup? Are they going to make you remove that to feel up your balls?
Excuse me, but if we are allowed to shoot a politician everytime he lies and/or reverses his stand on any issue, we might as well wipe out every federal and state and local post there is. All you need to do is watch the Daily Show *any* random day of the week, and they will run a bit involving a senator or congressman saying one thing and then show how a year earlier he/she said the exact opposite.
Our political process seems to *depend* upon mass amnesia, where, depending upon which way the wind blows politicians can reverse their stands on an issue and somehow we never take notice. Certainly, the media (with the notable exception of Comedy Central) never takes notice.
Just because *you heard them say* "images will not be saved" doesn't mean that after this incident they won't say "images are being saved in the interests of national security and to use as evidence when and if potential threats are intercepted, and the perpetrators brought to justice".
Or, they'll puill a Fox News and just lie saying "Images are not being saved." And then you can show them the images and ask "what about these?" And they'll respond "In this post 9/11 world, there will always be isolated incidents where the appearance of inpropriety occurs. But it's in the best interests of all to support this technology as it's our patriotic duty to keep America safe."
Yeah, I can't figure it out. People on the street shoot each other over liquor store robberies for a $100, but when your livelihood is affected to the tune of tens of thousands, people sit in their sofas watching American Idol.
Never mind some fisherman picking off BP execs, I'm shocked no one has been picking off mortgage brokers, bankers, and other high-ups that handed us the Great Depression, that will essentially, last for the remainer of our lives (all indicators point to things getting worse, not better, unless you're already in the top 1%).
Even more amsuing is that that south is filled with gun-nuts, you'd think that at least one of them would get riled up enough to do something. Amazing that they'll shoot at each other about a scratch on the pickup truck, but when it comes down to REAL things, they act like they have no power.
Maybe there's something to those chemtrails after all, as the populace is handing the country over to a few elite, with no fight whatsoever. John Carpenter's "They Live" is starting to look like a documentary. Where's the Hoffman lenses when you need them?
So what you're saying is: If you're going to commit a crime, commit the biggest crime you can, because the bigger the crime, the better it pays, and therefore, is worth the risk to your life/freedom.
That explains Bernie Madoff then. I would suggest then, that we ALL run Ponzi Schemes and get rich, go to jail for 150 years, but at least our families will be set for a few generations.
Your argument basically states that crime is OK if the crime is for $billions, but the mugger on the street who robs you of $60 at gunpoint is a drag on society that needs to be jailed for years at a rate of $100,000 per year.
Actually, they stole that "feature" from applications developed for SGI.
Remember, MS was copying their "high end enterprise" market-model from what used to occupy the high-end market in computing... SUN and SGI. Unix-based $20,000 workstations that had $50,000 applications loaded onto them.
There were tiered-pricing models back then as well. And if you wanted users to be able to "share" work, that cost more. And you had to keep paying yearly to "rent" your software.
You reallty think MS invented that kind of "rape your customers" approach? No, if they had, at least *that* would have been innovative. But sadly, it's just another aspect that they "borrowed" from the existing high-end market -- especially if you were trying to do broadcast-quality graphics back then.
The late 80's were filled with spinning chrome logos, mostly produced on very expensive SGI equipment (Although there was a $20,000 Difinicon board that worked with the IBM PC. It had it's own 68030 CPU for rendering and essentially just used the PC as a big power supply), but it was the software-models from that time that MS copied into NT Workstation and Server.
Google took over as the primary search engine because it was lightweight and fast. Now Google is adding bling that will turn it into Yahoo -- a search "portal"... And sooner or later, Google will become slow and bloated in the never-ending competition with Microsoft.
Which of course, means a new company will spring up, with a lightweight and fast search engine. It will be called something funny-sounding at first, and then, when more and more of us start using it, we'll just "_____" for that. Eventually MS and Google will fade away, still clubbing each other over the head, but this new company will start to dominate, until it too, goes public, gets an asswipe as a CEO and completely destroys itself.
And then the web starts all over again. With AOL and Yahoo. Hey, aren't they merging? Spooky!
Maybe we'll see a rise of Pointcast again. Or Beens.com Whatever. As long as it's not MS running the internet. Or Apple. Or Google. Man, I look back on black text on grey background fondly. Now get off my lawn!
Listen, the one common element has since 9/11 has been aircraft. So, ban aircraft. That'll finally make us "safe". But just because that may be too big a leap right away, ban international flights. Or just stop flying to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Ireland.
At what point are enough materials banned from flights that planes now go into the air mostly empty because so much has been banned that very little of anything gets onto planes?
I see a bright future in the shipping industry -- and by shipping, I mean boats. Fedex and UPS are going to have to stop flying as every fedex box could be a potential bomb.
There's one final solution for the USA that might make you safe. Isolationism. Close the borders, no flights in or out, put up walls on every border, make the economy domestic only (might be good to put your own people back to work), stop exports, stop imports, and ignore the rest of the world. I mean, you do that anyway, or perhaps you treat the rest of the world as if it *is* the USA.
Surprisingly, I suspect that if the USA were to follow that plan, there would be a worldwide drop in terrorism, mostly due to the fact that the USA would have pulled their troops out of all those other countries that they have troops in, and they'd stop sticking their noses in other people's business.
Just you wait until someone does blow up a plane and went through the body scanner. Sooner or later they will make a bomb from threads of C-4 or whatever, sew it into a set of pants and shirt, and then we'll have to fly naked because the TSA is scared of clothing.
They are already scared of shoes, toothpaste, hair gel, nail clippers, bottled water, yadda-yadd, ad-infinitum.
Here's what I don't get. We had the "shoe-bomber" which in turn, made the TSA remove and inspect our shoes. Then last year we had the "underwear-bomber"... So how come the TSA doesn't make us remove and inspect our underwear?
Just wait till some guy detonates a bomb he shoved up his ass. Then it's cavity searches for all.
And the airline industry will slowly crumble from pissed off passengers refusing to fly. Or we'll just accept it by that time, just as we now accept the humiliation we currently go through.
No, but it's something I pay a lot of money for. It would be one thing if the flight was $25 and I was hassled. But it's not. The flight is over $100 each way (easily) plus extras if I check a bag. And you don't even get a meal anymore. So just so we're clear, it's more expensive, you get less, and it's more of a hassle.
I'd deal with the hassle if it was less expensive and you got more legroom. But you don't.
For what I spend to fly, I could have a very nice dinner with an attractive lady AND get stellar service from the restaurant (and possibly stellar service from the lady as well).
So, what am I getting from the airline? I'm treated as criminal from the moment I enter the airport, I'm crammed into an aluminum tube (if I'm lucky and the flight isn't canceled or oversold) that is noisy and smells bad, I get nothing but a coke and some peanuts. And when you add up the total hours spent from door to door, flying is only marginally faster than some other means (for short trips). When you're going NY to LA, that's a different story. So my question to you is: What am I getting for my money? Shouldn't I be treated better as a customer? This is the only capitalistic society I know of where the customer is always wrong.
Seriously, those screaming Obamacare is socialism need to take a hard look at the rest of their society before making a complaint -- because what we've got here sure isn't capitalism and democracy. I'm not sure what it is, but I know it's not that.
In a Capitalistic Society there is SUPPOSED to be competition. That is, anyone is free to start up a company and compete on price, or quality, or any other standard they can compete on.
So, why can't someone start an airline that doesn't require going through security? I see a market for this as we're all fed up with airport security. I'll bet passengers would even pay double to not have to stand in a line for 2 hours only to have the flight canceled and they have to do it all over again tomorrow.
I'd think this is something the Tea Baggers could get behind since it's about capitalism and smaller government. If some dipshit wants to try hijacking the plane in flight, the passengers are free to get out of their seats and beat the guy to death. Also, the airline I propose starting won't oversell every flight and then ask people to take a later flight in exchange for worthless vouchers.
Also, my airline will go back to having good-looking stewardesses in short skirts. It's about time there was some competition in this game. I wonder if I can get Richard Branson on-board with this idea? You can bet that Virgin Galactic won't have these kind of body-scanners to go into space.
Are you asking if you bought the *distribution rights* to a song? Well, first you need to be a record company. It might be easier if the song you are distributing was your song that you wrote, performed and recorded yourself. Even then you might not be immune as ASCAP might want fees, and/or sue if they feel your song is too similar to another artists (and never mind if you sampled anything).
If you're just saying that you walked into Walmart, bought a CD and shared it, well, then you're guilty of copyright infringment as you do not have the rights to distribute said music. So says the law that is owned by big business. I hope you didn't just crawl from under a rock in outer mongolia because I thought *everyone* already knows this. What do you think this story is about? A speeding ticket?
I say she declare herself "Too Big To Fail" and get a TARP bailout at 0% interest, just like those scumbag Wall Street Fatcats. Then she can pay back the loan over the course of 1.5 million years.
Dude; have you ever been on the recieving end of a "bill" in collections?
What evidence was presented to the collection agency that you didn't pay your bill. NONE. Yet, the "big company" that says you owe them money is assumed to be right, and the collection agency then starts the harassment process which can include calling you all hours of the day and night and messing with your credit history.
I just spent FOUR MONTHS fighting with a collection agency over a Verizon/Direct-TV billing error. I had been billed by Direct TV even though I had paid Verizon for the services. Verizon was supposed to have paid them, but didn't, so Direct TV then sent the bill to me. When I explained to Direct TV that it had been paid via Verizon, they sent the bill to a collection agency.
I faxed the agency a good amount of documentation, including a REFUND CHECK I recieved from Direct TV that covered the unused portion of my pro-rated last month of service. I also showed my Verizon bills that contained Direct-TV billing and payment through Verizon.
So, as of today, the collection agency (I called them) advised me that my balance is now zero, apparently, I finally got Verizon and Direct TV to talk to each other and they agreeed it was a billing error. They claim my account will be out of collections next week.
This is after spending hours and hours of my life on the phone explaining and re-explaining the situation, faxing people, writing letters and doing everything in my power to resolve the situation.
Now, where is the APOLOGY from either Verizon or Direct TV? Who do I get to bill for the lost hours of my life and productivity I spent to fix this issue between two giant companies? Where's the admission from the Collection Agency that they were wrong to ASSUME that I was a CRIMINAL?
I'll tell you where it is: NOWHERE.
When the Jury sees "BIG FACELESS COMPANY" versus "Joe Shmoe", they always assume that Big Faceless Company is always right. Never mind that Big Companies like BP constantly screw everyone they can, and anyone that assumes that Big Company is always right is a fool.
The fact that we now allow these companies to spend endless amounts of money buying political offices and manipulating our democracy scares me to the core.
Gee you're right. And seeing that we have hundreds of thousands of criminals already in jail, all crime should be stopped by now. After all, we've seen how many people spend the rest of their lives in jail, so the example should be set -- DON'T MURDER. And yet, murder goes on.
Hows that war on Drugs going for you? Has it stopped... no, has it even SLOWED the flow of drugs, or the use of drugs?
Heck, we've got two border agents in jail for attempting to stop a known drug traffiker. Actually, they might be out by now, gotta look that one up.
It has nothing to do with legality or illegality, it has to do with making everyone in America a criminal in some way, usually by having them violate laws they don't even understand.
For example, you are probably in violation of some tax code, you just don't know it yet. While the police haven't busted down your door, yet, it's only a matter of time before the USA is a giant armed camp and we are all criminals.
I was going to say that the RIAA should pay her to take them. Due to "Striesand Effect", those songs could become popular if the RIAA *doesn't* want you to have 'em. Come to think of it, maybe that's why these verdicts are so outrageous, because the RIAA wants the rest of us to download those crap songs.
Frankly, "stealing" these songs could be more public service than theft. If only stealing them made them actually disappear, but that's not how digital copies work.
Didn't Jeff Goldblum predict this happening in the movie? "Life finds a way" ?
This is why you NEVER mix dinosaur DNA with frogs! "We won't make those same mistakes again." "Of course not, you'll make a whole new set of mistakes!" (The second film had some magnificent sarcastic dialog).
There's a *REASON* 99.9% of fan fiction doesn't get turned into the next episode. How many Lt. Mary Sue's do we really need? I think there was one rare instance where some Xena fan-fic got published as a book... that was about it.
Women writers tend to make a Han-Solo/Luke or Kirk/Spock love fest, while men tend to write stories where the hero lands on an alien planet inhabited by sex-starved babes in bikinis.
Basically it's trash writing and most of the time, it shows that most people should never even get near a keyboard.
Influenza kills more people per year than 9/11. In fact, we'd have to have 9/11 happen about once per month to equal what Influenza does. Now, when you get on a plane, for the next "X" hours, you're breathing recycled air that contains the viruses of everyone else on the plane.
If you want to kill alot of people, infect yourself with the virulent strain of the flu you can find, and board an aircraft. No bombs required. No knife, no gun, no metal of any type. Just the flu.
All this security theater is to prevent what? A hijacking? Hijackings are over. No one will ever sit in their seat and be quiet ever again during a hijacking. The whole plane will get up and kick the ass of whoever tries to hijack a plane. It doesn't even matter if he's got a gun, he doesn't have enough bullets to kill everyone. It doesn't matter if he has a bomb, the people in the plane will consider themselves heroes and attack the guy anyhow, to prevent him from completing whatever plan he may have.
So what is the point of all this theater? To protect the airplane itself? That's my guess. It's cheaper for airlines to spend millions in federally funded security than it is to continually replace aluminum cigars which they would have to pay for out of their own profits.
It's clear that they don't care about people, otherwise, they'd prevent anyone who is ill from boarding a plane. I mean, seriously, terrorists need to get a clue. Sure, bombs make "terror" in that they get you in the news and make people scared, but seriously, if you want to actually kill people, all you need is a virus.
I've been telling people for years that WWII really came down to a battle of quantity over quality. Technologically, Germany was 10 years ahead of everyone else. Furthermore, their weapons were amazingly well-engineered. But they didn't have the facilities and infrastructure to produce in large quantities.
And that's what the USA had -- tons of natural resources, lots of factories, lots of fairly untouchable infrastructure with which to crank out a lot of weapons. Never mind the weapons were of inferior quality (i.e. The Sherman) we just had so many, we overwhelmed the Germans with the sheer number.
And what WWII American doughboy didn't desire a Luger pistol off any captured German soldier? That shows the quality of the German war machine, everybody wanted their stuff.
Witness how the American Forces and the Soviets were both racing to capture as much German technology as they could once it was clear the Nazis had lost the war. Both sides knew that the Germans were still, even as their empire fell, producing designs and weapons that were far in advance of what the allies could dream up.
Ah man. I loved the Intertec... One of the most useful machines of that era... Except that when it locked up, you had to remember to remove the floppies from the drive before you rebooted, or else you destroyed the boot block. For it's time, it was a very fast system, and the screen was better than most.
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You mean... like the TSA here in America?
Actually, Slavery is still legal, depending upon where you live.
We're sorry... Soooo. Sorrry...
At BP we're committed to environmental protection. That's why we're drilling even deeper than before, right to the bowels of hell to release Cuthulu.
Really, you're irked that they lied?
Dude, George Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4000 US troops DIED as a result of *that* lie. But nobody seems to be irked about that one. Everyone in the USA jokes about that one. Yeah it's a big joke.
100,000 dead -- that's like you having 9/11 happen every week or so. Hope you can sleep at night.
So, if I go through this backscatter machine wearing my tinfoil hat and I make another tinfoil hat for my groin (tinfoil underwear?), I take it that I'll be immediately tackled by security? Or does backscatter go right through tin foil?
It seems my choices are : wear a lead-suit, or go naked, since they are going to see you naked anyhow.
Also, let's say you're wearing an althetic cup?
Are they going to make you remove that to feel up your balls?
Excuse me, but if we are allowed to shoot a politician everytime he lies and/or reverses his stand on any issue, we might as well wipe out every federal and state and local post there is. All you need to do is watch the Daily Show *any* random day of the week, and they will run a bit involving a senator or congressman saying one thing and then show how a year earlier he/she said the exact opposite.
Our political process seems to *depend* upon mass amnesia, where, depending upon which way the wind blows politicians can reverse their stands on an issue and somehow we never take notice. Certainly, the media (with the notable exception of Comedy Central) never takes notice.
Just because *you heard them say* "images will not be saved" doesn't mean that after this incident they won't say "images are being saved in the interests of national security and to use as evidence when and if potential threats are intercepted, and the perpetrators brought to justice".
Or, they'll puill a Fox News and just lie saying "Images are not being saved." And then you can show them the images and ask "what about these?" And they'll respond "In this post 9/11 world, there will always be isolated incidents where the appearance of inpropriety occurs. But it's in the best interests of all to support this technology as it's our patriotic duty to keep America safe."
Yeah, I can't figure it out. People on the street shoot each other over liquor store robberies for a $100, but when your livelihood is affected to the tune of tens of thousands, people sit in their sofas watching American Idol.
Never mind some fisherman picking off BP execs, I'm shocked no one has been picking off mortgage brokers, bankers, and other high-ups that handed us the Great Depression, that will essentially, last for the remainer of our lives (all indicators point to things getting worse, not better, unless you're already in the top 1%).
Even more amsuing is that that south is filled with gun-nuts, you'd think that at least one of them would get riled up enough to do something. Amazing that they'll shoot at each other about a scratch on the pickup truck, but when it comes down to REAL things, they act like they have no power.
Maybe there's something to those chemtrails after all, as the populace is handing the country over to a few elite, with no fight whatsoever. John Carpenter's "They Live" is starting to look like a documentary. Where's the Hoffman lenses when you need them?
So what you're saying is: If you're going to commit a crime, commit the biggest crime you can, because the bigger the crime, the better it pays, and therefore, is worth the risk to your life/freedom.
That explains Bernie Madoff then. I would suggest then, that we ALL run Ponzi Schemes and get rich, go to jail for 150 years, but at least our families will be set for a few generations.
Your argument basically states that crime is OK if the crime is for $billions, but the mugger on the street who robs you of $60 at gunpoint is a drag on society that needs to be jailed for years at a rate of $100,000 per year.
Actually, they stole that "feature" from applications developed for SGI.
Remember, MS was copying their "high end enterprise" market-model from what used to occupy the high-end market in computing... SUN and SGI. Unix-based $20,000 workstations that had $50,000 applications loaded onto them.
There were tiered-pricing models back then as well. And if you wanted users to be able to "share" work, that cost more. And you had to keep paying yearly to "rent" your software.
You reallty think MS invented that kind of "rape your customers" approach? No, if they had, at least *that* would have been innovative. But sadly, it's just another aspect that they "borrowed" from the existing high-end market -- especially if you were trying to do broadcast-quality graphics back then.
The late 80's were filled with spinning chrome logos, mostly produced on very expensive SGI equipment (Although there was a $20,000 Difinicon board that worked with the IBM PC. It had it's own 68030 CPU for rendering and essentially just used the PC as a big power supply), but it was the software-models from that time that MS copied into NT Workstation and Server.
Google took over as the primary search engine because it was lightweight and fast. Now Google is adding bling that will turn it into Yahoo -- a search "portal"... And sooner or later, Google will become slow and bloated in the never-ending competition with Microsoft.
Which of course, means a new company will spring up, with a lightweight and fast search engine. It will be called something funny-sounding at first, and then, when more and more of us start using it, we'll just "_____" for that. Eventually MS and Google will fade away, still clubbing each other over the head, but this new company will start to dominate, until it too, goes public, gets an asswipe as a CEO and completely destroys itself.
And then the web starts all over again. With AOL and Yahoo. Hey, aren't they merging? Spooky!
Maybe we'll see a rise of Pointcast again. Or Beens.com Whatever. As long as it's not MS running the internet. Or Apple. Or Google. Man, I look back on black text on grey background fondly. Now get off my lawn!
Listen, the one common element has since 9/11 has been aircraft. So, ban aircraft. That'll finally make us "safe". But just because that may be too big a leap right away, ban international flights. Or just stop flying to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Ireland.
At what point are enough materials banned from flights that planes now go into the air mostly empty because so much has been banned that very little of anything gets onto planes?
I see a bright future in the shipping industry -- and by shipping, I mean boats. Fedex and UPS are going to have to stop flying as every fedex box could be a potential bomb.
There's one final solution for the USA that might make you safe. Isolationism. Close the borders, no flights in or out, put up walls on every border, make the economy domestic only (might be good to put your own people back to work), stop exports, stop imports, and ignore the rest of the world. I mean, you do that anyway, or perhaps you treat the rest of the world as if it *is* the USA.
Surprisingly, I suspect that if the USA were to follow that plan, there would be a worldwide drop in terrorism, mostly due to the fact that the USA would have pulled their troops out of all those other countries that they have troops in, and they'd stop sticking their noses in other people's business.
Just you wait until someone does blow up a plane and went through the body scanner. Sooner or later they will make a bomb from threads of C-4 or whatever, sew it into a set of pants and shirt, and then we'll have to fly naked because the TSA is scared of clothing.
They are already scared of shoes, toothpaste, hair gel, nail clippers, bottled water, yadda-yadd, ad-infinitum.
Here's what I don't get. We had the "shoe-bomber" which in turn, made the TSA remove and inspect our shoes. Then last year we had the "underwear-bomber"... So how come the TSA doesn't make us remove and inspect our underwear?
Just wait till some guy detonates a bomb he shoved up his ass. Then it's cavity searches for all.
And the airline industry will slowly crumble from pissed off passengers refusing to fly. Or we'll just accept it by that time, just as we now accept the humiliation we currently go through.
No, but it's something I pay a lot of money for. It would be one thing if the flight was $25 and I was hassled. But it's not. The flight is over $100 each way (easily) plus extras if I check a bag. And you don't even get a meal anymore. So just so we're clear, it's more expensive, you get less, and it's more of a hassle.
I'd deal with the hassle if it was less expensive and you got more legroom. But you don't.
For what I spend to fly, I could have a very nice dinner with an attractive lady AND get stellar service from the restaurant (and possibly stellar service from the lady as well).
So, what am I getting from the airline? I'm treated as criminal from the moment I enter the airport, I'm crammed into an aluminum tube (if I'm lucky and the flight isn't canceled or oversold) that is noisy and smells bad, I get nothing but a coke and some peanuts. And when you add up the total hours spent from door to door, flying is only marginally faster than some other means (for short trips). When you're going NY to LA, that's a different story. So my question to you is: What am I getting for my money? Shouldn't I be treated better as a customer? This is the only capitalistic society I know of where the customer is always wrong.
Seriously, those screaming Obamacare is socialism need to take a hard look at the rest of their society before making a complaint -- because what we've got here sure isn't capitalism and democracy. I'm not sure what it is, but I know it's not that.
In a Capitalistic Society there is SUPPOSED to be competition. That is, anyone is free to start up a company and compete on price, or quality, or any other standard they can compete on.
So, why can't someone start an airline that doesn't require going through security? I see a market for this as we're all fed up with airport security. I'll bet passengers would even pay double to not have to stand in a line for 2 hours only to have the flight canceled and they have to do it all over again tomorrow.
I'd think this is something the Tea Baggers could get behind since it's about capitalism and smaller government. If some dipshit wants to try hijacking the plane in flight, the passengers are free to get out of their seats and beat the guy to death. Also, the airline I propose starting won't oversell every flight and then ask people to take a later flight in exchange for worthless vouchers.
Also, my airline will go back to having good-looking stewardesses in short skirts. It's about time there was some competition in this game. I wonder if I can get Richard Branson on-board with this idea? You can bet that Virgin Galactic won't have these kind of body-scanners to go into space.
Are you asking if you bought the *distribution rights* to a song? Well, first you need to be a record company. It might be easier if the song you are distributing was your song that you wrote, performed and recorded yourself. Even then you might not be immune as ASCAP might want fees, and/or sue if they feel your song is too similar to another artists (and never mind if you sampled anything).
If you're just saying that you walked into Walmart, bought a CD and shared it, well, then you're guilty of copyright infringment as you do not have the rights to distribute said music. So says the law that is owned by big business. I hope you didn't just crawl from under a rock in outer mongolia because I thought *everyone* already knows this. What do you think this story is about? A speeding ticket?
I say she declare herself "Too Big To Fail" and get a TARP bailout at 0% interest, just like those scumbag Wall Street Fatcats. Then she can pay back the loan over the course of 1.5 million years.
Dude; have you ever been on the recieving end of a "bill" in collections?
What evidence was presented to the collection agency that you didn't pay your bill. NONE. Yet, the "big company" that says you owe them money is assumed to be right, and the collection agency then starts the harassment process which can include calling you all hours of the day and night and messing with your credit history.
I just spent FOUR MONTHS fighting with a collection agency over a Verizon/Direct-TV billing error. I had been billed by Direct TV even though I had paid Verizon for the services. Verizon was supposed to have paid them, but didn't, so Direct TV then sent the bill to me. When I explained to Direct TV that it had been paid via Verizon, they sent the bill to a collection agency.
I faxed the agency a good amount of documentation, including a REFUND CHECK I recieved from Direct TV that covered the unused portion of my pro-rated last month of service. I also showed my Verizon bills that contained Direct-TV billing and payment through Verizon.
So, as of today, the collection agency (I called them) advised me that my balance is now zero, apparently, I finally got Verizon and Direct TV to talk to each other and they agreeed it was a billing error. They claim my account will be out of collections next week.
This is after spending hours and hours of my life on the phone explaining and re-explaining the situation, faxing people, writing letters and doing everything in my power to resolve the situation.
Now, where is the APOLOGY from either Verizon or Direct TV? Who do I get to bill for the lost hours of my life and productivity I spent to fix this issue between two giant companies? Where's the admission from the Collection Agency that they were wrong to ASSUME that I was a CRIMINAL?
I'll tell you where it is: NOWHERE.
When the Jury sees "BIG FACELESS COMPANY" versus "Joe Shmoe", they always assume that Big Faceless Company is always right. Never mind that Big Companies like BP constantly screw everyone they can, and anyone that assumes that Big Company is always right is a fool.
The fact that we now allow these companies to spend endless amounts of money buying political offices and manipulating our democracy scares me to the core.
Gee you're right. And seeing that we have hundreds of thousands of criminals already in jail, all crime should be stopped by now. After all, we've seen how many people spend the rest of their lives in jail, so the example should be set -- DON'T MURDER. And yet, murder goes on.
Hows that war on Drugs going for you?
Has it stopped... no, has it even SLOWED the flow of drugs, or the use of drugs?
Heck, we've got two border agents in jail for attempting to stop a known drug traffiker. Actually, they might be out by now, gotta look that one up.
It has nothing to do with legality or illegality, it has to do with making everyone in America a criminal in some way, usually by having them violate laws they don't even understand.
For example, you are probably in violation of some tax code, you just don't know it yet. While the police haven't busted down your door, yet, it's only a matter of time before the USA is a giant armed camp and we are all criminals.
I was going to say that the RIAA should pay her to take them. Due to "Striesand Effect", those songs could become popular if the RIAA *doesn't* want you to have 'em. Come to think of it, maybe that's why these verdicts are so outrageous, because the RIAA wants the rest of us to download those crap songs.
Frankly, "stealing" these songs could be more public service than theft. If only stealing them made them actually disappear, but that's not how digital copies work.
So, if she were a mentally unstable 13-year old girl who now kills herself over this judgement, is the RIAA liable for cyber-bullying?
Didn't Jeff Goldblum predict this happening in the movie? "Life finds a way" ?
This is why you NEVER mix dinosaur DNA with frogs! "We won't make those same mistakes again." "Of course not, you'll make a whole new set of mistakes!" (The second film had some magnificent sarcastic dialog).
There's a *REASON* 99.9% of fan fiction doesn't get turned into the next episode. How many Lt. Mary Sue's do we really need? I think there was one rare instance where some Xena fan-fic got published as a book... that was about it.
Women writers tend to make a Han-Solo/Luke or Kirk/Spock love fest, while men tend to write stories where the hero lands on an alien planet inhabited by sex-starved babes in bikinis.
Basically it's trash writing and most of the time, it shows that most people should never even get near a keyboard.
Influenza kills more people per year than 9/11. In fact, we'd have to have 9/11 happen about once per month to equal what Influenza does. Now, when you get on a plane, for the next "X" hours, you're breathing recycled air that contains the viruses of everyone else on the plane.
If you want to kill alot of people, infect yourself with the virulent strain of the flu you can find, and board an aircraft. No bombs required. No knife, no gun, no metal of any type. Just the flu.
All this security theater is to prevent what? A hijacking? Hijackings are over. No one will ever sit in their seat and be quiet ever again during a hijacking. The whole plane will get up and kick the ass of whoever tries to hijack a plane. It doesn't even matter if he's got a gun, he doesn't have enough bullets to kill everyone. It doesn't matter if he has a bomb, the people in the plane will consider themselves heroes and attack the guy anyhow, to prevent him from completing whatever plan he may have.
So what is the point of all this theater? To protect the airplane itself? That's my guess. It's cheaper for airlines to spend millions in federally funded security than it is to continually replace aluminum cigars which they would have to pay for out of their own profits.
It's clear that they don't care about people, otherwise, they'd prevent anyone who is ill from boarding a plane. I mean, seriously, terrorists need to get a clue. Sure, bombs make "terror" in that they get you in the news and make people scared, but seriously, if you want to actually kill people, all you need is a virus.
I've been telling people for years that WWII really came down to a battle of quantity over quality. Technologically, Germany was 10 years ahead of everyone else. Furthermore, their weapons were amazingly well-engineered. But they didn't have the facilities and infrastructure to produce in large quantities.
And that's what the USA had -- tons of natural resources, lots of factories, lots of fairly untouchable infrastructure with which to crank out a lot of weapons. Never mind the weapons were of inferior quality (i.e. The Sherman) we just had so many, we overwhelmed the Germans with the sheer number.
And what WWII American doughboy didn't desire a Luger pistol off any captured German soldier? That shows the quality of the German war machine, everybody wanted their stuff.
Witness how the American Forces and the Soviets were both racing to capture as much German technology as they could once it was clear the Nazis had lost the war. Both sides knew that the Germans were still, even as their empire fell, producing designs and weapons that were far in advance of what the allies could dream up.
Ah man. I loved the Intertec... One of the most useful machines of that era... Except that when it locked up, you had to remember to remove the floppies from the drive before you rebooted, or else you destroyed the boot block. For it's time, it was a very fast system, and the screen was better than most.