And later found out..wasn't that they were being cheap...but, just not as accustomed to drinking liquids as cold as we were.
Uhhm, ice is cheaper than coke. So how can it be cheap to give you more coke? I always order my coke with no ice so that I don't get ripped off by paying a couple bucks for a shot of coke in a cup of ice. And when the ice starts to melt I can even finish it cause it's so disgusting all watered down like that. I guess it's whatever you're use to. I travel for the different customs too.
I gotta agree. The guy could be telling the truth but I got the distinct impression he made it up. If it was truthful, I think he would have included the racist part up front. And most racists aren't bold enough to say "nigger" aloud in public. Also, why would he have a talk with the staff about the Texan, how did the staff catch up to the Texan, and then this guy stuck around to observe that conversation? What rule did he break that the staff would intervene? Or is this guy gonna come back and say the Texan picked some old lady's pocket too. I think you're right, I call bullshit on that.
I've traveled to about a dozen different countries and, as an American, I keep a low profile. Most people I've met abroad are polite enough (as polite as a city-dweller can be). I've even been to France a couple of times and was always treated in a courteous fashion. But I'd end up meeting British tourists from time to time and in almost every case they have proven themselves to be the biggest pricks on the planet. Maybe not to other people, I wouldn't know, but as soon as they find out you're an American, they won't shut up with the insults.
One time, I was in a bar in Amsterdam, alone having a drink. I ordered another just as a couple of English tourists came in the place and they heard my accent. Now I was alone and not talking to anyone, except to say, "can I have another Heineken please?" These guys came right over and started bitching about how we live in the most backward country and then started going off about our gun laws and all of that. At first, I was polite and just said, "yeah, I don't agree with many laws in my country either." I then tried to turn away and go back to my drink. But they wouldn't shut up. Eventually I had to say, "look I just came in here for a drink, I don't care what your opinion is, I didn't ask for it." I've had at least two other similiar incidents like that and I've never had an incident like that where the person wasn't British.
My point in all of this is that the British are everything that they hate in Americans. Obnoxious and overbearing (albeit in a prissy way). That's why they hate us so much. They see too much of us in them. I'm sick of hearing the British bitch to us about Iraq too. If you don't want to be in Iraq, go bitch to your prime minister first. We're not forcing you to be there. The French can bitch, they stuck to their principles, you can't. And we'd have a much harder time staying in Iraq if we lost our closest ally there, which I consider a good thing. So leave!
I think this was just another case of a British guy wanting to bitch at Americans so he made up a story that would let him do it. They especially hate George Bush (but then hey, who doesn't) so he made the guy a Texan in his story. It doesn't matter that Bush is a New Englander because he's adopted his phony Texan ranch and his phony Texan accent and all of a sudden, we're all Texans now. The British people and our other "close" allies, the Israelis hate us so much because they don't have enough control over their own governments to stop being our allies when we go rogue. In their impotence, they transfer their hatred of their own goverments onto us. Well guess what? We don't have any control over our own government either.
Now if that story is in fact true, then that Texan is going to go home, poorly treated, and tell all his friends and family about it. He'll end up a little more racist and jingoistic and so will all of those in his circle. He'll care even less about the opinion of international community when he votes this November. Good job there!
I work on projects that require US citizenship, top secret clearance, polygraphs. There's no way my job or our work will ever be outsourced.
Yeah they said that in the Soviet Union once too. And as they neglected the general economy and dumped more and more money into defense, it wasn't too long thereafter that the soldiers and other government workers went unpaid. So your job may never be outsourced, but that's no guarantee it'll stick around either. There were a number of prominent economists who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union (almost to the year) back in the 60s. Most of them also predicted our collapse to follow 10 to 20 years after them, provided that we didn't readjust our spending patterns. Well, we've adjusted them alright, we put even more into defense. Defense spending is a bubble too. It can't keep on going up forever and it's already had a drastic effect on our economy.
Great, keep that up! Since you government defense workers represent one of the largest areas of public spending, they'll be sure to keep the wars coming. And then they'll tax us more to fund their wars, driving the more productive private-sector companies to send even more jobs offshore or go out of business altogether. Most new jobs these days are public sector at a time when the rest of the world is moving away from socialism. You're working for the very people who are destroying this country. You're working to support wars that make us less safe, are almost always illegal and kill far more innocent people than soldiers. It doesn't matter who is in office, there is always an illegal war going on. I could never work in the defense industry because that would make me a traitor to my country and an accessory to murder. Ignorance is no excuse anymore than it was for German soldiers who were "just following orders," like in WWII. In fact it's worse, because defense workers haven't been drafted, they're there by choice.
I'm sorry if I came across as hostile. It isn't personal. I just live in a town that's seen a big upsurge of defense jobs and I greatly resent it. Especially when politicians are always excusing and promoting outsourcing by saying, "why not, if you can get the job done as good as, if not better." They're always implying that we're overpaid, underskilled workers, when America has the best programmers in the world. This country needs another Henry Ford to remind the CEOs that no one will be able to afford their products if we're all working at Walmart.
I guess I could always retrain. Haven't heard about what I should retrain for yet. I do get a laugh that a moron with no skills who was elected president is telling me that I'm not educated enough to get a job (well, actually I have one, but it won't last, I see people let go everyday). I guess the next step up is rocket science, although it doesn't look like NASA has a bright future either.
I'll second that. They're pieces of junk with no quality control. I have an AV140 (it was bout $400 at the time) and the battery barely gets me to work in the morning. Sometimes it'll last less than 30 minutes, sometimes I can get a hour. As I understand it, it's kind of a crap shoot as to whether your unit will be like this or not. It also gets into a funky state where it'll play two songs at the same time. Sometimes it crashes for no reason and sometimes it becomes totally unresponsive (even the off button won't work) until the batteries run down. I hardly ever use it anymore because it's such a pain. It's the worst piece of electronics I've ever purchased.
I am so fed up with you people. First off, let me say that I am a staunch conservative and I think Bush is the worst president this nation has ever had. I wouldn't vote for him if I had a gun to my head. Kerry promises to do the same things that Bush is doing. When a candidate promises to do something bad, you can rest assured that those are the only promises they intend to keep.
To me, there is no difference between Kerry and Bush and I'm sick to death of this "game" of picking the lesser or two evils every election. If you vote for the least of two evils, then you are voting for evil. You are giving your mandate for evil to rule you. So if Kerry gets elected and goes to war with Iran (or whomever he goes to war with because I GUARANTEE you he will), then YOU are partly responsible for those dead soldiers and civilians. YOU become responsible for the reduced security that this nation will then face.
As for balance of power between the branches, the founders didn't mean it to be balance of power between the republicans and democrats, they meant the actual branches of government. Most of the republicans and democrats (incl. Kerry) threw these balances out the window when they let the president go to war without a congressional declaration (required by constitution). Democrats support measures like the "authorization for force", because they know that their time will come again (because of people like you) and they don't want to be bound by the constitution any more than the republicans do.
Kerry and Bush share the same beliefs on most major issues. They're both Skull & Bones members (both admitted this on Meet the Press), which is a luciferian society that Hitler belonged to. They're even distant cousins, connected through the British throne. The powers that be set up this system to guarantee that they'll stay in power, while at the same time, giving you the illusion of a choice in how you're ruled. Meanwhile, the true left and right in this country stay divided (and conquered) and those at the top swing the pedulum in such a way as to ensure it lands wherever they want it to. The left becomes satiated when a democrat comes into office and the right becomes satiated when a republican comes into office. It doesn't matter if Clinton dismantles welfare or Bush dramatically inflates government, it's all an illusion for the suckers.
Here's an idea, don't vote at all unless you truly support who you're voting for. A slut cannot claim to value their virginity when they'll sleep with anyone. Nor can a voter value their privelge but saying, "I'll vote for X because he can't be as bad a Y." THAT'S true voter apathy. However, if enough people stop voting, then our leaders can claim no mandate over us. We then have the right to reject the massive debt they pile upon us. Election monitors deem elections illegitimate if they have something like less than 30% of the potential electorate voting. That is a number we should strive for. Only then can we speak of serious reform.
As a friend from England said, 'you keep saying you have a liberal and conservative party. We see it as you have a conservative and a more-conservative party.'
Given that conservatives are for smaller government, I'll never understand this sentiment. If we were conservative, we'd probably have much better relations with the world since our government wouldn't have trillions of dollars to impose it's will upon the world. I guess the English actually believe George Bush when he claims to be a conservative. And if they believe that, I have some weapons of mass distruction to sell them.;-)
I guess people are so often confused because we have a mix of socialist and fascist trends in our society. The largest corporate interests petition to government to socialize portions of the economy (ex. heavy regulations) in order to eliminate the competetion. Then they use their new status as monopolists (or blatant colluders) to order the government to do their bidding (ie. wars, anti-union laws, tax breaks, or to direct govt. spending their way). So now we have fewer companies in control of more assets, which undermines capitalism, and we have a behemoth state that becomes the world's largest consumer. That's not a bad thing if the money were directed towards infrastructure (ie, roads, schools, etc.) or capital investments, but we spend it on war, bribes and bureaucracy. We are not at all conservative economically or politically.
War and Christrianity, does not a conservative make. War-mongering christians are just the voting block that republicans have targeted, whereas the democrats have gone after immigrants and hedonists. The voting block does not make the label, the ideology does.
Really? About six or seven months back, I used to get spam over AOL IM a few times a day. Is it possible you've restricted chatting to anyone who's not in your buddy list? I couldn't do that since it would interfere with work.
I guess I'd still prefer a few times a day to the thousand spams a week I get on my home account. I'm sure I've thrown away quite a few legitimate e-mails that weren't properly filtered. Whereas with IM, I can always tell that anastasia527183618, probably isn't a friend or coworker.
I don't know about that. I get a signal in the mid-90s and I have a very stable mount. As for the dish type, I had assumed they were standard (at least for Dish Network). I live in Colorado Springs and we get Florida like thunderstorms too. A simple heavy rainstorm or snowstorm won't do much to the reception, but a true thunderstorm will take it out for all but the most minor blips. Given the benefits over cable and the fact that the quality is perfect most of the time, I put up with it, but if we had more thunderstorms, I'd probably go back to cable too. I don't think it has anything to do with the dish, it's just the electical interference. Actually, my friend's cellphone does the same thing too, but apparently only after he dropped it (can't be good).
Who would have thought it would be the U.S. that became the world government?
All of those people would have thought it. From our perspective, the only choice we're given in this world is world government with the US in charge (typically the neo-con view) or world governement with the UN in charge ('democratic' side). Those of us against world government are against it since you have no where to go if you don't like the political system.
The other reason we hate it so much is because we recognize that in order to integrate countries, you need to bring the poor ones up. And that is done by transferring wealth from the rich ones. This has clearly been happening for some time (even during US empire modes of globalization). It means that we are guaranteed economic decline for many years to come as investments continue to shift to China and India.
True conservatives are as much against US empire as they are against UN world government. We know that the pendulum gets swung in such a way as to come to a rest on world government. Republicans and democrats are on the same team on this one. Most everyone else is on the other team.
Oh, and before someone pipes up and says how great globalization has been for our economy, try raising a family of four on a single salary. People were able to do this all the time in the 70s when we had that "monster" Carter in office destroying out economy. In real terms though, we're far worse off now. Most economic numbers out of Washington are pure fiction.
Whenever the debate between a random universe and a deterministic universe comes up, people always pull quantum mechanics out of their pocket and say, "Since we can never predict the future (Heisenberg), then the universe must be random." The inability predict the future has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the universe is deterministic. It just means that you can't know the future without changing it. That's just a reassertion of deterministic principles in itself. If our observations of the universe changes it, then that is an extension of determinism as our decision to observe is based on our genetics and upbringing. Randomness is only our inability to understand the causes behind effects.
People just don't want to live in a deterministic universe because they want to believe they have free will. Well, if you lived in a random universe and your leg just started kicking out and flailing without any decision, chemical factor or message from the brain, then would you be any more free? It seems to me that a person only has freedom in a deterministic universe anyway. Only then can my decisions have any consequence.
I'd hold on to your own view, if I were you. Most tech people I know are making less than they were 5 years ago. In fact a common pattern at my company is to fire people and then hire them back at considerably less. I would love to have your 1.5% increases. I suspect, in a few more years, you'll be looking back on them rather fondly too.
I have one of those newer video archos' but you can't put Rockbox (open source os) on them which is the only thing that makes an Archos worthwhile. The have crappy quality control and their OS sucks. My AV140 will often play two songs at once (bug, not a feature) and sometimes it'll lock up and not turn off until the battery dies. It doesn't take too long for it to die either, I'm lucky if I get a hour and a half of play out of it. If you do go with Archos, try and get one of the older Recorder models since Rockbox solves many of these problems. You won't have video, but do you really need to watch DivX movies on a 1" screen?
Gimme a break. It is not bad at all at cross-platform. Where I work, we're moving jars from windows to solaris to linux all the time without a hitch. I'll even go as far to say that we don't even consider cross-platform problems because they never come up. It just works -- yes, in reality too.
Multiple GUI APIs. How sorry I am for you that you have a choice. You do know that you don't have to use them all at the same time, right? Oh, but I don't want to get you started on that. I guess you can stick with C and it's 'single' GUI API.
I think people who bash java don't really use it professionally. But everyone I've met who does use it wouldn't go back to anything else (except maybe the former Smalltalkers). I'm really at a loss to explain all of the Slashdot antipathy towards Java other than some people prefer to do things the hard way. I've got too much work to do without wasting time on C, assembly or punchcards for that matter.
"Why do you have to prepare for everything?" In Perl, if I want to do something, I do it. It takes a line or two of code, and I'm done. In Java, to do something I have to prepare for it AND do it.
Well you have to prepare your computer by turning it on. You have to prepare your typing by lifting your fingers. Each language has it's own "steps" to complete any task and your Java example make a lot more sense to me than your perl example. That saves me a lot more time in the long run.
I guess I once felt the way you did when dealing with java streams. You're always constructing streams by passing a stream into another stream's constructor. But now I love it. It offers such tremendous flexibility and it's akin to unix piping. Do you complain that cat doesn't have a 'cat only lines with a certain pattern' option or do you use the cat command to prepare the grep command for a more elegant solution?
Why bother? Saltwater aquariums grow quite out of control on their own. After scraping coraline algae off of everything once or twice a month, you'll be glad just to have things grow slow. Or try trimming back the explosive growth of Anathelia. All of my coral quickly got too big for my tank (when I had one).
Plus, you probably don't have enough dissovled minerals in your tank to do this without throwing off the balance of other things. It might work if you do frequent water changes, but I don't think that's too healthy for an established tank either.
I did both, in a way. I went to RIT for a CS degree. The teachers were pathetic and, just like before college, I realized that I'd have to learn it all on my own (and usually did so in the first week of class). I was after the piece of paper that would get me a good job. But history and political science are more of a passion for me and I got a lot more out of those classes than the CS ones. So whenever I had the elective space, I took these courses. I came out of RIT with a CS degree but I took about twice as many history and poly sci courses. I couldn't believe how many people were taking differential equations for their CS degree. They didn't have to, they just assumed it would be better for their degree. I took what I wanted to while still making sure that the piece of paper meant something to someone. College should be about education, not technical training in Modula-2.
Actually, international law forbids the taking of land by force. We made that illegal in order to prevent another Hitler. Your examples are from a period before these laws (except Yugo, which was a result of Soviet disintegration). But the Jews were wronged and now international law no longer applies to Israel (or the US apparently). They're like abused children who grew up to become abusers themselves. And just as it's not an excuse to abuse children because you were abused yourself, neither does Israel have the right to treat Palestinians like "two-legged beasts (Menachem Begin - in 1982 Knesset)."
Israel is in violation of countless UN resolutions and those resolutions are not inspired by anti-Semitism (Arabs are Semites). You steal land, then you're a criminal. This is a black & white issue for most of the world and for anyone with common sense. You quote a 1947 UN partition plan without taking the dozens of resolutions meant to curb Israel's criminal behavior. They're far more guilty than Sadaam was of violating UN resolutions and unlike the Iraqis, they actually have nuclear weapons and are clearly destabilizing the Middle East.
Since I don't want peanut butter on my monitor I'm going to continue to call it (hard-G) GIF. That's what most people say and that's what I was lead to believe by some CompuServer FAQ when I first encountered GIF files. I had thought, at the time (late 80s), that they owned the patent.
I like being able to start watching a recorded program before it's finished recording. That's the biggest plus of a DVR over a VCR. That and not running out of tape. I wait 15 minutes into an hour long show to avoid the commercials and then hit play.
Also, my Dish 721 records the actual MPEG stream making the recording and live image indistinguishable. This is much better than TiVo. VCR recordings look pretty crummy on a big screen TV by comparison. I also have a dual tuner which replaces my need for two clunky VCRs. My particular reciever also doesn't charge a monthly fee for the program guide, which makes programming so much simpler than setting up a VCR (and I use to set them up all the time).
Case in point; it was too hard to get enough explosives to damage the WTC buildings, but highjack a couple of airplanes fueled to cross the continent and you have the means to do so.
Actually, the seismological readings at the moment the buildings started to fall would indicate that it wasn't too hard get enough explosives to bring down the buildings. By your logic, building #7 fell because it was just its time or it was having sympathy pains for the first two towers. Larry Silverstien (owner of the WTC properties) pretty much admitted this on a PBS interview when he referred to the decision to "pull" the building.
I just got a Canon Powershot S1 IS that seems to fit many of your requirements. 4 AA batteries, 10x optical zoom, CF card (or microdrive if so inclined), one of the smallests ultrazooms out there. Best of all, it has an image stabilization feature that can give you an extra couple of stops and it has a movie mode that's on par with DV cams (640x480 @ 30 fps).
It's only three mega-pixels, but I don't care about printing 8x10s. The only thing I hate about it is the lens cap falls off if you so much as sneeze. Someone should get fired for that one. Oh yeah, the pictures are great.
--chris
Re:Drop the paralyzing posturing
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I actually heard a CNN or FOX commentator claim that Bin Laden (Saudi) directs all Palestinian suicide bombers. I have found the quality of the news coverage in this crisis has been in serious decline since the event. If our government (US) and the media don't start using their heads more, we're going to be in for a very dark future. I don't want a war based on Israel's self-defeating model. Although force will be necessary, this is the type of war that will require us to, "think our way out of it," if you'll pardon my use of a Babylon 5 quote. Quite frankly, I don't have enough faith in our government to handle this properly.
Re:Drop the paralyzing posturing
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Hitler wasn't elected. He only got about 25% of the vote in 1932; von Hindenburg was elected with about 38% of the vote. After the election, German companies urged von Hindenburg to take Hitler as a vice chancellor. Hitler refused, and further urging coerced von Hindenburg to offer Hitler a chancellorship. Hitler agreed and a year later von Hindenburg fell ill and died, leaving Hitler as sole Chancellor. He promptly had himself named dictator and the rest followed.
But whoever wrote it (I honestly don't know the name), took it to another network and with some cosmetic changes, aired it as Babalon 5.
Babylon 5 was being pitched since before TNG. It has no connection to Star Trek.
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Uhhm, ice is cheaper than coke. So how can it be cheap to give you more coke? I always order my coke with no ice so that I don't get ripped off by paying a couple bucks for a shot of coke in a cup of ice. And when the ice starts to melt I can even finish it cause it's so disgusting all watered down like that. I guess it's whatever you're use to. I travel for the different customs too.
I gotta agree. The guy could be telling the truth but I got the distinct impression he made it up. If it was truthful, I think he would have included the racist part up front. And most racists aren't bold enough to say "nigger" aloud in public. Also, why would he have a talk with the staff about the Texan, how did the staff catch up to the Texan, and then this guy stuck around to observe that conversation? What rule did he break that the staff would intervene? Or is this guy gonna come back and say the Texan picked some old lady's pocket too. I think you're right, I call bullshit on that.
I've traveled to about a dozen different countries and, as an American, I keep a low profile. Most people I've met abroad are polite enough (as polite as a city-dweller can be). I've even been to France a couple of times and was always treated in a courteous fashion. But I'd end up meeting British tourists from time to time and in almost every case they have proven themselves to be the biggest pricks on the planet. Maybe not to other people, I wouldn't know, but as soon as they find out you're an American, they won't shut up with the insults.
One time, I was in a bar in Amsterdam, alone having a drink. I ordered another just as a couple of English tourists came in the place and they heard my accent. Now I was alone and not talking to anyone, except to say, "can I have another Heineken please?" These guys came right over and started bitching about how we live in the most backward country and then started going off about our gun laws and all of that. At first, I was polite and just said, "yeah, I don't agree with many laws in my country either." I then tried to turn away and go back to my drink. But they wouldn't shut up. Eventually I had to say, "look I just came in here for a drink, I don't care what your opinion is, I didn't ask for it." I've had at least two other similiar incidents like that and I've never had an incident like that where the person wasn't British.
My point in all of this is that the British are everything that they hate in Americans. Obnoxious and overbearing (albeit in a prissy way). That's why they hate us so much. They see too much of us in them. I'm sick of hearing the British bitch to us about Iraq too. If you don't want to be in Iraq, go bitch to your prime minister first. We're not forcing you to be there. The French can bitch, they stuck to their principles, you can't. And we'd have a much harder time staying in Iraq if we lost our closest ally there, which I consider a good thing. So leave!
I think this was just another case of a British guy wanting to bitch at Americans so he made up a story that would let him do it. They especially hate George Bush (but then hey, who doesn't) so he made the guy a Texan in his story. It doesn't matter that Bush is a New Englander because he's adopted his phony Texan ranch and his phony Texan accent and all of a sudden, we're all Texans now. The British people and our other "close" allies, the Israelis hate us so much because they don't have enough control over their own governments to stop being our allies when we go rogue. In their impotence, they transfer their hatred of their own goverments onto us. Well guess what? We don't have any control over our own government either.
Now if that story is in fact true, then that Texan is going to go home, poorly treated, and tell all his friends and family about it. He'll end up a little more racist and jingoistic and so will all of those in his circle. He'll care even less about the opinion of international community when he votes this November. Good job there!
Yeah they said that in the Soviet Union once too. And as they neglected the general economy and dumped more and more money into defense, it wasn't too long thereafter that the soldiers and other government workers went unpaid. So your job may never be outsourced, but that's no guarantee it'll stick around either. There were a number of prominent economists who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union (almost to the year) back in the 60s. Most of them also predicted our collapse to follow 10 to 20 years after them, provided that we didn't readjust our spending patterns. Well, we've adjusted them alright, we put even more into defense. Defense spending is a bubble too. It can't keep on going up forever and it's already had a drastic effect on our economy.
Great, keep that up! Since you government defense workers represent one of the largest areas of public spending, they'll be sure to keep the wars coming. And then they'll tax us more to fund their wars, driving the more productive private-sector companies to send even more jobs offshore or go out of business altogether. Most new jobs these days are public sector at a time when the rest of the world is moving away from socialism. You're working for the very people who are destroying this country. You're working to support wars that make us less safe, are almost always illegal and kill far more innocent people than soldiers. It doesn't matter who is in office, there is always an illegal war going on. I could never work in the defense industry because that would make me a traitor to my country and an accessory to murder. Ignorance is no excuse anymore than it was for German soldiers who were "just following orders," like in WWII. In fact it's worse, because defense workers haven't been drafted, they're there by choice.
I'm sorry if I came across as hostile. It isn't personal. I just live in a town that's seen a big upsurge of defense jobs and I greatly resent it. Especially when politicians are always excusing and promoting outsourcing by saying, "why not, if you can get the job done as good as, if not better." They're always implying that we're overpaid, underskilled workers, when America has the best programmers in the world. This country needs another Henry Ford to remind the CEOs that no one will be able to afford their products if we're all working at Walmart.
I guess I could always retrain. Haven't heard about what I should retrain for yet. I do get a laugh that a moron with no skills who was elected president is telling me that I'm not educated enough to get a job (well, actually I have one, but it won't last, I see people let go everyday). I guess the next step up is rocket science, although it doesn't look like NASA has a bright future either.
I'll second that. They're pieces of junk with no quality control. I have an AV140 (it was bout $400 at the time) and the battery barely gets me to work in the morning. Sometimes it'll last less than 30 minutes, sometimes I can get a hour. As I understand it, it's kind of a crap shoot as to whether your unit will be like this or not. It also gets into a funky state where it'll play two songs at the same time. Sometimes it crashes for no reason and sometimes it becomes totally unresponsive (even the off button won't work) until the batteries run down. I hardly ever use it anymore because it's such a pain. It's the worst piece of electronics I've ever purchased.
I am so fed up with you people. First off, let me say that I am a staunch conservative and I think Bush is the worst president this nation has ever had. I wouldn't vote for him if I had a gun to my head. Kerry promises to do the same things that Bush is doing. When a candidate promises to do something bad, you can rest assured that those are the only promises they intend to keep.
To me, there is no difference between Kerry and Bush and I'm sick to death of this "game" of picking the lesser or two evils every election. If you vote for the least of two evils, then you are voting for evil. You are giving your mandate for evil to rule you. So if Kerry gets elected and goes to war with Iran (or whomever he goes to war with because I GUARANTEE you he will), then YOU are partly responsible for those dead soldiers and civilians. YOU become responsible for the reduced security that this nation will then face.
As for balance of power between the branches, the founders didn't mean it to be balance of power between the republicans and democrats, they meant the actual branches of government. Most of the republicans and democrats (incl. Kerry) threw these balances out the window when they let the president go to war without a congressional declaration (required by constitution). Democrats support measures like the "authorization for force", because they know that their time will come again (because of people like you) and they don't want to be bound by the constitution any more than the republicans do.
Kerry and Bush share the same beliefs on most major issues. They're both Skull & Bones members (both admitted this on Meet the Press), which is a luciferian society that Hitler belonged to. They're even distant cousins, connected through the British throne. The powers that be set up this system to guarantee that they'll stay in power, while at the same time, giving you the illusion of a choice in how you're ruled. Meanwhile, the true left and right in this country stay divided (and conquered) and those at the top swing the pedulum in such a way as to ensure it lands wherever they want it to. The left becomes satiated when a democrat comes into office and the right becomes satiated when a republican comes into office. It doesn't matter if Clinton dismantles welfare or Bush dramatically inflates government, it's all an illusion for the suckers.
Here's an idea, don't vote at all unless you truly support who you're voting for. A slut cannot claim to value their virginity when they'll sleep with anyone. Nor can a voter value their privelge but saying, "I'll vote for X because he can't be as bad a Y." THAT'S true voter apathy. However, if enough people stop voting, then our leaders can claim no mandate over us. We then have the right to reject the massive debt they pile upon us. Election monitors deem elections illegitimate if they have something like less than 30% of the potential electorate voting. That is a number we should strive for. Only then can we speak of serious reform.
Given that conservatives are for smaller government, I'll never understand this sentiment. If we were conservative, we'd probably have much better relations with the world since our government wouldn't have trillions of dollars to impose it's will upon the world. I guess the English actually believe George Bush when he claims to be a conservative. And if they believe that, I have some weapons of mass distruction to sell them. ;-)
I guess people are so often confused because we have a mix of socialist and fascist trends in our society. The largest corporate interests petition to government to socialize portions of the economy (ex. heavy regulations) in order to eliminate the competetion. Then they use their new status as monopolists (or blatant colluders) to order the government to do their bidding (ie. wars, anti-union laws, tax breaks, or to direct govt. spending their way). So now we have fewer companies in control of more assets, which undermines capitalism, and we have a behemoth state that becomes the world's largest consumer. That's not a bad thing if the money were directed towards infrastructure (ie, roads, schools, etc.) or capital investments, but we spend it on war, bribes and bureaucracy. We are not at all conservative economically or politically.
War and Christrianity, does not a conservative make. War-mongering christians are just the voting block that republicans have targeted, whereas the democrats have gone after immigrants and hedonists. The voting block does not make the label, the ideology does.
Really? About six or seven months back, I used to get spam over AOL IM a few times a day. Is it possible you've restricted chatting to anyone who's not in your buddy list? I couldn't do that since it would interfere with work.
I guess I'd still prefer a few times a day to the thousand spams a week I get on my home account. I'm sure I've thrown away quite a few legitimate e-mails that weren't properly filtered. Whereas with IM, I can always tell that anastasia527183618, probably isn't a friend or coworker.
I don't know about that. I get a signal in the mid-90s and I have a very stable mount. As for the dish type, I had assumed they were standard (at least for Dish Network). I live in Colorado Springs and we get Florida like thunderstorms too. A simple heavy rainstorm or snowstorm won't do much to the reception, but a true thunderstorm will take it out for all but the most minor blips. Given the benefits over cable and the fact that the quality is perfect most of the time, I put up with it, but if we had more thunderstorms, I'd probably go back to cable too. I don't think it has anything to do with the dish, it's just the electical interference. Actually, my friend's cellphone does the same thing too, but apparently only after he dropped it (can't be good).
All of those people would have thought it. From our perspective, the only choice we're given in this world is world government with the US in charge (typically the neo-con view) or world governement with the UN in charge ('democratic' side). Those of us against world government are against it since you have no where to go if you don't like the political system.
The other reason we hate it so much is because we recognize that in order to integrate countries, you need to bring the poor ones up. And that is done by transferring wealth from the rich ones. This has clearly been happening for some time (even during US empire modes of globalization). It means that we are guaranteed economic decline for many years to come as investments continue to shift to China and India.
True conservatives are as much against US empire as they are against UN world government. We know that the pendulum gets swung in such a way as to come to a rest on world government. Republicans and democrats are on the same team on this one. Most everyone else is on the other team.
Oh, and before someone pipes up and says how great globalization has been for our economy, try raising a family of four on a single salary. People were able to do this all the time in the 70s when we had that "monster" Carter in office destroying out economy. In real terms though, we're far worse off now. Most economic numbers out of Washington are pure fiction.
Whenever the debate between a random universe and a deterministic universe comes up, people always pull quantum mechanics out of their pocket and say, "Since we can never predict the future (Heisenberg), then the universe must be random." The inability predict the future has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the universe is deterministic. It just means that you can't know the future without changing it. That's just a reassertion of deterministic principles in itself. If our observations of the universe changes it, then that is an extension of determinism as our decision to observe is based on our genetics and upbringing. Randomness is only our inability to understand the causes behind effects.
People just don't want to live in a deterministic universe because they want to believe they have free will. Well, if you lived in a random universe and your leg just started kicking out and flailing without any decision, chemical factor or message from the brain, then would you be any more free? It seems to me that a person only has freedom in a deterministic universe anyway. Only then can my decisions have any consequence.
I'd hold on to your own view, if I were you. Most tech people I know are making less than they were 5 years ago. In fact a common pattern at my company is to fire people and then hire them back at considerably less. I would love to have your 1.5% increases. I suspect, in a few more years, you'll be looking back on them rather fondly too.
I have one of those newer video archos' but you can't put Rockbox (open source os) on them which is the only thing that makes an Archos worthwhile. The have crappy quality control and their OS sucks. My AV140 will often play two songs at once (bug, not a feature) and sometimes it'll lock up and not turn off until the battery dies. It doesn't take too long for it to die either, I'm lucky if I get a hour and a half of play out of it. If you do go with Archos, try and get one of the older Recorder models since Rockbox solves many of these problems. You won't have video, but do you really need to watch DivX movies on a 1" screen?
Gimme a break. It is not bad at all at cross-platform. Where I work, we're moving jars from windows to solaris to linux all the time without a hitch. I'll even go as far to say that we don't even consider cross-platform problems because they never come up. It just works -- yes, in reality too.
Multiple GUI APIs. How sorry I am for you that you have a choice. You do know that you don't have to use them all at the same time, right? Oh, but I don't want to get you started on that. I guess you can stick with C and it's 'single' GUI API.
I think people who bash java don't really use it professionally. But everyone I've met who does use it wouldn't go back to anything else (except maybe the former Smalltalkers). I'm really at a loss to explain all of the Slashdot antipathy towards Java other than some people prefer to do things the hard way. I've got too much work to do without wasting time on C, assembly or punchcards for that matter.
Well you have to prepare your computer by turning it on. You have to prepare your typing by lifting your fingers. Each language has it's own "steps" to complete any task and your Java example make a lot more sense to me than your perl example. That saves me a lot more time in the long run.
I guess I once felt the way you did when dealing with java streams. You're always constructing streams by passing a stream into another stream's constructor. But now I love it. It offers such tremendous flexibility and it's akin to unix piping. Do you complain that cat doesn't have a 'cat only lines with a certain pattern' option or do you use the cat command to prepare the grep command for a more elegant solution?
Why bother? Saltwater aquariums grow quite out of control on their own. After scraping coraline algae off of everything once or twice a month, you'll be glad just to have things grow slow. Or try trimming back the explosive growth of Anathelia. All of my coral quickly got too big for my tank (when I had one).
Plus, you probably don't have enough dissovled minerals in your tank to do this without throwing off the balance of other things. It might work if you do frequent water changes, but I don't think that's too healthy for an established tank either.
I did both, in a way. I went to RIT for a CS degree. The teachers were pathetic and, just like before college, I realized that I'd have to learn it all on my own (and usually did so in the first week of class). I was after the piece of paper that would get me a good job. But history and political science are more of a passion for me and I got a lot more out of those classes than the CS ones. So whenever I had the elective space, I took these courses. I came out of RIT with a CS degree but I took about twice as many history and poly sci courses. I couldn't believe how many people were taking differential equations for their CS degree. They didn't have to, they just assumed it would be better for their degree. I took what I wanted to while still making sure that the piece of paper meant something to someone. College should be about education, not technical training in Modula-2.
Actually, international law forbids the taking of land by force. We made that illegal in order to prevent another Hitler. Your examples are from a period before these laws (except Yugo, which was a result of Soviet disintegration). But the Jews were wronged and now international law no longer applies to Israel (or the US apparently). They're like abused children who grew up to become abusers themselves. And just as it's not an excuse to abuse children because you were abused yourself, neither does Israel have the right to treat Palestinians like "two-legged beasts (Menachem Begin - in 1982 Knesset)."
Israel is in violation of countless UN resolutions and those resolutions are not inspired by anti-Semitism (Arabs are Semites). You steal land, then you're a criminal. This is a black & white issue for most of the world and for anyone with common sense. You quote a 1947 UN partition plan without taking the dozens of resolutions meant to curb Israel's criminal behavior. They're far more guilty than Sadaam was of violating UN resolutions and unlike the Iraqis, they actually have nuclear weapons and are clearly destabilizing the Middle East.
Since I don't want peanut butter on my monitor I'm going to continue to call it (hard-G) GIF. That's what most people say and that's what I was lead to believe by some CompuServer FAQ when I first encountered GIF files. I had thought, at the time (late 80s), that they owned the patent.
--chris
I like being able to start watching a recorded program before it's finished recording. That's the biggest plus of a DVR over a VCR. That and not running out of tape. I wait 15 minutes into an hour long show to avoid the commercials and then hit play.
Also, my Dish 721 records the actual MPEG stream making the recording and live image indistinguishable. This is much better than TiVo. VCR recordings look pretty crummy on a big screen TV by comparison. I also have a dual tuner which replaces my need for two clunky VCRs. My particular reciever also doesn't charge a monthly fee for the program guide, which makes programming so much simpler than setting up a VCR (and I use to set them up all the time).
--chris
Actually, the seismological readings at the moment the buildings started to fall would indicate that it wasn't too hard get enough explosives to bring down the buildings. By your logic, building #7 fell because it was just its time or it was having sympathy pains for the first two towers. Larry Silverstien (owner of the WTC properties) pretty much admitted this on a PBS interview when he referred to the decision to "pull" the building.
I just got a Canon Powershot S1 IS that seems to fit many of your requirements. 4 AA batteries, 10x optical zoom, CF card (or microdrive if so inclined), one of the smallests ultrazooms out there. Best of all, it has an image stabilization feature that can give you an extra couple of stops and it has a movie mode that's on par with DV cams (640x480 @ 30 fps).
It's only three mega-pixels, but I don't care about printing 8x10s. The only thing I hate about it is the lens cap falls off if you so much as sneeze. Someone should get fired for that one. Oh yeah, the pictures are great.
--chris
I actually heard a CNN or FOX commentator claim that Bin Laden (Saudi) directs all Palestinian suicide bombers. I have found the quality of the news coverage in this crisis has been in serious decline since the event. If our government (US) and the media don't start using their heads more, we're going to be in for a very dark future. I don't want a war based on Israel's self-defeating model. Although force will be necessary, this is the type of war that will require us to, "think our way out of it," if you'll pardon my use of a Babylon 5 quote. Quite frankly, I don't have enough faith in our government to handle this properly.
Hitler wasn't elected. He only got about 25% of the vote in 1932; von Hindenburg was elected with about 38% of the vote. After the election, German companies urged von Hindenburg to take Hitler as a vice chancellor. Hitler refused, and further urging coerced von Hindenburg to offer Hitler a chancellorship. Hitler agreed and a year later von Hindenburg fell ill and died, leaving Hitler as sole Chancellor. He promptly had himself named dictator and the rest followed.
But whoever wrote it (I honestly don't know the name), took it to another network and with some cosmetic changes, aired it as Babalon 5. Babylon 5 was being pitched since before TNG. It has no connection to Star Trek.