Authorization for use of military force != declaration of war, you imbecile.
Hint: Only Congress gets to declare wars (Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution). If you're going to correct someone on the internet, try being right.
You know, you're not doing anyone any favors when you start bringing up 9/11 conspiracy theories. Just stick to the stuff you can prove--it's more than damning enough as it is.
The tl;dr of the above: In February 8, 1963 (yes, under Kennedy), amidst fears of spreading Communist influence with the Qassim government of Iraq (and possibly losing control of the country's oil industry), the CIA and British government aided in the Ba'athist coup that put Saddam in power.
Re-read your Newton. To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. Challenge aggression with aggression and receive aggression.
presents the greatest single threat to the survival of human civilization
The single biggest threat to human civilization is when we slowly dismantle the things we value and cherish from the inside. Internal forces, not external. No terrorist has accomplished as much destruction to our way of life as we have done to ourselves in the past nine years.
in fact *I* have a constitutional right NOT to be discriminated against
That's great, but that's not what you said. You said you don't have the right to think something. Do you really have thoughtcrime in your country? Because if you do, I feel sorry for you and your fellow citizens. The freedom to think what you wish is the freedom to be human. If you can't think what you want to, you are not even a slave... you are a tool. An implement. But not a man. "THIS IS THE GREATER FREEDOM," my ass.
>>Your freedom of opinion does not INCLUDE the freedom to think I or anybody else is less than you. >Actually it most decidedly does not.
Actually, it most assuredly does. You are free to think whatever you like in this country. Seriously. For reals.
Since it's a provable fact that I am NOT less than you, and nobody else is either
Less how? Less smart? Less weight? Less income? There are a hundred different ways for one person to be "less than" someone else, since you never specify exactly what you're comparing (less than what?).
in fact one of the founding principles of your nation is that "all men are created equal before God"
Just because two things are created equal doesn't necessarily mean they stay that way.
They'll dry up, and the only organizations left will be those that are big enough to use economies of scale in advertising to raise enough money.
No, not necessarily. There's still value in the free local paper. Maybe not huge mega News Corporations with helicopters and Rolodexes with the numbers of presidents, but the smaller papers that concentrate strictly on smaller populations (towns & cities) by definition won't have the same global interest.
Here's a local example (Portland, ME) called the Bollard. They do some fairly good pieces, make phone calls, attend meetings, write exposes--all the sorts of things proper "journalists" should do. But they're shoestring. They cover local stuff, local businesses pay for the ads, and the paper is free. Their website? Also free. If they can do it, why not more?
Which means the population of paid professional newsgatherers is going to plummet, replaced by reprints of the gist of Twitterstorms and the like.
Again, not necessarily. Times change. Standards change. Maybe the future doesn't look very bright for career journalists, but that doesn't mean the news stops flowing. Shit, people are using Twitter feeds to rally protests and help coordinate searches for earthquake survivors, for chrissake. If that's not real news coverage I don't know what the hell else you could ask for.
with all information flowing as compressed XML via standard messaging protocols
Not that an anonymous coward would watch their own post, but just in case... what "standard messaging protocols" were they using, out of curiosity? Personal guess is JMS.
because a 100 billion dollar corporation wouldn't want to risk losing $30k in attorneys fees to say, shut down a critic
Except that the critic they're trying to shut down wouldn't have to go hunting for a good lawyer if the case is solid. Presumably, lawyers for the defense would be lining up to take the case.
I'm having a hard time trying to think of good reasons to oppose loser-pays, especially since we (U.S.) don't have the asinine defamation laws of the U.K.
I know of cytotoxins and necrotoxins, but not of "cetotoxins"
Interesting. Have you ever heard of "misspellings?"
the latter is likely to be worse in almost all cases
No. The former is likely to take longer, ergo it will be worse. Don't believe me? Answer me this: would you rather die from a black widow bite or die from internal hemorrhaging from being raped in the ass with a baseball bat non-stop for a week?
Okay. I said ONE OF the most painful ways in nature. First I never claimed it was THE most painful, and secondly I SPECIFICALLY restricted it to natural deaths. Burning to death doesn't count. Very few diseases have such an extended and incredibly torturous gestation.
Again, see what you're doing here? I get where you're coming from, but you're going about it the wrong way. Misinformation doesn't help anyone, particularly the millions who die every year from it.
Unless you've actually seen it happen - you don't know what you're talking about.
Like I said, first-hand experience champ.
One thing I can instantly think of that's likely to match it is a black widow bite.
See, this is what I'm talking about. You suggest that maybe the bite from a black widow is a more painful way to die. I would suggest that the bite from a brown recluse would be far more painful, because it's not a neurotoxin, but a cetotoxin. So the wound slowly gets necrotic until your skin is literally sloughing off in chunks.
that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.
Writing as someone who also had malaria (P.falciparum and vivax simultaneously), I'd like to correct this because it's simply not true. Not in any way, shape or form. And I had the most dangerous form you can get.
Worst case scenario, you spend a week cycling through chills and fevers, fevers and chills. Then you get TIRED. So tired you can barely move. Eventually, you go into a coma. After that there's plenty of bad shit going on to your system but you don't feel any of it because you're in a coma. Then you die. I didn't personally get to this part, but I'm guessing it's as painless as the coma was. According to my parents, I was certainly thrashing around a lot, had all kinds of fluids in my lungs, all that I'm sure appears painful, but honestly it was nothing compared to catheterization.
Which is to say, yes, deadly, yes, you don't want to get it, but no, not the most painful way to shake off this mortal coil. Not even close. I could think of so many worse ways to go.
Mag Stripe readers are, and have been, dime-a-dozen for decades. Literally, decades. I remember reading back in the day of BBSs they had instructions on D.I.Y. magstripe encoding, IIRC using the head from a cassette tape recorder. The hard part was making sure the speed of the card passing over the head was consistent.
Anyway, point is the tech is so common and the knowledge so well-known that you can't do anything about it at this point.
Most of the people who say that aren't running it and have never actually run it, but could swear they heard it was crap from someone that swears they uninstalled it, like, after 5 minutes because it was crap.
I've been running XP 64-bit for a couple of years now. IIRC it was originally a free D/L from MS, now it's really only available through their MSDN (for free if someone's paying for your MSDN subscription, like work). It's awesome. Easily, without a shadow of a doubt the best OS to come from Redmond. And I used to be a die-hard Windows 2000 XP Pro lover. Still have much love for the 2k, but damn, XP64 is just solid. No locks, no hardware issues.
Now, that said, I have all the right XP64 drivers, I didn't have to hack any 2003 drivers (as XP64 is technically the 2003 codebase). Everything just works(TM) and YMMV. That said, I have had NO problems finding drivers. The big, huge, SCARY thing everyone was warning me about, how I wouldn't have sound (wrong) or video (wrong) or any of my peripherals (wacom cintiq works fine, external audio works fine, all USB stuff work fine as they should, my 3Ware 16-drive RAID card? WORKS FINE.) The only piece of hardware I have had any problem with is my Nikon CoolScan 5K, but that's not just with XP-64, that's any 64-bit operating system, including 2003, Vista, and (yep) Windows 7.
The nice thing is I get all the 64-bit benefits (12 gigs of RAM makes Photoshop my bitch) all the XP benefits like DirectX 10 and updated service packs (it's recent enough that MS is still supporting it... for the time-being, anyway), wireless networking Just Works(TM), plus no Widget-interface fisher-price crap, no always-running, always-scanning crap, no treat-you-like-an-intruder-for-your-own-good security crap... everything runs on it, and it's fast (faster than Win7, anyway).
Rural in Japan is not the same thing as Rural in Kansas or Nebraska or Montana.
No, but URBAN Japan IS a lot like urban New York, urban Chicago, urban San Francisco. And yet, somehow their cities get the same 100Mbps fiber that's OH NOES IMPOSSIBLE! for the U.S.
One thing this country has become a major producer and exporter of: pathetic excuses.
It took about 70 years for those mountain towns to get phone service after the telephone's invention. For some reason you expect them to all have high-speed web browsing only 20 years after the WWW's invention. That's not logical.
Presumably rolling high-speed out would be able to build on the advantage of 70 years of technological advancement. Which is to say, developmental rates are not static throughout time; if history has shown any indication, it's in accelerated rates of development. Assuming just because X took 70 years that Y, which is completely different than X, should take the same time is... well... stupid. It's like saying, "Well, it took six years to build the First Transcontinental Railroad, therefor it should take at LEAST that long to build a highway across America." Highways are not railroads. High speed delivery != twisted pair. Fix your brain.
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Authorization for use of military force != declaration of war, you imbecile.
Hint: Only Congress gets to declare wars (Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution). If you're going to correct someone on the internet, try being right.
how is what the leakers did any different than people that gave classified docs to the Soviets and Chinese
Oh, analogies! I love analogies!
Here's a helpful wikipedia link for you to read when you have some free time: The Pentagon Papers.
You know, you're not doing anyone any favors when you start bringing up 9/11 conspiracy theories. Just stick to the stuff you can prove--it's more than damning enough as it is.
The tl;dr of the above:
In February 8, 1963 (yes, under Kennedy), amidst fears of spreading Communist influence with the Qassim government of Iraq (and possibly losing control of the country's oil industry), the CIA and British government aided in the Ba'athist coup that put Saddam in power.
if not challenged with force
Re-read your Newton. To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. Challenge aggression with aggression and receive aggression.
presents the greatest single threat to the survival of human civilization
The single biggest threat to human civilization is when we slowly dismantle the things we value and cherish from the inside. Internal forces, not external. No terrorist has accomplished as much destruction to our way of life as we have done to ourselves in the past nine years.
in fact *I* have a constitutional right NOT to be discriminated against
That's great, but that's not what you said. You said you don't have the right to think something. Do you really have thoughtcrime in your country? Because if you do, I feel sorry for you and your fellow citizens. The freedom to think what you wish is the freedom to be human. If you can't think what you want to, you are not even a slave... you are a tool. An implement. But not a man. "THIS IS THE GREATER FREEDOM," my ass.
>>Your freedom of opinion does not INCLUDE the freedom to think I or anybody else is less than you.
>Actually it most decidedly does not.
Actually, it most assuredly does. You are free to think whatever you like in this country. Seriously. For reals.
Since it's a provable fact that I am NOT less than you, and nobody else is either
Less how? Less smart? Less weight? Less income? There are a hundred different ways for one person to be "less than" someone else, since you never specify exactly what you're comparing (less than what?).
in fact one of the founding principles of your nation is that "all men are created equal before God"
Just because two things are created equal doesn't necessarily mean they stay that way.
They'll dry up, and the only organizations left will be those that are big enough to use economies of scale in advertising to raise enough money.
No, not necessarily. There's still value in the free local paper. Maybe not huge mega News Corporations with helicopters and Rolodexes with the numbers of presidents, but the smaller papers that concentrate strictly on smaller populations (towns & cities) by definition won't have the same global interest.
Here's a local example (Portland, ME) called the Bollard. They do some fairly good pieces, make phone calls, attend meetings, write exposes--all the sorts of things proper "journalists" should do. But they're shoestring. They cover local stuff, local businesses pay for the ads, and the paper is free. Their website? Also free. If they can do it, why not more?
Which means the population of paid professional newsgatherers is going to plummet, replaced by reprints of the gist of Twitterstorms and the like.
Again, not necessarily. Times change. Standards change. Maybe the future doesn't look very bright for career journalists, but that doesn't mean the news stops flowing. Shit, people are using Twitter feeds to rally protests and help coordinate searches for earthquake survivors, for chrissake. If that's not real news coverage I don't know what the hell else you could ask for.
That said, the Apple Cinema Displays are probably the finest displays that can be purchased for the price.
Snore. My NEC/Mitsubishi Diamondtron would make mincemeat out of any Cinema Display.
It would also make a better weapon were it possible to wield over one's head, which it is not, because it's the weight of a small safe.
with all information flowing as compressed XML via standard messaging protocols
Not that an anonymous coward would watch their own post, but just in case... what "standard messaging protocols" were they using, out of curiosity? Personal guess is JMS.
because a 100 billion dollar corporation wouldn't want to risk losing $30k in attorneys fees to say, shut down a critic
Except that the critic they're trying to shut down wouldn't have to go hunting for a good lawyer if the case is solid. Presumably, lawyers for the defense would be lining up to take the case.
Imagine how powerful the EFF could become if they had all their expenses reimbursed for all the huge cases they've won.
I'm having a hard time trying to think of good reasons to oppose loser-pays, especially since we (U.S.) don't have the asinine defamation laws of the U.K.
Tin foil hats will have to be outlawed, like bulletproof vests.
Only criminals need tinfoil hats. You ain't no CRIMINAL, is you?
I know of cytotoxins and necrotoxins, but not of "cetotoxins"
Interesting. Have you ever heard of "misspellings?"
the latter is likely to be worse in almost all cases
No. The former is likely to take longer, ergo it will be worse. Don't believe me? Answer me this: would you rather die from a black widow bite or die from internal hemorrhaging from being raped in the ass with a baseball bat non-stop for a week?
See? Works every time.
Okay. I said ONE OF the most painful ways in nature. First I never claimed it was THE most painful, and secondly I SPECIFICALLY restricted it to natural deaths. Burning to death doesn't count. Very few diseases have such an extended and incredibly torturous gestation.
Again, see what you're doing here? I get where you're coming from, but you're going about it the wrong way. Misinformation doesn't help anyone, particularly the millions who die every year from it.
Unless you've actually seen it happen - you don't know what you're talking about.
Like I said, first-hand experience champ.
One thing I can instantly think of that's likely to match it is a black widow bite.
See, this is what I'm talking about. You suggest that maybe the bite from a black widow is a more painful way to die. I would suggest that the bite from a brown recluse would be far more painful, because it's not a neurotoxin, but a cetotoxin. So the wound slowly gets necrotic until your skin is literally sloughing off in chunks.
That's just off the top of my head.
that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.
Writing as someone who also had malaria (P.falciparum and vivax simultaneously), I'd like to correct this because it's simply not true. Not in any way, shape or form. And I had the most dangerous form you can get.
Worst case scenario, you spend a week cycling through chills and fevers, fevers and chills. Then you get TIRED. So tired you can barely move. Eventually, you go into a coma. After that there's plenty of bad shit going on to your system but you don't feel any of it because you're in a coma. Then you die. I didn't personally get to this part, but I'm guessing it's as painless as the coma was. According to my parents, I was certainly thrashing around a lot, had all kinds of fluids in my lungs, all that I'm sure appears painful, but honestly it was nothing compared to catheterization.
Which is to say, yes, deadly, yes, you don't want to get it, but no, not the most painful way to shake off this mortal coil. Not even close. I could think of so many worse ways to go.
Hmm. Nope... still too many to choose from. Give me another clue.
Mag Stripe readers are, and have been, dime-a-dozen for decades. Literally, decades. I remember reading back in the day of BBSs they had instructions on D.I.Y. magstripe encoding, IIRC using the head from a cassette tape recorder. The hard part was making sure the speed of the card passing over the head was consistent.
Anyway, point is the tech is so common and the knowledge so well-known that you can't do anything about it at this point.
I thought most people say XP-64 is crap?
Most of the people who say that aren't running it and have never actually run it, but could swear they heard it was crap from someone that swears they uninstalled it, like, after 5 minutes because it was crap.
I've been running XP 64-bit for a couple of years now. IIRC it was originally a free D/L from MS, now it's really only available through their MSDN (for free if someone's paying for your MSDN subscription, like work). It's awesome. Easily, without a shadow of a doubt the best OS to come from Redmond. And I used to be a die-hard Windows 2000 XP Pro lover. Still have much love for the 2k, but damn, XP64 is just solid. No locks, no hardware issues.
Now, that said, I have all the right XP64 drivers, I didn't have to hack any 2003 drivers (as XP64 is technically the 2003 codebase). Everything just works(TM) and YMMV. That said, I have had NO problems finding drivers. The big, huge, SCARY thing everyone was warning me about, how I wouldn't have sound (wrong) or video (wrong) or any of my peripherals (wacom cintiq works fine, external audio works fine, all USB stuff work fine as they should, my 3Ware 16-drive RAID card? WORKS FINE.) The only piece of hardware I have had any problem with is my Nikon CoolScan 5K, but that's not just with XP-64, that's any 64-bit operating system, including 2003, Vista, and (yep) Windows 7.
The nice thing is I get all the 64-bit benefits (12 gigs of RAM makes Photoshop my bitch) all the XP benefits like DirectX 10 and updated service packs (it's recent enough that MS is still supporting it... for the time-being, anyway), wireless networking Just Works(TM), plus no Widget-interface fisher-price crap, no always-running, always-scanning crap, no treat-you-like-an-intruder-for-your-own-good security crap... everything runs on it, and it's fast (faster than Win7, anyway).
Rural in Japan is not the same thing as Rural in Kansas or Nebraska or Montana.
No, but URBAN Japan IS a lot like urban New York, urban Chicago, urban San Francisco. And yet, somehow their cities get the same 100Mbps fiber that's OH NOES IMPOSSIBLE! for the U.S.
One thing this country has become a major producer and exporter of: pathetic excuses.
Ahh, there's that American can-do spirit I've read so much about.
It took about 70 years for those mountain towns to get phone service after the telephone's invention. For some reason you expect them to all have high-speed web browsing only 20 years after the WWW's invention. That's not logical.
Presumably rolling high-speed out would be able to build on the advantage of 70 years of technological advancement. Which is to say, developmental rates are not static throughout time; if history has shown any indication, it's in accelerated rates of development. Assuming just because X took 70 years that Y, which is completely different than X, should take the same time is... well... stupid. It's like saying, "Well, it took six years to build the First Transcontinental Railroad, therefor it should take at LEAST that long to build a highway across America." Highways are not railroads. High speed delivery != twisted pair. Fix your brain.
Cancerous growths have more talent than Ms. Spears.
Troll? It's a fact. And the dick part? AC was being a dick. Another fact.
Hey, dick. Most Pu isotopes under 244 are alpha emitters. The important part is the decay heat, which is highest in 238.
Lighten up, Francis.
Yeah, first Apple would have to design something with replaceable batteries.