I have a 2 year old niece that I took to see LOTR. She liked it up until the battle at Amon Hen, and then the time got to her. Well I can't say that... it went downhill after she thought Gandalf died (I can't spoil the return for her by letting her know he'll come back!!!)
I was VERY surprised, I mainly just wanted her to see the first part with the fireworks and the hobbits, but she wanted to keep watching.
She thought the cave troll looked like Shrek, but "Scary!!!".
When we got home she bugged me to show her hobbit - dot - com on the computer (Apparently television has taught her that everything has a dot com something associated with it) so she could look at the scary pictures.
I'll never forget seeing star wars on the big screen when I was a little less than 2. I figure LOTR can be her 'Star Wars' - given that the new star wars movies will suck if they follow in the footsteps of Episode 1.
When everyone else is talking about why the law itself is fucked up, and you start lecturing everyone on what the law IS, and then provide absolutely no reasoning behind why the law should be that way, save for the existence of other laws - then any point you make is off topic.
You seem to be quite proud of your understanding of contract law, but nobody is talking about that anyhow.
My parents have a high speed connection at their home, but it's for me when I visit. Calling them members of the online population would be sort of misleading. Now we're down to 497,999,998 people actually using the internet from home.
Sure they have access, but that means next to nothing in terms of how much they'll purchase online - and THIS is what I assume those numbers will be used for when shady CEO's are trying to convince their board members that they'll be selling 10x as much whatever online in a year, and that the funding is a good investment.
~D
It's not a moral issue, it's a definition issue. At what point does a person exist? When it's still a separate sperm and egg? When it's one of possibly many fertilized eggs that begin to grow? If this is the case, then masturbation would be murder a million times over, and the fetuses themselves would be guilty of murder when they deprive other fertilized eggs from developing even to fetus-hood.
Why not just answer that question once and for all, and be done with it?
Morality is the word given to behaviors that are logically flawed due to lack of fully understanding what you're really even wanting to behave like. It's one of those subjective things that people keep around solely to use to sling mud at each other.
I have never seen a peaceful demonstration. 3 people start one, don't do a whole hell of a lot, and then 5,000 shitheads end up gathering to break things. Then the "peaceful" minority bitch and moan that they were being peaceful and shouldn't have gotten tear gas shot at them, or bullets, or whatever the hell happened.
Please, let me know when a truly peaceful demonstration is happening so I can go and videotape the thing, and mark that day on a calendar and in a history book.
This is the only way to encourage it. To them it's a really difficult issue, because the people initiating the spam are most likely not chinese, and they don't want to admit that they're incompetent when it comes to anything because they're proud as all hell.
So we get OUR networks flooded? Why should we have to deal with that? They're not the drunk drivers of the information superhighway, but they sure as hell are the enablers.
What I'm worried about is that some asshole over here is going to get some chinese people executed for illegal spamming activity on chinese servers. Some poor schmuck over there who can't read the english manual will get shot in the head because of some sleazy american "entrepreneur" using their relay.
I'm usually one for very simple solutions, but this problem is pretty complicated. I think that all we really CAN do is block them, and let them realize that they have to figure out how to run their machines before they can come out and play again.
~D
I have no problem watching Fox and waiting through commercials or going from channel to channel for 3 minutes at a time. I had no problem in the early 80's paying for commercial free cable television.
One was wasting my time, and another was wasting my money, both extracting their price.
But I can't live with AOL. Charging ridiculous fees for weak dial up connections, AND shooting ads at the poor sons of bitches who use them by mistake. I cannot live with paying $10 for a movie ticket and sitting through 30 minutes of previews for retarded movies that I have no interest in seeing. I hated watching 13 Days because I wanted to see the LOTR preview on the big screen ASAP (the one ad I wanted to see was preceding the worst movie I have ever seen - lucky me).
Not only do you get charged for everything nowadays, they insult you with ads. But they don't warn you about it. They don't care, because WE don't care. No matter that I have been to 6 movies in the past year - 6 showings of LOTR that is, or that I avoid products that I see commercials for as much as possible, or that I just stop using services that advertise at me while charging me, 99.999 percent of americans don't care.
And that makes all the difference.
I can live with a pay model. I can live with an ad model. I cannot live with a pay + ad model. I cannot live with the Hometown Buffet pricing model that they use for cable modems.
I have more respect than I probably should for the people that run this thing, but I really hope this doesn't turn into another pay + be harassed site.
The problem is that I don't care what you think about niggers, rag heads, white trash or whomever. Though you have a right to say it, you have absolutely no right to force me to pay to hear you say it. That's the problem.
Once you start sticking your hands into my pockets I get really pissed off. What we want to avoid is people who are pissed off about it banding together with their nigger, rag head, white trash, [insert racial slur here] friends to go kick the hell out of you. Not for speaking your mind, but for taking our money and time.
When you piss off enough people shit starts to happen, and that's basically what governments are around for - to avoid that.
People see everything in different ways. Here's how I see it:
When I request a web page, I'm requesting whatever HTML they're providing me, or whatever XML/Stylesheet they "support". If it doesn't look right, then tough. But I should get that HTML. Especially for a damn text article. I will not return to a site - ever - if they pull this bullshit. That's just me.
Not allowing you to see ANYTHING is pretty retarded, so there has to be a business angle. Customers will be more dissatisfied if they see NOTHING than if they see a poor rendering of crappy HTML, because the customers who do NOT use IE and so on are used to it.
What is the business angle? Maybe these companies have stakes in Microsoft or whatever browser they choose to allow HTML to be sent to. Other than that, I can't understand it.
I disagree on the manager comment. I DO agree that the code is most likely pretty tight.
The only reason windows is so damn unstable and convoluted is because they want it to be - it's in their interest for their OS to be all mangled up to make it tougher for other companies to write competing software.
The same reason that the Word file format is obfuscated to hell.
AOL has the right to do whatever the hell they want to do to their system to keep people out. If you don't like that, then DO NOT USE IT.
The only people from AOL that I chat with who could not talk to me any other way are too dumb for me to really ever need to communicate with them anyhow. This is maybe 16 of the 33 people on my buddy list. The other 17 could find me on IRC or some other chat medium.
If people refused to use AIM, and instead used other systems, dropping them each time they were forced into the same sort of situation that AOL is trying to stick people into now, then eventually the corporations would realize that they have to come up with a different pricing plan, a different way to pay for it all than advertising, and forcing you to install their own software.
I hate the advertising model, given that it makes social pressure a sales tool. "Oh it's free! Just install this and we can chat."
When people realize that time and irritation are not FREE - they waste your life, they might start to hate ads as much as I do. Enough to actually stop using a system no matter who it means I can't talk to.
I use it now because I can, but I'll stop without complaint if Fire at some point can't connect to their servers. No problem.
That's how this country works. Sometimes to get your way you actually have to do something, or not do something, as it were.
When the slashdot ads become unbearable, I'll be out of here too.
Would I PAY for access to systems and web sites if I never had to see an ad - absolutely. Would I refuse to pay if they then started showing me "fewer" ads, instead of "NO" ads? Absolutely.
Are people really too dumb to figure out what to do to enjoy their online experience? Does nobody else pick browsers that allow you to disable window.open() and such? Why do people have to bitch that they aren't getting a service for free anymore. Don't use it, and they'll figure out how to sell it in a way that you'll be satisfied. Maybe all the chat mediums will merge. Who the hell knows?
Smaller supply of used macs, smaller target audience. Without more data here, there is absolutely no reason to believe that any supply and demand difference would exist.
Mac threads themselves are Flamebait. Most comments are ill founded, and no one who posts seems to see both sides of the coin anyhow.
Yes, I've had PC's in the past and I've had numerous harware problems with them. Yes, I've had macs in the past and have never had a hardware issue. Yes I think that the PC's were a better deal, since I saved 50 percent or more up front. Yes having a computer that lasts forever is pointless because it'll be obsolete anyhow in a year.
Even this posting will get replied to by one of the 300 people worldwide who have had hardware issues with Apple computers. And by the jerk off that tries to tell me that I don't know how to use a computer. And by the 13 year old who TyPeS EvEryThIng LiKe ThiS and says "pC'z ROXX" or some other nonsense.
This open forum shit is fine and all, but goddamn, would some people have the decency to at least know something about what they're saying?
If you're a mac person, it's a cool deal. If you're a PC person, then it's not. Big deal... why is there even a thread on the topic?
It's sad knowing full well that not everyone using a PC is a moron, but 99 percent of those posting on their behalf are. Same goes to the mac folks. But at least Apple tries to target imbeciles, so moronic pro-mac posts should be expected.
Some of this is just absurd, and nearly all of it is laughable.
It made a lot of broad statements with no logical reasoning (save a monetary difference between two completely different machines), and therefore presented itself as bait for people to flame.
The university degree shows that a person went through those classes so that job interviews don't have to be hours long to figure out exactly what someone knows.
It seems that you're implying that without college it's unlikely that people will have less of a background in those areas than their college grad counterparts, which is a fallacy.
However, nobody wants to figure out for themself what someone knows before hiring them or dealing with them, and have grown to rely on the paper as proof of well-roundedness or something.
The best thing about leaving college was not having to read any more Ayn Rand than I wanted to, or sit in classroom discussions on why or why not *insert philosopher here* would be averse to *insert modern idea here*.
College taught me that a 1500 SAT implies a lack of social ability 99 percent of the time. It taught me that a PhD means nothing when it comes to sitting through a course that the professor isn't even nearly a master of. It taught me that the people with the best grades were hard workers who lived in professors' offices and were utterly incapable of solving any problem on their own - no matter how hard they worked. It taught me that no matter how correct your answers were to a test, using a method not discussed in lecture was a surefire way to get zero credit for the problem (especially in E&M). It taught me that the professors who seemed to be the dumbest were actually the brightest of the bunch, and that the dumbest acted as if they were better than the rest.
In essence, it taught me how life really is, so I got out before I wanted to kill myself just to be away from all the bullshit.
I already knew that the world was messed up and that people were generally assholes - I didn't need college to teach me that. What it taught me was that the supposedly brightest people act exactly as absurdly as Jerry Springer trailer trash. It confirmed that the difference between the average college grad and the average non-grad was indeed a piece of paper, that the difference between the brilliant grad and the brilliant non-grad was indeed a piece of paper, and the average dumb grad was just as dumb as the average non-grad.
The college grads always end up thinking that they're smarter, though.
Who will be effective is determined more by whether or not you're one who learns - not by the piece of paper. You don't need college to educate yourself, but you might need college to either convince someone else that you are educated in a 30 minute interview, or to learn how to be full of yourself. Both of these traits are important in the business world.
Hit up a school that starts with calculus and the lowest physics there is calculus based, then test out of them. That'll save you time.
You're still screwed into sitting in a bunch of humanities classes taught by PhD's who think that their reading ability is somehow better than yours, and whose opinions are always correct.
Some CS courses are pretty cool, but then again you really can half ass all the projects even at good schools and still pull good grades.
So you'd rather finance unskilled people who don't do anything (for whatever reason) than finance skilled people who benefit you by their actions?
It's a donation, and if I had income in excess of my other donations (to family and friends getting nailed by the economy) I'd much rather give it to a badass coder who's probably better than I am at what I get paid for, whose software I use, than to someone who does absolutely nothing that benefits anyone.
I'll get nailed for this one, I know, but I'm not a pot smoking hippie like the rest of california, or a lot of the/. community.
1) Those moderates weren't really moderate in the first place. I say: fuck them and we can kill them too. I think that it was made pretty clear that people are either for or against the US. Moderate = Terrorist.
2) Innocent in what way? Innocent in that they are still living over there on the moon since they aren't lucky enough to get to come here and try their hand at killing Americans? They fight for a morality that is defined as evil by the principles that this country has been founded on.
3) The cycle of violence comment is out of place on this planet. Sometimes people will try to take you out no matter what you do save surrender to their oppression. This is one of those times. We can either retaliate and take out as many of them as we can, or just wait around for more from them. Sure it will happen throughout history and the future, but when you allow it to happen your nation dies.
Some people think that American ideals (not beating women for absurd reasons, being allowed to fly a kite, getting an education, not living on the moon, not being forced to follow some silly religion - and they are ALL silly including christianity, and being led by someone that we elected ourselves) are worth fighting for and preserving.
Some people don't care much, but all the Birkenstock wearing tree huggers that love to post on slashdot and spout opinions regarding US inaction when it comes to defending itself would not have been able to construct their eloquent but ridiculous arguments - having the vocabulary of an 11 year old, given that a 6th grade education is all that Allah wants you to have.
When you have termites in your house - even just a few, you eradicate them to avoid them taking everything over and your house falling down. That's the current situation.
Some people choose to fight for factions that are no better than hordes of insects.
No matter what you do they try to find ways to track your purchasing habits. For now, it makes it tougher if you operate on a cash basis. That way you can be certain that it will only be the government itself that will take the time to do so, so just stay out of trouble with them and you can mantain relative privacy.
I carry around a lot of cash on my person for this very reason - I do not trust businesses not to send me solicitations in my mailbox after I shop there, so I pay in cash. When they ask for a zip code I give 90210, and when they ask for a phone number I tell them random numbers beginning with valid area codes.
All to avoid a full mailbox of garbage. The junk I do receive sometimes is mailed back, or I just write "return to sender" on it and drop it in a different mailbox. I can only hope that I'm ruining someone's day everytime I do things like that, even though I know I don't. I can always hope.
Junk mail is strictly harassment, and should be punishable by law. Marketing managers should be killed after every junk mail campaign.
But I do what I can to avoid it, and that includes the use of cash.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a 2 year old niece that I took to see LOTR. She liked it up until the battle at Amon Hen, and then the time got to her. Well I can't say that... it went downhill after she thought Gandalf died (I can't spoil the return for her by letting her know he'll come back!!!)
I was VERY surprised, I mainly just wanted her to see the first part with the fireworks and the hobbits, but she wanted to keep watching.
She thought the cave troll looked like Shrek, but "Scary!!!".
When we got home she bugged me to show her hobbit - dot - com on the computer (Apparently television has taught her that everything has a dot com something associated with it) so she could look at the scary pictures.
I'll never forget seeing star wars on the big screen when I was a little less than 2. I figure LOTR can be her 'Star Wars' - given that the new star wars movies will suck if they follow in the footsteps of Episode 1.
~D
If that are the law, then the law are an ass.
When everyone else is talking about why the law itself is fucked up, and you start lecturing everyone on what the law IS, and then provide absolutely no reasoning behind why the law should be that way, save for the existence of other laws - then any point you make is off topic.
You seem to be quite proud of your understanding of contract law, but nobody is talking about that anyhow.
~D
My parents have a high speed connection at their home, but it's for me when I visit. Calling them members of the online population would be sort of misleading. Now we're down to 497,999,998 people actually using the internet from home. Sure they have access, but that means next to nothing in terms of how much they'll purchase online - and THIS is what I assume those numbers will be used for when shady CEO's are trying to convince their board members that they'll be selling 10x as much whatever online in a year, and that the funding is a good investment. ~D
Functional = working. I'm not talking about ML or Prolog here. ~D
I'm waiting to get my project to catalog every functional program ever written by anyone additional funding.
I expect there to be at least 35 million new species of "Hello World!" that have yet to be discovered.
~D
It's not a moral issue, it's a definition issue. At what point does a person exist? When it's still a separate sperm and egg? When it's one of possibly many fertilized eggs that begin to grow? If this is the case, then masturbation would be murder a million times over, and the fetuses themselves would be guilty of murder when they deprive other fertilized eggs from developing even to fetus-hood.
Why not just answer that question once and for all, and be done with it?
Morality is the word given to behaviors that are logically flawed due to lack of fully understanding what you're really even wanting to behave like. It's one of those subjective things that people keep around solely to use to sling mud at each other.
~D
I have never seen a peaceful demonstration. 3 people start one, don't do a whole hell of a lot, and then 5,000 shitheads end up gathering to break things. Then the "peaceful" minority bitch and moan that they were being peaceful and shouldn't have gotten tear gas shot at them, or bullets, or whatever the hell happened.
Please, let me know when a truly peaceful demonstration is happening so I can go and videotape the thing, and mark that day on a calendar and in a history book.
~D
Well I'd have modded you up.
Dead people's works don't need copyright protection
Great idea, slick. Make it a GOOD IDEA for businesses to have people taken out.
~D
This is the only way to encourage it. To them it's a really difficult issue, because the people initiating the spam are most likely not chinese, and they don't want to admit that they're incompetent when it comes to anything because they're proud as all hell. So we get OUR networks flooded? Why should we have to deal with that? They're not the drunk drivers of the information superhighway, but they sure as hell are the enablers. What I'm worried about is that some asshole over here is going to get some chinese people executed for illegal spamming activity on chinese servers. Some poor schmuck over there who can't read the english manual will get shot in the head because of some sleazy american "entrepreneur" using their relay. I'm usually one for very simple solutions, but this problem is pretty complicated. I think that all we really CAN do is block them, and let them realize that they have to figure out how to run their machines before they can come out and play again. ~D
data fragmentation, and also the ability to install different OS'es on different partitions.
~D
I have no problem watching Fox and waiting through commercials or going from channel to channel for 3 minutes at a time. I had no problem in the early 80's paying for commercial free cable television.
One was wasting my time, and another was wasting my money, both extracting their price.
But I can't live with AOL. Charging ridiculous fees for weak dial up connections, AND shooting ads at the poor sons of bitches who use them by mistake. I cannot live with paying $10 for a movie ticket and sitting through 30 minutes of previews for retarded movies that I have no interest in seeing. I hated watching 13 Days because I wanted to see the LOTR preview on the big screen ASAP (the one ad I wanted to see was preceding the worst movie I have ever seen - lucky me).
Not only do you get charged for everything nowadays, they insult you with ads. But they don't warn you about it. They don't care, because WE don't care. No matter that I have been to 6 movies in the past year - 6 showings of LOTR that is, or that I avoid products that I see commercials for as much as possible, or that I just stop using services that advertise at me while charging me, 99.999 percent of americans don't care.
And that makes all the difference.
I can live with a pay model. I can live with an ad model. I cannot live with a pay + ad model. I cannot live with the Hometown Buffet pricing model that they use for cable modems.
I have more respect than I probably should for the people that run this thing, but I really hope this doesn't turn into another pay + be harassed site.
~D
The problem is that I don't care what you think about niggers, rag heads, white trash or whomever. Though you have a right to say it, you have absolutely no right to force me to pay to hear you say it. That's the problem.
Once you start sticking your hands into my pockets I get really pissed off. What we want to avoid is people who are pissed off about it banding together with their nigger, rag head, white trash, [insert racial slur here] friends to go kick the hell out of you. Not for speaking your mind, but for taking our money and time.
When you piss off enough people shit starts to happen, and that's basically what governments are around for - to avoid that.
People see everything in different ways. Here's how I see it:
When I request a web page, I'm requesting whatever HTML they're providing me, or whatever XML/Stylesheet they "support". If it doesn't look right, then tough. But I should get that HTML. Especially for a damn text article. I will not return to a site - ever - if they pull this bullshit. That's just me.
Not allowing you to see ANYTHING is pretty retarded, so there has to be a business angle. Customers will be more dissatisfied if they see NOTHING than if they see a poor rendering of crappy HTML, because the customers who do NOT use IE and so on are used to it.
What is the business angle? Maybe these companies have stakes in Microsoft or whatever browser they choose to allow HTML to be sent to. Other than that, I can't understand it.
~D
I disagree on the manager comment. I DO agree that the code is most likely pretty tight.
The only reason windows is so damn unstable and convoluted is because they want it to be - it's in their interest for their OS to be all mangled up to make it tougher for other companies to write competing software.
The same reason that the Word file format is obfuscated to hell.
~D
AOL has the right to do whatever the hell they want to do to their system to keep people out. If you don't like that, then DO NOT USE IT.
The only people from AOL that I chat with who could not talk to me any other way are too dumb for me to really ever need to communicate with them anyhow. This is maybe 16 of the 33 people on my buddy list. The other 17 could find me on IRC or some other chat medium.
If people refused to use AIM, and instead used other systems, dropping them each time they were forced into the same sort of situation that AOL is trying to stick people into now, then eventually the corporations would realize that they have to come up with a different pricing plan, a different way to pay for it all than advertising, and forcing you to install their own software.
I hate the advertising model, given that it makes social pressure a sales tool. "Oh it's free! Just install this and we can chat."
When people realize that time and irritation are not FREE - they waste your life, they might start to hate ads as much as I do. Enough to actually stop using a system no matter who it means I can't talk to.
I use it now because I can, but I'll stop without complaint if Fire at some point can't connect to their servers. No problem.
That's how this country works. Sometimes to get your way you actually have to do something, or not do something, as it were.
When the slashdot ads become unbearable, I'll be out of here too.
Would I PAY for access to systems and web sites if I never had to see an ad - absolutely. Would I refuse to pay if they then started showing me "fewer" ads, instead of "NO" ads? Absolutely.
Are people really too dumb to figure out what to do to enjoy their online experience? Does nobody else pick browsers that allow you to disable window.open() and such? Why do people have to bitch that they aren't getting a service for free anymore. Don't use it, and they'll figure out how to sell it in a way that you'll be satisfied. Maybe all the chat mediums will merge. Who the hell knows?
Smaller supply of used macs, smaller target audience. Without more data here, there is absolutely no reason to believe that any supply and demand difference would exist.
Mac threads themselves are Flamebait. Most comments are ill founded, and no one who posts seems to see both sides of the coin anyhow.
Yes, I've had PC's in the past and I've had numerous harware problems with them. Yes, I've had macs in the past and have never had a hardware issue. Yes I think that the PC's were a better deal, since I saved 50 percent or more up front. Yes having a computer that lasts forever is pointless because it'll be obsolete anyhow in a year.
Even this posting will get replied to by one of the 300 people worldwide who have had hardware issues with Apple computers. And by the jerk off that tries to tell me that I don't know how to use a computer. And by the 13 year old who TyPeS EvEryThIng LiKe ThiS and says "pC'z ROXX" or some other nonsense.
This open forum shit is fine and all, but goddamn, would some people have the decency to at least know something about what they're saying?
If you're a mac person, it's a cool deal. If you're a PC person, then it's not. Big deal... why is there even a thread on the topic?
It's sad knowing full well that not everyone using a PC is a moron, but 99 percent of those posting on their behalf are. Same goes to the mac folks. But at least Apple tries to target imbeciles, so moronic pro-mac posts should be expected.
Some of this is just absurd, and nearly all of it is laughable.
It made a lot of broad statements with no logical reasoning (save a monetary difference between two completely different machines), and therefore presented itself as bait for people to flame.
We're arguing a few different points here.
The university degree shows that a person went through those classes so that job interviews don't have to be hours long to figure out exactly what someone knows.
It seems that you're implying that without college it's unlikely that people will have less of a background in those areas than their college grad counterparts, which is a fallacy.
However, nobody wants to figure out for themself what someone knows before hiring them or dealing with them, and have grown to rely on the paper as proof of well-roundedness or something.
The best thing about leaving college was not having to read any more Ayn Rand than I wanted to, or sit in classroom discussions on why or why not *insert philosopher here* would be averse to *insert modern idea here*.
College taught me that a 1500 SAT implies a lack of social ability 99 percent of the time. It taught me that a PhD means nothing when it comes to sitting through a course that the professor isn't even nearly a master of. It taught me that the people with the best grades were hard workers who lived in professors' offices and were utterly incapable of solving any problem on their own - no matter how hard they worked. It taught me that no matter how correct your answers were to a test, using a method not discussed in lecture was a surefire way to get zero credit for the problem (especially in E&M). It taught me that the professors who seemed to be the dumbest were actually the brightest of the bunch, and that the dumbest acted as if they were better than the rest.
In essence, it taught me how life really is, so I got out before I wanted to kill myself just to be away from all the bullshit.
I already knew that the world was messed up and that people were generally assholes - I didn't need college to teach me that. What it taught me was that the supposedly brightest people act exactly as absurdly as Jerry Springer trailer trash. It confirmed that the difference between the average college grad and the average non-grad was indeed a piece of paper, that the difference between the brilliant grad and the brilliant non-grad was indeed a piece of paper, and the average dumb grad was just as dumb as the average non-grad.
The college grads always end up thinking that they're smarter, though.
Who will be effective is determined more by whether or not you're one who learns - not by the piece of paper. You don't need college to educate yourself, but you might need college to either convince someone else that you are educated in a 30 minute interview, or to learn how to be full of yourself. Both of these traits are important in the business world.
If you're bright, start your own company.
Hit up a school that starts with calculus and the lowest physics there is calculus based, then test out of them. That'll save you time.
You're still screwed into sitting in a bunch of humanities classes taught by PhD's who think that their reading ability is somehow better than yours, and whose opinions are always correct.
Some CS courses are pretty cool, but then again you really can half ass all the projects even at good schools and still pull good grades.
So you'd rather finance unskilled people who don't do anything (for whatever reason) than finance skilled people who benefit you by their actions?
/. community.
It's a donation, and if I had income in excess of my other donations (to family and friends getting nailed by the economy) I'd much rather give it to a badass coder who's probably better than I am at what I get paid for, whose software I use, than to someone who does absolutely nothing that benefits anyone.
I'll get nailed for this one, I know, but I'm not a pot smoking hippie like the rest of california, or a lot of the
actually, asian american isn't the preferred nomenclature for chinese man who lives and works in china.
1) Those moderates weren't really moderate in the first place. I say: fuck them and we can kill them too. I think that it was made pretty clear that people are either for or against the US. Moderate = Terrorist.
2) Innocent in what way? Innocent in that they are still living over there on the moon since they aren't lucky enough to get to come here and try their hand at killing Americans? They fight for a morality that is defined as evil by the principles that this country has been founded on.
3) The cycle of violence comment is out of place on this planet. Sometimes people will try to take you out no matter what you do save surrender to their oppression. This is one of those times. We can either retaliate and take out as many of them as we can, or just wait around for more from them. Sure it will happen throughout history and the future, but when you allow it to happen your nation dies.
Some people think that American ideals (not beating women for absurd reasons, being allowed to fly a kite, getting an education, not living on the moon, not being forced to follow some silly religion - and they are ALL silly including christianity, and being led by someone that we elected ourselves) are worth fighting for and preserving.
Some people don't care much, but all the Birkenstock wearing tree huggers that love to post on slashdot and spout opinions regarding US inaction when it comes to defending itself would not have been able to construct their eloquent but ridiculous arguments - having the vocabulary of an 11 year old, given that a 6th grade education is all that Allah wants you to have.
When you have termites in your house - even just a few, you eradicate them to avoid them taking everything over and your house falling down. That's the current situation.
Some people choose to fight for factions that are no better than hordes of insects.
Good day.
~D
No matter what you do they try to find ways to track your purchasing habits. For now, it makes it tougher if you operate on a cash basis. That way you can be certain that it will only be the government itself that will take the time to do so, so just stay out of trouble with them and you can mantain relative privacy.
I carry around a lot of cash on my person for this very reason - I do not trust businesses not to send me solicitations in my mailbox after I shop there, so I pay in cash. When they ask for a zip code I give 90210, and when they ask for a phone number I tell them random numbers beginning with valid area codes.
All to avoid a full mailbox of garbage. The junk I do receive sometimes is mailed back, or I just write "return to sender" on it and drop it in a different mailbox. I can only hope that I'm ruining someone's day everytime I do things like that, even though I know I don't. I can always hope.
Junk mail is strictly harassment, and should be punishable by law. Marketing managers should be killed after every junk mail campaign.
But I do what I can to avoid it, and that includes the use of cash.