Gimme a break. I state a fact. Is not that summary a biased one with loaded language? And is there objectivity missing in the recent slashdot editorial tilt to the left?
I read some of those due to where I was working, and we inthe IC did say that there were WMD. Perhaps your link source is not as definitive as you believe?
Problem is that in the first several amendments "the people" is clearly focused on the individual. Or do you belive "the people" given free speech in the 1st are only those the state approves? Likewise for several others.
Just the "greater good" of the trial lawyers. You got fooled!
This was all about allowing tons of trial lawyers to make tons of money by inundating telcos with civil suits.
Note that the intelligence gathering part of the bill basically is unaltered. Go read it, it allows bascially what was going on under the previous bill.
The "fight" was the Repubs trying to protect their big contributor Telcos (who dont give a rats ass about privacy), and the Dems trying to help their big contributor Trial Lawyers make more money (who don't give a rats ass about justice, just money).
Politics. Both D and R serving their respective masters.
You haven't figured it out yet that you are being used?
Letting rage and bias against "Bushco" steer you is a piss poor way of looking at things. Your use of "Bushco" is a very telling term - says you've turned off the intellect and turned on the emotions - and are irrational about this as surely as a white person using "nigger" reveals a person to be an unthinking racist.
When will you will realize that this bill ALLOWS the intelligence gathering operations to go on as before? Go read the thing.
The only net gain in this bill is for the trial lawyers to barrage telcos with civil suits.
Its all politics. In the end this battle was only about enriching the trial lawyers, who are amongst the Democrats largest contributors, and hitting the Telcos who are probably heavy Republican contributors. More than anything else is, that was what was the point of contention in Congress. Not right or wrong, but both parties doing the bidding of their money supply masters.
And you are fool enough to let one side use you.
Blinded by rage and incapable of thinking past hating "Bushco", you've been had by those who find you a "useful idiot" (supposedly Lenin's term).
True enough. There are few of the "original hardcore science/computer/linux/whatever nerds" left here. I remember when this place used to lean libertarian, and the political crap like this seldom was seldom presented - and certainly was presented much more objectively than this bilge article (I went Reuters, AP and a few online sites to get objective and far more informative coverage). Now its all trendy collectivist/leftist crap and a few rightist sniping at the obvious fools in the huge herd of conspiracy leftists that have become./'s core demographic (kdawson, et al, editors). Its rather sad that so man here wallow in ignorance, supposing the half truths and spin they cherish and get here to be the whole of the matter.
Vox populi, Vox Dei I guess. At least Taco can afford a nice house and car now. Until the collectivists come and take it "for the good of the people".
What I wonder is when they will realize that this bill ALLOWS the intelligence gathering operations to go on as before?
The only net gain is for the trial lawyers to barrage telcos with civil suits. Its all politics. In the end only enriching the trial lawyers, who are amongst the Democrats largest contributors, and hitting the Telcos who are probably heavy Republican contributors, and that more than anything else is what is the point of contention. Not right or wrong, but both parties doing the bidding of their money supply masters.
Garbage in, Garbage out. Surely as a/. member, you know that geek truism?
Where do you think the Bush Administration got the bad data on WMD? Same place that Clinton depended on, same results. Same for Bush the Elder when he was surprised by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
From the US intelligence community.
You know, the same bunch of people that missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, overestimated their strengths for decades, missed 9/11, missed the kind of resistance US forces would face in Iraq, missed how relatively quick it would be to use native force and US Airpower in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, missed on calling an aspirin factory an anthrax factory back in the 90's, missed on what camp to hit with cruise missiles to kill Bin Laden back in the 90's...
Do I need to go further? All the way back to how Pearl Harbor was bungled perhaps?
The US Intelligence community is broken. Does not require Evil Chimpy McHalliBush. Just a President that trust what the governmental career intelligence people tell him.
And Bush, as Clinton before him, depended on what they told him and acted on it. And was just as wrong.
You might do better to fix your thinking than to falsify issues by editing other people's posts.
"They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve"
I mean there isn't even the slightest pretense there of objective reporting.
Seems neither the left nor the right is interested in speaking plain facts wihtout embellishing them with spin and political distortion.
Since when did obvious slanted coverage become a staple here? I thought it was about "News for Nerds" - and that in general, us "nerds" desire objectivity, not rampant bias and editorializing presented as "news".
And yeah, there goes my karma. Probably get modded down for speaking truth that offends someone.
Hey, I know someone that is looking. Colorado, maybe Utah. What you have for a C++/Unix guy thats almost 50? He has no CS degree but has been doing programming professionally since the 80's, mainly in C back when I first met him in the 90's.;-)
1. Pass legislation reversing the court the ruling that allows for business process patents. These constitute a huge number of the pending patents I bet - and have been the basis for most so-called software patents.
2. Specify that neither business methods nor software can be patented.
3. Invalidate ALL standing patents that were issued under the previous rule.
Doc, you need to subscribe to some technical literature instead of the nuclear paranoia you seem to subscribe to. This situation is pretty obvious if you bother to think instead of knee-jkerk react. You seem to start with the pre-judeged assumption that some sort of comic-book conspiracy of evil overlords runs the US Intelligence agencies and will irrationally choose evil nukes over engineering practicality, in order to be more menacing.
Wrong. Be rational. There are solid engineering and budgetary reasons at work here. No "secrecy" can hide those issues, no matter the classification fo the satellite. Physics, like mathematics, sooner or later breaks attempts at classifying it. And there are limits on the money spent, even in a "black" budget project. If things go bad, you can bet overspending will leak out. Google SBIRS-High for a good example - look at the globalsecurity.org entry (pic is taken looking S from Buckley AFB - I used to live to the west of that hill full of houses in Aurora CO).
The weight and expense to power ratio for plutonium or other decay based power systems is too high compared to solar arrays and batteries when in low earth orbit. The stuff that uses nukes is generally interplanetary in nature and cannot depend on solar. This is especially true with US launched stuff. Plus, nuclear power units have too high a heat signature to be used for "stealthy" sats, and are heavy and too expensive to launch if there is a cost-worthy alternative. Which there is: good ol' solar arrays, nice and thin.
The intelligence agencies would much rather have more gizmos if given the choice. Solar arrays provide them with better weight tradeoffs, and more power as well -- meaning they can add more stuff and use more power hungry stuff. And they are cheaper to deploy, and less likely to run afoul of regulatory issues i.e. try dragging a nuc design for LOE (low earth orbit) in front of an Engineering Design Review board - they'll laugh you out of the room for being politically stupid.
And if you are talking about the voiced concerns that the satellite in question (US-193, NROL-21) has hazardous material, well that hazmat is rocket fuel for orbital manuvering - the full load of it given that the sat never deployed the solar arrays, nor attemted to manuver to a more stable higher orbit. Chemicals. Not nukes.
Launched Dec 26 2006, had orbital control problems or else was launched into a very unusual orbit for an intelligence platform. (Open info in the internet).
Given that its NRO and that size, I'd guess its a multi-sensor platfrom.
Pretty sad - those things run about $2 Billion. And you can bet that its absence will leave holes in intelligence coverage and really contrain intelligence gathering due to restriction of resources.
Give that plutonium power sources are pretty robust - few moving parts, but low earth orbit stuff doesnt need that - solar and batteries are usually sufficient. So its likely solar powered.
Seems the NRO has not learned to diversify, still putting its eggs in one big basket. That and that the Aerospace companies that sell them to the Govt only know how to make One Big Rocket instead of managing constellations of more numerous but smaller and chaeper satellites. (Pet Peeve of mine).
I bet they had solar arrays, but from amateur images there werent any deployed at any time. That would be the reason why the satellite died - something broke in the solar arrays or deployment process. Since its that new of a satellite (2006), I bet they had equipment failures from the start if its power that is the issue.
Tinfoil hat time: Take all of my above speculation (I used to work in Aerospace and the military) with a grain of salt - they could be using "power" as a cover some classified event that trashed the satellite, like a collision with junk from the Chinese anti-missle mess. That would be very politically inconvenient for the Bush administration right now, and this would be a nice excuse to make that problem go away.
Whatever the case is, the US intelligence community is out 2 billion, and a lot of capacity that was supposed to come online is not there. Could make for problems.
You proceed from false assumptions. The exit polls were quuite simply wrong. To base your argument on that is pretty damning.
Its not the Repubs alone that try to influence the elections - look at the outright fraud that resulted in the WA gov election and was enough to give the office to someone based on illegal votes (felons, addresses that didnt exist, multiple votes by single voters in different precincts).
The Repubs may play the supression game well, but they ahve nothing on the Dems when it comes to outright fraud.
Our current voting system is broken. Its incapable of guaranteeing 1-person, 1-vote - and that the vote is not changed after it is cast. Eventually that will destroy our Republic faster than any conservative, liberal, Democrat or Republican.
We need a tamperproof photo/biometric voter ID, open and well documented voting machinery, solid cryptography basis for all this stuff, and checks and balances of the audit procedures.
Anything less is simply taking an aspirin in hopes that it will cure the brain cancer thats killing you.
I've seen similar stuff about Giuliani and Thompson supporters, re: switching to Romney. Problem for them is that I know one of the names they used, called him up and he had never heard of such a thing. Just another lie planted by the Romney camp.
Its like the "EvangelicalsForMitt" website earlier this year onthe Republican side - they are neither Evangelicals, nor are they "For Mitt". Nothing more than a front for an Atlanta PR firm with Romney ties that feeds the press hack jobs on other Republicans and is covertly fed "opposition research" from the Romney campaign staff. They start spin, rumors and outright lies, and have been alleged to be behind a lot of the disnformation emails going around.
Romney seems to be trying to covertly throw a TON of mud at everyone while keeping himself at arms length. Behind that plastic facade is just another rich guy who thinks he can be plastic enough by faking his beliefs and dragging everyone else down, instead of moving himself up.
He'll be worse than Nixon if he buys his way in.
This comes from the things I learned and people I got to know when I did some legislative work. Politics is damend ugly, but it doesnt have to be. People like Romney and Hillary Clinton make it that way. Idealist will get squashed. Ask Obama who has been on the receiving end of Hillary's corporate hits, and Fred Thompson who is trying to be a small government Federalist in a "Big Government"/Corporatist Republican world.
You haven't talked to many recent US "IS" degree graduates, have you?
Rote memorization of mechanics is all most of them have. They can tell me how to write a quicksort with ease, but a large number of them cannot tell me why its advantageous over a heapsort - and what circumstances might change that.
The latter is what Google should be asking for "senior" positions, and the fact that they do not says bad things about Google - 1) they are gunning for a younger crowd because they ask things that a pro would normally go look up or call a library function, and they are interviewing the wrong way and are basing their decision on something other than demonstrated experience.
I got different interviewers, none of them over 30, and no questions based on thinking, only on mere regurgitation of whats likely being taught at their alma mater's grad school. I'm still in aerospace, and unlike Google, you still have to be able to think here, and we have good people well over 50 solving engineering problems instead of reinventing the wheel every decade. I was disappointed that such shallow practices are at the core of Google considering the interviews were for a positions that allegedly required experience. I truly expected more and better.
And I and others came back a little worse for the wear but pretty much the same people we were. So a "peace" movement managed to scrape up some malcontents, big deal. I bet not all of whom were soldiers, much less combat troops. Of the few that actually turn out to have really served and been in theater, a majority of them are REMFS (Rear Echelon Muther Fuckers) and other deskbound dickheads who never saw the real combat other than random SAF blocks away from their safe concrete buildings.
Face it, there are always shitbirds IN the military (look at Swofford), so there will always be shitbirds that get out of the military and try to trash it. More recently, look at Beauchamp and the The National Review and the fabrications he put there. Turns out he was a REMF and a liar. Same for the fakes, like Jesse MacBeth - who was presented bythe peace protest groups as an Anti-War combat veteran Ranger. There are many other instances of that sort of thign as well. The "Peace" movement is very good at latching onto fake soldiers and non-combat vets as long as they are willing to sing the right tune to the cameras and pose as something they are not.
Given the history of such willing fools, I'd highly discount almost all of the protesters - since its likely many of them are either fakes or not combat arms.
And yes, the margin was close, so libertarian votes that would have otherwise been cast for the R candidate would have made the difference.
Look at the senatorial election in Missouri in 06 - the libertarian vote was the largest ever - and the Republican voted dropped, and the margin was far smaller than the libertarian gain. Doing the math: Libertarians left the Republican party, and in doing so gave the Democrats a victory.
Maybe thats the start of a trend. IF so, its almso a suicidal one, because as bad as the Republicans are on social liberty, the Democrats are far worse on economic and political liberty (PC-ism, speech codes, etc). And they both are still pigs when it comes to pork.
"You have been watching too many movies. I worked with this stuff and referencing "Patriot Games" makes anyone in the know laugh (or even better that dubmassed movie that has them tracking WIl Smith in realtime inside a firken building. I was even at a classified brief where they made a joke of it: "Can we do stuff like I saw on Patriot Games? Yes, if you can get my a camera and a crane"."
Let me guess where that brief was - a certain 3 letter agency at Ft Meade MD? Heh.
They used that same anecdote when my wife did her brief a long time ago, and when I did mine going back into classified work after 9/11. I bet my son hears it when he gets his indoctrination brief going in there.
I voted libertarian last election cycle, and it sure as hell didnt get me a libertarian candidate. Just more earmarking corrupt pork-fed collectivist Democrtats, to go with the earmarking corrupt pork-fed statist Republicans.
So yes, thats emperical evidence: voted L, got D in a mixed district.
1) ARMITRAGE leaked the name and Fitzgerald knew this long before he put reporters in jail and went after libby. If Armitrage wasn't prosecuted, then the leak was not a crime. If there was no crime, then there could be no obstruction since there was no crime to be covered up.
2) If there was no crime there should have been no further prosecution - and the reporters that went to jail for Contemopt shoudl never have been put there (and consequently Libby never prosecuted either).
3) Large number of legitimate defenses were disallowed Libby and his defense team, including the question of whether a leak was a crime or not. The JURY never got to hear all of the story -they jsut got to hear the continued refernces to a leak that apparently was not a crime without being told the whole of the truth. This is a substantial chance that this conviction will be overturned on appeal.
4) the Judge basically threw away the prosecution and probation offices recommendations, in order to make a political statement with the sentencing. So, Bush, like CLinton before him, made a political statement with the powers of his Office of President.
Wait a sec. This is Slashdot. Daily Kos is over there... and so is Digg.
Oh well, slashdot circling the drain, leftwards, as well, descending into the feverswamp of leftist idiocy. I wish we could flush the idiotic naive lefty editorial slamnt that seems to have taken residence here since kdawson started his lefty trolling. Either that or put a Free republic moron up here to post for "balnace".
Then techno libertarians who initially flocked to this place could sit back and watch BOTH sets of idiots die of apoplexy, and maybe we'd get back a tech site that used to be a place to go that was populist in tilt, but politically neutral ground.
KDAWSON, troll, must GO! Or else give someone for the Right equal powers to post flamebait to the front page.
Slashdot Mirror
Flamebait?
Gimme a break. I state a fact. Is not that summary a biased one with loaded language? And is there objectivity missing in the recent slashdot editorial tilt to the left?
So how is that flamebait?
I read some of those due to where I was working, and we inthe IC did say that there were WMD. Perhaps your link source is not as definitive as you believe?
Problem is that in the first several amendments "the people" is clearly focused on the individual. Or do you belive "the people" given free speech in the 1st are only those the state approves? Likewise for several others.
Your reasoning is specious and wrong.
Just the "greater good" of the trial lawyers. You got fooled!
This was all about allowing tons of trial lawyers to make tons of money by inundating telcos with civil suits.
Note that the intelligence gathering part of the bill basically is unaltered. Go read it, it allows bascially what was going on under the previous bill.
The "fight" was the Repubs trying to protect their big contributor Telcos (who dont give a rats ass about privacy), and the Dems trying to help their big contributor Trial Lawyers make more money (who don't give a rats ass about justice, just money).
Politics. Both D and R serving their respective masters.
You haven't figured it out yet that you are being used?
Letting rage and bias against "Bushco" steer you is a piss poor way of looking at things. Your use of "Bushco" is a very telling term - says you've turned off the intellect and turned on the emotions - and are irrational about this as surely as a white person using "nigger" reveals a person to be an unthinking racist.
When will you will realize that this bill ALLOWS the intelligence gathering operations to go on as before? Go read the thing.
The only net gain in this bill is for the trial lawyers to barrage telcos with civil suits.
Its all politics. In the end this battle was only about enriching the trial lawyers, who are amongst the Democrats largest contributors, and hitting the Telcos who are probably heavy Republican contributors. More than anything else is, that was what was the point of contention in Congress. Not right or wrong, but both parties doing the bidding of their money supply masters.
And you are fool enough to let one side use you.
Blinded by rage and incapable of thinking past hating "Bushco", you've been had by those who find you a "useful idiot" (supposedly Lenin's term).
True enough. There are few of the "original hardcore science/computer/linux/whatever nerds" left here. I remember when this place used to lean libertarian, and the political crap like this seldom was seldom presented - and certainly was presented much more objectively than this bilge article (I went Reuters, AP and a few online sites to get objective and far more informative coverage). Now its all trendy collectivist/leftist crap and a few rightist sniping at the obvious fools in the huge herd of conspiracy leftists that have become ./'s core demographic (kdawson, et al, editors). Its rather sad that so man here wallow in ignorance, supposing the half truths and spin they cherish and get here to be the whole of the matter.
Vox populi, Vox Dei I guess. At least Taco can afford a nice house and car now. Until the collectivists come and take it "for the good of the people".
What I wonder is when they will realize that this bill ALLOWS the intelligence gathering operations to go on as before?
The only net gain is for the trial lawyers to barrage telcos with civil suits. Its all politics. In the end only enriching the trial lawyers, who are amongst the Democrats largest contributors, and hitting the Telcos who are probably heavy Republican contributors, and that more than anything else is what is the point of contention. Not right or wrong, but both parties doing the bidding of their money supply masters.
Garbage in, Garbage out. Surely as a /. member, you know that geek truism?
...
Where do you think the Bush Administration got the bad data on WMD? Same place that Clinton depended on, same results. Same for Bush the Elder when he was surprised by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
From the US intelligence community.
You know, the same bunch of people that missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, overestimated their strengths for decades, missed 9/11, missed the kind of resistance US forces would face in Iraq, missed how relatively quick it would be to use native force and US Airpower in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, missed on calling an aspirin factory an anthrax factory back in the 90's, missed on what camp to hit with cruise missiles to kill Bin Laden back in the 90's
Do I need to go further? All the way back to how Pearl Harbor was bungled perhaps?
The US Intelligence community is broken. Does not require Evil Chimpy McHalliBush. Just a President that trust what the governmental career intelligence people tell him.
And Bush, as Clinton before him, depended on what they told him and acted on it. And was just as wrong.
You might do better to fix your thinking than to falsify issues by editing other people's posts.
I especially liked this bit:
"They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve"
I mean there isn't even the slightest pretense there of objective reporting.
Seems neither the left nor the right is interested in speaking plain facts wihtout embellishing them with spin and political distortion.
Since when did obvious slanted coverage become a staple here? I thought it was about "News for Nerds" - and that in general, us "nerds" desire objectivity, not rampant bias and editorializing presented as "news".
And yeah, there goes my karma. Probably get modded down for speaking truth that offends someone.
You have a 3 digit ./ ID.
You're not supposed to "get out more".
What kind of an example do you want to be setting for us 5 digit types?
Hey, I know someone that is looking. Colorado, maybe Utah. What you have for a C++/Unix guy thats almost 50? He has no CS degree but has been doing programming professionally since the 80's, mainly in C back when I first met him in the 90's. ;-)
1. Pass legislation reversing the court the ruling that allows for business process patents. These constitute a huge number of the pending patents I bet - and have been the basis for most so-called software patents.
2. Specify that neither business methods nor software can be patented.
3. Invalidate ALL standing patents that were issued under the previous rule.
That simple.
Doc, you need to subscribe to some technical literature instead of the nuclear paranoia you seem to subscribe to. This situation is pretty obvious if you bother to think instead of knee-jkerk react. You seem to start with the pre-judeged assumption that some sort of comic-book conspiracy of evil overlords runs the US Intelligence agencies and will irrationally choose evil nukes over engineering practicality, in order to be more menacing.
Wrong. Be rational. There are solid engineering and budgetary reasons at work here. No "secrecy" can hide those issues, no matter the classification fo the satellite. Physics, like mathematics, sooner or later breaks attempts at classifying it. And there are limits on the money spent, even in a "black" budget project. If things go bad, you can bet overspending will leak out. Google SBIRS-High for a good example - look at the globalsecurity.org entry (pic is taken looking S from Buckley AFB - I used to live to the west of that hill full of houses in Aurora CO).
The weight and expense to power ratio for plutonium or other decay based power systems is too high compared to solar arrays and batteries when in low earth orbit. The stuff that uses nukes is generally interplanetary in nature and cannot depend on solar. This is especially true with US launched stuff. Plus, nuclear power units have too high a heat signature to be used for "stealthy" sats, and are heavy and too expensive to launch if there is a cost-worthy alternative. Which there is: good ol' solar arrays, nice and thin.
The intelligence agencies would much rather have more gizmos if given the choice. Solar arrays provide them with better weight tradeoffs, and more power as well -- meaning they can add more stuff and use more power hungry stuff. And they are cheaper to deploy, and less likely to run afoul of regulatory issues i.e. try dragging a nuc design for LOE (low earth orbit) in front of an Engineering Design Review board - they'll laugh you out of the room for being politically stupid.
And if you are talking about the voiced concerns that the satellite in question (US-193, NROL-21) has hazardous material, well that hazmat is rocket fuel for orbital manuvering - the full load of it given that the sat never deployed the solar arrays, nor attemted to manuver to a more stable higher orbit. Chemicals. Not nukes.
Launched Dec 26 2006, had orbital control problems or else was launched into a very unusual orbit for an intelligence platform. (Open info in the internet).
Given that its NRO and that size, I'd guess its a multi-sensor platfrom.
Pretty sad - those things run about $2 Billion. And you can bet that its absence will leave holes in intelligence coverage and really contrain intelligence gathering due to restriction of resources.
Give that plutonium power sources are pretty robust - few moving parts, but low earth orbit stuff doesnt need that - solar and batteries are usually sufficient. So its likely solar powered.
Seems the NRO has not learned to diversify, still putting its eggs in one big basket. That and that the Aerospace companies that sell them to the Govt only know how to make One Big Rocket instead of managing constellations of more numerous but smaller and chaeper satellites. (Pet Peeve of mine).
I bet they had solar arrays, but from amateur images there werent any deployed at any time. That would be the reason why the satellite died - something broke in the solar arrays or deployment process. Since its that new of a satellite (2006), I bet they had equipment failures from the start if its power that is the issue.
Tinfoil hat time: Take all of my above speculation (I used to work in Aerospace and the military) with a grain of salt - they could be using "power" as a cover some classified event that trashed the satellite, like a collision with junk from the Chinese anti-missle mess. That would be very politically inconvenient for the Bush administration right now, and this would be a nice excuse to make that problem go away.
Whatever the case is, the US intelligence community is out 2 billion, and a lot of capacity that was supposed to come online is not there. Could make for problems.
You proceed from false assumptions. The exit polls were quuite simply wrong. To base your argument on that is pretty damning.
Its not the Repubs alone that try to influence the elections - look at the outright fraud that resulted in the WA gov election and was enough to give the office to someone based on illegal votes (felons, addresses that didnt exist, multiple votes by single voters in different precincts).
The Repubs may play the supression game well, but they ahve nothing on the Dems when it comes to outright fraud.
Our current voting system is broken. Its incapable of guaranteeing 1-person, 1-vote - and that the vote is not changed after it is cast. Eventually that will destroy our Republic faster than any conservative, liberal, Democrat or Republican.
We need a tamperproof photo/biometric voter ID, open and well documented voting machinery, solid cryptography basis for all this stuff, and checks and balances of the audit procedures.
Anything less is simply taking an aspirin in hopes that it will cure the brain cancer thats killing you.
Funny you should mention Romney like that.
I've seen similar stuff about Giuliani and Thompson supporters, re: switching to Romney. Problem for them is that I know one of the names they used, called him up and he had never heard of such a thing. Just another lie planted by the Romney camp.
Its like the "EvangelicalsForMitt" website earlier this year onthe Republican side - they are neither Evangelicals, nor are they "For Mitt". Nothing more than a front for an Atlanta PR firm with Romney ties that feeds the press hack jobs on other Republicans and is covertly fed "opposition research" from the Romney campaign staff. They start spin, rumors and outright lies, and have been alleged to be behind a lot of the disnformation emails going around.
Romney seems to be trying to covertly throw a TON of mud at everyone while keeping himself at arms length. Behind that plastic facade is just another rich guy who thinks he can be plastic enough by faking his beliefs and dragging everyone else down, instead of moving himself up.
He'll be worse than Nixon if he buys his way in.
This comes from the things I learned and people I got to know when I did some legislative work. Politics is damend ugly, but it doesnt have to be. People like Romney and Hillary Clinton make it that way. Idealist will get squashed. Ask Obama who has been on the receiving end of Hillary's corporate hits, and Fred Thompson who is trying to be a small government Federalist in a "Big Government"/Corporatist Republican world.
You haven't talked to many recent US "IS" degree graduates, have you?
Rote memorization of mechanics is all most of them have. They can tell me how to write a quicksort with ease, but a large number of them cannot tell me why its advantageous over a heapsort - and what circumstances might change that.
The latter is what Google should be asking for "senior" positions, and the fact that they do not says bad things about Google - 1) they are gunning for a younger crowd because they ask things that a pro would normally go look up or call a library function, and they are interviewing the wrong way and are basing their decision on something other than demonstrated experience.
I got different interviewers, none of them over 30, and no questions based on thinking, only on mere regurgitation of whats likely being taught at their alma mater's grad school. I'm still in aerospace, and unlike Google, you still have to be able to think here, and we have good people well over 50 solving engineering problems instead of reinventing the wheel every decade. I was disappointed that such shallow practices are at the core of Google considering the interviews were for a positions that allegedly required experience. I truly expected more and better.
Glad to see I'm not the only one.
You and me both.
Look, I served. I was over there. It sucked.
And I and others came back a little worse for the wear but pretty much the same people we were. So a "peace" movement managed to scrape up some malcontents, big deal. I bet not all of whom were soldiers, much less combat troops. Of the few that actually turn out to have really served and been in theater, a majority of them are REMFS (Rear Echelon Muther Fuckers) and other deskbound dickheads who never saw the real combat other than random SAF blocks away from their safe concrete buildings.
Face it, there are always shitbirds IN the military (look at Swofford), so there will always be shitbirds that get out of the military and try to trash it. More recently, look at Beauchamp and the The National Review and the fabrications he put there. Turns out he was a REMF and a liar. Same for the fakes, like Jesse MacBeth - who was presented bythe peace protest groups as an Anti-War combat veteran Ranger. There are many other instances of that sort of thign as well. The "Peace" movement is very good at latching onto fake soldiers and non-combat vets as long as they are willing to sing the right tune to the cameras and pose as something they are not.
Given the history of such willing fools, I'd highly discount almost all of the protesters - since its likely many of them are either fakes or not combat arms.
Not individual but aggregate.
And yes, the margin was close, so libertarian votes that would have otherwise been cast for the R candidate would have made the difference.
Look at the senatorial election in Missouri in 06 - the libertarian vote was the largest ever - and the Republican voted dropped, and the margin was far smaller than the libertarian gain. Doing the math: Libertarians left the Republican party, and in doing so gave the Democrats a victory.
Maybe thats the start of a trend. IF so, its almso a suicidal one, because as bad as the Republicans are on social liberty, the Democrats are far worse on economic and political liberty (PC-ism, speech codes, etc). And they both are still pigs when it comes to pork.
"You have been watching too many movies. I worked with this stuff and referencing "Patriot Games" makes anyone in the know laugh (or even better that dubmassed movie that has them tracking WIl Smith in realtime inside a firken building. I was even at a classified brief where they made a joke of it: "Can we do stuff like I saw on Patriot Games? Yes, if you can get my a camera and a crane"."
Let me guess where that brief was - a certain 3 letter agency at Ft Meade MD? Heh.
They used that same anecdote when my wife did her brief a long time ago, and when I did mine going back into classified work after 9/11. I bet my son hears it when he gets his indoctrination brief going in there.
I voted libertarian last election cycle, and it sure as hell didnt get me a libertarian candidate. Just more earmarking corrupt pork-fed collectivist Democrtats, to go with the earmarking corrupt pork-fed statist Republicans.
So yes, thats emperical evidence: voted L, got D in a mixed district.
The best comparison I can make is that it's Elite, but with real people running^W ruining the galaxy, and you can't argue with that.
There, fixed it for you.
1) ARMITRAGE leaked the name and Fitzgerald knew this long before he put reporters in jail and went after libby. If Armitrage wasn't prosecuted, then the leak was not a crime. If there was no crime, then there could be no obstruction since there was no crime to be covered up.
2) If there was no crime there should have been no further prosecution - and the reporters that went to jail for Contemopt shoudl never have been put there (and consequently Libby never prosecuted either).
3) Large number of legitimate defenses were disallowed Libby and his defense team, including the question of whether a leak was a crime or not. The JURY never got to hear all of the story -they jsut got to hear the continued refernces to a leak that apparently was not a crime without being told the whole of the truth. This is a substantial chance that this conviction will be overturned on appeal.
4) the Judge basically threw away the prosecution and probation offices recommendations, in order to make a political statement with the sentencing. So, Bush, like CLinton before him, made a political statement with the powers of his Office of President.
Wait a sec. This is Slashdot. Daily Kos is over there... and so is Digg.
Oh well, slashdot circling the drain, leftwards, as well, descending into the feverswamp of leftist idiocy. I wish we could flush the idiotic naive lefty editorial slamnt that seems to have taken residence here since kdawson started his lefty trolling. Either that or put a Free republic moron up here to post for "balnace".
Then techno libertarians who initially flocked to this place could sit back and watch BOTH sets of idiots die of apoplexy, and maybe we'd get back a tech site that used to be a place to go that was populist in tilt, but politically neutral ground.
KDAWSON, troll, must GO! Or else give someone for the Right equal powers to post flamebait to the front page.
"Express that sort of "opinion" in the US and you'll find yourself in Guantánamo."
Bullshit.
Radio Pacifica is one such counter example.
Black Swan to your idiotic post.
None of the above. Period.
Its like the old joke - How do you define an honorable politician? Once he is bought, he stays bought.
There's not one in any of the party lists that wouldn't sell out one "nerd" issue or another somewhere along the line.