While an insult to the intelligence of most teachers, the fact of the matter it is true for various reasons. Teachers are sheltered by things such as tenure and the pleasures of cival servanthood. You SHOULD ALWAYS CONSIDER COLLEGE BEFORE A CAREER! Let me repeat that...FUCKING GO TO COLLEGE!. A college degree will last you a life time, and is worth more money than mere certifications. Employers don't care what you really know, they care about what they think you know. That sheepskin makes your more hirable, and more important as a skilled worker than certs. AFTER you get out of college, get a few certs but only to maintain your value as an employee.
Trust me on this, I dropped out of college to follow a career in management, but when that turned out to be bunk I fell back on my computer skills. Unfortunately, although I could whip ass over most IT sysadmins, I still get passed over because I don't have a college degree or experience (how do you get experience without the degree?).
For starters...kiddy porn? Don't expect me to have a whole lot of sympathy for the accused, pending the weight of the evidence. But, the followign issues are at stake:
Privacy - The other users have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and having an officer present during the search with the ability to view their records violates that privacy.
Agency - This idiot has a weak case, since the "unreasonable search and seizure" clause is to protect an individuals rights against the state, not their sysadmins. Try again. There are a handful or more of legal precedents which allow evidence gathered by someone whereas if that someone were an officer of the court or a cop, it would be inadmissible.
Person, Articles, Effects - none of those three should extend to the ISP's records unless the ISP is the defendant.
Cost of Administration - it cannot be expected that your average cop is also a sysadmin, so it would be up to the ISP itself to pay for the gathering of evidence - a cost which constitutes an illegal tax (not that illegal taxes aren't all the rage nowadays).
As CalTrans had already created this particular sign, and similar forms of prior art exist all across this country, this is not art. This guy did a flagrant plagiarism, and moreover he craftily attempted to cover up his act of counterfieture.
All the authority you have is locked up in your expertise. Having worked for a City government with a completely fucked IT policy (my HR director once told us that she doesn't want to hear that "the cause of the problems are the users"), I can honestly tell you your Legitimate Authority lay in what you know, and what they don't know.
First, get with other IT directors from Corporations or other City Governments/School Districts (preferrable) and get copies of their IT policies. Highlight the sections they have that you want to implement, and then pass them around - not just to your uppers, but to everyone who asks (or doesn't ask). Even users. Be prepared to discuss in layspeak why these policies are necessary. Keep in mind who you're talking to in terms of how you phrase your reasoning. For instance, when talking to a user, explain "some of these people don't respect the other users need for equal resources". When you talk to administration, frame it in the context of liability and security, and find stories of big monies being lost by school districts because little johnny found porn while looking at whitehouse.com.
Finally, what they don't know won't hurt them. For instance, if you can get your hands on bandwidth throttling software, implement it quietly and don't tell anyone. I made a habit out of installing spyware when I was in charge of desktop systems, and any napster/winamp/happy99.exe type stuff that showed up got remotely uninstalled after dark. Whenever anyone called me about X not working, I told them that that software was not authorized or supported by me.
And don't be afraid to be frank. More than once I threatened to quit my job over big issues, and I would have.
Actually, fraud, shredding documents, and bribery are all illegal, last I checked.
Specify what acts of fraud you are alleging? Shredding documents is NOT at all illegal - we do it everyday so that people can't dig our customers credit card numbers out of the trash. Specify what acts of bribery were committed.
And let's face it - most of the corporations in this country live off of the government. Regardless of all the rhetoric of the "free market" in the USA we have a highly subsidized high-tech industry, financial industry, and agricultural industry.
Highly subsidized? Can you prove this? Most "high tech" companies I know produce consumer electronics and electronis systems for businesses or other hi-tech firms. Besides, I'm sure any government subsidy far and away doesn't come close to the amount of subsidization the corporations do when they pay taxes to the government so politicians can give handouts to their constituency.
The huge defense budgets are loaded with pork for the handful of politically connected defense contractors.
Define pork? I don't consider anything involving our national defense pork. The only think close to impropriety is how senators lobby hard to get defense contracters to locate to their state and bring jobs home.
How much research that lead to the internet was on the taxpayer's dime, or from government protected monopolies?
The entire Internet was developed by US government tax payer dollars. Given the economic prosperity that brought, I don't see a problem with it. Moreover, the purpouse of the Internet was well founded in maintaining communications during a nuclear attack - a very real possibility during the last half of the 20th century.
And let's not even go into limited liability for shareholders - if a company profits, they get the profits. If a company goes bankrupt, the owners are not liable, the creditors lose their money.
No shit sherlock, thats called risk. But you're wrong - shareholders get fucked when companies go under as well. That's the risk you take when you put money into a company either in the form of unsecured loans or by buying stocks. If you aren't willing to tolerate the risk, then don't put the money out. Do you have a clue how the system works?
Of course, more than likely, if the company is big enough or important enough, they will be bailed out, again by taxpayers. Remember the "Mexico" bailout (i.e., US banks got bailed out). The second "Mexico" bailout? The third "Mexico" bailout? The S&L bailout? The Crysler bailout? Long Term Capital Management? Steel tariffs? The airlines? Hell, my tax money is still going to McDonald's to advertize their "food" overseas. The bailouts and subsidies to US companies in my lifetime are counted in the trillions of dollars.
Mexico repayed the loans in record time (and there never was a second or third mexico bailout). Of course, the S&L bailouts and Airline bailouts were kind of necessary - you can't let the lynchpin of our economy fail. I'm sure if it had, you would have bitched about it just the same. Do you bitch about the FDIC as well?
In jail for what? You might want to stowe your outrage and get back to some logic. There is nothing illegal about firing workers because your company is short on cash. There is nothing illegal about giving your top level management rediculous paychecks either.
It is merely immoral.
Before you decide to pull out the guillotine, you may want to actually substantiate your charges wity some factual evidence of wrongdoing. The fact of the matter is, most corporate failures, most mass layoffs, and most insolvencies arent' caused by criminal mismanagement, just plain mismanagement. That is the risk of a free market capitalist economy.
There are a massive number of vehicles out there that have absolutely no use or utility whatsoever.
My ass, if they had "no use or utility" they would'nt be being made. If *you* don't have a use for them, then don't buy them, but dont' tell me that I can't have a certain kind of vehicles because you don't think I need it, that's just commie as hell.
Indeed, the public at large doesn't pay enough attention to fuel economy when purchasing cars either (though they absolutely should if they don't like killing kids from emphyzema and they're patriotic)
No, they're probably paying more attention to the much more realistic threat of their kids getting KIA because the pussy little gas sipping car they'd be driving doesn't have enough steel reinforced structure to save them in an accident. Guess what: SUV's do a much better job of protecting their occupants. As is typical in today's world, they make the SUV driver pay a higher premium for survivability.
If the US really cared about being strategically strong....they would impose a large tax
Slow your role...this country was founded by people who were tired of the government trying to use taxes to punish them. We're not worried about our strategic strength, because the Arab states need our money more then we need their oil. Only 52% of our foreign oil is from the Mid-East, the rest being from South America and Northern Europe. We also do about 15% of our oil production internally. If we really cared about being strong though, we'd hit those resources in the Gulf of Mexico, and that god awful pile of rubble in ANWR that everyone is so concerned about spoiling (hint:it's a barren pile of frozen rocks guys, we aren't exactly going to hurt it anyway).
If you want total and complete freedom in hosting your web site, you'll need to get a hosting provider outside of the country you're likely to piss people off in. I have a friend that runs both a couple of pr0n sites and a gambling site (ironically, he's a rather square dude), and he lives and works in Costa Rica. That costs mucho dinero, especially considering that outside of the US and EU, good bandwidth is hard to get. The next best solution is to be your own ISP: Arrange to have a T-1, T-3, or OC-3 connection of your own with a Tier1 provider like Sprint or Qwest, and as long as you pay that $1k USD per month they don't particularly give a shit what you do with it. But then, you'll have the expense and time of setting up your own DNS servers in addition to web services.
The hosting provider I go with is Esosoft, and although they don't offer alot of bells and whistles, they do support PHP, Perl & C CGI, Frontpage 2K extensions, Miva (which is what my site). They use a virtual server system running on Linux (although they say unix, it's Apache). Not only do I run my site (yep, 2nd plug), but some organizations I used to belong to used them for several years, and we get away with lots of shit, including posting porn. I'm none to shy either, but I also excercise practical restraint: although I don't have the luxury of anonymity, I choose my battles and stick to my guns, and have found that most people are full of shit when it comes time to actually file a suit against you or your hosting provider.
While I agree with your statement in as much as it is predicated on the assumption that the BSA is only engaged in supporting the rights of software developers, the fact of the matter is that does not give them the right to use intimidation tactics to forcefully audit people. I, as a private citizen, or even as a small business owner,should not be forced to spend my money on the administration of software licenses according to the standards of a third party. An audit constitutes a violation of my privacy, and in as much as they use barratry to get their way, it infringes on my civil liberties.
The BSA bears the burden of proof, and they should not be allowed to arbitrarily target a business or individual.
They were using open source beowulf clusters to run a CCD camera which tracked the reflection in your eye (after being calibrated to your eyes geometry) to determine the position you were looking at, then two blinks for left click, three blinks for right click.
It would still be interesting without OSS and Beowulf clusters, but it probably would'nt get onto slashdot.
Having installed dozens of decent radios in cars, I can assure that if you were getting noise, it was your installation and not the cars breaker-point ignition system causing the problem. The more decent the radio in fact (I don't mean Kraco, I'm talking like Nakamichi- okay maybe not Nak but Eclipse, Sony Mobile ES, or Alpine) the better it rejects noise UNTIL you have a bad ground on your radio or a crappy old antenna.
Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a ground strap running from your firewall to your hood either.
Why do you class-warfare morons inject yourself everywhere even when it's not relevant? The most stolen car is a TOYOTA CAMRY - not exactly a rich persons car. Meanwhile, crimes that occur in boardrooms usually impact people who have the money to invest in those companies - which by the logic and you and your class-warfare ilk are the RICH.
You're a dumbass. The most heavily stolen car is the Toyota Camry, followed by the Honda Accord and the Chevy C1500 Truck. These aren't rich people cars, which just goes to show that people like you who promote class warfare don't actually care about the numbers, just so long as it sounds good.
the victims of crime in the boardroom are poor people.
You're an even bigger moron. Crimes that occur in the boardroom take money away from investors and stockholders - of which the "poor" are rarely in the group.
our elected officials know that the only way to keep their jobs is to sell favors to the rich people (keeping campaign contributions coming in), in order to buy votes from the poor people (using propaganda).
And the poor people are more than happy to sell their votes for welfare programs, good feelings, and promises of programs that benefit them directly. In the vote economy, the rich may provide the capital, but the idiots who let their vote be bought are the ones who fuel the system.
things will remain this way in america for as long as the populace remains a mass of uneducated consumers driven by media.
Such as yourself
and it looks like the people who want to keep it that way are winning.
Well.. you know slavery? Where do you think all those slaves that willingly jumped on the ships for america came from?
They were rounded up in Africa, by Africans, and sold to (usually) the Dutch or Spanish traders who brough them to various Carribean islands. Importation of slaves was outlawed in the late 1700's by our Constitution.
And then, colonialism anyone?
What about it? As in, do you have a point?
If you don't want to see that most of europe and amrican wealth is delivered from continious exploitation of the rest of the world, no matter how sublte it is, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
And merely because you insist (in the way that ignorant losers do) that for American and Europe to be as wealthy as they were that they had to have exploited someone doesn't make it true either. Quite simply, capitalism works. Not only did it make the US and Europe rich by trading with each other, but it's made most of Asia richer.
It is. And those kids that are dying from hunger or from AIDS? Did you know that up until recently drugs to help those infected with HIV/AIDS were few times more expensive in africa than in the 'west' (up until recently when african countries finaly convinced WTO that this has bad effect on overall economy (that was the ONLY reason WTO accepted)).
This is most certainly bullshit, because in America we pay higher costs for drugs - ALL DRUGS including those for treating HIV - than even Canada or Mexico who are right off our borders. Are you so damned ignorant of basic economics that you think a rich country can sell something to countries on a poor continent for more than the rich country is willing to pay?
Well, I have. I never said American capitalism didn't exploit European workers (as did Europe). African slavery wouldn't have happened unless the plantation & mineral economy of pre-industrial hadn't been enormously profitable.
Bullshit. African slavery was a product of Africans. They had internal slave trade happenning for thousands of years. African slaves were traded to the Arabs for thousands of years, until the rise of Islam began making human slavery somewhat unpopular. The Africans simply found a new market in the Europeans.
England's industrial revolution would not have been possible without the "Atlantic triangle" of slavery, sugar-cacao-cotton, and textiles. Slavery, along with the exploitation of English peasants, where key "human ingredients" in the birth of capitalism.
The "birth of capitalism"? You moron, capitalism was around since man first began trade. It is the most fundamental and robust of socioeconomic systems. People have spent millenia trying to dream up new systems, all of which have failed (socialism, communism, mercantilism, et al). And the Atlantic triangle was sugar-rum-slaves. There was no significant market for textiles in carribean or african countries.
Later, England became anti-slavery when they sought to undermine the economies of their rivals France & Spain, and when their manufacturing economy had taken off.
England did'nt become anti-slavery untill the early 1800's. By that, I mean they decided slavery was illegal in 1772, but did'nt actually abolish slave trade by British subject until 1807. They government did'nt actually engage in direct military enforcement of antislavery for another 10 years. The decision wasn't driven economically, but by religeon.
Even when slavery ended, the exploitation of Africa hardly ended. Just look at the history of the Congo -- surely you're not going to suggest Belgium was out to "civilize" Africa, are you? Or that the CIA's assassination of Patrice Lumumba was purely the fault of Africans?
I'm not even suggesting the CIA assisinated him. In fact, history quite clearly records that a BELGIAN officer commanded a BELGIAN firing squad to shoot him long before the CIA could think about acting against him. Again, your skewed propagandized version of the facts might make things comfortable for you, but it doesn't help you get much of a grasp on reality.
Well, thats amazing, I guess that 12 MILLION black people that are the ancestors of the entire black US population just came over voluntarily in the 1700's and 1800s for a holiday. Man, how blind can you be? Almost the entire US black population is descended directly from slaves. Over 12 million shipped, and at least that number never made the journey.
You're about ignorant. No wait...you ARE ignorant. The most liberal estimates are that about 2 million African slaves were brought to the Americas - not directly onto the continent of the US. More reasonable estimates put the number at about 800,000. The Constitution as ratified in the late 1700's banned the import of slaves, so any slaves born about about 1800 were born on American soil (excluding smuggling, which really wasn't an issue because American born slaves were less expensive). This is still a grisley math, but then you have to consider that the slave driven economy of the southern states did not even make up half of the overall plantation economy; Slaves were expensive to buy and keep and only made sense on large scales. The vast majority of southern agriculture took place on southern farms where slaves, if any could be afforded, merely augmented the work done by poor white southern farmers.
I'm afraid that reality is not as politically sexy as you would like to make it for your own personal benefit.
350 years of violent exploitation and colonisation, leaving millions mired in poverty, and then less than 50 years of independence
Yadda yadda yadda, the same tired lines aren't even worth shooting down anymore. If you can't seen through the veneer of wildly inflated accusations, you're doomed to suffer the yoke of ignorance you bear now.
then less than 50 years of independence (in most countries, less than 30 years), and people expect things to be just peachy already? Shite, thats ridiculous.
Half of Asia doesn't seem to think so. Countries like Singapore and Thaland were giant mudpits of disease and poverty in the late 80's. By the late 90's, they were an "emerging market" with billions of world dollars flooding in. There was a city for 700,000 people built in thailand in 5 years to house the new economy.
Consider this: before white people stepped onto the African continent,
White people have been on the African continent for thousands of years. Trade between southern europe and northern africa has millennia of history behind it.
Africans WERENT mired in poverty at all. Instead, the Bantus had a thriving, successful civilisation that spanned virtually the entire continent south of the sahara, and had spent the previous 2000 years expanding and spreading southwards. Primarily an agricultural society, but in the North and along the east coast engaged in trade with the arabs and indians respectively. The nomadic San in the South of Africa have occupied the land where they are living for 40,000 years. Africans were a successful, thriving civilisation for centuries UNTIL the moment white people stepped onto the continent. The Africans did not have guns or natural resistance to many of the diseases the europeans brought, millions perished from disease or violence. And now half of/. seems to think that Africans have caused their own problems? Amazing. The ignorance is astounding.
The ignorance is astounding, but it's your ignorance. Any great african civilizations died out by the birth of Christ. Oh, and by the way, "Africa" is a continent, but it's peoples form nations that are subsidiary even to the individual borders of countries they are in. You sit there and speak of the Africans as some pan continental civilization, and it only shows off your stupidity. Meanwhile, the decline of African civilization had nothing to do with the rise of western civilization other than the fact that they happenned at the same time.
Here's yet another politician who has nothing better to do but to think up ways to protect us from ourselves. Realize this folks: this won't end the act of making hidden video shots, it'll just add an additional layer of legality to it. Meanwhile, it'll become harder to guard against employee theft, provide evidence of abusive or negligent babysitters, or cheating spouses.
And moving 95% of the Internet to the.prn domain just because it's not G-Rated? It takes parents to raise a child, not a busy-body congresswoman.
Notice that the blither that is this post gets a "4" rating (of course, since it attacks capitalism), but every reply against gets modded down as troll or flamebait.
I plead no contest. In fact, since you elected to venture into the topic of my autogamy, I freely venture the following tidbit: I *wank* at least 3 times a week, and to facilitate this habit I have a large collection of both Internet pr0n and videos (such as "In Diana Jones and the Temple of Poon") to assist in my endeavors. Now, aren't you glad you opened that can of worms?
Sorry, I don't usually flame like that, but I looked at your website and you're an utter self righteous cock.
Congratulations! Most people actually wait meet someone in person or interact with them before making such judgements, but in your 21 meager years on this planet you've acquired enough wisdom to do that after reading (what appears to be from my weblogs) a whole single web page!
You earned your internet connection? No, you (and I) were lucky to be born in a situation where internet accessible.
Well spank me with a fiberoptic cable! What a coincidence that we should both be born on the 99.943% share of the planets surface where you can get data off the Internet with the right equipment!
Come to think of it, we're lucky not to have been born as the 6 million children who die annually.
If I lived in a place were 6 million children die annually, the last think I'd be worried about would be an Internet connection. I think clean water, food, shelter, medicine, and ammo would rank alot higher.
We're privileged to live where we live. Oh, but wait, I forgot, we earned our privilege.
Hold on there, shitbrick. From what I've seen of your life from your website, you haven't earned jack. But then, your economic priorities seem to center around beer and clubbing, so don't expect to earn much of anything. Keep your self flagellatory attitude to yourself.
Now I'm not a socialist, more of a social democrat with certain libertarian leanings (make of that what you will),
Okay, here's what I make of it: You're an ignorant pussy. Ignorant: because you spew a set of conflictory ideas which in no way form a sequiter set of beliefs, much less a paradigm of philosophy that would allow you to fit into any of the labels you used above. In fact, I am willing venture that you're opinions have been spoonfed you by whatever media outlet you frequently patronize, and you've never actually assimilated to any degree enough factual information to formulate an ethos by which to conduct yourself, and like the rest of the worlds apathetic youth it's left you searching not for meaning, since you've been brainwashed to believe it's beyond you, but instead for a label to which you can cling to in the hopes of finding some group to identify with. Pussy: You're a pussy because you lack the testicular fortitude to admit that while you appreciate the populist propoganda fronted by each of the groups you mention above, you really are afraid to belong to any one of them out of fear that you might polarize the remainder against you.
but how you can ignore mass suffering and exploitation?
It's really easy - there is no mass suffering or exploitation going on for the next 2,500 miles. Anything beyond that I claim no obligatory responsability for. In light of that, I still check the labels on clothes before I buy them to ensure they weren't made by 4 year old Bangladeshi girls, I drive a wussy gas-sipping LEV-rated four banger that I only fill with gas from stations whose refineries don't import Mid-East or African oil, and I warn all the women around me about buying diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and other gemstones without knowing the country of origin - and the impact of the gemstone trade on their aboriginal populaces. I also give generously to the wino on the corner (but mainly because he's an honest wino: His sign reads "Hopeless Drunk, need money for booze"). The rest of the gimme-a-handout-because-I'm-a-victim crowd can get in a line and march the fuck home. If you're such a social crusader, you can put down the Becks and pool stick and actually do something beyond banging your keyboard in your self-rightous sactimonious way.
* No, these are not ad hominem attacks against your logic, but personal attacks against what based on what you have said in the previous post.
That's what ad hominem means <red foreman>you dumbass</red foreman>. In any event, none of your comments had jack to do with my comments, which makes you fair game as flamebait.
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While an insult to the intelligence of most teachers, the fact of the matter it is true for various reasons. Teachers are sheltered by things such as tenure and the pleasures of cival servanthood. You SHOULD ALWAYS CONSIDER COLLEGE BEFORE A CAREER! Let me repeat that...FUCKING GO TO COLLEGE!. A college degree will last you a life time, and is worth more money than mere certifications. Employers don't care what you really know, they care about what they think you know. That sheepskin makes your more hirable, and more important as a skilled worker than certs. AFTER you get out of college, get a few certs but only to maintain your value as an employee.
Trust me on this, I dropped out of college to follow a career in management, but when that turned out to be bunk I fell back on my computer skills. Unfortunately, although I could whip ass over most IT sysadmins, I still get passed over because I don't have a college degree or experience (how do you get experience without the degree?).
As CalTrans had already created this particular sign, and similar forms of prior art exist all across this country, this is not art. This guy did a flagrant plagiarism, and moreover he craftily attempted to cover up his act of counterfieture.
SHAME!
All the authority you have is locked up in your expertise. Having worked for a City government with a completely fucked IT policy (my HR director once told us that she doesn't want to hear that "the cause of the problems are the users"), I can honestly tell you your Legitimate Authority lay in what you know, and what they don't know.
First, get with other IT directors from Corporations or other City Governments/School Districts (preferrable) and get copies of their IT policies. Highlight the sections they have that you want to implement, and then pass them around - not just to your uppers, but to everyone who asks (or doesn't ask). Even users. Be prepared to discuss in layspeak why these policies are necessary. Keep in mind who you're talking to in terms of how you phrase your reasoning. For instance, when talking to a user, explain "some of these people don't respect the other users need for equal resources". When you talk to administration, frame it in the context of liability and security, and find stories of big monies being lost by school districts because little johnny found porn while looking at whitehouse.com.
Finally, what they don't know won't hurt them. For instance, if you can get your hands on bandwidth throttling software, implement it quietly and don't tell anyone. I made a habit out of installing spyware when I was in charge of desktop systems, and any napster/winamp/happy99.exe type stuff that showed up got remotely uninstalled after dark. Whenever anyone called me about X not working, I told them that that software was not authorized or supported by me.
And don't be afraid to be frank. More than once I threatened to quit my job over big issues, and I would have.
Actually, fraud, shredding documents, and bribery are all illegal, last I checked.
Specify what acts of fraud you are alleging? Shredding documents is NOT at all illegal - we do it everyday so that people can't dig our customers credit card numbers out of the trash. Specify what acts of bribery were committed.
And let's face it - most of the corporations in this country live off of the government. Regardless of all the rhetoric of the "free market" in the USA we have a highly subsidized high-tech industry, financial industry, and agricultural industry.
Highly subsidized? Can you prove this? Most "high tech" companies I know produce consumer electronics and electronis systems for businesses or other hi-tech firms. Besides, I'm sure any government subsidy far and away doesn't come close to the amount of subsidization the corporations do when they pay taxes to the government so politicians can give handouts to their constituency.
The huge defense budgets are loaded with pork for the handful of politically connected defense contractors.
Define pork? I don't consider anything involving our national defense pork. The only think close to impropriety is how senators lobby hard to get defense contracters to locate to their state and bring jobs home.
How much research that lead to the internet was on the taxpayer's dime, or from government protected monopolies?
The entire Internet was developed by US government tax payer dollars. Given the economic prosperity that brought, I don't see a problem with it. Moreover, the purpouse of the Internet was well founded in maintaining communications during a nuclear attack - a very real possibility during the last half of the 20th century.
And let's not even go into limited liability for shareholders - if a company profits, they get the profits. If a company goes bankrupt, the owners are not liable, the creditors lose their money.
No shit sherlock, thats called risk. But you're wrong - shareholders get fucked when companies go under as well. That's the risk you take when you put money into a company either in the form of unsecured loans or by buying stocks. If you aren't willing to tolerate the risk, then don't put the money out. Do you have a clue how the system works?
Of course, more than likely, if the company is big enough or important enough, they will be bailed out, again by taxpayers. Remember the "Mexico" bailout (i.e., US banks got bailed out). The second "Mexico" bailout? The third "Mexico" bailout? The S&L bailout? The Crysler bailout? Long Term Capital Management? Steel tariffs? The airlines? Hell, my tax money is still going to McDonald's to advertize their "food" overseas. The bailouts and subsidies to US companies in my lifetime are counted in the trillions of dollars.
Mexico repayed the loans in record time (and there never was a second or third mexico bailout). Of course, the S&L bailouts and Airline bailouts were kind of necessary - you can't let the lynchpin of our economy fail. I'm sure if it had, you would have bitched about it just the same. Do you bitch about the FDIC as well?
In jail for what? You might want to stowe your outrage and get back to some logic. There is nothing illegal about firing workers because your company is short on cash. There is nothing illegal about giving your top level management rediculous paychecks either.
It is merely immoral.
Before you decide to pull out the guillotine, you may want to actually substantiate your charges wity some factual evidence of wrongdoing. The fact of the matter is, most corporate failures, most mass layoffs, and most insolvencies arent' caused by criminal mismanagement, just plain mismanagement. That is the risk of a free market capitalist economy.
There are a massive number of vehicles out there that have absolutely no use or utility whatsoever.
My ass, if they had "no use or utility" they would'nt be being made. If *you* don't have a use for them, then don't buy them, but dont' tell me that I can't have a certain kind of vehicles because you don't think I need it, that's just commie as hell.
Indeed, the public at large doesn't pay enough attention to fuel economy when purchasing cars either (though they absolutely should if they don't like killing kids from emphyzema and they're patriotic)
No, they're probably paying more attention to the much more realistic threat of their kids getting KIA because the pussy little gas sipping car they'd be driving doesn't have enough steel reinforced structure to save them in an accident. Guess what: SUV's do a much better job of protecting their occupants. As is typical in today's world, they make the SUV driver pay a higher premium for survivability.
If the US really cared about being strategically strong....they would impose a large tax
Slow your role...this country was founded by people who were tired of the government trying to use taxes to punish them. We're not worried about our strategic strength, because the Arab states need our money more then we need their oil. Only 52% of our foreign oil is from the Mid-East, the rest being from South America and Northern Europe. We also do about 15% of our oil production internally. If we really cared about being strong though, we'd hit those resources in the Gulf of Mexico, and that god awful pile of rubble in ANWR that everyone is so concerned about spoiling (hint:it's a barren pile of frozen rocks guys, we aren't exactly going to hurt it anyway).
If you want total and complete freedom in hosting your web site, you'll need to get a hosting provider outside of the country you're likely to piss people off in. I have a friend that runs both a couple of pr0n sites and a gambling site (ironically, he's a rather square dude), and he lives and works in Costa Rica. That costs mucho dinero, especially considering that outside of the US and EU, good bandwidth is hard to get. The next best solution is to be your own ISP: Arrange to have a T-1, T-3, or OC-3 connection of your own with a Tier1 provider like Sprint or Qwest, and as long as you pay that $1k USD per month they don't particularly give a shit what you do with it. But then, you'll have the expense and time of setting up your own DNS servers in addition to web services.
The hosting provider I go with is Esosoft, and although they don't offer alot of bells and whistles, they do support PHP, Perl & C CGI, Frontpage 2K extensions, Miva (which is what my site). They use a virtual server system running on Linux (although they say unix, it's Apache). Not only do I run my site (yep, 2nd plug), but some organizations I used to belong to used them for several years, and we get away with lots of shit, including posting porn. I'm none to shy either, but I also excercise practical restraint: although I don't have the luxury of anonymity, I choose my battles and stick to my guns, and have found that most people are full of shit when it comes time to actually file a suit against you or your hosting provider.
While I agree with your statement in as much as it is predicated on the assumption that the BSA is only engaged in supporting the rights of software developers, the fact of the matter is that does not give them the right to use intimidation tactics to forcefully audit people. I, as a private citizen, or even as a small business owner,should not be forced to spend my money on the administration of software licenses according to the standards of a third party. An audit constitutes a violation of my privacy, and in as much as they use barratry to get their way, it infringes on my civil liberties.
The BSA bears the burden of proof, and they should not be allowed to arbitrarily target a business or individual.
on that flyby, the pattern is full...
They were using open source beowulf clusters to run a CCD camera which tracked the reflection in your eye (after being calibrated to your eyes geometry) to determine the position you were looking at, then two blinks for left click, three blinks for right click.
It would still be interesting without OSS and Beowulf clusters, but it probably would'nt get onto slashdot.
They shouldn't be taxing computer buyers but manufacturers of computer components
Who then pass the costs of those taxes on to the buyer.
THINK MCFLY!
Prove it....
Having installed dozens of decent radios in cars, I can assure that if you were getting noise, it was your installation and not the cars breaker-point ignition system causing the problem. The more decent the radio in fact (I don't mean Kraco, I'm talking like Nakamichi- okay maybe not Nak but Eclipse, Sony Mobile ES, or Alpine) the better it rejects noise UNTIL you have a bad ground on your radio or a crappy old antenna.
Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a ground strap running from your firewall to your hood either.
Why do you class-warfare morons inject yourself everywhere even when it's not relevant? The most stolen car is a TOYOTA CAMRY - not exactly a rich persons car. Meanwhile, crimes that occur in boardrooms usually impact people who have the money to invest in those companies - which by the logic and you and your class-warfare ilk are the RICH.
the victims of car theft are rich people.
You're a dumbass. The most heavily stolen car is the Toyota Camry, followed by the Honda Accord and the Chevy C1500 Truck. These aren't rich people cars, which just goes to show that people like you who promote class warfare don't actually care about the numbers, just so long as it sounds good.
the victims of crime in the boardroom are poor people.
You're an even bigger moron. Crimes that occur in the boardroom take money away from investors and stockholders - of which the "poor" are rarely in the group.
our elected officials know that the only way to keep their jobs is to sell favors to the rich people (keeping campaign contributions coming in), in order to buy votes from the poor people (using propaganda).
And the poor people are more than happy to sell their votes for welfare programs, good feelings, and promises of programs that benefit them directly. In the vote economy, the rich may provide the capital, but the idiots who let their vote be bought are the ones who fuel the system.
things will remain this way in america for as long as the populace remains a mass of uneducated consumers driven by media.
Such as yourself
and it looks like the people who want to keep it that way are winning.
Thanks to, in part, you.
Well.. you know slavery? Where do you think all those slaves that willingly jumped on the ships for america came from?
They were rounded up in Africa, by Africans, and sold to (usually) the Dutch or Spanish traders who brough them to various Carribean islands. Importation of slaves was outlawed in the late 1700's by our Constitution.
And then, colonialism anyone?
What about it? As in, do you have a point?
If you don't want to see that most of europe and amrican wealth is delivered from continious exploitation of the rest of the world, no matter how sublte it is, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
And merely because you insist (in the way that ignorant losers do) that for American and Europe to be as wealthy as they were that they had to have exploited someone doesn't make it true either. Quite simply, capitalism works. Not only did it make the US and Europe rich by trading with each other, but it's made most of Asia richer.
It is. And those kids that are dying from hunger or from AIDS? Did you know that up until recently drugs to help those infected with HIV/AIDS were few times more expensive in africa than in the 'west' (up until recently when african countries finaly convinced WTO that this has bad effect on overall economy (that was the ONLY reason WTO accepted)).
This is most certainly bullshit, because in America we pay higher costs for drugs - ALL DRUGS including those for treating HIV - than even Canada or Mexico who are right off our borders. Are you so damned ignorant of basic economics that you think a rich country can sell something to countries on a poor continent for more than the rich country is willing to pay?
Well, I have. I never said American capitalism didn't exploit European workers (as did Europe). African slavery wouldn't have happened unless the plantation & mineral economy of pre-industrial hadn't been enormously profitable.
Bullshit. African slavery was a product of Africans. They had internal slave trade happenning for thousands of years. African slaves were traded to the Arabs for thousands of years, until the rise of Islam began making human slavery somewhat unpopular. The Africans simply found a new market in the Europeans.
England's industrial revolution would not have been possible without the "Atlantic triangle" of slavery, sugar-cacao-cotton, and textiles. Slavery, along with the exploitation of English peasants, where key "human ingredients" in the birth of capitalism.
The "birth of capitalism"? You moron, capitalism was around since man first began trade. It is the most fundamental and robust of socioeconomic systems. People have spent millenia trying to dream up new systems, all of which have failed (socialism, communism, mercantilism, et al). And the Atlantic triangle was sugar-rum-slaves. There was no significant market for textiles in carribean or african countries.
Later, England became anti-slavery when they sought to undermine the economies of their rivals France & Spain, and when their manufacturing economy had taken off.
England did'nt become anti-slavery untill the early 1800's. By that, I mean they decided slavery was illegal in 1772, but did'nt actually abolish slave trade by British subject until 1807. They government did'nt actually engage in direct military enforcement of antislavery for another 10 years. The decision wasn't driven economically, but by religeon.
Even when slavery ended, the exploitation of Africa hardly ended. Just look at the history of the Congo -- surely you're not going to suggest Belgium was out to "civilize" Africa, are you? Or that the CIA's assassination of Patrice Lumumba was purely the fault of Africans?
I'm not even suggesting the CIA assisinated him. In fact, history quite clearly records that a BELGIAN officer commanded a BELGIAN firing squad to shoot him long before the CIA could think about acting against him. Again, your skewed propagandized version of the facts might make things comfortable for you, but it doesn't help you get much of a grasp on reality.
Well, thats amazing, I guess that 12 MILLION black people that are the ancestors of the entire black US population just came over voluntarily in the 1700's and 1800s for a holiday. Man, how blind can you be? Almost the entire US black population is descended directly from slaves. Over 12 million shipped, and at least that number never made the journey.
/. seems to think that Africans have caused their own problems? Amazing. The ignorance is astounding.
You're about ignorant. No wait...you ARE ignorant. The most liberal estimates are that about 2 million African slaves were brought to the Americas - not directly onto the continent of the US. More reasonable estimates put the number at about 800,000. The Constitution as ratified in the late 1700's banned the import of slaves, so any slaves born about about 1800 were born on American soil (excluding smuggling, which really wasn't an issue because American born slaves were less expensive). This is still a grisley math, but then you have to consider that the slave driven economy of the southern states did not even make up half of the overall plantation economy; Slaves were expensive to buy and keep and only made sense on large scales. The vast majority of southern agriculture took place on southern farms where slaves, if any could be afforded, merely augmented the work done by poor white southern farmers.
I'm afraid that reality is not as politically sexy as you would like to make it for your own personal benefit.
350 years of violent exploitation and colonisation, leaving millions mired in poverty, and then less than 50 years of independence
Yadda yadda yadda, the same tired lines aren't even worth shooting down anymore. If you can't seen through the veneer of wildly inflated accusations, you're doomed to suffer the yoke of ignorance you bear now.
then less than 50 years of independence (in most countries, less than 30 years), and people expect things to be just peachy already? Shite, thats ridiculous.
Half of Asia doesn't seem to think so. Countries like Singapore and Thaland were giant mudpits of disease and poverty in the late 80's. By the late 90's, they were an "emerging market" with billions of world dollars flooding in. There was a city for 700,000 people built in thailand in 5 years to house the new economy.
Consider this: before white people stepped onto the African continent,
White people have been on the African continent for thousands of years. Trade between southern europe and northern africa has millennia of history behind it.
Africans WERENT mired in poverty at all. Instead, the Bantus had a thriving, successful civilisation that spanned virtually the entire continent south of the sahara, and had spent the previous 2000 years expanding and spreading southwards. Primarily an agricultural society, but in the North and along the east coast engaged in trade with the arabs and indians respectively. The nomadic San in the South of Africa have occupied the land where they are living for 40,000 years. Africans were a successful, thriving civilisation for centuries UNTIL the moment white people stepped onto the continent. The Africans did not have guns or natural resistance to many of the diseases the europeans brought, millions perished from disease or violence. And now half of
The ignorance is astounding, but it's your ignorance. Any great african civilizations died out by the birth of Christ. Oh, and by the way, "Africa" is a continent, but it's peoples form nations that are subsidiary even to the individual borders of countries they are in. You sit there and speak of the Africans as some pan continental civilization, and it only shows off your stupidity. Meanwhile, the decline of African civilization had nothing to do with the rise of western civilization other than the fact that they happenned at the same time.
Here's yet another politician who has nothing better to do but to think up ways to protect us from ourselves. Realize this folks: this won't end the act of making hidden video shots, it'll just add an additional layer of legality to it. Meanwhile, it'll become harder to guard against employee theft, provide evidence of abusive or negligent babysitters, or cheating spouses.
.prn domain just because it's not G-Rated? It takes parents to raise a child, not a busy-body congresswoman.
And moving 95% of the Internet to the
Notice that the blither that is this post gets a "4" rating (of course, since it attacks capitalism), but every reply against gets modded down as troll or flamebait.
Gimme an effin break.
I don't usually congratulate AC's, but that just put a tear in my eye...I'd sing "Oh Canada" right now if I could remember the words....
You wanker.
I plead no contest. In fact, since you elected to venture into the topic of my autogamy, I freely venture the following tidbit: I *wank* at least 3 times a week, and to facilitate this habit I have a large collection of both Internet pr0n and videos (such as "In Diana Jones and the Temple of Poon") to assist in my endeavors. Now, aren't you glad you opened that can of worms?
Sorry, I don't usually flame like that, but I looked at your website and you're an utter self righteous cock.
Congratulations! Most people actually wait meet someone in person or interact with them before making such judgements, but in your 21 meager years on this planet you've acquired enough wisdom to do that after reading (what appears to be from my weblogs) a whole single web page!
You earned your internet connection? No, you (and I) were lucky to be born in a situation where internet accessible.
Well spank me with a fiberoptic cable! What a coincidence that we should both be born on the 99.943% share of the planets surface where you can get data off the Internet with the right equipment!
Come to think of it, we're lucky not to have been born as the 6 million children who die annually.
If I lived in a place were 6 million children die annually, the last think I'd be worried about would be an Internet connection. I think clean water, food, shelter, medicine, and ammo would rank alot higher.
We're privileged to live where we live. Oh, but wait, I forgot, we earned our privilege.
Hold on there, shitbrick. From what I've seen of your life from your website, you haven't earned jack. But then, your economic priorities seem to center around beer and clubbing, so don't expect to earn much of anything. Keep your self flagellatory attitude to yourself.
Now I'm not a socialist, more of a social democrat with certain libertarian leanings (make of that what you will),
Okay, here's what I make of it: You're an ignorant pussy. Ignorant: because you spew a set of conflictory ideas which in no way form a sequiter set of beliefs, much less a paradigm of philosophy that would allow you to fit into any of the labels you used above. In fact, I am willing venture that you're opinions have been spoonfed you by whatever media outlet you frequently patronize, and you've never actually assimilated to any degree enough factual information to formulate an ethos by which to conduct yourself, and like the rest of the worlds apathetic youth it's left you searching not for meaning, since you've been brainwashed to believe it's beyond you, but instead for a label to which you can cling to in the hopes of finding some group to identify with. Pussy: You're a pussy because you lack the testicular fortitude to admit that while you appreciate the populist propoganda fronted by each of the groups you mention above, you really are afraid to belong to any one of them out of fear that you might polarize the remainder against you.
but how you can ignore mass suffering and exploitation?
It's really easy - there is no mass suffering or exploitation going on for the next 2,500 miles. Anything beyond that I claim no obligatory responsability for. In light of that, I still check the labels on clothes before I buy them to ensure they weren't made by 4 year old Bangladeshi girls, I drive a wussy gas-sipping LEV-rated four banger that I only fill with gas from stations whose refineries don't import Mid-East or African oil, and I warn all the women around me about buying diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and other gemstones without knowing the country of origin - and the impact of the gemstone trade on their aboriginal populaces. I also give generously to the wino on the corner (but mainly because he's an honest wino: His sign reads "Hopeless Drunk, need money for booze"). The rest of the gimme-a-handout-because-I'm-a-victim crowd can get in a line and march the fuck home. If you're such a social crusader, you can put down the Becks and pool stick and actually do something beyond banging your keyboard in your self-rightous sactimonious way.
* No, these are not ad hominem attacks against your logic, but personal attacks against what based on what you have said in the previous post.
That's what ad hominem means <red foreman>you dumbass</red foreman>. In any event, none of your comments had jack to do with my comments, which makes you fair game as flamebait.
Not to belabor the obvious, but have you looked at k5 [kuro5hin.org]? Scoop might be a good basis for you.
Damn, thanks for taking the wind out of my sails : )
I'll probaby finish it if for no other reason to make a Miva alterantive to slashcode available.
Totalitarian control of the media", though? Maybe you need to get out more.
Why? I don't make distinction between iron-fisted dictators and tin-pot dictators.
I totally submitted this story hours ago...and it got rejected. Slashdots editors are phuqed.
/. subs at my web site.
It's a good thing I save all my
(This is not grousing, this is a legitimate bitch - there's a difference).