Look...I am from a Muslim country and I can assure you that Fox News is pretty benign compared to Al Jazeera. Maybe you don't watch Al Jazeera in Arabic. It's full of conspiracy theories. Even on the Arab-Israeli issue, I would say that that Fox is less biased than Al Jazeera. I know it's hard to imagine when one ever watched Limbaugh or O'Reilly, but it's sadly verifiable.
Really? This surprises me. I get a fair amount of my news from Al Jazeera's web services (which are yards ahead of their American counterparts', who could all stand to take a page from their playbook wrt digital distribution). It's one of several news sources that I check regularly, and I find it to have a much higher level of reliability and depth than pretty much any mainstream American source. Of course their opinion and commentary are...opiniony and commenty, much like the opinion and comment in any other news source, in whatever media, around the world.
But back at the point, given a statement like this: Heck, actually for as long as I've known about them they've always been the garbage of the Arab world.... you shouldn't have a problem providing a couple citations.
For one thing, the idea that The average household has never stocked ANY tiny screwdrivers is crap. Anyone who owns a pair of eyeglasses knows it.
Second...
The market has gone towards simple, integrated, and (especially in portable devices like laptops and cell phones)--SMALL. You can't have those things and still be "tinker-friendly."
What the hell does that even mean? My mp3 player case has four Phillips screws on it. Oh hey, back at the point, until just now so did an iPhone. Which is kind of the point of what we're talking about. My laptop (and pretty much everybody else's) uses a combination of Phillips screws and (goddamn stupid gimmicky) little plastic tabs. They are integrated. They are simple. They are small. I can easily - and have often - taken them apart. My cheap-ass freebie cell phone can be popped apart with a butter knife. What, just because something's little means you can't take it apart? What a bunch of bullshit.
So you have faith in the claims of the people you trust and take their word as gospel?... We must have faith that these things are true and test them as necessary. (Emphasis yours)
Of course not. Nuclear power works. Gravity works. That's not faith, that's data.
For example, I can have faith in the "golden rule" and decide that it's incorrect only after I actually give it a shot in earnest.
That's not religion, that's ethics. You certainly can test ethical assertions. That's not what I'm debating.
There is of course no way to test the existence of a god figure, but there's also no way to test string theory or what's inside a black hole. Does that invalidate the scientific method?
No, it means we don't know what's inside a black hole, or whether a god figure exists. Therefore I am not going to base my decision making process on what's inside a black hole or whether a god figure exists.
Have you ever tried to follow the teachings of a particular religion in earnest or are you just assuming them to be wrong on principle?
Yes, I was a practicing Lutheran for almost 20 years. I know my Bible better than 90% of Christians. I've also got some knowledge and experience in Buddhism, Wicca, and Asatru. I've read the Koran and the Book of Mormon. I don't think any of that is essential to my point.
Had it occurred to you that what some call divine whim, others call "rules" that the universe enforces based on our makeup in much the same way as we are subject to the rules of gravity and quantum mechanics?
Well, sure. You can call anything you want whatever you want. Just because you want to say "God makes the apple fall" doesn't make it any more true than "It's turtles all the way down."
And BTW, your "horseshit" comment is not only inappropriate, but reveals a level of personal immaturity that most likely precludes you from truly understanding the problem at hand. Please don't act like a child if you intend to sit at the adult's table.
Excuse me? This is Slashdot. Be prepared for strong language.
Of course you can make the argument that gravity and the like are testable and "real", but how realistic is that?
Pretty damn realistic, I think. You can test gravity. You can test nuclear physics. You can do that, even if you haven't. Or you can "rely on the experiences and reporting of others," of whom there are many. You can also combine these two methods and replicate the experiments of others.
Which is, you know, completely the opposite of religion in every way.
Actually, "free as in speech" leads directly to a diverse ecosystem where a variety of different people get paid by a variety of different parties for a variety of different things. Things like end-user support, developer support, art, documentation, updates, customization, and yes Virginia, even boxed software.
Here comes a car analogy, for the literally challenged.
Automobiles are "free as in speech." Stuff's interchangeable (generally), manufactured to spec and standard (again, largely), and you can replace parts with off-the-rack equipment. You don't have to take your car back to the dealership you bought it at to get it worked on. (And before a Rolls owner jumps on that, you knew damn well what you were buying. Bet you own a Mac too.) And holy crap, you could even buy the tools, read a book, and fix the damn thing yourself if you really got a bug up your ass about it.
And hey presto! The guys at the car dealership are getting paid! How do they do it? By providing you a service! For money! Like...like...like we lived in America or something!
I am most certainly not "looking at reality through the lens of my beliefs." (FWIW, I'm nowhere near the center.) I'm looking at reality through the lens of the polling that has been done on these topics.
Yes, people want a public option. Overwhelmingly. In every poll that has been done on the topic for the last forty years. This is undisputed. Ask people why they're upset about "Obamacare." The overwhelming refrain is that it's a giveaway to the insurance companies that does nothing for real people's real problems. People don't want an insurance company bailout, and they don't want any more weak ass excuses about "but the meanies on the other side wouldn't let us!" They want this fixed.
The people want the tax cuts ended. Yes. Look at the numbers. Everybody wants this, Republicans, Democrats, everyone. Except the Republicans and Democrats in government, and the people that pay for them. But everybody else.
The Patriot Act. We seem to agree on this. But I'm not "those of you on the left." And I never shut up about it. You'll have to take that up with "those of them on the left." Who I detest more than you do, I assure you.
Gitmo and the war(s). Nope. Nobody cares anymore. Sick of it being our problem. The people at Guantanamo? Send them home. Do it today. The troops in combat? Bring them home. Do it last week. This is a miserable failure that's bankrupting America and killing our children. It's time to come home.
But what will those poor brown people do? The same damn things they were doing before we blew their countries up. End it. Bring them home.
And I don't see why you insist on continuing to make this a "our team's better than your team" thing, because I was at no point talking about anyone's team, but since you asked: Did the Bush administration win this war (oops, sorry, wars)? No. Is the Obama administration going to win these wars? No. That's my whole point.
End it. Bring them home. This is economically and morally bankrupt. Now, what do I think? I think we should bring every single soldier home. Right the fuck now. And then I think Barack Obama should appear on a globally transmitted television broadcast, get down on his knees, and beg the world's forgiveness for this atrocity. I think we should pay reparations to get these countries back on their feet. We blew all their shit up. We should pay to rebuild their shit. And then I think George W. Bush (and Barack Obama, yes) should be tried for war crimes, and put in a very small room for the rest of their natural lives. That's what I want. But we're not talking about what I want, more's the pity. We're talking about what "the center" wants. The center wants it over with. Bring them home. Now. No "bring them home except for 50,000 troops who are still in Iraq today," no "bring them home at the end of some arbitrary year that will be totally punted when the time comes because we're gonna fucking be there when I'm old," I'm talking about "put my kids on a plane in Kuwait this week and bring them home." People are sick of it.
Now, like I've been saying here, I'm not center. I'm not sure what I am, but I'm hardline something. But I'm not talking about me here. I'm talking about publicly available polling numbers that you could have looked up yourself instead of turning this into a partisan screed.
Damn straight he is. The center in this country wants a public health care option, an end to the Bush tax cuts, the Patriot Act repealed, Gitmo closed, and their kids home from getting shot at in the desert. That's the center. The Obama administration is firmly to the right of it. It's not hard to understand.
I admire your romanticism, but you're wrong, and you spelled out the reason why yourself: "We need to move in all forms of media to the concept of shared space and acceptable loses."
We have that now, for the first time in human history,. It is the digital commons. It's archive.org, isohunt.com, my mp3 player, and your flash drive. And it's forever, because it's everywhere. You can't burn it, you can't arrest it, you can't kill it. It's immortal, indestructible, and omnipresent.
Who the fuck cares? I'm not going to buy something that I know comes broken to get the privilege of fixing it unless I'm at a garage sale. That's ridiculous.
Simply put - our skulls have different patterns depending on your race, things like brow ridges, size of cheek bones, size of eye holes, etc etc - all White people have similar features, all black people have similar features.
If you want to defend that, I'll be right here waiting.
For example, I almost never use the "All programs" menu any more. No need. Everything I want or need is either on the task bar (pinned there) or on the start menu (pinned there or in the 'recently used' section), or available with just a few keystrokes typed in the search box.
Congratulations, Microsoft. You've almost caught up with the free desktop of 2006. lol.
25 men on a roster. Once one leaves he can't come back. Notable enough to have caused a recent All Star Game to have ended in a tie for the first time in history.
lacking anything resembling a front
Except the back of the infield. And the outfield fence. And the four bases.
sacrifices
So why do they call them "sacrifice flies" and "sacrifice bunts?"
faints, deceptions
Like bunting for a hit? Or making a bench move to force a pitching change? Or hell, pitching as a whole? How about baserunning as a whole? Seriously, I could go on like this all day, but I think the point's been made.
annihilating opposition
Chess is in no way about "annihilating opposition." It is about achieving checkmate. You must not be terribly good at chess.
Yes, the post office is one of several government-sanctioned monopolies. It is in the national interest to have a unified postal system. That doesn't make it a government agency, nor does it make it the responsibility of Congress to "keep it viable."
Adolf Hitler was in fact allowed to do as he pleased with the Jews. We knew what was going on for years. The world knew what was going on for years. When he started shooting up our transatlantic shipping, we decided we couldn't tolerate it any more.
Citation needed? Conspiracy theory? Are you fucking retarded?! It's in the goddamn Congressional Record! Do two minutes of research, for Christ's sake! Not even real research, just look at the first goddamn page of search results! What the fuck is wrong with you?!
Meanwhile Fox is delivering what its viewers desire to continue watching (profit motive.. their product is the viewers who they sell to the advertisers), rather than what some special interest wants them to see (control of information motive... they dont have a product, just an agenda)
You are teh dum and here's why.
Fox is a special interest. Fox has an agenda. Their control of information makes them more money. You are painting these ideas as opposites when they are anything but.
Slashdot Mirror
Look...I am from a Muslim country and I can assure you that Fox News is pretty benign compared to Al Jazeera. Maybe you don't watch Al Jazeera in Arabic. It's full of conspiracy theories. Even on the Arab-Israeli issue, I would say that that Fox is less biased than Al Jazeera. I know it's hard to imagine when one ever watched Limbaugh or O'Reilly, but it's sadly verifiable.
Well then, verify it.
Really? This surprises me. I get a fair amount of my news from Al Jazeera's web services (which are yards ahead of their American counterparts', who could all stand to take a page from their playbook wrt digital distribution). It's one of several news sources that I check regularly, and I find it to have a much higher level of reliability and depth than pretty much any mainstream American source. Of course their opinion and commentary are...opiniony and commenty, much like the opinion and comment in any other news source, in whatever media, around the world.
But back at the point, given a statement like this: Heck, actually for as long as I've known about them they've always been the garbage of the Arab world.... you shouldn't have a problem providing a couple citations.
You could say that without the profit motive, we'd never get any decent operating systems, and to that I would answer "Ubuntu".
Come again?
For one thing, the idea that The average household has never stocked ANY tiny screwdrivers is crap. Anyone who owns a pair of eyeglasses knows it.
Second...
The market has gone towards simple, integrated, and (especially in portable devices like laptops and cell phones)--SMALL. You can't have those things and still be "tinker-friendly."
What the hell does that even mean? My mp3 player case has four Phillips screws on it. Oh hey, back at the point, until just now so did an iPhone. Which is kind of the point of what we're talking about. My laptop (and pretty much everybody else's) uses a combination of Phillips screws and (goddamn stupid gimmicky) little plastic tabs. They are integrated. They are simple. They are small. I can easily - and have often - taken them apart. My cheap-ass freebie cell phone can be popped apart with a butter knife. What, just because something's little means you can't take it apart? What a bunch of bullshit.
No, and no again.
So you have faith in the claims of the people you trust and take their word as gospel? ... We must have faith that these things are true and test them as necessary. (Emphasis yours)
Of course not. Nuclear power works. Gravity works. That's not faith, that's data.
For example, I can have faith in the "golden rule" and decide that it's incorrect only after I actually give it a shot in earnest.
That's not religion, that's ethics. You certainly can test ethical assertions. That's not what I'm debating.
There is of course no way to test the existence of a god figure, but there's also no way to test string theory or what's inside a black hole. Does that invalidate the scientific method?
No, it means we don't know what's inside a black hole, or whether a god figure exists. Therefore I am not going to base my decision making process on what's inside a black hole or whether a god figure exists.
Have you ever tried to follow the teachings of a particular religion in earnest or are you just assuming them to be wrong on principle?
Yes, I was a practicing Lutheran for almost 20 years. I know my Bible better than 90% of Christians. I've also got some knowledge and experience in Buddhism, Wicca, and Asatru. I've read the Koran and the Book of Mormon. I don't think any of that is essential to my point.
Had it occurred to you that what some call divine whim, others call "rules" that the universe enforces based on our makeup in much the same way as we are subject to the rules of gravity and quantum mechanics?
Well, sure. You can call anything you want whatever you want. Just because you want to say "God makes the apple fall" doesn't make it any more true than "It's turtles all the way down."
And BTW, your "horseshit" comment is not only inappropriate, but reveals a level of personal immaturity that most likely precludes you from truly understanding the problem at hand. Please don't act like a child if you intend to sit at the adult's table.
Excuse me? This is Slashdot. Be prepared for strong language.
What a gibbering heap of horseshit.
Of course you can make the argument that gravity and the like are testable and "real", but how realistic is that?
Pretty damn realistic, I think. You can test gravity. You can test nuclear physics. You can do that, even if you haven't. Or you can "rely on the experiences and reporting of others," of whom there are many. You can also combine these two methods and replicate the experiments of others.
Which is, you know, completely the opposite of religion in every way.
Actually, "free as in speech" leads directly to a diverse ecosystem where a variety of different people get paid by a variety of different parties for a variety of different things. Things like end-user support, developer support, art, documentation, updates, customization, and yes Virginia, even boxed software.
Here comes a car analogy, for the literally challenged.
Automobiles are "free as in speech." Stuff's interchangeable (generally), manufactured to spec and standard (again, largely), and you can replace parts with off-the-rack equipment. You don't have to take your car back to the dealership you bought it at to get it worked on. (And before a Rolls owner jumps on that, you knew damn well what you were buying. Bet you own a Mac too.) And holy crap, you could even buy the tools, read a book, and fix the damn thing yourself if you really got a bug up your ass about it.
And hey presto! The guys at the car dealership are getting paid! How do they do it? By providing you a service! For money! Like...like...like we lived in America or something!
I am most certainly not "looking at reality through the lens of my beliefs." (FWIW, I'm nowhere near the center.) I'm looking at reality through the lens of the polling that has been done on these topics.
Yes, people want a public option. Overwhelmingly. In every poll that has been done on the topic for the last forty years. This is undisputed. Ask people why they're upset about "Obamacare." The overwhelming refrain is that it's a giveaway to the insurance companies that does nothing for real people's real problems. People don't want an insurance company bailout, and they don't want any more weak ass excuses about "but the meanies on the other side wouldn't let us!" They want this fixed.
The people want the tax cuts ended. Yes. Look at the numbers. Everybody wants this, Republicans, Democrats, everyone. Except the Republicans and Democrats in government, and the people that pay for them. But everybody else.
The Patriot Act. We seem to agree on this. But I'm not "those of you on the left." And I never shut up about it. You'll have to take that up with "those of them on the left." Who I detest more than you do, I assure you.
Gitmo and the war(s). Nope. Nobody cares anymore. Sick of it being our problem. The people at Guantanamo? Send them home. Do it today. The troops in combat? Bring them home. Do it last week. This is a miserable failure that's bankrupting America and killing our children. It's time to come home.
But what will those poor brown people do? The same damn things they were doing before we blew their countries up. End it. Bring them home.
And I don't see why you insist on continuing to make this a "our team's better than your team" thing, because I was at no point talking about anyone's team, but since you asked: Did the Bush administration win this war (oops, sorry, wars)? No. Is the Obama administration going to win these wars? No. That's my whole point.
End it. Bring them home. This is economically and morally bankrupt. Now, what do I think? I think we should bring every single soldier home. Right the fuck now. And then I think Barack Obama should appear on a globally transmitted television broadcast, get down on his knees, and beg the world's forgiveness for this atrocity. I think we should pay reparations to get these countries back on their feet. We blew all their shit up. We should pay to rebuild their shit. And then I think George W. Bush (and Barack Obama, yes) should be tried for war crimes, and put in a very small room for the rest of their natural lives. That's what I want. But we're not talking about what I want, more's the pity. We're talking about what "the center" wants. The center wants it over with. Bring them home. Now. No "bring them home except for 50,000 troops who are still in Iraq today," no "bring them home at the end of some arbitrary year that will be totally punted when the time comes because we're gonna fucking be there when I'm old," I'm talking about "put my kids on a plane in Kuwait this week and bring them home." People are sick of it.
Now, like I've been saying here, I'm not center. I'm not sure what I am, but I'm hardline something. But I'm not talking about me here. I'm talking about publicly available polling numbers that you could have looked up yourself instead of turning this into a partisan screed.
No, the center of "every poll done on any of these topics." Which you could damn well have looked up yourself. Google, motherfucker. Do you use it.
Damn straight he is. The center in this country wants a public health care option, an end to the Bush tax cuts, the Patriot Act repealed, Gitmo closed, and their kids home from getting shot at in the desert. That's the center. The Obama administration is firmly to the right of it. It's not hard to understand.
Me, you insensitve clod!
Neat! Honestly, I've never been zombie guy, but I'm gonna check this out. Thanks for the tip, and thanks for the story!
Nothing you just said replied to anything I just said. What the hell are you talking about?
I admire your romanticism, but you're wrong, and you spelled out the reason why yourself: "We need to move in all forms of media to the concept of shared space and acceptable loses."
We have that now, for the first time in human history,. It is the digital commons. It's archive.org, isohunt.com, my mp3 player, and your flash drive. And it's forever, because it's everywhere. You can't burn it, you can't arrest it, you can't kill it. It's immortal, indestructible, and omnipresent.
Oh, and it's free.
Who the fuck cares? I'm not going to buy something that I know comes broken to get the privilege of fixing it unless I'm at a garage sale. That's ridiculous.
Wrong. That's not what they said.
Full quote:
Simply put - our skulls have different patterns depending on your race, things like brow ridges, size of cheek bones, size of eye holes, etc etc - all White people have similar features, all black people have similar features.
If you want to defend that, I'll be right here waiting.
When we become capable of comprehending it, it wouldn't shock me a damn bit to discover that they are.
all White people have similar features, all black people have similar features
This is the most ignorant thing I've ever read on Slashdot.
For example, I almost never use the "All programs" menu any more. No need. Everything I want or need is either on the task bar (pinned there) or on the start menu (pinned there or in the 'recently used' section), or available with just a few keystrokes typed in the search box.
Congratulations, Microsoft. You've almost caught up with the free desktop of 2006. lol.
notable resource limitations
25 men on a roster. Once one leaves he can't come back. Notable enough to have caused a recent All Star Game to have ended in a tie for the first time in history.
lacking anything resembling a front
Except the back of the infield. And the outfield fence. And the four bases.
sacrifices
So why do they call them "sacrifice flies" and "sacrifice bunts?"
faints, deceptions
Like bunting for a hit? Or making a bench move to force a pitching change? Or hell, pitching as a whole? How about baserunning as a whole? Seriously, I could go on like this all day, but I think the point's been made.
annihilating opposition
Chess is in no way about "annihilating opposition." It is about achieving checkmate. You must not be terribly good at chess.
You obviously don't know dick about baseball.
Then come up with an energy source that will sustain that.
Yes, the post office is one of several government-sanctioned monopolies. It is in the national interest to have a unified postal system. That doesn't make it a government agency, nor does it make it the responsibility of Congress to "keep it viable."
Adolf Hitler was in fact allowed to do as he pleased with the Jews. We knew what was going on for years. The world knew what was going on for years. When he started shooting up our transatlantic shipping, we decided we couldn't tolerate it any more.
Citation needed? Conspiracy theory? Are you fucking retarded?! It's in the goddamn Congressional Record! Do two minutes of research, for Christ's sake! Not even real research, just look at the first goddamn page of search results! What the fuck is wrong with you?!
Meanwhile Fox is delivering what its viewers desire to continue watching (profit motive.. their product is the viewers who they sell to the advertisers), rather than what some special interest wants them to see (control of information motive... they dont have a product, just an agenda)
You are teh dum and here's why.
Fox is a special interest. Fox has an agenda. Their control of information makes them more money. You are painting these ideas as opposites when they are anything but.