Some media sources you should expect to be biased. It's Rolling Stone, for cryin' out loud. I think they do some great reporting, but I know when I open it what slant to expect.
ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Hollywood, (did I leave any out?) all through McCain in front of the bus months before the election.
Bull. You know who threw McCain in front of the bus this year? He did, by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, by being nominated at the Xcel Center in St. Paul while there were high school kids and old women getting tear gassed outside, and by simply being a Republican presidential candidate at a really bad time to be a Republican presidential candidate.
Hell I saw a ratio of 4-1 Obama ads to McCain ads on TV. Even on FOX.
That's because the Obama campaign raised way more money. You may wish to ask yourself "How is that the Democrats managed to raise more money than the bigoted old white guy party?" You may come up with some surprising answers.
The media won this election for Obama. They didn't report on it. They choose a side and promoted it. So much for reporting the news. They were making the news.
The Democrats were using words like "hope" and "change," while the Republicans were using words like "terrorist" and "anti-American." And you are shocked - SHOCKED - that one of those messages got more air time than the other?
Oh, what the fuck ever. I saw a story very similar to this one in my local daily like a week before the election. It was titled "Has the press been biased against John McCain" or some such, and the first thought I had was "No, I think he's just a douchebag." See, because when somebody's a douchebag, telling people that that guy's a douchebag isn't biased reporting, it's just reporting. Welcome back to the reality-based reality.
This is where I disagree with the gay rights lobby. This in an individual rights issue, not a gay rights issue and pursuing solutions to these issues as gay rights will result in the perpetuation of civil rights violations, just to a smaller group. *snip* When disadvantaged by unjust government control, the solution is not to lobby for my group to get preference (since the problem is that another group has already successfully done that) but to demand individual liberties.
I completely agree with this whole thing, I've come to very similar conclusions myself actually. Well put.
That said, I wasn't arguing against gay marriage, I was arguing against the indiscriminate labelling of people as homophobic. My second post on this topic describes what I would have the law re gay marriage be.
I assume you are referring to this post...
Personally, I'm not against gay marriage as such, I'm against government interference in private relationships. I wouldn't have marriage controlled or determined by the state at all. In that case, people who wanted to enter into a contract regarding shared property rights, sexual exclusivity etc could do so. If they want to call that marriage, they could do so. If someone else doesn't want to acknowledge that, they don't have to, not being a party to the contract.
I agree with all of that except (maybe) the final sentence. I would argue that the government, as the principal agent that has recognized similar contracts between two parties for two hundred years and has created a inequitable tax and inheritance system around said contracts, does have to honor that contract or do away with the inequities in the system regarding married and unmarried couples altogether. I would prefer the second choice there myself, and from the tone of your previous posts I think you would too, but tearing down the entire American socioeconomic privilege system around marriage is a massive job and would take years, and we have to be realists about that.
Thanks for your reply!
Re:African Americans are overwhelmingly homophobic
on
Obama Launches Change.gov
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
No.
"Marriage" is a word that has meaning in our culture for a long time
"Marriage" is also a legal institution that confers legal rights and responsibilities, it affects things from your taxes to hospital visitation rights. Yes, this is an equal rights issue. Don't be dense.
it is a radical redefining something that is considered one of the basic building blocks of society.
Here we agree completely, and I further say "It's about damn time." Our grandchildren will be taught about this struggle in forty years and be ashamed of us.
Everyone who opposes anything like this is labelled "homophobic" though. It's an attempt to eliminate discussion. "Islamaphobic" works the same way.
Actually, I tend to use the phrase "ignorant bigot."
Perhaps you would disagree with my position on adoption or gay marriage (neither of which I have given here because it isn't my point), but do you think it is possible that gay lobby groups could have a bad idea and that opposition to that idea could potentially be "sensible" rather than "homophobic".
No, but certainly not because I haven't listened to their arguments ad nauseum. I've heard it all, I've heard that children will be taught analingus in elementary school, I've heard about how those pernicious gays recruit innocent young boys, I've heard about "TEH FAMILY! TEH FAMILY!" If you, on the other hand, have something that doesn't sound like the same old tired Religious Reich nonsense, if you want to talk some fucking sense, by all means entertain me.
Tramp is also extremely useful for editing files as root without opening a root emacs session. If you use sudo on your system, it's C-x C-f/sudo::/path/to/file, or su: C-x C-f/root@localhost:/path/to/file.
You're just wrong. An illustrative anecdote: I live in Minnesota, and we've got MinnesotaCare which isn't perfect but is, to my knowledge, the best system of its kind in the country. I'm not rich, far from it. For most of my adult life I have been uninsured, and when I did have insurance it was completely inadequate, over-expensive insurance through my employer. Copays, waiting periods, "I can get this kind of filling for a cavity but not that one," just all kinds of ridiculous shit.
Now I'm self-employed and under $INCOME (but certainly not below the poverty line), and I'm eligible for MNCare. It is by far the cheapest, most hassle-free health plan I've ever had.
(sorry, I'd like to continue this but I really have to go vote right now, I may pick this back up later)
there's an easy way to do this with XP, while there's no such utility for Ubuntu.
Sure there is: Synaptic (or aptitude if that's your preference). If we're talking about deployment to multiple machines, there are utilities like Reconstructor or AptonCD. The Debian package management framework makes the whole thing pretty trivial.
That's probably because you spent those 6 months installing all sorts of extra crap which clogged up the system.
You misunderstood my original post. My 1.5 year old Ubuntu install is faster than a 0 day old HP OEM install of XP.
The GOOD thing about XP is that it can be easily stripped with nLite
Color me skeptical, but that doesn't exactly sound like a good thing about XP. That may be a good thing about nLite, but it speaks damn poorly of XP that such a utility is necessary (yes yes, for certain values of "necessary").
In the real world, most new computers are sold with Vista and people are perfectly happy with it^W^W^W^W^W^Wpeople are fucking miserable with it and jumping ship in huge numbers as soon as they can bribe their geek friends to do it.
Ubuntu after a year and a half of use beats an OEM version of XP out-of-the-box. This is based on personal experience with my Pentium D machine (yeah, hard-de-har-har) which has been dist-upgraded since Kubuntu 7.04 and is now running KDE4 (which is slower than the stock Ubuntu Gnome install).
RMS is right. People need to quit buying Nvidia hardware. I realize that doesn't help your current situation and I am sorry you're having trouble with it, but in the future it's something you should seriously consider when making your purchases. They've demonstrated time and again that they are simply not interested in releasing free drivers or opening their specs, so fuck 'em.
Companies, OTOH, provide direction and assess customer needs to drive features - which requires some degree of control and expertise beyond coding. Would OO have gotten to where it is today without Sun?
I found the rest of your post quite interesting (although I don't entirely agree with all of it), but this is just a horrible example. OpenOffice sucks donkey balls. "Where OOo is today" is a half-assed, half-speed MS Office 2000 clone with an ugly widget set. Its only selling points are MSO document compatibility (which admittedly is unsurpassed) and a pretty good styles implementation. It is just "un-horrible" enough for Sun to be able to tell its corporate customers "Hey, you should really try StarOffice, it's better!" and not get laughed out of the conference room. OpenOffice could have been an innovative project, an honest attempt at employing some new ideas in office software (see: KOffice). But Sun's stranglehold will never allow that.
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Some media sources you should expect to be biased. It's Rolling Stone, for cryin' out loud. I think they do some great reporting, but I know when I open it what slant to expect.
ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Hollywood, (did I leave any out?) all through McCain in front of the bus months before the election.
Bull. You know who threw McCain in front of the bus this year? He did, by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, by being nominated at the Xcel Center in St. Paul while there were high school kids and old women getting tear gassed outside, and by simply being a Republican presidential candidate at a really bad time to be a Republican presidential candidate.
Hell I saw a ratio of 4-1 Obama ads to McCain ads on TV. Even on FOX.
That's because the Obama campaign raised way more money. You may wish to ask yourself "How is that the Democrats managed to raise more money than the bigoted old white guy party?" You may come up with some surprising answers.
The media won this election for Obama. They didn't report on it. They choose a side and promoted it. So much for reporting the news. They were making the news.
The Democrats were using words like "hope" and "change," while the Republicans were using words like "terrorist" and "anti-American." And you are shocked - SHOCKED - that one of those messages got more air time than the other?
Oh, what the fuck ever. I saw a story very similar to this one in my local daily like a week before the election. It was titled "Has the press been biased against John McCain" or some such, and the first thought I had was "No, I think he's just a douchebag." See, because when somebody's a douchebag, telling people that that guy's a douchebag isn't biased reporting, it's just reporting. Welcome back to the reality-based reality.
This is where I disagree with the gay rights lobby. This in an individual rights issue, not a gay rights issue and pursuing solutions to these issues as gay rights will result in the perpetuation of civil rights violations, just to a smaller group. *snip* When disadvantaged by unjust government control, the solution is not to lobby for my group to get preference (since the problem is that another group has already successfully done that) but to demand individual liberties.
I completely agree with this whole thing, I've come to very similar conclusions myself actually. Well put.
That said, I wasn't arguing against gay marriage, I was arguing against the indiscriminate labelling of people as homophobic. My second post on this topic describes what I would have the law re gay marriage be.
I assume you are referring to this post...
Personally, I'm not against gay marriage as such, I'm against government interference in private relationships. I wouldn't have marriage controlled or determined by the state at all. In that case, people who wanted to enter into a contract regarding shared property rights, sexual exclusivity etc could do so. If they want to call that marriage, they could do so. If someone else doesn't want to acknowledge that, they don't have to, not being a party to the contract.
I agree with all of that except (maybe) the final sentence. I would argue that the government, as the principal agent that has recognized similar contracts between two parties for two hundred years and has created a inequitable tax and inheritance system around said contracts, does have to honor that contract or do away with the inequities in the system regarding married and unmarried couples altogether. I would prefer the second choice there myself, and from the tone of your previous posts I think you would too, but tearing down the entire American socioeconomic privilege system around marriage is a massive job and would take years, and we have to be realists about that.
Thanks for your reply!
Does it ever occur to you that people who oppose adoption by gays, for example, may do so on the basis of principles they hold and not irrational fear?
No.
"Marriage" is a word that has meaning in our culture for a long time
"Marriage" is also a legal institution that confers legal rights and responsibilities, it affects things from your taxes to hospital visitation rights. Yes, this is an equal rights issue. Don't be dense.
it is a radical redefining something that is considered one of the basic building blocks of society.
Here we agree completely, and I further say "It's about damn time." Our grandchildren will be taught about this struggle in forty years and be ashamed of us.
Everyone who opposes anything like this is labelled "homophobic" though. It's an attempt to eliminate discussion. "Islamaphobic" works the same way.
Actually, I tend to use the phrase "ignorant bigot."
Perhaps you would disagree with my position on adoption or gay marriage (neither of which I have given here because it isn't my point), but do you think it is possible that gay lobby groups could have a bad idea and that opposition to that idea could potentially be "sensible" rather than "homophobic".
No, but certainly not because I haven't listened to their arguments ad nauseum. I've heard it all, I've heard that children will be taught analingus in elementary school, I've heard about how those pernicious gays recruit innocent young boys, I've heard about "TEH FAMILY! TEH FAMILY!" If you, on the other hand, have something that doesn't sound like the same old tired Religious Reich nonsense, if you want to talk some fucking sense, by all means entertain me.
[citations needed]
Tramp is also extremely useful for editing files as root without opening a root emacs session. If you use sudo on your system, it's C-x C-f /sudo::/path/to/file, or su: C-x C-f /root@localhost:/path/to/file.
You're just wrong. An illustrative anecdote: I live in Minnesota, and we've got MinnesotaCare which isn't perfect but is, to my knowledge, the best system of its kind in the country. I'm not rich, far from it. For most of my adult life I have been uninsured, and when I did have insurance it was completely inadequate, over-expensive insurance through my employer. Copays, waiting periods, "I can get this kind of filling for a cavity but not that one," just all kinds of ridiculous shit.
Now I'm self-employed and under $INCOME (but certainly not below the poverty line), and I'm eligible for MNCare. It is by far the cheapest, most hassle-free health plan I've ever had.
(sorry, I'd like to continue this but I really have to go vote right now, I may pick this back up later)
there's an easy way to do this with XP, while there's no such utility for Ubuntu.
Sure there is: Synaptic (or aptitude if that's your preference). If we're talking about deployment to multiple machines, there are utilities like Reconstructor or AptonCD. The Debian package management framework makes the whole thing pretty trivial.
That's probably because you spent those 6 months installing all sorts of extra crap which clogged up the system.
You misunderstood my original post. My 1.5 year old Ubuntu install is faster than a 0 day old HP OEM install of XP.
The GOOD thing about XP is that it can be easily stripped with nLite
Color me skeptical, but that doesn't exactly sound like a good thing about XP. That may be a good thing about nLite, but it speaks damn poorly of XP that such a utility is necessary (yes yes, for certain values of "necessary").
Unless you keep booting up and down all day, boot time has nothing to do with performance.
So unless you're running Windows, boot time has nothing to do with performance?
And did you learn your lesson about things to look for when buying hardware?
In the real world, most new computers are sold with Vista and people are perfectly happy with it^W^W^W^W^W^Wpeople are fucking miserable with it and jumping ship in huge numbers as soon as they can bribe their geek friends to do it.
Ubuntu has been running rings around XP for like four years now. TYOLOTD was 2005, you've got some catching up to do.
So something like "open Synaptic and check a box and you are done?" When did Windows start doing that?
Ubuntu after a year and a half of use beats an OEM version of XP out-of-the-box. This is based on personal experience with my Pentium D machine (yeah, hard-de-har-har) which has been dist-upgraded since Kubuntu 7.04 and is now running KDE4 (which is slower than the stock Ubuntu Gnome install).
RMS is right. People need to quit buying Nvidia hardware. I realize that doesn't help your current situation and I am sorry you're having trouble with it, but in the future it's something you should seriously consider when making your purchases. They've demonstrated time and again that they are simply not interested in releasing free drivers or opening their specs, so fuck 'em.
I've upped my standards, Nvidia. So up yours.
I think they do all of those things.
Give me a Commercial version that is a bit more polished and has the important stuff already installed
Like what?
also get a "remote help" system
Preferences > Remote Desktop. It's been there forever. OTOH, if you want the whole "paid support" deal, you have to, well... pay for it.
That didn't make any damn sense at all.
Companies, OTOH, provide direction and assess customer needs to drive features - which requires some degree of control and expertise beyond coding. Would OO have gotten to where it is today without Sun?
I found the rest of your post quite interesting (although I don't entirely agree with all of it), but this is just a horrible example. OpenOffice sucks donkey balls. "Where OOo is today" is a half-assed, half-speed MS Office 2000 clone with an ugly widget set. Its only selling points are MSO document compatibility (which admittedly is unsurpassed) and a pretty good styles implementation. It is just "un-horrible" enough for Sun to be able to tell its corporate customers "Hey, you should really try StarOffice, it's better!" and not get laughed out of the conference room. OpenOffice could have been an innovative project, an honest attempt at employing some new ideas in office software (see: KOffice). But Sun's stranglehold will never allow that.
FYI: "Gimmick."
What is this an argument for?
I thought it was fairly self-explanatory. Saddam Hussein was a totally made-up "enemy" who never once attacked America or American interests abroad.
Oh, only you know the future. The glorious future where we win the war and gas is cheap and everyone just lurvs us! I see.
Way to totally make a bunch of baseless claims and then dodge out of the debate when you get called out.
Hope! Yay!
WTF does that have to do with being the President of the United States?