This is only true if you have loads and loads of free time on your hands like a high school or college student might. Otherwise, when you get out into the real world and get a job or start dating someone, you find out that free time disappears and a game that gives lots of goodies for little effort or that can be dropped for weeks and months before being picked back up without losing you is a great thing.
Long games are good for certain people and bad for others. However, the problem isn't really that the game is giving him a lot of gameplay so much as it's making it's gameplay so hard that it's unnaturally prolonged by failure. That's another split between the hardcore and casual gamer markets.
As a fan of console RPGs, I run into this all the time. Some games keep the fun continuous. Others require a lot of old-school level grinding to wring out the rewards. Some games make it easy to pick the game up and remember where you were if work intervenes for a week or two. Others leave you feeling like you need to start over.
It should be pretty easy to guess which type I prefer.
Not even 50% of "climate scienctists" agree with global warming. Wake up and smell the coffee man.
In what mythical fantasy land is this true? 'Cause it's not Earth.
The only people that disagree over global warming are economists, statisticians, mining engineers, and a wide variety of people who are experts in fields outside of atmospheric and climate research but have no experience within the field. The reason I said 99% instead of 100% is that while I have never seen a climatologist that disagrees with the fact that temperatures are increased, I can't deny that there must be somebody somewhere who does.
Cite five people with actual credentials in climate and atmospheric sciences that don't believe in global warming, and I'll return with a hundred that do. I want published papers; not the ravings of a crank whose work can't pass muster in a peer-reviewed journal. The field is completely dominated by people who have looked at the evidence and have been convinced. Once again, you make an extraordinary claim without any burden of proof; either put up or shut up.
Also consider having three forums: one for liberals, moderated by volunteers within the forum; one for conservatives, moderated by volunteers within the forum, and one non-partisan. That way, the people who really just want to be partisan can talk amongst themselves, and they can censor the other side as much as they want within their own forum.
That's a bad idea because it provides two nurturing pools for partisan extremism to let people gear up for battle before going all out in the "non-partisan" forum. People can argue with a "public" face and then bad mouth in the "private" partisan forum. Unless you restrict access to the partisan forums, then they'll just become battlefields as well. If you let moderation filter out people in the "wrong" area, then they'll quickly become two camps that accuse the otherside of close-minded censorship.
For more info than you'll ever need, go to Real Climate.
Also, why a mere 200 years? 200 years is EASY to find information on. The changes in the atmosphere and weather over the past 200 years is the most double-checked and verified data that we have. It's indisputable.
It's going back thousands or millions of years to verify that earth isn't experiencing a natural cycle that people usually ask for because that's the hard part where the methods to reach back further and further become fewer and fewer until you start being unable to verify against multiple sources of data and have to prove the validity of your data through other means.
The best we can do indisputably to measure CO2 levels so far is 800,000 years from ice samples in Antarctica. We can get measures of temperature through oxygen isotope ratios, and we find that they correlate nicely. Honestly. The data is indisputable to people who are impartial and open to reason like most judges are.
Nope, not even the legal deifinition has been proved and even the "upward trend" has only been "proven" with false statistical methods.
Like I said. Proof to ideologues is an impossible burden of proof.
Considering that over 99% of climate scientists are on my side, I'll put the burden back on you. Show me that it's "only been 'proven' with false statistical methods." You're the one making an extraordinary claim, and you're the one that needs extraordinary proof.
First, you have to prove that global warming actually exists. Which has not been done yet (Definitely not to the legal level of proof).
Actually, that part's pretty easy. The burden of legal proof is a little lower of a bar than the proof to ideologues and an uninformed public. That global temperatures over the past two centuries exhibit and upwards trend is pretty much proven. That atmospheric CO2 levels are tightly correlated to global temperature is pretty much proven. A mechanism to explain this is proven. That we have more C02 in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 800,000 years is pretty much proven.
Then you have to prove that the automakers are deliberatley causing Global Warming.
Ah, now THAT's where the lawsuit fails. You have to prove malice or negligence, and I think the burden of proof for THAT is where the bar is going to be set higher than they can reach, especially when the federal government does not consider CO2 to be a pollutant.
Ultimately, in the case of the auto industry, the problem is that the market does not want to pay higher prices for environmentally-friendly technologies, and there is no previous government mandate to only offer models that reduce emissions. Given that all they are doing is offering the option to be a bad citizen instead of forcing polluting vehicles on consumers, I don't see that liability can be proven.
1. "Oil" companies are really "energy fuel" companies. They will sell you whatever fuel you want to buy. The debate on global warming is irrelevant to them. In fact, if you switch to more expensive fuels, like hydrogen induction for your car and nuclear for your electricity, their profit margins might actually go up.
BS. The debate is not irrelevant. The lower your costs, the more profit you can make, and switching to non-carbon fuels requires a large investment that will eat up profits in the short-term. In the modern investing environment, protecting short-term shareholder interests is all that matters. Oil companies stand a lot to gain from sticking to technologies and infrastructure that they've already invested in.
I'll have to take the second items bit-by-bit:
2. One of the most powerful, corrupt, and politically active corporations in all of America is the Archer Daniels Midland corportation.
Agreed. ADM is a cancer on the US economy that has helped drive small, family farms out of business.
First of all, it takes a shitload of corn (pardon the pun) to make, and growing corn is extremely hard on the land.
Corn is the single worst crop you can use for ethanol. Switchgrass and sugarcane are much, much better. In the realm of biodiesel, energy returns on land investment are much greater, and algal biodiesel gives utterly outrageous BTUs/acre.
Secondly, while CO2 emissions are lower with ethanol, other gases, many of which are far more dangerous to humans, are emitted at much higher levels.
Going to E100 or B100 increases NOx but decreases formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. PM is usually reduced, and sulfates are eliminated. The mild NOx increase is problematic but small. However, due to a lack of sulfur, NOx control technologies (better catalytic converters) can be used that are unavailable in standard petrofuel engines that can completely negate and reverse this trend.
Thirdly, the energy consumed just to fertilize, harvest, ship, process and distill this miracle fuel is enormous.
The energy consumed just to drill, extract, ship, process and crack crude oil is enormous. What's your point.
Also, try using feedstocks other than corn. It makes a huge difference.
Lucky for ADM, they fucking *own* the government.
Unfortunately, this fact, and the disproportionately powerful sugarcane lobby are the major reasons why corn is used as an ethanol feedstock instead of something more efficient.
Before fretting about how much Exxon may have given to some tiny PAC dressed up in white lab coats, look into how much money ADM has given to Vice President Al Gore over the years.
ADM does not show up in the list of top donors for either the 1996 or 2000 elections for Al Gore. In 2000, Bush received $2,636,625 from agribusiness while Gore received $309,575. ADM has given more to Republicans or equivalent in every election since 1992 except for 1994 for a total 57% Rep. vs. 43% Dem.
It's not people like Gore that ADM gives money to but Congressmen from farm states that received the bulk of their largesse. People like Gore don't believe in biofuels because farm lobbies bribe them; they believe very honestly that global warming is a threat. (Have you ever seen "An Inconvenient Truth?" His passion for the matter is evident.) It is, however, companies like ADM that keep us on inefficient products that do more to hurt ethanol than even the oil companies do.
You must be blissfully unaware of the past 5-6 years of administration appointees. I almost envy you. Nearly ALL appointees over any sort of regulatory watchdog, scientific fact-finding, or pork-laden government spending bureau of the government has been an industry lobbyist of some sort who is assured to make sure that said industry (which donates lots of money to the Republicans) will make out like a bandit (literally) on the taxpayer's dime or taint and all evidence that gets in the way of said industry's profits.
The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):
Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.
What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.
If you don't think the failure to properly elect the leader of the most powerful country in the free world in a fair and accurate matter is "Stuff That Matters," then what the hell does in your myopic little universe of one?
Like the ABC movie "The Path To 9/11"?? Yeah, threatening to revoke a network's broadcast license because you disagree with the content of their programming isn't censorship.
Since when did "opposing censorship" imply supporting slanderous lies and partisan political porn? The movie blamed the Clinton administration for not authorizing strikes agaisnt bin Laden and blamed Clinton for not keeping his eye on the ball due to being distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair. This is despite the fact that the 9/11 Commission report found exactly the opposite was true. You know: the fact finding, bipartisan organization.
Clinton was very focused on the hunt for bin Laden. No one would have refused a kill shot on him. In fact, I distinctly remember the uproar and cry that Clinton was trying to distract the nation from Lewinsky trial when he ordered two terrorist camps destroyed with a cruise missile strike.
That's slander and a deliberate, partisan distortion of the truth intended to affect the upcoming elections by blaming the a Democratic president for 9/11 written by a close friend of Rush Limbaugh. Good Lord! What is wrong with you, where you think that lies and distortions are just valid views that crazies "disagree with the content" of?
We wants licenses pulled for their blatant attempts to muddy the waters of history to shift blame for the benefit of the right wing. Besides, the right-wing threatened CBS with the same thing over their unaired documentary The Reagans and 2003, and CBS had the decency to fold it up. Apparently, though, what's good enough for the goose isn't good enough for the gander.
It's a left-leaning site. I have NEVER seen a right-leaning article approved here. Ever.
I think you're displaying that subjective lens of partisanship that allows you to either believe that something is the objective truth or left-leaning claptrap. Slashdot has posted articles from the Cato Institute of all people before (which is actually Libertarian, but they've posted the right-wing economic articles from them and not just the left-wing pro-freedom and privacy articles). They've posted articles where people question global warming. They've posted articles that speak glowingly of globalization. You need to take off the blinders and look more if you haven't seen pro-right wing stuff here.
You especially need to go back to pre-2000 when the government was run by someone other than the right-wing, and Clinton got a lot of flak for the DMCA, the Clipper chip, etc. Basically, if anything, Slashdot has a Libertarian, anti-government bias in the editors and a Democratic, Libertarian, Republican, Other ranking order in percentage of posters. Slashdot only seems left leaning because the abuses of the right have been front and center for the past 5 years and not the abuses of the left.
That interpretation requires an incredibly selective view of history. In the times of the Civil Rights movement, both parties were divided by pro- and anti-segregationist forces. The Democrats in the South were pro-segregation conservatives, and the Republicans were mostly ambivalent moderates.
It was Lyndon Johnson who, upon signing the Civil Rights act, stated, "We have lost the South for a generation." It was Barry Goldwater who energized the right-wing of the Democratic Party and took the South by running on a platform of "states-rights."
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a pretty bipartisan piece of legislation even if it was clearly the liberal majority of the Democratic Party that pushed it. Almost all non-Southern Democrats and Republicans voted for it. Almost all Southern Democrats and Republicans voted against it. However, it was the Democrats who agitated for it for years, and it was the Democrats who bore the brunt of the blame in the minds of segregationists.
You need to read more on Nixon's "Southern Strategy" before you accuse the Democrats of coddling up to the racists. From the 60s to the 80s, everyone knew what campaigning on "states rights" was all about, and every major Republican candidate for President in that time period -- yes, even Reagan -- included rhetoric about states rights in speeches aimed at Southern voters.
If you want to believe that Republican and Democratic takes on racism in the wake of the Civil Rights movement is flipped from reality, then you're going to need to explain why black voters are almost all Democrats and why rural Southern whites are almost all Republicans and have been seen the 60s when people like Strom Thurmond defected to the Republican Party. I welcome an explanation that has neo-Confederate racists embracing the party of equality and grateful, enfranchised blacks embracing the party of discrimination. It should be entertaining.
I can't see how this impacts on civil liberties but I can see how this would reduce crime.
Your civil liberties are only the intersection of what the government doesn't consider a crime and what they can't effectively enforce into law. Anything else is just legal fiction that may or may not free you from jail or let you get some payback if you get a trial, but any damage or time lost to prison is still done.
Out of curiosity, would you be more or less likely to protest government malfeansce if you knew that the government would be recording the whole event and identifying "troublemakers" to be watched later? How do you think your friends and family would feel about protesting in that kind of situation?
Honestly, this sort of servile "please protect me from the bad, scary criminals" attitude is why the masses are often called sheep. You're just asking to be herded. Sorry, to be fair you're just asking for them to be herded expecting to never feel the hook around your neck. Personally, I think that's even more damning.
The truth is that "left" and "right" both encompass very different forms of freedom and equality, but when you converge at no freedom and no equality, there really isn't much difference between the authoritarian left and the authoritarian right but history and rhetoric.
Anyhow, adding loudspeakers to these cameras might be a good thing (bear with me, don't mod me down yet!). If the number of cameras stays the same, well we are just getting spied on the same as before, but with loudspeakers, now people will notice the spying is taking place. As it stands, cameras are easy to forget about in day-to-day life, but hearing the voice of authority booming down from on high is sure to raise some alarm. Hopefully we will finally see some kind of backlash! (Now you can mod me down)
Humans, like all mammals, have one of two responses to an irritant that is beyond their individual ability to do anything about:
Humans have a third response -- to band together to do something about it that no individual can accomplish -- but it is far less natural and instinctual than the first two, and I suspect that the vast majority of the public will fall into #1 and then #2, and very few will go on to #3.
Anyone who claims that tightening the noose is a good thing because it will finally make the people realize their mistakes doesn't understand just how much tighter the noose can really get.
Are you trying to tell me that the average M$ shop is paperless?
No. That would require a complete lack of reading comprehension skills to infer. Converting some tasks from paper does not imply converting all tasks from paper. His argument that converting some tasks from paper has helped businesses small and large is sound. Try to think back on how the following things were done without computers in the past:
Double-entry accounting
Spreadsheets
Authoring and distribution of memos
Inventory tracking and logistics
Scheduling of meetings and resources
Payroll, tracking of benefits, and tracking of employment status
Computers have taken basic clerical work and replaced the inefficiencies of paper and filing cabinets with documents that can be stored, searched, and retrieved in seconds instead of minutes. This is not necessarily the result of some sort of angelic gifts from MS, but it is how PCs have made business more agile by reducing procedural overhead and accounting.
The reason he probably chose this game is because it's something that everyone is familiar with, it's off-beat and interesting like any good art, and it's whimsical enough that no one will take it too seriously and get offended by the reviews when he takes on contorversial styles like Marxist and Feminist.
Incidentally, did anyone else read the New Criticism section and realize that they now had a name for all those hated, pretentious, fluffy critiques that make up nonsense from symbolic manipulation like some sort of postmodern augury? Yeah, me too; I hate those people.
I've always preferred the phone or in-person conversations to email. I barely even read the email that I have. Coworkers that prefer to email or IM you to getting up and just talking to you bug the heck out of me. I'm three cubicles away! You could get my attention by just raising your voice if you're too lazy to get out of the seat!
At any rate, the web provides me with useful information and infinite diversion. Email provides me with... a slow, inefficient, redundant method of communication. There's no contest.
That's not like any BASIC program *I* ever wrote!
on
Why Johnny Can't Code
·
· Score: 4, Funny
You're missing the ^G to make it beep after every line. Amateur.
Others have pointed out that your advice on credit cards is bad but not why.
Your list is a list of things to do to show that you are financially responsible and a captain of your own destiny. That's not what your credit score reflects. Your credit score reflects how reliable and profitable of a customer for credit you are. That's all that lenders care about.
In other words, you have to be willing to take on debt occasionally and to pay it off in a reliable fashion. Carrying a small balance in the form of car loans or occasional credit card debt looks far more attractive than an unknown blank slate who could be a good customer of credit or could be an untested bad customer.
Of course not, it's a postulate. The question is about whether or not law enforcement would logically be forced to conclude that shutting down Tor nodes is a good idea if they see Tor as a greater threat than a benefit. I argue that they would. I don't necessarily agree with the postulate itself, which is why the thread is tagged "Devil's Advocate."
I'll continue to play Devil's Advocate. (I use Tor pretty frequently, actually.)
If people use kitchen knives to stab and kill each other wouldn't making kitchen knives illegal and trying to scare people off owning them be a legitimate tactic.
Ah. The dual-use argument. Now, from law enforcement's perspective, what are the legitimate uses for Tor that supercede the need to track down and stop potential child molesters?
Obviously the problem with this is you end up banning all sorts of things and gain nothing since if there's no knife available somebody with murderous intent will merely use an alternative.
What alternatives to Tor exist? Oh, sure for darknets, you've got I2P, Freenet, etc., but what alternatives exist that allows Tor's essential out-proxying capability? How are they immune to being taken down in the same fashion as Tor? Either you have centralized out-proxies who are willing to take the heat, or you out-proxy through end users who will be discouraged by the potential of having abusive/illegal behavior one day come from their IP.
Even if banning something would prevent it's abuse there is the question of whether limiting the advancement of civilisation in order to deal with minor problems is proportionate. This is why the abuse is no argument against the use.
Dude. I love using Tor (except the awful sluggishness), but "limiting the advancement of civilisation?" Seriously, come on. Non-Devil's Advocate now: How exactly is Tor advancing civilisation?
Short Answer: Almost certainly. Long Answer: They probably won't.
Most members of the RIAA are multi-national entities who own the same companies that own the copyrights to anime soundtracks in Japan. (Does the name "Sony" ring a bell?) They could sue you in American courts for violating Japanese copyright under the TRIPs agreements.
Even ignoring that, many anime soundtracks are licensed for distribution in the US, even if not released on CDs. Part of the complexity of licensing anime for US distribution is that all of the rights to a series are not always held by one entity. The anime distribution companies sometimes have to separately license the soundtrack from the video and the dub track. In that case, you'd be violating the American company's rights. Most of these companies are independent and turn a blind eye to all copyright violations short of the redistribution of translated episodes or movies that they own the rights to because it's free advertising. However, some of these companies are owned by RIAA / MPAA members. (e.g. Pioneer/Geneon)
Given the lack of commercial viability of anime soundtracks in the US compared to the ripped works of big pop stars that the RIAA searches for, the long-reach and expense of pursuing the violation of Japanese copyrights, and the general disinterest of American holders of those rights, you're probably safe.
But you're only safe because they don't want to go after you and not because they can't.
I suppose the difference is that: 1) Telcos let you get the CP. 2) TOR lets you get away with it.
ISPs don't anonymize your traffic and are complicit in government surveillance of it.
That said, I do most of my surfing through TOR just because I intrinsically hate the NSA spying on me. I use TOR for the sake of using TOR even though there are sites I can't go to anymore because of bans on TOR IPs thanks to bad actors. I've never liked people looking over my shoulder even when I'm doing absolutely nothing wrong. I'd rather be thought of as hiding something wrong than be known for sure to be doing nothing wrong just for the peace of mind of having my privacy.
The only things I don't do through TOR are things where I sign-in, like Slashdot, where anonymity is pointless and, in fact, running with an identity through TOR is possibly harmful since it makes it easier to identify each end of the TOR tunnel. It sure is slow-going, though.
Note that, due to the way Tor works, seizing the Tor exit nodes won't help track down the actual people responsible in any way. [...] It will, however, help scare people off running Tor nodes quite nicely.
Devil's Advocate: If TOR helps protect child pornographers from the grip of the law, and you think that capturing pedophiles is a greater good than all the other uses of TOR or that TOR's uses are primarily negative, then isn't attempting to scare people off running TOR nodes a legitimate tactic? Thus, wouldn't seizing these machines under any allowable legal pretext be perfectly in line with the goals of law enforcement?
Slashdot Mirror
What's he complaining about? Long games = good.
This is only true if you have loads and loads of free time on your hands like a high school or college student might. Otherwise, when you get out into the real world and get a job or start dating someone, you find out that free time disappears and a game that gives lots of goodies for little effort or that can be dropped for weeks and months before being picked back up without losing you is a great thing.
Long games are good for certain people and bad for others. However, the problem isn't really that the game is giving him a lot of gameplay so much as it's making it's gameplay so hard that it's unnaturally prolonged by failure. That's another split between the hardcore and casual gamer markets.
As a fan of console RPGs, I run into this all the time. Some games keep the fun continuous. Others require a lot of old-school level grinding to wring out the rewards. Some games make it easy to pick the game up and remember where you were if work intervenes for a week or two. Others leave you feeling like you need to start over.
It should be pretty easy to guess which type I prefer.
Not even 50% of "climate scienctists" agree with global warming. Wake up and smell the coffee man.
In what mythical fantasy land is this true? 'Cause it's not Earth.
The only people that disagree over global warming are economists, statisticians, mining engineers, and a wide variety of people who are experts in fields outside of atmospheric and climate research but have no experience within the field. The reason I said 99% instead of 100% is that while I have never seen a climatologist that disagrees with the fact that temperatures are increased, I can't deny that there must be somebody somewhere who does.
Cite five people with actual credentials in climate and atmospheric sciences that don't believe in global warming, and I'll return with a hundred that do. I want published papers; not the ravings of a crank whose work can't pass muster in a peer-reviewed journal. The field is completely dominated by people who have looked at the evidence and have been convinced. Once again, you make an extraordinary claim without any burden of proof; either put up or shut up.
Also consider having three forums: one for liberals, moderated by volunteers within the forum; one for conservatives, moderated by volunteers within the forum, and one non-partisan. That way, the people who really just want to be partisan can talk amongst themselves, and they can censor the other side as much as they want within their own forum.
That's a bad idea because it provides two nurturing pools for partisan extremism to let people gear up for battle before going all out in the "non-partisan" forum. People can argue with a "public" face and then bad mouth in the "private" partisan forum. Unless you restrict access to the partisan forums, then they'll just become battlefields as well. If you let moderation filter out people in the "wrong" area, then they'll quickly become two camps that accuse the otherside of close-minded censorship.
For more info than you'll ever need, go to Real Climate.
Also, why a mere 200 years? 200 years is EASY to find information on. The changes in the atmosphere and weather over the past 200 years is the most double-checked and verified data that we have. It's indisputable.
It's going back thousands or millions of years to verify that earth isn't experiencing a natural cycle that people usually ask for because that's the hard part where the methods to reach back further and further become fewer and fewer until you start being unable to verify against multiple sources of data and have to prove the validity of your data through other means.
The best we can do indisputably to measure CO2 levels so far is 800,000 years from ice samples in Antarctica. We can get measures of temperature through oxygen isotope ratios, and we find that they correlate nicely. Honestly. The data is indisputable to people who are impartial and open to reason like most judges are.
Nope, not even the legal deifinition has been proved and even the "upward trend" has only been "proven" with false statistical methods.
Like I said. Proof to ideologues is an impossible burden of proof.
Considering that over 99% of climate scientists are on my side, I'll put the burden back on you. Show me that it's "only been 'proven' with false statistical methods." You're the one making an extraordinary claim, and you're the one that needs extraordinary proof.
First, you have to prove that global warming actually exists. Which has not been done yet (Definitely not to the legal level of proof).
Actually, that part's pretty easy. The burden of legal proof is a little lower of a bar than the proof to ideologues and an uninformed public. That global temperatures over the past two centuries exhibit and upwards trend is pretty much proven. That atmospheric CO2 levels are tightly correlated to global temperature is pretty much proven. A mechanism to explain this is proven. That we have more C02 in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 800,000 years is pretty much proven.
Then you have to prove that the automakers are deliberatley causing Global Warming.
Ah, now THAT's where the lawsuit fails. You have to prove malice or negligence, and I think the burden of proof for THAT is where the bar is going to be set higher than they can reach, especially when the federal government does not consider CO2 to be a pollutant.
Ultimately, in the case of the auto industry, the problem is that the market does not want to pay higher prices for environmentally-friendly technologies, and there is no previous government mandate to only offer models that reduce emissions. Given that all they are doing is offering the option to be a bad citizen instead of forcing polluting vehicles on consumers, I don't see that liability can be proven.
1. "Oil" companies are really "energy fuel" companies. They will sell you whatever fuel you want to buy. The debate on global warming is irrelevant to them. In fact, if you switch to more expensive fuels, like hydrogen induction for your car and nuclear for your electricity, their profit margins might actually go up.
BS. The debate is not irrelevant. The lower your costs, the more profit you can make, and switching to non-carbon fuels requires a large investment that will eat up profits in the short-term. In the modern investing environment, protecting short-term shareholder interests is all that matters. Oil companies stand a lot to gain from sticking to technologies and infrastructure that they've already invested in.
I'll have to take the second items bit-by-bit:
2. One of the most powerful, corrupt, and politically active corporations in all of America is the Archer Daniels Midland corportation.
Agreed. ADM is a cancer on the US economy that has helped drive small, family farms out of business.
First of all, it takes a shitload of corn (pardon the pun) to make, and growing corn is extremely hard on the land.
Corn is the single worst crop you can use for ethanol. Switchgrass and sugarcane are much, much better. In the realm of biodiesel, energy returns on land investment are much greater, and algal biodiesel gives utterly outrageous BTUs/acre.
Secondly, while CO2 emissions are lower with ethanol, other gases, many of which are far more dangerous to humans, are emitted at much higher levels.
Going to E100 or B100 increases NOx but decreases formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. PM is usually reduced, and sulfates are eliminated. The mild NOx increase is problematic but small. However, due to a lack of sulfur, NOx control technologies (better catalytic converters) can be used that are unavailable in standard petrofuel engines that can completely negate and reverse this trend.
Thirdly, the energy consumed just to fertilize, harvest, ship, process and distill this miracle fuel is enormous.
The energy consumed just to drill, extract, ship, process and crack crude oil is enormous. What's your point.
Also, try using feedstocks other than corn. It makes a huge difference.
Lucky for ADM, they fucking *own* the government.
Unfortunately, this fact, and the disproportionately powerful sugarcane lobby are the major reasons why corn is used as an ethanol feedstock instead of something more efficient.
Before fretting about how much Exxon may have given to some tiny PAC dressed up in white lab coats, look into how much money ADM has given to Vice President Al Gore over the years.
ADM does not show up in the list of top donors for either the 1996 or 2000 elections for Al Gore. In 2000, Bush received $2,636,625 from agribusiness while Gore received $309,575. ADM has given more to Republicans or equivalent in every election since 1992 except for 1994 for a total 57% Rep. vs. 43% Dem.
It's not people like Gore that ADM gives money to but Congressmen from farm states that received the bulk of their largesse. People like Gore don't believe in biofuels because farm lobbies bribe them; they believe very honestly that global warming is a threat. (Have you ever seen "An Inconvenient Truth?" His passion for the matter is evident.) It is, however, companies like ADM that keep us on inefficient products that do more to hurt ethanol than even the oil companies do.
You must be blissfully unaware of the past 5-6 years of administration appointees. I almost envy you. Nearly ALL appointees over any sort of regulatory watchdog, scientific fact-finding, or pork-laden government spending bureau of the government has been an industry lobbyist of some sort who is assured to make sure that said industry (which donates lots of money to the Republicans) will make out like a bandit (literally) on the taxpayer's dime or taint and all evidence that gets in the way of said industry's profits.
...No really, 7 ridiculous arguments straight from the horse's mouth! (How's FEMA workin' out there, HF?)
Read more here:
Bush Has Appointed Over 100 Lobbyists as 'Regulators'
WhiteHouseForSale.org | Contributors and Paybacks Articles
Evidence that this has been a pattern of behavior as far back as when he was governor.
Some info on two of the officials reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal
An even longer list of crony appointees
The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):
Michael Brown's two political appointees deputees in FEMA
A petition for Bush to make political appointments with a list of 6 good examples
The Hertiage Foundation even endorsed making political appointees over experienced civil servants in 2001!
Why, just look how many Heritage Foundation flacks are now in the administration.
Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.
What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.
If you don't think the failure to properly elect the leader of the most powerful country in the free world in a fair and accurate matter is "Stuff That Matters," then what the hell does in your myopic little universe of one?
I guess you're not from New Orleans.
Like the ABC movie "The Path To 9/11"?? Yeah, threatening to revoke a network's broadcast license because you disagree with the content of their programming isn't censorship.
Since when did "opposing censorship" imply supporting slanderous lies and partisan political porn? The movie blamed the Clinton administration for not authorizing strikes agaisnt bin Laden and blamed Clinton for not keeping his eye on the ball due to being distracted by the Monica Lewinsky affair. This is despite the fact that the 9/11 Commission report found exactly the opposite was true. You know: the fact finding, bipartisan organization.
Clinton was very focused on the hunt for bin Laden. No one would have refused a kill shot on him. In fact, I distinctly remember the uproar and cry that Clinton was trying to distract the nation from Lewinsky trial when he ordered two terrorist camps destroyed with a cruise missile strike.
That's slander and a deliberate, partisan distortion of the truth intended to affect the upcoming elections by blaming the a Democratic president for 9/11 written by a close friend of Rush Limbaugh. Good Lord! What is wrong with you, where you think that lies and distortions are just valid views that crazies "disagree with the content" of?
We wants licenses pulled for their blatant attempts to muddy the waters of history to shift blame for the benefit of the right wing. Besides, the right-wing threatened CBS with the same thing over their unaired documentary The Reagans and 2003, and CBS had the decency to fold it up. Apparently, though, what's good enough for the goose isn't good enough for the gander.
It's a left-leaning site. I have NEVER seen a right-leaning article approved here. Ever.
I think you're displaying that subjective lens of partisanship that allows you to either believe that something is the objective truth or left-leaning claptrap. Slashdot has posted articles from the Cato Institute of all people before (which is actually Libertarian, but they've posted the right-wing economic articles from them and not just the left-wing pro-freedom and privacy articles). They've posted articles where people question global warming. They've posted articles that speak glowingly of globalization. You need to take off the blinders and look more if you haven't seen pro-right wing stuff here.
You especially need to go back to pre-2000 when the government was run by someone other than the right-wing, and Clinton got a lot of flak for the DMCA, the Clipper chip, etc. Basically, if anything, Slashdot has a Libertarian, anti-government bias in the editors and a Democratic, Libertarian, Republican, Other ranking order in percentage of posters. Slashdot only seems left leaning because the abuses of the right have been front and center for the past 5 years and not the abuses of the left.
That interpretation requires an incredibly selective view of history. In the times of the Civil Rights movement, both parties were divided by pro- and anti-segregationist forces. The Democrats in the South were pro-segregation conservatives, and the Republicans were mostly ambivalent moderates.
It was Lyndon Johnson who, upon signing the Civil Rights act, stated, "We have lost the South for a generation." It was Barry Goldwater who energized the right-wing of the Democratic Party and took the South by running on a platform of "states-rights."
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a pretty bipartisan piece of legislation even if it was clearly the liberal majority of the Democratic Party that pushed it. Almost all non-Southern Democrats and Republicans voted for it. Almost all Southern Democrats and Republicans voted against it. However, it was the Democrats who agitated for it for years, and it was the Democrats who bore the brunt of the blame in the minds of segregationists.
You need to read more on Nixon's "Southern Strategy" before you accuse the Democrats of coddling up to the racists. From the 60s to the 80s, everyone knew what campaigning on "states rights" was all about, and every major Republican candidate for President in that time period -- yes, even Reagan -- included rhetoric about states rights in speeches aimed at Southern voters.
If you want to believe that Republican and Democratic takes on racism in the wake of the Civil Rights movement is flipped from reality, then you're going to need to explain why black voters are almost all Democrats and why rural Southern whites are almost all Republicans and have been seen the 60s when people like Strom Thurmond defected to the Republican Party. I welcome an explanation that has neo-Confederate racists embracing the party of equality and grateful, enfranchised blacks embracing the party of discrimination. It should be entertaining.
I can't see how this impacts on civil liberties but I can see how this would reduce crime.
Your civil liberties are only the intersection of what the government doesn't consider a crime and what they can't effectively enforce into law. Anything else is just legal fiction that may or may not free you from jail or let you get some payback if you get a trial, but any damage or time lost to prison is still done.
Out of curiosity, would you be more or less likely to protest government malfeansce if you knew that the government would be recording the whole event and identifying "troublemakers" to be watched later? How do you think your friends and family would feel about protesting in that kind of situation?
Honestly, this sort of servile "please protect me from the bad, scary criminals" attitude is why the masses are often called sheep. You're just asking to be herded. Sorry, to be fair you're just asking for them to be herded expecting to never feel the hook around your neck. Personally, I think that's even more damning.
The truth is that "left" and "right" both encompass very different forms of freedom and equality, but when you converge at no freedom and no equality, there really isn't much difference between the authoritarian left and the authoritarian right but history and rhetoric.
Anyhow, adding loudspeakers to these cameras might be a good thing (bear with me, don't mod me down yet!). If the number of cameras stays the same, well we are just getting spied on the same as before, but with loudspeakers, now people will notice the spying is taking place. As it stands, cameras are easy to forget about in day-to-day life, but hearing the voice of authority booming down from on high is sure to raise some alarm. Hopefully we will finally see some kind of backlash! (Now you can mod me down)
Humans, like all mammals, have one of two responses to an irritant that is beyond their individual ability to do anything about:
1) Adaptation and calm acceptance.
2) Learned helplessness.
Humans have a third response -- to band together to do something about it that no individual can accomplish -- but it is far less natural and instinctual than the first two, and I suspect that the vast majority of the public will fall into #1 and then #2, and very few will go on to #3.
Anyone who claims that tightening the noose is a good thing because it will finally make the people realize their mistakes doesn't understand just how much tighter the noose can really get.
No. That would require a complete lack of reading comprehension skills to infer. Converting some tasks from paper does not imply converting all tasks from paper. His argument that converting some tasks from paper has helped businesses small and large is sound. Try to think back on how the following things were done without computers in the past:
- Double-entry accounting
- Spreadsheets
- Authoring and distribution of memos
- Inventory tracking and logistics
- Scheduling of meetings and resources
- Payroll, tracking of benefits, and tracking of employment status
Computers have taken basic clerical work and replaced the inefficiencies of paper and filing cabinets with documents that can be stored, searched, and retrieved in seconds instead of minutes. This is not necessarily the result of some sort of angelic gifts from MS, but it is how PCs have made business more agile by reducing procedural overhead and accounting.The reason he probably chose this game is because it's something that everyone is familiar with, it's off-beat and interesting like any good art, and it's whimsical enough that no one will take it too seriously and get offended by the reviews when he takes on contorversial styles like Marxist and Feminist.
Incidentally, did anyone else read the New Criticism section and realize that they now had a name for all those hated, pretentious, fluffy critiques that make up nonsense from symbolic manipulation like some sort of postmodern augury? Yeah, me too; I hate those people.
I've always preferred the phone or in-person conversations to email. I barely even read the email that I have. Coworkers that prefer to email or IM you to getting up and just talking to you bug the heck out of me. I'm three cubicles away! You could get my attention by just raising your voice if you're too lazy to get out of the seat!
At any rate, the web provides me with useful information and infinite diversion. Email provides me with... a slow, inefficient, redundant method of communication. There's no contest.
You're missing the ^G to make it beep after every line.
Amateur.
Others have pointed out that your advice on credit cards is bad but not why.
Your list is a list of things to do to show that you are financially responsible and a captain of your own destiny. That's not what your credit score reflects. Your credit score reflects how reliable and profitable of a customer for credit you are. That's all that lenders care about.
In other words, you have to be willing to take on debt occasionally and to pay it off in a reliable fashion. Carrying a small balance in the form of car loans or occasional credit card debt looks far more attractive than an unknown blank slate who could be a good customer of credit or could be an untested bad customer.
Of course not, it's a postulate. The question is about whether or not law enforcement would logically be forced to conclude that shutting down Tor nodes is a good idea if they see Tor as a greater threat than a benefit. I argue that they would. I don't necessarily agree with the postulate itself, which is why the thread is tagged "Devil's Advocate."
I'll continue to play Devil's Advocate. (I use Tor pretty frequently, actually.)
If people use kitchen knives to stab and kill each other wouldn't making kitchen knives illegal and trying to scare people off owning them be a legitimate tactic.
Ah. The dual-use argument. Now, from law enforcement's perspective, what are the legitimate uses for Tor that supercede the need to track down and stop potential child molesters?
Obviously the problem with this is you end up banning all sorts of things and gain nothing since if there's no knife available somebody with murderous intent will merely use an alternative.
What alternatives to Tor exist? Oh, sure for darknets, you've got I2P, Freenet, etc., but what alternatives exist that allows Tor's essential out-proxying capability? How are they immune to being taken down in the same fashion as Tor? Either you have centralized out-proxies who are willing to take the heat, or you out-proxy through end users who will be discouraged by the potential of having abusive/illegal behavior one day come from their IP.
Even if banning something would prevent it's abuse there is the question of whether limiting the advancement of civilisation in order to deal with minor problems is proportionate. This is why the abuse is no argument against the use.
Dude. I love using Tor (except the awful sluggishness), but "limiting the advancement of civilisation?" Seriously, come on. Non-Devil's Advocate now: How exactly is Tor advancing civilisation?
(Disclaimer: IANAL)
Short Answer: Almost certainly.
Long Answer: They probably won't.
Most members of the RIAA are multi-national entities who own the same companies that own the copyrights to anime soundtracks in Japan. (Does the name "Sony" ring a bell?) They could sue you in American courts for violating Japanese copyright under the TRIPs agreements.
Even ignoring that, many anime soundtracks are licensed for distribution in the US, even if not released on CDs. Part of the complexity of licensing anime for US distribution is that all of the rights to a series are not always held by one entity. The anime distribution companies sometimes have to separately license the soundtrack from the video and the dub track. In that case, you'd be violating the American company's rights. Most of these companies are independent and turn a blind eye to all copyright violations short of the redistribution of translated episodes or movies that they own the rights to because it's free advertising. However, some of these companies are owned by RIAA / MPAA members. (e.g. Pioneer/Geneon)
Given the lack of commercial viability of anime soundtracks in the US compared to the ripped works of big pop stars that the RIAA searches for, the long-reach and expense of pursuing the violation of Japanese copyrights, and the general disinterest of American holders of those rights, you're probably safe.
But you're only safe because they don't want to go after you and not because they can't.
I suppose the difference is that:
1) Telcos let you get the CP.
2) TOR lets you get away with it.
ISPs don't anonymize your traffic and are complicit in government surveillance of it.
That said, I do most of my surfing through TOR just because I intrinsically hate the NSA spying on me. I use TOR for the sake of using TOR even though there are sites I can't go to anymore because of bans on TOR IPs thanks to bad actors. I've never liked people looking over my shoulder even when I'm doing absolutely nothing wrong. I'd rather be thought of as hiding something wrong than be known for sure to be doing nothing wrong just for the peace of mind of having my privacy.
The only things I don't do through TOR are things where I sign-in, like Slashdot, where anonymity is pointless and, in fact, running with an identity through TOR is possibly harmful since it makes it easier to identify each end of the TOR tunnel. It sure is slow-going, though.
Note that, due to the way Tor works, seizing the Tor exit nodes won't help track down the actual people responsible in any way. [...] It will, however, help scare people off running Tor nodes quite nicely.
Devil's Advocate:
If TOR helps protect child pornographers from the grip of the law, and you think that capturing pedophiles is a greater good than all the other uses of TOR or that TOR's uses are primarily negative, then isn't attempting to scare people off running TOR nodes a legitimate tactic? Thus, wouldn't seizing these machines under any allowable legal pretext be perfectly in line with the goals of law enforcement?