I actually like the runner-up's design better. The winner's is simple and clean but blocky and unfriendly. The runner-up's has a more friendly feel to it. I guess it's all the sharp corners vs. the rounded ones.
It showed up in mine (Avant which is an Explorer shell). However, it took a few seconds to load; I'm guessing the site is slow. Did you give it a minute to see if it showed up?
What an odd comment... while both games look great for what they are, FF is popular for its turn-based combat, and SotC is popular for its incredibly engaging storyline and art direction. Why can't those go to the Wii? (I admit I cannot see how you would play SotC with that remote-wand...)
I think you're the first person I've ever met to claim that the combat system is why people play Final Fantasy. People play Final Fantasy games typically for the storyline and the visuals, and ever since FF7 (or arguably FF3j for NES or FF6 for SNES), Square has consistently set the bar higher and higher on graphics quality in their games. It's part of the branding of the franchise. "You thought that the last FF game looked good? I'll bet you can't wait to see the next."
Square is already showing off FFXIII for PS3. They can't backslide to Wii-level graphics. They're committed to the PS3 / Xbox 360 level of graphics. They can make side games like FF: Crystal Chronicles or repackaged old games for the Wii, but the Final Fantasy brand is solidly on the track of PS3 or better graphics.
As for SotC, it's solidly pushing the envelope of what the PS2 is capable of. I admittedly haven't seen Twilight Princess, but to date no GameCube game has ever impressed me with its graphics compared to the shiniest PS2 and Xbox games. The Wii will be roughly a generation behind in graphics capabilities, and SotC sold itself almost entirely on ambienance and breathtaking artwork. (The gameplay's pretty good too.) On the PS3 and Xbox 360 raise the bar on what breathtaking artwork is, games that rely on it for impact will not go to the Wii, for better or for worse.
They keep saying that because they desperately need for it to be true. If developers come up with hard and edgy games for the Wii or good sports / racing titles that take advantage of the controller, then they'll steal the core markets for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
As long as Sony & MS can convince everybody that the Wii is for kids and non-gamers, then they'll keep the genres that appeal to the hardcore exclusively their consoles. However, I think the day that some smart developer thinks of how to use the Wii controller for a first person shooter is the day that console FPS games like Halo become irrelevant.
The only games that can't migrate to the Wii are games that depend on having pretty, pretty graphics for much of their appeal, like the mainline Final Fantasy games or games like Shadow of the Colossus. The Wii isn't even trying for graphics success.
The Wii will change forever the face of console gaming. I can't wait for the next generation when the Wii's control features get married to the graphics power of the current generation.
If you're looking to avoid law enforcement, you're pretty much SOL. I hope you don't carry an active cell phone, by the way.
If you're looking to avoid snoopy private eyes and stalker ex-girlfriends, then this is good stuff, but you can already achieve pretty good privacy by not having your bills in your name by using a nominee and by always paying with cash / money order.
However, getting a device that connects you to the internet without any address of yours being associated with it would be the ultimate in privacy. You'd pretty much have to tick off the government to get in trouble, and if you in it that deep, then there's pretty much nothing that going to help you.
Personally, I'm tickled by the idea of sticking a dedicated Freenet node or TOR server on one just for kicks.
I'm all fine with porn being blocked from a practical standpoint, but if this gets in the way of me using TOR because of people possibly using TOR to view porn, then I'm not interested.
A service that isn't necessarily tied to your home address and name sounds pretty attractive for the privacy-minded. Wireless, unfiltered broadband is kind of a holy grail of networking for some of us. If they promise to screw it up by acting as a nanny ISP and holding hands with the government, then I'm out.
A) Offer introductory service for free with an upgrade path that costs money. B) Ads. Remember kids, your time and smooth browsing experience cost nothing.
Well, if you really wanted to demonstrate that you weren't listening to anything I said, then you couldn't have done a better job.
The government is using surveilance to weed out discenters instead of turning on TV or cracking open the NYT's editorial page.
They aren't being "weeded out" yet, but they are being spied on and intimidated. The way to do it right is to do a rerun of the COINTELPRO operations from the 50s-70s designed to drives wedges between groups, discredit them in the media, and to smear their leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. You don't round them up and slap them in gulags, not in the current political environment anyway.
Our current lack of freedoms makes our lives not worth living anyway. Somehow though, under presidents like FDR and Lincoln who used far more executive power, the US citizens managed to keep from commiting suicide.
It's not yet not worth living; it's not yet North Korea. I don't think it could be within 5-10 years even under the worse case scenarios. However, it's not as free as it was even 10-30 years ago. I don't believe in "good enough America." I was raised to believe we stood for principles and that it was those principles that were worth dying for and not some flag, some piece of land, or some shared ethnicity.
Lincoln I have few issues with. Overall I admire the steps he took even if I think that suspension of habeus corpus is never justifiable. While the Emancipation Proclamation was certainly unconstitutional at the time, it was at the very least a declaration of principle and justice. We rapidly followed that up by making it formally right in the Constitution in the three amendments that most demonstration America's continuing belief in advancing freedom in my mind (to be followed later by the 19th).
WWII America frightens me in many ways. There was a full-time propoganda machine controlling public perception. There were mass internment camps for Japanese-Americans. There was a wide net for the draft. There was a 4 term President -- far long than most democratically elected leaders have stayed in power with a peaceful transition afterwards.
We bounced back from FDR because FDR wanted us to stay a democracy. He could've taken the role of a dictator. In fact, in the 30s many people were bemoaning that democracy had failed us and that strong leadership was needed. He chose not to take that path, though. America bounced back from WWII only because the men at the helm were solidly motivated by principles, and I cannot say the same for the current administration given many of the policies that it has publicly and privately advanced.
America will bounce back from this crisis of democracy but only because of people like me who fight against programs like this and not because of people like you who welcome them and ignore their potential for abuse.
The government should not have classified information, including information on how it is spying on our enemies. It should all be out in the public.
The government should have classified information when it is a threat to our enemies and not a threat to the people of the nation. Technologies, locations and identities of secret agents and facilities, war-fighting capabilities, etc. should be kept secret. However, the government should never be allowed to turn the weapons of the state on its own citizens.
Any program that can be abused against the population of the country should not be kept secret, and I think that it's morally indefensible to say that an abusable program like this should have no oversight and should be hideable from the public's eyes at the whim of the chief executive. One need only look at history to see how men in power have abused surveillance powers to oppress opposition.
While I believe the actions going after the "whistleblowers" in this case may be quite overzealous. They did release classified information, and that has always been wrong. Whether or not that information should be classified is debatable, and whether or not the government should be collecting it is also debatable. But anyone charged can have that debate during their trial.
That debate is pointless if the law explicitly states that state secrets trump press freedom in all cases. The Chilling Effect is already present and all that is left is for the brave to sacrifice themselves needlessly. I believe that the balance of power should always be in the favor of the people and not in favor of the appointed guardians of the people.
If the Rosenbergs had given the details on the bomb to a newspaper to be printed, instead of handing it over to the Soviets, do you think they should have been protected just because a newspaper has a right to publish under the first amendment?
No, in that case the secret of the state was a particular weapons technology. That we had such a device was already public knowledge. The people in fact had a right to know that we had the bomb once it was used. The implementation details of how to make such a weapon however did not need to be as it was not a significant threat to the liberty of the people to be deprived of such knowledge. No political party or movement could be persecuted or intimidated and democracy is not threatened by nuclear weapon implementation details.
That's an essential difference between these two example. However, a program that spies on the activity of Americans that was kept secret from the people is another thing because it is ripe for abuse. In this case, the state secret is that it is acting in a manner that is arguably counter to the interests of the people. That sort of secret should never be kept.
To let the executive branch should have the power to simply quash all public debate on its actions by slapping a security clearance on its programs is extremely dangerous. It's a Soviet-like power grab. To say that the people do not have a right to know (and thus be able to protest) some of the actions of their government is to forfit all your power over government in these areas. Any place in government where the people do not have control is a crack in the levee and will widen over time as our current adminstration is making more and more clear each day.
In other words, you are advocating suicidal anarchy?
Anarchy, no. Democracy, yes. Democracy requires that citizens be informed of the actions of their government and that their government does not have undue powers to force its will upon the people.
A spying program specifically meant to correlate leaders of factions and to find links between people is very, very useful in suppressing opposition and protest groups. You just attack the most connected nodes. Keeping the public in the dark about it only makes it more sinister since the people cannot vote against a program that they may find morally repellent if they do not know it exists. This is explicitly anti-democratic.
At what point do we curb liberty to save our own lives?
Not here. Not anywhere close to here. What is the point in having our lives if they are not worth living? A government with these powers could easily crush dissent and make the lives of unhappy citizens short, nasty, and brutish. I personally do not believe in the Confuscian ideal of the harmonious people all of one mind and character. That sort of public contentment is a chimera and a civilizational dead-end.
It is one thing to limit our "liberty" to directly harm one another for safety such as by having laws against murder and rape. It is another thing to demand that we be kept in the dark about what our government is doing, be spied upon daily for whatever the government deems is dangerous activities, and to be prosecuted for telling others secrets our government does not want the citizens to know. If that's your sort of thing, I'd look into Mandarin classes because there's a whole tradition of thought that finds that sort of thing necessary across the Pacific. That's not the American way, though.
We are not a situation of being under foreign rule right now.
Why does it have to be foreign to be bad? Is it not worse to have your fellow citizens give away your country to oppression? Just ask an Iraqi Kurd sometime what it's like. Ask a woman in Saudi Arabia. Ask a political dissident in North Korea what the labor camps are like. Ask a former slum-dweller from Zimbabwe what Operation Clean Up Trash was like.
We are under a situation of rule from a President who has quietly, repeatedly asserted the position that the White House and the military are above rule of law. Read about signing statements. Read about White House memos on torture, prisoner rights, and domestic surveillance. Just go down the list of the Bill or Rights and Google "Bush [Xth] Amendment." (You can skip 2nd & 3rd, though.) Read about "unlawful combatants" and "enemy combatants" and Jose Padilla.
Are we truly safe in a government where the executive branch asserts that the law gives them the privilege to break the law? This is what your trading liberty for security has bought you. When will Bush go "far enough" in your mind?
Cowards who value their lives more than their freedoms are the fundamental building blocks -- the foundation -- upon which every house of tyrants is built. If you are seriously arguing that the rights of the people to be secure in the persons or to have the actions of their government made accountable and open to them are less important than their so-called safety, then you are a morally treasonous coward. You are the brick and mortar of a police state, and I grieve that my country has made so many of you.
Or, as Patrick Henry -- one the men instrumental in both the revolution and in pushing for the adoption of the Bill of Rights specifically to limit the power of the federal goverment -- said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
1) It was right under Bush and Clinton both. 2) It was right under Bush and not right under Clinton. 3) It was not right under Bush and right under Clinton. 4) It was not right under Bush and Clinton both.
If you're saying anything but 1 or 4, you're a flaming hypocrite. If you're saying 1, then you're consisent but wrong.
If, instead, you're trying to undermine opposition for the position that the Bush administration is wrong for doing it by pointing out that Clinton did it too, then you're in for a rude surprise -- that doesn't work. That just makes us angry at Mr. Triangulation too. Believe it or not, a lot of people actually stand on loyalty to principles instead of loyalty to party or persons.
Also, while it's considered irresponsible for journalists to identify rape victims and out undercover cops, unless there's a court order to the contrary, there's no standing law to that effect that I'm aware of. I doubt it would hold up in federal court if there was one.
State secrets is another matter entirely, but I think there should be considerable leeway for when the state's secret is that it's violating the laws and the freedoms of its citizens. You CAN'T let it be any other way or else you truly have an unaccountable government which is the opposite of what a democracy is supposed to be. National security should not trump the human rights of its citizens.
I also think that the legit dermatologists should be trained to recognize the symptoms of parasite delusions and be allowed to prescribe anti-psychotics to patients.
Having just read monoqlith's post below, I retract that statement since anti-psychotics only worsened his problem with Lyme disease. Or at the very least, I'd like to modify it to say that they should be trained to recognize any diseases which could cause these delusions.
Why is this far fetched? Never woke up getting bit, had a cockroach in you're mouth, (never lived down south heh?)
As someone who has lived their entire life in the South: Umm, no. That's disgusting, and I wouldn't go admitting in public if I were you.
So, why is so *ucking impossible?
Because anything capable of causing these wide variety of symptoms here would have to be highly invasive and easily detectable. If real fibers were coming out of people, they could go to the emergency room, have them cut off, and have them sent to a pathology lab to determine what they are.
Instead, you have close up photos of obviously man-made fibers in a wide variety of colors not found in nature (and certainly not found in the byproducts of parasites) and promises of a homeopathic cure.
Given (a) the lack of proof of an infectious agent, (b) the strange and unnatural appearance of the byproducts of the supposed infection, (c) the treatability of the problem with anti-psychotics, and (d) the kind of pseudoscientific cures being peddled for it on the internet, I think that it all adds up to it being a delusion. Both the "Doctor" in the picture websites and the "Nurse" in the CBS & PM articles are exploiting people with mental illnessness, and I think they should be locked up for their cruelty for doing so. I also think that the legit dermatologists should be trained to recognize the symptoms of parasite delusions and be allowed to prescribe anti-psychotics to patients.
Zonk for a while has been my favorite editor. He posts stories that (while not necessarily all the informative or important) keep me entertained, mostly games and the occasional neat, fluff science article. He also very rarely posts a dupe or a post with bad grammar. In essence, he's actually an editor on the site.
However, posting an article that treats the fevered imaginations of schizophrenics as a real tranmissable disease and linking to crazy homeopathy websites is a new low for Slashdot. I mean, this is serious crank material. There's no parasite; the microscope pictures are obviously of carpet fuzz and lint given the structure and wild variety of colors. I mean seriously. LOOK at them. You can see how the threads are spun if you look closely enough at them, and there's absolutely no reason why a parasite would evolve the ability to make so many different vividly colors of thread.
Zonk's on my "Dead to Me" list now for Slashdot editors. This is complete bunk, and I feel awkward now for being a regular visitor at a site that would post this kind of patent nonsense.
Not according to the bars, they always seem to close with: "You don't have to go home, but, you can't stay here..." [...] Also, if you pick up a chick...you gotta get her home to your bed somehow!!
You know, a responsible person has random, empty sex with strangers in the backseat of the car rather than drive home drunk.
Slashdot Mirror
So says the man with a signature in italics and (currently) a serif font.
I just checked the URL. It's on Slashdot itself.
Doh!
(Anyway, it did take a few seconds to load the banner.)
I actually like the runner-up's design better. The winner's is simple and clean but blocky and unfriendly. The runner-up's has a more friendly feel to it. I guess it's all the sharp corners vs. the rounded ones.
It showed up in mine (Avant which is an Explorer shell).
However, it took a few seconds to load; I'm guessing the site is slow. Did you give it a minute to see if it showed up?
I'm just glad that someone found a use for Coke Blak.
What will this do to the game rental market? (Does Blockbuster still rent games?)
Is that pair of questions a self-cotained commentary on the state of the game rental market in itself?
Neat! How do both games handle moving the character around with the remote used for weaponry?
What an odd comment... while both games look great for what they are, FF is popular for its turn-based combat, and SotC is popular for its incredibly engaging storyline and art direction. Why can't those go to the Wii? (I admit I cannot see how you would play SotC with that remote-wand...)
I think you're the first person I've ever met to claim that the combat system is why people play Final Fantasy. People play Final Fantasy games typically for the storyline and the visuals, and ever since FF7 (or arguably FF3j for NES or FF6 for SNES), Square has consistently set the bar higher and higher on graphics quality in their games. It's part of the branding of the franchise. "You thought that the last FF game looked good? I'll bet you can't wait to see the next."
Square is already showing off FFXIII for PS3. They can't backslide to Wii-level graphics. They're committed to the PS3 / Xbox 360 level of graphics. They can make side games like FF: Crystal Chronicles or repackaged old games for the Wii, but the Final Fantasy brand is solidly on the track of PS3 or better graphics.
As for SotC, it's solidly pushing the envelope of what the PS2 is capable of. I admittedly haven't seen Twilight Princess, but to date no GameCube game has ever impressed me with its graphics compared to the shiniest PS2 and Xbox games. The Wii will be roughly a generation behind in graphics capabilities, and SotC sold itself almost entirely on ambienance and breathtaking artwork. (The gameplay's pretty good too.) On the PS3 and Xbox 360 raise the bar on what breathtaking artwork is, games that rely on it for impact will not go to the Wii, for better or for worse.
They keep saying that because they desperately need for it to be true. If developers come up with hard and edgy games for the Wii or good sports / racing titles that take advantage of the controller, then they'll steal the core markets for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
As long as Sony & MS can convince everybody that the Wii is for kids and non-gamers, then they'll keep the genres that appeal to the hardcore exclusively their consoles. However, I think the day that some smart developer thinks of how to use the Wii controller for a first person shooter is the day that console FPS games like Halo become irrelevant.
The only games that can't migrate to the Wii are games that depend on having pretty, pretty graphics for much of their appeal, like the mainline Final Fantasy games or games like Shadow of the Colossus. The Wii isn't even trying for graphics success.
The Wii will change forever the face of console gaming. I can't wait for the next generation when the Wii's control features get married to the graphics power of the current generation.
If you're looking to avoid law enforcement, you're pretty much SOL. I hope you don't carry an active cell phone, by the way.
If you're looking to avoid snoopy private eyes and stalker ex-girlfriends, then this is good stuff, but you can already achieve pretty good privacy by not having your bills in your name by using a nominee and by always paying with cash / money order.
However, getting a device that connects you to the internet without any address of yours being associated with it would be the ultimate in privacy. You'd pretty much have to tick off the government to get in trouble, and if you in it that deep, then there's pretty much nothing that going to help you.
Personally, I'm tickled by the idea of sticking a dedicated Freenet node or TOR server on one just for kicks.
What's the first link for?
Finding out where to camp out to be first in the theater?
Geocaching your wireless modem?
Aiming the orbital laser strike?
Explain to me exactly where I can get free EV-DO service right now, and you've sold me.
I'm all fine with porn being blocked from a practical standpoint, but if this gets in the way of me using TOR because of people possibly using TOR to view porn, then I'm not interested.
A service that isn't necessarily tied to your home address and name sounds pretty attractive for the privacy-minded. Wireless, unfiltered broadband is kind of a holy grail of networking for some of us. If they promise to screw it up by acting as a nanny ISP and holding hands with the government, then I'm out.
A) Offer introductory service for free with an upgrade path that costs money.
B) Ads. Remember kids, your time and smooth browsing experience cost nothing.
I'd be happy if I could just get ATI's drivers to work with Hardened Gentoo.
Well, if you really wanted to demonstrate that you weren't listening to anything I said, then you couldn't have done a better job.
The government is using surveilance to weed out discenters instead of turning on TV or cracking open the NYT's editorial page.
They aren't being "weeded out" yet, but they are being spied on and intimidated. The way to do it right is to do a rerun of the COINTELPRO operations from the 50s-70s designed to drives wedges between groups, discredit them in the media, and to smear their leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. You don't round them up and slap them in gulags, not in the current political environment anyway.
Our current lack of freedoms makes our lives not worth living anyway. Somehow though, under presidents like FDR and Lincoln who used far more executive power, the US citizens managed to keep from commiting suicide.
It's not yet not worth living; it's not yet North Korea. I don't think it could be within 5-10 years even under the worse case scenarios. However, it's not as free as it was even 10-30 years ago. I don't believe in "good enough America." I was raised to believe we stood for principles and that it was those principles that were worth dying for and not some flag, some piece of land, or some shared ethnicity.
Lincoln I have few issues with. Overall I admire the steps he took even if I think that suspension of habeus corpus is never justifiable. While the Emancipation Proclamation was certainly unconstitutional at the time, it was at the very least a declaration of principle and justice. We rapidly followed that up by making it formally right in the Constitution in the three amendments that most demonstration America's continuing belief in advancing freedom in my mind (to be followed later by the 19th).
WWII America frightens me in many ways. There was a full-time propoganda machine controlling public perception. There were mass internment camps for Japanese-Americans. There was a wide net for the draft. There was a 4 term President -- far long than most democratically elected leaders have stayed in power with a peaceful transition afterwards.
We bounced back from FDR because FDR wanted us to stay a democracy. He could've taken the role of a dictator. In fact, in the 30s many people were bemoaning that democracy had failed us and that strong leadership was needed. He chose not to take that path, though. America bounced back from WWII only because the men at the helm were solidly motivated by principles, and I cannot say the same for the current administration given many of the policies that it has publicly and privately advanced.
America will bounce back from this crisis of democracy but only because of people like me who fight against programs like this and not because of people like you who welcome them and ignore their potential for abuse.
The government should not have classified information, including information on how it is spying on our enemies. It should all be out in the public.
The government should have classified information when it is a threat to our enemies and not a threat to the people of the nation. Technologies, locations and identities of secret agents and facilities, war-fighting capabilities, etc. should be kept secret. However, the government should never be allowed to turn the weapons of the state on its own citizens.
Any program that can be abused against the population of the country should not be kept secret, and I think that it's morally indefensible to say that an abusable program like this should have no oversight and should be hideable from the public's eyes at the whim of the chief executive. One need only look at history to see how men in power have abused surveillance powers to oppress opposition.
While I believe the actions going after the "whistleblowers" in this case may be quite overzealous. They did release classified information, and that has always been wrong. Whether or not that information should be classified is debatable, and whether or not the government should be collecting it is also debatable. But anyone charged can have that debate during their trial.
That debate is pointless if the law explicitly states that state secrets trump press freedom in all cases. The Chilling Effect is already present and all that is left is for the brave to sacrifice themselves needlessly. I believe that the balance of power should always be in the favor of the people and not in favor of the appointed guardians of the people.
If the Rosenbergs had given the details on the bomb to a newspaper to be printed, instead of handing it over to the Soviets, do you think they should have been protected just because a newspaper has a right to publish under the first amendment?
No, in that case the secret of the state was a particular weapons technology. That we had such a device was already public knowledge. The people in fact had a right to know that we had the bomb once it was used. The implementation details of how to make such a weapon however did not need to be as it was not a significant threat to the liberty of the people to be deprived of such knowledge. No political party or movement could be persecuted or intimidated and democracy is not threatened by nuclear weapon implementation details.
That's an essential difference between these two example. However, a program that spies on the activity of Americans that was kept secret from the people is another thing because it is ripe for abuse. In this case, the state secret is that it is acting in a manner that is arguably counter to the interests of the people. That sort of secret should never be kept.
Given the actions of the current administration against peace groups and the historical precident of what happened to civil rights leaders during the 1960s, I cannot trust the government not to ever use this power against its own citizens for "ends justify the means" purposes.
To let the executive branch should have the power to simply quash all public debate on its actions by slapping a security clearance on its programs is extremely dangerous. It's a Soviet-like power grab. To say that the people do not have a right to know (and thus be able to protest) some of the actions of their government is to forfit all your power over government in these areas. Any place in government where the people do not have control is a crack in the levee and will widen over time as our current adminstration is making more and more clear each day.
In other words, you are advocating suicidal anarchy?
Anarchy, no. Democracy, yes. Democracy requires that citizens be informed of the actions of their government and that their government does not have undue powers to force its will upon the people.
A spying program specifically meant to correlate leaders of factions and to find links between people is very, very useful in suppressing opposition and protest groups. You just attack the most connected nodes. Keeping the public in the dark about it only makes it more sinister since the people cannot vote against a program that they may find morally repellent if they do not know it exists. This is explicitly anti-democratic.
At what point do we curb liberty to save our own lives?
Not here. Not anywhere close to here. What is the point in having our lives if they are not worth living? A government with these powers could easily crush dissent and make the lives of unhappy citizens short, nasty, and brutish. I personally do not believe in the Confuscian ideal of the harmonious people all of one mind and character. That sort of public contentment is a chimera and a civilizational dead-end.
It is one thing to limit our "liberty" to directly harm one another for safety such as by having laws against murder and rape. It is another thing to demand that we be kept in the dark about what our government is doing, be spied upon daily for whatever the government deems is dangerous activities, and to be prosecuted for telling others secrets our government does not want the citizens to know. If that's your sort of thing, I'd look into Mandarin classes because there's a whole tradition of thought that finds that sort of thing necessary across the Pacific. That's not the American way, though.
We are not a situation of being under foreign rule right now.
Why does it have to be foreign to be bad? Is it not worse to have your fellow citizens give away your country to oppression? Just ask an Iraqi Kurd sometime what it's like. Ask a woman in Saudi Arabia. Ask a political dissident in North Korea what the labor camps are like. Ask a former slum-dweller from Zimbabwe what Operation Clean Up Trash was like.
We are under a situation of rule from a President who has quietly, repeatedly asserted the position that the White House and the military are above rule of law. Read about signing statements. Read about White House memos on torture, prisoner rights, and domestic surveillance. Just go down the list of the Bill or Rights and Google "Bush [Xth] Amendment." (You can skip 2nd & 3rd, though.) Read about "unlawful combatants" and "enemy combatants" and Jose Padilla.
Are we truly safe in a government where the executive branch asserts that the law gives them the privilege to break the law? This is what your trading liberty for security has bought you. When will Bush go "far enough" in your mind?
The constitution is not a suicide pact.
Cowards who value their lives more than their freedoms are the fundamental building blocks -- the foundation -- upon which every house of tyrants is built. If you are seriously arguing that the rights of the people to be secure in the persons or to have the actions of their government made accountable and open to them are less important than their so-called safety, then you are a morally treasonous coward. You are the brick and mortar of a police state, and I grieve that my country has made so many of you.
Or, as Patrick Henry -- one the men instrumental in both the revolution and in pushing for the adoption of the Bill of Rights specifically to limit the power of the federal goverment -- said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Are you saying?
1) It was right under Bush and Clinton both.
2) It was right under Bush and not right under Clinton.
3) It was not right under Bush and right under Clinton.
4) It was not right under Bush and Clinton both.
If you're saying anything but 1 or 4, you're a flaming hypocrite. If you're saying 1, then you're consisent but wrong.
If, instead, you're trying to undermine opposition for the position that the Bush administration is wrong for doing it by pointing out that Clinton did it too, then you're in for a rude surprise -- that doesn't work. That just makes us angry at Mr. Triangulation too. Believe it or not, a lot of people actually stand on loyalty to principles instead of loyalty to party or persons.
Also, while it's considered irresponsible for journalists to identify rape victims and out undercover cops, unless there's a court order to the contrary, there's no standing law to that effect that I'm aware of. I doubt it would hold up in federal court if there was one.
State secrets is another matter entirely, but I think there should be considerable leeway for when the state's secret is that it's violating the laws and the freedoms of its citizens. You CAN'T let it be any other way or else you truly have an unaccountable government which is the opposite of what a democracy is supposed to be. National security should not trump the human rights of its citizens.
I also think that the legit dermatologists should be trained to recognize the symptoms of parasite delusions and be allowed to prescribe anti-psychotics to patients.
Having just read monoqlith's post below, I retract that statement since anti-psychotics only worsened his problem with Lyme disease. Or at the very least, I'd like to modify it to say that they should be trained to recognize any diseases which could cause these delusions.
Why is this far fetched? Never woke up getting bit, had a cockroach in you're mouth, (never lived down south heh?)
As someone who has lived their entire life in the South: Umm, no. That's disgusting, and I wouldn't go admitting in public if I were you.
So, why is so *ucking impossible?
Because anything capable of causing these wide variety of symptoms here would have to be highly invasive and easily detectable. If real fibers were coming out of people, they could go to the emergency room, have them cut off, and have them sent to a pathology lab to determine what they are.
Instead, you have close up photos of obviously man-made fibers in a wide variety of colors not found in nature (and certainly not found in the byproducts of parasites) and promises of a homeopathic cure.
Given (a) the lack of proof of an infectious agent, (b) the strange and unnatural appearance of the byproducts of the supposed infection, (c) the treatability of the problem with anti-psychotics, and (d) the kind of pseudoscientific cures being peddled for it on the internet, I think that it all adds up to it being a delusion. Both the "Doctor" in the picture websites and the "Nurse" in the CBS & PM articles are exploiting people with mental illnessness, and I think they should be locked up for their cruelty for doing so. I also think that the legit dermatologists should be trained to recognize the symptoms of parasite delusions and be allowed to prescribe anti-psychotics to patients.
Zonk for a while has been my favorite editor. He posts stories that (while not necessarily all the informative or important) keep me entertained, mostly games and the occasional neat, fluff science article. He also very rarely posts a dupe or a post with bad grammar. In essence, he's actually an editor on the site.
However, posting an article that treats the fevered imaginations of schizophrenics as a real tranmissable disease and linking to crazy homeopathy websites is a new low for Slashdot. I mean, this is serious crank material. There's no parasite; the microscope pictures are obviously of carpet fuzz and lint given the structure and wild variety of colors. I mean seriously. LOOK at them. You can see how the threads are spun if you look closely enough at them, and there's absolutely no reason why a parasite would evolve the ability to make so many different vividly colors of thread.
Zonk's on my "Dead to Me" list now for Slashdot editors. This is complete bunk, and I feel awkward now for being a regular visitor at a site that would post this kind of patent nonsense.
And was the controller just a mars bar wrapped in tin foil?
Does this mean that the Wii launch will be like the old rumors around the Xbox 360 launch?
Not according to the bars, they always seem to close with: "You don't have to go home, but, you can't stay here..." [...] Also, if you pick up a chick...you gotta get her home to your bed somehow!!
You know, a responsible person has random, empty sex with strangers in the backseat of the car rather than drive home drunk.