Wow. I have no idea how you got modded informative at all.
You are buying both the record and a legal entitlement granted by the copyright holder.
No. Just fucking NO. This is the propaganda you've been LED to believe. This is the nonsense propaganda you are currently PARROTING as the truth, but just because you've been duped into believing it is so, does not make it so.
People cannot OWN ideas, nor is it good for our society to try and enable them to do so. Setting up artificial barriers on trade in this manner ends up causing more harm than it solves.
When I buy a CD, I own the physical object, and the data on it. Oh, the RIAA says I don't? Well fuck them because I do own it, and there's not a goddamn thing anyone will do to stop me from doing whatever I please with this data, including give copies of it to all 3 million of my friends if I so desire. Don't like it? Don't fucking upload it.
At this point, after so many abuses by the RIAA/MPAA/patent trolls/idiots/government, and the lengths these cocksuckers have gone through to sue grandmothers and amputees for everything they own just to make an example, there is absolutely no possible way that anyone can possibly convince me I'm somehow in the wrong for copying bits from one computer to another. Sorry, not buying it. I've grown up literally my entire life having benefited enormously from pirated software and media that first my father, then I never could have otherwise afforded, while doing absolutely no harm to anyone in the process.
Legions of millions of people stand behind me in agreement. These assholes trying to make us feel guilty and ashamed for piracy have already lost the war, whether they realize it or not. It's a damn shame some fools insists on parroting their lies (and bought and paid for legislation, which isn't fit to wipe my ass with) all the way to the bitter end.
At this point you don't even need blank CDs. An MP3 player and some external hard drives and all of the sudden your the fucking Library of Congress walking around with tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes nearly a million, in copyrighted content. Never mind that you could have only really afforded 1% of your library or less.
It's a serious problem.
How is it a considered a PROBLEM that any human with internet access can access and download a billion times more information than any of the great Libraries of the world ever held, for free? HOW is that a problem, even if it does make it harder for some artists to become millionaires, when humanity as a whole benefits enormously?
I mean for fuck's sake, the human species is advancing so fast now thanks to the Internet and free and open exchange of information. Why the fuck would any sane person want to put up toll booths to limit that? That's exactly what has happened to everything else in our societies, and the strangehold of it has been what's holding us back. We need to take out the fucking toll booths from everything and the let the market do its work. Humanity will advance itself regardless of the existence of copyright law.
which is the greatest example of why the government does far more harm than good when it tries to tell people what they should want.
No, I'd say the War on Drugs is far, far worse. I mean, in Prohibition they didn't have people's decapitated bodies being hung from overpasses in mid-town, or Federal agents seizing entire hotels from lawful owners because a booze transaction occurred in one room behind closed doors.
Damn, this is like the third time in this same article where somebody took a offhand comment completely out of context and started accusing me of all kinds of crazy beliefs I don't hold! We are on the same side, bro... I agree with everything you said.
What I was getting at is, many people (myself included) were duped into thinking Obama was the real deal a few years back. Finally, someone who's going to fix this fucking country! Only to soon realize we'd been had, and he's just another fucking dirty politician out to "get his" at our expense.
As you are aware, the actual NEED for change, which led to him getting elected, hasn't disappeared...it's stronger than ever. Wikileaks and all this has happened, the truth has come out about a lot of shit, and the cracks are starting to show. People are becoming aware of the banksters and their grip on our country and economy, and the numerous other ways our country is infested with corruption from top to bottom. They have to realize this, by necessity, because the only other option is economic doom, death, and global destruction.
It's over with for these assholes, whether they realize it or not.
When it is apparent to me that they are going after both sides,
There are only two sides to worry about right now: those who are (consciously or unconsciously) in favor of continued tyranny, and those whose eyes are opened, who are tired of it, and who are ready for freedom.
There is no "Democrat" or "Republican"...."liberal" or "conservative"....--those are false dichotomies, bread and circuses rhetoric designed to stir up the populace against each other, while both parties take turns raping the citizens of this country.
The former group greatly outnumbers the latter. But it's the latter group who is growing, and will ultimately prevail, because truth and freedom speaks louder than any tyranny. So give it some careful thought before you decide which group to throw your support behind.
1) What you consider "proper", I consider to be "fucking stupid, unreasonable, and unreadable." It is the height of arrogance to believe that one's preferred way of indentation is more "proper" than someone else's, because it's completely subjective.
2) What makes youthink I need "a job" from anyone? I'm self employed...I create my own job. And no, my job won't ever involve having to put up with other people's arrogant and stupid design decisions.
Revolution is a word tossed around by wannabe anarchists who make a show of desiring change but lack the commitment to actually enable any change. It's hip, it's fashionable, and it's anti-establishment so people feel empowered by endorsing revolution.
Agreed.
Moving towards the less mature arenas, on college campuses you see people promoting revolution and hinting at violence as a component of it. It's another false sense of empowerment; the idea that violence can create real and permanent change is mostly untrue in modern times in the Western world.
Violence has never created real and permanent change. In fact, nothing has, because no such thing exists.
Our Founding Fathers did indeed believe that violence was something necessary however. I think Thomas Jefferson summed it up best:
"From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Like it or not, we are stuck with the system that we have. Revolution will never happen and if it did, it would never change anything. It's better to use one's time and money to make corrective measures to the existing system. In particular striving for more transparency in policies and programs helps keep the politicians honest as they have to disclose what they do, and things like the FOIA have been quite a benefit. That's something we can pursue realistically without the false pretense of revolution.
Apparently you don't understand the gravity of the situation we are facing right now. Unless *drastic* changes occur soon in our a) foreign policy, b) economy, c) monetary system, this country, and pretty much the entire world, is fucked. Yes, it's that serious. Your defeatist attitude is not helping, and the system will change with or without your help...because it HAS to.
While you're sitting around talking about how "revolution will never happen", it IS happening. Right now, as we speak. Hint: the word "revolution" does not necessarily imply bloodshed....though some blood is being shed, and will be shed, before all is said and done.
Imagine if all the Occupiers had a coherent and uniform message about one particular issue, and had well thought out demonstrations. They may have been able to tweak things by now. But instead it's a bunch of disorganized pot-smoking street people all claiming their own cause and causing trouble. That is most definitely not the root of an revolution or any kind of progress. All the Middle East movements had very definite goals and that helped immensely.
You're wrong. Civil unrest is most definitely the root of ALL revolution or progress, when an existing system of government has become stalled out and is no longer meeting the people's needs. It has happened time and time again throughout history, and it is happening now. The status quo will not continue. Any other belief simply represents a misunderstanding of a) history and b) the current situation as it actually stands. The Arab Spring has spread to the Western world.
Apparently you just don't get how fed up some people are. It doesn't take 80% of the population to be thoroughly pissed off. All it takes one guy setting himself on fire because of government corruption, for people all around the world to begin to see just how bad it's gotten. This country is corrupt from the top all the way down to the very bottom. We simply can't afford to let it continue.
In short I disagree with your comment, and I think it's the kind of pretentious thing a hipster would say.
Perhaps next time you'll choose to respond back with a worthwhile argument, instead of dismissing me as a "hipster." You don't know me, bud, and directing insults at me isn't going to win your argument.
Well, you obviously cared to some extent. Why else would you find it worth your time to write such an ugly, spiteful reply? If you don't have anything positive to contribute, then piss off.
Bro, you're not thinking it through. When (yes, when, barring massive electoral fraud, assassination, etc) Ron Paul becomes President, he will have the bully pulpit. The reason Obama "can't get things done" is because he's playing the political game. The President has a huge amount of power, he just uses it sparingly because of politics. Paul doesn't give a shit about any of that. He just wants to fix our country, and the country is behind them. He will veto bill after bill, end all the wars with a stroke of the pen including the War on Drugs, end various wasteful agencies under his control. Congress will go along with it and introduce real legislation, or they will be vetoed and will end up losing their jobs. It's as simple as that. Real leadership. It's what this country's been needing for a long, long time.
But you can bet your ass that some contractors and equipment vendors will make a lot of money off of this. And I suspect, like Chertoff, it wouldn't be hard to trace the contracts that are inevitably issued back to the senators who support this garbage.
It's even more insidious than that. The kickbacks are just a bonus here. The real gain is the encroachment in our civil liberties. I've been seeing a lot of worrying signs this year, like the NDAA, but other stuff leading up to that and other measures. They (the "Powers That Be") are serious about turning this country into a dictatorship. The VIPR teams are a big part of this.
On the Iraq war: Democrats were opposed 126-82, Republicans in favor 215-6. If Democrats had controlled congress, it would never have happened.
Which is exactly why they voted against it--because it was a REPUBLICAN thing. And yet, just a few years later and BOTH parties are agitating for a war in Iran. Which will be our undoing, because we're about to start World War mother fucking Three.
On public option healthcare: It was filibustered to death. It had support of 100% of Senate Democrats, but was opposed by 40 Senate Republicans plus Lieberman, who is an independent. One more Democrat in the Senate, and it would have passed.
Great! Then it would have been just as big of a boondoggle as the current clusterfuck, except even worse because the government would have a monopoly on healthcare. NOT exactly utopia you're dreaming of here.
On torture and the prison-industrial complex: They fought against torture. The fact that they didn't do some other good thing does not erase the good thing that they did do.
Oh, well how about Obama ordering the summary execution of an American citizen, with no trial or jury, who wasn't even accused of any crime, for no reason other than we don't like him? Would that cound as a "bad thing" the "Democrats did" in your worldview?
On gays and women (and immigrants and Muslims, for that matter): When a large segment of the population is used as a political punching bag and denied basic rights and control over their lives, that IS a big deal.
You're right--it IS a big deal. Unfortunately, there's SO many other really, really BIG deals going on right now, like the potential entry of our country into World War 3, the failed economy (which, NO, isn't "showing life" despite media propaganda to the contrary), the rapid and growing encroachment upon and outright usurpation of our rights--the list goes on, and on, and on. As much as I sympathize for gay/lesbian folks and agree they should have equal rights, that's NOT the top item on our agenda right now.
It's not like the government can only do one thing at a time, and we must solve one problem before moving on to another. We can help millions of people right now, but it seems you'd rather let them suffer because you can't get some other things you want first.
You think if we just elect the Democrats in a landslide they will solve all our problems? How naive are you?
On unions: You accuse them of union busting. That's just shocking. They fought for EFCA, but it was filibustered to death by the Republicans. Also I seem to recall some Democrats fighting like hell in Wisconsin to protect the unions, only for the Republican governor to circumvent the law and pass his union busting bill illegally, and then have a Republican state supreme court judge give it the okay.
Yes, his statement DOES seem a bit wrong, and you rightly pointed it out. Did you ever stop to consider that the REASON his statement is wrong is because the whole Republican/Democrat divide isn't really a divide at all? These labels and mud slinging tactics are designed specifically to keep the masses occupied with fighting each other over bullshit while the real people in power pass law after law taking our rights away one by one, and removing any and all obstacles to their domination of this country. NDAA is just the latest and most visible (and by far, the worst) part of this.
At the bottom level of politics, all these people taking up the mantra of Democrat or Republican, liberal, conservative, whatever, and fighting against other groups, all they're doing is wasting their energy and effort while their masters laugh all the way to the Federal Reserve, then straight to a private jet to retire in Dubai.
The Republicans are out to break your spirits. They want you to give up on the Democrats so that they can take power. That's been their goal for years, and it's perfectly clear to anyone paying attention. Stop falling for it.
You are in bad need of a reality check and wake up call.
Saying the parties are the same is just the excuse of the lazy, trying to rationalize why they don't bother voting.
No. That's the actual truth and reality. Both parties are controlled by the same masters. Believing anything else is self-delusion and ignorance, thanks to your apparently unquestioning belief in government propaganda. It's hardly your fault--you've been immersed in it since the day you were born. The "system" we live in has been a work in progress for over a hundred years. It's not a design so much as an emergent phenomena, but regardless of the cause of perpetrators, it's here....but it's not here to stay for much longer.
From what I can gather, it (as in, the systematic stripping of our liberties) does in fact originate from that time period. Remember, 1914 was the beginning of World War I. In those days there was the German, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, British, Ottoman, and other empires which were pretty much like the U.S. is today: old, glorious empires rife with internal strife and past their primes, who were in the mood taking out their aggression through warfare. Their cultures and ideas all had a profound influence on the United States at the time, especially due to vastly improved communications technologies. (The first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858.)
It's much akin to how third world countries are influenced today by our gluttonousness, greed, and artificial lifestyle. Those attitudes spread from Europe to the U.S., especially amongst the "millenial" generation, and took hold in the fervent selfishness and greed that ran rampant in the 1920s, to be curtailed by the Great Depression, only to be ramped up again full force by WWII when we were the only nation left standing afterwards. Meanwhile, the oppression slowly grew.
As it turns out, in Europe imperialism wasn't dealt a death blow in WWI either, since the same attitudes led straight to WWII. Finally Europe had enough of war and tyranny was dealt a serious blow. Unfortunately, it took root in the relatively-unscathed U.S. and blossomed into what we see today: a full-featured police state.
That is what I thought. However, recent evidence points to the obvious problem -> people become used to the current level of fear. Which means you are either in a race to continuously pop out a larger and stronger crisis, or you have to pull back for a bit. Right now, people are losing their life savings -> in the end, the people upstairs have ensured that the people downstairs have *nothing* to lose.
Correct, but the fear phase (in reaction to any crises) is now long over with. That was a few years back when people elected Obama in a landslide and were all too eager to approve bailout after bailout. Now they've realized they've been had, en masse, and it's looking pretty grim for the establishment as a whole.
Like it or not, we are stuck with the system that we have. Revolution will never happen and if it did, it would never change anything.
Sorry, you're wrong. It's occurring right now.
Hint: The word "revolution" does not necessarily connotate standing armies and Revolutionary-era battles.
Imagine if all the Occupiers had a coherent and uniform message about one particular issue, and had well thought out demonstrations. They may have been able to tweak things by now. But instead it's a bunch of disorganized pot-smoking street people all claiming their own cause and causing trouble.
This is exactly the image the media wanted and apparently, successfully ingrained into your head. In reality, Occupy is people from ALL walks of life, who are pissed off about ALL sorts of things. A huge percentage of which is legitimate gripes. They can't be ignored or silenced any longer. Tyranny is finished in this country, for a LONG time to come, whether you or they realize it or not.
You're behind the times, anyhow. Occupy is no longer the center of our national attention, and Wall Street is no longer the center of Occupy's attention. Right now both are shifting to Ron Paul.
Interesting you mention Clipper. I seem to recall that was the language for/used by dBASE back in the day. My dad used that language to write a DOS application for the Air Force to keep track of technical manuals, and a similar program for a local junkyard to keep track of vehicles/parts on the yard. Menu driven, etc., and pretty nice. I think a lot of people don't understand that the BASIC language doesn't have to be just limited to just 10 PRINT "HELLO" type stuff, as specific implementations widely differed, and in a good implementation it can be used to build real apps that don't suck.
Yeah and getting a paycheck is the fun side of working a job. Should we hand kids 20 dollar bills and pretend we are teaching them a work ethic? Dragging and dropping generic blocks of code outlives its pedagogical usefulness in about 20 minutes with a kid smart enough that he'll ever be a programmer anyway. Not to mention the fact that dragging and dropping a GUI is actually one of the boringest parts of programming. Coming up with the clever algorithm to solve a problem is what is fun and touchdevelop will never teach that. Basic would be much better and python would be infinitely better than that as it is a programming language that they might actually see one day and it is brain dead easy to boot.
Apparently it never occurs to clueless people such as yourself that there are people out there in the world who think fundamentally differently than you. Shocking, I know, but it's true: what works "perfectly" for you may be utterly abysmal for anyone else.
I guess it never occurred to you, but this is the direction that touchscreen OS-level user interfactions (i.e. shell level interactions, scripting, etc) are headed. What, did you imagine that the phone/tablet would always be a useless brick without a PC there to support it? I predict there will be a split here, and some will go that route, while others will move towards being completely independent devices on their own.
For that to happen there will need to be a touchscreen "shell" that allows efficient interaction with system objects, files, data, etc WITHOUT having to pop up some bullshit on-screen keyboard, hours of laborious command line entries, etc. The current paradigm is horribly unsuitable. We need to be able to drag and drop commands, objects, files, applications, etc, set up pipes, all that with an easy to use interface.
It's going to kick major ass when someone gets it figured out. Sorry the Luddites can't see it. I'm glad to see that Microsoft has stepped up to the plate with some actual innovation. Their first attempt might suck, but they'll come out with something good eventually. Hope other players are sitting up and taking note. We are seeing the PC revolution all over again....at the same time as an ACTUAL revolution in Western civilization.....which is just amazing to be living through.
I love the fact that due to the archival nature of the Internet, posts like this will be preserved for all time to demonstrate just how clueless the poster is, in regards to his arrogantly expressed inability to understand that this is exactly the direction user interfaces are going in, thus making his post laughably wrong when viewed in a 5-10 years down the road perspective.
Being able to "script" things together by dragging items/objects/commands together into sequences and combining these sequences in various ways is THE way to solve today's touch screen interface problems. What, you think you can just slap a touch keyboard UI in there and BAM, that's the future of how things will always be done? All the misery of fat fingers pressing wrong buttons and triggering the wrong actions, now and for good? Come on.
Today we are seeing a new PC revolution. Well, some of us are anyway....sorry if you get left behind. Kudos to Microsoft for developing this technology and bringing it to market. I'm no Microsoft fan, but I have a feeling Windows 8 Mobile is really going to shake up the smartphone market.
You can't get BASIC for your phone for the same reason you can't get a reasonable BASIC for your average GNU/Linux distro. It's just not that good and it only teaches you bad habits, and in the end - it's just not useful. It's not that good language for the masses as it is advertised, and you can't do much in it.
It did a lot for me. When I was in 2nd grade I stumbled across a book on BASIC programming in the school library. I remember thinking, "hey, my dad has a computer!" So I checked it out and took it home. He set me up on his 286 compatible (12MHz, 1MB RAM, DOS 5.x, two 40MB MFM drives, ATI VGAWonder and 15" Samsung SyncMaster!) in Professional Write and showed me how to save my programs and run them with GWBasic.
I spent a lot of time copying in the example programs from the book line by line. My favorite was an interactive detective story, kinda like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I started making changes and was amazed to see that the computer did exactly what I told it to do...or didn't, if I screwed up something.
A couple years later I got bored of BASIC and with the help of a DOS program called LearnC (which now I can't find *anywhere*) and Turbo C I learned that language too, then Turbo Pascal, and others. The rest is history.
So yeah, I'd say that BASIC could still be a very useful language.
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In caucus you count supporters, not ballots and they aren't secret anyway.
Well, except for the secret count.
Wow. I have no idea how you got modded informative at all.
You are buying both the record and a legal entitlement granted by the copyright holder.
No. Just fucking NO. This is the propaganda you've been LED to believe. This is the nonsense propaganda you are currently PARROTING as the truth, but just because you've been duped into believing it is so, does not make it so.
People cannot OWN ideas, nor is it good for our society to try and enable them to do so. Setting up artificial barriers on trade in this manner ends up causing more harm than it solves.
When I buy a CD, I own the physical object, and the data on it. Oh, the RIAA says I don't? Well fuck them because I do own it, and there's not a goddamn thing anyone will do to stop me from doing whatever I please with this data, including give copies of it to all 3 million of my friends if I so desire. Don't like it? Don't fucking upload it.
At this point, after so many abuses by the RIAA/MPAA/patent trolls/idiots/government, and the lengths these cocksuckers have gone through to sue grandmothers and amputees for everything they own just to make an example, there is absolutely no possible way that anyone can possibly convince me I'm somehow in the wrong for copying bits from one computer to another. Sorry, not buying it. I've grown up literally my entire life having benefited enormously from pirated software and media that first my father, then I never could have otherwise afforded, while doing absolutely no harm to anyone in the process.
Legions of millions of people stand behind me in agreement. These assholes trying to make us feel guilty and ashamed for piracy have already lost the war, whether they realize it or not. It's a damn shame some fools insists on parroting their lies (and bought and paid for legislation, which isn't fit to wipe my ass with) all the way to the bitter end.
At this point you don't even need blank CDs. An MP3 player and some external hard drives and all of the sudden your the fucking Library of Congress walking around with tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes nearly a million, in copyrighted content. Never mind that you could have only really afforded 1% of your library or less.
It's a serious problem.
How is it a considered a PROBLEM that any human with internet access can access and download a billion times more information than any of the great Libraries of the world ever held, for free? HOW is that a problem, even if it does make it harder for some artists to become millionaires, when humanity as a whole benefits enormously?
I mean for fuck's sake, the human species is advancing so fast now thanks to the Internet and free and open exchange of information. Why the fuck would any sane person want to put up toll booths to limit that? That's exactly what has happened to everything else in our societies, and the strangehold of it has been what's holding us back. We need to take out the fucking toll booths from everything and the let the market do its work. Humanity will advance itself regardless of the existence of copyright law.
which is the greatest example of why the government does far more harm than good when it tries to tell people what they should want.
No, I'd say the War on Drugs is far, far worse. I mean, in Prohibition they didn't have people's decapitated bodies being hung from overpasses in mid-town, or Federal agents seizing entire hotels from lawful owners because a booze transaction occurred in one room behind closed doors.
Damn, this is like the third time in this same article where somebody took a offhand comment completely out of context and started accusing me of all kinds of crazy beliefs I don't hold! We are on the same side, bro... I agree with everything you said.
What I was getting at is, many people (myself included) were duped into thinking Obama was the real deal a few years back. Finally, someone who's going to fix this fucking country! Only to soon realize we'd been had, and he's just another fucking dirty politician out to "get his" at our expense.
As you are aware, the actual NEED for change, which led to him getting elected, hasn't disappeared...it's stronger than ever. Wikileaks and all this has happened, the truth has come out about a lot of shit, and the cracks are starting to show. People are becoming aware of the banksters and their grip on our country and economy, and the numerous other ways our country is infested with corruption from top to bottom. They have to realize this, by necessity, because the only other option is economic doom, death, and global destruction.
It's over with for these assholes, whether they realize it or not.
When it is apparent to me that they are going after both sides,
There are only two sides to worry about right now: those who are (consciously or unconsciously) in favor of continued tyranny, and those whose eyes are opened, who are tired of it, and who are ready for freedom.
There is no "Democrat" or "Republican"...."liberal" or "conservative"....--those are false dichotomies, bread and circuses rhetoric designed to stir up the populace against each other, while both parties take turns raping the citizens of this country.
The former group greatly outnumbers the latter. But it's the latter group who is growing, and will ultimately prevail, because truth and freedom speaks louder than any tyranny. So give it some careful thought before you decide which group to throw your support behind.
1) What you consider "proper", I consider to be "fucking stupid, unreasonable, and unreadable." It is the height of arrogance to believe that one's preferred way of indentation is more "proper" than someone else's, because it's completely subjective.
2) What makes youthink I need "a job" from anyone? I'm self employed...I create my own job. And no, my job won't ever involve having to put up with other people's arrogant and stupid design decisions.
Revolution is a word tossed around by wannabe anarchists who make a show of desiring change but lack the commitment to actually enable any change. It's hip, it's fashionable, and it's anti-establishment so people feel empowered by endorsing revolution.
Agreed.
Moving towards the less mature arenas, on college campuses you see people promoting revolution and hinting at violence as a component of it. It's another false sense of empowerment; the idea that violence can create real and permanent change is mostly untrue in modern times in the Western world.
Violence has never created real and permanent change. In fact, nothing has, because no such thing exists.
Our Founding Fathers did indeed believe that violence was something necessary however. I think Thomas Jefferson summed it up best:
"From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Like it or not, we are stuck with the system that we have. Revolution will never happen and if it did, it would never change anything. It's better to use one's time and money to make corrective measures to the existing system. In particular striving for more transparency in policies and programs helps keep the politicians honest as they have to disclose what they do, and things like the FOIA have been quite a benefit. That's something we can pursue realistically without the false pretense of revolution.
Apparently you don't understand the gravity of the situation we are facing right now. Unless *drastic* changes occur soon in our a) foreign policy, b) economy, c) monetary system, this country, and pretty much the entire world, is fucked. Yes, it's that serious. Your defeatist attitude is not helping, and the system will change with or without your help...because it HAS to.
While you're sitting around talking about how "revolution will never happen", it IS happening. Right now, as we speak. Hint: the word "revolution" does not necessarily imply bloodshed....though some blood is being shed, and will be shed, before all is said and done.
Imagine if all the Occupiers had a coherent and uniform message about one particular issue, and had well thought out demonstrations. They may have been able to tweak things by now. But instead it's a bunch of disorganized pot-smoking street people all claiming their own cause and causing trouble. That is most definitely not the root of an revolution or any kind of progress. All the Middle East movements had very definite goals and that helped immensely.
You're wrong. Civil unrest is most definitely the root of ALL revolution or progress, when an existing system of government has become stalled out and is no longer meeting the people's needs. It has happened time and time again throughout history, and it is happening now. The status quo will not continue. Any other belief simply represents a misunderstanding of a) history and b) the current situation as it actually stands. The Arab Spring has spread to the Western world.
Apparently you just don't get how fed up some people are. It doesn't take 80% of the population to be thoroughly pissed off. All it takes one guy setting himself on fire because of government corruption, for people all around the world to begin to see just how bad it's gotten. This country is corrupt from the top all the way down to the very bottom. We simply can't afford to let it continue.
In short I disagree with your comment, and I think it's the kind of pretentious thing a hipster would say.
Perhaps next time you'll choose to respond back with a worthwhile argument, instead of dismissing me as a "hipster." You don't know me, bud, and directing insults at me isn't going to win your argument.
Well, you obviously cared to some extent. Why else would you find it worth your time to write such an ugly, spiteful reply? If you don't have anything positive to contribute, then piss off.
Because at home, I don't get to enjoy the audience's reaction to what we're (together) watching.
Bro, you're not thinking it through. When (yes, when, barring massive electoral fraud, assassination, etc) Ron Paul becomes President, he will have the bully pulpit. The reason Obama "can't get things done" is because he's playing the political game. The President has a huge amount of power, he just uses it sparingly because of politics. Paul doesn't give a shit about any of that. He just wants to fix our country, and the country is behind them. He will veto bill after bill, end all the wars with a stroke of the pen including the War on Drugs, end various wasteful agencies under his control. Congress will go along with it and introduce real legislation, or they will be vetoed and will end up losing their jobs. It's as simple as that. Real leadership. It's what this country's been needing for a long, long time.
But you can bet your ass that some contractors and equipment vendors will make a lot of money off of this. And I suspect, like Chertoff, it wouldn't be hard to trace the contracts that are inevitably issued back to the senators who support this garbage.
It's even more insidious than that. The kickbacks are just a bonus here. The real gain is the encroachment in our civil liberties. I've been seeing a lot of worrying signs this year, like the NDAA, but other stuff leading up to that and other measures. They (the "Powers That Be") are serious about turning this country into a dictatorship. The VIPR teams are a big part of this.
Rough times ahead.
On the Iraq war: Democrats were opposed 126-82, Republicans in favor 215-6. If Democrats had controlled congress, it would never have happened.
Which is exactly why they voted against it--because it was a REPUBLICAN thing. And yet, just a few years later and BOTH parties are agitating for a war in Iran. Which will be our undoing, because we're about to start World War mother fucking Three.
On public option healthcare: It was filibustered to death. It had support of 100% of Senate Democrats, but was opposed by 40 Senate Republicans plus Lieberman, who is an independent. One more Democrat in the Senate, and it would have passed.
Great! Then it would have been just as big of a boondoggle as the current clusterfuck, except even worse because the government would have a monopoly on healthcare. NOT exactly utopia you're dreaming of here.
On torture and the prison-industrial complex: They fought against torture. The fact that they didn't do some other good thing does not erase the good thing that they did do.
Oh, well how about Obama ordering the summary execution of an American citizen, with no trial or jury, who wasn't even accused of any crime, for no reason other than we don't like him? Would that cound as a "bad thing" the "Democrats did" in your worldview?
On gays and women (and immigrants and Muslims, for that matter): When a large segment of the population is used as a political punching bag and denied basic rights and control over their lives, that IS a big deal.
You're right--it IS a big deal. Unfortunately, there's SO many other really, really BIG deals going on right now, like the potential entry of our country into World War 3, the failed economy (which, NO, isn't "showing life" despite media propaganda to the contrary), the rapid and growing encroachment upon and outright usurpation of our rights--the list goes on, and on, and on. As much as I sympathize for gay/lesbian folks and agree they should have equal rights, that's NOT the top item on our agenda right now.
It's not like the government can only do one thing at a time, and we must solve one problem before moving on to another. We can help millions of people right now, but it seems you'd rather let them suffer because you can't get some other things you want first.
You think if we just elect the Democrats in a landslide they will solve all our problems? How naive are you?
On unions: You accuse them of union busting. That's just shocking. They fought for EFCA, but it was filibustered to death by the Republicans. Also I seem to recall some Democrats fighting like hell in Wisconsin to protect the unions, only for the Republican governor to circumvent the law and pass his union busting bill illegally, and then have a Republican state supreme court judge give it the okay.
Yes, his statement DOES seem a bit wrong, and you rightly pointed it out. Did you ever stop to consider that the REASON his statement is wrong is because the whole Republican/Democrat divide isn't really a divide at all? These labels and mud slinging tactics are designed specifically to keep the masses occupied with fighting each other over bullshit while the real people in power pass law after law taking our rights away one by one, and removing any and all obstacles to their domination of this country. NDAA is just the latest and most visible (and by far, the worst) part of this.
At the bottom level of politics, all these people taking up the mantra of Democrat or Republican, liberal, conservative, whatever, and fighting against other groups, all they're doing is wasting their energy and effort while their masters laugh all the way to the Federal Reserve, then straight to a private jet to retire in Dubai.
The Republicans are out to break your spirits. They want you to give up on the Democrats so that they can take power. That's been their goal for years, and it's perfectly clear to anyone paying attention. Stop falling for it.
You are in bad need of a reality check and wake up call.
Saying the parties are the same is just the excuse of the lazy, trying to rationalize why they don't bother voting.
No. That's the actual truth and reality. Both parties are controlled by the same masters. Believing anything else is self-delusion and ignorance, thanks to your apparently unquestioning belief in government propaganda. It's hardly your fault--you've been immersed in it since the day you were born. The "system" we live in has been a work in progress for over a hundred years. It's not a design so much as an emergent phenomena, but regardless of the cause of perpetrators, it's here....but it's not here to stay for much longer.
From what I can gather, it (as in, the systematic stripping of our liberties) does in fact originate from that time period. Remember, 1914 was the beginning of World War I. In those days there was the German, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, British, Ottoman, and other empires which were pretty much like the U.S. is today: old, glorious empires rife with internal strife and past their primes, who were in the mood taking out their aggression through warfare. Their cultures and ideas all had a profound influence on the United States at the time, especially due to vastly improved communications technologies. (The first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858.)
It's much akin to how third world countries are influenced today by our gluttonousness, greed, and artificial lifestyle. Those attitudes spread from Europe to the U.S., especially amongst the "millenial" generation, and took hold in the fervent selfishness and greed that ran rampant in the 1920s, to be curtailed by the Great Depression, only to be ramped up again full force by WWII when we were the only nation left standing afterwards. Meanwhile, the oppression slowly grew.
As it turns out, in Europe imperialism wasn't dealt a death blow in WWI either, since the same attitudes led straight to WWII. Finally Europe had enough of war and tyranny was dealt a serious blow. Unfortunately, it took root in the relatively-unscathed U.S. and blossomed into what we see today: a full-featured police state.
And a sixth just might be coming soon.
That is what I thought. However, recent evidence points to the obvious problem -> people become used to the current level of fear. Which means you are either in a race to continuously pop out a larger and stronger crisis, or you have to pull back for a bit. Right now, people are losing their life savings -> in the end, the people upstairs have ensured that the people downstairs have *nothing* to lose.
Correct, but the fear phase (in reaction to any crises) is now long over with. That was a few years back when people elected Obama in a landslide and were all too eager to approve bailout after bailout. Now they've realized they've been had, en masse, and it's looking pretty grim for the establishment as a whole.
Like it or not, we are stuck with the system that we have. Revolution will never happen and if it did, it would never change anything.
Sorry, you're wrong. It's occurring right now.
Hint: The word "revolution" does not necessarily connotate standing armies and Revolutionary-era battles.
Imagine if all the Occupiers had a coherent and uniform message about one particular issue, and had well thought out demonstrations. They may have been able to tweak things by now. But instead it's a bunch of disorganized pot-smoking street people all claiming their own cause and causing trouble.
This is exactly the image the media wanted and apparently, successfully ingrained into your head. In reality, Occupy is people from ALL walks of life, who are pissed off about ALL sorts of things. A huge percentage of which is legitimate gripes. They can't be ignored or silenced any longer. Tyranny is finished in this country, for a LONG time to come, whether you or they realize it or not.
You're behind the times, anyhow. Occupy is no longer the center of our national attention, and Wall Street is no longer the center of Occupy's attention. Right now both are shifting to Ron Paul.
You're about a year behind the times. The revolution is already well underway.
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Interesting you mention Clipper. I seem to recall that was the language for/used by dBASE back in the day. My dad used that language to write a DOS application for the Air Force to keep track of technical manuals, and a similar program for a local junkyard to keep track of vehicles/parts on the yard. Menu driven, etc., and pretty nice. I think a lot of people don't understand that the BASIC language doesn't have to be just limited to just 10 PRINT "HELLO" type stuff, as specific implementations widely differed, and in a good implementation it can be used to build real apps that don't suck.
Bullshit. What serious problems are you imagining? I'm willing to bet that you're just parroting nonsense, and that you don't actually know.
Python's forced formatting/indentation makes it a non-starter for me...for ANY use. Not into bondage and discipline, sorry.
Yeah and getting a paycheck is the fun side of working a job. Should we hand kids 20 dollar bills and pretend we are teaching them a work ethic? Dragging and dropping generic blocks of code outlives its pedagogical usefulness in about 20 minutes with a kid smart enough that he'll ever be a programmer anyway. Not to mention the fact that dragging and dropping a GUI is actually one of the boringest parts of programming. Coming up with the clever algorithm to solve a problem is what is fun and touchdevelop will never teach that. Basic would be much better and python would be infinitely better than that as it is a programming language that they might actually see one day and it is brain dead easy to boot.
Apparently it never occurs to clueless people such as yourself that there are people out there in the world who think fundamentally differently than you. Shocking, I know, but it's true: what works "perfectly" for you may be utterly abysmal for anyone else.
I guess it never occurred to you, but this is the direction that touchscreen OS-level user interfactions (i.e. shell level interactions, scripting, etc) are headed. What, did you imagine that the phone/tablet would always be a useless brick without a PC there to support it? I predict there will be a split here, and some will go that route, while others will move towards being completely independent devices on their own.
For that to happen there will need to be a touchscreen "shell" that allows efficient interaction with system objects, files, data, etc WITHOUT having to pop up some bullshit on-screen keyboard, hours of laborious command line entries, etc. The current paradigm is horribly unsuitable. We need to be able to drag and drop commands, objects, files, applications, etc, set up pipes, all that with an easy to use interface.
It's going to kick major ass when someone gets it figured out. Sorry the Luddites can't see it. I'm glad to see that Microsoft has stepped up to the plate with some actual innovation. Their first attempt might suck, but they'll come out with something good eventually. Hope other players are sitting up and taking note. We are seeing the PC revolution all over again....at the same time as an ACTUAL revolution in Western civilization.....which is just amazing to be living through.
I love the fact that due to the archival nature of the Internet, posts like this will be preserved for all time to demonstrate just how clueless the poster is, in regards to his arrogantly expressed inability to understand that this is exactly the direction user interfaces are going in, thus making his post laughably wrong when viewed in a 5-10 years down the road perspective.
Being able to "script" things together by dragging items/objects/commands together into sequences and combining these sequences in various ways is THE way to solve today's touch screen interface problems. What, you think you can just slap a touch keyboard UI in there and BAM, that's the future of how things will always be done? All the misery of fat fingers pressing wrong buttons and triggering the wrong actions, now and for good? Come on.
Today we are seeing a new PC revolution. Well, some of us are anyway....sorry if you get left behind. Kudos to Microsoft for developing this technology and bringing it to market. I'm no Microsoft fan, but I have a feeling Windows 8 Mobile is really going to shake up the smartphone market.
You can't get BASIC for your phone for the same reason you can't get a reasonable BASIC for your average GNU/Linux distro. It's just not that good and it only teaches you bad habits, and in the end - it's just not useful. It's not that good language for the masses as it is advertised, and you can't do much in it.
It did a lot for me. When I was in 2nd grade I stumbled across a book on BASIC programming in the school library. I remember thinking, "hey, my dad has a computer!" So I checked it out and took it home. He set me up on his 286 compatible (12MHz, 1MB RAM, DOS 5.x, two 40MB MFM drives, ATI VGAWonder and 15" Samsung SyncMaster!) in Professional Write and showed me how to save my programs and run them with GWBasic.
I spent a lot of time copying in the example programs from the book line by line. My favorite was an interactive detective story, kinda like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I started making changes and was amazed to see that the computer did exactly what I told it to do...or didn't, if I screwed up something.
A couple years later I got bored of BASIC and with the help of a DOS program called LearnC (which now I can't find *anywhere*) and Turbo C I learned that language too, then Turbo Pascal, and others. The rest is history.
So yeah, I'd say that BASIC could still be a very useful language.
Who exactly are you responding to? I haven't seen a single post along those lines in the entire discussion. You are just making a strawman.