The problem with that is that that sort of value judgement is going to be made by a computer.
I mean in some countries' govt. healthcare it already is (e.g. the Netherlands) "in some cases". That's not by AI per se, but the decision is not even made by a human anymore, nor do they feel any sort of need to explain themselves.
Wait wait wait wait wait. First you accept that Obama's truth squads indeed threatened violence and legal harassment and you proceeded to push the point that McCain has the same.
You not only accepted this as truth, but claimed it was morally acceptable because "McCain does it too".
Then I demonstrate that McCain's "truth squads" did no such thing.
And now you claim Obama's don't either, and ask for proof that he did. You weren't asking for proof just 1 post ago, in fact you considered threats and judicial harassment acceptable political tactics.
For anyone paying attention you've merely exposed yourself. You apparently think violence and lying is acceptable to defend your candidate, your viewpoints.
And yet presumably being aware of this blatant inconsistency you complain about not having a decent argument. You know "decent argument" means something other than "argument that I win". Especially if you're using deceit and lies to push your side.
I bet you, all the while accepting threats and legal intimidation as acceptable political tactics, call yourself a "liberal".
You want to see proof that Obama used threats and violence ? Read 4 posts back. It's right there. I'm not going to repeat it.
Let's have a decent argument indeed. Let's start with you not flipflopping like a crazed Obamaton.
That's fine in a perfect world but all know that is not the real concern here. If people know that a little net monitoring could prevent children from getting hurt people (including my slef) would be all for it. However 1)It does not stop children from getting hurt 2)These laws are likely to be expanded and abused
Then lets do away with the police. If you truly believe policing is not helping then why not throw out the police and send a note to ahmadinejad asking for a few spare mullahs and an angry mob ?
All laws inconvenience people. All laws have limited effect. All efforts at policing are imperfect, some are downright counterproductive.
These laws do help. At least according to many americans and you live in a democracy, you have to compromise. Count yourself lucky for in most states, including some supposedly free states, you wouldn't have any say at all.
Despite all the crying and raging these laws weren't expanded and weren't widely used. They are not causing the "repression" that the left claims they would.
By contrast the ideologies that the left is pushing, or at least giving a free pass are oppressive. Islam, the religion, anywhere muslims are anywhere near a significant minority is causing oppression unheard of in the west for at least several centuries. In China state tactics comparable to what Nazi Germany did are getting free passes, both in Xinjang and Tibet (and only God knows how many more places in China where we don't know about it at all).
Thank you. It's good to see McCain has been trying to reign in such foolish laws.
Thank you, but my point is mainly that Obama not only has refused to help him, he also made no effort on any of those laws at all, we merely have a few words of him saying exactly what he thinks people want to hear.
And we have the fact that Obama accepted large amounts of pro-copyright money, in addition to hundreds of other extremely questionable sources. Some of his money comes from "ZAWSDFW".
Add to that that Obama's flipped more of his positions during the campaign than raindrops have fallen in the US since it began.
Please tell me. Is this going to magically stop once he's elected ? Will he magically start actually making stands and pick your stands ? Don't you think that the reason we don't hear any firm viewpoints from him is that they're extremely unlikely to meet with our favor ?
I can't understand how anyone would trust the guy with swiping their sidewalk... could you please explain it to me ?
Is the partisanship really that bad these days ? I mean I know how bad it's become at my alma mater, but still I'm amazed how much this utter blocking of minds has infected people.
Are we truly stupid enough to interpret america being "politically liberal" as being utterly close-minded democrat Obamatons ? How else could we possibly forgive the massive flaws of character and total lack of substantive information from Barack Obama ? Political "liberalism" has changed meaning into "let's call one party 'the liberals' and force everyone to vote for them".
They could be street performers for all we know. The information we have at the moment is too vague.
No it isn't. You're just getting desperate in defending your predetermined idea. You wouldn't accept it from McCain that he took money from RIAA and other big contents (who also, btw, like net neutrality), so why do you accept if from Obama.
Regardless Google has a lot to gain from net neutrality since that would be the first site to redirect if you were an ISP. The revenue from default search page would be HUGE. They have been behind Obama for
Google is 10x worse than microsoft in the monopolizing department, but, they say "don't worry we mean well".
They also push censorship on the Chinese, and don't take principled stances (e.g. their chinese search results don't at least specify that the results are censored).
I understand google has many people soothed for the moment, but I think you and I both know in our hearts that google won't be our friend for very much longer.
Google "don't worry we 'do no evil'" is doing lots, lots of 'evil' (e.g. monopolizing, privacy invasions, censorship,...), but they somehow have people soothed for the moment. I can see why they'd support Obama. Neither will be "our friend" for very long.
About your anti-child-molesting laws. To be completely honest : I wouldn't care if they turned my whole house upside down to save 1 child.
Besides I know the law and if they intrude under the guise of this law they can collect evidence, but they can't use it for any unrelated charge. If they do try to use it for an unrelated charge, then I go free in that case, and the law that you can't be sued twice for the same crime kicks in, effectively clearing me of any crimes that they might have discovered during that search.
Sorry but your link is not at all the same. These McCain supporters you link to are merely sending out a second mailing refuting the "lies" (I do believe they're indeed lies, but that's beside the point here). That's perfectly acceptable. They're neither threatening nor intimidating the people who created the original mailing.
This is not what the Obama "truth squads" did. They threatened violence against anyone who "spread untruths" about Obama.
And they did start action against people who associated Obama with Bill Ayers. It is more than clear that indeed Obama would like his 20-year-long relationship with him suppressed, and is not ashamed to use the legal system to suppress criticism about this relationship, while, despite your (weak) attempt at providing a "morally equivalent" that turned out to merely share a few soundbytes in their names.
These groups are not at all doing the same thing. Not at all. Yes they share a name (and a very, very ill-chosen name it is for the McCain side). But it's not "equally bad" at all.
Sorry but you've not made your case - at all. McCain is allowed to post flyers saying he's a good guy, and Obama's allowed to post flyers saying McCain's a bad guy.
The problem is that Obama's using maffia tactics, and actual violence to suppress people from saying he's a bad guy. And that act alone does indeed make him one.
So what you're saying is that while "Big Content" (RIAA, anti-fair use, etc) is 100% or nearly 100% pro-Obama that doesn't mean Obama is pro-"Big Content"
Sorry, but it does. Cleary the RIAA thinks Obama will "help" them (and fuck the rest of us) where McCain wouldn't.
Note that you ARE expected to prove this. Let's see you provide a link by a credible source that they exist first.
And if Obama will stoop as low as anyone else, that's not a good sign at all. What would his response to 9/11 have been ? Nuking Mecca ? After all "it's all the same", right ?
You have to do better than the other bastards. "The same" is not good enough, and "basically the same as the rumours" is an abomination.
I do believe the last 4 years were exceptions. Unlike, well, most everyone it seems, I do not believe Bush had much of a choice attacking Iraq or not.
So I'm sorry to say, I don't blame him for attacking Iraq, nor for the cost of it. A democrat president would have attacked too, to protect the oil (I'm sorry to any and all sensitivities, but we really can't do without (yet ?)), at greater cost, and a democrat president would have gone on to lose the war (note how democrats ALSO voted to attack Iraq, a dem president would have attacked just the same).
The current bailout is another thing I can't blame Bush for. The reality is that this was caused by the relaxation of banking standards during the Carter administration (democrat congress + democrat president) and continued during the Clinton administration (democrat congress + democrat president) with the CRA, the direct cause of the current crisis, forcing banks to relax lending standards a long way into absurd territory. The bailout is necessary if we want to continue having an economy that's based on lending. An economy not based on lending to increase means of production of normal people would basically mean one thing : back to the productivity of the middle ages. Obama is a member of the organisations that are at the source of the current crisis (ACORN especially, but also a lot of "socialist", but really (violently) communist parties, including serving on the Woods board with unrepentant bomber "I didn't kill enough innocents to get it done" Bill Ayers), and is certainly partially responsible.
And yes, Bush should simply have vetoed the CRA and a few other laws upon coming to office, but he would have been utterly destroyed for lowering house values to normal levels.
So while I am inclined to agree with you on the spending issue, the last years have not been cheap. However they've been cheaper (and especially more successful) than a democrat president would have made them.
Furthermore, you know what the only thing is that's widely considered worse than president Bush ? The democrat congress. Indecisive, back-stabbing, earmarks galore, and accusations of full-on corruption.
The solution for president Bush is not putting a democrat president, massively increasing the political power of the worse-than-Bush congress.
I like McCain. He actually makes things happen, and has the history to prove it (like the links above). He doesn't take dirty money. Obama's a black box, at worst he's a communist terrorist, at best he's an "i hate america" democrat. He takes money from the RIAA, from EMI, from fucking Iran (wonder if he agrees with ahmadinejad that "there are no gays in Iran", or if he charges extra for that).
I also RESENT the accusation that not voting for this "potential" communist terrorist is somehow racist, and I'm very close to letting that decide my vote, irrespective of anything else. Add to that the vile campaign he started against Hillary Clinton, and the audacity of a supposed pro-feminist candidate to say that "she should be home with her family". I don't like Obama, and I think it's fair to say that there are significant parts of his supporters that I am not ashamed to say I hate.
There really is no contest between these 2. McCain for president !
I understand and agree with your dislike of him taking money from such a group but it's either Obama or McCain. Obama understands the issues and has been talking about them for a long time
So he's been talking sweet to us, and taking money from them (it's not just the RIAA I'm afraid, and you're right their contribution is limited, but it's also sony music, EMI,...)
Besides McCain has ALSO more than proven to understand and care about the issues (and, contrary to Obama, has actually made a difference, Obama's all talk, McCain has at least 2 pro-fair-use amendments currently in U.S. law).
Sorry but it's really no contest. Granted Obama didn't damage fair use either, but he didn't help nothing.
McCain actually DID help fair use multiple times, and did succeed at least twice (can't seem to find other relevant votes).
Do you seriously believe their government health "insurance" (if it's govt. it's not an insurance at all) will lower costs ? They tend to call it "spending" but in reality for a working person it's a cost.
Most estimates of this atrocity's cost are somewhere between "more money than the entire U.S. is worth" and "even God would have trouble paying for this". And that's assuming zero corruption (zero earmarks especially).
And, as another poster indicates, they're going to raise military expenses too. *sigh*.
He's a lawyer people. The RIAA regularly gives him a couple grand "for the kids". Let's not kid ourselves on his real positions. He's an enemy of fair use, an enemy of free speech on the web.
While McCain has Lawrence Lessig's blessing and has worked to enhance fair use in the past according to Lessig, he's probably not a candidate that will make fair use a government priority either. But he may try and improve the situation a little.
Heh given Lessig's site, it's no wonder only Obama gets paid by the RIAA.
*sigh* I liked Obama for his "get out of Iraq" talk. He backtracked all those statements, now wants to remain there and spend even more than McCain (does he think that's a popular position ?). For every single other point I like McCain. *sigh*
I'm gonna go McCain. Yes he's Bush's successor, but at least he doesn't take "free money" from the devil. And it's becoming increasingly unclear on just what point Obama differs from Bush.
Needless to say obama finds himself the sole arbiter of truth, and clearly states that doubting the truth of his (absurd) campaign promises will result in civil AND criminal penalties. Obama, NOT anyone else, created "Obama truth squads" and threatened "legal" violence.
Stalin couldn't do it any better.
So please don't continue "raining on my parade", without having actually checked what the events are.
âoeSt. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.
âoeWhat Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
But remember this is a "liberal" site. Using intimidation and even violence is perfectly okay, as long as you're intimidating the right side. Slashdot does not have an article mentioning Obama's using of justice and police as extortion means, both in his own name, and with organisations he's founding, like ACORN. After all "they're all the same" muslims-Bush-And we ourselves. However don't forget Obama is "different" : he brings "change".
But since we all known liberals are equally good as Bush who is equally good as Osama bin laden and other muslims and terrorists, liberals get to use the same tactics they suspect others of without guilt, and most certainly without punishment.
Just because it's not entirely clear to me. What exactly is the problem with flagging innocents as "suspect" ?
I understand that flagging them as "guilty" would be unacceptable. But if a program tells someone where to look, and it turns out there's nothing there how is that different from letting a human identify what's suspect ? Humans make (many) mistakes too.
Another problem is that "probable cause" obviously doesn't work unless there is a utterly massive sentiment against terrorism, and for good or for worse, that simply doesn't exist in some countries (yes those with a certain religion, but even some communist countries, atheist by definition have the same problem).
Probable cause is nothing more than the "feeling" of a single person. Not something I'd call anywhere near impartial.
And yes I've checked, these people are screened intensively. They are, however not barred from flight or anything such. Yes their suitcases are searched, and they themselves too. But nothing more.
So... what's the problem here ? Surely law enforcement is allowed to indentify something as "suspect" ?
Personally I think the reverse is more likely. That not only humans will have the right to switch programs off, but other programs too, and this is going to evolve into the "right" to "switch off" humans, due to a better understanding of exactly what a human is.
Think about it. If we're able to predict human actions even 50% many of us wouldn't consider eachother persons anymore, but mere programs.
If we can predict 90% or so, it's hopeless trying to defend that there's anything conscious about these 2-legged mammals we find in the cities. Even a little bit of drugs, even soft ones, in a human and nobody has any trouble whatsoever predicting what's going to happen.
Furthermore programmatic consciousness is a LOT cheaper (100 per cpu ?) than a real life human. Contributes a lot less to oil consumption, co2, and so on and so forth... Billions of times more mobile than a human (for a program going into orbit, or to the moon or mars, or even other stars once a basic presence is established, would pausing yourself, copying yourself over, and resuming. Going to the bahamas has the price of a phone call.
They'd be more capable, can be made virtually involnerable (to kill a redundant program you'd have to terminate all computers it runs on)...
Actually I've been reading the news and I've visited a few friends that actually know climate research. They assured (and showed) me just how the IPCC arrives at it's conclusions and it's not pretty.
The reality is that about global warming the answer is simple : "we don't know". We truly don't know what will happen.
The only thing we *do* know is that once important factors have changed (the sun's corona, the heater of the earth, has for reasons that baffle everyone, dropped nearly 5% in temperature). This has happened already and we know it's effects. It's gonna be a fucking cold winter, and probably a fucking cold decade.
If we're not lucky it's gonna be a fucking cold century. But no worries. It's only 15 years ago that the somewhat less stable democrats were screaming "a new ice age is upon us", and they can go back to doing that, right ?
Temperature, in case you haven't noticed, has already dropped right back to 1980 levels, and the graph looks like temperature is falling off a cliff. I remember the winters of the 1980's. I was a toddler then. The entire country was covered in snow for months.
The news is a joke. Has been so for a long time.
The sky is not falling and gaia is not killing us for using too much electricity. Truly sorry.
None of this also changes the fact that Al Gore knowingly used fraudulent research to advance his political position. Bush has never done anything of the sort.
What's that I hear on the news now lately ? And this "too little regulation" thingy... that's odd. Don't they have tons of regulation in Europe ? (same link)
(And yes, Al Gore used this argument, which has been proven to have been constructed fraudulently many times).
Meanwhile, the sun's corona is at a historical low temperature. If the sun really does control temperature, we'll know in the coming year.
(and there's no serious scientist doubting it's going to be a VERY cold year, and most are talking 5 or 10 years with the oddball out about a cold 200 years (like the last time the sun did this))
Let's make Obama the next president of Brazil ! You know, so he still has a job after november. The democrats are not known for providing well for their ex-es.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that is that that sort of value judgement is going to be made by a computer.
I mean in some countries' govt. healthcare it already is (e.g. the Netherlands) "in some cases". That's not by AI per se, but the decision is not even made by a human anymore, nor do they feel any sort of need to explain themselves.
"This video is not available in your territory". Great, locality-based DRM.
BTW, what's with the !jewtube tag ?
What are these votes you've seen of Obama ? I don't like the ones I've seen.
Obama's voted "present" one hell of a lot of times, but otherwise ... He's main choice was not to choose at all, let others fix stuff for him.
A true democrat :-p
Wait wait wait wait wait. First you accept that Obama's truth squads indeed threatened violence and legal harassment and you proceeded to push the point that McCain has the same.
You not only accepted this as truth, but claimed it was morally acceptable because "McCain does it too".
Then I demonstrate that McCain's "truth squads" did no such thing.
And now you claim Obama's don't either, and ask for proof that he did. You weren't asking for proof just 1 post ago, in fact you considered threats and judicial harassment acceptable political tactics.
For anyone paying attention you've merely exposed yourself. You apparently think violence and lying is acceptable to defend your candidate, your viewpoints.
And yet presumably being aware of this blatant inconsistency you complain about not having a decent argument. You know "decent argument" means something other than "argument that I win". Especially if you're using deceit and lies to push your side.
I bet you, all the while accepting threats and legal intimidation as acceptable political tactics, call yourself a "liberal".
You want to see proof that Obama used threats and violence ? Read 4 posts back. It's right there. I'm not going to repeat it.
Let's have a decent argument indeed. Let's start with you not flipflopping like a crazed Obamaton.
That's fine in a perfect world but all know that is not the real concern here. If people know that a little net monitoring could prevent children from getting hurt people (including my slef) would be all for it. However
1)It does not stop children from getting hurt
2)These laws are likely to be expanded and abused
Then lets do away with the police. If you truly believe policing is not helping then why not throw out the police and send a note to ahmadinejad asking for a few spare mullahs and an angry mob ?
All laws inconvenience people. All laws have limited effect. All efforts at policing are imperfect, some are downright counterproductive.
These laws do help. At least according to many americans and you live in a democracy, you have to compromise. Count yourself lucky for in most states, including some supposedly free states, you wouldn't have any say at all.
Despite all the crying and raging these laws weren't expanded and weren't widely used. They are not causing the "repression" that the left claims they would.
By contrast the ideologies that the left is pushing, or at least giving a free pass are oppressive. Islam, the religion, anywhere muslims are anywhere near a significant minority is causing oppression unheard of in the west for at least several centuries. In China state tactics comparable to what Nazi Germany did are getting free passes, both in Xinjang and Tibet (and only God knows how many more places in China where we don't know about it at all).
Thank you. It's good to see McCain has been trying to reign in such foolish laws.
Thank you, but my point is mainly that Obama not only has refused to help him, he also made no effort on any of those laws at all, we merely have a few words of him saying exactly what he thinks people want to hear.
And we have the fact that Obama accepted large amounts of pro-copyright money, in addition to hundreds of other extremely questionable sources. Some of his money comes from "ZAWSDFW".
Add to that that Obama's flipped more of his positions during the campaign than raindrops have fallen in the US since it began.
Please tell me. Is this going to magically stop once he's elected ? Will he magically start actually making stands and pick your stands ? Don't you think that the reason we don't hear any firm viewpoints from him is that they're extremely unlikely to meet with our favor ?
I can't understand how anyone would trust the guy with swiping their sidewalk ... could you please explain it to me ?
Is the partisanship really that bad these days ? I mean I know how bad it's become at my alma mater, but still I'm amazed how much this utter blocking of minds has infected people.
Are we truly stupid enough to interpret america being "politically liberal" as being utterly close-minded democrat Obamatons ? How else could we possibly forgive the massive flaws of character and total lack of substantive information from Barack Obama ? Political "liberalism" has changed meaning into "let's call one party 'the liberals' and force everyone to vote for them".
They could be street performers for all we know. The information we have at the moment is too vague.
No it isn't. You're just getting desperate in defending your predetermined idea. You wouldn't accept it from McCain that he took money from RIAA and other big contents (who also, btw, like net neutrality), so why do you accept if from Obama.
Regardless Google has a lot to gain from net neutrality since that would be the first site to redirect if you were an ISP. The revenue from default search page would be HUGE. They have been behind Obama for
Google is 10x worse than microsoft in the monopolizing department, but, they say "don't worry we mean well".
They also push censorship on the Chinese, and don't take principled stances (e.g. their chinese search results don't at least specify that the results are censored).
I understand google has many people soothed for the moment, but I think you and I both know in our hearts that google won't be our friend for very much longer.
Google "don't worry we 'do no evil'" is doing lots, lots of 'evil' (e.g. monopolizing, privacy invasions, censorship, ...), but they somehow have people soothed for the moment. I can see why they'd support Obama. Neither will be "our friend" for very long.
About your anti-child-molesting laws. To be completely honest : I wouldn't care if they turned my whole house upside down to save 1 child.
Besides I know the law and if they intrude under the guise of this law they can collect evidence, but they can't use it for any unrelated charge. If they do try to use it for an unrelated charge, then I go free in that case, and the law that you can't be sued twice for the same crime kicks in, effectively clearing me of any crimes that they might have discovered during that search.
For the McCain anti-copyright laws, read this
Sorry but your link is not at all the same. These McCain supporters you link to are merely sending out a second mailing refuting the "lies" (I do believe they're indeed lies, but that's beside the point here). That's perfectly acceptable. They're neither threatening nor intimidating the people who created the original mailing.
This is not what the Obama "truth squads" did. They threatened violence against anyone who "spread untruths" about Obama.
And they did start action against people who associated Obama with Bill Ayers. It is more than clear that indeed Obama would like his 20-year-long relationship with him suppressed, and is not ashamed to use the legal system to suppress criticism about this relationship, while, despite your (weak) attempt at providing a "morally equivalent" that turned out to merely share a few soundbytes in their names.
These groups are not at all doing the same thing. Not at all. Yes they share a name (and a very, very ill-chosen name it is for the McCain side). But it's not "equally bad" at all.
Sorry but you've not made your case - at all. McCain is allowed to post flyers saying he's a good guy, and Obama's allowed to post flyers saying McCain's a bad guy.
The problem is that Obama's using maffia tactics, and actual violence to suppress people from saying he's a bad guy. And that act alone does indeed make him one.
So what you're saying is that while "Big Content" (RIAA, anti-fair use, etc) is 100% or nearly 100% pro-Obama that doesn't mean Obama is pro-"Big Content"
Sorry, but it does. Cleary the RIAA thinks Obama will "help" them (and fuck the rest of us) where McCain wouldn't.
Or to ACORN.
Note that you ARE expected to prove this. Let's see you provide a link by a credible source that they exist first.
And if Obama will stoop as low as anyone else, that's not a good sign at all. What would his response to 9/11 have been ? Nuking Mecca ? After all "it's all the same", right ?
You have to do better than the other bastards. "The same" is not good enough, and "basically the same as the rumours" is an abomination.
I do believe the last 4 years were exceptions. Unlike, well, most everyone it seems, I do not believe Bush had much of a choice attacking Iraq or not.
So I'm sorry to say, I don't blame him for attacking Iraq, nor for the cost of it. A democrat president would have attacked too, to protect the oil (I'm sorry to any and all sensitivities, but we really can't do without (yet ?)), at greater cost, and a democrat president would have gone on to lose the war (note how democrats ALSO voted to attack Iraq, a dem president would have attacked just the same).
The current bailout is another thing I can't blame Bush for. The reality is that this was caused by the relaxation of banking standards during the Carter administration (democrat congress + democrat president) and continued during the Clinton administration (democrat congress + democrat president) with the CRA, the direct cause of the current crisis, forcing banks to relax lending standards a long way into absurd territory. The bailout is necessary if we want to continue having an economy that's based on lending. An economy not based on lending to increase means of production of normal people would basically mean one thing : back to the productivity of the middle ages. Obama is a member of the organisations that are at the source of the current crisis (ACORN especially, but also a lot of "socialist", but really (violently) communist parties, including serving on the Woods board with unrepentant bomber "I didn't kill enough innocents to get it done" Bill Ayers), and is certainly partially responsible.
And yes, Bush should simply have vetoed the CRA and a few other laws upon coming to office, but he would have been utterly destroyed for lowering house values to normal levels.
So while I am inclined to agree with you on the spending issue, the last years have not been cheap. However they've been cheaper (and especially more successful) than a democrat president would have made them.
Furthermore, you know what the only thing is that's widely considered worse than president Bush ? The democrat congress. Indecisive, back-stabbing, earmarks galore, and accusations of full-on corruption.
The solution for president Bush is not putting a democrat president, massively increasing the political power of the worse-than-Bush congress.
I like McCain. He actually makes things happen, and has the history to prove it (like the links above). He doesn't take dirty money. Obama's a black box, at worst he's a communist terrorist, at best he's an "i hate america" democrat. He takes money from the RIAA, from EMI, from fucking Iran (wonder if he agrees with ahmadinejad that "there are no gays in Iran", or if he charges extra for that).
I also RESENT the accusation that not voting for this "potential" communist terrorist is somehow racist, and I'm very close to letting that decide my vote, irrespective of anything else. Add to that the vile campaign he started against Hillary Clinton, and the audacity of a supposed pro-feminist candidate to say that "she should be home with her family". I don't like Obama, and I think it's fair to say that there are significant parts of his supporters that I am not ashamed to say I hate.
There really is no contest between these 2. McCain for president !
I understand and agree with your dislike of him taking money from such a group but it's either Obama or McCain. Obama understands the issues and has been talking about them for a long time
So he's been talking sweet to us, and taking money from them (it's not just the RIAA I'm afraid, and you're right their contribution is limited, but it's also sony music, EMI, ...)
Besides McCain has ALSO more than proven to understand and care about the issues (and, contrary to Obama, has actually made a difference, Obama's all talk, McCain has at least 2 pro-fair-use amendments currently in U.S. law).
Sorry but it's really no contest. Granted Obama didn't damage fair use either, but he didn't help nothing.
McCain actually DID help fair use multiple times, and did succeed at least twice (can't seem to find other relevant votes).
Great ... what does he intend to do with his RIAA bucks ? Will he listen to the money or to the voters ?
If he hadn't TAKEN the money there wouldn't have been any discussion.
(which is to say, this is cool and all, but how can you trust someone who's taking "free money" from the devil ?)
Democrats ... spending less ? This is new.
Do you seriously believe their government health "insurance" (if it's govt. it's not an insurance at all) will lower costs ? They tend to call it "spending" but in reality for a working person it's a cost.
Most estimates of this atrocity's cost are somewhere between "more money than the entire U.S. is worth" and "even God would have trouble paying for this". And that's assuming zero corruption (zero earmarks especially).
And, as another poster indicates, they're going to raise military expenses too. *sigh*.
Well Obama's a lawyer that took the RIAA's "free money" while senator.
He's a lawyer people. The RIAA regularly gives him a couple grand "for the kids". Let's not kid ourselves on his real positions. He's an enemy of fair use, an enemy of free speech on the web.
While McCain has Lawrence Lessig's blessing and has worked to enhance fair use in the past according to Lessig, he's probably not a candidate that will make fair use a government priority either. But he may try and improve the situation a little.
Heh given Lessig's site, it's no wonder only Obama gets paid by the RIAA.
*sigh* I liked Obama for his "get out of Iraq" talk. He backtracked all those statements, now wants to remain there and spend even more than McCain (does he think that's a popular position ?). For every single other point I like McCain. *sigh*
I'm gonna go McCain. Yes he's Bush's successor, but at least he doesn't take "free money" from the devil. And it's becoming increasingly unclear on just what point Obama differs from Bush.
No in the individual case. Just a long series of decisions-given-input in a single person.
If you can predict 50% correctly after seeing 50-or-so decisions first.
http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXIenDGSAdPA?reactions
Needless to say obama finds himself the sole arbiter of truth, and clearly states that doubting the truth of his (absurd) campaign promises will result in civil AND criminal penalties. Obama, NOT anyone else, created "Obama truth squads" and threatened "legal" violence.
Stalin couldn't do it any better.
So please don't continue "raining on my parade", without having actually checked what the events are.
Actually Obama does the same and he's not even president. (yet ?)
âoeSt. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.
âoeWhat Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
But remember this is a "liberal" site. Using intimidation and even violence is perfectly okay, as long as you're intimidating the right side. Slashdot does not have an article mentioning Obama's using of justice and police as extortion means, both in his own name, and with organisations he's founding, like ACORN. After all "they're all the same" muslims-Bush-And we ourselves. However don't forget Obama is "different" : he brings "change".
But since we all known liberals are equally good as Bush who is equally good as Osama bin laden and other muslims and terrorists, liberals get to use the same tactics they suspect others of without guilt, and most certainly without punishment.
Just because it's not entirely clear to me. What exactly is the problem with flagging innocents as "suspect" ?
I understand that flagging them as "guilty" would be unacceptable. But if a program tells someone where to look, and it turns out there's nothing there how is that different from letting a human identify what's suspect ? Humans make (many) mistakes too.
Another problem is that "probable cause" obviously doesn't work unless there is a utterly massive sentiment against terrorism, and for good or for worse, that simply doesn't exist in some countries (yes those with a certain religion, but even some communist countries, atheist by definition have the same problem).
Probable cause is nothing more than the "feeling" of a single person. Not something I'd call anywhere near impartial.
And yes I've checked, these people are screened intensively. They are, however not barred from flight or anything such. Yes their suitcases are searched, and they themselves too. But nothing more.
So ... what's the problem here ? Surely law enforcement is allowed to indentify something as "suspect" ?
The point I'm trying to make is that this "self-control" most likely is just a trained reflex or some such, perfectly predictable.
And if it is, making something conscious would be trivial indeed.
Personally I think the reverse is more likely. That not only humans will have the right to switch programs off, but other programs too, and this is going to evolve into the "right" to "switch off" humans, due to a better understanding of exactly what a human is.
Think about it. If we're able to predict human actions even 50% many of us wouldn't consider eachother persons anymore, but mere programs.
If we can predict 90% or so, it's hopeless trying to defend that there's anything conscious about these 2-legged mammals we find in the cities. Even a little bit of drugs, even soft ones, in a human and nobody has any trouble whatsoever predicting what's going to happen.
Furthermore programmatic consciousness is a LOT cheaper (100 per cpu ?) than a real life human. Contributes a lot less to oil consumption, co2, and so on and so forth ... Billions of times more mobile than a human (for a program going into orbit, or to the moon or mars, or even other stars once a basic presence is established, would pausing yourself, copying yourself over, and resuming. Going to the bahamas has the price of a phone call.
They'd be more capable, can be made virtually involnerable (to kill a redundant program you'd have to terminate all computers it runs on) ...
Actually I've been reading the news and I've visited a few friends that actually know climate research. They assured (and showed) me just how the IPCC arrives at it's conclusions and it's not pretty.
The reality is that about global warming the answer is simple : "we don't know". We truly don't know what will happen.
The only thing we *do* know is that once important factors have changed (the sun's corona, the heater of the earth, has for reasons that baffle everyone, dropped nearly 5% in temperature). This has happened already and we know it's effects. It's gonna be a fucking cold winter, and probably a fucking cold decade.
If we're not lucky it's gonna be a fucking cold century. But no worries. It's only 15 years ago that the somewhat less stable democrats were screaming "a new ice age is upon us", and they can go back to doing that, right ?
Temperature, in case you haven't noticed, has already dropped right back to 1980 levels, and the graph looks like temperature is falling off a cliff. I remember the winters of the 1980's. I was a toddler then. The entire country was covered in snow for months.
The news is a joke. Has been so for a long time.
The sky is not falling and gaia is not killing us for using too much electricity. Truly sorry.
None of this also changes the fact that Al Gore knowingly used fraudulent research to advance his political position. Bush has never done anything of the sort.
And we all know Al Gore's real climate worries.
"the republicans" ?
We're right here you know. You talk as if they can't be found except on other planets.
"the republicans", esp McCain btw, were Questioning certain loaning practices, only to be scolded out for being racist.
What's that I hear on the news now lately ? And this "too little regulation" thingy ... that's odd. Don't they have tons of regulation in Europe ? (same link)
He's more of a cowboy than Al Gore. He's more likeable than Al Gore.
And if you're honest, he doesn't pull Scientific frauds.
(And yes, Al Gore used this argument, which has been proven to have been constructed fraudulently many times).
Meanwhile, the sun's corona is at a historical low temperature. If the sun really does control temperature, we'll know in the coming year.
(and there's no serious scientist doubting it's going to be a VERY cold year, and most are talking 5 or 10 years with the oddball out about a cold 200 years (like the last time the sun did this))
Not that we don't all know very well just exactly how worried Al Gore is about the climate
Let's start hacking !
Let's make Obama the next president of Brazil ! You know, so he still has a job after november. The democrats are not known for providing well for their ex-es.