To be honest, drugs aren't the only items they sold... a segment on one of the sat news stations last night showed the site selling pilfered bank logins, credit card details, and in essence, selling stuff that no government would condone, no matter how hands-off that government would be.
Sibling is right - if drugs were legal, the site would simply sell other illegal stuff.
That said, your point still stands... it's not exactly a free and open market in there.
I saw a news blurb about the site just last night on (if I remember right) RT News (http://rt.com/ ), with one of the reporters showing how easy it was to buy stolen web banking login credentials... Could it be that the media exposure spooked the site owners?
It does. But if he was interested in euthanasia tribunals he was probably considering it for himself. So maybe it's for the best.
True, but it does lead to a question: Why a "tribunal"? Unless you're too physically incapacitated to do it yourself, it's relatively easy to buy an oxygen mask and a bottle of compressed nitrogen... put it on, eat a couple of sleeping pills, fall asleep, never wake up. Relatively zero pain, and no mess... *shrug*
IMHO, and in spite of living somewhere where it's actually 100% legal to do it, Euthanasia as policy is at the top of a slippery slope... even though Oregon requires psychiatric approval before an individual does it, very few folks get one before offing themselves. Too many safeguards have been ignored or glossed over, because progress.
Maybe it's just easier to do what we've always done... leave it alone and if someone does it, they do it. Just make certain they didn't get any 'help' (as in, intentional homicide) to get it done.
I find that I increasingly listen to music from the very fringes - at one end of the scale, it is stuff like renaissance lute music, Chinese classics, Arabic classics etc, and at the other end, it is weird, new, alternative music that I can't put a name to.
Same here... I've wandered into genres that would be considered fringe in the US (e.g. Neue Deutsche Härte), and have taken on an appreciation for positively ancient stuff (e.g. Classical), as well as a band list that few human beings could recognize the entirety of.
Put it this way - once in a great while something I like *might* show up as background music in a car commercial or suchlike, but that's about it. For example, the latest is a car commercial with The Glitch Mob's song "Fortune Days". Their self-label, Glass Air Records, is not on the membership listings (mind you, this is pretty much a bible of labels to avoid...)
I'm also blessed with friends that have the same weird habit, and constantly introduce me to stuff that would never appear on a Top 40 list of any kind. I even have a CD of songs I'd ripped into mp3 that a rather brilliant kid (a former student of mine) in Utah produced - with nothing more than his spare time and a computer. I've since copied it all over creation with his explicit permission and blessing. To top that off, I live near a town which has a hella brilliant music community (Portland, OR), that produces quite a bit of good stuff w/o an RIAA imprimatur (that may happen to the band later, but until then...)
But, I have the RIAA and their overly-developed sense of entitlement for all that. Years ago, when I realized that they were doing their level best to literally 'own' music for entirety, I sought out stuff that wasn't under their control... some of what I have still is to an extent (though mostly under their EU counterparts, or was later acquired by them), but the majority of it is definitely not.
While I doubt that my own individual efforts will fiscally bankrupt what is a creatively and morally bankrupt cartel, I still find it liberating, as so folks who are turned on to the stuff I play.
Good point... but selling 13 chapters would be akin to selling a television season (not counting commercials), as opposed to a cinematic thing. Some stories (e.g. Foundation, Heinlein's Future History, etc) would be best treated in a TV series-style format, so you can get the 13 hours (not counting commercials) needed to stuff that much damned content into it.
Movies are limited by necessity - 3 hours is a long-ass stretch in one go at a theater. The classic Dr. Zhivago movie was IIRC 2-3 hours, and it had an intentional intermission inserted smack in the middle of it, even on the DVD. ( Originally it was so that folks could get up and stretch their legs, have a smoke, etc.) It was one of the few movies I've seen that didn't completely butcher the novel in order to make it fit into a small (-ish) timeframe. Consider that even a fast reader will take hours on end to consume a typical novel... a straight movie is way too short a format.
I know a lot of the ancillary and similar stories around it were lash-ups meant to add to it (and to make a continuum for Daneel and suchlike), but wasn't the original Foundation trilogy meant to be written together, Mule and all?
Maybe it's just the distance of time since I read it, but I could have sworn that the three original Foundation books were written together intentionally.
While this may certainly be true, it does not ameliorate the fact that the notion of a Jewish *state* is inherently and inescapably racist.
1) Race != Religion. ( 'the hell are mods thinking these days?)
2) The context of the time: Millions of your fellow worshippers were just slaughtered wholesale because of their religion, no one lifted a hand to stop it until it threatened them, and now that it's over no one really gives a shit about you. Meanwhile at least one superpower (the USSR) is still actively hunting down what few Jews live in their borders. Yeah, fuck that. Time to find a place where we can at least stand up for ourselves, and hey - the British promised that such a place was available in one of their colonial holdings, and BTW, that place happens to be your ancestral homeland! Makes perfect fucking sense in light of all that...
3) Vatican City is a nation-state based on one religion - not much racism going on there. No one complains about that because their 'army' (if you want to call it that) is on loan from Switzerland, and they're not surrounded by folks from an opposing religion who are actively out to eliminate them (quite the opposite, actually).
4) Regarding: Denying this would necessarily lead to acceptance of an Aryan state - you forgot one small detail: If 1930's Germany had stayed within their pre-existing borders, they could've had this alleged "Aryan" state with the world's indifferent blessing.
The bible has plenty of similar peace loving statements of equality and acceptance. The difference is not what exactly is in each holy book, but how followers interpret those words: as laws, suggestions or stories.
Well, there's also context - is the cherry-picked verse part of a story/parable, part of an instruction, a no-kidding commandment, addressed to a specific individual or group...what? Also, was the quoted text later superseded by later teachings/events (especially if we're talking about Christian Theology, which explicitly has the New Testament superseding and eliminating a lot of stuff in the Old)?
Far too many sophomoric lines of argument conveniently ignore such things (and are thus easily destroyed), but, if you'll pardon the pun, the devil is in the details.:)
To semi-paraphrase her old man: 'It depends on what the meaning of the word 'legal' is...'
While it likely did not violate any specific statutory law, it definitely violated numerous regulations on the matter - regulations that she herself whined about Bush allegedly breaking, and that one of her underlings got fired specifically for during her tenure.
Sorry, but while it may have been technically "legal", it was definitely in violation of regulation, a risk to national security, and definitely sleazy. President Nixon got fired for less... and he only had an old Dictabelt recorder.
Sorry, but it was expressly against State Department policy since 2009, she was SoS when one of her underlings got fired for doing the exact same thing in Africa, and the whole thing was very likely against most gov't secrecy regulations considering some of the content that likely got passed around on it.
You know... the Watergate incident, where former President Richard Nixon was ultimately forced to resign... because he had a personal recording device that had embarrassingly large gaps in the tapes that congress subpoenaed? Yep, that Watergate.
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...I'm just hoping there's no ""Deep Throat" this time around, esp. with her husband nearby (bah-dump-tshhh!)
This is a potential problem with every single programming language ever. No exceptions. C is somewhere in the middle with that risk, but it is no where near the worst. I'd give that medal to Perl.
The more powerful the language, the more it's like a loaded gun: You can use it responsibly and do amazing things with it, or you can put a bullet through your foot with it. Choice is yours... and the closer you get to bare metal with the language, the greater the chance of lead meeting foot at high speed.
They were broke, but when Bill left office, there was a budget surplus, for the third year in a row.
Given that the budget was (and has always been) controlled by Congress (where the opposition party held sway), I'm not so sure he should get much credit for that.
...only $200m from Soros? May want to count MoveOn.org, DU, Being Liberal, and a whole host of other endeavors he and his buddies have been dumping way more money into... not even counting MSNBC, a goodly chunk of CNN, Verio, et al. Also, check in with Warren Buffett; he's good for (probably) at least a few hundred million or more (probably way, way more.)
Fact is, the system is soaked with money on both sides, so your original point (shitloads of money corrupting/clouding the election process) is valid, but honestly, they *both* suck.
It was listed as "F" when the story was submitted earlier this morning, but now it's suddenly bumped to a "B" (Assessed on: Tue Mar 10 09:31:29 PDT 2015).
All it would take is a patch or two to bump it up, I suspect.
I wonder if one can get the mods to update the submission.
The disks that shipped the same week sold 3 times as many copies as the previous issue.
Mostly by curious people who only got half the story on the evening news. Controversy (actual controversy as classically defined, mind) does that.
What if the frat became an open 'Stormfront' house?
So what if it does? The societal repercussions of belonging to such a thing would be detrimental enough that nearly everyone with at least two working neurons would avoid it. Eventually it, like the Klan, becomes some isolated group with an ever-shrinking number of nutjobs and idiots.
Agreed with sibling. As vile as it may be, once you start putting subjective limits on speech, it's only downhill from there.
Sure, speech that generates fraud or incites panic is obviously illegal (as is speech that culminates in such things as "swatting"), but those are reasonable limits that are obvious to one and all.
"Hate speech" has already been morphed (see also the incredibly stupid phrase "microaggressions", which could very easily be converted into an expression of "hate", thus "hate speech.")
Tell me - do you think that non-racial ideals so damned fragile that they cannot withstand a stupid phrase from a stupid person? If you think they are, then the problem lies with you, not the ideals themselves.
True - so let's make the repercussion equal to the transgression: ridicule, education against, and ostracism by the student body. I bet that after a month or so of being shunned and laughed at by the student body at large (and excluded from, oh I dunno... things like getting laid...), the students in question would have one very powerful incentive to straighten their act up. A couple of months later, the frat would likely die of member starvation (unless they publicly apologized, and demonstrated something akin to repentance, of course.)
Instead, the college just drove them further underground and made them attractive to every little rebellious soul on campus.
I'm not a "Greek", and I never have been or wanted to be, but your characterization of them is not consistent with what I have known.
Neither was I, and I agree to a *small* extent. Mind you, I'm from Arkansas and it was a long time ago, but there were still frats (and sororities) that were, shall we say, a wee bit on the exclusionary side of things, and the exclusions were occasionally based on religion, skin color, ethnic origin...
As for TFA? As much as I myself detest racism and bigotry based on someone's religion/ethnicity/etc... Personally, I think they *should* be allowed to be total asshats about it. Seriously - as long as there's no assualt or other crimes against others, let them chant whatever the hell they want.
I say this for two reasons:
1) College is supposed to be a place where all viewpoints and ideas are explored - even the ugly and stupid ones. Freedom of speech should hold highest priority in such a place.
2) The video (and anything like it) can serve as an example to point at and instruct against; a competent prof can debate the racist activity into the dirt, in a setting that educates everyone else, and (hopefully) teaches the racists in question along the way.
By kicking out the frat charter, you only drive the problem deeper underground... and where is the frickin' benefit in doing that among a body of kids that are going to be naturally rebellious in the first place? You only make it more attractive to such a mindset.
It's one thing to have some neat-o technology, but another to rush out and shove it into mass production just because OMG Europe and Asia is doing it, guys! Hurry the fsck up!!!11!!
Seriously; drones already create inter-neighbor privacy concerns, a potential hazard as they occasionally crash into stuff, and seriously, there's a potential that it can provide one more step towards a surveillance society that is entirely unwelcome.
Oh, a small tangent: I live in a very rural area expressly for the peace and quiet. Unless I'm running it, a drone buzzing over my property, snooping around and making noise, only means one thing: target practice. Not because of any tinfoil factor, but because it's an annoyance and a trespass. I am very certain that I'm not alone in this. You want drones buzzing about your area, fine... just don't intrude on those of us who have no use or desire for the things.
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, drugs aren't the only items they sold... a segment on one of the sat news stations last night showed the site selling pilfered bank logins, credit card details, and in essence, selling stuff that no government would condone, no matter how hands-off that government would be.
Sibling is right - if drugs were legal, the site would simply sell other illegal stuff.
That said, your point still stands... it's not exactly a free and open market in there.
I saw a news blurb about the site just last night on (if I remember right) RT News (http://rt.com/ ), with one of the reporters showing how easy it was to buy stolen web banking login credentials... Could it be that the media exposure spooked the site owners?
It does. But if he was interested in euthanasia tribunals he was probably considering it for himself. So maybe it's for the best.
True, but it does lead to a question: Why a "tribunal"? Unless you're too physically incapacitated to do it yourself, it's relatively easy to buy an oxygen mask and a bottle of compressed nitrogen... put it on, eat a couple of sleeping pills, fall asleep, never wake up. Relatively zero pain, and no mess... *shrug*
IMHO, and in spite of living somewhere where it's actually 100% legal to do it, Euthanasia as policy is at the top of a slippery slope... even though Oregon requires psychiatric approval before an individual does it, very few folks get one before offing themselves. Too many safeguards have been ignored or glossed over, because progress.
Maybe it's just easier to do what we've always done... leave it alone and if someone does it, they do it. Just make certain they didn't get any 'help' (as in, intentional homicide) to get it done.
I find that I increasingly listen to music from the very fringes - at one end of the scale, it is stuff like renaissance lute music, Chinese classics, Arabic classics etc, and at the other end, it is weird, new, alternative music that I can't put a name to.
Same here... I've wandered into genres that would be considered fringe in the US (e.g. Neue Deutsche Härte), and have taken on an appreciation for positively ancient stuff (e.g. Classical), as well as a band list that few human beings could recognize the entirety of.
Put it this way - once in a great while something I like *might* show up as background music in a car commercial or suchlike, but that's about it. For example, the latest is a car commercial with The Glitch Mob's song "Fortune Days". Their self-label, Glass Air Records, is not on the membership listings (mind you, this is pretty much a bible of labels to avoid...)
I'm also blessed with friends that have the same weird habit, and constantly introduce me to stuff that would never appear on a Top 40 list of any kind. I even have a CD of songs I'd ripped into mp3 that a rather brilliant kid (a former student of mine) in Utah produced - with nothing more than his spare time and a computer. I've since copied it all over creation with his explicit permission and blessing. To top that off, I live near a town which has a hella brilliant music community (Portland, OR), that produces quite a bit of good stuff w/o an RIAA imprimatur (that may happen to the band later, but until then...)
But, I have the RIAA and their overly-developed sense of entitlement for all that. Years ago, when I realized that they were doing their level best to literally 'own' music for entirety, I sought out stuff that wasn't under their control... some of what I have still is to an extent (though mostly under their EU counterparts, or was later acquired by them), but the majority of it is definitely not.
While I doubt that my own individual efforts will fiscally bankrupt what is a creatively and morally bankrupt cartel, I still find it liberating, as so folks who are turned on to the stuff I play.
It was probably that 43,278,965th Candy Crush friend request that did it to him.
Good point... but selling 13 chapters would be akin to selling a television season (not counting commercials), as opposed to a cinematic thing. Some stories (e.g. Foundation, Heinlein's Future History, etc) would be best treated in a TV series-style format, so you can get the 13 hours (not counting commercials) needed to stuff that much damned content into it.
Movies are limited by necessity - 3 hours is a long-ass stretch in one go at a theater. The classic Dr. Zhivago movie was IIRC 2-3 hours, and it had an intentional intermission inserted smack in the middle of it, even on the DVD. ( Originally it was so that folks could get up and stretch their legs, have a smoke, etc.) It was one of the few movies I've seen that didn't completely butcher the novel in order to make it fit into a small (-ish) timeframe. Consider that even a fast reader will take hours on end to consume a typical novel... a straight movie is way too short a format.
I know a lot of the ancillary and similar stories around it were lash-ups meant to add to it (and to make a continuum for Daneel and suchlike), but wasn't the original Foundation trilogy meant to be written together, Mule and all?
Maybe it's just the distance of time since I read it, but I could have sworn that the three original Foundation books were written together intentionally.
While this may certainly be true, it does not ameliorate the fact that the notion of a Jewish *state* is inherently and inescapably racist.
1) Race != Religion. ( 'the hell are mods thinking these days?)
2) The context of the time: Millions of your fellow worshippers were just slaughtered wholesale because of their religion, no one lifted a hand to stop it until it threatened them, and now that it's over no one really gives a shit about you. Meanwhile at least one superpower (the USSR) is still actively hunting down what few Jews live in their borders. Yeah, fuck that. Time to find a place where we can at least stand up for ourselves, and hey - the British promised that such a place was available in one of their colonial holdings, and BTW, that place happens to be your ancestral homeland! Makes perfect fucking sense in light of all that...
3) Vatican City is a nation-state based on one religion - not much racism going on there. No one complains about that because their 'army' (if you want to call it that) is on loan from Switzerland, and they're not surrounded by folks from an opposing religion who are actively out to eliminate them (quite the opposite, actually).
4) Regarding: Denying this would necessarily lead to acceptance of an Aryan state - you forgot one small detail: If 1930's Germany had stayed within their pre-existing borders, they could've had this alleged "Aryan" state with the world's indifferent blessing.
The bible has plenty of similar peace loving statements of equality and acceptance. The difference is not what exactly is in each holy book, but how followers interpret those words: as laws, suggestions or stories.
Well, there's also context - is the cherry-picked verse part of a story/parable, part of an instruction, a no-kidding commandment, addressed to a specific individual or group ...what? Also, was the quoted text later superseded by later teachings/events (especially if we're talking about Christian Theology, which explicitly has the New Testament superseding and eliminating a lot of stuff in the Old)?
Far too many sophomoric lines of argument conveniently ignore such things (and are thus easily destroyed), but, if you'll pardon the pun, the devil is in the details. :)
Hillary should offer up her private emails as soon as the Republicans in Congress release all of their private emails.
If you have credible evidence that any of them did government business on such systems, I would agree.
This is not some petty-assed partisan issue, so please stop worshipping.
To semi-paraphrase her old man: 'It depends on what the meaning of the word 'legal' is...'
While it likely did not violate any specific statutory law, it definitely violated numerous regulations on the matter - regulations that she herself whined about Bush allegedly breaking, and that one of her underlings got fired specifically for during her tenure.
Sorry, but while it may have been technically "legal", it was definitely in violation of regulation, a risk to national security, and definitely sleazy. President Nixon got fired for less... and he only had an old Dictabelt recorder.
Sorry, but it was expressly against State Department policy since 2009, she was SoS when one of her underlings got fired for doing the exact same thing in Africa, and the whole thing was very likely against most gov't secrecy regulations considering some of the content that likely got passed around on it.
But, you know, worshippers gonna worship...
Irony of ironies...
Hillary Clinton once served as a staffer on the Watergate Committee.
You know... the Watergate incident, where former President Richard Nixon was ultimately forced to resign... because he had a personal recording device that had embarrassingly large gaps in the tapes that congress subpoenaed? Yep, that Watergate.
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.
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This is a potential problem with every single programming language ever. No exceptions. C is somewhere in the middle with that risk, but it is no where near the worst. I'd give that medal to Perl.
The more powerful the language, the more it's like a loaded gun: You can use it responsibly and do amazing things with it, or you can put a bullet through your foot with it. Choice is yours... and the closer you get to bare metal with the language, the greater the chance of lead meeting foot at high speed.
They were broke, but when Bill left office, there was a budget surplus, for the third year in a row.
Given that the budget was (and has always been) controlled by Congress (where the opposition party held sway), I'm not so sure he should get much credit for that.
...only $200m from Soros? May want to count MoveOn.org, DU, Being Liberal, and a whole host of other endeavors he and his buddies have been dumping way more money into... not even counting MSNBC, a goodly chunk of CNN, Verio, et al. Also, check in with Warren Buffett; he's good for (probably) at least a few hundred million or more (probably way, way more.)
Fact is, the system is soaked with money on both sides, so your original point (shitloads of money corrupting/clouding the election process) is valid, but honestly, they *both* suck.
I suspect it was crash-updated recently.
It was listed as "F" when the story was submitted earlier this morning, but now it's suddenly bumped to a "B" (Assessed on: Tue Mar 10 09:31:29 PDT 2015).
All it would take is a patch or two to bump it up, I suspect.
I wonder if one can get the mods to update the submission.
The disks that shipped the same week sold 3 times as many copies as the previous issue.
Mostly by curious people who only got half the story on the evening news. Controversy (actual controversy as classically defined, mind) does that.
What if the frat became an open 'Stormfront' house?
So what if it does? The societal repercussions of belonging to such a thing would be detrimental enough that nearly everyone with at least two working neurons would avoid it. Eventually it, like the Klan, becomes some isolated group with an ever-shrinking number of nutjobs and idiots.
The university gets federal funding, no?
Your move. ;)
Agreed with sibling. As vile as it may be, once you start putting subjective limits on speech, it's only downhill from there.
Sure, speech that generates fraud or incites panic is obviously illegal (as is speech that culminates in such things as "swatting"), but those are reasonable limits that are obvious to one and all.
"Hate speech" has already been morphed (see also the incredibly stupid phrase "microaggressions", which could very easily be converted into an expression of "hate", thus "hate speech.")
Tell me - do you think that non-racial ideals so damned fragile that they cannot withstand a stupid phrase from a stupid person? If you think they are, then the problem lies with you, not the ideals themselves.
Free speech doesn't mean free from repercussion.
True - so let's make the repercussion equal to the transgression: ridicule, education against, and ostracism by the student body. I bet that after a month or so of being shunned and laughed at by the student body at large (and excluded from, oh I dunno... things like getting laid...), the students in question would have one very powerful incentive to straighten their act up. A couple of months later, the frat would likely die of member starvation (unless they publicly apologized, and demonstrated something akin to repentance, of course.)
Instead, the college just drove them further underground and made them attractive to every little rebellious soul on campus.
I'm not a "Greek", and I never have been or wanted to be, but your characterization of them is not consistent with what I have known.
Neither was I, and I agree to a *small* extent. Mind you, I'm from Arkansas and it was a long time ago, but there were still frats (and sororities) that were, shall we say, a wee bit on the exclusionary side of things, and the exclusions were occasionally based on religion, skin color, ethnic origin...
As for TFA? As much as I myself detest racism and bigotry based on someone's religion/ethnicity/etc... Personally, I think they *should* be allowed to be total asshats about it. Seriously - as long as there's no assualt or other crimes against others, let them chant whatever the hell they want.
I say this for two reasons:
1) College is supposed to be a place where all viewpoints and ideas are explored - even the ugly and stupid ones. Freedom of speech should hold highest priority in such a place.
2) The video (and anything like it) can serve as an example to point at and instruct against; a competent prof can debate the racist activity into the dirt, in a setting that educates everyone else, and (hopefully) teaches the racists in question along the way.
By kicking out the frat charter, you only drive the problem deeper underground... and where is the frickin' benefit in doing that among a body of kids that are going to be naturally rebellious in the first place? You only make it more attractive to such a mindset.
Agreed.
It's one thing to have some neat-o technology, but another to rush out and shove it into mass production just because OMG Europe and Asia is doing it, guys! Hurry the fsck up!!!11!!
Seriously; drones already create inter-neighbor privacy concerns, a potential hazard as they occasionally crash into stuff, and seriously, there's a potential that it can provide one more step towards a surveillance society that is entirely unwelcome.
Oh, a small tangent: I live in a very rural area expressly for the peace and quiet. Unless I'm running it, a drone buzzing over my property, snooping around and making noise, only means one thing: target practice. Not because of any tinfoil factor, but because it's an annoyance and a trespass. I am very certain that I'm not alone in this. You want drones buzzing about your area, fine... just don't intrude on those of us who have no use or desire for the things.
Meh - my personal laptop runs OSX.
Professionally, I'm stuck with learning and using it.
As ugly as it is, systemd is still better than Windows Server 2012, the registry, services.msc, and (*puke*) Powershell.
Ditto sibling... Event Horizon was campy as hell and even funny at times - I actually liked that movie.
Now Battlefield Earth? It and all of its Hubbardite followers can all die in a fire.