Especially since if the RIAA could figure out HOW to sue everyone just for the files on their computer, I'm sure they'd be right there with their team of rabid lawyers. It wouldn't matter if having said files was legal or not; they'd still be lawsuit bait.
Think on that, you folks who think privacy only matters if you "have nothing to hide".
I don't have any problem with buying music straight from the artist, and have done so when one catches my ear to the point that I wish to own a copy of their music. And when I do that, the artist gets paid in full for the fruit of their labours (less whatever they paid some private production studio).
However, it distresses me to buy the same product from an RIAA affiliate, because in that case, the artist gets reamed up the ass -- usually they wind up not even owning their own work, and are paid very little (or sometimes not at all) relative to the production/distribution company's profits.
I have thought about that, and still have mixed feelings about it. Much as it would feel good to make the statement, and maybe startle a few people in the Rep party, would it actually accomplish anything? I'm not so sure. I do know my business won't survive the economics of another Carter-esque presidency.
Speculation is that MT governor Brian Schweitzer will run for the next Democrat pres ticket -- and from what I've seen so far, I like him better than any other potential candidate (for 4 years from now if McCain wins, or for 8 years from now if Obama wins). MT's notion of "Democrat" really means "liberal Republican" rather than left-wing whacko like it presently does to the rest of the world, making him appealing to a broad base. And he's had the balls to tell the Feds to GFY over RealID. This old-line Republican likes that. Plus the fact that he hasn't lost touch with the farms and ranches that are the foundation for everything else -- cuz everyone's gotta eat. One of the big problems today is that the average person is now the 3rd generation away from the farm, consequently there's this huge disconnect between how they see the world and how the world really works. This sad truth came home to me when I met not one but TWO nominal-adults who (I shit you not) DID NOT KNOW that beef comes from cows!!
Anyway, I hope that's a viable game plan for the future. The present options still suck.:(
Had the thought the other day that we really should have appreciated Barry Goldwater more, back when we coulda had him..:/
I haven't logged every factoid, statement, speech, or position change for either candidate. If I had, I assure you the list would be much longer for Obama, because... frankly McCain has always been a flipflopper and it's not news; he's been around a long time, and I *already* knew what I didn't like about him. But having never heard of Obama before, I knew nothing about him and was perfectly willing to give him a fair chance to win my vote. My first impression of him was very positive, but the more I listened to him, the less I liked. (I don't really give a shit what his rivals said, nor did I pay much attention to them, as all the other Dem candidates were known entities that I *already* knew I did not wish to vote for.)
As I say I haven't logged, nor care to, every detail that altered my opinion of him. The cumulative impression is what counts in the end and ultimately determines how I vote.
Some of us have matured past the need to put everything in either/or, black-or-white dichotomies. Sometimes there isn't a set of hard reasons for a decision, but rather the accumulated shades of grey are what determines it.
Anyway, you can vote for your reasons, and I'll vote for mine, and we'll both probably be pissed in the end, cuz in politics, no one ever gets it all their own way.
I'd guess your figure of 35% in the distant past comes from a period when the entire surface of the planet was a seething mass of greenery. Anyway, here are various thoughts generated by your post:
Realistically, given conditions that are suitable for human life, what is the max oxygen that the biosphere can produce? that is, how much of the biosphere will actually be producing oxygen?
Plants also require nitrogen and CO2. If the balance shifts too far toward O2, wouldn't that tend to limit plant growth and therefore O2 output?
What is the max amount that could be produced, if all the available sunlit, vegetation-habitable land and water areas were covered with green plants? ie. what would the atmospheric content be then?
Also, if Plant A replaces Plant B with a roughly equivalent biomass and chlorophyll content, wouldn't that result in approximately equal oxygen production?
While I'd agree that air is more important than oceans (we can survive better without the latter:) I'm not sure there's really an oxygen scare in our future.
I've heard contrary arguments too -- that slash-and-burn in the Amazon will leave us without enough oxygen, because a large chunk of the world's O2 production comes from the Amazon jungle. Perhaps ocean growth will merely offset this.;)
The big stumbling block is that much, perhaps most of the Sahara lacks any soil whatever -- it's just naked exposed rock (not even covered by sand). So first you've got to either pulverize and fertilize the surface, or bring in a soil layer. NOW you can work on terraforming it.;)
I did have the thought... how does a green Sahara affect downwind climates?
Hence Robert Nathan's excellent tome, "Digging the Weans".
It's a pet peeve of mine too. Everything not proven to be something else must be religious. What baloney! it just means you don't know what it's for yet. Hell, maybe it's not anything but random decoration. Decorative sunbursts are used on many modern buildings; that doesn't mean we're sun worshippers or that those buildings are temples!
I did look at the photos. It looked to me like the kids were dead and just thrown in however was convenient, and that the adult [mother?] body followed, still alive, and the adult reached for the child's hand before its own death. (Having buried large dogs, I can attest that a corpse dropped into a hole can indeed land like this.)
I would hazard a guess that some of the broken bones were the product of violence, not time. Frex, the middle kid's head looks stove-in to me, as if impacted by a blunt weapon.
And when I looked at the photo, I was struck by how they appeared to have been just tossed into a grave together, with the mother possibly still alive (appears to be reaching for the child).
But I've dug graves and buried large dogs, so I have perhaps a different perspective on how a corpse falls into a hole than does someone who has never done such work.
Um... you make it sound like this nasty alga doesn't produce any oxygen -- but given its nature as a green plant, and its vigor and invasiveness, it probably produces more oxygen than did the plants it displaced.
So... while we may lose a lot of marine ecologies to it, and that would be sad, we're not going to suffocate because of it. And relatively few cultures are completely dependent on the sea for their sustenance, so for most of us, starvation thanks to this alga isn't a realistic hazard either.
Point being, what's a hazard to one ecology may not be a hazard to another, even when they're side by side.
The solution is simple, if draconian: stop playing music that isn't available royalty-free. And then either the royalty mafia notes the loss of the advertising force that comes from a wide listener base, and changes their grasping ways... or we all develop different tastes in music, and life goes on without royalty-impaired music.
In fact, here's a handy link to Digital Gunfire's royalty release form (used by permission):
It's a very complex part of Europe, for sure, with many peoples some of whom are relatively recent transplants (like the Albanians you mention). But a cultural or even historical distinction doesn't necessarily mean that the gene pool is also split along those same lines. And the only way to know for sure is to do DNA profiles and correlate the results. With a sample of 2500 for all of Europe, it's likely to be broadly accurate, but will not reflect small local population histories.
Exactly. Very seldom does any candidate agree with all our views... sometimes that Veep candidate weighs more heavily on our minds than the Pres. candidate... we juggle all the factors and eventually come to a stopping point (tho not necessarily to a conclusion), spend our votes, and go home to chew our fingernails down to the quick while the votes are counted, and sometimes the next day we wish we'd voted the other way.
How does describing my own change of opinion make me a troll?? Geez, don't you ever change your opinion about something over time, as more information filters into your awareness?? That's all I was talking about.
Tho after reading your other comments under this article, I think you're just looking for a flame war. *shrug*
Good question. In my experience, *normal* children seem to have exactly one reaction to porn: they go "Eugh, gross!", gawk for a few moments (the same way anyone will when confronted with something they consider freaky), then quickly lose interest and go on to other normal childhood pursuits.
I'm wondering if the only "harm" from porn comes to children who are already psychologically abnormal (maybe liking porn at an early age predicts a tendency toward sexual abberations as an adult?), or are being sexually abused (so the porn looks more "normal" to them, rather than icky and gross).
"Is there a reason that McCain's platform serves to (1) increase the profits of industries that hate him and give TONS of money to his opponent, and (2) Provides legal protection for industries that his primary voting base despises?"
I wondered the same thing. It makes no sense. Anyone want to try shoehorning it into an explanation??
My initial impression of Obama was that he was honest and meant well.
He himself convinced me to the contrary. No one else had anything to do with it. The endpoint he left me at is that I no longer trust him at all.
McCain, at least, I find to be an honest asshole, who wastes no breath trying to convince me otherwise. I don't like him, but at least I've come to think what we see is what we'll get.
Apparently the groupthink on slashdot is so juvenile that it can't tell this speech is an expression of "When I was young and stupid, I believed all this shit about how I knew everything and no one else knew anything. If blogs had existed back then, I could have told even more people how I knew everything and they knew nothing". I'm sure it must have gotten a good laugh from the audience as they recognised it as parody of the typical 20-something know-it-all.
Or maybe not, since slashdot groupthink doesn't seem to get it. But most people here are still in 20-something know-it-all mode, too.
(Geez, I don't even like McCain, and I can see this. WTF is wrong with you people?)
I think what the parent was talking about is that altho most people here espouse conservative viewpoints, they still support liberal candidates, and the more liberal the better! It makes no sense, but that's all too commonly how it is, especially among younger people with fewer years of realworld experience.
Back in 1972 I knew a guy who was doing opinion polls... he'd ask folks their views on various issues of the day, and the typical responses in our area were conservative or even reactionary. The final question was "Who do you think would make a good President?" and these people who'd just expressed all those conservative views replied...
TEDDY KENNEDY....!!
Say what??!
And now we have the same phenomenon here on slashdot. People here espose all these conservative (classical old-style Republican and Libertarian) views, but when asked who they want to see as president, they pick the most liberal candidate -- the candidate LEAST likely to protect their views in the long run.
I've been watching the California State Senate sessions this week. As you may be aware, CA is facing a $17 BILLION budget deficit, yet our legislators can't seem to get a budget into place (the state has been running 7 or 8 weeks now without one).
Despite this, the Democrats still vote en bloc FOR everything that's feelgood or costs-citizens-more, no matter how much money it's going to waste.
Now, the Dems have a majority here (26-D, 14-R) and can control the outcome of every vote. So tell me again how they are working so hard to reign in spending, when they have total control over the spending process??
As you say, it's not that our legislators CAN'T cut spending. It's that they don't WANT to.
Good points in this and your followups. I don't *like* McCain, but Obama SCARES me, and you just articulated WHY. Hope you don't mind if I steal your post and pass it along to others who don't yet see the problem.
Similarly, I don't like McCain... but I think Obama would be a much bigger disaster than McCain. I don't really want to vote FOR either of them, but one repells me more than the other. So for lack of better choices, I will vote for the lesser of two evils.
No non-evil choice appears to be forthcoming at present, and certainly none with any chance of winning the election.
So to avoid throwing away my vote or not using it at all, I will wind up using it AGAINST a candidate, rather than FOR a candidate.
This disgusts me, but I don't see a more-responsible way to use my vote AND make sure it counts for *something* in the final tally.
Slashdot Mirror
Especially since if the RIAA could figure out HOW to sue everyone just for the files on their computer, I'm sure they'd be right there with their team of rabid lawyers. It wouldn't matter if having said files was legal or not; they'd still be lawsuit bait.
Think on that, you folks who think privacy only matters if you "have nothing to hide".
I don't have any problem with buying music straight from the artist, and have done so when one catches my ear to the point that I wish to own a copy of their music. And when I do that, the artist gets paid in full for the fruit of their labours (less whatever they paid some private production studio).
However, it distresses me to buy the same product from an RIAA affiliate, because in that case, the artist gets reamed up the ass -- usually they wind up not even owning their own work, and are paid very little (or sometimes not at all) relative to the production/distribution company's profits.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
I have thought about that, and still have mixed feelings about it. Much as it would feel good to make the statement, and maybe startle a few people in the Rep party, would it actually accomplish anything? I'm not so sure. I do know my business won't survive the economics of another Carter-esque presidency.
Speculation is that MT governor Brian Schweitzer will run for the next Democrat pres ticket -- and from what I've seen so far, I like him better than any other potential candidate (for 4 years from now if McCain wins, or for 8 years from now if Obama wins). MT's notion of "Democrat" really means "liberal Republican" rather than left-wing whacko like it presently does to the rest of the world, making him appealing to a broad base. And he's had the balls to tell the Feds to GFY over RealID. This old-line Republican likes that.
Plus the fact that he hasn't lost touch with the farms and ranches that are the foundation for everything else -- cuz everyone's gotta eat. One of the big problems today is that the average person is now the 3rd generation away from the farm, consequently there's this huge disconnect between how they see the world and how the world really works. This sad truth came home to me when I met not one but TWO nominal-adults who (I shit you not) DID NOT KNOW that beef comes from cows!!
Anyway, I hope that's a viable game plan for the future. The present options still suck. :(
Had the thought the other day that we really should have appreciated Barry Goldwater more, back when we coulda had him.. :/
I haven't logged every factoid, statement, speech, or position change for either candidate. If I had, I assure you the list would be much longer for Obama, because... frankly McCain has always been a flipflopper and it's not news; he's been around a long time, and I *already* knew what I didn't like about him. But having never heard of Obama before, I knew nothing about him and was perfectly willing to give him a fair chance to win my vote. My first impression of him was very positive, but the more I listened to him, the less I liked. (I don't really give a shit what his rivals said, nor did I pay much attention to them, as all the other Dem candidates were known entities that I *already* knew I did not wish to vote for.)
As I say I haven't logged, nor care to, every detail that altered my opinion of him. The cumulative impression is what counts in the end and ultimately determines how I vote.
Some of us have matured past the need to put everything in either/or, black-or-white dichotomies. Sometimes there isn't a set of hard reasons for a decision, but rather the accumulated shades of grey are what determines it.
Anyway, you can vote for your reasons, and I'll vote for mine, and we'll both probably be pissed in the end, cuz in politics, no one ever gets it all their own way.
I'd guess your figure of 35% in the distant past comes from a period when the entire surface of the planet was a seething mass of greenery. Anyway, here are various thoughts generated by your post:
Realistically, given conditions that are suitable for human life, what is the max oxygen that the biosphere can produce? that is, how much of the biosphere will actually be producing oxygen?
Plants also require nitrogen and CO2. If the balance shifts too far toward O2, wouldn't that tend to limit plant growth and therefore O2 output?
What is the max amount that could be produced, if all the available sunlit, vegetation-habitable land and water areas were covered with green plants? ie. what would the atmospheric content be then?
Also, if Plant A replaces Plant B with a roughly equivalent biomass and chlorophyll content, wouldn't that result in approximately equal oxygen production?
While I'd agree that air is more important than oceans (we can survive better without the latter :) I'm not sure there's really an oxygen scare in our future.
I've heard contrary arguments too -- that slash-and-burn in the Amazon will leave us without enough oxygen, because a large chunk of the world's O2 production comes from the Amazon jungle. Perhaps ocean growth will merely offset this. ;)
And then they can kiss all that cheap/free advertising goodbye....
Don't go digging in out-of-the-way places, and you won't uncover any trolls. ;)
The big stumbling block is that much, perhaps most of the Sahara lacks any soil whatever -- it's just naked exposed rock (not even covered by sand). So first you've got to either pulverize and fertilize the surface, or bring in a soil layer. NOW you can work on terraforming it. ;)
I did have the thought... how does a green Sahara affect downwind climates?
Hence Robert Nathan's excellent tome, "Digging the Weans".
It's a pet peeve of mine too. Everything not proven to be something else must be religious. What baloney! it just means you don't know what it's for yet. Hell, maybe it's not anything but random decoration. Decorative sunbursts are used on many modern buildings; that doesn't mean we're sun worshippers or that those buildings are temples!
I did look at the photos. It looked to me like the kids were dead and just thrown in however was convenient, and that the adult [mother?] body followed, still alive, and the adult reached for the child's hand before its own death. (Having buried large dogs, I can attest that a corpse dropped into a hole can indeed land like this.)
I would hazard a guess that some of the broken bones were the product of violence, not time. Frex, the middle kid's head looks stove-in to me, as if impacted by a blunt weapon.
And when I looked at the photo, I was struck by how they appeared to have been just tossed into a grave together, with the mother possibly still alive (appears to be reaching for the child).
But I've dug graves and buried large dogs, so I have perhaps a different perspective on how a corpse falls into a hole than does someone who has never done such work.
Um... you make it sound like this nasty alga doesn't produce any oxygen -- but given its nature as a green plant, and its vigor and invasiveness, it probably produces more oxygen than did the plants it displaced.
So ... while we may lose a lot of marine ecologies to it, and that would be sad, we're not going to suffocate because of it. And relatively few cultures are completely dependent on the sea for their sustenance, so for most of us, starvation thanks to this alga isn't a realistic hazard either.
Point being, what's a hazard to one ecology may not be a hazard to another, even when they're side by side.
The solution is simple, if draconian: stop playing music that isn't available royalty-free. And then either the royalty mafia notes the loss of the advertising force that comes from a wide listener base, and changes their grasping ways... or we all develop different tastes in music, and life goes on without royalty-impaired music.
In fact, here's a handy link to Digital Gunfire's royalty release form (used by permission):
http://www.digitalgunfire.com/radioplayrelease.rtf
It's a very complex part of Europe, for sure, with many peoples some of whom are relatively recent transplants (like the Albanians you mention). But a cultural or even historical distinction doesn't necessarily mean that the gene pool is also split along those same lines. And the only way to know for sure is to do DNA profiles and correlate the results. With a sample of 2500 for all of Europe, it's likely to be broadly accurate, but will not reflect small local population histories.
Exactly. Very seldom does any candidate agree with all our views... sometimes that Veep candidate weighs more heavily on our minds than the Pres. candidate... we juggle all the factors and eventually come to a stopping point (tho not necessarily to a conclusion), spend our votes, and go home to chew our fingernails down to the quick while the votes are counted, and sometimes the next day we wish we'd voted the other way.
How does describing my own change of opinion make me a troll?? Geez, don't you ever change your opinion about something over time, as more information filters into your awareness?? That's all I was talking about.
Tho after reading your other comments under this article, I think you're just looking for a flame war. *shrug*
The Latin American population is largely Indian (of the American variety).
Latino didn't used to mean "Latin American", BTW. That itself is a corruption of the term as formerly used to mean the darker southern European type.
Damn, now I feel old.
Good question. In my experience, *normal* children seem to have exactly one reaction to porn: they go "Eugh, gross!", gawk for a few moments (the same way anyone will when confronted with something they consider freaky), then quickly lose interest and go on to other normal childhood pursuits.
I'm wondering if the only "harm" from porn comes to children who are already psychologically abnormal (maybe liking porn at an early age predicts a tendency toward sexual abberations as an adult?), or are being sexually abused (so the porn looks more "normal" to them, rather than icky and gross).
"Is there a reason that McCain's platform serves to (1) increase the profits of industries that hate him and give TONS of money to his opponent, and (2) Provides legal protection for industries that his primary voting base despises?"
I wondered the same thing. It makes no sense. Anyone want to try shoehorning it into an explanation??
My initial impression of Obama was that he was honest and meant well.
He himself convinced me to the contrary. No one else had anything to do with it. The endpoint he left me at is that I no longer trust him at all.
McCain, at least, I find to be an honest asshole, who wastes no breath trying to convince me otherwise. I don't like him, but at least I've come to think what we see is what we'll get.
Apparently the groupthink on slashdot is so juvenile that it can't tell this speech is an expression of "When I was young and stupid, I believed all this shit about how I knew everything and no one else knew anything. If blogs had existed back then, I could have told even more people how I knew everything and they knew nothing". I'm sure it must have gotten a good laugh from the audience as they recognised it as parody of the typical 20-something know-it-all.
Or maybe not, since slashdot groupthink doesn't seem to get it. But most people here are still in 20-something know-it-all mode, too.
(Geez, I don't even like McCain, and I can see this. WTF is wrong with you people?)
I think what the parent was talking about is that altho most people here espouse conservative viewpoints, they still support liberal candidates, and the more liberal the better! It makes no sense, but that's all too commonly how it is, especially among younger people with fewer years of realworld experience.
Back in 1972 I knew a guy who was doing opinion polls... he'd ask folks their views on various issues of the day, and the typical responses in our area were conservative or even reactionary. The final question was "Who do you think would make a good President?" and these people who'd just expressed all those conservative views replied...
TEDDY KENNEDY ....!!
Say what??!
And now we have the same phenomenon here on slashdot. People here espose all these conservative (classical old-style Republican and Libertarian) views, but when asked who they want to see as president, they pick the most liberal candidate -- the candidate LEAST likely to protect their views in the long run.
I've been watching the California State Senate sessions this week. As you may be aware, CA is facing a $17 BILLION budget deficit, yet our legislators can't seem to get a budget into place (the state has been running 7 or 8 weeks now without one).
Despite this, the Democrats still vote en bloc FOR everything that's feelgood or costs-citizens-more, no matter how much money it's going to waste.
Now, the Dems have a majority here (26-D, 14-R) and can control the outcome of every vote. So tell me again how they are working so hard to reign in spending, when they have total control over the spending process??
As you say, it's not that our legislators CAN'T cut spending. It's that they don't WANT to.
Good points in this and your followups. I don't *like* McCain, but Obama SCARES me, and you just articulated WHY. Hope you don't mind if I steal your post and pass it along to others who don't yet see the problem.
Similarly, I don't like McCain... but I think Obama would be a much bigger disaster than McCain. I don't really want to vote FOR either of them, but one repells me more than the other. So for lack of better choices, I will vote for the lesser of two evils.
No non-evil choice appears to be forthcoming at present, and certainly none with any chance of winning the election.
So to avoid throwing away my vote or not using it at all, I will wind up using it AGAINST a candidate, rather than FOR a candidate.
This disgusts me, but I don't see a more-responsible way to use my vote AND make sure it counts for *something* in the final tally.