the earth has had historic massive swings in climate, without any manmade input
obvious deduction:
even if you isolate all human effects, you're still going to have a dangerous heating up or cooling down at some point
therefore:
you are going to be involved in this sort of purposeful engineering at some point, no matter what humanity's effects are. the alternative is to just allow an ice age or the sahara covering half the globe and massive ecosystem/ species die off. that neglect is a superior approach?
so why not just sidstep all the pointless bickering and pointless blamegames and get down to proactive engineering now
we're going to be engineering our climate some day even if we all magically turn into environmental saints. you see that right?
and i understand why washington hates political parties. i hate them for the same reasons he does
but who the fuck cares?
political parties are INEVITABLE. social human beings congregate into parties. you cannot prevent this, no one can prevent this. so you should stop trying to deny an ugly but obvious truth of human social existence and accept it and work within its unfortunate parameters
this is the point where you can either shoot the messenger (me), simply because i tell you an unyielding ugly truth of reality, or you accept it
washington and the founding fathers were men, not demigods. they did a lot right, and i thank them for that. but their words are not biblical passages to be worshipped like a religion without question, but to be analyzed and either rejected or accepted. plenty of what they said was genius. but they were still fallible men, so much of their words are also flat out wrong. who decides which is which? you do. but you can't look at all of their rhetorical output like the words of jesus or muhammad
there's this strange strand of american thought that views the founding fathers and the constitution and the bill of rights like they were the quran or the bible. i'm sorry, but the founding fathers would view people like this with far more disdain than anything they fought against in their lifetimes. because what they fought for, and won, was a rational logical foundation for a progressive, prosperous government and society
the opposite of that would be this sort of quasireligious, unthinking worship of their words like they were born of angels and gilded into stone and gold
no, if you want to abide by the founding fathers and their principles most faithfully, yhen you will question their words, and reject some of their words or accept some of their words in the same logical rational fashion they formulated those words with. the founding fathers would want you to do this, because they certainly viewed religious fanaticism with disdain
underneath we will have a shitstorm of politically biased comments
so i offer a third option, to climate change doubters and climate change believers:
1. who fucking cares whose fault it is
political recrimination gets us nowhere. its cold in the house because someone left the window open? ok, so you're going to sit there and scream at each other over who opened the window? here's a new idea: how about someone demonstrating actual responsibility and instead actually stand the fuck up, walk over, and close the fucking window: NO MATTER WHO LEFT IT OPEN
2. who fucking cares if we are heating up or cooling down or not changing
the fact is, we live here, and we are interested in controlling the thermostat. if it gets too cold, do something to turn it up. if it gets to hot, do something to turn it down. we are homo sapiens, this what we do: we do not adapt to our environment, we adapt our environment to us. we do not grow fur, we make clothes. we do not enter torpor at midday, we invent air conditioning
if you say we shouldn't mess with the weather, you are by extension denying the fact that we already are having an effect on the climate. so we might as well get involved with twiddling with the environment ON PURPOSE, because the notion that 6.5 billion humans can magically have no effect at all is a completely absurd premise on your part
this environmental attitude is the engineer's approach. fuck all of you capitalists, politicians, activists and hysterical whiners. the engineer will prevail here, because only we have the solution to what the rest of you simply bicker about
we need scientifically, factually sound well-researched methods for forcing change on our planet on purpose. and then we'll fix your fucking problem. something like seeding the dead zones of the ocean with iron
lets put it this way: make believe, for the moment, for the sake of argument, regardless of your beliefs, that
1. the earth is actually heating up 2. it is doing so because of nature, not man-made reasons
ok, well what are we supposed to do, just accept rising sea levels, melting glaciers and the sahara desert growing 25%?
no, we artificially introduce methods for cooling the earth down. we do this, #1, for selfish reasons, but also for #2: a preservation of current species and ecosystems, as a side effect. are you going to let the amazon dry up because you don't like the idea of man fiddling with the environment?
yes, the planet could continue to evolve new species without human intervention. but what is really going to happen is that this planet is going to become a museum, under human supervision, of the current catalog of species and ecosystems that have evolved so far. why? because we want to fucking live here, that's why
so, for the deniers in opposition to supposition #1 above: if you don't believe the earth is heating up, you still have to admit the earth has had historic swings in climate, and that we earthlings will have to intervene at some point, correct?
and for the believers in man-made change in opposition to supposition #2 above: you believe that climate change is caused by man, you have to admit that to fix the problem we have to do it PROACTIVELY. please don't try to sell me the moronic bullshit that 6.5 billion humans can live on this planet like ghosts. this is a different kind of denial than those who deny climate change, but no less foolish
imagine that: no pointless recriminations and blame games, no living in denial and sticking your head in the sand
commence with the retarded partisan bickering anyway. meanwhile, us engineers will roll up our sleeves and will actually go and fix your fucking problem while you political assholes do nothing but bicker
We live in societies with historically high water mark standards of living and justice. It doesn't mean we're done, we still have a long way to go on both measures, but don't dismiss our very real, quantifiable progress so quickly. Whine all you want, but it just shows you lack all perspective or judgment or historical perspective.
Without government stability, you have no prosperity, security, education, or social progress: social and political stability is no joke. It is the most important thing a government can deliver. Really. That you dismiss the notion so easily merely demonstrates how out of touch you are with any of the issues in play that you are injecting your ignorant pessimism into. We aren't in the shitter, we're in the opposite. You go to Somalia, then you talk to us about who is living in the shitter and how unimportant political and social stability is.
Educate yourself. Have some real intelligent perspective in your words. Because currently, your cynicism is a replacement for intelligence, not a sign of it.
the "protest" is apparently against frivolity and capitalism and lack of seriousness of the christmas sales charts
as if christmas sales charts are anything but a frivolous, capitalistic and thoroughly unserious endeavour. christmas sales charts should always be dominated by x factor, because they deserve each other: completely pointless, unimportant bullshit. taking the idea of christmas sales charts seriously is your first mistake
ratm going to the top of the sales charts is not a reassertion of what's real, its not a protest against anything. its an equally lightweight air puff exercise taking place within the bubble of completely unimportant bullshit no one serious remotely cares about
anyone who sees this exercise as powerful or exhilarating has just announced themselves as a creme puff who doesn't have any real issues in their lives
no one serious fucking cares. its not the real world, its not a real issue
third parties, if successful, either replace one of the dominant two, like the whigs in the 1800s in the usa, or one of the dominant two parties coopts the third party's message, relegating the third party back to maginalization, like with ross perot in the 1990s
furthermore, the similarity of the two dominant parties is not a weakness of democracy, but a strength. two parties compete for the moderates of the country, this forces them to moderate their own message in order to win votes. this leads to the parties being a better representation of the moderate middle, which leads to greater social stability: parity between the leaders of a country and its citizens
if the party has a strong zealot streak, such as currently in the usa with the teabaggers on the right, this is a good thing for the left, because by forcing an ideological litmus test on right-leaning candidates, the teabaggers force right-leaning candidates further right, thereby weakening their appeal to moderates, thereby weakening the right's showing in elections. if you are left-leaning in the usa, you should thank the stars for the appearance of right wing zealots like sarah palin and rush limbaugh on the landscape: this helps the left by giving moderate votes to left moderate candidates
meanwhile, if you believe that two similar parties is a weakness, or under some shadowy force's control, you are either a paranoid schizophrenic, or you simply don't understand that marginal, fringe parties should never dominate a country. because no matter how progressive your beliefs, the purpose of a government is to provide stability, first and foremost. the government should reflect the great moderate middle as much as possible, and this is what two parties achieves, and this goal is far more important than any other you can put forth
finally, third parties merely siphon votes off from their more moderate cousins, and therefore perversely empower the party most opposite you and your beliefs. its simple math
two parties the ultimate natural evolution of all democracies, and this is a good thing, despite you and your fringe beliefs, whether far right or far left. your marginalization is a benefit to the stability of your country
and you will see the real search results on the experts-exchange page
this situation has evolved over time i noticed
experts-exchange used to hide the real results a few years ago
then they seemed to be delisted from google results
then they came back to google results, and all you had to do was scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see the genuine text you searched for and the entire unobfuscated threaded discussion
so there's a story behind that. what i don't know, but i would guess google saw the scamminess of what they were doing, punished their results ranking, and experts-exchange belatedly "corrected" their obfuscations, and google gave them back their ranking
the peace treaty was signed in december 1814. but a major battle in the war, the one that made andrew jackson's name, took place in new orleans AFTER the peace treaty. the combatants didn't hear about the peace until february 1815
i think we'll see a return of that in space warfare. sure the wide open vacuum of space changes everything, but so does the sheer vastness of it all. in future space battles, it wouldn't be surprising for a peace to be signed, the agreement beamed to combatants at light speed... and yet the battle still rages on for weeks, months, maybe even years. the battlefield might be lightyears away from the capitols
i don't even know if the idea of central command will work. we're used to modern tom clancy style special operations nowadays where forces engage the enemy while analysts watch them in realtime in pentagon/ cia warrooms as infrared images on massive screens, caught from spy satellites high above
but you can't do that in space
so warfare in space will deevolve from this sort of highly vertically integrated command and control aspect. you can't, for example, have a commander on earth relaying instructions to his troops on mars in real time, simply because the radio signal takes 10-20 minutes, one way (depending upon orbital locations)
furthermore, there's nothing to say they still can't do that, or aren't actually doing that already. in fact, a big story in the international press about how dumb the military is on these video feeds is a good cover. one can hope, anyways, that the military is smarter than depicted in this story
The militants use programs such as SkyGrabber, from Russian company SkySoftware. Andrew Solonikov, one of the software's developers, said he was unaware that his software could be used to intercept drone feeds. "It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet -- no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content," he said by email from Russia.
can you hear the RIAA licking its chops? "see? we told you: media piracy software directly supports terrorism!" be on the lookout for media company fearmongering after this fiasco
otherwise, it looks like cyberpunk science fiction is now reality: insurgents hacking airbourne military robots. those 5 words are straight out of 1980s science fiction. skynet indeed
and thats some awesome security you have on those video feeds there mr. pentagon! what kind of military intelligence does it require to conclude that gee, i dunno, maybe those feeds should be encrypted? pffffft
A senior defense official said that James Clapper, the Pentagon's intelligence chief, assessed the Iraq intercepts at the direction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and concluded they represented a shortcoming to the security of the drone network.
you guys are fucking brilliant. you concluded unencrypted live video feeds of battlefields represented a shortcoming? your enemy now knows where you are looking, and where you aren't. what your concerns and priorities are, and what you may know about what the enemy is doing. in real time. you morons are truly a credit to the union. i wonder how many soldiers on the ground have had their lives put in danger by this stunning demonstration of cunning military intelligence?
Development Although his name is "Squid"ward, he is actually an octopus. This was stated in a 20 minute "behind the scenes" feature of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie DVD with creator Stephen Hillenburg and a few voice actors. The following was quoted by Squidward's voice actor, Rodger Bumpass: "I am Rodger Bumpass, and I play Squidward Tentacles. He's more of an adult, tries to be at least. He's an octopus, but they call him Squidward. I never understood. I guess Octoward just never worked for a name, though." Also, in another feature on the DVD, entitled "The Case of the SpongeBob," Stephen Hillenburg quotes the following: "This is Squidward the octopus." Later in the feature, he quotes, "It was easier for animation to draw him with six legs instead of eight."
viagra can be misspelled many ways in an email message. all of them not as direct as going and using this way of routing the word around filters, and not even misspelling it
what confuses me is why some americans believe salvation from whatever political woes they despise somehow magically lies in 3rd and 4th parties
when no matter what bothers you about two parties will most definitely NOT go away with more parties
pick your favorite multiparty country. examine issue {X} that you despise about american politics. you're going to tell me issue {X} does not go on in your multiparty utopia too?
the opinion of one asshole senator is not the majority voice of the australian people. so the problem will work itself out eventually
in nondemocracies, such a retarded filtering policy could be established by fiat, in spite of what the people really want. and so in nondemocracies, the government and the people really aren't the same
and there's only a top few major parties in france, germany and australia
its not as different as you suggest
because what you are trying to propose is purely ideological plays in the existence and foundation of third parties. and it simply never plays out like that
in places like canada, something like the bloc quebecois represents an ethnic and geographic and linguistic allegiance, not an ideological alternative (of course its different ideologically, my point is simply that the source of the party's existence is not a pure ideological play). if quebec split off from canada, you'd have the political landscape of canada naturally reassert itself as purely conservatives and liberals
and so if you are intellectually honest on the matter i think you will find the source of the continued existence of so-called third and fourth "major" parties in european countries is due to the same sort of social stratification and entrenched old world classism that results in something like the bloc quebecois: voting blocks composed of constituencies that are not purely ideological in alternative composition to the main parties. and so such european parties are not a valid argument for the existence of a third or fourth party in a country like the usa whose political party landscape is purely ideological in nature (almost purely, purely antyhign is impossible)
the usa is not as socially stratified as old world countries. it used to be democratic southeast dominant, but this geographic dominance has evaporated as much of the south has now embraced the party of lincoln, simply because that party has evolved to be more conservative, and therefore more representative of much southeastern thinking
and so now the composition of the american political landscape is more purely ideological, the usa more homogenous geogrpahically in terms of rich versus poor, ethnic this and that, and it is linguistically homogenous. as opposed to europe, where some very ancient ethnicities and languages and classist nonsense still exists within a nations boundaries. this provides the basis for third and fourth parties along nonideological grounds
since the usa has less entrenched european social stratification and wild geographic differences in ethnicity and language, it is therefore more further along on the natural evolution of politics playing out in democracies towarda natural balance of two party systems
brittle dim minds and supple brilliant minds (and a continuum in between)
i have found that if a lack of capital letters creates enough mental static for someone to find it difficult to read my posts, then they are probably of the brittle mind category. and so i do not wish to speak to such a person anyways, since brittle minds do not have much substance to offer me in regards to the actual intellectual composition of their comments (as opposed to empty stylistic flourishes)
so using only lowercase letters results in a convenient filter that serves simple minds as well as myself. simple minds: they avoid me, because its too much mental noise for them to plow through my unusual writing convention. meanwhile, anyone who does not have difficulty with a novel writing style (due to their mental flexibility) is also someone who tends to have more interesting replies to my comments (due to that same mental flexibility). such minds tend to react honestly to the actual intellectual ideas i am trying to convey, and tend not to spin conversations off into pointless ideological posturing... empty style
in this way, due to my unconventional writing style, i tend to be able to interact with more quality minds
for example, i don't consider you a simple mind: you read my comment, understood it, and replied thoughtfully and honestly. you didn't seem to have any difficulty in this regard. so now all you have to do is let go of your ill placed respect for people whose minds are not as flexible as yours
all you will lose is empty chatter signifying nothing useful to you from subpar minds. that they get hung up on empty stylistic convention is the social cue you need to gain insight into the quality of the mind you are dealing with
someone who has nothing of intellectual novelty and substance to offer you is also usually someone who doesn't have the ability or inclination to plow through a little novelty of writing style
but you are failing to address what the system actually ran
i think you would agree that the guy shouldn't be thrown in jail if the system in question ran a nuclear power facility
and i agree with you the guy should not be thrown in jail if the system in question ran a greeting card company (that's a civil matter: no jail, but he should be sued for substantial damages)
however, if the system ran a public utility, the man deprived the public of their rightful access to public property. that's a punishable criminal offense that very definitely requires jail time
come to think of it, i reverse my earlier statement: even in the greeting card company, you are depriving someone of access to their own property. so yes, jail time there too
i can take your computer off your desk. that's obviously theft. but what if i changed your password and put a postit note on your computer saying "i don't think you have a right to run your own computer, come talk to me first"
that's the same as if i had taken it physically: i am depriving you of your property, which is as criminal as physically taking it
Slashdot Mirror
the earth has had historic massive swings in climate, without any manmade input
obvious deduction:
even if you isolate all human effects, you're still going to have a dangerous heating up or cooling down at some point
therefore:
you are going to be involved in this sort of purposeful engineering at some point, no matter what humanity's effects are. the alternative is to just allow an ice age or the sahara covering half the globe and massive ecosystem/ species die off. that neglect is a superior approach?
so why not just sidstep all the pointless bickering and pointless blamegames and get down to proactive engineering now
we're going to be engineering our climate some day even if we all magically turn into environmental saints. you see that right?
and i understand why washington hates political parties. i hate them for the same reasons he does
but who the fuck cares?
political parties are INEVITABLE. social human beings congregate into parties. you cannot prevent this, no one can prevent this. so you should stop trying to deny an ugly but obvious truth of human social existence and accept it and work within its unfortunate parameters
this is the point where you can either shoot the messenger (me), simply because i tell you an unyielding ugly truth of reality, or you accept it
washington and the founding fathers were men, not demigods. they did a lot right, and i thank them for that. but their words are not biblical passages to be worshipped like a religion without question, but to be analyzed and either rejected or accepted. plenty of what they said was genius. but they were still fallible men, so much of their words are also flat out wrong. who decides which is which? you do. but you can't look at all of their rhetorical output like the words of jesus or muhammad
there's this strange strand of american thought that views the founding fathers and the constitution and the bill of rights like they were the quran or the bible. i'm sorry, but the founding fathers would view people like this with far more disdain than anything they fought against in their lifetimes. because what they fought for, and won, was a rational logical foundation for a progressive, prosperous government and society
the opposite of that would be this sort of quasireligious, unthinking worship of their words like they were born of angels and gilded into stone and gold
no, if you want to abide by the founding fathers and their principles most faithfully, yhen you will question their words, and reject some of their words or accept some of their words in the same logical rational fashion they formulated those words with. the founding fathers would want you to do this, because they certainly viewed religious fanaticism with disdain
underneath we will have a shitstorm of politically biased comments
so i offer a third option, to climate change doubters and climate change believers:
1. who fucking cares whose fault it is
political recrimination gets us nowhere. its cold in the house because someone left the window open? ok, so you're going to sit there and scream at each other over who opened the window? here's a new idea: how about someone demonstrating actual responsibility and instead actually stand the fuck up, walk over, and close the fucking window: NO MATTER WHO LEFT IT OPEN
2. who fucking cares if we are heating up or cooling down or not changing
the fact is, we live here, and we are interested in controlling the thermostat. if it gets too cold, do something to turn it up. if it gets to hot, do something to turn it down. we are homo sapiens, this what we do: we do not adapt to our environment, we adapt our environment to us. we do not grow fur, we make clothes. we do not enter torpor at midday, we invent air conditioning
if you say we shouldn't mess with the weather, you are by extension denying the fact that we already are having an effect on the climate. so we might as well get involved with twiddling with the environment ON PURPOSE, because the notion that 6.5 billion humans can magically have no effect at all is a completely absurd premise on your part
this environmental attitude is the engineer's approach. fuck all of you capitalists, politicians, activists and hysterical whiners. the engineer will prevail here, because only we have the solution to what the rest of you simply bicker about
we need scientifically, factually sound well-researched methods for forcing change on our planet on purpose. and then we'll fix your fucking problem. something like seeding the dead zones of the ocean with iron
lets put it this way: make believe, for the moment, for the sake of argument, regardless of your beliefs, that
1. the earth is actually heating up
2. it is doing so because of nature, not man-made reasons
ok, well what are we supposed to do, just accept rising sea levels, melting glaciers and the sahara desert growing 25%?
no, we artificially introduce methods for cooling the earth down. we do this, #1, for selfish reasons, but also for #2: a preservation of current species and ecosystems, as a side effect. are you going to let the amazon dry up because you don't like the idea of man fiddling with the environment?
yes, the planet could continue to evolve new species without human intervention. but what is really going to happen is that this planet is going to become a museum, under human supervision, of the current catalog of species and ecosystems that have evolved so far. why? because we want to fucking live here, that's why
so, for the deniers in opposition to supposition #1 above: if you don't believe the earth is heating up, you still have to admit the earth has had historic swings in climate, and that we earthlings will have to intervene at some point, correct?
and for the believers in man-made change in opposition to supposition #2 above: you believe that climate change is caused by man, you have to admit that to fix the problem we have to do it PROACTIVELY. please don't try to sell me the moronic bullshit that 6.5 billion humans can live on this planet like ghosts. this is a different kind of denial than those who deny climate change, but no less foolish
imagine that: no pointless recriminations and blame games, no living in denial and sticking your head in the sand
commence with the retarded partisan bickering anyway. meanwhile, us engineers will roll up our sleeves and will actually go and fix your fucking problem while you political assholes do nothing but bicker
more action, less "hot air"
We live in societies with historically high water mark standards of living and justice. It doesn't mean we're done, we still have a long way to go on both measures, but don't dismiss our very real, quantifiable progress so quickly. Whine all you want, but it just shows you lack all perspective or judgment or historical perspective.
Without government stability, you have no prosperity, security, education, or social progress: social and political stability is no joke. It is the most important thing a government can deliver. Really. That you dismiss the notion so easily merely demonstrates how out of touch you are with any of the issues in play that you are injecting your ignorant pessimism into. We aren't in the shitter, we're in the opposite. You go to Somalia, then you talk to us about who is living in the shitter and how unimportant political and social stability is.
Educate yourself. Have some real intelligent perspective in your words. Because currently, your cynicism is a replacement for intelligence, not a sign of it.
thank you for thoroughly filling my skull with that madness this morning. thanks a lot >:-(
the "protest" is apparently against frivolity and capitalism and lack of seriousness of the christmas sales charts
as if christmas sales charts are anything but a frivolous, capitalistic and thoroughly unserious endeavour. christmas sales charts should always be dominated by x factor, because they deserve each other: completely pointless, unimportant bullshit. taking the idea of christmas sales charts seriously is your first mistake
ratm going to the top of the sales charts is not a reassertion of what's real, its not a protest against anything. its an equally lightweight air puff exercise taking place within the bubble of completely unimportant bullshit no one serious remotely cares about
anyone who sees this exercise as powerful or exhilarating has just announced themselves as a creme puff who doesn't have any real issues in their lives
no one serious fucking cares. its not the real world, its not a real issue
meanwhile, in the real world...
its not decided by anyone
third parties, if successful, either replace one of the dominant two, like the whigs in the 1800s in the usa, or one of the dominant two parties coopts the third party's message, relegating the third party back to maginalization, like with ross perot in the 1990s
furthermore, the similarity of the two dominant parties is not a weakness of democracy, but a strength. two parties compete for the moderates of the country, this forces them to moderate their own message in order to win votes. this leads to the parties being a better representation of the moderate middle, which leads to greater social stability: parity between the leaders of a country and its citizens
if the party has a strong zealot streak, such as currently in the usa with the teabaggers on the right, this is a good thing for the left, because by forcing an ideological litmus test on right-leaning candidates, the teabaggers force right-leaning candidates further right, thereby weakening their appeal to moderates, thereby weakening the right's showing in elections. if you are left-leaning in the usa, you should thank the stars for the appearance of right wing zealots like sarah palin and rush limbaugh on the landscape: this helps the left by giving moderate votes to left moderate candidates
meanwhile, if you believe that two similar parties is a weakness, or under some shadowy force's control, you are either a paranoid schizophrenic, or you simply don't understand that marginal, fringe parties should never dominate a country. because no matter how progressive your beliefs, the purpose of a government is to provide stability, first and foremost. the government should reflect the great moderate middle as much as possible, and this is what two parties achieves, and this goal is far more important than any other you can put forth
finally, third parties merely siphon votes off from their more moderate cousins, and therefore perversely empower the party most opposite you and your beliefs. its simple math
two parties the ultimate natural evolution of all democracies, and this is a good thing, despite you and your fringe beliefs, whether far right or far left. your marginalization is a benefit to the stability of your country
and you will see the real search results on the experts-exchange page
this situation has evolved over time i noticed
experts-exchange used to hide the real results a few years ago
then they seemed to be delisted from google results
then they came back to google results, and all you had to do was scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see the genuine text you searched for and the entire unobfuscated threaded discussion
so there's a story behind that. what i don't know, but i would guess google saw the scamminess of what they were doing, punished their results ranking, and experts-exchange belatedly "corrected" their obfuscations, and google gave them back their ranking
the peace treaty was signed in december 1814. but a major battle in the war, the one that made andrew jackson's name, took place in new orleans AFTER the peace treaty. the combatants didn't hear about the peace until february 1815
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_New_Orleans
i think we'll see a return of that in space warfare. sure the wide open vacuum of space changes everything, but so does the sheer vastness of it all. in future space battles, it wouldn't be surprising for a peace to be signed, the agreement beamed to combatants at light speed... and yet the battle still rages on for weeks, months, maybe even years. the battlefield might be lightyears away from the capitols
i don't even know if the idea of central command will work. we're used to modern tom clancy style special operations nowadays where forces engage the enemy while analysts watch them in realtime in pentagon/ cia warrooms as infrared images on massive screens, caught from spy satellites high above
but you can't do that in space
so warfare in space will deevolve from this sort of highly vertically integrated command and control aspect. you can't, for example, have a commander on earth relaying instructions to his troops on mars in real time, simply because the radio signal takes 10-20 minutes, one way (depending upon orbital locations)
furthermore, there's nothing to say they still can't do that, or aren't actually doing that already. in fact, a big story in the international press about how dumb the military is on these video feeds is a good cover. one can hope, anyways, that the military is smarter than depicted in this story
can you hear the RIAA licking its chops? "see? we told you: media piracy software directly supports terrorism!" be on the lookout for media company fearmongering after this fiasco
otherwise, it looks like cyberpunk science fiction is now reality: insurgents hacking airbourne military robots. those 5 words are straight out of 1980s science fiction. skynet indeed
and thats some awesome security you have on those video feeds there mr. pentagon! what kind of military intelligence does it require to conclude that gee, i dunno, maybe those feeds should be encrypted? pffffft
you guys are fucking brilliant. you concluded unencrypted live video feeds of battlefields represented a shortcoming? your enemy now knows where you are looking, and where you aren't. what your concerns and priorities are, and what you may know about what the enemy is doing. in real time. you morons are truly a credit to the union. i wonder how many soldiers on the ground have had their lives put in danger by this stunning demonstration of cunning military intelligence?
yes
the word is "evil"
http://spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Squidward_Tentacles
everyone knows squidward lives in a tikihead
viagra can be misspelled many ways
in an email message.
all of them not as direct as
going and using this way of
routing the word around filters,
and not even misspelling it
i'm just describing natural tendencies
what confuses me is why some americans believe salvation from whatever political woes they despise somehow magically lies in 3rd and 4th parties
when no matter what bothers you about two parties will most definitely NOT go away with more parties
pick your favorite multiparty country. examine issue {X} that you despise about american politics. you're going to tell me issue {X} does not go on in your multiparty utopia too?
ooosh
and i always liked "the sound of music"
maybe the usa can loan arnold schwarzenegger back to the country of his birth, to clean things up in australia, terminator style?
about something the australian government is doing wrong can be spun into an attack on the american government
why do you have such a giant hard on for the usa?
do any governments besides washington dc actually do anything wrong in the world worthy of your condemnation?
they are one and the same
the opinion of one asshole senator is not the majority voice of the australian people. so the problem will work itself out eventually
in nondemocracies, such a retarded filtering policy could be established by fiat, in spite of what the people really want. and so in nondemocracies, the government and the people really aren't the same
tell me all about hurling insults from a position of anonymity and what that has to do with being an antisocial ass. i'm fascinated
and there's only a top few major parties in france, germany and australia
its not as different as you suggest
because what you are trying to propose is purely ideological plays in the existence and foundation of third parties. and it simply never plays out like that
in places like canada, something like the bloc quebecois represents an ethnic and geographic and linguistic allegiance, not an ideological alternative (of course its different ideologically, my point is simply that the source of the party's existence is not a pure ideological play). if quebec split off from canada, you'd have the political landscape of canada naturally reassert itself as purely conservatives and liberals
and so if you are intellectually honest on the matter i think you will find the source of the continued existence of so-called third and fourth "major" parties in european countries is due to the same sort of social stratification and entrenched old world classism that results in something like the bloc quebecois: voting blocks composed of constituencies that are not purely ideological in alternative composition to the main parties. and so such european parties are not a valid argument for the existence of a third or fourth party in a country like the usa whose political party landscape is purely ideological in nature (almost purely, purely antyhign is impossible)
the usa is not as socially stratified as old world countries. it used to be democratic southeast dominant, but this geographic dominance has evaporated as much of the south has now embraced the party of lincoln, simply because that party has evolved to be more conservative, and therefore more representative of much southeastern thinking
and so now the composition of the american political landscape is more purely ideological, the usa more homogenous geogrpahically in terms of rich versus poor, ethnic this and that, and it is linguistically homogenous. as opposed to europe, where some very ancient ethnicities and languages and classist nonsense still exists within a nations boundaries. this provides the basis for third and fourth parties along nonideological grounds
since the usa has less entrenched european social stratification and wild geographic differences in ethnicity and language, it is therefore more further along on the natural evolution of politics playing out in democracies towarda natural balance of two party systems
brittle dim minds and supple brilliant minds (and a continuum in between)
i have found that if a lack of capital letters creates enough mental static for someone to find it difficult to read my posts, then they are probably of the brittle mind category. and so i do not wish to speak to such a person anyways, since brittle minds do not have much substance to offer me in regards to the actual intellectual composition of their comments (as opposed to empty stylistic flourishes)
so using only lowercase letters results in a convenient filter that serves simple minds as well as myself. simple minds: they avoid me, because its too much mental noise for them to plow through my unusual writing convention. meanwhile, anyone who does not have difficulty with a novel writing style (due to their mental flexibility) is also someone who tends to have more interesting replies to my comments (due to that same mental flexibility). such minds tend to react honestly to the actual intellectual ideas i am trying to convey, and tend not to spin conversations off into pointless ideological posturing... empty style
in this way, due to my unconventional writing style, i tend to be able to interact with more quality minds
for example, i don't consider you a simple mind: you read my comment, understood it, and replied thoughtfully and honestly. you didn't seem to have any difficulty in this regard. so now all you have to do is let go of your ill placed respect for people whose minds are not as flexible as yours
all you will lose is empty chatter signifying nothing useful to you from subpar minds. that they get hung up on empty stylistic convention is the social cue you need to gain insight into the quality of the mind you are dealing with
someone who has nothing of intellectual novelty and substance to offer you is also usually someone who doesn't have the ability or inclination to plow through a little novelty of writing style
my comment specifically addresses the final charge that remains
so are you just exercising your propaganda writing abilities or do you not understand the fucking obvious about your own link?
but you are failing to address what the system actually ran
i think you would agree that the guy shouldn't be thrown in jail if the system in question ran a nuclear power facility
and i agree with you the guy should not be thrown in jail if the system in question ran a greeting card company (that's a civil matter: no jail, but he should be sued for substantial damages)
however, if the system ran a public utility, the man deprived the public of their rightful access to public property. that's a punishable criminal offense that very definitely requires jail time
come to think of it, i reverse my earlier statement: even in the greeting card company, you are depriving someone of access to their own property. so yes, jail time there too
i can take your computer off your desk. that's obviously theft. but what if i changed your password and put a postit note on your computer saying "i don't think you have a right to run your own computer, come talk to me first"
that's the same as if i had taken it physically: i am depriving you of your property, which is as criminal as physically taking it