No, I said I bought two monitors: one was the Rad-5, the other a Rad-5p. The two are clearly different in quality despite the claim that they're 'functionally equivalent'.
God knows why a post about monitors was modded as flamebait, but I guess that's just another case of slashdot idiocy.
I have both a KDS Rad-5 and a Rad-5p. The Rad-5 is a good monitor; far, far easier on the eyes than any CRT ever was (even the better CRTs give me trouble after a couple of hours).
The Rad-5p was bought after the Rad-5, and was shipped in the Rad-5 box. The Rad-5p is clearly inferior to the Rad-5. Unfortunately the machine self-identified as a Rad-5 and I thought the poor display was due to my inability to get the video drivers working properly (different video card on the machine with the Rad-5p). Having determined the problem was my fault, I simply decided to live with it until I discovered, seven months later (and one month after the return guarrantee expired), that the monitor wasn't a Rad-5 after all (a new set of video drivers correctly identified the monitor). The company, of course, refused to take back the monitor and replace it with the one I actually wanted. Their reasoning: in small print it actually says that they'll ship a Rad-5p instead of a Rad-5 if the latter is out of stock, as these two are 'functionally equivalent'.
Bastards....
In any event, the KDS Rad-5 is a good monitor and worth the money. The Rad-5p sucks donkey dick. If you buy KDS, make damn sure the company that's providing the monitor actually sends you an honest-to-god Rad-5. My computers are always-on and the Rad-5 hasn't had a single dead pixel in all the time that I've owned it. I can't say the same for other brands bought by folks I know.
Let's see...my choices for President in 2000 were:
- a looney right-wing religious fanatic with a deep hatred for anything not upper-class, white, and American;
- a political tool of the democratic party and a consummate liar, lacking the spine to act independently of the wishes of his campaign contributors;
- a socialist 'greater good' greenie wannabe dictator who's absolutely convinced that the only way to 'protect' the consumer/citizen is through...more government. More government acting according to *his* grand view of the Brave New World, of course.
Yeee-eess. I must say, what a hopeful set of options. These 'choices' were reflected in miniature in all of my state and local elections as well. Crooks, fools, bigots, and would-be totalitarian idiots, one and all.
I am *so* happy to be American.
BTW, I voted for Gore. I voted for Gore because I hated the man slightly less than I hated Bush and Nader. It turns out I might as well have not voted at all, since the Supreme Court decided to ignore the process and choose the candidate themselves.
Really, being an American just tickles me pink. My wife, on the other hand, is gathering information on what it takes to become a Canadian citizen and urging us to move to British Columbia. She has this odd idea that perhaps we'll have some 'terrorist' incident which, coincidentally enough, will result in national martial law and the suspension of elections come 2004...at least if Bush is losing in the polls, that is.
I already got the accent from my grandparents, eh? I should fit right in.
Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary.
Well now, that depends on what you think the minimum qualifications for a police state are.
Right now the government can come and kidnap you, then imprison you indefinitely without any recourse to the court system and in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution. I use the word 'kidnap' because they don't even have to arrest you; all they have to do is declare that you're a 'material witness' to some unspecified crime.
That's it. Piss someone off in power and away you go, with no chance of regaining your freedom until those in power choose to let you go.
How anyone can see this as anything but a characteristic of a police state is beyond me. Guess your definition of 'freedom' allows you to overlook those kinds of abuses - so long as they don't happen to you, eh?
Max
Re:Tablet prog contest has same prob (+how to fix
on
Fishing for Ideas
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· Score: 1
This way? Anyone stupid enough to enter is too stupid to be hired by Microsoft.
Given the quality of their software, I'd say anyone stupid enough to enter is probably MS management material.
Of course environmentalists want to deprive others of rights. That's rather the point of any movement, isn't it? To transfer power from one group of people to another. Otherwise, there isn't much of a point in this sort of movement at all.
It's all a struggle for power. Corporations want the power to do as they please in the name of profit; environmentalists want the power do as they please in the name of the environment. But power-seeking is always a zero-sum game; if you gain power, you've taken it from someone else.
As a happy little Randian Libertarian I firmly believe that the best government is that which governs least, for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is that the bigger government gets, the less interested it seems in anything but chasing its own dreams of power-mongering regardless of the consequences. The environmentalist idea of giving yet more power to the government in order to protect the environment seems to me to be the worst possible outcome when said government has little, if any, interest in the environment, and will most likely use the additional power it gets for other purposes. Regardless of what the Bushites and others wearing rose-colored blinders say, government is not here to help.
This is where any environmentalist plank is fundamentally flawed. Government is run by people who are no more moral or infallible than anyone else, and indeed, have proven time and again that they're often quite a bit less moral and more infallible. Do you honestly think that the best solution is to hand yet more power to these people and hope they don't fuck things up, or use that power to pursue other agendas?
Trust in government is for morons. It's as idiotic to expect the government to look out for your welfare as it is to think that Exxon is really concerned about pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere. It's also the retreat of the brain-dead to indulge in groupthink and to use the words 'for the greater good' when in reality what they mean is 'for the pursuit of our own agenda, at the expense of your freedom'.
If the environmentalists are truly interested in protecting the environment, they'd look for alternate, concrete solutions. Like buying up land themselves and dedicating it for a preserve; or making it possible for folks to sue not only corporations which harm them through indiscriminate and preventable pollution, but charging corporate execs who knowingly allow their company to engage in these actions with the murder of the folks who die from it. Right now, our government - that very government the environmentalists want us to trust to protect us from the 'evil' corporations - rarely allows the first and doesn't allow the second at all.
While it's true that environmentalists distrust technological creations' effects on the environment and on health, this doesn't discount environmentalists trusting the scientific method for observation.
Besides, science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island are fine counterexamples). Pesticides do have negatives effects on the environment (remember DDT?). Chemical preservatives cause cancer (More potassium benzoate in your maple syrup?).
By your reasoning science can't be trusted to build a perfectly safe airplane either. So I guess we should outlaw air travel altogether. And let's not even mention how faulty private automobiles are.
Science also can't be trusted to create a perfectly safe vaccine. Out of every group that gets the vaccine, a few always die - guess we should outlaw vaccines as well.
Sorry if I don't trust things that have proven themselves untrustworthy.
You use things that aren't perfectly trustworthy every single day. What you're doing here is selectively editing your perceptions about what constitutes big, bad, evil science, and what constitutes acceptable science.
Time to get a grip. You will *never* be safe, ever. Everything incurs risk. It's silly to complain about some risks while completely ignoring larger, more immediate ones simply because it's convenient for you to do so.
Observation is something completely different. In fact it is this very same scientific observation that causes environmentalists to realize that this technology is untrustworthy.
All technology is untrustworthy, by definition. There are no guarrantees. A rational human being knows this. Unfortunately, most so-called 'environmentalists' aren't even close to rational.
As someone who hails from a state that relies entirely on hydroelectric power, I fail to see what 'environmental' damage these plants are causing that in any way results in a strong argument for other sources of power.
Really, so a few species of fish die out. Big freakin' deal. You won't find me on the enviro-looney picket line screaming over the loss of a few types of salmon, or some obscure snail.
Choices have to be made: do you want coal power and the fish, or do you want clean hydro and screw the fish? That's what it boils down to, and so far the people who are in the position to make the choice - the residents of my state - vote 'hydro'.
I think we have our priorities straight. It's the morons in the extremist movements, advocating that we tear down all the dams to save the damned salmon, who have their collective heads up their asses. Until we come up with fusion or solar-collection satellites, the alternatives are much, much worse.
If the views of the common soldier are somehow psychically warped into a borg-like collective by their commanding officers, then the fact that King George rules America terrifies me all the more. Now I *know* my army will gladly take to the streets and kill American citizens with wild abandon, so long as someone in power labels them 'terrorists' first.
That is, if my self-serving, self-righteous, brain-dead fellow citizens don't do me in first for holding views contrary to their Holy Leader.
Don't look at this from a "I have nothing to hide, so therefore feel free to monitor my actions all the time" point of view. Look at it from a "I have nothing to hide, and have done nothing wrong, so therefore there's no need to monitor my actions all the time and it's intrusive to do so" view.
No, I look at this from the perspective of "I won't bother you if you won't bother me, so mind your own goddamned business." In other words, unless I'm intruding on your life in some undeniable fashion, fuck off.
What I do on my own time is my business, and mine alone. No one has any right to monitor my activities. I don't care if it's the nosey fuckwit neighbor next door who spends his time spying because his own life is so pathetically empty, or some 'official' government agency trying to 'keep America safe from terrorists'. My response is always going to be the same: "shove off, asshole. I'm not bothering you, so leave me the hell alone."
There are those of us who have this idea that our business is our business, and morons who use the "if you have nothing to hide argument..." are just Enquirer-reading losers wasting good oxygen, the sort of folks who'd be much better off with a bullet in the brain. Bother us enough and you might just get that bullet you're begging for.
Who gives a shit whether Freenet is used for what you consider to be earth-shattering important uses or not? The web in nearly its entirety is filled with inane, useless, masturbatory sites and yet I don't see anyone but a few brainless twits calling for its destruction.
Here's a newsflash: if Freenet doesn't ring your bell *then don't use it*. That's right, just don't download it and install it. Nobody's pointing a gun to your head.
As for the rest of us, whether or not we use it is *our* choice and *our* business. It isn't your choice, and it certainly isn't any of your damned business. Hear that? It - isn't - any - of - your - damned - business.
And why don't you provide some scientific, empirical studies published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal establishing a causal link between viewing porn and violence?
Go ahead, give it a shot. You won't find one because such a link has never been established. Asshole.
Oh, and what exactly is kiddie porn anyway? In Holland "Seventeen" magazine does great business because - get this - seventeen-year-olds are consenting adults. I suppose that we should apply the U.S. standard and arrest all those Dutch 'child pornographers'?
In Sweden the age of consent is 15. Gods forbid! Time to nuke all those nasty Swedes! Think of all the child-rape that's going on in that country!
Self-righteous little twits like you throw me off my feed. Thank the gods there's Freenet, a system which moralistic morons like yourself won't be able to touch no matter what sort of 'objectionable' material passes through the system.
Precisely what the hell are you going to do about it? Freenet works the way it works, and there's not a goddamned thing you can do to stop it, other than to whine or try to get it outlawed.
We've already seen how effective that is, what with all the assinine U.S. laws passed that are virtually unenforceable where the internet is concerned. With Freenet there's the problem of even locating who's using it in the first place, unless of course King George get's his wish and we all have surveillance cameras installed in our homes....
You may find that personally offensive because, perhaps, you won't be able to interfere with and monitor your neighbors personal affairs, but as your neighbor I say "to hell with you. mind your own damned business, you yahoo." And with Freenet, I can thumb my nose at you and make it stick.
Funny. When I used to do the hiring I automatically excluded anyone with any sort of CS/IS degree. A CS/IS degree meant that the person in question was too fucking stupid to teach themselves, so they had go to college and have someone do the job for them.
I also found that people with any sort of remotely-computer-oriented degree expected to be treated like absolute authorities and given large salaries. When they found out their boss had all of one computer class in college, waaaay back in the early '80's, their contempt was palpable - even when it was proven time and again that I could run circles around the twits.
It simply wasn't worth the effort, in terms of retraining or personnel management (having to deal with with the assholes) to hire them in the first place. So their resumes were automatically chucked into my round filing receptacle and never seen again.
The best workers I ever had tended to be self-taught kids who were constantly learning on their own time out of simple fascination. I gladly paid these young'ns large sums of money because they were so bloody good at their jobs. Were I to transfer back into management I'd continue with the same practices today, only moreso I think (the folks with the degrees seem even more arrogant these days, if that's possible - and with even less reason, given the quality of a 21st century education).
Hell, we played that back in 1983, complete with a nice black book of instructions detailing all the 'valid' methods of eliminating one's target. I believe the book was called "Killer", but I no longer have it so I'm not sure about that.
The most popular method was to simply walk into a class your victim had and shoot him with a dart gun. But I bet if you tried that today you'd be expelled and given a court order to see a psychiatrist.
You've got to be kidding. The Greenies aren't any different than the Democrats or the Republicans. All assholes whose sole goal in life is telling others what they can't do.
I mean, anyone who signs their/. posts when they're logged in and equates personal tastes with intelligence has got to be a big enough fool to throw away their vote in the closest election in decades.
Perhaps, but at least I'm not so much a fool as to make myself look like an idiot defending the obnoxious, stupid-sounding term 'warfighter'.
Retaliation against an armed aggressor? What armed aggressor? America hasn't been up against an armed aggressor since 1945.
In fact, all we've been doing since then is getting involved in petty wars to prove that this president or that president has a bigger dick than some other national leader.
Hey, fuck the rest of the world. Let them kill each other. Do I care? So long as they sell us oil who gives a shit if the Iraqis and Israelis wipe each other out? Who cares if the maniacs in the Balkans want to set up a Fourth Reich? Who really gives a damn if Libya decides to go on a North African rampage?
Honestly, if we just minded our own goddamned business in the Middle East do you really think the winner would refuse to sell oil to the biggest consumer on the planet? Yeah, tell me another.
I vote for non-interference and non-involvement. Let the fanatics have at each other. When the dust settles, do business with the winner.
Which is rather a good argument against representative democracy, which recently seems like an abject failure. Let's try something new, shall we? Perhaps an intelligence test to get the vote? And while we're at it, only those that can vote can breed.
So long as there's a bunch of anti-abortion pro-war shitheads who have nothing better to do than to fuck about in their neighbors business and vote for people who pass laws pissing all over the Constitution, Bush is pretty much set no matter what the Democrats do.
The primary problem here is that there are a whole bunch of Americans who just love being bent over and fucked up the ass by their politicians - so long as the guy next door with different political views gets the shaft as well. Minding your own fucking business is something the Enquirer-reading generation just can't seem to get a handle on.
And yet it's obvious to even the most thick-headed of us that the man is a complete fucking moron. As are, it appears, most of the twits who voted for him.
Which makes sense, given that half the population is below average in intelligence. Finally they have equal representation in the White House!
Had a friend who could pick a lock in 30 seconds. He picked my dead-bolt once in less than 60 seconds.
Goddamned annoying to come home late at night from work and find him parked in my favorite chair, watching TV and drinking my brews.
But after I almost shot him once when I thought he was an intruder he decided to go bother other folks and drink *their* brew. Ah, the gun! Better discouragement than any lock.
Jesus, you really *are* one of Bush's Bitches, aren't you? The word 'soldier' was good enough for our government for more than two centuries - now Bush shows up and somehow it no longer does the trick?
Please, kiss my ass. Not only is that a crock of shit, but the term 'warfighter' sounds fucking silly. Only a moron would find the term anything less than ludicrous.
Of course, the fact that Bush actually is a moron explains a great deal, including the inane term 'warfighter'.
The subject line says it all. Apparently the author, unable to think in spans of longer than ten years, concludes that the internet isn't a tool for freedom because every oppressive regime that doesn't have at least one internet-connected computer hasn't collapsed on itself already.
The internet isn't a violently intrusive tool. If it does contribute to the downfall to repression it'll do so slowly and insidiously, over the course of decades. Since most nations of the world had either no connection or a negligible connection to the internet back in '93, no conclusion can reasonably be reached as to its effect.
The book is bullshit, pure and simple. No one is in a position to say much of anything on the topic, and won't be for at least another 20 or 30 years.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I said I bought two monitors: one was the Rad-5, the other a Rad-5p. The two are clearly different in quality despite the claim that they're 'functionally equivalent'.
God knows why a post about monitors was modded as flamebait, but I guess that's just another case of slashdot idiocy.
Max
I have both a KDS Rad-5 and a Rad-5p. The Rad-5 is a good monitor; far, far easier on the eyes than any CRT ever was (even the better CRTs give me trouble after a couple of hours).
The Rad-5p was bought after the Rad-5, and was shipped in the Rad-5 box. The Rad-5p is clearly inferior to the Rad-5. Unfortunately the machine self-identified as a Rad-5 and I thought the poor display was due to my inability to get the video drivers working properly (different video card on the machine with the Rad-5p). Having determined the problem was my fault, I simply decided to live with it until I discovered, seven months later (and one month after the return guarrantee expired), that the monitor wasn't a Rad-5 after all (a new set of video drivers correctly identified the monitor). The company, of course, refused to take back the monitor and replace it with the one I actually wanted. Their reasoning: in small print it actually says that they'll ship a Rad-5p instead of a Rad-5 if the latter is out of stock, as these two are 'functionally equivalent'.
Bastards....
In any event, the KDS Rad-5 is a good monitor and worth the money. The Rad-5p sucks donkey dick. If you buy KDS, make damn sure the company that's providing the monitor actually sends you an honest-to-god Rad-5. My computers are always-on and the Rad-5 hasn't had a single dead pixel in all the time that I've owned it. I can't say the same for other brands bought by folks I know.
Max
Let's see...my choices for President in 2000 were:
- a looney right-wing religious fanatic with a deep hatred for anything not upper-class, white, and American;
- a political tool of the democratic party and a consummate liar, lacking the spine to act independently of the wishes of his campaign contributors;
- a socialist 'greater good' greenie wannabe dictator who's absolutely convinced that the only way to 'protect' the consumer/citizen is through...more government. More government acting according to *his* grand view of the Brave New World, of course.
Yeee-eess. I must say, what a hopeful set of options. These 'choices' were reflected in miniature in all of my state and local elections as well. Crooks, fools, bigots, and would-be totalitarian idiots, one and all.
I am *so* happy to be American.
BTW, I voted for Gore. I voted for Gore because I hated the man slightly less than I hated Bush and Nader. It turns out I might as well have not voted at all, since the Supreme Court decided to ignore the process and choose the candidate themselves.
Really, being an American just tickles me pink. My wife, on the other hand, is gathering information on what it takes to become a Canadian citizen and urging us to move to British Columbia. She has this odd idea that perhaps we'll have some 'terrorist' incident which, coincidentally enough, will result in national martial law and the suspension of elections come 2004...at least if Bush is losing in the polls, that is.
I already got the accent from my grandparents, eh? I should fit right in.
Max
Anyone who thinks the US is a true "police state" is automatically an intellectually devoid overreactionary.
Well now, that depends on what you think the minimum qualifications for a police state are.
Right now the government can come and kidnap you, then imprison you indefinitely without any recourse to the court system and in complete violation of the U.S. Constitution. I use the word 'kidnap' because they don't even have to arrest you; all they have to do is declare that you're a 'material witness' to some unspecified crime.
That's it. Piss someone off in power and away you go, with no chance of regaining your freedom until those in power choose to let you go.
How anyone can see this as anything but a characteristic of a police state is beyond me. Guess your definition of 'freedom' allows you to overlook those kinds of abuses - so long as they don't happen to you, eh?
Max
This way? Anyone stupid enough to enter is too stupid to be hired by Microsoft.
Given the quality of their software, I'd say anyone stupid enough to enter is probably MS management material.
Max
That should be 'more fallible', not 'more infallible'.
Max
Of course environmentalists want to deprive others of rights. That's rather the point of any movement, isn't it? To transfer power from one group of people to another. Otherwise, there isn't much of a point in this sort of movement at all.
It's all a struggle for power. Corporations want the power to do as they please in the name of profit; environmentalists want the power do as they please in the name of the environment. But power-seeking is always a zero-sum game; if you gain power, you've taken it from someone else.
As a happy little Randian Libertarian I firmly believe that the best government is that which governs least, for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is that the bigger government gets, the less interested it seems in anything but chasing its own dreams of power-mongering regardless of the consequences. The environmentalist idea of giving yet more power to the government in order to protect the environment seems to me to be the worst possible outcome when said government has little, if any, interest in the environment, and will most likely use the additional power it gets for other purposes. Regardless of what the Bushites and others wearing rose-colored blinders say, government is not here to help.
This is where any environmentalist plank is fundamentally flawed. Government is run by people who are no more moral or infallible than anyone else, and indeed, have proven time and again that they're often quite a bit less moral and more infallible. Do you honestly think that the best solution is to hand yet more power to these people and hope they don't fuck things up, or use that power to pursue other agendas?
Trust in government is for morons. It's as idiotic to expect the government to look out for your welfare as it is to think that Exxon is really concerned about pumping noxious gases into the atmosphere. It's also the retreat of the brain-dead to indulge in groupthink and to use the words 'for the greater good' when in reality what they mean is 'for the pursuit of our own agenda, at the expense of your freedom'.
If the environmentalists are truly interested in protecting the environment, they'd look for alternate, concrete solutions. Like buying up land themselves and dedicating it for a preserve; or making it possible for folks to sue not only corporations which harm them through indiscriminate and preventable pollution, but charging corporate execs who knowingly allow their company to engage in these actions with the murder of the folks who die from it. Right now, our government - that very government the environmentalists want us to trust to protect us from the 'evil' corporations - rarely allows the first and doesn't allow the second at all.
Max
While it's true that environmentalists distrust technological creations' effects on the environment and on health, this doesn't discount environmentalists trusting the scientific method for observation.
Besides, science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island are fine counterexamples). Pesticides do have negatives effects on the environment (remember DDT?). Chemical preservatives cause cancer (More potassium benzoate in your maple syrup?).
By your reasoning science can't be trusted to build a perfectly safe airplane either. So I guess we should outlaw air travel altogether. And let's not even mention how faulty private automobiles are.
Science also can't be trusted to create a perfectly safe vaccine. Out of every group that gets the vaccine, a few always die - guess we should outlaw vaccines as well.
Sorry if I don't trust things that have proven themselves untrustworthy.
You use things that aren't perfectly trustworthy every single day. What you're doing here is selectively editing your perceptions about what constitutes big, bad, evil science, and what constitutes acceptable science.
Time to get a grip. You will *never* be safe, ever. Everything incurs risk. It's silly to complain about some risks while completely ignoring larger, more immediate ones simply because it's convenient for you to do so.
Observation is something completely different. In fact it is this very same scientific observation that causes environmentalists to realize that this technology is untrustworthy.
All technology is untrustworthy, by definition. There are no guarrantees. A rational human being knows this. Unfortunately, most so-called 'environmentalists' aren't even close to rational.
Max
As someone who hails from a state that relies entirely on hydroelectric power, I fail to see what 'environmental' damage these plants are causing that in any way results in a strong argument for other sources of power.
Really, so a few species of fish die out. Big freakin' deal. You won't find me on the enviro-looney picket line screaming over the loss of a few types of salmon, or some obscure snail.
Choices have to be made: do you want coal power and the fish, or do you want clean hydro and screw the fish? That's what it boils down to, and so far the people who are in the position to make the choice - the residents of my state - vote 'hydro'.
I think we have our priorities straight. It's the morons in the extremist movements, advocating that we tear down all the dams to save the damned salmon, who have their collective heads up their asses. Until we come up with fusion or solar-collection satellites, the alternatives are much, much worse.
Max
If the views of the common soldier are somehow psychically warped into a borg-like collective by their commanding officers, then the fact that King George rules America terrifies me all the more. Now I *know* my army will gladly take to the streets and kill American citizens with wild abandon, so long as someone in power labels them 'terrorists' first.
That is, if my self-serving, self-righteous, brain-dead fellow citizens don't do me in first for holding views contrary to their Holy Leader.
Max
Don't look at this from a "I have nothing to hide, so therefore feel free to monitor my actions all the time" point of view. Look at it from a "I have nothing to hide, and have done nothing wrong, so therefore there's no need to monitor my actions all the time and it's intrusive to do so" view.
No, I look at this from the perspective of "I won't bother you if you won't bother me, so mind your own goddamned business." In other words, unless I'm intruding on your life in some undeniable fashion, fuck off.
What I do on my own time is my business, and mine alone. No one has any right to monitor my activities. I don't care if it's the nosey fuckwit neighbor next door who spends his time spying because his own life is so pathetically empty, or some 'official' government agency trying to 'keep America safe from terrorists'. My response is always going to be the same: "shove off, asshole. I'm not bothering you, so leave me the hell alone."
There are those of us who have this idea that our business is our business, and morons who use the "if you have nothing to hide argument..." are just Enquirer-reading losers wasting good oxygen, the sort of folks who'd be much better off with a bullet in the brain. Bother us enough and you might just get that bullet you're begging for.
Max
Who gives a shit whether Freenet is used for what you consider to be earth-shattering important uses or not? The web in nearly its entirety is filled with inane, useless, masturbatory sites and yet I don't see anyone but a few brainless twits calling for its destruction.
Here's a newsflash: if Freenet doesn't ring your bell *then don't use it*. That's right, just don't download it and install it. Nobody's pointing a gun to your head.
As for the rest of us, whether or not we use it is *our* choice and *our* business. It isn't your choice, and it certainly isn't any of your damned business. Hear that? It - isn't - any - of - your - damned - business.
Was that slow enough for you?
Max
And why don't you provide some scientific, empirical studies published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal establishing a causal link between viewing porn and violence?
Go ahead, give it a shot. You won't find one because such a link has never been established. Asshole.
Oh, and what exactly is kiddie porn anyway? In Holland "Seventeen" magazine does great business because - get this - seventeen-year-olds are consenting adults. I suppose that we should apply the U.S. standard and arrest all those Dutch 'child pornographers'?
In Sweden the age of consent is 15. Gods forbid! Time to nuke all those nasty Swedes! Think of all the child-rape that's going on in that country!
Self-righteous little twits like you throw me off my feed. Thank the gods there's Freenet, a system which moralistic morons like yourself won't be able to touch no matter what sort of 'objectionable' material passes through the system.
Max
Ah, bullshit. I like porn. Porn is good. More porn, please!
And I couldn't tell you the brand of my sneakers if my life depended on it. Who gives a shit about sneakers when you can spend the money on porn?
Max
Precisely what the hell are you going to do about it? Freenet works the way it works, and there's not a goddamned thing you can do to stop it, other than to whine or try to get it outlawed.
We've already seen how effective that is, what with all the assinine U.S. laws passed that are virtually unenforceable where the internet is concerned. With Freenet there's the problem of even locating who's using it in the first place, unless of course King George get's his wish and we all have surveillance cameras installed in our homes....
You may find that personally offensive because, perhaps, you won't be able to interfere with and monitor your neighbors personal affairs, but as your neighbor I say "to hell with you. mind your own damned business, you yahoo." And with Freenet, I can thumb my nose at you and make it stick.
Max
Funny. When I used to do the hiring I automatically excluded anyone with any sort of CS/IS degree. A CS/IS degree meant that the person in question was too fucking stupid to teach themselves, so they had go to college and have someone do the job for them.
I also found that people with any sort of remotely-computer-oriented degree expected to be treated like absolute authorities and given large salaries. When they found out their boss had all of one computer class in college, waaaay back in the early '80's, their contempt was palpable - even when it was proven time and again that I could run circles around the twits.
It simply wasn't worth the effort, in terms of retraining or personnel management (having to deal with with the assholes) to hire them in the first place. So their resumes were automatically chucked into my round filing receptacle and never seen again.
The best workers I ever had tended to be self-taught kids who were constantly learning on their own time out of simple fascination. I gladly paid these young'ns large sums of money because they were so bloody good at their jobs. Were I to transfer back into management I'd continue with the same practices today, only moreso I think (the folks with the degrees seem even more arrogant these days, if that's possible - and with even less reason, given the quality of a 21st century education).
Max
Hell, we played that back in 1983, complete with a nice black book of instructions detailing all the 'valid' methods of eliminating one's target. I believe the book was called "Killer", but I no longer have it so I'm not sure about that.
The most popular method was to simply walk into a class your victim had and shoot him with a dart gun. But I bet if you tried that today you'd be expelled and given a court order to see a psychiatrist.
Max
You voted Green, didn't you?
/. posts when they're logged in and equates personal tastes with intelligence has got to be a big enough fool to throw away their vote in the closest election in decades.
You've got to be kidding. The Greenies aren't any different than the Democrats or the Republicans. All assholes whose sole goal in life is telling others what they can't do.
I mean, anyone who signs their
Perhaps, but at least I'm not so much a fool as to make myself look like an idiot defending the obnoxious, stupid-sounding term 'warfighter'.
Max
Retaliation against an armed aggressor? What armed aggressor? America hasn't been up against an armed aggressor since 1945.
In fact, all we've been doing since then is getting involved in petty wars to prove that this president or that president has a bigger dick than some other national leader.
Hey, fuck the rest of the world. Let them kill each other. Do I care? So long as they sell us oil who gives a shit if the Iraqis and Israelis wipe each other out? Who cares if the maniacs in the Balkans want to set up a Fourth Reich? Who really gives a damn if Libya decides to go on a North African rampage?
Honestly, if we just minded our own goddamned business in the Middle East do you really think the winner would refuse to sell oil to the biggest consumer on the planet? Yeah, tell me another.
I vote for non-interference and non-involvement. Let the fanatics have at each other. When the dust settles, do business with the winner.
Max
Which is rather a good argument against representative democracy, which recently seems like an abject failure. Let's try something new, shall we? Perhaps an intelligence test to get the vote? And while we're at it, only those that can vote can breed.
Max
So long as there's a bunch of anti-abortion pro-war shitheads who have nothing better to do than to fuck about in their neighbors business and vote for people who pass laws pissing all over the Constitution, Bush is pretty much set no matter what the Democrats do.
The primary problem here is that there are a whole bunch of Americans who just love being bent over and fucked up the ass by their politicians - so long as the guy next door with different political views gets the shaft as well. Minding your own fucking business is something the Enquirer-reading generation just can't seem to get a handle on.
Probably because their own lives are so pathetic.
Max
And yet it's obvious to even the most thick-headed of us that the man is a complete fucking moron. As are, it appears, most of the twits who voted for him.
Which makes sense, given that half the population is below average in intelligence. Finally they have equal representation in the White House!
Max
Had a friend who could pick a lock in 30 seconds. He picked my dead-bolt once in less than 60 seconds.
Goddamned annoying to come home late at night from work and find him parked in my favorite chair, watching TV and drinking my brews.
But after I almost shot him once when I thought he was an intruder he decided to go bother other folks and drink *their* brew. Ah, the gun! Better discouragement than any lock.
Max
Jesus, you really *are* one of Bush's Bitches, aren't you? The word 'soldier' was good enough for our government for more than two centuries - now Bush shows up and somehow it no longer does the trick?
Please, kiss my ass. Not only is that a crock of shit, but the term 'warfighter' sounds fucking silly. Only a moron would find the term anything less than ludicrous.
Of course, the fact that Bush actually is a moron explains a great deal, including the inane term 'warfighter'.
Max
The subject line says it all. Apparently the author, unable to think in spans of longer than ten years, concludes that the internet isn't a tool for freedom because every oppressive regime that doesn't have at least one internet-connected computer hasn't collapsed on itself already.
The internet isn't a violently intrusive tool. If it does contribute to the downfall to repression it'll do so slowly and insidiously, over the course of decades. Since most nations of the world had either no connection or a negligible connection to the internet back in '93, no conclusion can reasonably be reached as to its effect.
The book is bullshit, pure and simple. No one is in a position to say much of anything on the topic, and won't be for at least another 20 or 30 years.
Max