"He is referring to the medical doctor, not baltar. As for Cylons why not the communications lady?"
Why not every single human on the show is a secret Cylon?
This is part in jest, but the only way I can think of to get out of the "cliffhanger shocker!" from the end of the season is to bring in the Cylon clone of the person affected.
"OK. Spoiler Warning (kinda): hollywood has trashed this story many times but I'm talking about the original novel now, goes by the name "F-----------". "
What was this novel's original name? Or the author? I can't say I've ever heard of it. The title you have given is basically ungoogelable, so it remains a mystery.
"The purpose of the ban was clear, it was a vain hope, but a hope to try to keep a clean jury pool"
Yet another place where the internet bypasses the ban.
"As far as having "strategic" industries, you can disagree with them all you like"
As long as it does not involve censorship. See my other reply to you about how to protect Canadian broadcasters without censoring a thing.
"Sorry, not all things can be purely market driven. Some things, like an indigenous broadcast industry are in the national interest"
While I also have extreme distaste for any government involvement in media or "official government news, why not try this approach? I find it much less onerous than censorship. It would protect the indiginous broadcast industry, while it would not trample on the basic rights that free citizens have in other countries:
Increase tax funding to the CBC/etc and make it more robust, with more channels.
Force the cable TV carriers to carry it. Make sure it is broadcast to most Canadian homes as well over the air.
Lift all bans on "outside" channels.
Then, your native industry is protected, and "Canadian Content" is available to all, who still have the freedom of choice.
If even this is not acceptible, what of the Web? If TV viewers abandon TV and become Web users, do you propose a sort of "Great Firewall" to "protect" Canadian web content?
Melts in your space, not on your planet
on
Space Elevator Update
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Our previous best accomplishment in this domain, pioneered by the great elevator engineer Willy Wonka with his ground breaking...."
Ground-breaking is right! Mr. Wonka's ingenious solution to base the elevator on a weave of microchocolate fibres is to be applauded. However, once the sun shone on this, the chocolate string melted and the elevator hit like a meteor.
Next time, Mr. Wonka, consider using Oompa-Loompa hair fibers. Or maybe you can beam astronauts into space with that TV ray. Who cares if they come back from their mission 1 inch high?
"To be fair, Quebec allows people to communicate in any language privately"
The Quebec laws actually do censor private communication (i.e. non-government, non-official communication). The "to be fair" someone in Quebec mentioned elsewhere is that the laws are not enforced.
"Bizarre in the here and now. Ironically, the harder you try to preserve and freeze a culture the faster it dies. This is one the world could do without."
I agree. If it only exists due to paranoid, xenophobic laws, what good is it anyway?
"Sorry, not all things can be purely market driven. Some things, like an indigenous broadcast industry are in the national interest. "
I strongly disagree on this, when it means censoring outside voices. The interests of a free person in a free society vs the interest of the rulers to "keep them from seeing things we don't want them to see."
"You can be busted and fined for trying to bring a cup of foreign rice into Japan."
That is a lot less important than being denied the right to read/see what you want to. I find it very hard to justify censorship of any kind. However, this type of censorship "in the national interest" ranks up there with bookburning. It is really similar in ways. This is one thing that must be left purely market driven, because in this "the market" is the ability to read/see/etc what you want.
My Canadian friends strongly resent the censorship, and have no moral problem with circumventing censorship regulations so they can see what they want.
"The point was six million Quebecers would be horribly outnumbered."
Yes. I can't imagine the racist xenophobic mindset present in Quebec law that so many Quebecoi love would be too friendly to those who choose to speak Spanish.
It's a tax alright. Just because it is a kind of tax that you apparently like does not mean it is not a tax.
"I'm not forgetting it, it's just not relevant"
The specific problem mentioned is where this tax causes you to pay more in other taxes.
"Just because someone misuses a term, does not make that term correct. And you provided no links - just text"
I provided the sources for most of those quotations that accurately call a tax a tax. If you think I am a liar, go look them up. Otherwise, there is no reason to.
"You pay tax on pretty much everything, does that make *everything you buy* a tax?"
No. Only when the government forces me to pay an extra fee on it that has nothing to with anything. This is a tax like any other. The government forces the person to pay the government money, and then the government takes this money and gives it to another. You are trying to get off on the technicality that while the government forcibly swipes this money, it does not technically pass through government hands on its way to the Canadian copyright organization, which receives the money as a massive payment of corporate welfare. That is what it boils down to: taxation to fund corporate welfare.
These two situations are the same thing:
non-levy tax: The government forces you to pay it money when you buy a CD. The government takes this money and gives it to a copyright organisation.
levy tax: The government forces you to pay the tax directly to the corporate welfare recipient (the Canadiana copyright organisation) without the money passing through government hands.
The above situations are both taxes. The accounting is simpler with the tax you call a levy, however.
"By your logic, your car is a tax"
You are babbling. Wild analogies that are never explained or justified do sound like that.
"*who actually knows what the words mean* states *that it is a tax and not a levy*."
If they know what words mean, they won't be denying that this specific kind of tax is a tax.
"*sigh* can you not read? It is *not* a tax, it is a levy. They are Two. Different. Things."
Typing like Shatner when you are saying something that is entirely incorrect does not make it any more true.
"Just because someone misuses a term, does not make that term correct"
"There are a lot of people who currently think you can free-fall from outer space back into the atmosphere as long as you have a pressure suit and a chute"
That's no fun unless you have a snowboard too, man! Cowabunga!
Not to be the piler-on of FUD, but there are other things besides terrorism to be taken into account. Consider all the airplanes that have been lost to simple human error, maintenance machanics, and cutting corners. "Value Jet", however you spell it, comes to mind first.
Such as system needs to have in place some sort of failsafe or redunancy so that such disasters, be they intended, or the result of Teamsters' laziness, do not destroy it all. A (non-Beowulf) cluster of several nano-lines? A sort of web of them so that you could smash through several lines and the thing would still hold?
"...and I propose that we call it "the Space Superhighway".
(In a pinch, some might call it the Nanobahn. Once some drunken shuttle pilot hits it and causes it to fall and wrap around the planet, it will be known as the World Wide Wire.)
"No, not really, and in response to another reply, I didn't include Mexico and Central America in the population numbers because they are predominatly Spanish speaking and combined have 300 million people as well."
You referred to "the continent". The continent the United States and Canada are on includes Mexico and Central America.
"I do wonder though how the rest of the continent would view a nation being founded in their midst that has born on the basis of racial and cultural purity"
Not just the continent, the world. With laws that deny basic rights in order "preserve the culture", they put themselves in the same boat with Serbia in the 1990s and Germany in the 1930s.
People complain about how much the US is "to the right" of other countries. However, our ethnic/cultural fascist wing (Pat Buchanan, etc) is on the outside of the mainstream: properly shunned. In Canada, you have such "oppress the 'alien' culture elements" fascists in the main posts of power in one of the largest provinces.
I am guessing that Pat Buchanan loves the Quebec principle of censoring and crushing those who are not culturally pure, but I have not seen his words on the subject. I know he would like the United States to be run this way (having Quebec-like laws to censor people from using Spanish in their private affairs).
"Actually it has less to do with "preserving the culture" than helping the Canadian industry to survive"
If an industry must have such barriers in order to survive, then it is not viable in the first place. Take down the barriers and put it out of its misery. The same thing applies to US industries like the auto industries. We've had barriers here to protect the US auto industry from the fact that they still can't make cars as good as Japan.
"If they separated, they would be a market of about six million on a continent of 300 million english speakers."
I think you are leaving out most of the countries in the continent, which happen to speak Spanish, including Mexico which is much more populous than Canada.
"If they separated, they would be a market of about six million on a continent of 300 million english speakers."
Is there a way to separate the market temporarily without Quebec leaving Canada? That way, you can watch the language problem die out. Afterwards, re-integrate the market. The language-nazis would be gone, and the Quebecoi would be able to breathe easier in whatever language they want.
Gore's statement about inventing the Internet is now a matter of public record. It cannot be erased. Live with it. Get over it. It does not make me think less of him, why should it?
"Armey and lots of others that politically opposed him *lied* and misquoted him"
I have yet to see one of Armey's quotes or analize it. What Armey said or did not say does not change the fact that Gore made a misstatement about Internet history.
"People in the know said that Gore deserves credit for being there for them before anyone else"
People in the know know that before Gore was there, there were others who had created the Internet before Gore was even elected to Congress.
"Not coincidentally, Gore's statement is accurate"
How is it in any way accurate? The Internet started in 1969. It had the name Internet by 1974. Gore was elected in 1976. Given the irrefutable facts of history, it was not accurate of Gore to claim he took the iniative in creating it while in Congress.
"...Armey-et-al lie...."
You are rather off topic.
"You say Gore 'admitted that he misspoke'. To anyone smarter than a houseplant or GWB, that means not a *lie* but that admitting that there was a better way to describe things."
Lie? I have not used that claim in this argument. Repeatedly, I have referred to it as a mistatement, a mistake. Not something he intended to say. Maybe ARMEY said it, but who cares. The whole mention of Armey is a straw-man argument.
The tally is:
The right? Does not really matter in this. The Right did not make in incorrect claim of creating the internet. However, for the Right to call the incorrect claim a LIE is very likely unfair.
The left? Gore slipped up, and admitted his mistake. Gore comes out looking clean. Yet, there are blind apologists on his side that think it serves Gore to twist history and words beyong meaning to try and make out like a bad statement is really true. You blind apologists are calling Gore a liar by insisting that the bad statement is true even though Gore said it was not.
"If that seems harsh, I hear Dubya's got a habit..."
Ah. I see where you are coming from. By using a common insult for Bush, you betray that you are not interested in facts: you just want to spin things to favor your party. That is all. Your arguments lose credibility like those of right-wingers who call Clinton "Slickwilly". Well, you can always go back to babbling about Dick Armey.
This scam-operation has sent me many spams with fraudulent information and deceptive headers. Would you trust a university that hides itself among the penis enlargers and v1cont1n hucksters?
"Not about a policy passed inside a nation by an elected governement who was voted in office by a majority of the population and that had the population support in doing so..."
If the policy involves language-nazis regulating a personal matter such as what language they use in private communications, that is about as bad.
"Not about a policy passed inside a nation by an elected governement who was voted in office by a majority of the population and that had the population support in doing so..."
"Those channels are banned because Canada wishes to keep it's culture somewhat separate from the US."
Again, any culture that requires censorship in order to preserve it is not worth preserving. If it can't survive by allowing people basic freedoms of expression, what is it worth?
Besides, you are incorrect. The channels are banned because the Canadian government wants them censored. I've talked to many Canadians about this, and most of them want the personal choice to receive evil "outside" channels. It is the basic right of any individual in a free society, even if culture-nazis want censorship.
"It's to protect our sovereignty from a valid threat that is the United States of America"
If Canada is so "threatened" by the prospect of information flowing freely, what is it worth? If this is really true, Canada has vastly inferior culture that can only survive by draconian laws, and truly belongs on the "ash heap" of history or in a museum.
And what about the soveriegnty of Canadian citizens who want to be able to make their own choices?
"Now all we ask is to insure that BOTH languages are available... Thats not that much to ask."
"there were enven french employee forced to speak english to french speaking customer due to Company policy... Now that was fascistic"
How? Was the government involved? No. Now you have the government forcing langauge choices on business. That is what is fascistic.
Why not leave such a personal communication and expression decision up to the people? Note: I'm not talking about official government business. I'm talking about the draconian laws you are in so favor of that control private (non-government) speech.
As for the justification you are using of retribution against the English "who owned everything", that is sounding similar to a certain other country that, like Quebec, had laws to censor and silence private communication for "nationalist" reasons, but they blamed it all on the Jews "who owned everything". This is a dangerous road to go down.
Any culture that has to have draconian laws to preserve it is not worthy of preserving.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not every single human on the show is a secret Cylon?
This is part in jest, but the only way I can think of to get out of the "cliffhanger shocker!" from the end of the season is to bring in the Cylon clone of the person affected.
What was this novel's original name? Or the author? I can't say I've ever heard of it. The title you have given is basically ungoogelable, so it remains a mystery.
As long as it does not involve censorship. See my other reply to you about how to protect Canadian broadcasters without censoring a thing.
"Robinson made it up. You know, from his imagination." I had no idea! I thought it really happened and messed up our Mars colonies!!!!!
While I also have extreme distaste for any government involvement in media or "official government news, why not try this approach? I find it much less onerous than censorship. It would protect the indiginous broadcast industry, while it would not trample on the basic rights that free citizens have in other countries:
Increase tax funding to the CBC/etc and make it more robust, with more channels.
Force the cable TV carriers to carry it. Make sure it is broadcast to most Canadian homes as well over the air.
Lift all bans on "outside" channels.
Then, your native industry is protected, and "Canadian Content" is available to all, who still have the freedom of choice.
If even this is not acceptible, what of the Web? If TV viewers abandon TV and become Web users, do you propose a sort of "Great Firewall" to "protect" Canadian web content?
Ground-breaking is right! Mr. Wonka's ingenious solution to base the elevator on a weave of microchocolate fibres is to be applauded. However, once the sun shone on this, the chocolate string melted and the elevator hit like a meteor.
Next time, Mr. Wonka, consider using Oompa-Loompa hair fibers. Or maybe you can beam astronauts into space with that TV ray. Who cares if they come back from their mission 1 inch high?
The Quebec laws actually do censor private communication (i.e. non-government, non-official communication). The "to be fair" someone in Quebec mentioned elsewhere is that the laws are not enforced.
"Bizarre in the here and now. Ironically, the harder you try to preserve and freeze a culture the faster it dies. This is one the world could do without."
I agree. If it only exists due to paranoid, xenophobic laws, what good is it anyway?
I strongly disagree on this, when it means censoring outside voices. The interests of a free person in a free society vs the interest of the rulers to "keep them from seeing things we don't want them to see."
"You can be busted and fined for trying to bring a cup of foreign rice into Japan."
That is a lot less important than being denied the right to read/see what you want to. I find it very hard to justify censorship of any kind. However, this type of censorship "in the national interest" ranks up there with bookburning. It is really similar in ways. This is one thing that must be left purely market driven, because in this "the market" is the ability to read/see/etc what you want.
My Canadian friends strongly resent the censorship, and have no moral problem with circumventing censorship regulations so they can see what they want.
Yes. I can't imagine the racist xenophobic mindset present in Quebec law that so many Quebecoi love would be too friendly to those who choose to speak Spanish.
"I'm not forgetting it, it's just not relevant"
The specific problem mentioned is where this tax causes you to pay more in other taxes.
"Just because someone misuses a term, does not make that term correct. And you provided no links - just text"
I provided the sources for most of those quotations that accurately call a tax a tax. If you think I am a liar, go look them up. Otherwise, there is no reason to.
"You pay tax on pretty much everything, does that make *everything you buy* a tax?"
No. Only when the government forces me to pay an extra fee on it that has nothing to with anything. This is a tax like any other. The government forces the person to pay the government money, and then the government takes this money and gives it to another. You are trying to get off on the technicality that while the government forcibly swipes this money, it does not technically pass through government hands on its way to the Canadian copyright organization, which receives the money as a massive payment of corporate welfare. That is what it boils down to: taxation to fund corporate welfare.
These two situations are the same thing:
non-levy tax: The government forces you to pay it money when you buy a CD. The government takes this money and gives it to a copyright organisation.
levy tax: The government forces you to pay the tax directly to the corporate welfare recipient (the Canadiana copyright organisation) without the money passing through government hands.
The above situations are both taxes. The accounting is simpler with the tax you call a levy, however.
"By your logic, your car is a tax"
You are babbling. Wild analogies that are never explained or justified do sound like that.
"*who actually knows what the words mean* states *that it is a tax and not a levy*."
If they know what words mean, they won't be denying that this specific kind of tax is a tax.
"*sigh* can you not read? It is *not* a tax, it is a levy. They are Two. Different. Things."
Typing like Shatner when you are saying something that is entirely incorrect does not make it any more true.
"Just because someone misuses a term, does not make that term correct"
Words for you to live by.
That's no fun unless you have a snowboard too, man! Cowabunga!
This is a space elevator we are talking about. Might as well have the sign say "In case of emergency, use stars."
Such as system needs to have in place some sort of failsafe or redunancy so that such disasters, be they intended, or the result of Teamsters' laziness, do not destroy it all. A (non-Beowulf) cluster of several nano-lines? A sort of web of them so that you could smash through several lines and the thing would still hold?
(In a pinch, some might call it the Nanobahn. Once some drunken shuttle pilot hits it and causes it to fall and wrap around the planet, it will be known as the World Wide Wire.)
Read the "Mars" series by Kim Stanley Robinson. There is a part where a space tether gets severed and wreaks havoc on the surface of Mars.
You referred to "the continent". The continent the United States and Canada are on includes Mexico and Central America.
People complain about how much the US is "to the right" of other countries. However, our ethnic/cultural fascist wing (Pat Buchanan, etc) is on the outside of the mainstream: properly shunned. In Canada, you have such "oppress the 'alien' culture elements" fascists in the main posts of power in one of the largest provinces.
I am guessing that Pat Buchanan loves the Quebec principle of censoring and crushing those who are not culturally pure, but I have not seen his words on the subject. I know he would like the United States to be run this way (having Quebec-like laws to censor people from using Spanish in their private affairs).
If an industry must have such barriers in order to survive, then it is not viable in the first place. Take down the barriers and put it out of its misery. The same thing applies to US industries like the auto industries. We've had barriers here to protect the US auto industry from the fact that they still can't make cars as good as Japan.
I think you are leaving out most of the countries in the continent, which happen to speak Spanish, including Mexico which is much more populous than Canada.
Is there a way to separate the market temporarily without Quebec leaving Canada? That way, you can watch the language problem die out. Afterwards, re-integrate the market. The language-nazis would be gone, and the Quebecoi would be able to breathe easier in whatever language they want.
Rather: Gore said he did invent the internet.
"The lie lives on, considering the title of TFA."
Gore's statement about inventing the Internet is now a matter of public record. It cannot be erased. Live with it. Get over it. It does not make me think less of him, why should it?
"Armey and lots of others that politically opposed him *lied* and misquoted him" I have yet to see one of Armey's quotes or analize it. What Armey said or did not say does not change the fact that Gore made a misstatement about Internet history.
"People in the know said that Gore deserves credit for being there for them before anyone else"
People in the know know that before Gore was there, there were others who had created the Internet before Gore was even elected to Congress.
"Not coincidentally, Gore's statement is accurate"
How is it in any way accurate? The Internet started in 1969. It had the name Internet by 1974. Gore was elected in 1976. Given the irrefutable facts of history, it was not accurate of Gore to claim he took the iniative in creating it while in Congress.
"...Armey-et-al lie...."
You are rather off topic.
"You say Gore 'admitted that he misspoke'. To anyone smarter than a houseplant or GWB, that means not a *lie* but that admitting that there was a better way to describe things."
Lie? I have not used that claim in this argument. Repeatedly, I have referred to it as a mistatement, a mistake. Not something he intended to say. Maybe ARMEY said it, but who cares. The whole mention of Armey is a straw-man argument.
The tally is:
The right? Does not really matter in this. The Right did not make in incorrect claim of creating the internet. However, for the Right to call the incorrect claim a LIE is very likely unfair.
The left? Gore slipped up, and admitted his mistake. Gore comes out looking clean. Yet, there are blind apologists on his side that think it serves Gore to twist history and words beyong meaning to try and make out like a bad statement is really true. You blind apologists are calling Gore a liar by insisting that the bad statement is true even though Gore said it was not.
"If that seems harsh, I hear Dubya's got a habit..."
Ah. I see where you are coming from. By using a common insult for Bush, you betray that you are not interested in facts: you just want to spin things to favor your party. That is all. Your arguments lose credibility like those of right-wingers who call Clinton "Slickwilly". Well, you can always go back to babbling about Dick Armey.
This scam-operation has sent me many spams with fraudulent information and deceptive headers. Would you trust a university that hides itself among the penis enlargers and v1cont1n hucksters?
If the policy involves language-nazis regulating a personal matter such as what language they use in private communications, that is about as bad.
"Not about a policy passed inside a nation by an elected governement who was voted in office by a majority of the population and that had the population support in doing so..."
Again, any culture that requires censorship in order to preserve it is not worth preserving. If it can't survive by allowing people basic freedoms of expression, what is it worth?
Besides, you are incorrect. The channels are banned because the Canadian government wants them censored. I've talked to many Canadians about this, and most of them want the personal choice to receive evil "outside" channels. It is the basic right of any individual in a free society, even if culture-nazis want censorship.
"It's to protect our sovereignty from a valid threat that is the United States of America"
If Canada is so "threatened" by the prospect of information flowing freely, what is it worth? If this is really true, Canada has vastly inferior culture that can only survive by draconian laws, and truly belongs on the "ash heap" of history or in a museum.
And what about the soveriegnty of Canadian citizens who want to be able to make their own choices?
"there were enven french employee forced to speak english to french speaking customer due to Company policy... Now that was fascistic"
How? Was the government involved? No. Now you have the government forcing langauge choices on business. That is what is fascistic.
Why not leave such a personal communication and expression decision up to the people? Note: I'm not talking about official government business. I'm talking about the draconian laws you are in so favor of that control private (non-government) speech.
As for the justification you are using of retribution against the English "who owned everything", that is sounding similar to a certain other country that, like Quebec, had laws to censor and silence private communication for "nationalist" reasons, but they blamed it all on the Jews "who owned everything". This is a dangerous road to go down.
Any culture that has to have draconian laws to preserve it is not worthy of preserving.