...and Clinton was too busy getting blowjobs to care.
Neither point is actually relevant, but one of us is so seething with hatred for Bush II that it just HAS to be said, right?
No, Bush2 RECLASSIFIED documents. Do you understand that word? Do you know what it means? Can you comprehend the difference between declassifying things that are secret, and making secret again things that had been declassified?
a stated goal of Bush II and Clinton, to reduce the amount of overclassification going on.
And Jr. did it by losing material? There's only so much stuff you can stuff in man-sized safes. My point is: Bush Jr. had stuff RE-classified, so I'm thinking that his stated goal might have been the opposite of his real goal.
When are we going to stop this sycophantic worship of sociopaths who happen to get rich by screwing over others?
They aren't sociopaths. That would be a medical condition beyond their control; They have a diminished sense of right and wrong. No, what they are is far worse: They deliberately ignore social values and mores for their own profit.
There isn't a stable definition of sociopath, but you're describing one as far as I can see.
And this shouldn't come as a surprise. Amongst the wealthy I have learned they have a common social trait that is decidedly uncommong amongst the working class: The ability to turn charm on and off at a whim. These are people who are nice to you, and mean to the waiter. They are not nice people, and it's something they're socialized to do.
Again, mean people who have learned to pretend to be nice: sociopaths!
See, the problem goes deeper than you think: A minority of this society trains its children to prey on one another.
Very sociopathic indeed.
They're predators in the purest sense -- exemplifying the exact traits that allowed humans to become the dominant form of life on this planet.
No: They're parasites, infecting the social organism and saping it from within.
It's a huge difference between these people being psychos before, playing the game and still being psychos and someone with tendencies to become a full-blown psycho through playing video games.
The difference is between reality and the fevered fantasies of delusional old people. The myth of people turning psychos because of the game is just a myth, it has no basis in reality, it has no value. It's like the myth about LSD sold to kids as lick-on tattoos, there is plenty of old loons utterly convinced that this happens, but it -never- has (Jehovah's witnesses misinterpreted a police report mention cartoons printed on an acid sheet as "potentially attractive to children" and misconstrued that as "intentionally targeting children" and conflated that as "sold at corner stores to unsuspecting youngsters", complete hysteria).
you read a lot of these psychos that go nuts have been "working it up" by intensely playing for hours then go out, adrenaline pumping and play it "live".
Yes, you read stuff written by misinformed loonies parroting paranoid phobias invented by ignorant activists with an agenda. Before videogames they were crusading against rap, and before that against TV, and before that against comic books, and so on and so forth. They're systematically wrong about it, but they're acting on faith, not reason, so they'll never stop blaming problems that have always existed on the new thing.
This study just confirms what everyone who's not as stupid as the Former Florida Attorney Who Shall Remain Nameless already knew: All our friends have been playing these games and none of the ones who weren't psychos to begin with turned psycho because of it.
“Previous research has shown us that personality traits like psychoticism and aggressiveness intensify the negative effects of violent video games and we wanted to find out why,” said Markey.
So psychos act like psychos after playing video games? WHAT A SURPRISE!
There should be a hefty fine levied against all the "news" outlets that have whipped up this "games make people psycho" meme in the last decades. Their fear mongering is NOT harmless, and they should be held accountable.
...involves the use of Washington political lobbyists, PR agencies writing fake blogs and Twitter accounts, and a newspaper advertising campaign in the US.
"Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." ~ Daniel Lerner
You killed your credibility the moment you made it public, guys. Fail.
All they have to do is to say "conspiracy theory" and their credibility will magically reappear.
For one thing, you'll notice that the conspiracy nuts are, well, always wrong.
That "watergate" thing was complete hogwash. And all those nutters who said the CIA was undermining democracies around the world? Such fools! Really smart people know that there never have been any conspiracies, ever: Reflexively calling people "nuts" and assuming insanity in all who talk of one specific subject is a sign of genius.
Seems like there's far more oil than can be accounted for by dead organisms alone.
The total global biomass has been estimated to be 2000 billion tonnes with 1600 billion of those tonnes in forests.[13][14]
Net primary production is the rate at which biomass is generated in a given area, mainly due to photosynthesis. Some global producers of biomass in order of productivity rates are
* swamps and marshes: 2,500 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* tropical rain forests: 2,000 g/m/yr of biomass[16]
* algal beds and reefs: 2000 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* river estuaries: 1,800 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* temperate forests: 1,250 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* cultivated lands: 650 g/m/yr of biomass[15][17]
* deserts: 3 g/m/yr of biomass[17]
* open ocean: 125 g/m/yr of biomass[15][17]
* tundras: 140 g/m/yr[15][17]
coverage of the Israel/Gaza situation and the Terror Flotilla
No, tell us how you REALLY feel.
The raid was condemned by the UN; and Israel offered to truck in what they seized. To me, that doesn't sound like Israel found any proof of terrorism on those ships, and neither does it sound like their acts were clearly correct in the eyes of those in the know.
doorstop-IQ losers who parrot whatever they are told.
What about doorstop-IQ losers who systematically demonize one side of a conflict and absolve the other of all wrongdoing?
If it's a medium of harmful propaganda that alters your understanding of reality, you are dumber for it. But I honestly think the "tv makes you dumb" meme is just another "comic books are bad/ video games are bad" false belief itself based on nothing but fear of the new.
[x] makes people (especially kids) dumb, because it is an impoverishment of the senses: Without touching, smelling and hearing (signal is not timed correctly) the brain development is stunted.
If (x == Books) then YourPoint = bullshit; Else if (x == TheTV) then YourPoint = Insightful;
It's not the medium that does good or bad, it's the content.
Your rent is based on two things - location and space ("amount used"). [...] the limited bandwith on the phone. [...] even the 100/200 amp wire into your house has a "bandwidth" limit of the amount of electricity it can pull at any one time.
Yup, they can all be paid on a flat rate, or not, depending on what makes sense... or what the men in power managed to force on the public. Whichever.
One thing I hate about Hollyweird is how they'll take a perfectly good story, such as the 'Iliad', pervert it completely, add unnecessary crap, and cut out all of the important parts.
Also unpleasant.
'Troy' is an outstanding example of this
The highpoint of that movie was the Horse. Oh, and they had a giant, that's always fun. And I can see where they were going with the atheist story of Troy, but that wasn't a good movie. It was very pretty, technically flawless; but like you said, they fucked it up at the story level.
Imagine, for a moment, if we bought real estate the way we buy electricity. We'd have a punch card at the door to record when we go out, and when we go in...
And yet my students in Japan would always go to a shrine before a big test or a big baseball game. Spirituality in Japan is complex, but I know that doesn't fit your argument, so carry on.
I knock on wood and cross my fingers. What's you point?
I was commenting in a thread derived from this: "Americans are brutish and willfully ignorant, most are superstitious (from religion to astrology), and they fetishize their stupidity and ignorance in their popular entertainments"
Someone decided to defend the honor of his nation-state by saying that there's pop-culture and religion/superstition in other countries too. Now, in a perfect world, that person would have been moderated to "-1: Jingo", but unfortunately some asshole with mod points gave him a boost. So I countered with some reason.
Yeah, there's a lot starlets and superstition in Japan (like their obsession with bloodtypes, them wacky japs), but there isn't the same underlying fabric of anti-intellectualism, and THAT IS WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. They have kept a few rituals, but they aren't trying to deny science because it differs from ancient Shinto writings. Their religion and superstition isn't part of a widespread movement of willful ignorance, and that's what counts in this discussion.
SpaceLab was not a space station unless you count the Shuttle as a space station. Mir? Almaz and Salyut series and Skylab predated Mir. Mir was interesting for it's size and the fact that it was "assembled" in orbit. So for you error and arrogance do you think you should just punished by summary imprisonment.
I don't see where your point is. Did you forget it?
Oh, and BEFORE you answer, look up pictures of MIR, and pictures of the early years of the ISS, and then think.
You may think it's a culture. If you want to call it one I won't argue semantics , it is the very shallow culture they hang on to because they have been deprived of a culture developed over thousands of years. It's the only thing they can learn and pick up quickly to belong to somethimg.
The same problem affects many African Americans. Now you can call me a racist. many don't have a culture rooted in thousands of years. They have a shallow culture they've managed to scrounge together from bits and pieces post slavery.
Have you ever read any Noam Chomsky? He talks about how that shallow culture is not an accident. Heck, forget about Chomsky, I can sum it up with a handy Ceasar quote: "Bread and circuses".
Their culture is designed to make them easy to exploit. It's not an accidental byproduct of a misguided multicultural policy, it's the result of a concerted effort to keep people complacent.
Does a government body seeking bids on computer systems have the right to specify which OS they plan to use
No. They were required to do a study to assess their needs, and instead just decided to go with Vista. Worse, when challenged, they lied to cover their asses.
And WTF are you defending someone's choice to buy Vista? VISTA!? Come on!
the corruption of government officials to win contracts on dubious grounds. It's part of the reason that the infrastructure is so bad. I doubt that corruption was involved in this case however;
I'm more of a cynic than you, I think the bureaucrat in charge of this was expecting something in return for handing a contract this big to someone in particular.
What if Linux doesn't run the app they needed and Vista does?
I'm sorry, but in the real world, Linux simply can't replace Windows in a lot of cases. I didn't bother to RTFA, its pointless on this sort of discussion on slashdot, no one is rational here when it comes to Linux.
This case is about the right to make an official proposal. If you don't bother to RTFA, don't bother to spew your ignorant opinions either. If the company who sued for the right to actually make the proposal can't make a proposal that meets the needs, then the proposal will be rejected.
Slashdot Mirror
...and Clinton was too busy getting blowjobs to care.
Neither point is actually relevant, but one of us is so seething with hatred for Bush II that it just HAS to be said, right?
No, Bush2 RECLASSIFIED documents. Do you understand that word? Do you know what it means? Can you comprehend the difference between declassifying things that are secret, and making secret again things that had been declassified?
a stated goal of Bush II and Clinton, to reduce the amount of overclassification going on.
And Jr. did it by losing material? There's only so much stuff you can stuff in man-sized safes.
My point is: Bush Jr. had stuff RE-classified, so I'm thinking that his stated goal might have been the opposite of his real goal.
you can't deny thousands of years of human evolutionwhich show that in almost every society wealth is concentrated amongst a small number of people.
Give me a sharp guillotine and I'll try.
I'll have some of that cake, too.
When are we going to stop this sycophantic worship of sociopaths who happen to get rich by screwing over others?
They aren't sociopaths. That would be a medical condition beyond their control; They have a diminished sense of right and wrong. No, what they are is far worse: They deliberately ignore social values and mores for their own profit.
There isn't a stable definition of sociopath, but you're describing one as far as I can see.
And this shouldn't come as a surprise. Amongst the wealthy I have learned they have a common social trait that is decidedly uncommong amongst the working class: The ability to turn charm on and off at a whim. These are people who are nice to you, and mean to the waiter. They are not nice people, and it's something they're socialized to do.
Again, mean people who have learned to pretend to be nice: sociopaths!
See, the problem goes deeper than you think: A minority of this society trains its children to prey on one another.
Very sociopathic indeed.
They're predators in the purest sense -- exemplifying the exact traits that allowed humans to become the dominant form of life on this planet.
No: They're parasites, infecting the social organism and saping it from within.
Someone needs a solid beating with the "correlation != causation" stick.
Did you know that most rapists have seen Disney cartoons? Think about it...
It's a huge difference between these people being psychos before, playing the game and still being psychos and someone with tendencies to become a full-blown psycho through playing video games.
The difference is between reality and the fevered fantasies of delusional old people. The myth of people turning psychos because of the game is just a myth, it has no basis in reality, it has no value. It's like the myth about LSD sold to kids as lick-on tattoos, there is plenty of old loons utterly convinced that this happens, but it -never- has (Jehovah's witnesses misinterpreted a police report mention cartoons printed on an acid sheet as "potentially attractive to children" and misconstrued that as "intentionally targeting children" and conflated that as "sold at corner stores to unsuspecting youngsters", complete hysteria).
you read a lot of these psychos that go nuts have been "working it up" by intensely playing for hours then go out, adrenaline pumping and play it "live".
Yes, you read stuff written by misinformed loonies parroting paranoid phobias invented by ignorant activists with an agenda.
Before videogames they were crusading against rap, and before that against TV, and before that against comic books, and so on and so forth. They're systematically wrong about it, but they're acting on faith, not reason, so they'll never stop blaming problems that have always existed on the new thing.
This study just confirms what everyone who's not as stupid as the Former Florida Attorney Who Shall Remain Nameless already knew: All our friends have been playing these games and none of the ones who weren't psychos to begin with turned psycho because of it.
FTFA:
“Previous research has shown us that personality traits like psychoticism and aggressiveness intensify the negative effects of violent video games and we wanted to find out why,” said Markey.
So psychos act like psychos after playing video games? WHAT A SURPRISE!
There should be a hefty fine levied against all the "news" outlets that have whipped up this "games make people psycho" meme in the last decades. Their fear mongering is NOT harmless, and they should be held accountable.
You should check how does ANY aid get to Gaza.
Yup, they're holding Gaza by the throat and maintaining a firm grip.
...involves the use of Washington political lobbyists, PR agencies writing fake blogs and Twitter accounts, and a newspaper advertising campaign in the US.
"Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." ~ Daniel Lerner
You killed your credibility the moment you made it public, guys. Fail.
All they have to do is to say "conspiracy theory" and their credibility will magically reappear.
For one thing, you'll notice that the conspiracy nuts are, well, always wrong.
That "watergate" thing was complete hogwash. And all those nutters who said the CIA was undermining democracies around the world? Such fools! Really smart people know that there never have been any conspiracies, ever: Reflexively calling people "nuts" and assuming insanity in all who talk of one specific subject is a sign of genius.
Seems like there's far more oil than can be accounted for by dead organisms alone.
The total global biomass has been estimated to be 2000 billion tonnes with 1600 billion of those tonnes in forests.[13][14]
Net primary production is the rate at which biomass is generated in a given area, mainly due to photosynthesis. Some global producers of biomass in order of productivity rates are
* swamps and marshes: 2,500 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* tropical rain forests: 2,000 g/m/yr of biomass[16]
* algal beds and reefs: 2000 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* river estuaries: 1,800 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* temperate forests: 1,250 g/m/yr of biomass[15]
* cultivated lands: 650 g/m/yr of biomass[15][17]
* deserts: 3 g/m/yr of biomass[17]
* open ocean: 125 g/m/yr of biomass[15][17]
* tundras: 140 g/m/yr[15][17]
(Multiply by millions of years...)
coverage of the Israel/Gaza situation and the Terror Flotilla
No, tell us how you REALLY feel.
The raid was condemned by the UN; and Israel offered to truck in what they seized. To me, that doesn't sound like Israel found any proof of terrorism on those ships, and neither does it sound like their acts were clearly correct in the eyes of those in the know.
doorstop-IQ losers who parrot whatever they are told.
What about doorstop-IQ losers who systematically demonize one side of a conflict and absolve the other of all wrongdoing?
99.999% of television is utter, irredeemable crap
90% of everything is crap.
Wait. Can TV actually make you dumber?
If it's a medium of harmful propaganda that alters your understanding of reality, you are dumber for it. But I honestly think the "tv makes you dumb" meme is just another "comic books are bad/ video games are bad" false belief itself based on nothing but fear of the new.
[x] makes people (especially kids) dumb, because it is an impoverishment of the senses: Without touching, smelling and hearing (signal is not timed correctly) the brain development is stunted.
If (x == Books) then YourPoint = bullshit; Else if (x == TheTV) then YourPoint = Insightful;
It's not the medium that does good or bad, it's the content.
Your rent is based on two things - location and space ("amount used"). [...] the limited bandwith on the phone. [...] even the 100/200 amp wire into your house has a "bandwidth" limit of the amount of electricity it can pull at any one time.
Yup, they can all be paid on a flat rate, or not, depending on what makes sense... or what the men in power managed to force on the public. Whichever.
One thing I hate about Hollyweird is how they'll take a perfectly good story, such as the 'Iliad', pervert it completely, add unnecessary crap, and cut out all of the important parts.
Also unpleasant.
'Troy' is an outstanding example of this
The highpoint of that movie was the Horse.
Oh, and they had a giant, that's always fun. And I can see where they were going with the atheist story of Troy, but that wasn't a good movie. It was very pretty, technically flawless; but like you said, they fucked it up at the story level.
Imagine, for a moment, if we bought real estate the way we buy electricity. We'd have a punch card at the door to record when we go out, and when we go in...
And yet my students in Japan would always go to a shrine before a big test or a big baseball game. Spirituality in Japan is complex, but I know that doesn't fit your argument, so carry on.
I knock on wood and cross my fingers. What's you point?
I was commenting in a thread derived from this: "Americans are brutish and willfully ignorant, most are superstitious (from religion to astrology), and they fetishize their stupidity and ignorance in their popular entertainments"
Someone decided to defend the honor of his nation-state by saying that there's pop-culture and religion/superstition in other countries too. Now, in a perfect world, that person would have been moderated to "-1: Jingo", but unfortunately some asshole with mod points gave him a boost.
So I countered with some reason.
Yeah, there's a lot starlets and superstition in Japan (like their obsession with bloodtypes, them wacky japs), but there isn't the same underlying fabric of anti-intellectualism, and THAT IS WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. They have kept a few rituals, but they aren't trying to deny science because it differs from ancient Shinto writings. Their religion and superstition isn't part of a widespread movement of willful ignorance, and that's what counts in this discussion.
SpaceLab was not a space station unless you count the Shuttle as a space station.
Mir? Almaz and Salyut series and Skylab predated Mir. Mir was interesting for it's size and the fact that it was "assembled" in orbit.
So for you error and arrogance do you think you should just punished by summary imprisonment.
I don't see where your point is. Did you forget it?
Oh, and BEFORE you answer, look up pictures of MIR, and pictures of the early years of the ISS, and then think.
"It's a culture of consumerism, "
You may think it's a culture. If you want to call it one I won't argue semantics , it is the very shallow culture they hang on to because they have been deprived of a culture developed over thousands of years.
It's the only thing they can learn and pick up quickly to belong to somethimg.
The same problem affects many African Americans. Now you can call me a racist. many don't have a culture rooted in thousands of years. They have a shallow culture they've managed to scrounge together from bits and pieces post slavery.
Have you ever read any Noam Chomsky? He talks about how that shallow culture is not an accident. Heck, forget about Chomsky, I can sum it up with a handy Ceasar quote: "Bread and circuses".
Their culture is designed to make them easy to exploit. It's not an accidental byproduct of a misguided multicultural policy, it's the result of a concerted effort to keep people complacent.
Does a government body seeking bids on computer systems have the right to specify which OS they plan to use
No. They were required to do a study to assess their needs, and instead just decided to go with Vista. Worse, when challenged, they lied to cover their asses.
And WTF are you defending someone's choice to buy Vista? VISTA!? Come on!
Please note that your response posts must be provided in both English and French.
Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?
the corruption of government officials to win contracts on dubious grounds. It's part of the reason that the infrastructure is so bad. I doubt that corruption was involved in this case however;
I'm more of a cynic than you, I think the bureaucrat in charge of this was expecting something in return for handing a contract this big to someone in particular.
What if Linux doesn't run the app they needed and Vista does?
I'm sorry, but in the real world, Linux simply can't replace Windows in a lot of cases. I didn't bother to RTFA, its pointless on this sort of discussion on slashdot, no one is rational here when it comes to Linux.
This case is about the right to make an official proposal. If you don't bother to RTFA, don't bother to spew your ignorant opinions either. If the company who sued for the right to actually make the proposal can't make a proposal that meets the needs, then the proposal will be rejected.