This might be true of dark chocolate, but British milk chocolate is evil, at least as far as I've experienced it at import stores.
I'm not a huge fan of milk chocolate (the opposite of a fan, generally), but the American version isn't quite as anemic, and doesn't turn into mouth slime. Again, it doesn't matter much, since milk chocolate is pretty vile universally, barring some exceptions (again, Pocky... mmmm).
Briefly they test dark chocolate coffee ones... They were among the best candy bars I've ever had. Obviously this meant they were discontinued.
As for the US ones sucking, at least, in the candy sphere, we're still better than the UK. I've never had a good British chocolate, their milk chocolate makes ours look good. Doubly true for the hideous Aero bars... Bleh.
Green tea KitKats are amazing. You make me want to hop over to our local asian market and grab some candy... And Pocky. Tons of Pocky. Washed down with a cold bottle of Malta... There goes the money reserved for actual food... thanks.
Point the citizenry at a different country and warn them about it, so that the citizenry overlook the problems at home. Classic propaganda is to create an external enemy.
This is true, as it speaks to the reason behind the statement. Sadly, this doesn't really speak to the potential truth of the statement itself. Truth can be propaganda, as well as lies.
Judging from my experience with American law enforcement, and "justice", and everything else I've read, this smells a wee bit truthful. It still serves Russia nicely (them being, perhaps, bigger dicks than us), but I still think they might have a valid point. We're not the good guys, by any stretch. We only look out for our own interests, and by "our", I of course mean only our governments, not "our" as in "we the people".
I really don't get all the hate on this service. It is better than the alternative; devices that are never updated because carriers and manufacturers would rather you go out and buy more hardware every year. This happened to my Droid (Verizon) and Transformer (ASUS), after a single update, they never received even a modicum of support again.
Oh no, Android is slightly more useful, at the cost of carriers and manufactures... must be a terrible plot.
I understand wanting control, but sadly mobile devices have moved way beyond that. You can't control your hardware nor, really, your software. They aren't desktop computers... Sadly. I would kill for upgradable mobile devices, so I don't have to toss them every year. I find disposable hardware to be a bit vulgar. Then add in the fact, that sans rooting (if possible) that your device will never, ever, see an upgrade. So to get more functions, and security, you need to go shell out $300+ for a new device. If you're not on a contract, then you might just be screwed.
I'm also happy that Google recognizes, finally, fragmentation.
It depends. I had a party at my house once, and someone posted photos to Facebook from their phone, tagging my house as a location. I have never been able to remove this. Even flagging the photos doesn't remove the "check in" as my house as a public location. Trying to complain doesn't work, since my house isn't actually associated with me, according to Facebook, I am not the owner of this "venue". So, despite me never telling facebook my address, and removing all location data from everything I share, Facebook now can associate me with an address.
The problem with things like Facebook, is that you have no power over what others can do with your information. You can abstain from using it, or use it as responsibly as possible, and it doesn't matter once someone posts something about you.
Google's terms are still a bit wonkey, though. They are vague enough to do the same things as Facebook.
I've pretty much given up though. It is a losing battle, and I'm resigned to the fact that pretty much everything I do online isn't mine the second I hit "submit". I can either completely abstain from the internet; put in a inordinate amount of time and work to perhaps secure a small bit of myself, or just accept it and proceed with a touch of vigilance. I'm not endorsing this as everyone's choice, but it is the one the works for me, given that none of them are particularly good.
I don't post anything that matters, or that is personal, or that could come and bite me in the butt. Pretty much nothing that you couldn't gather from sitting in a room with me for 15 minutes. The more personal things never hit the internet. If I wouldn't share it with a temporary bar pal, I won't share it online. As for my "IP" (that terms makes me feel dirty, but its the best I got), I only post limited versions for others to see, versions that are watermarked, cropped, and generally inferior in quality. This isn't to keep pirates at bay (I don't really care, at least not at this point), but to keep corporations like Google and Facebook from using it for profit. Having a letter of marque doesn't make you any less a pirate, in my book.
I am a minority, most people don't care. I knew a guy who was on probation, who continually posted pictures of him drinking alcohol on Facebook. I pondered the stupidity of this for a long time. People post their full sex lives, their really personal bits (STDs, Abortions, criminal acts, drug use, etc...) without even thinking about it. Hell, last weekend me and my girlfriend were on vacation, and I almost "checked in" to a location 400 miles from home, advertising the fact that our house was empty, and our stuff was ripe for the picking. And to make matters worse, or more entertaining, no one even cares about the shit we share (at least the people we want to care).
When actions are secret from voters, democracy completely breaks down. How could I make an informed decision based on the actions of the NSA and secrect courts, when I'm not allowed to know about these things? How can I vote on information I'm not permitted to have?
Yes, the usual answer is "Trust us, we're the government", but I'm not even allowed to have enough information to assess this claim. Is the government trustworthy, how the hell should I know. Are they abusing their power, I'm not allowed the tools to assess this either, outside of their say so. Which turns this whole thing into a tautology; I should trust the government because it claims to be trustworthy, and I should trust this claim because the government is trustworthy.
People like Snowden and Manning are the only means I have to be an informed voter. Which is a sad state of affairs, I'm forced to trust these people, acting out of who-knows-what motivations, over my own elected officials.
But then again, this all very naive on my part. Manning didn't matter, things didn't change, why would Snowden make a difference? My government will never change, until the day that it finally, after a slow decline, collapses into irrelevancy dragging the rest of the US with it. But I take some hope that someday, when I'm long dead, the US be the topic of historians who might have a better picture than we will ever be permitted to have. Then, and only then, may we be judged on our merits (and it probably won't be as flattering as we fool ourselves into thinking).
don't believe that contractors swear an oath to protect the Constitution, and even if they did, who did Snowden vet his personal interpretation of the Constitution with? Nobody, I expect. Assuming his intentions were actually "good," he just decided he didn't like it and broke the law. As to the constitutionality of the programs, Professor Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School has some views on that [volokh.com].
I don't know about his duty to the constitution, but in my view he acted ethically, if not legally. He saw something that he thought was wrong, and harmful to others, and tried to stop it. To me this is a higher good than merely protecting the Constitution. I would hope that everyone would do the same, if in his shoes, or in like situations. This is especially true in situtations like this, where no one who matters (i.e. not the powers that be) are likely to be harmed.
As for embarrassment... Big whoop. If you don't want to be embarrassed, don't do anything embarrassing. If your action bite you in the ass eventually, that is your own fault, and you don't get my sympathy. Especially when it is a Government operating outside their purview (the will, and welfare of the American people). I don't give a shit if it is "my" government, or a "bad" government like China, the standards of judgement are the same. An act is evil, or good, no matter who commits it. I fail in nationalism, surely, but history has taught me that nationalism is rarely a good thing.
Snowden is likely an asset of Russian intelligence.
If there is any proof of this, then it is worth talking about. If not, it is base speculation and not really worth entertaining. Might as well say that Snowden is working for the greys, to take power from the lizard aliens who control the American government. Both statements are pretty much equivalent at this point, being somewhat meaningless conspiracy theories. That said, their might be more than meets the eye with the Russian connection, but until there is some information it is pointless to speculate. We're also dealing with intelligence communities, so whose to say that most of the information on this tract isn't psyops, or whatever?
I wouldn't rush to judgment that the Snowden leaks are a good thing. The West may come to regret them greatly. These revelations will be playing out in events over the course of years.
My government might regret them. I won't. Even if they are of dubious origin, if they are true, then we deserve the egg in our face. And further, those that permitted this state of affairs should face some consequences. Even if this isn't good for my country, or me personally, I'm find with whatever fallout there may be, since consequences are always deserved for bad behavior. This is probably a rare point of view, but I'll stick with it. Ethics trump power, at least in my book.
Whatever they did to Google Maps, both on Android and via the web is mind boggling. On the Android version they reduced functionality completely (need two apps for street view, really?), while making it ugly and barely usable. On the web version, they actually made it worse than Bing maps. Again, killing street view, unless you actually know which thumbnail is the place your looking for (which means I didn't need street view to begin with), worse, some of their "helpful" thumbnails are for things miles away from the destination your looking for. But I suppose it looks nicer, which counts for something... Personally I'd rather have functionality, but hey... I think I'm a minority.
I never thought I'd see the day when Bing, or even Mapquest, was better than Google.
Pretty much everything Google has done in the last year has been a step backwards. Removing functionality, making functions harder to access, killing usability, adding more widgets and flash, making vital information harder to find (the gmail redesign, ugh), trying to be smarter than the user...
The new Flickr was pretty bad too. I was planning on giving them money, and going back to them after 4 years, but the second they issued their new layout, I gave my money to 500px instead. The fact that it was near impossible to back out of a picture, once selected, was the point where I decided that Yahoo is officially dead (and not merely in the strange unlife its been in for the last decade).
your ignorance is showing. the christians, which i am not one, but they have not been killing non believers in whole for hundreds of years now.
Except the ones that do... And further, a majority, or significant minority, of Muslims kill non-believers? Really? There are more Muslims than pretty much anything else, you'd have thunk we'd all be dead by know...
mischief or not, the moslem view (long term) is that the whole world MUST be converted, under pain of death if need be.
All of them believe this? A majority of them? In every region of the world? Sources should be cited for such sweeping statements.
Christians also think the world would be a nifty place if everyone was one of them. Hell, some of the take glee in the fact the the world will soon end, and all of us non-believers will suffer eternal torment. I wouldn't hold that as a very moral stance either.
But then again there are a ton of Christians who manage to be decent people (perhaps even a majority of them), how can this not be true for those strange-alien Muslims as well?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan the recent actions of our government (recent being, depressingly, the last 40 years or so), and I am in favor of transparency, whistle-blowing, and calling out our government on its bad behavior. I also think Manning did a good thing, though I also feel his actions should have consiquences since he did still break the law, laws that at least partially these days, exists for a very good reason (some secrecy will always be necessary, especially about military matters and intel).
That said; Manning didn't reveal any war crimes. Embarrassing information, sure. Even ethical breaches by soldiers, or perhaps even their commanders... but no war crimes. I'm pretty mixed in my feeling on him, to be honest. I support his actions, but they might not spring from noble goals, even if they met noble ends. It seems they sprung from his angst arrising from his conflicted sexuality, and the abuse and threat surrounding it in his environment (the DADT military), coupled with dealing with some unscrupulous characters (Assange)... Snowden is a better example of a noble leaker, further Snowden is very careful with his information.. Where Manning handed it over whole-hog. Again, I still support him. And I find that this sentence is a bit obscene, since nothing terribly dangerous got out, and there were no consiquences from his leak. No one got demonstrably hurt (not even, sadly, the government).
Me supporting consequences for him isn't me being against his actions, btw. The same went for other peaceful protesters of the civil rights era, and of followers of Ghandi when they were throwing off British colonialism. People participating in sit-ins and protests expected arrest and potential abuse. This is what made them noble. This gave their actions more meaning, than if there were no consequences for these actions.
Having to deliver to every single person in the US, no matter how far in BFE they live, while still magically turning a profit despite the Government using dirty tricks to kill them? For being far more efficient than Fedex or UPS (by a couple of days, generally), while being cheaper?
It seems that lately Fedex dumps some deliveries to the USPS too. About half of everything I've ordered recently has ended up in our mail box (the communal type, not house front). This is kind of annoying, since I hardly ever check the mail during the middle of a month, since all its going to be is junk. At the end/beginning I get a couple bills from people who don't understand technology, and 3-4 magazines, so I generally check the mail.
I just hope that the USPS gets something from this, and aren't being mandatorily shafted again.
arbitrary except they are ideologically opposed in every way with the exception of destroying our rights and spying on our every move.
So the question is; do they actually exist? Are there people who are "Liberal", and people who are "Conservative"... Or are there range of people who encompass various points within these blanket dogmas? I'm guessing there might be some who are purely one or the other, but I think we call these people the "lunatic fringe", or at very least the "vocal minority".
Case and point, I'm pretty far to the left socially, so far that I am a social libertarian (small "L", of course). I agree with Libertarians about everything, except the economy. Then again, I was for the war in Afghanistan, against banning guns (some flavor of control, perhaps, but not elimination, or much more than we have already... more enforcement of current laws than anything). I'm not a dove, and adhere to some level of neo-con inspired "realpolitik". My stances on abortion are muddled, and a bit contradictory, and definitely not along the liberal lines (even if the end result is, it isn't my place to tell anyone what to do, no matter my ethical or moral stance).
My dad is a lifelong union supporter, and subscribes to communist papers, but thinks we should force all illegal immigrants out at gun point, and is somewhat on the fence about social tolerance. My mom is much the same, but goes further and thinks we don't have enough capital punishment, and perhaps we shouldn't let gay people cook our food because of diseases. One of my friends is a capital L Libertarians, who with a couple drinks in him is in favor of gun control, and perhaps stronger welfare laws (more, not less).
Politics aren't binary. They aren't even the magical 2 axis thing Libertarians love. They are scattershot, various issues can be pigeonholed, but this has nothing to do with what people actually believe. We pick and choose, for the most part. Some things we get socially, some we are brought up with, some we muddle out on our own, and some are handed to us from churches, or Government propaganda.
Second: Like other posters above have noted - install Ubuntu, install Steam, and game to your hearts content...
...But not really.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that Linux (or at least Ubuntu) is gaining (har har) steam in the gaming arena, but they still have miles and miles to go before they even rank as mildly competitive with Windows. Looking through the games available from Steam on Linux, not a single game in my library is represented, and there aren't any that I really want to play. Of the games I'm currently playing, only one is available (might be available, will be available?) on Linux, Shadowrun Returns. It is nice that I can play Valve titles, but I really don't want to. I'm burnt out of TF2, and I really can't bring myself to play Half Life 2 yet again.
If I was still running Linux, I'd still want a Windows partition for gaming right now. This isn't going to change until more big devs and triple A titles show up on Linux. Right now, ignoring Source titles, there are none.
Yes, the race gets closer with Wine. But the reason I migrated AWAY from Linux in the first place was having to mess with janky, temperamental, arcane solutions to very simple problems that are quickly fixed in the big two OSs. I don't want to have to waste time getting one game working, reading forums full of trolls and idiots for one post that give one correct value, in one semi-hidden config files, just to do something that I can do in one click on Windows. For a lark, I poked around on getting the two games I play the most right now to work on Linux (Rift and Civ 5), and it is a very hit-or-miss affair from the looks of it.
Again, I'm not bashing Linux, or "shilling" for MS (god I hate that internet bullshit meme), go with what works for you. If you want your OS choice to be a political statement, good on ya. If you really just like Linux, fine. If you hate MS and Apple, fine. If you love them, equally fine. Don't care. But it is disingenuous to promote Linux as a Windows replacement in gaming. It isn't even close. Perhaps it will be, someday. Perhaps that day is coming sooner than later. But it isn't even close yet.
Also...
MS is about to lose it's hold on the only thing keeping Windows relevant.
How? This news has nothing to do with Windows gaming, only with MS's own gaming for Windows. My games will all work fine after this. If not for Slashdot, I'd never of even noticed, so great is its effect on my being.
Further I haven't actually found myself saying "Man, I wish I was using Linux, this would be so much easier" on my day to day tasks. Actually Linux would hurt my workflow right now, since I would lose my number one tools (Lightroom/Photoshop). The only time I yearn for Linux is on my girlfriends crappy netbook running Win 7 Starter (she doesn't want Linux, so Windows it is), and on my weak HTPC. But sadly there isn't a media program that is easy enough for drunk friends to use, that can also handle 30k songs without dying (the objectively terrible and bloated iTunes can, for some reason even with Win 7's overhead). Linux isn't the be-all-end-all. Windows is fine for me. I actually like it, and prefer it to Linux. For now at least, perhaps things will change in the near future, one can never tell.
Also, Windows major advantage is its mediocrity. Its good enough. Its easy enough. Its powerful enough. Its ubiquity also helps, since EVERYTHING runs on Windows, and everything is compatible with it. You never really have to worry about it. I'm happy with this, since, as I age, I value being a "nerd" less and less. I don't really relish in having to dig around and tweak things. I want to click a button and have things happen. Sure, there is no glory in it, no/. cred, but I don't give a shit anymore. Life is too short to have to muck around with config files.
SciAm became a total waste of time. Its now written for the absolute bottom, and has pretty much embraced pushing an agenda (environmentalism and global warming) over what they used to do, digest new science for lay people without being condescending. Yes, I agree with their stance on their pet issues, but this doesn't mean I want to be preached at. If I did, I'd borrow my father's copies of The Nation. I hate media with an agenda. I don't want to be preached at, and I don't want to read something that I 100% agree with. They dumbed down the rest of the content, and decided to present it in a "For Dummies" style, with bullets pretty much summarizing the full article before you even read it, so you don't have to actually bother.
PopSci and Mechanics turned into gadget rags, and whorish ad platforms long ago.
Pulp magazines are dead. Or at least should be. I only get some photography magazines now (art focused, not gear focused), and McSweeny's The Believer for the lady friend. I also poach my father's copies of Mother Jones, since they can be pretty good and balanced for a liberal rag, from time to time. I used to get the Economist, but I couldn't keep up with weekly reading, and got sick of the Eurozone Collapsing RIGHT NOW, constantly, for three years. They also decided to not support Android, so I couldn't read it on either my phone or my tablet after upgrading to a Newer android version.
The current House of Representatives is willing to take the risk... it's pretty clear which is more principled.
Ha?
The House isn't principled, it is inflexible, and dogmatic. I'm not going to defend Clinton, but I will fight any attempt to pain the current House in a good light.The House is where we send extremists that we don't trust with actual power (the Senate, or higher).
Reminds me of the asinine scare about asbestos insulation, where the form (airborn fibers vs. solid bound masses) and exposure times (years) were completely ignored.
The scare was invalid, but the concern is valid. It, originally, wasn't about merely having asbestos sitting inertly in your walls, but about acts that would unwittingly disturb asbestos, leading to it being airborne as actual harmful particles. If you do work on, or demolish older structures, than asbestos can actually be a risk. I have a giant hunk of rock asbestos sitting on a shelf, and the odds of it ever harming anyone is pretty slim (unless I throw it at you, or such), but if I ground up a couple tons of it and exposed it to you over some time, it wouldn't be optimal. Same with lead paint, it isn't much of a risk, until it ages or until someone does work on a structure containing it.
The mercury scare still pisses me off. As a kid I loved it, I had some old mercury switches that mesmerized me, and occasionally I'd play with free mercury (I didn't swallow it, or rub it one me). My parents played with it constantly. But now its worse than ebola. In high school someone spilled a couple of grams of mercury, and it shut down half the school for a day... because mercury is scary.
Someone really needs to stand up to the power of heavy metal. Ahem...
That said, why does anyone actually care about the NRA anymore? They are about as valid as AARP, nothing more than a self-interested lobby group that really doesn't care about their members being using them to fun what their masters want to force on everyone. That isn't a screed against gun ownership, or owners, my feelings toward the NRA is irrelevant towards my stance on guns. The NRA should die, and be replaced with a better group that actually represents their members, and minimizes their actual bigger impact to only things that protect their members rights.
Except you can buy mice and touchscreens... You can't buy a Leap Motion.
I was very excited to get my hands on one of these... But that interest has pretty much completely died now since they moved back an actual release indefinitely.
Sure, there are pre-orders, which are a terrible idea, and the brief window when I could have got a beta dev version (which is useless to people like me, actual users).
They are vaporware, until I can actually go to a store, hand someone $80, and take it home.
I really wish that either this, or the Kinect for Windows were real options. I don't see gestures replacing my mouse and keyboard, but they would be a nice augment. I'd love being able to sit back, and pause videos with a gesture, or browse the internet without my mouse... but... I have a feeling this day is still far away.
It was only Moffat that wrote the good stories... The Girl in the Fireplace...
That one was absolute crap. It was horribly written, and only existed to be pretty and sentimental (which is Moffat's only thing)... Oh, and an excuse to have an unrealistic quirky-indie-drama girl character. But then again I couldn't get past the magical horse that only existed to end the episode, because he couldn't be bothered to actually find a way out of his own plot.
Blink was good in the sense that the Weeping Angels are next to Daleks in awesome Who monsters, but the I wanted to kill the girl after five seconds, because she was another cute, quirky, indie-movie character. I'm guessing Moffat loses sleep over Ellen Page not being British, since that is exactly who the new companion was.
I pretty much quit watching. New Doctor, good (not that I hate Smith, he just hasn't had anything to work from, and Moffat butchered the character). Getting rid of Amy Pond, awesome. But I really don't care until Moffat retires. The last season was unwatchable, it made the Silence arc look good, which must have taken some work.
I turned mine off after getting a slew of dust storm warnings... I live in Phoenix, these happen once a week from mid-July until the end of August. They aren't scary, they aren't alert worthy, they are a common thing. Why does my phone need to explode just to tell me that its going to be dusty?
A couple years back Verizon decided it was of utmost importance to tell me a rural wash, 10 miles from my house, might flood, once an hour for three days.
Perhaps the administrators of these alerts should read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", since their utility is completely destroyed when everyone turns them off thanks to being deluged with trivial alerts. Probably whats happening though is that whoever runs these is just going "ooooh shiney" and wants to play with their new toys.
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This might be true of dark chocolate, but British milk chocolate is evil, at least as far as I've experienced it at import stores.
I'm not a huge fan of milk chocolate (the opposite of a fan, generally), but the American version isn't quite as anemic, and doesn't turn into mouth slime. Again, it doesn't matter much, since milk chocolate is pretty vile universally, barring some exceptions (again, Pocky... mmmm).
Briefly they test dark chocolate coffee ones... They were among the best candy bars I've ever had. Obviously this meant they were discontinued.
As for the US ones sucking, at least, in the candy sphere, we're still better than the UK. I've never had a good British chocolate, their milk chocolate makes ours look good. Doubly true for the hideous Aero bars... Bleh.
Green tea KitKats are amazing. You make me want to hop over to our local asian market and grab some candy... And Pocky. Tons of Pocky. Washed down with a cold bottle of Malta... There goes the money reserved for actual food... thanks.
Point the citizenry at a different country and warn them about it, so that the citizenry overlook the problems at home. Classic propaganda is to create an external enemy.
This is true, as it speaks to the reason behind the statement. Sadly, this doesn't really speak to the potential truth of the statement itself. Truth can be propaganda, as well as lies.
Judging from my experience with American law enforcement, and "justice", and everything else I've read, this smells a wee bit truthful. It still serves Russia nicely (them being, perhaps, bigger dicks than us), but I still think they might have a valid point. We're not the good guys, by any stretch. We only look out for our own interests, and by "our", I of course mean only our governments, not "our" as in "we the people".
I really don't get all the hate on this service. It is better than the alternative; devices that are never updated because carriers and manufacturers would rather you go out and buy more hardware every year. This happened to my Droid (Verizon) and Transformer (ASUS), after a single update, they never received even a modicum of support again.
Oh no, Android is slightly more useful, at the cost of carriers and manufactures... must be a terrible plot.
I understand wanting control, but sadly mobile devices have moved way beyond that. You can't control your hardware nor, really, your software. They aren't desktop computers... Sadly. I would kill for upgradable mobile devices, so I don't have to toss them every year. I find disposable hardware to be a bit vulgar. Then add in the fact, that sans rooting (if possible) that your device will never, ever, see an upgrade. So to get more functions, and security, you need to go shell out $300+ for a new device. If you're not on a contract, then you might just be screwed.
I'm also happy that Google recognizes, finally, fragmentation.
It depends. I had a party at my house once, and someone posted photos to Facebook from their phone, tagging my house as a location. I have never been able to remove this. Even flagging the photos doesn't remove the "check in" as my house as a public location. Trying to complain doesn't work, since my house isn't actually associated with me, according to Facebook, I am not the owner of this "venue". So, despite me never telling facebook my address, and removing all location data from everything I share, Facebook now can associate me with an address.
The problem with things like Facebook, is that you have no power over what others can do with your information. You can abstain from using it, or use it as responsibly as possible, and it doesn't matter once someone posts something about you.
Google's terms are still a bit wonkey, though. They are vague enough to do the same things as Facebook.
I've pretty much given up though. It is a losing battle, and I'm resigned to the fact that pretty much everything I do online isn't mine the second I hit "submit". I can either completely abstain from the internet; put in a inordinate amount of time and work to perhaps secure a small bit of myself, or just accept it and proceed with a touch of vigilance. I'm not endorsing this as everyone's choice, but it is the one the works for me, given that none of them are particularly good.
I don't post anything that matters, or that is personal, or that could come and bite me in the butt. Pretty much nothing that you couldn't gather from sitting in a room with me for 15 minutes. The more personal things never hit the internet. If I wouldn't share it with a temporary bar pal, I won't share it online. As for my "IP" (that terms makes me feel dirty, but its the best I got), I only post limited versions for others to see, versions that are watermarked, cropped, and generally inferior in quality. This isn't to keep pirates at bay (I don't really care, at least not at this point), but to keep corporations like Google and Facebook from using it for profit. Having a letter of marque doesn't make you any less a pirate, in my book.
I am a minority, most people don't care. I knew a guy who was on probation, who continually posted pictures of him drinking alcohol on Facebook. I pondered the stupidity of this for a long time. People post their full sex lives, their really personal bits (STDs, Abortions, criminal acts, drug use, etc...) without even thinking about it. Hell, last weekend me and my girlfriend were on vacation, and I almost "checked in" to a location 400 miles from home, advertising the fact that our house was empty, and our stuff was ripe for the picking. And to make matters worse, or more entertaining, no one even cares about the shit we share (at least the people we want to care).
When actions are secret from voters, democracy completely breaks down. How could I make an informed decision based on the actions of the NSA and secrect courts, when I'm not allowed to know about these things? How can I vote on information I'm not permitted to have?
Yes, the usual answer is "Trust us, we're the government", but I'm not even allowed to have enough information to assess this claim. Is the government trustworthy, how the hell should I know. Are they abusing their power, I'm not allowed the tools to assess this either, outside of their say so. Which turns this whole thing into a tautology; I should trust the government because it claims to be trustworthy, and I should trust this claim because the government is trustworthy.
People like Snowden and Manning are the only means I have to be an informed voter. Which is a sad state of affairs, I'm forced to trust these people, acting out of who-knows-what motivations, over my own elected officials.
But then again, this all very naive on my part. Manning didn't matter, things didn't change, why would Snowden make a difference? My government will never change, until the day that it finally, after a slow decline, collapses into irrelevancy dragging the rest of the US with it. But I take some hope that someday, when I'm long dead, the US be the topic of historians who might have a better picture than we will ever be permitted to have. Then, and only then, may we be judged on our merits (and it probably won't be as flattering as we fool ourselves into thinking).
don't believe that contractors swear an oath to protect the Constitution, and even if they did, who did Snowden vet his personal interpretation of the Constitution with? Nobody, I expect. Assuming his intentions were actually "good," he just decided he didn't like it and broke the law. As to the constitutionality of the programs, Professor Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School has some views on that [volokh.com].
I don't know about his duty to the constitution, but in my view he acted ethically, if not legally. He saw something that he thought was wrong, and harmful to others, and tried to stop it. To me this is a higher good than merely protecting the Constitution. I would hope that everyone would do the same, if in his shoes, or in like situations. This is especially true in situtations like this, where no one who matters (i.e. not the powers that be) are likely to be harmed.
As for embarrassment... Big whoop. If you don't want to be embarrassed, don't do anything embarrassing. If your action bite you in the ass eventually, that is your own fault, and you don't get my sympathy. Especially when it is a Government operating outside their purview (the will, and welfare of the American people). I don't give a shit if it is "my" government, or a "bad" government like China, the standards of judgement are the same. An act is evil, or good, no matter who commits it. I fail in nationalism, surely, but history has taught me that nationalism is rarely a good thing.
Snowden is likely an asset of Russian intelligence.
If there is any proof of this, then it is worth talking about. If not, it is base speculation and not really worth entertaining. Might as well say that Snowden is working for the greys, to take power from the lizard aliens who control the American government. Both statements are pretty much equivalent at this point, being somewhat meaningless conspiracy theories. That said, their might be more than meets the eye with the Russian connection, but until there is some information it is pointless to speculate. We're also dealing with intelligence communities, so whose to say that most of the information on this tract isn't psyops, or whatever?
I wouldn't rush to judgment that the Snowden leaks are a good thing. The West may come to regret them greatly. These revelations will be playing out in events over the course of years.
My government might regret them. I won't. Even if they are of dubious origin, if they are true, then we deserve the egg in our face. And further, those that permitted this state of affairs should face some consequences. Even if this isn't good for my country, or me personally, I'm find with whatever fallout there may be, since consequences are always deserved for bad behavior. This is probably a rare point of view, but I'll stick with it. Ethics trump power, at least in my book.
And after we bomb Syria, I'm sure they'll be moved to another country we don't like, so we can bomb them in a couple years.
Perhaps Canada someday?
Whatever they did to Google Maps, both on Android and via the web is mind boggling. On the Android version they reduced functionality completely (need two apps for street view, really?), while making it ugly and barely usable. On the web version, they actually made it worse than Bing maps. Again, killing street view, unless you actually know which thumbnail is the place your looking for (which means I didn't need street view to begin with), worse, some of their "helpful" thumbnails are for things miles away from the destination your looking for. But I suppose it looks nicer, which counts for something... Personally I'd rather have functionality, but hey... I think I'm a minority.
I never thought I'd see the day when Bing, or even Mapquest, was better than Google.
Pretty much everything Google has done in the last year has been a step backwards. Removing functionality, making functions harder to access, killing usability, adding more widgets and flash, making vital information harder to find (the gmail redesign, ugh), trying to be smarter than the user...
The new Flickr was pretty bad too. I was planning on giving them money, and going back to them after 4 years, but the second they issued their new layout, I gave my money to 500px instead. The fact that it was near impossible to back out of a picture, once selected, was the point where I decided that Yahoo is officially dead (and not merely in the strange unlife its been in for the last decade).
your ignorance is showing. the christians, which i am not one, but they have not been killing non believers in whole for hundreds of years now.
Except the ones that do... And further, a majority, or significant minority, of Muslims kill non-believers? Really? There are more Muslims than pretty much anything else, you'd have thunk we'd all be dead by know...
mischief or not, the moslem view (long term) is that the whole world MUST be converted, under pain of death if need be.
All of them believe this? A majority of them? In every region of the world? Sources should be cited for such sweeping statements.
Christians also think the world would be a nifty place if everyone was one of them. Hell, some of the take glee in the fact the the world will soon end, and all of us non-believers will suffer eternal torment. I wouldn't hold that as a very moral stance either.
But then again there are a ton of Christians who manage to be decent people (perhaps even a majority of them), how can this not be true for those strange-alien Muslims as well?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan the recent actions of our government (recent being, depressingly, the last 40 years or so), and I am in favor of transparency, whistle-blowing, and calling out our government on its bad behavior. I also think Manning did a good thing, though I also feel his actions should have consiquences since he did still break the law, laws that at least partially these days, exists for a very good reason (some secrecy will always be necessary, especially about military matters and intel).
That said; Manning didn't reveal any war crimes. Embarrassing information, sure. Even ethical breaches by soldiers, or perhaps even their commanders... but no war crimes. I'm pretty mixed in my feeling on him, to be honest. I support his actions, but they might not spring from noble goals, even if they met noble ends. It seems they sprung from his angst arrising from his conflicted sexuality, and the abuse and threat surrounding it in his environment (the DADT military), coupled with dealing with some unscrupulous characters (Assange)... Snowden is a better example of a noble leaker, further Snowden is very careful with his information.. Where Manning handed it over whole-hog. Again, I still support him. And I find that this sentence is a bit obscene, since nothing terribly dangerous got out, and there were no consiquences from his leak. No one got demonstrably hurt (not even, sadly, the government).
Me supporting consequences for him isn't me being against his actions, btw. The same went for other peaceful protesters of the civil rights era, and of followers of Ghandi when they were throwing off British colonialism. People participating in sit-ins and protests expected arrest and potential abuse. This is what made them noble. This gave their actions more meaning, than if there were no consequences for these actions.
For?
Having to deliver to every single person in the US, no matter how far in BFE they live, while still magically turning a profit despite the Government using dirty tricks to kill them? For being far more efficient than Fedex or UPS (by a couple of days, generally), while being cheaper?
Did a mailman punch your mom?
It seems that lately Fedex dumps some deliveries to the USPS too. About half of everything I've ordered recently has ended up in our mail box (the communal type, not house front). This is kind of annoying, since I hardly ever check the mail during the middle of a month, since all its going to be is junk. At the end/beginning I get a couple bills from people who don't understand technology, and 3-4 magazines, so I generally check the mail.
I just hope that the USPS gets something from this, and aren't being mandatorily shafted again.
arbitrary except they are ideologically opposed in every way with the exception of destroying our rights and spying on our every move.
So the question is; do they actually exist? Are there people who are "Liberal", and people who are "Conservative"... Or are there range of people who encompass various points within these blanket dogmas? I'm guessing there might be some who are purely one or the other, but I think we call these people the "lunatic fringe", or at very least the "vocal minority".
Case and point, I'm pretty far to the left socially, so far that I am a social libertarian (small "L", of course). I agree with Libertarians about everything, except the economy. Then again, I was for the war in Afghanistan, against banning guns (some flavor of control, perhaps, but not elimination, or much more than we have already... more enforcement of current laws than anything). I'm not a dove, and adhere to some level of neo-con inspired "realpolitik". My stances on abortion are muddled, and a bit contradictory, and definitely not along the liberal lines (even if the end result is, it isn't my place to tell anyone what to do, no matter my ethical or moral stance).
My dad is a lifelong union supporter, and subscribes to communist papers, but thinks we should force all illegal immigrants out at gun point, and is somewhat on the fence about social tolerance. My mom is much the same, but goes further and thinks we don't have enough capital punishment, and perhaps we shouldn't let gay people cook our food because of diseases. One of my friends is a capital L Libertarians, who with a couple drinks in him is in favor of gun control, and perhaps stronger welfare laws (more, not less).
Politics aren't binary. They aren't even the magical 2 axis thing Libertarians love. They are scattershot, various issues can be pigeonholed, but this has nothing to do with what people actually believe. We pick and choose, for the most part. Some things we get socially, some we are brought up with, some we muddle out on our own, and some are handed to us from churches, or Government propaganda.
Second: Like other posters above have noted - install Ubuntu, install Steam, and game to your hearts content...
...But not really.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that Linux (or at least Ubuntu) is gaining (har har) steam in the gaming arena, but they still have miles and miles to go before they even rank as mildly competitive with Windows. Looking through the games available from Steam on Linux, not a single game in my library is represented, and there aren't any that I really want to play. Of the games I'm currently playing, only one is available (might be available, will be available?) on Linux, Shadowrun Returns. It is nice that I can play Valve titles, but I really don't want to. I'm burnt out of TF2, and I really can't bring myself to play Half Life 2 yet again.
If I was still running Linux, I'd still want a Windows partition for gaming right now. This isn't going to change until more big devs and triple A titles show up on Linux. Right now, ignoring Source titles, there are none.
Yes, the race gets closer with Wine. But the reason I migrated AWAY from Linux in the first place was having to mess with janky, temperamental, arcane solutions to very simple problems that are quickly fixed in the big two OSs. I don't want to have to waste time getting one game working, reading forums full of trolls and idiots for one post that give one correct value, in one semi-hidden config files, just to do something that I can do in one click on Windows. For a lark, I poked around on getting the two games I play the most right now to work on Linux (Rift and Civ 5), and it is a very hit-or-miss affair from the looks of it.
Again, I'm not bashing Linux, or "shilling" for MS (god I hate that internet bullshit meme), go with what works for you. If you want your OS choice to be a political statement, good on ya. If you really just like Linux, fine. If you hate MS and Apple, fine. If you love them, equally fine. Don't care. But it is disingenuous to promote Linux as a Windows replacement in gaming. It isn't even close. Perhaps it will be, someday. Perhaps that day is coming sooner than later. But it isn't even close yet.
Also...
MS is about to lose it's hold on the only thing keeping Windows relevant.
How? This news has nothing to do with Windows gaming, only with MS's own gaming for Windows. My games will all work fine after this. If not for Slashdot, I'd never of even noticed, so great is its effect on my being.
Further I haven't actually found myself saying "Man, I wish I was using Linux, this would be so much easier" on my day to day tasks. Actually Linux would hurt my workflow right now, since I would lose my number one tools (Lightroom/Photoshop). The only time I yearn for Linux is on my girlfriends crappy netbook running Win 7 Starter (she doesn't want Linux, so Windows it is), and on my weak HTPC. But sadly there isn't a media program that is easy enough for drunk friends to use, that can also handle 30k songs without dying (the objectively terrible and bloated iTunes can, for some reason even with Win 7's overhead). Linux isn't the be-all-end-all. Windows is fine for me. I actually like it, and prefer it to Linux. For now at least, perhaps things will change in the near future, one can never tell.
Also, Windows major advantage is its mediocrity. Its good enough. Its easy enough. Its powerful enough. Its ubiquity also helps, since EVERYTHING runs on Windows, and everything is compatible with it. You never really have to worry about it. I'm happy with this, since, as I age, I value being a "nerd" less and less. I don't really relish in having to dig around and tweak things. I want to click a button and have things happen. Sure, there is no glory in it, no /. cred, but I don't give a shit anymore. Life is too short to have to muck around with config files.
SciAm became a total waste of time. Its now written for the absolute bottom, and has pretty much embraced pushing an agenda (environmentalism and global warming) over what they used to do, digest new science for lay people without being condescending. Yes, I agree with their stance on their pet issues, but this doesn't mean I want to be preached at. If I did, I'd borrow my father's copies of The Nation. I hate media with an agenda. I don't want to be preached at, and I don't want to read something that I 100% agree with. They dumbed down the rest of the content, and decided to present it in a "For Dummies" style, with bullets pretty much summarizing the full article before you even read it, so you don't have to actually bother.
PopSci and Mechanics turned into gadget rags, and whorish ad platforms long ago.
Pulp magazines are dead. Or at least should be. I only get some photography magazines now (art focused, not gear focused), and McSweeny's The Believer for the lady friend. I also poach my father's copies of Mother Jones, since they can be pretty good and balanced for a liberal rag, from time to time. I used to get the Economist, but I couldn't keep up with weekly reading, and got sick of the Eurozone Collapsing RIGHT NOW, constantly, for three years. They also decided to not support Android, so I couldn't read it on either my phone or my tablet after upgrading to a Newer android version.
The current House of Representatives is willing to take the risk... it's pretty clear which is more principled.
Ha?
The House isn't principled, it is inflexible, and dogmatic. I'm not going to defend Clinton, but I will fight any attempt to pain the current House in a good light.The House is where we send extremists that we don't trust with actual power (the Senate, or higher).
Big. Very big.
Reminds me of the asinine scare about asbestos insulation, where the form (airborn fibers vs. solid bound masses) and exposure times (years) were completely ignored.
The scare was invalid, but the concern is valid. It, originally, wasn't about merely having asbestos sitting inertly in your walls, but about acts that would unwittingly disturb asbestos, leading to it being airborne as actual harmful particles. If you do work on, or demolish older structures, than asbestos can actually be a risk. I have a giant hunk of rock asbestos sitting on a shelf, and the odds of it ever harming anyone is pretty slim (unless I throw it at you, or such), but if I ground up a couple tons of it and exposed it to you over some time, it wouldn't be optimal. Same with lead paint, it isn't much of a risk, until it ages or until someone does work on a structure containing it.
The mercury scare still pisses me off. As a kid I loved it, I had some old mercury switches that mesmerized me, and occasionally I'd play with free mercury (I didn't swallow it, or rub it one me). My parents played with it constantly. But now its worse than ebola. In high school someone spilled a couple of grams of mercury, and it shut down half the school for a day... because mercury is scary.
Someone really needs to stand up to the power of heavy metal. Ahem...
That said, why does anyone actually care about the NRA anymore? They are about as valid as AARP, nothing more than a self-interested lobby group that really doesn't care about their members being using them to fun what their masters want to force on everyone. That isn't a screed against gun ownership, or owners, my feelings toward the NRA is irrelevant towards my stance on guns. The NRA should die, and be replaced with a better group that actually represents their members, and minimizes their actual bigger impact to only things that protect their members rights.
Oh no, someone doesn't have only negative things to say about an MS product... must be a shill!
Or someone with a different opinion than yours... but surely that is impossible.
Except you can buy mice and touchscreens... You can't buy a Leap Motion.
I was very excited to get my hands on one of these... But that interest has pretty much completely died now since they moved back an actual release indefinitely.
Sure, there are pre-orders, which are a terrible idea, and the brief window when I could have got a beta dev version (which is useless to people like me, actual users).
They are vaporware, until I can actually go to a store, hand someone $80, and take it home.
I really wish that either this, or the Kinect for Windows were real options. I don't see gestures replacing my mouse and keyboard, but they would be a nice augment. I'd love being able to sit back, and pause videos with a gesture, or browse the internet without my mouse... but... I have a feeling this day is still far away.
It was only Moffat that wrote the good stories ... The Girl in the Fireplace...
That one was absolute crap. It was horribly written, and only existed to be pretty and sentimental (which is Moffat's only thing)... Oh, and an excuse to have an unrealistic quirky-indie-drama girl character. But then again I couldn't get past the magical horse that only existed to end the episode, because he couldn't be bothered to actually find a way out of his own plot.
Blink was good in the sense that the Weeping Angels are next to Daleks in awesome Who monsters, but the I wanted to kill the girl after five seconds, because she was another cute, quirky, indie-movie character. I'm guessing Moffat loses sleep over Ellen Page not being British, since that is exactly who the new companion was.
I pretty much quit watching. New Doctor, good (not that I hate Smith, he just hasn't had anything to work from, and Moffat butchered the character). Getting rid of Amy Pond, awesome. But I really don't care until Moffat retires. The last season was unwatchable, it made the Silence arc look good, which must have taken some work.
I turned mine off after getting a slew of dust storm warnings... I live in Phoenix, these happen once a week from mid-July until the end of August. They aren't scary, they aren't alert worthy, they are a common thing. Why does my phone need to explode just to tell me that its going to be dusty?
A couple years back Verizon decided it was of utmost importance to tell me a rural wash, 10 miles from my house, might flood, once an hour for three days.
Perhaps the administrators of these alerts should read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", since their utility is completely destroyed when everyone turns them off thanks to being deluged with trivial alerts. Probably whats happening though is that whoever runs these is just going "ooooh shiney" and wants to play with their new toys.