From the blog "Mike and Heather began having an affair during the Baseline Murder Investigation and met repeatedly while on duty to bump uglies.
With hard hitting, evidence laden, journalism like that, the PPD better be scared! This is what I have against most of the anti-cop sentiment floating around in Phoenix, there is very little evidence, and a whole lot of mindless passionate finger pointing.
Also, to the rest of the people here, "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the COURTS, not the police. Very little would ever get done if they were unable to investigate under "suspicion".
Not taking side, I'm just taking it all with a grain of salt. The guy could very well be under suspicion of a crime, and thus this all is legal and valid.
I'm suprised the people involved don't sue for slander, to be honest, unless you have strong proof of your allegations being true (which are not provided on the blog).
I find siding against the police by default to be just as annoying. Most police, and most police departments don't fit into some default Orwellian mold, either. I'm willing to give BOTH the benefit of the doubt until more evidence surfaces, meaning I withhold all judgement, no matter how much I want to vomit forth a ideologically motivated value judgement based on nothing more than my politics, paranoia, and agenda.
The police could be treating people like crimials because, you know, they are criminals. Or the police could be a ruthless gestapo like organization. In this case, I have no evidence pointing either way. Inductive logic points me towards the former though. But not strongly.
If this was the Maricopa County Sheriff, I'd be leaning towards the latter, but my experiences with the Phoenix PD has been generally positive (even if sometimes they are over worked and understaffed to a point where they cannot do their job properly)
As a lefty, it makes me happy that my arrow keys still get some use. WASD is a pain in the ass, they are just keys, with nothing to set them apart from their surrounding keys, ESDF is much better for the wrong-handed crowd out there, since you at least have the touch typing nob on "F" to delineate it from everything else.
And back on topic, can someone please fix the damn delay between hitting preview, and allowing me to submit. Is it there for those of us who read REALLY slowly, 30 seconds is a bit much. Also, from hitting "continuing editing" it does some fun and wonky stuff, like kicking me back to editing, as desired, but then sending the page back to the beginning of the comments and putting the entry box back into preview mode.
Most the time I don't go back and re-edit my comments, because it is such a pain in the ass, betting which bizarre and annoying behavior/. will for on me.
Most newspapers either are already there, or present an extremely skewed view. I gave up even reading my local paper, since it skews so far to the right, it seems they gave up even TRYING to appear objective. The last year, its main news is smears of our sheriff and AG because they don't like their politics. At times they run opinion peices (i.e. not based on facts) as front page news.
Then you add in the huge amounts of human interest stories, and a around 10% content to 90% ad ration, and you get a waste of time and money. Add to this their aggressive tactics for subscriptions (I only want the fri-sat-sun additions, but they call three times a week to make me get more than that), and you don't even want to be in their database, much less have an active subscription.
If the Arizona Republic(an) died tomorrow, and Gannet with it, I would dance in the streets.
Crack pipes are always considered drug paraphernalia because there is no legitimate use for a crack pipe.
Perhaps where you live, here they can sell them as "snuff pipes" in headshops.
There is legitimate torrents on TPB, it takes about 5 seconds to find them. They have lots of public domain ebooks, linux distros, FOSS software, and (my favorite) old movies which exist prior to copyright, or never got the status. I just downloaded Metropolis from TPB last week.
As for a VPN, perhaps I don't want people seeing my traffic? Perhaps I'm paranoid. Perhaps I'm using TPB to download ISOs of software I have licenses for, but am still scared of the legal flack from idiotic laws preventing me from getting them when the original media dies. Same with downloading songs from CDs that I own, but are unreadable thanks to DRM, scratches, or flawed "extra" features.
Have you ever tried smoking tobacco from a regular POT bong? I tried once, it was the nastiest thing I've done. Same for POT pipes, they really suck as tobacco pipes. There really isn't a logical use for them outside of drug use.
Hookahs, and such, are legitimate, as are normal tobacco pipes, but not the type you can buy at your local headshop. There is a reason they don't sell these items at your local tobacconist.
I'm not arguing that they should be illegal, mind. I think they should be legal, as should marijuana. (I say this as a person who doesn't use it, even) I'm just stating that there is no legal purpose for these things, don't be naive and think there is. Its a legal loophole, thats all.
The funniest is "snuff pipes", which really have no reason to exist outside of smoking meth and crack.
Why does everyone here cling to some slim flimsy belief that what thepiratebay does is anything other than wilful, cynical wholesale copyright infringement?
Because I've used to do otherwise on occasion. That in itself is enough anecdotal evidence to prove that its sole purpose is not copyright infringement.
Yes, most people use it for piracy, but that doesn't mean that it only exists for piracy. If they decided to wipe all the legit torrents and only host illegal ones, then you'd have a case.
TPB is just a tool, like any other. It is value neutral, it all depends on how you use it. Right now a majority (not all) of people use it for piracy, but this doesn't mean anything. If a majority of people used the internet for piracy, should we shut it down? If a majority of people used CD/DVD burners for piracy, should we ban or regulate their sale?
Because it sure as hell is not benefitting humanity.
Huh, if that was my sole criteria for shopping, I probably wouldn't be able to buy anything. Hardly any for profit company exists to benefit humanity, they operate to make a quick buck. I'm sure most companies would LOVE to have the market share of Windows or Walmart, good and evil aside.
If Dell, for example, could find a way to remove all the competition legally, and be the only consumer PC manufacturer, they would jump on it. Who wouldn't?
Some things are simply self-evident. Books that are mostly pictures with few words are, in a word, unserious. No matter how much people wish it to be otherwise. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but to pretend otherwise is foolish.
All movies are trash because American Pie was trash. All art is trash because Andy Warhol was a hack. All of the internet is trash because 4Chan is trash.
Your example is more laughable, since you use one example in one form of media, and then claim a WHOLE genre is expression is trash based on some mythical a priori judgment, that you don't share.
Comic books are a means for expression, merely another means for expression, nothing more, nothing less. 90% of them are trash, but this is true for ALL media.
I don't think that an 11 year old would be able to see beyond the violence, to the roll that violence is playing in advancing a premise. It requires a certain level of maturity, and a certain knowledge to the whole genre of comics, a certain knowledge of the US's relationship with violence (in real life, and in media).
I really liked Funny Games (both of them), but I wouldn't let my children watch it either, and oddly, the violence is more low key in both versions of that film than in Watchmen.
Both are still better than the growing trend of "gore as porn" in popular cinema, or worse "torture as porn". Where violence is always and end in itself, and always orchestrated only to titillate, and not to advance plot, or show something important.
One of the things that struck me about Watchmen was the parents who took their children there expecting a normal superhero movie. Some parents continued watching unphased as their pre-adolecent daughter in front of us squirmed at the rape scene, and then permanently left to go to the bathroom during the prison break scene. This led me to think that this is one of the few movies that actually was rated correctly. This was the R rated movie. It had mature theme unsuitable to most minors, and not just some frontal nudity or gore.
Most children don't care if there is sex in movies. Maturity is related to sex drive, if they are immature, by nature, they don't have one. The most you can expect out of a typical child, during a sex scene is "ewww gross". Mild nudity is even more innocuous.
I can understand how porn, or more "deviant" sexual scenes might be disturbing to the development of children. Most of Blue Velvet might be rather much for children, for example. But then again, that is why it is rated R.
I don't understand why the US's goal is to raise generation after generation of violent prudes. It is an odd set of priorities. I'd rather the opposite be true.
If you had something to say, you would say it with a name, not anonymously. Obviously you either lack the balls, or are frightened of people who think your a raving lunatic being able to ignore you, as they should be able to. Either that or your paranoid delusions have grown to the point where you really think that "they" (they of course being people of differing opinion, i.e. the conspiracy) will come and get you for coughing up your own personal version of the "truth".
Personally the fourth option is the most viable, your a stupid troll. Meaning your probably some form of teenager, probably socially maligned by your peer group, probably in ill physical shape, and probably lashing out under the cover of anonymity since you lack the ability to do so in real life. In other words, a genuinely pathetic individual.
I'm not even sure if you have a valid point, since I still haven't bothered to read a single of your bizarre rants, since they are not presented in a way that grants a single shred of credibility. You sound like a schizophrenic hobo, thus the only accord you deserve is perhaps a pitiable glance, and some beer money. You have no valid sources, and your just quoting right wing talk-show conspiracy theories, none of it is new, most of it is long refuted or disproven, and most of it is lazy ad-hoc justification for being firmly trompted in a popular election by people who are completely sick of your backwards, harmful, political ideologies which are based on nothing more than shallow theories, and personal feelings of petty greed and Ayn Randian idiocy. Oh, and a large helping of "Sky Daddy says so".
Good for you. Now go shut up and let the adults talk./. really needs to get rid of open "AC" access, its getting annoying. Keep the AC action, but force registration to use it, so I can block these "copypasta" morons. Since the death of goatse, and the advent of overly political rantings, they've lost their amusement value.
Oh, and I hear that Obama and HITLER have been having dinner together a lot lately? Any thoughts?
The Bible has survived over 2000 years, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it's far more than an old book of stories.
[citation needed]
The Bible is an old book full of stories, some of the stories have components, but as far as I can tell none of the theological bits have been proven. To the contrary, many of the miraculous bits have been proven to be common literary conventions of the time.
It certainly isn't fact, and it shouldn't be taught as such.
True, though it is a theory strongly BACKED by facts, where creationism isn't. It's a theory strongly backed by "faith", which means it isn't SCIENCE, and therefore should never be taught as such. Evolution is theory, but this doesn't mean it is a colloquial theory, it is tested, backed by evidence and proper logic, and serves to explain existent circumstances. Creationism doesn't fill any of these. I have no problem with it being taught in comparative religion classes, where it belongs.
Until, of course, someone comes up with a factual, and logical proof of the JudeoChristian God, based on hard empirical evidence.
An Operating System (Vista) that prefers 2GB or more memory; whose file copy feature sucks; and that doesn't restore wifi after sleep isn't really as bad as people think, after the first service pack was released.
Notice I criticized them all, none of them are perfect. Right now Vista is still better on my laptop than Linux, since it can at least use the built in wifi (albeit with a ton of annoyance). Hell, right now I'm using an old Linksys USB dongle on it, and I still had to go edit some settings, and throw some hacks around to get it working, whereas Vista works with it out of the box. As stated, this isn't Linux' fault, though I might throw some blame for not working with the Linksys, since it must be a rather common problem (being common hardware).
As for the RAM, it isn't a problem. To me at least. I have 6Gb currently (thinking of going with 8Gb, since RAM is cheap), so it never effects me. If you have an older system, you shouldn't be wanting Vista any ways, there are better choices out there (XP or Linux flavors).
As stated, you get what you need for your purposes, and live with the inevitable faults. If you don't like an OS, then don't use it, it is as simple as that. There really isn't a need to flame people who like it, nor a logical grounding for it.
So how is being a Linux shill any better? I'm guessing your just using the word "shill" to designate people that you've decided aren't as "cool" as yourself, thus denigrating yourself to the level of the rest of the "fanboys" out there.
It is an operating system, nothing more, nothing less. Your preference in operating systems says nothing about the worth of your character. Also, sadly, going with the meaning of the word "shill", it doesn't mean that Apple/Microsoft is throwing large amounts of money my way to say nice things about their software. It would be nice if they were, though.
Vista isn't as bad as people said it was, especially after SP1 and some tweaking. It works, it is stable, and it doesn't eat up too many resources on any half-modern computer. More than it should, perhaps, but hardly noticeable if you have over 2Gb of RAM and a modern processor. File copying still sucks, and its cute little wifi death after waking bug still annoys me to the point of homicidal rage from time to time, but there is no perfect OS.
Vista is on my gaming box.
OS X also serves its niche, when I got sick of tinkering with computers, and my time was almost completely taken by writing large collegiate papers (and a fair amount of binge drinking), it worked wonderfully for me. It lived up to its slogan, for the most part, it just worked. Yes, it was lacking in tweak-ability, and often felt hobbled, but it still got the job done rather well. OS X, also has the benefit of being the hot-bed of high quality independent developers, who make both functional programs, and POLISHED ones, something the Linux development community, as a whole, hasn't quite discovered.
Right now OS X (on a MacMini) is my media center.
Linux has come leaps and bounds in recent years. Thanks to Ubuntu, and like projects, it has finally received the feeling of polish that the other corporate OSs have. It finally found the medium I'm happy with, where it works out of the box (sans my laptops damn built in wifi, as usual), is feature complete, but still has enough subterranean options to turn to when I'm in the mood. Sadly it still is somewhat gimped by issues not of its own fault... drivers... oh lord drivers, please?! It also still has compatibility options, WINE is nice, but still require more tinkering than some people have time, or desire for. There needs to be a Parallels like solution.
Linux is on my tinkering machine (an old HP laptop).
So who am I shilling for, if I use, and enjoy all three of the major OSs? I'd even be using Windows 7 right now if it wanted to behave nicely on my laptop.
My view might be a bit skewed since I'm not a programmer, nor do I work in the IT industry. I'm nothing more than a hobbyist, and casual nerd. My major "work" (i.e. for money) on computers is writing and the occasional freelance graphic design work.
OS preference should come down to what you need, and what compliments your work-style, and not some quasi-religious loyalty. I know cognitive dissonance comes into it, where your choice MUST be the best, since you chose it. But that is a silly and irrational justification.
I had to look up that attempt at a meme... I should have guessed it is from 4chan/b/ since it isn't funny, and has no intellectual appeal for anyone above perhaps fourteen.
I miss the days when/. had its own lame memes, and didn't have to import them from a bunch of adolescents. At least then the memes were fitting of the medium, meaning somewhat dorky.
Sorry for the nasty post, I just don't get the humor.
I don't want to install a whole new component to do something that a simple extension can do. I also really don't want ANOTHER superfluous service running, just in case I need it. One Chrome gets adblock, noscript, and cookiesafe, then I'll give it it's fair shake.
Right now I'm impressed with Chrome's zip, but I find it inferior from a UI perspective. It has all the annoying UI features of IE (stupid menus), a bad tab scheme (more mouse travel than any other browser), a lack of accessible bookmarks, etc...
I suspect the rights discussion is mostly semantics -- although I do have the right to bear arms in the fullest of sense. In fact, I have the right to bear nuclear arms.
The former I agree with, with some minor caveats, the latter not at all. The caveat, I'd say "you have the right to bear arms responsibly", I add the caveat since i don't think bearing arms is an ends to itself, but rather a means towards a more fundamental right. And also, as you stated, if you use that right to infringe on the rights of others, you no longer have that particular right, or at least that particular means of using the underlying right (self-defense).
Rights are a trade off, generally, at least social rights, the risk of a misused gun, while tragic, is minimal when compared to a misused nuke, also the applicability of using a gun for self-defense is more common (still rare), the applications of a nuke are... If a full foreign nation is against you as an individual, perhaps.
But then again I also am of the unpopular opinion that self-defense, as a right, has caveats. I fully agree with the definition of "the least amount of force to remove yourself from a situation", meaning that killing someone who may be a threat (its a judgment call, and people are fallible if nothing else) should be crime, unless there was no other form of resolution, and only in the case of potential bodily harm, not property damage.
Again, it boils down to responsibility. If I accept rights as a social construct, which I must, then I must accept that they exist for the good of society, and not individuals, per se. To clarify, individuals benefit obviously, but not, when it causes more harm than it rectifies. This latter cause, I suppose, is the debate.
This is the sort of thing I'd rewrite in the constitution, the second amendment is very vague, and needs clarification. Both sides of the arms argument can cite it to their ends, like the Bible. We often ignore the first bit of it "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State", and only cite the "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." bit. We also generally ignore the vocabulary that the founders used, and the context in which it was written. It largely becomes an argument of textual analysis, what you want to read in it.
I'd also revise the whole "Washington DC" thing, it makes no sense for them to not have representation, it can even be seen as unconstitutional since you need representation for taxation, it also is unconstitutional for them to have representation. Amusingly the only constitutional fix would to remove federal taxes from the residents of Washington DC.
I have. I understand that idea of "rights", though it still begs "what is a right", we know their limits, but not what they are, or where they come from. Or perhaps the limits are the rights, and thus rights = responsibility, in some sense.
Thus, you are denied the "right" to murder. You are denied the right to steal my property.
And thus driving is problematic, since it IS dangerous, and can harm others easily. Both in the physical sense, and financially (no insurance). Thus I have no problem acknowledging restriction on it, if I accepted as a right, which I don't. Its too specific, like having the right to own a computer, or the right to wear a fanny pack or grow flowers. The right to move about, I can see, but the right to own and operate a car, I can't. It's like saying everyone must have a computer because denying someone on is a violation of their first amendment.
Same thing with guns, I don't disagree that we have the right, but only in a constitutional sense, no some a priori natural law sense. We might have the right to protect ourselves from harm, but the fact that we talk about guns, themselves, as the right is stupid. A gun is nothing but a tool, not very right worthy. We make the debate into "I have the right to have a hammer", and not the more important "I have the right to build bird-houses in my garage".
The Constitution is not the origin of our rights -- it is merely the rules that American citizens agree to be governed under.
Right in the jingoistic sense, but wrong in reality. I didn't agree, nor has anyone agreed to live under them in the last 200 years. Some old dead, rich white guys agreed, long ago, and in a culture very much different than ours, all of whom had values very different than ours. There are vast swaths of it I would do away with, as well as vast swaths of stuff I would add.
One more tangent, if polled, how many people would accept the constitution as is?
The constitution is just a document, its a piece of paper written by mere mortals a long long time ago. You can no more cite the constitution for the origin of rights, as you can the Bible. I'm a personal fan of it, but claiming that the constitution is the origin of rights is rather silly.
According to the Constitution I have the right to music piracy, and murder too, since no where in there does it specifically deny these. Actually, the constitution does not contain a single LAW, therefore I have the right to do whatever I please... Oh wait...
I'm REALLY sick of people ranting about rights, but never the responsibilities that should be attached to them. Actually, wait, I'm generally sick of people ranting about rights, since the word has become a synonym for "a right is something that allows me to do whatever I please, others be damned!". We can't even define what a right IS, but still accept them as some immutable a priori thing existing in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
From the blog "Mike and Heather began having an affair during the Baseline Murder Investigation and met repeatedly while on duty to bump uglies.
With hard hitting, evidence laden, journalism like that, the PPD better be scared! This is what I have against most of the anti-cop sentiment floating around in Phoenix, there is very little evidence, and a whole lot of mindless passionate finger pointing.
Also, to the rest of the people here, "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the COURTS, not the police. Very little would ever get done if they were unable to investigate under "suspicion".
Not taking side, I'm just taking it all with a grain of salt. The guy could very well be under suspicion of a crime, and thus this all is legal and valid.
I'm suprised the people involved don't sue for slander, to be honest, unless you have strong proof of your allegations being true (which are not provided on the blog).
Stop driving on my roads then.
Thank you.
I find siding against the police by default to be just as annoying. Most police, and most police departments don't fit into some default Orwellian mold, either. I'm willing to give BOTH the benefit of the doubt until more evidence surfaces, meaning I withhold all judgement, no matter how much I want to vomit forth a ideologically motivated value judgement based on nothing more than my politics, paranoia, and agenda.
The police could be treating people like crimials because, you know, they are criminals. Or the police could be a ruthless gestapo like organization. In this case, I have no evidence pointing either way. Inductive logic points me towards the former though. But not strongly.
If this was the Maricopa County Sheriff, I'd be leaning towards the latter, but my experiences with the Phoenix PD has been generally positive (even if sometimes they are over worked and understaffed to a point where they cannot do their job properly)
Can we get an automatic "no life" or "slacker" one for just being here?
Also, its odd, according to the achievement page, I have one less +5 post than Taco. The whole thing is rather inaccurate.
a one it's can't take your shill critique bullshit critique seriously..
As a lefty, it makes me happy that my arrow keys still get some use. WASD is a pain in the ass, they are just keys, with nothing to set them apart from their surrounding keys, ESDF is much better for the wrong-handed crowd out there, since you at least have the touch typing nob on "F" to delineate it from everything else.
And back on topic, can someone please fix the damn delay between hitting preview, and allowing me to submit. Is it there for those of us who read REALLY slowly, 30 seconds is a bit much. Also, from hitting "continuing editing" it does some fun and wonky stuff, like kicking me back to editing, as desired, but then sending the page back to the beginning of the comments and putting the entry box back into preview mode.
Most the time I don't go back and re-edit my comments, because it is such a pain in the ass, betting which bizarre and annoying behavior /. will for on me.
Most newspapers either are already there, or present an extremely skewed view. I gave up even reading my local paper, since it skews so far to the right, it seems they gave up even TRYING to appear objective. The last year, its main news is smears of our sheriff and AG because they don't like their politics. At times they run opinion peices (i.e. not based on facts) as front page news.
Then you add in the huge amounts of human interest stories, and a around 10% content to 90% ad ration, and you get a waste of time and money. Add to this their aggressive tactics for subscriptions (I only want the fri-sat-sun additions, but they call three times a week to make me get more than that), and you don't even want to be in their database, much less have an active subscription.
If the Arizona Republic(an) died tomorrow, and Gannet with it, I would dance in the streets.
Crack pipes are always considered drug paraphernalia because there is no legitimate use for a crack pipe.
Perhaps where you live, here they can sell them as "snuff pipes" in headshops.
There is legitimate torrents on TPB, it takes about 5 seconds to find them. They have lots of public domain ebooks, linux distros, FOSS software, and (my favorite) old movies which exist prior to copyright, or never got the status. I just downloaded Metropolis from TPB last week.
As for a VPN, perhaps I don't want people seeing my traffic? Perhaps I'm paranoid. Perhaps I'm using TPB to download ISOs of software I have licenses for, but am still scared of the legal flack from idiotic laws preventing me from getting them when the original media dies. Same with downloading songs from CDs that I own, but are unreadable thanks to DRM, scratches, or flawed "extra" features.
Have you ever tried smoking tobacco from a regular POT bong? I tried once, it was the nastiest thing I've done. Same for POT pipes, they really suck as tobacco pipes. There really isn't a logical use for them outside of drug use.
Hookahs, and such, are legitimate, as are normal tobacco pipes, but not the type you can buy at your local headshop. There is a reason they don't sell these items at your local tobacconist.
I'm not arguing that they should be illegal, mind. I think they should be legal, as should marijuana. (I say this as a person who doesn't use it, even) I'm just stating that there is no legal purpose for these things, don't be naive and think there is. Its a legal loophole, thats all.
The funniest is "snuff pipes", which really have no reason to exist outside of smoking meth and crack.
Why does everyone here cling to some slim flimsy belief that what thepiratebay does is anything other than wilful, cynical wholesale copyright infringement?
Because I've used to do otherwise on occasion. That in itself is enough anecdotal evidence to prove that its sole purpose is not copyright infringement.
Yes, most people use it for piracy, but that doesn't mean that it only exists for piracy. If they decided to wipe all the legit torrents and only host illegal ones, then you'd have a case.
TPB is just a tool, like any other. It is value neutral, it all depends on how you use it. Right now a majority (not all) of people use it for piracy, but this doesn't mean anything. If a majority of people used the internet for piracy, should we shut it down? If a majority of people used CD/DVD burners for piracy, should we ban or regulate their sale?
Because it sure as hell is not benefitting humanity.
Huh, if that was my sole criteria for shopping, I probably wouldn't be able to buy anything. Hardly any for profit company exists to benefit humanity, they operate to make a quick buck. I'm sure most companies would LOVE to have the market share of Windows or Walmart, good and evil aside.
If Dell, for example, could find a way to remove all the competition legally, and be the only consumer PC manufacturer, they would jump on it. Who wouldn't?
Some things are simply self-evident. Books that are mostly pictures with few words are, in a word, unserious. No matter how much people wish it to be otherwise. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but to pretend otherwise is foolish.
All movies are trash because American Pie was trash. All art is trash because Andy Warhol was a hack. All of the internet is trash because 4Chan is trash.
Your example is more laughable, since you use one example in one form of media, and then claim a WHOLE genre is expression is trash based on some mythical a priori judgment, that you don't share.
Comic books are a means for expression, merely another means for expression, nothing more, nothing less. 90% of them are trash, but this is true for ALL media.
I don't think he did.
I don't think that an 11 year old would be able to see beyond the violence, to the roll that violence is playing in advancing a premise. It requires a certain level of maturity, and a certain knowledge to the whole genre of comics, a certain knowledge of the US's relationship with violence (in real life, and in media).
I really liked Funny Games (both of them), but I wouldn't let my children watch it either, and oddly, the violence is more low key in both versions of that film than in Watchmen.
Both are still better than the growing trend of "gore as porn" in popular cinema, or worse "torture as porn". Where violence is always and end in itself, and always orchestrated only to titillate, and not to advance plot, or show something important.
One of the things that struck me about Watchmen was the parents who took their children there expecting a normal superhero movie. Some parents continued watching unphased as their pre-adolecent daughter in front of us squirmed at the rape scene, and then permanently left to go to the bathroom during the prison break scene. This led me to think that this is one of the few movies that actually was rated correctly. This was the R rated movie. It had mature theme unsuitable to most minors, and not just some frontal nudity or gore.
Most children don't care if there is sex in movies. Maturity is related to sex drive, if they are immature, by nature, they don't have one. The most you can expect out of a typical child, during a sex scene is "ewww gross". Mild nudity is even more innocuous.
I can understand how porn, or more "deviant" sexual scenes might be disturbing to the development of children. Most of Blue Velvet might be rather much for children, for example. But then again, that is why it is rated R.
I don't understand why the US's goal is to raise generation after generation of violent prudes. It is an odd set of priorities. I'd rather the opposite be true.
If you had something to say, you would say it with a name, not anonymously. Obviously you either lack the balls, or are frightened of people who think your a raving lunatic being able to ignore you, as they should be able to. Either that or your paranoid delusions have grown to the point where you really think that "they" (they of course being people of differing opinion, i.e. the conspiracy) will come and get you for coughing up your own personal version of the "truth".
Personally the fourth option is the most viable, your a stupid troll. Meaning your probably some form of teenager, probably socially maligned by your peer group, probably in ill physical shape, and probably lashing out under the cover of anonymity since you lack the ability to do so in real life. In other words, a genuinely pathetic individual.
I'm not even sure if you have a valid point, since I still haven't bothered to read a single of your bizarre rants, since they are not presented in a way that grants a single shred of credibility. You sound like a schizophrenic hobo, thus the only accord you deserve is perhaps a pitiable glance, and some beer money. You have no valid sources, and your just quoting right wing talk-show conspiracy theories, none of it is new, most of it is long refuted or disproven, and most of it is lazy ad-hoc justification for being firmly trompted in a popular election by people who are completely sick of your backwards, harmful, political ideologies which are based on nothing more than shallow theories, and personal feelings of petty greed and Ayn Randian idiocy. Oh, and a large helping of "Sky Daddy says so".
Good for you. Now go shut up and let the adults talk. /. really needs to get rid of open "AC" access, its getting annoying. Keep the AC action, but force registration to use it, so I can block these "copypasta" morons. Since the death of goatse, and the advent of overly political rantings, they've lost their amusement value.
Oh, and I hear that Obama and HITLER have been having dinner together a lot lately? Any thoughts?
To be fair, it Win7 might be rock solid, I wouldn't know, I can't get the installer to... you know... install it.
The Bible has survived over 2000 years, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it's far more than an old book of stories.
[citation needed]
The Bible is an old book full of stories, some of the stories have components, but as far as I can tell none of the theological bits have been proven. To the contrary, many of the miraculous bits have been proven to be common literary conventions of the time.
It certainly isn't fact, and it shouldn't be taught as such.
True, though it is a theory strongly BACKED by facts, where creationism isn't. It's a theory strongly backed by "faith", which means it isn't SCIENCE, and therefore should never be taught as such. Evolution is theory, but this doesn't mean it is a colloquial theory, it is tested, backed by evidence and proper logic, and serves to explain existent circumstances. Creationism doesn't fill any of these. I have no problem with it being taught in comparative religion classes, where it belongs.
Until, of course, someone comes up with a factual, and logical proof of the JudeoChristian God, based on hard empirical evidence.
An Operating System (Vista) that prefers 2GB or more memory; whose file copy feature sucks; and that doesn't restore wifi after sleep isn't really as bad as people think, after the first service pack was released.
Notice I criticized them all, none of them are perfect. Right now Vista is still better on my laptop than Linux, since it can at least use the built in wifi (albeit with a ton of annoyance). Hell, right now I'm using an old Linksys USB dongle on it, and I still had to go edit some settings, and throw some hacks around to get it working, whereas Vista works with it out of the box. As stated, this isn't Linux' fault, though I might throw some blame for not working with the Linksys, since it must be a rather common problem (being common hardware).
As for the RAM, it isn't a problem. To me at least. I have 6Gb currently (thinking of going with 8Gb, since RAM is cheap), so it never effects me. If you have an older system, you shouldn't be wanting Vista any ways, there are better choices out there (XP or Linux flavors).
As stated, you get what you need for your purposes, and live with the inevitable faults. If you don't like an OS, then don't use it, it is as simple as that. There really isn't a need to flame people who like it, nor a logical grounding for it.
So how is being a Linux shill any better? I'm guessing your just using the word "shill" to designate people that you've decided aren't as "cool" as yourself, thus denigrating yourself to the level of the rest of the "fanboys" out there.
It is an operating system, nothing more, nothing less. Your preference in operating systems says nothing about the worth of your character. Also, sadly, going with the meaning of the word "shill", it doesn't mean that Apple/Microsoft is throwing large amounts of money my way to say nice things about their software. It would be nice if they were, though.
Vista isn't as bad as people said it was, especially after SP1 and some tweaking. It works, it is stable, and it doesn't eat up too many resources on any half-modern computer. More than it should, perhaps, but hardly noticeable if you have over 2Gb of RAM and a modern processor. File copying still sucks, and its cute little wifi death after waking bug still annoys me to the point of homicidal rage from time to time, but there is no perfect OS.
Vista is on my gaming box.
OS X also serves its niche, when I got sick of tinkering with computers, and my time was almost completely taken by writing large collegiate papers (and a fair amount of binge drinking), it worked wonderfully for me. It lived up to its slogan, for the most part, it just worked. Yes, it was lacking in tweak-ability, and often felt hobbled, but it still got the job done rather well. OS X, also has the benefit of being the hot-bed of high quality independent developers, who make both functional programs, and POLISHED ones, something the Linux development community, as a whole, hasn't quite discovered.
Right now OS X (on a MacMini) is my media center.
Linux has come leaps and bounds in recent years. Thanks to Ubuntu, and like projects, it has finally received the feeling of polish that the other corporate OSs have. It finally found the medium I'm happy with, where it works out of the box (sans my laptops damn built in wifi, as usual), is feature complete, but still has enough subterranean options to turn to when I'm in the mood. Sadly it still is somewhat gimped by issues not of its own fault... drivers... oh lord drivers, please?! It also still has compatibility options, WINE is nice, but still require more tinkering than some people have time, or desire for. There needs to be a Parallels like solution.
Linux is on my tinkering machine (an old HP laptop).
So who am I shilling for, if I use, and enjoy all three of the major OSs? I'd even be using Windows 7 right now if it wanted to behave nicely on my laptop.
My view might be a bit skewed since I'm not a programmer, nor do I work in the IT industry. I'm nothing more than a hobbyist, and casual nerd. My major "work" (i.e. for money) on computers is writing and the occasional freelance graphic design work.
OS preference should come down to what you need, and what compliments your work-style, and not some quasi-religious loyalty. I know cognitive dissonance comes into it, where your choice MUST be the best, since you chose it. But that is a silly and irrational justification.
I had to look up that attempt at a meme... I should have guessed it is from 4chan/b/ since it isn't funny, and has no intellectual appeal for anyone above perhaps fourteen.
I miss the days when /. had its own lame memes, and didn't have to import them from a bunch of adolescents. At least then the memes were fitting of the medium, meaning somewhat dorky.
Sorry for the nasty post, I just don't get the humor.
I don't want to install a whole new component to do something that a simple extension can do. I also really don't want ANOTHER superfluous service running, just in case I need it. One Chrome gets adblock, noscript, and cookiesafe, then I'll give it it's fair shake.
Right now I'm impressed with Chrome's zip, but I find it inferior from a UI perspective. It has all the annoying UI features of IE (stupid menus), a bad tab scheme (more mouse travel than any other browser), a lack of accessible bookmarks, etc...
I suspect the rights discussion is mostly semantics -- although I do have the right to bear arms in the fullest of sense. In fact, I have the right to bear nuclear arms.
The former I agree with, with some minor caveats, the latter not at all. The caveat, I'd say "you have the right to bear arms responsibly", I add the caveat since i don't think bearing arms is an ends to itself, but rather a means towards a more fundamental right. And also, as you stated, if you use that right to infringe on the rights of others, you no longer have that particular right, or at least that particular means of using the underlying right (self-defense).
Rights are a trade off, generally, at least social rights, the risk of a misused gun, while tragic, is minimal when compared to a misused nuke, also the applicability of using a gun for self-defense is more common (still rare), the applications of a nuke are... If a full foreign nation is against you as an individual, perhaps.
But then again I also am of the unpopular opinion that self-defense, as a right, has caveats. I fully agree with the definition of "the least amount of force to remove yourself from a situation", meaning that killing someone who may be a threat (its a judgment call, and people are fallible if nothing else) should be crime, unless there was no other form of resolution, and only in the case of potential bodily harm, not property damage.
Again, it boils down to responsibility. If I accept rights as a social construct, which I must, then I must accept that they exist for the good of society, and not individuals, per se. To clarify, individuals benefit obviously, but not, when it causes more harm than it rectifies. This latter cause, I suppose, is the debate.
This is the sort of thing I'd rewrite in the constitution, the second amendment is very vague, and needs clarification. Both sides of the arms argument can cite it to their ends, like the Bible. We often ignore the first bit of it "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State", and only cite the "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." bit. We also generally ignore the vocabulary that the founders used, and the context in which it was written. It largely becomes an argument of textual analysis, what you want to read in it.
I'd also revise the whole "Washington DC" thing, it makes no sense for them to not have representation, it can even be seen as unconstitutional since you need representation for taxation, it also is unconstitutional for them to have representation. Amusingly the only constitutional fix would to remove federal taxes from the residents of Washington DC.
I have. I understand that idea of "rights", though it still begs "what is a right", we know their limits, but not what they are, or where they come from. Or perhaps the limits are the rights, and thus rights = responsibility, in some sense.
Thus, you are denied the "right" to murder. You are denied the right to steal my property.
And thus driving is problematic, since it IS dangerous, and can harm others easily. Both in the physical sense, and financially (no insurance). Thus I have no problem acknowledging restriction on it, if I accepted as a right, which I don't. Its too specific, like having the right to own a computer, or the right to wear a fanny pack or grow flowers. The right to move about, I can see, but the right to own and operate a car, I can't. It's like saying everyone must have a computer because denying someone on is a violation of their first amendment.
Same thing with guns, I don't disagree that we have the right, but only in a constitutional sense, no some a priori natural law sense. We might have the right to protect ourselves from harm, but the fact that we talk about guns, themselves, as the right is stupid. A gun is nothing but a tool, not very right worthy. We make the debate into "I have the right to have a hammer", and not the more important "I have the right to build bird-houses in my garage".
The Constitution is not the origin of our rights -- it is merely the rules that American citizens agree to be governed under.
Right in the jingoistic sense, but wrong in reality. I didn't agree, nor has anyone agreed to live under them in the last 200 years. Some old dead, rich white guys agreed, long ago, and in a culture very much different than ours, all of whom had values very different than ours. There are vast swaths of it I would do away with, as well as vast swaths of stuff I would add.
One more tangent, if polled, how many people would accept the constitution as is?
The constitution is just a document, its a piece of paper written by mere mortals a long long time ago. You can no more cite the constitution for the origin of rights, as you can the Bible. I'm a personal fan of it, but claiming that the constitution is the origin of rights is rather silly.
According to the Constitution I have the right to music piracy, and murder too, since no where in there does it specifically deny these. Actually, the constitution does not contain a single LAW, therefore I have the right to do whatever I please... Oh wait...
I'm REALLY sick of people ranting about rights, but never the responsibilities that should be attached to them. Actually, wait, I'm generally sick of people ranting about rights, since the word has become a synonym for "a right is something that allows me to do whatever I please, others be damned!". We can't even define what a right IS, but still accept them as some immutable a priori thing existing in the real world.
I forgot to close a tag, sorry about that. Yeah, there is a preview, but where is the fun in that?