What exactly is your point? Because some fringe extremist terrorists cut people's heads off, that gives us license to torture and humiliate Iraqis, or something??
I truly don't understand what you're trying to imply there.
Yeah, god forbid folks should actually have to RTFA! No, it's the Slashdot editors moral responsibility to spoon-feed us information so we can spout off without having RTFA!
That's bullshit. What are the media you listen to / watch just a bunch of liars or what? US troops are definitely implicated. In fact, the DoD and the President authorised a policy of breaking the law and abusing "suspected terrorists", which was then applied in Iraq to detainees (including minors and females) who weren't even suspected of terrorism. Read Seymour Hersch's work on this.
Well, "under god" doesn't offend me. I don't think that "under god" is actually a religious thing.
Then you're a fucking idiot. Would you listen to yourself? "God isn't religious" - Of course God is a fucking religious concept!
It is more of a statement of what the one nation is answerable to. Almost every religion has a god,
Yeah, but nonreligious people don't. That's the whole point. (Aside from those little tiny religions that aren't monotheistic, like hinduism and buddhism, but who cares about them, they don't count, eh? That was sarcasm, in case you didn't notice.)
I'll tell you straight why a lot of people have a problem with religious people. If they just said "I believe in a supreme power but I can't prove it exists" and left it at that (which has nothing much to do with Christianity at all, please note) I wouldn't have too much of a problem with that. Personally. I might debate the statement in a friendly manner, but it wouldn't get my back up very much.
It's when they start to say things like "God wants me to do this", "God doesn't want me to have sex before marriage", "Let Jesus into your heart, or you will go to hell", "Homosexuality is forbidden by the bible therefore it's wrong", and even worse, saying things about their own religious book which aren't even true, that I get annoyed. When you start using religion as an alternative to rational thought, then that becomes a problem. If, on the other hand, you just believe in a higher power but you don't let that influence your decisionmaking in an irrational direction, that's OK.
The insurance company runs an ad featuring a testimoinial the customer showing that no matter how unusual the claim, they can be counted on to do the right thing by their cusotmers.
I don't think that would work. I think all insurance companies exclude some rare and unlikely events, such as damage due to war or civil disturbance for example.
However, I suppose they could say words to the effect of "As long as it's not on our simple list of exceptions: [list] and it's equal or less than the covered amount... we'll cover you, no matter what." But that would be less impressive.:)
Instapundit might be one of the most famous right-libertarian blogs in the world. When reading it, I think it's worth knowing that Mr. Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, writes for the PR shill site known as TechCentralStation, which exists to push the anti-regulation views that favour its corporate funders (and also, by the way, has generally a marked anti-open-source slant). Its funders include Microsoft.
I'm not sure whether Mr. Reynolds is a "shill" libertarian who doesn't really believe everything he's saying, or a "useful idiot" (to borrow a phrase from Lenin). I suspect the latter, but I haven't read much of his stuff.
Did you actually read the post? Are you aware that libertarian means "no regulation (except for minimal force and possibly fraud laws)" and "absolutely no welfare"? In every post on the subject I've ever read, anyway.
Well, exactly. That was very clear from your original post. Never a more blatant example of a libertarian reading what he wanted to read and ignoring the actual post have I ever seen.
HotJava is officially obsolete, and isn't a serious browser. It certainly wasn't programmed with modern techniques, seeing as it was created nearly 10 years ago.
Ding ding, credibility alert - wasn't talk radio in the US (before Air America came onto the scene) stuffed with batshit-insane conservatives like Rush Limbaugh?
You're missing the point. The facts of the matter are that Saddam did deny Iraq had WMDs. Repeatedly. Iraq did co-operate with inspections. Repeatedly.
The US did everything possible to get this war. They wanted a war, cooperation or no cooperation. See Milan Rai's excellent book "Regime Unchanged" about the US's continued support of anti-democratic forces in Iraq.
I'm still trying to find an open source tool to recover my 22gb/home partition when I tried to redefine an empty 45gb partition as fs ext2. It screwed up, redefined/home as an fs ext2 (from ext3), and the next thing I know, my consoles open up with black on white.
"It" did? What did?
fs type is not set in the partition table (in the partition table, there is a merely one generic fs type for "Linux filesystem", and another for "Linux swap"). To change a fs type, you pretty much have to recreate the partition (except when moving from ext2 to ext3, which can be done in place). It looks like you have somehow managed to recreate your/home partition, erasing all data. If so, you aren't going to be able to get your data back, at least not without military-grade hardware.
An insurance company is not much more than a collection of individuals grouped together to share the risk each one represent and help each other in case something goes wrong.
With one crucial difference. It is a profit-seeking entity which would heartlessly deny coverage to a kid dying of cancer if it thought it could get away with it. Unlike a community that was genuinely interested in helping each other even if it might mean some sacrifice.
So, each one is interested to be better covered at the lowest price.
That doesn't follow from the assumption that insurance is basically a community that is genuinely interested in "helping each other if something goes wrong". You assume everyone thinks like a red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist, when in reality not everyone does.
From this, everything else can be predicted...
Your "model" doesn't explain why the US health insurance model is so much more expensive than the British NHS (hint: profit-seeking?), so your "model" is flawed.
It makes you pointedly one-sided and you begin to lose credibility as a reliable source of information, and instead look like a left-wing crackpot.
It is a fact that US foreign policy is not motivated by benevolence. If you think that saying that makes someone a "left wing crackpot", fine - but are you willing to discuss the evidence, or are you just going to flame mindlessly?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft described Windows XP in advertisements as "secure".
It's not.
So, calling for a class-action suit against Microsoft is "communist", is it?
Under what conditions would suing Microsoft be the right thing to do and not "communist", then, in your uber-uber-uber-uber-libertarian fantasy world?
I truly don't understand what you're trying to imply there.
You're nuts, man! No mainstream journalist is wacko-left-wing enough to want to do that, surely?
Oh wait. Maybe it's just a non-sequitir.
No they aren't. RTFA.
Then you're a fucking idiot. Would you listen to yourself? "God isn't religious" - Of course God is a fucking religious concept!
It is more of a statement of what the one nation is answerable to. Almost every religion has a god,
Yeah, but nonreligious people don't. That's the whole point. (Aside from those little tiny religions that aren't monotheistic, like hinduism and buddhism, but who cares about them, they don't count, eh? That was sarcasm, in case you didn't notice.)
I'll tell you straight why a lot of people have a problem with religious people. If they just said "I believe in a supreme power but I can't prove it exists" and left it at that (which has nothing much to do with Christianity at all, please note) I wouldn't have too much of a problem with that. Personally. I might debate the statement in a friendly manner, but it wouldn't get my back up very much. It's when they start to say things like "God wants me to do this", "God doesn't want me to have sex before marriage", "Let Jesus into your heart, or you will go to hell", "Homosexuality is forbidden by the bible therefore it's wrong", and even worse, saying things about their own religious book which aren't even true, that I get annoyed. When you start using religion as an alternative to rational thought, then that becomes a problem. If, on the other hand, you just believe in a higher power but you don't let that influence your decisionmaking in an irrational direction, that's OK.
I don't think that would work. I think all insurance companies exclude some rare and unlikely events, such as damage due to war or civil disturbance for example.
However, I suppose they could say words to the effect of "As long as it's not on our simple list of exceptions: [list] and it's equal or less than the covered amount ... we'll cover you, no matter what." But that would be less impressive. :)
I'm not sure whether Mr. Reynolds is a "shill" libertarian who doesn't really believe everything he's saying, or a "useful idiot" (to borrow a phrase from Lenin). I suspect the latter, but I haven't read much of his stuff.
Ding ding, credibility alert - wasn't talk radio in the US (before Air America came onto the scene) stuffed with batshit-insane conservatives like Rush Limbaugh?
The US did everything possible to get this war. They wanted a war, cooperation or no cooperation. See Milan Rai's excellent book "Regime Unchanged" about the US's continued support of anti-democratic forces in Iraq.
"It" did? What did?
fs type is not set in the partition table (in the partition table, there is a merely one generic fs type for "Linux filesystem", and another for "Linux swap"). To change a fs type, you pretty much have to recreate the partition (except when moving from ext2 to ext3, which can be done in place). It looks like you have somehow managed to recreate your /home partition, erasing all data. If so, you aren't going to be able to get your data back, at least not without military-grade hardware.
3 lessons from this: BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP
With one crucial difference. It is a profit-seeking entity which would heartlessly deny coverage to a kid dying of cancer if it thought it could get away with it. Unlike a community that was genuinely interested in helping each other even if it might mean some sacrifice.
So, each one is interested to be better covered at the lowest price.
That doesn't follow from the assumption that insurance is basically a community that is genuinely interested in "helping each other if something goes wrong". You assume everyone thinks like a red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist, when in reality not everyone does.
From this, everything else can be predicted...
Your "model" doesn't explain why the US health insurance model is so much more expensive than the British NHS (hint: profit-seeking?), so your "model" is flawed.
It is a fact that US foreign policy is not motivated by benevolence. If you think that saying that makes someone a "left wing crackpot", fine - but are you willing to discuss the evidence, or are you just going to flame mindlessly?