I would definately want to become an icicle for the bulk of the trip, if only to avoid
"comesailawaycomesailawaycomesailawaywithme(you guys)" but then there's always the chance of hearing "I'm sorry, Dave..."
"Frankly this is probably not a big epidemic or 'problem' at all -- the media just loves to focus on it and the politicans love to have 'issues' that they can fight."
As I said in an earlier post in response to this guy, the papers are sensationalist about the whole thing. That's how they unfortunately make their money. Garden Grove is has a fairly high crime rate, higher than Anaheim or Santa Clara, but lower than many other nearby cities including Long Beach.
"The relevance of this in light of the 'big picture' is small. There will always be violent kids just as there will always be violent adults. Just because one group of violent kids commits a crime does not mean that all kids are violent and thus must be regulated by the state (think about it, it is commonly *percieved* that 'adult' violent crime is committed at night time. If the government responded by putting a curfew on the nation we would be pissed).
I absolutely agree.
"With these in mind, you can see how the public's perception of 'the issues' around violence and death is completely warped. This 'internet cafe' thingy is probably somthing completely blown out of proportion, a great political biline, an exciting news story but nothing more then the public using kids, the internet and violent games as a scapegoat for their ignorance and mis-understanding.
As for the line "parent's just don't understand" that is the truth in this case. They don't understand how the world has changed since they were kids and most of all they don't understand technology (aka internet). Their reactionary tendancies in light of this change makes thim spit out this legislative garbage."
As I also point out in my other post, the legislation enacted is minimal, and other legislation is pending a "closer look" by the Mayor and others concerned. Even the policeman interviewed points out that this incident was an "escalation" from probable previous violence or conflict. These kinds of things get all blown our of proportion anyway, but it's a shame to see it happen amongst the "thinking" community as well.
This is clearly why our country is going down the fucking drain. There's a Texan in the white house, and your ignorance goes even further to display what people from the bible belt don't know about coastal city living. California may be one of the more liberal states in the Union, however that doesn't mean their "knee jerk" reaction is to ban whatever they don't understand. If you read both articles it might become partially clear to you that the politicians and police involved aren't banning or even restricting the use of Cybercafe's because the new P4 is "mean looking." They admit that this "phenomenon" is something they haven't but want to look more closely at so that they can understand what is causing the problem before they overreact.
"But it was the murder of Mr. Ly that brought the confluence of gangs and computer games -- once the province of harmless nerds -- to a dangerous level.
"That was a wake-up call," said Bruce A. Broadwater, 60, who has been the mayor of Garden Grove for eight years. "We suddenly thought, What's going on here? Are these cafes places where hoodlums hang out, like pool halls in the old days?"
"I've gone and looked at a few of these places, and I've seen very little wrong with them," Mr. Broadwater said. But just because their patrons are honing their computer skills "doesn't mean they shouldn't be in school," he said.
Of course the newspapers are being sensationalist, that's what newspapers do. However even the most "hardened"=) gang investigators in dangerous little Garden Grove, will admit: "It'll start with a personal problem, and then someone will break someone else's window and he'll call in a friend who's a gang member," Detective Vi said. "Then it'll become a beating, and it'll evolve to gang on gang."
So you see not everyone outside the "Great State of Texas" is a jackass, even though that's more than I can say for some.
Re:Security != Justice ?
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 1
"Gotta love that pair of canards. For the first - the votes have been reviewed _exhaustively_ at this point. Based on the standards Gore and the DP wanted to use, he lost. Period. He would have lost _even if_ every ballot had been counted to his standards."
Unfortunately for Gore in the flurry of demanding recounts he and the DP only asked for the counties that they thought would help. Turned out it didn't, but a further recount of other districts showed that he would have won the state.(Source Time Magazine, I forget which issue).
"The electoral vote system, as it stands, is as fair and reasonable as any other solution. It's also the agreed-upon solution (what, you don't like living in a republic?). Don't like it? Try either of the following:
- convince enough people to change the system
- get your friends out and voting. 40% of the electorate stayed home last time."
Here you have an excellent point, if it had been smoothly and properly done. However many people below the age of...say, 35 years old will look at this further display of muddled "Republic" style governing and say "What difference does it really make anyway. Whomever "they" want in office is going to be there regardless." We have long since and I mean long since departed from real democracy in this country if ever it was real. No sooner were voting rights expanded to include other people besides rich, white, land(or slave)owners than the voting process no longer mattered and the electoral college made up mostly of those rich white (male) land(slave) owners still made the decisions.
I'm not saying that Clinton or any other president (JFK for instance) necessarily had the nation's popular vote to win. I just think that it makes us not much of a "By the People, For the People..." kind of place. I don't want to see Al Gore in office much more than George Jr. but the process and perception that our votes matter makes me laugh.
Well god damn...that is like the entire Seattle/Eastside region. Hell you could live in Marysville or North Bend or god sakes Auburn. 13miles is not like you are in Microsoft's backyard. I on the other hand live in the backyard...2 miles to work and back.
When any company Sprawls across country and globe like MSFT their "backyard" exceeds a couple dozen miles. When their tech support offices aren't within an hour's plane flight from their home office... you see my point. "Guess what? Every here either has AT&T cable modem or one of many ISP via DSL. Hell there is even an ISP local to Redmond (you can find them at dslreports.com..can't recall the URL at the moment)."
Guess what? I too now have AT&T and it only took 1 week. "So before people get all excited guess what? Many of the areas addresses get fucked up. Try spelling out street names to people and city names as there are alot of Native American names used for streets and cities here. Also when the customer service rep repeats the address to you...turn down the stereo first."
(LOL) I see your point since some of the easier streets and cities are names like Snoqualmie and Snohomish, however the part they fucked up over and over was the street address number it was the same digit wrong each time we called following the original problem, indicating that either the managers and reps we talked to couldn't or didn't correct a simple digit error. We took to asking each time what address they had before we gave the correct address to them because they would lie and lie and lie. AT&T was fast, efficient and the cable modem speeds are comparable, sometimes faster. After hearing about AT&T's subscriber problems a while back I was leery of the switch but it turned out well.
After moving to Seattle, no more than 13 miles from the sprawling Microsoft campus in Redmond, I signed up for MSN through Qwest. After 3 weeks, and an astute deliveryman from Airborn Express noticing that the wrong address was on the package, a DSL modem finally arrived. The modem was defective. 60, no shit, 60 phone calls, at least 30 address corrections, and 4 months later I cancelled the service and called AT&T. One week later a package arrived, the new modem from MSN. In a service industry in their own backyard the behemoths of bullshit could not get a simple address corrected nor a simple modem delivered until after the service was cancelled. Never have I seen such a case of the left testicle not knowing what the right testicle was doing.
Fuck them.
Does anyone know where I can read any of Tolkien's books online? I have been looking for several days and the only site I've found is in the process of restructuring. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Re:Security != Justice ?
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 1
Wait a minute.
Now I'm laughing.
Weren't you paying attention the the United States elections last year? Our current president got fewer votes statewide in Florida, the last contested state in the election where his brother is Governor, and Nationwide than his opponent.
If you think that the United States is a country where our votes count than you are also mistaken. No matter what they say about democracy, it's still a matter of the Golden Rule.
Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.
>
yes, but it was such a nice and amusing thought. Happy Solstice everyone!
Can Santa be seen from space?
on
Christmas is Coming
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Speaking of the Station check out this story from CNN SCI-TECH. Apparently the astronauts will be teaming up with NASA and NORAD to track Santa's progress on Christmas and display it on their web site.
To all those who think that a short summary of the series can spoil it:
You clearly have not read the series. It is not the WHAT, but the HOW and WHY. What makes the Dune series possibly the very best series of books of all time is what Frank Herbert has to say about humans, religion, government, fanaticism, emperialism and other things that constitute our existence. No film or mini series adaptation has yet touched on these aspects of his writing because it is truly after the first book that he expounds upon them. The Lynch film did the book a fair turn, but cut out much of the story, so ended up confusing to those who had not read the story. The mini-series took serious liberties with the storyline, but covered more territory. No substitute for the books, people.
_K
Slashdot Mirror
This thing would make Half-Life SMOKE!!!
I would definately want to become an icicle for the bulk of the trip, if only to avoid "comesailawaycomesailawaycomesailawaywithme(you guys)" but then there's always the chance of hearing "I'm sorry, Dave..."
That's maybe the damn funniest thing I've seen, here in River City, except perhaps the Clustered Urns. I'm only 23... -K
Nice insights.
"Frankly this is probably not a big epidemic or 'problem' at all -- the media just loves to focus on it and the politicans love to have 'issues' that they can fight."
As I said in an earlier post in response to this guy, the papers are sensationalist about the whole thing. That's how they unfortunately make their money. Garden Grove is has a fairly high crime rate, higher than Anaheim or Santa Clara, but lower than many other nearby cities including Long Beach.
"The relevance of this in light of the 'big picture' is small. There will always be violent kids just as there will always be violent adults. Just because one group of violent kids commits a crime does not mean that all kids are violent and thus must be regulated by the state (think about it, it is commonly *percieved* that 'adult' violent crime is committed at night time. If the government responded by putting a curfew on the nation we would be pissed).
I absolutely agree.
"With these in mind, you can see how the public's perception of 'the issues' around violence and death is completely warped. This 'internet cafe' thingy is probably somthing completely blown out of proportion, a great political biline, an exciting news story but nothing more then the public using kids, the internet and violent games as a scapegoat for their ignorance and mis-understanding.
As for the line "parent's just don't understand" that is the truth in this case. They don't understand how the world has changed since they were kids and most of all they don't understand technology (aka internet). Their reactionary tendancies in light of this change makes thim spit out this legislative garbage."
As I also point out in my other post, the legislation enacted is minimal, and other legislation is pending a "closer look" by the Mayor and others concerned. Even the policeman interviewed points out that this incident was an "escalation" from probable previous violence or conflict. These kinds of things get all blown our of proportion anyway, but it's a shame to see it happen amongst the "thinking" community as well.
This is clearly why our country is going down the fucking drain. There's a Texan in the white house, and your ignorance goes even further to display what people from the bible belt don't know about coastal city living. California may be one of the more liberal states in the Union, however that doesn't mean their "knee jerk" reaction is to ban whatever they don't understand. If you read both articles it might become partially clear to you that the politicians and police involved aren't banning or even restricting the use of Cybercafe's because the new P4 is "mean looking." They admit that this "phenomenon" is something they haven't but want to look more closely at so that they can understand what is causing the problem before they overreact.
"But it was the murder of Mr. Ly that brought the confluence of gangs and computer games -- once the province of harmless nerds -- to a dangerous level.
"That was a wake-up call," said Bruce A. Broadwater, 60, who has been the mayor of Garden Grove for eight years. "We suddenly thought, What's going on here? Are these cafes places where hoodlums hang out, like pool halls in the old days?"
"I've gone and looked at a few of these places, and I've seen very little wrong with them," Mr. Broadwater said. But just because their patrons are honing their computer skills "doesn't mean they shouldn't be in school," he said.
Of course the newspapers are being sensationalist, that's what newspapers do. However even the most "hardened"=) gang investigators in dangerous little Garden Grove, will admit:
"It'll start with a personal problem, and then someone will break someone else's window and he'll call in a friend who's a gang member," Detective Vi said. "Then it'll become a beating, and it'll evolve to gang on gang."
So you see not everyone outside the "Great State of Texas" is a jackass, even though that's more than I can say for some.
"Gotta love that pair of canards. For the first - the votes have been reviewed _exhaustively_ at this point. Based on the standards Gore and the DP wanted to use, he lost. Period. He would have lost _even if_ every ballot had been counted to his standards."
Unfortunately for Gore in the flurry of demanding recounts he and the DP only asked for the counties that they thought would help. Turned out it didn't, but a further recount of other districts showed that he would have won the state.(Source Time Magazine, I forget which issue).
"The electoral vote system, as it stands, is as fair and reasonable as any other solution. It's also the agreed-upon solution (what, you don't like living in a republic?). Don't like it? Try either of the following: - convince enough people to change the system - get your friends out and voting. 40% of the electorate stayed home last time."
Here you have an excellent point, if it had been smoothly and properly done. However many people below the age of...say, 35 years old will look at this further display of muddled "Republic" style governing and say "What difference does it really make anyway. Whomever "they" want in office is going to be there regardless." We have long since and I mean long since departed from real democracy in this country if ever it was real. No sooner were voting rights expanded to include other people besides rich, white, land(or slave)owners than the voting process no longer mattered and the electoral college made up mostly of those rich white (male) land(slave) owners still made the decisions.
I'm not saying that Clinton or any other president (JFK for instance) necessarily had the nation's popular vote to win. I just think that it makes us not much of a "By the People, For the People..." kind of place. I don't want to see Al Gore in office much more than George Jr. but the process and perception that our votes matter makes me laugh.
Well god damn...that is like the entire Seattle/Eastside region. Hell you could live in Marysville or North Bend or god sakes Auburn. 13miles is not like you are in Microsoft's backyard. I on the other hand live in the backyard...2 miles to work and back.
When any company Sprawls across country and globe like MSFT their "backyard" exceeds a couple dozen miles. When their tech support offices aren't within an hour's plane flight from their home office... you see my point.
"Guess what? Every here either has AT&T cable modem or one of many ISP via DSL. Hell there is even an ISP local to Redmond (you can find them at dslreports.com..can't recall the URL at the moment)."
Guess what? I too now have AT&T and it only took 1 week.
"So before people get all excited guess what? Many of the areas addresses get fucked up. Try spelling out street names to people and city names as there are alot of Native American names used for streets and cities here. Also when the customer service rep repeats the address to you...turn down the stereo first."
(LOL) I see your point since some of the easier streets and cities are names like Snoqualmie and Snohomish, however the part they fucked up over and over was the street address number it was the same digit wrong each time we called following the original problem, indicating that either the managers and reps we talked to couldn't or didn't correct a simple digit error. We took to asking each time what address they had before we gave the correct address to them because they would lie and lie and lie. AT&T was fast, efficient and the cable modem speeds are comparable, sometimes faster. After hearing about AT&T's subscriber problems a while back I was leery of the switch but it turned out well.
After moving to Seattle, no more than 13 miles from the sprawling Microsoft campus in Redmond, I signed up for MSN through Qwest. After 3 weeks, and an astute deliveryman from Airborn Express noticing that the wrong address was on the package, a DSL modem finally arrived. The modem was defective. 60, no shit, 60 phone calls, at least 30 address corrections, and 4 months later I cancelled the service and called AT&T. One week later a package arrived, the new modem from MSN. In a service industry in their own backyard the behemoths of bullshit could not get a simple address corrected nor a simple modem delivered until after the service was cancelled. Never have I seen such a case of the left testicle not knowing what the right testicle was doing. Fuck them.
Does anyone know where I can read any of Tolkien's books online? I have been looking for several days and the only site I've found is in the process of restructuring. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Wait a minute. Now I'm laughing. Weren't you paying attention the the United States elections last year? Our current president got fewer votes statewide in Florida, the last contested state in the election where his brother is Governor, and Nationwide than his opponent. If you think that the United States is a country where our votes count than you are also mistaken. No matter what they say about democracy, it's still a matter of the Golden Rule. Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.
> yes, but it was such a nice and amusing thought. Happy Solstice everyone!
Speaking of the Station check out this story from CNN SCI-TECH. Apparently the astronauts will be teaming up with NASA and NORAD to track Santa's progress on Christmas and display it on their web site.
To all those who think that a short summary of the series can spoil it: You clearly have not read the series. It is not the WHAT, but the HOW and WHY. What makes the Dune series possibly the very best series of books of all time is what Frank Herbert has to say about humans, religion, government, fanaticism, emperialism and other things that constitute our existence. No film or mini series adaptation has yet touched on these aspects of his writing because it is truly after the first book that he expounds upon them. The Lynch film did the book a fair turn, but cut out much of the story, so ended up confusing to those who had not read the story. The mini-series took serious liberties with the storyline, but covered more territory. No substitute for the books, people. _K