I love how the world has suddenly become innocent angels the last couple of decades, because of course the US is the worst bad guy that's ever existed.... Yep, that's us, worst assholes history has ever seen.
That other countries have committed greater crimes does not in any way excuse the US's crimes. I've never really understood that argument as a response to somebody pointing out an evil: "Well, but others are even worse, so that makes what we're doing OK." Obama is not Hitler, he's not Pol Pot, he's not Idi Amin, he's not Slobodan Milosevic, but he is doing some things that are seriously worrying and illegal under US law.
Yes, that's Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 34: War is good for business. They're forgetting Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace is good for business.
I'm guessing the difference is that war creates profit for a few select companies determined by the government, while peace creates profit for a much larger set of companies distributed more evenly across the economy.
The key is that you aren't listening to a single person when you do this. Your listening to a lot of them. While there will be fakes out there, if you're taking a sufficiently large sample size the real people will outnumber the fakes.
As far as who got it right: It doesn't appear that Obama had much control over what was going on, which makes both Fox and MSNBC thoroughly wrong. Al Jazeera did a very good job, but made a mistake if they gave the impression that nobody had organized it (for instance, there were fliers that instructed protesters on how to maintain discipline and effectiveness in the face of police violence that had to come from someone or some group). And the ordinary citizens were perhaps more idealistic about what was going on than they should have been.
These excuses have the major flaw that none of them are really true.
Last I saw, the legislative branch repeals laws, not the executive one.
He could have made it happen if he'd really wanted to though. He could have, in January of 2005, asked Nancy Pelosi to shove it through the Democratic-controlled House, asked Harry Reid to shove it through the sorta-Democratic-controlled Senate (using reconciliation or threatening to eliminate the option to filibuster), and told the Republicans to go away or he would taunt them a second time. He didn't even try to do so.
And I don't think that the President is called the "Prosecutor-in-Chief."
Technically true: he's actually the prosecutor-in-chief's (AG Eric Holder) boss. If Obama told Holder to investigate something and press charges based on what he found, it would have happened.
try to repeat the inanity of the Kenneth Starr debacle
Ok, so let me get this straight: Are you seriously saying that an out-of-wedlock blowjob (normally a matter for a civil divorce court) is morally or legally equivalent to the war crime of ordering prisoners to be tortured (often a matter for the International Criminal Court)? I think I know the real reason Obama's not prosecuting that though: He wants the same kid-glove treatment by whoever comes after him for ordering the murder of at least 1 American citizen.
I consider Obama to be significantly better at Bush at managing the economy, but significantly worse than Bush on respecting civil liberties, and given that Bush regularly ignored civil liberties that's saying something.
Frankly, I still think the Internet is nothing but television magnified by 1000, with all the lolcatz and pr0n and myface and spacebook and all that...
I don't, and here's why: Because it allows ordinary people to converse for basically nothing. That information allows people to radically change their perspective on current and past events.
I'll give you an example: If you watched the Arab Spring on Fox News, you'd think it was something like Iranian agents with the support of Barack Obama overthrowing benevolent US-friendly governments as part of Obama's nefarious plan to betray America. If you watched the same events on MSNBC, you'd think it was Obama single-handedly bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. If you watched the same events on Al Jazeera English (which you wouldn't be able to do in many areas without the Internet), you'd think it was the people in a spontaneous uprising. And if you were reading what ordinary Egyptians and Tunisians were saying about what was happening, you'd know that all 3 of the networks were at least partially wrong.
The same tactic that is banned in the First Geneva Convention, of which the US is a signatory. Anyone ordering or carrying out those kinds of drone strikes is a war criminal.
Right, that's because the cameras are mounted on top of the car and set up to take pictures automatically. There's no way to do that on a footpath, because the only way you can move something in there is for somebody to carry it.
Addition is almost unnecessary in daily life (we do have calculators).
No it's not unnecessary. I have $5 - can I afford a $4 sandwich and a $1.50 drink? I'm not going to pull out a calculator for that.
Here's my argument for teaching algebra: The more advanced algebra courses teach exponential growth. That's exactly the kind of equation you would do well to understand if you were, say, taking out a loan to buy a home. Not that there have been any problems with people taking out mortgages they don't understand or can't pay back.
It's hard to move a camera along the more remote regions of, say, the Appalachian Trail. Consider that what you'd be asking for is for somebody to go 10 feet down the trail, stop, steady the camera, take a panoramic picture, walk another 10 feet, etc. If it takes 30 seconds to take a picture, that's approximately 4.2 hours to go 1 mile. Also particularly interesting would be the spots where stopping to take this picture puts you halfway up a rock face or wading through a pond (I'm not making those scenarios up - there are several spots where the trail does that).
Whereas underwater, you can move at closer to boat speed.
Basically, the ad agencies have hired some very smart people who really understand kids to manipulate kids into demanding from their parents whatever stuff they're peddling, and part of what they're peddling is fast food. Parents can resist it for a while, but they've done the research and discovered that eventually the kids win these arguments. They target kids because kids' brains are easier to mess with than adults.
About the only real defense I'm aware of is keeping kids away from any TV other than Sesame Street and other obviously educational PBS shows.
What makes you think that most of the protesters were smelly hippies? There were Iraq War veterans, 83-year-old grandmothers, unemployed steelworkers, and all sorts of other distinctly non-hippy folks involved.
Not only that budget surplus, but low unemployment, the creation of something called the "Internet" (spurred on by a geeky VP), and in foreign policy the closest we've ever come to having peace between Israel and Palestine. Yeah, real disaster that.
Well, here's the thing: Republicans pandering to their extreme right wing doesn't risk losing their big donors, because their extreme right wing wants many of the same things that the big donors want, like no taxes on investment and inheritance and no regulation of business, and the things their extreme right wing cares about like imposing Christianity on the rest of us the donors are totally fine with. For the Democrats, though, pandering to their base would involve regulating and taxing people who form key donor constituencies, so the Democrats don't think they can do so without risking their existence as a party.
Occupy did actually make some fairly specific demands that were entirely ignored by those in power. One of the most notable was a demand that banks and if appropriate their officers be prosecuted when they were found to have committed fraud (the Obama administration instead announced a few months ago that they were closing the investigation on Goldman Sachs without pressing any kind of charge whatsoever even though some pretty damning evidence is a matter of public record).
The vaguer message of Occupy was that the Democratic Party in the US has utterly ignored the liberals in their base in an effort to pander to Wall St and the right wing. And why should people like Obama do that, when all they need to do to get their votes is scare the bejeesus out of them by threatening them with the prospect of President Romney?
Basically, there are 3 separate but related roles that may or may not be handled by the same person depending on the organization size.
1. A developer is responsible for writing and documenting their code in a way that it can be deployed reasonably easily. 2. A build manager (also called "change control") is responsible for managing and deploying changes to different environments. 3. An administrator is responsible for ensuring the overall health and security of the environments being deployed to.
Ideally, there's negotiation involved between each of these 3 groups. For example, if a developer wants to depend on a new package, there should be a discussion with the administrators on whether this package is a good idea. Separation of roles means that it's impossible for one person to simply impose their views on the organization.
GP is probably referring to the way US factories were like in, say, 1903 when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, before OSHA and the FDA existed. Sinclair specifically mentions in the book an incident he observed where a guy fell into a vat of beef waiting to be ground up and ended up becoming part of people's "ground beef". The public was outraged about this, not because somebody had died in the factory but because of the contamination of their food.
Slashdot Mirror
I love how the world has suddenly become innocent angels the last couple of decades, because of course the US is the worst bad guy that's ever existed. ... Yep, that's us, worst assholes history has ever seen.
That other countries have committed greater crimes does not in any way excuse the US's crimes. I've never really understood that argument as a response to somebody pointing out an evil: "Well, but others are even worse, so that makes what we're doing OK." Obama is not Hitler, he's not Pol Pot, he's not Idi Amin, he's not Slobodan Milosevic, but he is doing some things that are seriously worrying and illegal under US law.
Yes, that's Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 34: War is good for business.
They're forgetting Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace is good for business.
I'm guessing the difference is that war creates profit for a few select companies determined by the government, while peace creates profit for a much larger set of companies distributed more evenly across the economy.
The key is that you aren't listening to a single person when you do this. Your listening to a lot of them. While there will be fakes out there, if you're taking a sufficiently large sample size the real people will outnumber the fakes.
As far as who got it right: It doesn't appear that Obama had much control over what was going on, which makes both Fox and MSNBC thoroughly wrong. Al Jazeera did a very good job, but made a mistake if they gave the impression that nobody had organized it (for instance, there were fliers that instructed protesters on how to maintain discipline and effectiveness in the face of police violence that had to come from someone or some group). And the ordinary citizens were perhaps more idealistic about what was going on than they should have been.
These excuses have the major flaw that none of them are really true.
Last I saw, the legislative branch repeals laws, not the executive one.
He could have made it happen if he'd really wanted to though. He could have, in January of 2005, asked Nancy Pelosi to shove it through the Democratic-controlled House, asked Harry Reid to shove it through the sorta-Democratic-controlled Senate (using reconciliation or threatening to eliminate the option to filibuster), and told the Republicans to go away or he would taunt them a second time. He didn't even try to do so.
And I don't think that the President is called the "Prosecutor-in-Chief."
Technically true: he's actually the prosecutor-in-chief's (AG Eric Holder) boss. If Obama told Holder to investigate something and press charges based on what he found, it would have happened.
try to repeat the inanity of the Kenneth Starr debacle
Ok, so let me get this straight: Are you seriously saying that an out-of-wedlock blowjob (normally a matter for a civil divorce court) is morally or legally equivalent to the war crime of ordering prisoners to be tortured (often a matter for the International Criminal Court)? I think I know the real reason Obama's not prosecuting that though: He wants the same kid-glove treatment by whoever comes after him for ordering the murder of at least 1 American citizen.
I consider Obama to be significantly better at Bush at managing the economy, but significantly worse than Bush on respecting civil liberties, and given that Bush regularly ignored civil liberties that's saying something.
Frankly, I still think the Internet is nothing but television magnified by 1000, with all the lolcatz and pr0n and myface and spacebook and all that ...
I don't, and here's why: Because it allows ordinary people to converse for basically nothing. That information allows people to radically change their perspective on current and past events.
I'll give you an example: If you watched the Arab Spring on Fox News, you'd think it was something like Iranian agents with the support of Barack Obama overthrowing benevolent US-friendly governments as part of Obama's nefarious plan to betray America. If you watched the same events on MSNBC, you'd think it was Obama single-handedly bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. If you watched the same events on Al Jazeera English (which you wouldn't be able to do in many areas without the Internet), you'd think it was the people in a spontaneous uprising. And if you were reading what ordinary Egyptians and Tunisians were saying about what was happening, you'd know that all 3 of the networks were at least partially wrong.
The same tactic that is banned in the First Geneva Convention, of which the US is a signatory. Anyone ordering or carrying out those kinds of drone strikes is a war criminal.
If you want Gnome 2, you can get it here:
ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/desktop/2.91/2.91.2/sources/
Yes, building it is a pain in the butt, but you can do it.
You never, ever, lose a feature. At worst, the feature requires you to keep a really old version of a package around.
Right, that's because the cameras are mounted on top of the car and set up to take pictures automatically. There's no way to do that on a footpath, because the only way you can move something in there is for somebody to carry it.
Addition is almost unnecessary in daily life (we do have calculators).
No it's not unnecessary. I have $5 - can I afford a $4 sandwich and a $1.50 drink? I'm not going to pull out a calculator for that.
Here's my argument for teaching algebra: The more advanced algebra courses teach exponential growth. That's exactly the kind of equation you would do well to understand if you were, say, taking out a loan to buy a home. Not that there have been any problems with people taking out mortgages they don't understand or can't pay back.
It depends on what sort of crowd the bar caters to: Some bars will be almost exclusively girls or guys.
It's hard to move a camera along the more remote regions of, say, the Appalachian Trail. Consider that what you'd be asking for is for somebody to go 10 feet down the trail, stop, steady the camera, take a panoramic picture, walk another 10 feet, etc. If it takes 30 seconds to take a picture, that's approximately 4.2 hours to go 1 mile. Also particularly interesting would be the spots where stopping to take this picture puts you halfway up a rock face or wading through a pond (I'm not making those scenarios up - there are several spots where the trail does that).
Whereas underwater, you can move at closer to boat speed.
So in other words, as accidentally as Rose Mary Woods erased 18.5 minutes of the Nixon tapes. Got it.
Meet the Scapegoat
Basically, the ad agencies have hired some very smart people who really understand kids to manipulate kids into demanding from their parents whatever stuff they're peddling, and part of what they're peddling is fast food. Parents can resist it for a while, but they've done the research and discovered that eventually the kids win these arguments. They target kids because kids' brains are easier to mess with than adults.
About the only real defense I'm aware of is keeping kids away from any TV other than Sesame Street and other obviously educational PBS shows.
Unlike even the RIAA, they will shoot you dead if you screw with them.
If OP is an American, not likely, if only because they don't want to annoy the US government. Now, if he's from, say, Nepal, all bets are off.
It considers abominations like Bud Light to be beer.
After all, as the Arrogant Worms pointed out, Carrot Juice is Murder.
Besides, Bruce Schneier doesn't need his blog entries linked from anywhere - he just breaks into webservers and puts links wherever he wants.
for the uninitiated
What makes you think that most of the protesters were smelly hippies? There were Iraq War veterans, 83-year-old grandmothers, unemployed steelworkers, and all sorts of other distinctly non-hippy folks involved.
Not only that budget surplus, but low unemployment, the creation of something called the "Internet" (spurred on by a geeky VP), and in foreign policy the closest we've ever come to having peace between Israel and Palestine. Yeah, real disaster that.
Well, here's the thing: Republicans pandering to their extreme right wing doesn't risk losing their big donors, because their extreme right wing wants many of the same things that the big donors want, like no taxes on investment and inheritance and no regulation of business, and the things their extreme right wing cares about like imposing Christianity on the rest of us the donors are totally fine with. For the Democrats, though, pandering to their base would involve regulating and taxing people who form key donor constituencies, so the Democrats don't think they can do so without risking their existence as a party.
Occupy did actually make some fairly specific demands that were entirely ignored by those in power. One of the most notable was a demand that banks and if appropriate their officers be prosecuted when they were found to have committed fraud (the Obama administration instead announced a few months ago that they were closing the investigation on Goldman Sachs without pressing any kind of charge whatsoever even though some pretty damning evidence is a matter of public record).
The vaguer message of Occupy was that the Democratic Party in the US has utterly ignored the liberals in their base in an effort to pander to Wall St and the right wing. And why should people like Obama do that, when all they need to do to get their votes is scare the bejeesus out of them by threatening them with the prospect of President Romney?
Or Mint, or plain-old Debian, or Arch, or Gentoo, or rolling your own, or ...
Basically, GP's fundamental mistake was seeing OS's entirely through the lens of "How does the source of the OS make money?"
Basically, there are 3 separate but related roles that may or may not be handled by the same person depending on the organization size.
1. A developer is responsible for writing and documenting their code in a way that it can be deployed reasonably easily.
2. A build manager (also called "change control") is responsible for managing and deploying changes to different environments.
3. An administrator is responsible for ensuring the overall health and security of the environments being deployed to.
Ideally, there's negotiation involved between each of these 3 groups. For example, if a developer wants to depend on a new package, there should be a discussion with the administrators on whether this package is a good idea. Separation of roles means that it's impossible for one person to simply impose their views on the organization.
GP is probably referring to the way US factories were like in, say, 1903 when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, before OSHA and the FDA existed. Sinclair specifically mentions in the book an incident he observed where a guy fell into a vat of beef waiting to be ground up and ended up becoming part of people's "ground beef". The public was outraged about this, not because somebody had died in the factory but because of the contamination of their food.