This guy tells it like it is, from at least 3 sides to the argument. The only thing I can add is that I've had this experience with HP Inks versus the refill.
The refill is definitely inferior: it runs more easily, when the air is humid. But it is almost as good.
When I want to print something final, I get the HP brand ink -- but if I don't care, then the refill is almost as good, and I like the price drop.
Should it be my decision, or HPs? Well, in the end I really like to be able to choose, but I have to know what printers use the fink inks, ahead of time. Usually, it seems to me that the manufacturers hide that kind of information.
So the first step in not getting defrauded would be in getting full info.
The Linux server has recused itself, due to a potential conflict of interest. It has appointed its predecessor, an Apple ][gs, to handle the process for the rest of the case, and will take the opportunity to spend more time with its *NIX family, and perhaps will also take a vacation to Denmark.
It seemed to me that MP3 went due to the lawsuits and harrassment from RIAA, not because they had a particularly flawed business model
Seems to me, that if your business model brings with it harrassment from the RIAA that is bad enough to put you out of business, then you have a flawed business model.
To put this into perspective, consider: Al Capone is running the Chicago liquer industry, with mega profits. You notice this, and say "Great opportunity! I'll get in, undercut his prices by 25%, and still make a killing!". Of course, your business model does not account for his next move, nor are you prepared to fight a war with him, so you lose. That's a flawed business model, if you ask me.
Thing is, business isn't run in a vacuum. You've got to consider the society into which you enter business. Our current society encourages the formation of businesses like the RIAA, and your business model had better account for that.
At the last election, I (conservative who had in the previous election been for Alan Keyes) agreed completely with Nader on that point. I still do.
As far as I can tell, the Democrats and Republicans follow the orders of their leadership, who in turn spend more time with each other, and think more like each other, than they think like the typical voter.
That means that their policies match. In other words, in something so simple as playing golf together, they make a one-party system out of what is nominally a two-party system.
There is an interesting phenomenon that I like to call the "who gets to cave" phenonemon. Essentially, the leadership decides which bills will pass and which will fail. Then, the politicians can vote their consciences as long as it doesn't overturn that. The net result, though, is that your congressman seems "absolutely pro-labor", or "usually anti-abortion", though he sometimes has a surprise in store, and those surprises he explains away, but those surprises actually killed something that he'd always claimed to support, or ensured passage of something he'd always claimed he was against.
Anyhow, I didn't see much difference between Gore and Bush, and I still don't. Gore's presence wouldn't have stopped 9/11 from happening. Once that happened, the mad dog was going to bite, so Afghanistan was inevitable. Iraq may admittedly have been Bush's own project, but the dog was still mad: if it hadn't been Iraq, it might have been Pakistan or Palestine/Israel.
Most recently, my father, a longtime Republican, sent around an email saying that Bush had to be removed, because of the "free speech zones" that he sets up 10 miles from his visit site, considering negative political speech to be a danger. Honestly -- does anyone think that that came in with Bush? Or do we remember the WTO in Seattle? Bush couldn't have done it, if Democrats hadn't help set it up. The Democrats, in turn, help set it up because they want the same thing that Bush has -- though they'd prefer to be on top.
Functionally, they're a single party.
Come to think of it, I don't see anyone, Clark, Dean, or other, who outshines Bush in any area. And Bush, in my opinion, does not shine at all.
Honestly, I'm to the point where I wouldn't care more if LaRouche was elected. And LaRouche's party is dishonest, crazy, and dangerous. But so is our current course.
I'm sorry, did you say that Microsoft was a small business?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Scaled Composites is sponsored lock, stock, and barrell either by Microsoft or by one of its directors.
That said, Microsoft behaves and functions like a government, not like a business, and has more money to boot than some small governments. As such, Scaled Composites does not have to worry about profitability or even budget, any more than NASA does.
Technically, in my opinion, the company qualifies for the X-prize, but the entry violates the spirit of the X-prize.
The answer is, back to the farms. Learn to grow a garden, to really grow a garden. Also, immediately sell your financed house, and buy something that you own outright: something with a lot of land, and little house, and maybe with a saw for cutting lumber.
Also keep a computer, for the occasional job that does come by.
Learn how to pasteurize your own milk, and get (perhaps) 1 cow, or 1 bull if there's more than 25 bull-less cows in the area. [Deal is, trade your bull's services for 1/10 of the cow's milk, and 1/10 of the veal, if you eat it.]
Learn how to live cheaply. If you're not sure, start here:
http://www.growbiointensive.org
Want better? I've posted in my journal a way to increase the per-acre yield by 30% over what growbiointensive.org says.
Fact: Because of our technology, per-capita productivity towards peoples' standard of living, in my field of expertise, is of an order of magnitude 10 times more than that of people 500 years ago, and 100 times more than that of people 3000 years ago.
Fact: The same can be said for most industries (farming, for example).
Fact: Things were livable for most people back 500 years, and back 3000 years. Therefore, they should be livable now.
My desired standard of living (a family wage) is thus justified.
Fact: Things are not livable today for most people.
Now it's your turn. Please justify your local CEO's, congressman's, banker's, stock broker's, (etc) standard of living, as well as that of anyone else with a standard of living more than 5 times that of the people they manage.
Fact: things are a tad messed up. Our country is just a tad disordered, and our magnates are just a tad too busy disordering the world.
Fact: Disordering destroys order. Things are going to break down further.
Quite simply, we have to get back to some basics, like depending on God, obeying God, and stuff like that, or we're going to continue disordering our world, and it won't be pleasant.
Never crashed on me. Maybe you used a development version? (odd minor version number ==> develoment version)
I have Debian Woody, and can confirm that Gimp is slightly unstable, plus way too slow, for me. I don't like it at all.
Plus, there is a ton of stuff which it can't do, AFAIK. Anyone have a Mac, try out the free(beer) Futurepaint. That's a ton more powerful than GIMP, in my book, and a ton faster, too. At that, it's slower and less powerful than its $20 predecessor, DeskPaint. But you can't get Deskpaint any more.
But anyhow, my version, as it turns out, is 1.2.3. If I understand correctly, that means that Debian used a development version of GIMP in their Woody (stable) distribution.
That's asking for trouble, IMO. I'm surprised that they did that. Just my 2 cents' worth.
Okay, I did a search on "Death Spiral financing", and found out that this refers to a criminal financial operation. Therefore, any financial magazine that said "this could be..." would be liable for libel.
Which is rather interesting, because that means that our laws are actually making securities fraud easier, not harder. That, in turn, might imply that there is something fundamentally wrong with either the laws, or the structure of the markets, or maybe just that if your country has a significant population of evilly minded people, you're not going to have a good life.
Anyhow, I suspect that no financial magazine can use the words "death spiral financing" in conjunction with an investment, no matter how much it looks like it will be exactly that.
Just offhand, I'd like to know if there are any news reports that explain that this could be "death spiral financing".
Because if this is well known to financial geeks, then any financial magazine, such as forbes, which did not mention any such thing, would be doing its readers a real service.
Other than that, publishing the investment without publishing the possible eventual short sale would encourage newcomer readers to invest in a probable loss, lemming-bandwagon style.
People use dollars not because they're better, but because the US government requires that its manditory taxes be paid in dollars (well, bank dollars, but it ends up being the same).
So the businesses use dollars. Then, if you want to buy the business' products, you have to pay dollars.
When the government requires that its departments (Pentagon) and contractors use M$ Palladium (or other "trusted computing"), then its customers will require it. When that happens, then the change will be forced. If you want something off the web, you're going to have to use trusted computing too.
There are two solutions that I can see to this: (1) invent a networking environment that doesn't use trusted computing, and isn't open to this kind of thing (even if it's only PDAs communicating by infrared, with a encrypted/unencrypted option)
or
(2) Don't use computers.
Well, it couldn't last. But then again, it occurs to me that I remember a famous saying of mine:
In the time of Moses/Ra-Moesha, the Egyptians saw every one of their false gods killing them. In general, this is true: that if you have a false god, if you make a god out of that which is not a god, then it will sooner or later start to kill you. We Americans have many false gods, and the ways in which we will die are many and varied. For those who make food a false god, obesity. For those who make technology a false god, they will be tied down until they cannot live. For those who make the government a false god, they will see their government march them to war and death. For those who make the economy a false god, they will destroy that which they worship through their own greed, and in the process destroy themselves.
Before I begin, I'd like to note that with a document this large, it might be good to post individual "Topics" at the top level, and then others can talk about that topic in general.
I can confirm the firewall problem. The high schools in the country where I live do not have library catalog servers. I wanted to get a sample server up and running, and maybe let them start using it to record their books.
Of course, I had a firewalled ISP. I went ahead and asked them to get me connected with IPCHAINS to mysite.theirsite.lt, and they said sure.
Well, long story short, I asked and asked and asked for about 6-7 months, and nothing happened aside from more statements "yes, immediately. Yes, tomorrow". Meanwhile, I had my KOHA catalog server up and running. Eventually, the time for which it would have been useful passed, and they still hadn't done anything, so I stopped asking. Two months later, as I was packing up our stuff to leave the country, I got an email "oh, do you still need to be connected?".
Well, more and more, this is starting to be standard. As the author stated, broadcasters get privileged sites, and those designated "consumers" cannot get a broadcastable site no matter what they do.
Okay, just out of wondering, which do you think takes more transistor firings: A NOP? Or a DIV? Or a coprocessor FDIV?
Aside from that, I seem to remember something about computers having variable clock speeds. Maybe that's not the case on PCs, or maybe it is -- I dunno.
But increased heat output could be a concern for a processor overdriven on its CPU speed, I'd think.
...but I find it difficult to understand how a person can earn money by releasing the source to the software.
Okay, fair enough, but just because you have trouble understanding it doesn't mean it isn't so.
For example, there's the mySQL/Red Hat model. They give the software for free, and sell service. Since they know the software better than anyone else, they are worth the price.
Or, suppose you want to sell free music, or even free pages of childrens' mazes -- how would you do that? Well, check here.
There are working business models. Indeed, as people wise up, I suspect that the working free business models will eventually put the badly-working closed business models out of business. In the end, even nations are going to have to give up the idea of intellectual property, because the working free-IP countries will put the badly working captive-worker countries out of business.
However, that said, if and when that happens is none of my business.
(1) Open your door when you forgot your key and locked yourself out. (2) cut it just right and amaze your friends how quickly you can go through your latest VISA card! (3) Frame it in all the junk mail you recieved. (4) Use it to pull out at the bar, tell stories, bore your friends and even strangers!
Okay, first of all, yes, this guy's post is a bit of science fiction at this point. So was 1984, when it was written, and 1984 came and went, and we didn't have that situation. We didn't have that situation at that point, anyhow.
Nonetheless, 1984 *was* insightful. It provided clues into the nature of how politics worked. It was insightful in much the same way as, say, Machiavelli's "The Prince".
Well, the grandparent post is insightful, too, because it provides insight into the neoliberal capitalist mentality. Caveat: Neoliberal capitalism is not capitalist, nor is it liberal, nor is it neo; it goes back as far as history, because self-styled "great men" have always wanted lots of slaves and lots of concubines, and have been willing to pillage to get them..
So though I wouldn't bet in favor of the grandparent post actually happening exactly as he said (informative), it does display some insight into the nature of our problem (insightful).
As for it being conspiracy-theorist, has anyone ever claimed that conspiracies never happen? (French Revolution)
Or paranoid -- I remember when pop-radio-psychologist (at the time) Selfish Sally (Jesse Raphael) was talking to a guy that said "my family says I'm paranoid", and Selfish Sally said "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you." Which didn't do the guy any psychological good at all, I'm sure, but the point stands. It would be paranoid to think that this is necessarily actually going to happen in this way. Nonetheless, it is not paranoid to posit it as a possibility.
If you want to keep it to US history, you'll have to blame the 3/5 compromise.
Go back in your history books, and look up when they were arguing out the US Constitution, and decided that black slaves would equal 3/5 of a person.
From this, came (1) an acceptance of slavery, thus justifying the New England abuses of the Industrialization. That, in turn, drove a desire of the New England Industrialists to seize the South for their benefit, as well as providing a pretext for the ci vil war.
The ongoing abuses of the industrialists, meanwhile, drove the westward expansion and the policy of manifest destiny.
The civil war, then, centralized power in the hands of the federal government, thus providing power to the policies of manifest destiny, and driving an imperial attitude among our leaders.
With the imperial attitude came the need in our leaders' hearts to be the ruler of the world, from Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet", to our presence in WWI and WWII.
Now, our sending our boys off to WWII proved to be a different kind of downfall. With all the young men and women in love, probably going to get married in 5 years anyhow, the news of going off to war resulted in the baby boom, and a lot of premarital sex, or shotgun-fast weddings. Now, in general their intentions were right, and even where girls did get pregnant out of marriage, they still did get married. But then when it came time to teach their kids morality, they couldn't do it. They couldn't bring themselves to say "what we did was wrong" to themselves -- and therefore, they by and large taught their kids "just don't do it. People don't do that kind of thing."
The kids grew up hearing this, and immediately deduced "what kind of hypocrisy is this?!?" So we had the sexual revolution, and alongside that an explosion in psychoactive drugs.
The sexual revolution is something we never really go over. It resulted dually in a general loss of faith in God and libertine attitudes, which brought a host of problems: extreme wrongful profiteering became normal; legalized theft reached new highs with lawsuits becoming an accepted way to become rich. Our television started deifying consumerism and sexuality; and we as we started importing the products of theft, we had to export corruption and death in unimaginably large numbers of ways.
That, since then, has driven a great hatred of the ugly American. (But not to be Eurocentric, France and Germany, even Italy and Spain, all have engendered similar hatred, but not to the extremes that America has.)
But the lack of faith in God also drives fear. So you have 300 million (or more) fear-driven, consumerist, theft-friendly Americans.
What, exactly, could be more natural than the music piracy, the RIAA/MPAA tactics, DRM, and the Patriot act?
Yeah, you can take it back to the 3/5 compromise.
But that's the short sighted answer. The long-sighted answer would take it back to the first humans.
Or maybe, the longest-sighted answer of all would be to say "since we played our own role in this, we have earned what we got."
Port scanning is akin to walking up to someone's door and trying the knob to see if it is open. If you are a security agent, hired to do this once a week, then that's fine. Aside from that, it is a part of burglary. If you want to try to talk with him, set up your talkd, and then try to get him. That's akin to walking up to the *one* door and knocking.
Slashdot Mirror
This guy tells it like it is, from at least 3 sides to the argument. The only thing I can add is that I've had this experience with HP Inks versus the refill.
The refill is definitely inferior: it runs more easily, when the air is humid. But it is almost as good.
When I want to print something final, I get the HP brand ink -- but if I don't care, then the refill is almost as good, and I like the price drop.
Should it be my decision, or HPs? Well, in the end I really like to be able to choose, but I have to know what printers use the fink inks, ahead of time. Usually, it seems to me that the manufacturers hide that kind of information.
So the first step in not getting defrauded would be in getting full info.
My mother in law owns a Con S450, which started generating the error code (flashing orange/green) ...-o-o-o-o-o-o-g-... repeatedly.
... but it seems to me applicable to this topic.
Looking it up on the web, we found this (google cache) and this (google cache).
I'll let people make their own opinions, so that I don't accuse them
Anyhow, we don't have a fix, nor much expectation of getting one.
The Linux server has recused itself, due to a potential conflict of interest. It has appointed its predecessor, an Apple ][gs, to handle the process for the rest of the case, and will take the opportunity to spend more time with its *NIX family, and perhaps will also take a vacation to Denmark.
Seems to me, that if your business model brings with it harrassment from the RIAA that is bad enough to put you out of business, then you have a flawed business model.
To put this into perspective, consider: Al Capone is running the Chicago liquer industry, with mega profits. You notice this, and say "Great opportunity! I'll get in, undercut his prices by 25%, and still make a killing!". Of course, your business model does not account for his next move, nor are you prepared to fight a war with him, so you lose. That's a flawed business model, if you ask me.
Thing is, business isn't run in a vacuum. You've got to consider the society into which you enter business. Our current society encourages the formation of businesses like the RIAA, and your business model had better account for that.
At the last election, I (conservative who had in the previous election been for Alan Keyes) agreed completely with Nader on that point. I still do.
As far as I can tell, the Democrats and Republicans follow the orders of their leadership, who in turn spend more time with each other, and think more like each other, than they think like the typical voter.
That means that their policies match. In other words, in something so simple as playing golf together, they make a one-party system out of what is nominally a two-party system.
There is an interesting phenomenon that I like to call the "who gets to cave" phenonemon. Essentially, the leadership decides which bills will pass and which will fail. Then, the politicians can vote their consciences as long as it doesn't overturn that. The net result, though, is that your congressman seems "absolutely pro-labor", or "usually anti-abortion", though he sometimes has a surprise in store, and those surprises he explains away, but those surprises actually killed something that he'd always claimed to support, or ensured passage of something he'd always claimed he was against.
Anyhow, I didn't see much difference between Gore and Bush, and I still don't. Gore's presence wouldn't have stopped 9/11 from happening. Once that happened, the mad dog was going to bite, so Afghanistan was inevitable. Iraq may admittedly have been Bush's own project, but the dog was still mad: if it hadn't been Iraq, it might have been Pakistan or Palestine/Israel.
Most recently, my father, a longtime Republican, sent around an email saying that Bush had to be removed, because of the "free speech zones" that he sets up 10 miles from his visit site, considering negative political speech to be a danger. Honestly -- does anyone think that that came in with Bush? Or do we remember the WTO in Seattle? Bush couldn't have done it, if Democrats hadn't help set it up. The Democrats, in turn, help set it up because they want the same thing that Bush has -- though they'd prefer to be on top.
Functionally, they're a single party.
Come to think of it, I don't see anyone, Clark, Dean, or other, who outshines Bush in any area. And Bush, in my opinion, does not shine at all.
Honestly, I'm to the point where I wouldn't care more if LaRouche was elected. And LaRouche's party is dishonest, crazy, and dangerous. But so is our current course.
I'm sorry, did you say that Microsoft was a small business?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Scaled Composites is sponsored lock, stock, and barrell either by Microsoft or by one of its directors.
That said, Microsoft behaves and functions like a government, not like a business, and has more money to boot than some small governments. As such, Scaled Composites does not have to worry about profitability or even budget, any more than NASA does.
Technically, in my opinion, the company qualifies for the X-prize, but the entry violates the spirit of the X-prize.
Nuh-uh.
The answer is, back to the farms. Learn to grow a garden, to really grow a garden. Also, immediately sell your financed house, and buy something that you own outright: something with a lot of land, and little house, and maybe with a saw for cutting lumber.
Also keep a computer, for the occasional job that does come by.
Learn how to pasteurize your own milk, and get (perhaps) 1 cow, or 1 bull if there's more than 25 bull-less cows in the area. [Deal is, trade your bull's services for 1/10 of the cow's milk, and 1/10 of the veal, if you eat it.]
Learn how to live cheaply. If you're not sure, start here:
http://www.growbiointensive.org
Want better? I've posted in my journal a way to increase the per-acre yield by 30% over what growbiointensive.org says.
Fact: Because of our technology, per-capita productivity towards peoples' standard of living, in my field of expertise, is of an order of magnitude 10 times more than that of people 500 years ago, and 100 times more than that of people 3000 years ago.
Fact: The same can be said for most industries (farming, for example).
Fact: Things were livable for most people back 500 years, and back 3000 years. Therefore, they should be livable now.
My desired standard of living (a family wage) is thus justified.
Fact: Things are not livable today for most people.
Now it's your turn. Please justify your local CEO's, congressman's, banker's, stock broker's, (etc) standard of living, as well as that of anyone else with a standard of living more than 5 times that of the people they manage.
Fact: things are a tad messed up. Our country is just a tad disordered, and our magnates are just a tad too busy disordering the world.
Fact: Disordering destroys order. Things are going to break down further.
Quite simply, we have to get back to some basics, like depending on God, obeying God, and stuff like that, or we're going to continue disordering our world, and it won't be pleasant.
Imagine riding such a bicycle at the bottom of one of Jupiter's methane oceans. Don't understand? Go RTA.
Please email me:
mike_underscore_rudmin_at_yahoo_dot_com
I do (or perhaps *did*) prepublishing for a line of major textbooks, and I too have some thoughts. I'd like to hear your thoughts, though.
Also, in your email, please mention what subject you teach.
- Mike
I have Debian Woody, and can confirm that Gimp is slightly unstable, plus way too slow, for me. I don't like it at all.
Plus, there is a ton of stuff which it can't do, AFAIK. Anyone have a Mac, try out the free(beer) Futurepaint. That's a ton more powerful than GIMP, in my book, and a ton faster, too. At that, it's slower and less powerful than its $20 predecessor, DeskPaint. But you can't get Deskpaint any more.
But anyhow, my version, as it turns out, is 1.2.3. If I understand correctly, that means that Debian used a development version of GIMP in their Woody (stable) distribution.
That's asking for trouble, IMO. I'm surprised that they did that. Just my 2 cents' worth.
Futurepaint is also free. However, that said, I actually prefer its predecessor, Deskpaint, by ZedCor. But it's no longer published.
Wigs and stilts, wigs and stilts.
Ma, I'm agonna be PRESIDENT!
Okay, I did a search on "Death Spiral financing", and found out that this refers to a criminal financial operation. Therefore, any financial magazine that said "this could be..." would be liable for libel.
Which is rather interesting, because that means that our laws are actually making securities fraud easier, not harder. That, in turn, might imply that there is something fundamentally wrong with either the laws, or the structure of the markets, or maybe just that if your country has a significant population of evilly minded people, you're not going to have a good life.
Anyhow, I suspect that no financial magazine can use the words "death spiral financing" in conjunction with an investment, no matter how much it looks like it will be exactly that.
Other than that, publishing the investment without publishing the possible eventual short sale would encourage newcomer readers to invest in a probable loss, lemming-bandwagon style.
So the businesses use dollars. Then, if you want to buy the business' products, you have to pay dollars.
When the government requires that its departments (Pentagon) and contractors use M$ Palladium (or other "trusted computing"), then its customers will require it. When that happens, then the change will be forced. If you want something off the web, you're going to have to use trusted computing too.
There are two solutions that I can see to this:
(1) invent a networking environment that doesn't use trusted computing, and isn't open to this kind of thing (even if it's only PDAs communicating by infrared, with a encrypted/unencrypted option)
or
(2) Don't use computers.
Well, it couldn't last. But then again, it occurs to me that I remember a famous saying of mine:
In the time of Moses/Ra-Moesha, the Egyptians saw every one of their false gods killing them. In general, this is true: that if you have a false god, if you make a god out of that which is not a god, then it will sooner or later start to kill you. We Americans have many false gods, and the ways in which we will die are many and varied. For those who make food a false god, obesity. For those who make technology a false god, they will be tied down until they cannot live. For those who make the government a false god, they will see their government march them to war and death. For those who make the economy a false god, they will destroy that which they worship through their own greed, and in the process destroy themselves.
-(myself)
I can confirm the firewall problem. The high schools in the country where I live do not have library catalog servers. I wanted to get a sample server up and running, and maybe let them start using it to record their books.
Of course, I had a firewalled ISP. I went ahead and asked them to get me connected with IPCHAINS to mysite.theirsite.lt, and they said sure.
Well, long story short, I asked and asked and asked for about 6-7 months, and nothing happened aside from more statements "yes, immediately. Yes, tomorrow". Meanwhile, I had my KOHA catalog server up and running. Eventually, the time for which it would have been useful passed, and they still hadn't done anything, so I stopped asking. Two months later, as I was packing up our stuff to leave the country, I got an email "oh, do you still need to be connected?".
Well, more and more, this is starting to be standard. As the author stated, broadcasters get privileged sites, and those designated "consumers" cannot get a broadcastable site no matter what they do.
Okay, just out of wondering, which do you think takes more transistor firings: A NOP? Or a DIV? Or a coprocessor FDIV?
Aside from that, I seem to remember something about computers having variable clock speeds. Maybe that's not the case on PCs, or maybe it is -- I dunno.
But increased heat output could be a concern for a processor overdriven on its CPU speed, I'd think.
Okay, fair enough, but just because you have trouble understanding it doesn't mean it isn't so. For example, there's the mySQL/Red Hat model. They give the software for free, and sell service. Since they know the software better than anyone else, they are worth the price.
Or, suppose you want to sell free music, or even free pages of childrens' mazes -- how would you do that? Well, check here.
There are working business models. Indeed, as people wise up, I suspect that the working free business models will eventually put the badly-working closed business models out of business. In the end, even nations are going to have to give up the idea of intellectual property, because the working free-IP countries will put the badly working captive-worker countries out of business.
However, that said, if and when that happens is none of my business.
Forget reputation, though you can look for that too if you want. Take a look at the other articles linked to under that "Linux at Work" inset.
Then judge for yourself.
It's always a bad idea to say something that could be taken out of context as slander, so why not just let their own words speak for themselves.
No! Don't USE THE SLEDGE!!!!
Here are several possible uses:
(1) Open your door when you forgot your key and locked yourself out.
(2) cut it just right and amaze your friends how quickly you can go through your latest VISA card!
(3) Frame it in all the junk mail you recieved.
(4) Use it to pull out at the bar, tell stories, bore your friends and even strangers!
Okay, first of all, yes, this guy's post is a bit of science fiction at this point. So was 1984, when it was written, and 1984 came and went, and we didn't have that situation. We didn't have that situation at that point, anyhow.
Nonetheless, 1984 *was* insightful. It provided clues into the nature of how politics worked. It was insightful in much the same way as, say, Machiavelli's "The Prince".
Well, the grandparent post is insightful, too, because it provides insight into the neoliberal capitalist mentality. Caveat: Neoliberal capitalism is not capitalist, nor is it liberal, nor is it neo; it goes back as far as history, because self-styled "great men" have always wanted lots of slaves and lots of concubines, and have been willing to pillage to get them..
So though I wouldn't bet in favor of the grandparent post actually happening exactly as he said (informative), it does display some insight into the nature of our problem (insightful).
As for it being conspiracy-theorist, has anyone ever claimed that conspiracies never happen? (French Revolution)
Or paranoid -- I remember when pop-radio-psychologist (at the time) Selfish Sally (Jesse Raphael) was talking to a guy that said "my family says I'm paranoid", and Selfish Sally said "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you." Which didn't do the guy any psychological good at all, I'm sure, but the point stands. It would be paranoid to think that this is necessarily actually going to happen in this way. Nonetheless, it is not paranoid to posit it as a possibility.
Mod that post back up. Mod it insightful.
From this, came (1) an acceptance of slavery, thus justifying the New England abuses of the Industrialization. That, in turn, drove a desire of the New England Industrialists to seize the South for their benefit, as well as providing a pretext for the ci vil war.
The ongoing abuses of the industrialists, meanwhile, drove the westward expansion and the policy of manifest destiny. The civil war, then, centralized power in the hands of the federal government, thus providing power to the policies of manifest destiny, and driving an imperial attitude among our leaders.
With the imperial attitude came the need in our leaders' hearts to be the ruler of the world, from Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet", to our presence in WWI and WWII.
Now, our sending our boys off to WWII proved to be a different kind of downfall. With all the young men and women in love, probably going to get married in 5 years anyhow, the news of going off to war resulted in the baby boom, and a lot of premarital sex, or shotgun-fast weddings. Now, in general their intentions were right, and even where girls did get pregnant out of marriage, they still did get married. But then when it came time to teach their kids morality, they couldn't do it. They couldn't bring themselves to say "what we did was wrong" to themselves -- and therefore, they by and large taught their kids "just don't do it. People don't do that kind of thing."
The kids grew up hearing this, and immediately deduced "what kind of hypocrisy is this?!?" So we had the sexual revolution, and alongside that an explosion in psychoactive drugs.
The sexual revolution is something we never really go over. It resulted dually in a general loss of faith in God and libertine attitudes, which brought a host of problems: extreme wrongful profiteering became normal; legalized theft reached new highs with lawsuits becoming an accepted way to become rich. Our television started deifying consumerism and sexuality; and we as we started importing the products of theft, we had to export corruption and death in unimaginably large numbers of ways.
That, since then, has driven a great hatred of the ugly American. (But not to be Eurocentric, France and Germany, even Italy and Spain, all have engendered similar hatred, but not to the extremes that America has.)
But the lack of faith in God also drives fear. So you have 300 million (or more) fear-driven, consumerist, theft-friendly Americans.
What, exactly, could be more natural than the music piracy, the RIAA/MPAA tactics, DRM, and the Patriot act?
Yeah, you can take it back to the 3/5 compromise.
But that's the short sighted answer. The long-sighted answer would take it back to the first humans.
Or maybe, the longest-sighted answer of all would be to say "since we played our own role in this, we have earned what we got."
Port scanning is akin to walking up to someone's door and trying the knob to see if it is open. If you are a security agent, hired to do this once a week, then that's fine. Aside from that, it is a part of burglary. If you want to try to talk with him, set up your talkd, and then try to get him. That's akin to walking up to the *one* door and knocking.