I hope you think back to the kind of shit you're spewing now when the dollar has been devalued into the ground. The IMF has been fucking begging us to practice a modicum of fiscal responsibility, but we don't care because WE'RE THE US and WE DON'T NEED TO ANSWER TO YOU PANSY EUROPEANS. We're spending our way into another Great Depression, and that is something the rest of the world has to worry about.
The problem is, there's not much they can do. Trade sanctions, embargoes, or war would all basically have similar effects to the dollar collapsing. So what the rest of the world is doing is moving to the Euro, so that when the dollar is worth as much as a 1921 Deutschmark, they won't be pulled down with us.
Otherwise, all they can do is plead with us to be in some way reasonable and stop acting like we're God's own country.
Of course not. Actually, I'm not being critical of that at all -- most of the things I listed there are services of the government to all people.
I wasn't specifically addressing America; rather, I was addressing the statement that the 'American dream' is to be able to say that you did something all by yourself but with God's help. In reality, except in the complete absence of government, very few people accomplish something without at least some measure of direct or indirect government assistance.
No man is an island, etc. Government welfare doesn't just come in the form of a handout, and your garden-variety rugged individualist is deluding herself if she believes that she's done anything all by herself.
"This, with God's help, and legal protection of my interests, and government management and upkeep of the commercial infrastructure, and skilled laborers educated in public schools, and protection from disease through public sanitation, I have done."
Fixed Dean Alfange's typo.
Re:Every political story on Slashdot has a Dem. sl
on
The Nader Factor
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Kerry and Bush came down on different sides of virtually every single issue in the debates." Did they?
"Abortion." Bush: I'm opposed to abortion, and I worked to ban partial birth abortion. Kerry: I'm opposed to abortion, but I wouldn't work to ban it.
"Foreign policy." Bush: I led the war on terror. The Patriot Act is good. Kerry: I will hunt down and kill the terrorists. The Patriot Act is good, but we need to 'monitor' its use.
"Health care." Bush: I passed Medicare 'reform' and support 'health savings accounts', which are thinly veiled tax shelters for people who can already afford health care. I oppose buying drugs from Canada because they cannot be trusted. Kerry: I support opening up the federal insurance system to the public -- the system that, by and large, still deals with the for-profit middlemen. Also, I think we should undermine the Canadian pharmaceutical price controls by buying the drugs that they imported from us. Neither: If we're considering buying drugs from Canada that they imported from us, shouldn't we consider implementing our own similar system? Neither candidate supports any major reform of the health system -- just small, iterative changes that merely solidify the status quo.
"Iraq." Bush: I believe I was right to invade Iraq. Kerry: I believe I was right to authorize him to invade Iraq, except he should have spent more time on diplomacy. But then unilateral invasion would be fine.
"The environment." I have to agree with you there -- Bush's record is pretty abysmal on the environment. Of course, Kerry hasn't really given concrete proof he'll do better -- remember, Bush claims to be an environmental president, so you can't always believe what is said.
In general, though, Bush and Kerry had DIFFERENT views, but their views were very close.
'encule' is French for 'fuck up the ass'. 'Enculator' would thus mean 'one who fucks up the ass'. I imagine it's the same for other Romance languages like Spanish.
Overreaction. The majority of Slackware GNOME users were already using Dropline; Patrick has just decided to stop duplicating the Dropline effort, especially when it's generally considered to be nicer.
Division of labor is a good thing -- this/. article is totally skewing a few unrelated events to prove some sort of trend that really isn't occurring.
Because KDE and GNOME aren't just about different toolkits; they have differing design philosophies across the board. If they didn't, there'd be no reason for KDE and GNOME not to merge.
Oh, and ROX is a GTK+ application. It can be themed in the same way as any other GTK+ app.
And I don't ever use appdirs, and I haven't found that ROX is scolding me for not using them or something. ROX itself is packaged as an appdir, but if you (or your distro) install it correctly, you never have to know that.
VB.net is also barely recognizable as BASIC. I'd bet that 99% of VB programs have at most a handful of lines that would compile with even somewhat recent BASIC dialects like, say, QBASIC.
Like you suggested, Visual Basic is now essentially preprocessed C#. I'd say that it's more accurate to say C# is Java than to say Visual Basic is BASIC.
Did I say anything about the strategic pros and cons of supporting Israel? I was specifically addressing the following exchange:
gibbsjoh: "Don't forget the fact the Yanks give God knows how many billions of Dollars to a regime that's in violation of over 100 UN Resultions and has killed over 3000 innocent civilans since 2000... oh the fucking irony."
anonymous coward: "Yes, we give a lot of aid (food/medicine) to countries like North Korea. Seems we don't want people to starve."
I was addressing the latter -- by most definitions, Israel is a rogue state in consistent defiance of the UN (including resolutions the US authored) and in possession of 'WMD'. It's also relatively wealthy. Most American aid to Israel (it's the #1 recipient of US Federal government money, more than any US state or foreign entity) goes into their military. Their economy is robust enough that they don't need foreign aid for economic or humanitarian reasons.
Next time, please read more carefully before criticizing someone's grasp of an issue, especially in such derogatory terms.
The country in question here, I believe, is actually quite wealthy. Largely because of American money, but wealthy -- and the money we send them doesn't go to food, either.
Israel hardly needs aid. Any money we send them is for weapons.
Yes, I would weigh possible complications as being justification for ending the life of a fetus. Until very late in gestation, a human fetus has none of the features that make it specially human -- conscious thought, language, reason and learning. I would choose decades of human experience and the health of a society over a prehuman fetus in a heartbeat.
If raising a child was a totally personal responsibility, I'd understand where you're coming from. It isn't. The birth of a child, especially an unwanted one, sends ripples. I'm pretty sure I outlined the myriad consequences of an unwanted child before (in a post which you did not deign to respond to).
I fail to see how making a mistake should doom you and those around you to that fate.
It's shortsighted to look only at the US. Population is still increasing worldwide, and immigration will keep distribution steady -- or it would, if nations would drop their draconian border restrictions.
By the way, in most states, the adoption waiting time you cite is not for American babies, it's for WHITE American babies. Statistically, the waiting time for white adoptive parents who are willing to adopt minority children is much lower. It's super-hard to get blond, blue-eyed baby girls, but there's still a glut in especially black boys. Recently, the Canadians have been adopting black children from the US, but there's still a glut. There is no shortage of children to adopt. There's a shortage of 'desirable' children that racist white parents aren't afraid are crack babies. Putting more children into the system will only skew things further, with the extra white kids getting snapped up, but even more black kids growing up without a parent.
So, yes. The death of numerous prehuman fetuses is acceptable to me in exchange for protecting society and individuals from the problems caused by unwanted children.
The complications involved in pregnancy are endless. Many can result in the death or permanent injury of the mother, the baby, or both. In the end, it's safer and more merciful simply to abort the pregnancy -- it's not like we need any more children.
Way to thrash that straw man. Is he bleeding? You might want to get him to a hospital.
The difference between the quote "poor, drunks, and worthless" and an embryo is conscious thought and experience. That is what makes humans special, not a particular assortment of nucleic acids.
The straw is everywhere, man! You're totally merciless.
That's fine for you. On the other hand, what would you have lost if you'd been aborted?
There's a difference between being 'poor and struggling' and being unable to raise a child. For every success story of someone who was able to rise to the occasion, there's a childbeater, a drunk, an addict, a deadbeat. This doesn't only affect the parent; it also affects the other parent, the child, and those who know them.
On a broader level, these personal tragedies turn into higher crime rates, dissolving families, and the collapse of the inner city. All because of the dogmatic belief that possessing unique human DNA makes something intrinsically more valuable than anything else.
Why does there have to be "serious justification" for the ending of human life?
What's more, since when is "the condom broke" a justification anyway? That's absurd. More accurate justifications for abortion are: the life of the mother; the economic status of the mother; the social effects of unwanted children; the economic and social effects of families with children they cannot support; the social consequences of children born out of wedlock; the consequences of marriages entered for the specific purpose of not bearing a child out of wedlock. There are many more.
How are those any less valid than the political goals of war?
Really? How about the hundreds, if not thousands, of civilian deaths? What about their right to life?
Are their deaths an acceptable price to pay for destroying the evil, evil terrorists? If so, why isn't the death of your hypothetical unborn child an acceptable price to pay for protecting the potential mother, keeping them and their potential child off the welfare rolls and out of jail, etc.?
You know, wasting money isn't the same thing as being fiscally liberal. Both the Democrats and the Republicans waste money, mind you, but they're wasting it on significantly different things.
Since when is there an absolute right to life? Capital punishment and war are both legal actions of the government, and they result in the death of living, sapient human beings.
Only for people who equate property crimes with crimes against human beings.
It amazes me that anyone could consider murder an acceptable response to someone who happens to be on someone else's property. Most people with a breath of conscience would consider that cold-blooded homicide.
And there were times when both candidates clearly addressed each other. Minor infractions, especially when the rules are so numerous and strict, aren't really something to get hot and bothered about.
I carry a pen or a pencil at all times, and I'd instinctively reach for it if I needed to write something down. At worst, it looks like this is what Kerry did -- he had a pen in his pocket and used it.
A 'cheat sheet' would be worse, because both candidates are supposed to be debating with equal resources. An outside pen does not significantly unbalance that, and can be forgiven.
A cheat sheet or a radio earpiece, on the other hand, could tip the scales. However, neither are likely -- I don't think either candidate has the skill to correctly use outside help during the debate without making it obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
"Here in the US, if we have a problem, we deal with it."
Oh, really?
I hope you think back to the kind of shit you're spewing now when the dollar has been devalued into the ground. The IMF has been fucking begging us to practice a modicum of fiscal responsibility, but we don't care because WE'RE THE US and WE DON'T NEED TO ANSWER TO YOU PANSY EUROPEANS. We're spending our way into another Great Depression, and that is something the rest of the world has to worry about.
The problem is, there's not much they can do. Trade sanctions, embargoes, or war would all basically have similar effects to the dollar collapsing. So what the rest of the world is doing is moving to the Euro, so that when the dollar is worth as much as a 1921 Deutschmark, they won't be pulled down with us.
Otherwise, all they can do is plead with us to be in some way reasonable and stop acting like we're God's own country.
Of course not. Actually, I'm not being critical of that at all -- most of the things I listed there are services of the government to all people.
I wasn't specifically addressing America; rather, I was addressing the statement that the 'American dream' is to be able to say that you did something all by yourself but with God's help. In reality, except in the complete absence of government, very few people accomplish something without at least some measure of direct or indirect government assistance.
No man is an island, etc. Government welfare doesn't just come in the form of a handout, and your garden-variety rugged individualist is deluding herself if she believes that she's done anything all by herself.
"This, with God's help, and legal protection of my interests, and government management and upkeep of the commercial infrastructure, and skilled laborers educated in public schools, and protection from disease through public sanitation, I have done."
Fixed Dean Alfange's typo.
"Kerry and Bush came down on different sides of virtually every single issue in the debates."
Did they?
"Taxes."
Bush: Let's cut taxes massively.
Kerry: Let's cut taxes merely hugely.
Both: Let's keep the overall tax structure the same.
"Abortion."
Bush: I'm opposed to abortion, and I worked to ban partial birth abortion.
Kerry: I'm opposed to abortion, but I wouldn't work to ban it.
"Foreign policy."
Bush: I led the war on terror. The Patriot Act is good.
Kerry: I will hunt down and kill the terrorists. The Patriot Act is good, but we need to 'monitor' its use.
"Health care."
Bush: I passed Medicare 'reform' and support 'health savings accounts', which are thinly veiled tax shelters for people who can already afford health care. I oppose buying drugs from Canada because they cannot be trusted.
Kerry: I support opening up the federal insurance system to the public -- the system that, by and large, still deals with the for-profit middlemen. Also, I think we should undermine the Canadian pharmaceutical price controls by buying the drugs that they imported from us.
Neither: If we're considering buying drugs from Canada that they imported from us, shouldn't we consider implementing our own similar system? Neither candidate supports any major reform of the health system -- just small, iterative changes that merely solidify the status quo.
"Iraq."
Bush: I believe I was right to invade Iraq.
Kerry: I believe I was right to authorize him to invade Iraq, except he should have spent more time on diplomacy. But then unilateral invasion would be fine.
"The environment."
I have to agree with you there -- Bush's record is pretty abysmal on the environment. Of course, Kerry hasn't really given concrete proof he'll do better -- remember, Bush claims to be an environmental president, so you can't always believe what is said.
In general, though, Bush and Kerry had DIFFERENT views, but their views were very close.
'encule' is French for 'fuck up the ass'. 'Enculator' would thus mean 'one who fucks up the ass'. I imagine it's the same for other Romance languages like Spanish.
Or if you want to develop programs that work with both X11 and Windows. Remember, there is no Free Qt for Windows -- only for Unix and MacOS.
Or if you want to use a non-GPL license for your program.
Overreaction. The majority of Slackware GNOME users were already using Dropline; Patrick has just decided to stop duplicating the Dropline effort, especially when it's generally considered to be nicer.
/. article is totally skewing a few unrelated events to prove some sort of trend that really isn't occurring.
Division of labor is a good thing -- this
Because KDE and GNOME aren't just about different toolkits; they have differing design philosophies across the board. If they didn't, there'd be no reason for KDE and GNOME not to merge.
Oh, and ROX is a GTK+ application. It can be themed in the same way as any other GTK+ app.
And I don't ever use appdirs, and I haven't found that ROX is scolding me for not using them or something. ROX itself is packaged as an appdir, but if you (or your distro) install it correctly, you never have to know that.
VB.net is also barely recognizable as BASIC. I'd bet that 99% of VB programs have at most a handful of lines that would compile with even somewhat recent BASIC dialects like, say, QBASIC.
Like you suggested, Visual Basic is now essentially preprocessed C#. I'd say that it's more accurate to say C# is Java than to say Visual Basic is BASIC.
Did I say anything about the strategic pros and cons of supporting Israel? I was specifically addressing the following exchange:
gibbsjoh: "Don't forget the fact the Yanks give God knows how many billions of Dollars to a regime that's in violation of over 100 UN Resultions and has killed over 3000 innocent civilans since 2000... oh the fucking irony."
anonymous coward: "Yes, we give a lot of aid (food/medicine) to countries like North Korea. Seems we don't want people to starve."
I was addressing the latter -- by most definitions, Israel is a rogue state in consistent defiance of the UN (including resolutions the US authored) and in possession of 'WMD'. It's also relatively wealthy. Most American aid to Israel (it's the #1 recipient of US Federal government money, more than any US state or foreign entity) goes into their military. Their economy is robust enough that they don't need foreign aid for economic or humanitarian reasons.
Next time, please read more carefully before criticizing someone's grasp of an issue, especially in such derogatory terms.
To the left, the right IS "them." It's a basic moral opposition. A moral leftist must regard the right as his or her enemies.
The country in question here, I believe, is actually quite wealthy. Largely because of American money, but wealthy -- and the money we send them doesn't go to food, either.
Israel hardly needs aid. Any money we send them is for weapons.
Yes, I would weigh possible complications as being justification for ending the life of a fetus. Until very late in gestation, a human fetus has none of the features that make it specially human -- conscious thought, language, reason and learning. I would choose decades of human experience and the health of a society over a prehuman fetus in a heartbeat.
If raising a child was a totally personal responsibility, I'd understand where you're coming from. It isn't. The birth of a child, especially an unwanted one, sends ripples. I'm pretty sure I outlined the myriad consequences of an unwanted child before (in a post which you did not deign to respond to).
I fail to see how making a mistake should doom you and those around you to that fate.
It's shortsighted to look only at the US. Population is still increasing worldwide, and immigration will keep distribution steady -- or it would, if nations would drop their draconian border restrictions.
By the way, in most states, the adoption waiting time you cite is not for American babies, it's for WHITE American babies. Statistically, the waiting time for white adoptive parents who are willing to adopt minority children is much lower. It's super-hard to get blond, blue-eyed baby girls, but there's still a glut in especially black boys. Recently, the Canadians have been adopting black children from the US, but there's still a glut.
There is no shortage of children to adopt. There's a shortage of 'desirable' children that racist white parents aren't afraid are crack babies. Putting more children into the system will only skew things further, with the extra white kids getting snapped up, but even more black kids growing up without a parent.
So, yes. The death of numerous prehuman fetuses is acceptable to me in exchange for protecting society and individuals from the problems caused by unwanted children.
The complications involved in pregnancy are endless. Many can result in the death or permanent injury of the mother, the baby, or both. In the end, it's safer and more merciful simply to abort the pregnancy -- it's not like we need any more children.
Did I say that?
Way to thrash that straw man. Is he bleeding? You might want to get him to a hospital.
The difference between the quote "poor, drunks, and worthless" and an embryo is conscious thought and experience. That is what makes humans special, not a particular assortment of nucleic acids.
The straw is everywhere, man! You're totally merciless.
That's fine for you. On the other hand, what would you have lost if you'd been aborted?
There's a difference between being 'poor and struggling' and being unable to raise a child. For every success story of someone who was able to rise to the occasion, there's a childbeater, a drunk, an addict, a deadbeat. This doesn't only affect the parent; it also affects the other parent, the child, and those who know them.
On a broader level, these personal tragedies turn into higher crime rates, dissolving families, and the collapse of the inner city. All because of the dogmatic belief that possessing unique human DNA makes something intrinsically more valuable than anything else.
Why does there have to be "serious justification" for the ending of human life?
What's more, since when is "the condom broke" a justification anyway? That's absurd. More accurate justifications for abortion are: the life of the mother; the economic status of the mother; the social effects of unwanted children; the economic and social effects of families with children they cannot support; the social consequences of children born out of wedlock; the consequences of marriages entered for the specific purpose of not bearing a child out of wedlock. There are many more.
How are those any less valid than the political goals of war?
Really? How about the hundreds, if not thousands, of civilian deaths? What about their right to life?
Are their deaths an acceptable price to pay for destroying the evil, evil terrorists? If so, why isn't the death of your hypothetical unborn child an acceptable price to pay for protecting the potential mother, keeping them and their potential child off the welfare rolls and out of jail, etc.?
You know, wasting money isn't the same thing as being fiscally liberal. Both the Democrats and the Republicans waste money, mind you, but they're wasting it on significantly different things.
Since when is there an absolute right to life? Capital punishment and war are both legal actions of the government, and they result in the death of living, sapient human beings.
Only for people who equate property crimes with crimes against human beings.
It amazes me that anyone could consider murder an acceptable response to someone who happens to be on someone else's property. Most people with a breath of conscience would consider that cold-blooded homicide.
Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Shift+Tab.
Ctrl+W.
Single Window Extension or Tabbrowser Preferences.
It's called the Single Browser Extension. It's existed for Firefox and Mozilla for a very long time.
And there were times when both candidates clearly addressed each other. Minor infractions, especially when the rules are so numerous and strict, aren't really something to get hot and bothered about.
I carry a pen or a pencil at all times, and I'd instinctively reach for it if I needed to write something down. At worst, it looks like this is what Kerry did -- he had a pen in his pocket and used it.
A 'cheat sheet' would be worse, because both candidates are supposed to be debating with equal resources. An outside pen does not significantly unbalance that, and can be forgiven.
A cheat sheet or a radio earpiece, on the other hand, could tip the scales. However, neither are likely -- I don't think either candidate has the skill to correctly use outside help during the debate without making it obvious.
Hey, in what state is it that it's acceptable to murder trespassers in cold blood? Iraq?