"I can't say for sure that this "sarin" is not real, but I can say that so far 100% of the WMD news stories have been fabrications by either the government or the "news" media."
So those Kurds Saddam gased aren't really dead, but the whole stroy is a fabrication?
"Now let's talk about bias. When the story broke about the bomb going off that was hooked up to a sarin gas shell (Sarin is a nerve agent, a weapon of mass destruction), for that day and the next, you could find no news story on CNN.com about it. Not one. It was covered on FOX News and MSNBC's websites. Nothing on cnn.com. On the third day, I did manage to find an article that was discussing something else about the war, and at the bottom it mentioned the sarin bomb found."
Yes, I noticed this as well. I usually read both cnn and fox, as well as others, and try to sort it out for myself because you cant trust any one news source
So you're criticizing Fox for being biased and then have the gall to recommend readin a book by Al Franken? Ahh, have you considered Al Franken's book might also be bised and you're a hypocrite for telling people not to use biased news sources, and then recommending one? Or do you just want people to not use right-wing biased news sources, but thin left-wing biased news sources are ok?
""Is it wrong to root for your government's defeat, if you sincerely feel its policies are so misguided that their success would lead to much greater harm in the long run than would their failure in the short run?""
So success in Iraq, i.e. free democratic country is more like Nazi Germany's goal, and failure in Iraq, defined as civil war or theocracy, is less like Nazi Germany's goal? I would argue that if failure means more death and less freedom in Iraq, and you want this so Bush is not re-elected, maybe you should question your motives and values.
The problem is Moore tries to blame the shooting on the easy access to guns, and ignores the fact that the shooting has more to do with the boys upbringing. If a gun hadn't been available, he would have found another way. We shouldn't just blame guns for deaths, but understand the motives of the shooters. Making guns illegal won't stop murder any more than making drugs illegal will stop drug abuse. You need to fix the root causes, rather than ignoring them, as Moore conveniently did.
"And you are angry with Moores editing? I suspect you are angry with his politics more than mere "editing"."
A documentary shouldn't have a political agenda. It should present facts and opinions from all sides and let the viewer make up his mind. Moore should not have accepted the Academy Award for best documentary for BfC when it clearly was not a documentary, but an op ed piece on film.
" IMHO In fact, every political documentary is a "commentary"."
Bullshit. Reporters like Bob Woodward try to present the facts and opinions from all sides and let the reader decide. Moore is an embarrassment to journalism because he starts with an agenda, presents facts that support that agenda, and ignores facts that contradict his agenda. This happens on both the left and the right, and "documentaries" by these types need to be taken with a grain of salt.
"the Bush Administration gave $43 million in aid to the Taliban in part to -- give money to the poppy growers for the money they would lose because they can't grow heroin anymore." "Bowling for Columbine" continued the canard, asserting that the US gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Both of these are false; the aid, intended to help relive famine, was given to non-governmental organizations, not the Taliban. In his latest book, Moore finally gets it right, noting that the aid "was to be distributed by international organizations."
So is Michael Moore one of those lying liars that Al Frankin likes to write about? Oh wait, he's a liberal, so Frankin's fair and balanced book doesn;t include him, but instead focuses on whether O'Reilly is a lying liar for cliaming a show of his won a Peabody instead of a Polk award. I'm confused about why Frankin finds OReilly's seemingly trivial off camera mistake more worth writing about than Moore's on-camera mistake.
"[Christopher] HITCHENS: But speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own [Moore], as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities."
I actually hear this quote live and almost fell on the floor laughing at the irony.
So much for free speech on/. I thought the ability to remain anonymous in society was the holy grail of/. Just look at all the privacy related stories. The/. editors are a bunch of hypocrites.
Lawyers are making a fortune from MS software, and the one's paying the cost are ultimately the consumers. So, not only does antitrust legislation infringe on MS's right to free trade, it doesn;t even help the people it was designed to help. Instead, antitrust legislation helps companies unable to compete steals revenue from companies that the consumers have chosen as the winners. Antitrust legislation is only necessary for govt granted monopolies such as power companies and phone comanies, and we should start questioning why the govt. has granted these monopolies.
"The legal costs are part of Microsoft's settlement for over-charging consumers buying its software in California."
That's the opinion of the govt. and the courts, not fact. The govt. has tried to circumvent the free market economy. The amusing part is unless they start regulating the price of Windows, MS will charge whatever they want to get to the profit margin they want until it starts costing them business.
"Wrong! Only a monopoly can pass all costs to the consumers. Anything other than a monopoly can only push up prices so much before sale start to diminish.
By saying this, Microsoft, in effect is admitting to being a monopoly."
Wrong! A company,regardless of it's monopoly status must pass all expenses on to customers, or face bankrupcy. Whther or not the market is willing to bear it determines success. Your final statement is irrational.
" But, does this suffer the same problems as current chips do wrt dual processors? Or quad processors?
What's the penalties of this technology? Does anyone know?
Sounds too good to be true for a dual core cpu to act as a single core proc."
Single-core cpu's already have multpile pipelines to support parallelism of single threads. Also, the p4 hyperthreading allows multiple threads to take advantage of multiple OS tasks simultaneously. A dual core seems like an expansion on the hyperthreading concept, allowing two processors to take advantage of multiple tasks running on an OS.
"they're making a $0.70 profit on each song sold and doing absolutely no work to get it! "
That's like saying Walmart should get the majority of the money from their sales instead of paying the manufacturers in China the majority. Get a clue, all Apple does is is set up a server bank to upload files. The recording industry does all the work getting people to actually like the crap that passes for music these days.
Yes. It's sad that it is illegal for a bunch of companies to agree on an open standard that doesn't involve Rambus. If this sort of thing is illegal, why are/.ers supporting antitrust legislation against Microsoft. It seems these same laws have come back and are going to bite consumers in the ass with higher prices to pay off Rambus lawsuits. Down with antitrust legislation.
"While it might suck having to pay a nickel for music off of iTunes, at least I know that my data can be backed up in a manner of my own choosing."
Aside from the moronic copy protection schemes of a minority of cd's, most can be backed up as well. Plus, since there is no encryption on cd's, there are no limits to the backup process.
"For far too many copyrights and patents, the main expense is in filing, and the creative effort was trivial."
Actually, copyright is automatic. The only reason to file a copyright is to prove the date when something was created. This can also be done, BTW, by sealing the work in an envelope or box and mailing it to yourself. The unopened box can then be presented in court and the postmark will verify the copyright date.
"The idea isn't to ensure that Microsoft makes a fair profit from its patents; it's to make sure that no one else can write fully compatible software."
Given the Eolas debacle, I'd say your statement is a case of ignoring the facts and believing what you want to believe. I don't know MS's business plan, but I can just as easily argue that MS is patenting everything under the sun to avoid getting sued for infringement of other people's frivolous patents.
Re:The real problem with real communism
on
Swedish Pirate Demo
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"And that is the key problem - some workers need to be worth more than other workers - anathema to the Marxist. And since things like chip plants, auto (or tractor) factories and suchlike cannot be funded by the workers, *something* must come in to fund them. So you either have a) rich people (again, anathema to Marxists) or b) "The State" come in to create the plants. But if "The State" owns the plant, the workers don't own it, and "The State" is not going to give it up.
That was what prevented the Communist nations from being able to scale - Marxism didn't work, they went to "The State", and inefficency prevented them from getting anywhere."
Yes. The key problem with Markist communism is that he didn't see the owners and managers as the most productive individuals in a factory. He saw them as leeches of the workers' labor. So it didn't occur to anyone who believed him that a factory run by a government might be a miserable failure since no one in the government necessarily knows or cares how to run the factory properly.
"I've found that the inherent problem in communism lie in scale. A village can subsist as a commune, as African tribes, an indeed some places in America even. A country, however can not."
I agree. The scale to which communism works is inversely proportional to how well the members of the commune know each other and care about each other. People are more likely to give up their wealth for people they know than people they don't know. A father has no problem spending money on his son, has some problem spending his money on his next door neighbor instead of his son, and an even greater problem with spending his money on someone around the world whom he's never met instead of his son.
"A socialism is actually a sub-type of capitalism."
Socialism is NOT a sub-type of capitalism, but the exact opposite of capitalism. Most societies have some mixture of both. Capitalism is about individual rights to free trade. Socialism is about placing the needs of the collective obove the rights of the individual to free trade.
Are you sure. Ayn Rand, for one would disagree. If we can determine scientific facts objectively, why do you claim it is impossible to determine an objective morality?
Morality needs to be based on reason, not popular intuition. The percentage of people believing something is right or wrong has no bearing on whether it is right or wrong. Unfortunately, democracy is the best solution we have, which is basically tyranny of the majority (If you don't believe me, ask a black slave in the south in the early nineteenth century, for instance).
" Two basic classes, the very powerful and the serfs.
Now, look at the US economy. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer while the middle-class shrinks.
You have an overly optimistic view of the future.
Rather than hoping that everyone will, somehow, achieve a more equal economic level, why don't we start working now to preserve and strengthen the middle-class?"
This is a very ignorant analogy. The aristocrats of the middle ages gained and maintained their wealth and power through force. They took the land by forced, divided it up, and made the peasants farm it.
Today, to get rich, you need to start a business and create something people want in a free market. The rich may be getting richer, but the poor certainly are not getting poorer. I don't think there were a lot of fat poor people in the middle ages. In fact, being fat was a good attribute back then because it was a sign of wealth.
There is a fundamental difference in the way wealth is created today. It is done under principles of free trade, which is the foundation for the chance for wealth and prosperity for all, including those overseas who want a better life for themselves and are willing to do the same job as you for at the same quality for less wages.
Slashdot Mirror
"I can't say for sure that this "sarin" is not real, but I can say that so far 100% of the WMD news stories have been fabrications by either the government or the "news" media."
So those Kurds Saddam gased aren't really dead, but the whole stroy is a fabrication?
"Now let's talk about bias. When the story broke about the bomb going off that was hooked up to a sarin gas shell (Sarin is a nerve agent, a weapon of mass destruction), for that day and the next, you could find no news story on CNN.com about it. Not one. It was covered on FOX News and MSNBC's websites. Nothing on cnn.com. On the third day, I did manage to find an article that was discussing something else about the war, and at the bottom it mentioned the sarin bomb found."
Yes, I noticed this as well. I usually read both cnn and fox, as well as others, and try to sort it out for myself because you cant trust any one news source
So you're criticizing Fox for being biased and then have the gall to recommend readin a book by Al Franken? Ahh, have you considered Al Franken's book might also be bised and you're a hypocrite for telling people not to use biased news sources, and then recommending one? Or do you just want people to not use right-wing biased news sources, but thin left-wing biased news sources are ok?
""Is it wrong to root for your government's defeat, if you sincerely feel its policies are so misguided that their success would lead to much greater harm in the long run than would their failure in the short run?""
So success in Iraq, i.e. free democratic country is more like Nazi Germany's goal, and failure in Iraq, defined as civil war or theocracy, is less like Nazi Germany's goal? I would argue that if failure means more death and less freedom in Iraq, and you want this so Bush is not re-elected, maybe you should question your motives and values.
The problem is Moore tries to blame the shooting on the easy access to guns, and ignores the fact that the shooting has more to do with the boys upbringing. If a gun hadn't been available, he would have found another way. We shouldn't just blame guns for deaths, but understand the motives of the shooters. Making guns illegal won't stop murder any more than making drugs illegal will stop drug abuse. You need to fix the root causes, rather than ignoring them, as Moore conveniently did.
"And you are angry with Moores editing? I suspect you are angry with his politics more than mere "editing"."
A documentary shouldn't have a political agenda. It should present facts and opinions from all sides and let the viewer make up his mind. Moore should not have accepted the Academy Award for best documentary for BfC when it clearly was not a documentary, but an op ed piece on film.
" IMHO In fact, every political documentary is a "commentary"."
Bullshit. Reporters like Bob Woodward try to present the facts and opinions from all sides and let the reader decide. Moore is an embarrassment to journalism because he starts with an agenda, presents facts that support that agenda, and ignores facts that contradict his agenda. This happens on both the left and the right, and "documentaries" by these types need to be taken with a grain of salt.
"the Bush Administration gave $43 million in aid to the Taliban in part to -- give money to the poppy growers for the money they would lose because they can't grow heroin anymore." "Bowling for Columbine" continued the canard, asserting that the US gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Both of these are false; the aid, intended to help relive famine, was given to non-governmental organizations, not the Taliban. In his latest book, Moore finally gets it right, noting that the aid "was to be distributed by international organizations."
So is Michael Moore one of those lying liars that Al Frankin likes to write about? Oh wait, he's a liberal, so Frankin's fair and balanced book doesn;t include him, but instead focuses on whether O'Reilly is a lying liar for cliaming a show of his won a Peabody instead of a Polk award. I'm confused about why Frankin finds OReilly's seemingly trivial off camera mistake more worth writing about than Moore's on-camera mistake.
"[Christopher] HITCHENS: But speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own [Moore], as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities."
I actually hear this quote live and almost fell on the floor laughing at the irony.
So much for free speech on /. I thought the ability to remain anonymous in society was the holy grail of /. Just look at all the privacy related stories. The /. editors are a bunch of hypocrites.
Lawyers are making a fortune from MS software, and the one's paying the cost are ultimately the consumers. So, not only does antitrust legislation infringe on MS's right to free trade, it doesn;t even help the people it was designed to help. Instead, antitrust legislation helps companies unable to compete steals revenue from companies that the consumers have chosen as the winners. Antitrust legislation is only necessary for govt granted monopolies such as power companies and phone comanies, and we should start questioning why the govt. has granted these monopolies.
"The legal costs are part of Microsoft's settlement for over-charging consumers buying its software in California."
That's the opinion of the govt. and the courts, not fact. The govt. has tried to circumvent the free market economy. The amusing part is unless they start regulating the price of Windows, MS will charge whatever they want to get to the profit margin they want until it starts costing them business.
"Wrong! Only a monopoly can pass all costs to the consumers. Anything other than a monopoly can only push up prices so much before sale start to diminish.
By saying this, Microsoft, in effect is admitting to being a monopoly."
Wrong! A company,regardless of it's monopoly status must pass all expenses on to customers, or face bankrupcy. Whther or not the market is willing to bear it determines success. Your final statement is irrational.
" But, does this suffer the same problems as current chips do wrt dual processors? Or quad processors?
What's the penalties of this technology? Does anyone know?
Sounds too good to be true for a dual core cpu to act as a single core proc."
Single-core cpu's already have multpile pipelines to support parallelism of single threads. Also, the p4 hyperthreading allows multiple threads to take advantage of multiple OS tasks simultaneously. A dual core seems like an expansion on the hyperthreading concept, allowing two processors to take advantage of multiple tasks running on an OS.
"they're making a $0.70 profit on each song sold and doing absolutely no work to get it! "
That's like saying Walmart should get the majority of the money from their sales instead of paying the manufacturers in China the majority. Get a clue, all Apple does is is set up a server bank to upload files. The recording industry does all the work getting people to actually like the crap that passes for music these days.
Yes. It's sad that it is illegal for a bunch of companies to agree on an open standard that doesn't involve Rambus. If this sort of thing is illegal, why are /.ers supporting antitrust legislation against Microsoft. It seems these same laws have come back and are going to bite consumers in the ass with higher prices to pay off Rambus lawsuits. Down with antitrust legislation.
"While it might suck having to pay a nickel for music off of iTunes, at least I know that my data can be backed up in a manner of my own choosing."
Aside from the moronic copy protection schemes of a minority of cd's, most can be backed up as well. Plus, since there is no encryption on cd's, there are no limits to the backup process.
"For far too many copyrights and patents, the main expense is in filing, and the creative effort was trivial."
Actually, copyright is automatic. The only reason to file a copyright is to prove the date when something was created. This can also be done, BTW, by sealing the work in an envelope or box and mailing it to yourself. The unopened box can then be presented in court and the postmark will verify the copyright date.
"The idea isn't to ensure that Microsoft makes a fair profit from its patents; it's to make sure that no one else can write fully compatible software."
Given the Eolas debacle, I'd say your statement is a case of ignoring the facts and believing what you want to believe. I don't know MS's business plan, but I can just as easily argue that MS is patenting everything under the sun to avoid getting sued for infringement of other people's frivolous patents.
"And that is the key problem - some workers need to be worth more than other workers - anathema to the Marxist. And since things like chip plants, auto (or tractor) factories and suchlike cannot be funded by the workers, *something* must come in to fund them. So you either have a) rich people (again, anathema to Marxists) or b) "The State" come in to create the plants. But if "The State" owns the plant, the workers don't own it, and "The State" is not going to give it up.
That was what prevented the Communist nations from being able to scale - Marxism didn't work, they went to "The State", and inefficency prevented them from getting anywhere."
Yes. The key problem with Markist communism is that he didn't see the owners and managers as the most productive individuals in a factory. He saw them as leeches of the workers' labor. So it didn't occur to anyone who believed him that a factory run by a government might be a miserable failure since no one in the government necessarily knows or cares how to run the factory properly.
"I've found that the inherent problem in communism lie in scale. A village can subsist as a commune, as African tribes, an indeed some places in America even. A country, however can not."
I agree. The scale to which communism works is inversely proportional to how well the members of the commune know each other and care about each other. People are more likely to give up their wealth for people they know than people they don't know. A father has no problem spending money on his son, has some problem spending his money on his next door neighbor instead of his son, and an even greater problem with spending his money on someone around the world whom he's never met instead of his son.
"A socialism is actually a sub-type of capitalism."
Socialism is NOT a sub-type of capitalism, but the exact opposite of capitalism. Most societies have some mixture of both. Capitalism is about individual rights to free trade. Socialism is about placing the needs of the collective obove the rights of the individual to free trade.
"Morals are not facts, they're beliefs."
Are you sure. Ayn Rand, for one would disagree. If we can determine scientific facts objectively, why do you claim it is impossible to determine an objective morality?
Morality needs to be based on reason, not popular intuition. The percentage of people believing something is right or wrong has no bearing on whether it is right or wrong. Unfortunately, democracy is the best solution we have, which is basically tyranny of the majority (If you don't believe me, ask a black slave in the south in the early nineteenth century, for instance).
" Two basic classes, the very powerful and the serfs.
Now, look at the US economy. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer while the middle-class shrinks.
You have an overly optimistic view of the future.
Rather than hoping that everyone will, somehow, achieve a more equal economic level, why don't we start working now to preserve and strengthen the middle-class?"
This is a very ignorant analogy. The aristocrats of the middle ages gained and maintained their wealth and power through force. They took the land by forced, divided it up, and made the peasants farm it.
Today, to get rich, you need to start a business and create something people want in a free market. The rich may be getting richer, but the poor certainly are not getting poorer. I don't think there were a lot of fat poor people in the middle ages. In fact, being fat was a good attribute back then because it was a sign of wealth.
There is a fundamental difference in the way wealth is created today. It is done under principles of free trade, which is the foundation for the chance for wealth and prosperity for all, including those overseas who want a better life for themselves and are willing to do the same job as you for at the same quality for less wages.