I see by your e-mail that you're in Russia, a country and people I have always admired. Something that I never really understood about you people. For much of the 20th Century, you guys had the number one police state. Unfortunately, this security apparatus was used to prop up a corrupt socialist state controlled economy. In the eighties, you all finally realized that a capitalist free market economy was the way to go, but you didn't just throw out Marxism, you also threw out a perfectly good grass roots based police system! I know how much you ruskis like proverbs and aphorisms, so I ask you, do you have an expression similar to "Throwing the baby out with the bath water"?
What the expression means is that in the process of getting rid of something bad (used bath water, i.e., socialist economy, Marxism) you inadvertently got rid of something cute and cuddly (the baby, i.e., the police state). Big mistake! Without proper surveillance of the citizenry, how can the state insure that the rights of businesses and corporations are protected?
Anyway, please take this criticism in the spirit in which it is offered. You've already made big steps in correcting this problem by electing Vladimir Putin who hopefully will be able to reconstitute the organs. But Russia has really lost some opportunities that you'll never be able to get back. For example, take the gulags. Hello? Privatization? If you had opened up the gulags to free enterprise, you wouldn't be in the position you are today. You could be the next China!
Another bad effect of dissolving the security organs has been the phenomenal increase in crime and in the activities of the "maphia". If you had kept the KGB and other organizations intact, you wouldn't have all these problems with the maphia. The fact is, when you dissolved the police state, you released a huge pool of talented workers to the maphia. If you had kept them employed spying on the people, they wouldn't have needed to go work for the blatnyie*.
On more of a tangent, crack is a form of cocaine. Or more accurately, it's a form that the very low class drug addicts use. Higher class drug addicts (i.e., movie producers and politicians) use what is called "free base". It's essentially the same thing, but you'd never hear a political advisor say, "Hey, let's smoke some crack." That would be looked down on. Instead, he would say something like, "Hey, let's get some free base."
I hope this helps you understand American culture and language a little more. I know that some things, like humor, can not easily survive translation, but I hope this additional comment will help make my perspective more understandable.
* Blatnyie is an American slang word for a rap artist. Example: Suge Knight, co-founder of Death Row Records, is one of the better known blatnoi to come from Compton, California.
What is the deal with the liberal trolls on slashdot? Are you so inarticulate and ignorant that you can't argue a point, so you must instead censor me by modding me troll? Are you aware that you are wrong and unAmerican, but can't apologize? Or perhaps you are one of those low income students I mentioned, who could benefit from my proposed waiver program, but you're too much of a coward to put your life on the line to secure for yourself and your fellow Americans the sweet sweet benefits of liberty?
You wouldn't be "forced" to give up any freedoms if you'd refrain from exercising them so much. Our freedoms are our most precious resource, and there are some (and I suspect you're one of them*) that would waste our freedoms by overusing them. It's not like we can just drill under a wildlife refuge for new freedoms. If you want to save our freedoms, the best way is to conserve them. And the best way to conserve them is to start at home.
First, begin by keeping more of your thoughts to yourself. I'm not suggesting that you keep all thoughts to yourself and cut off all interactions with those around you, but maybe put a lid on sharing political opinions with others. Put the kibosh on criticisms of President Bush and his administration. If all Americans began conserving our precious liberty in this way, then wiretaps and such couldn't be falsely portrayed by traitors and terrorist-lovers as anti-freedom. On the contrary, such security measures can be understood properly for what they are: securing our precious freedoms, i.e., saving them for a rainy day, when we might really need them.**
* I suspect you, but I'll wait until I get word from the NSA and the CIA before filing a formal accusation in court.
** I.e., if a Democrat gets elected President, God forbid.
If it takes wiretapping to protect our freedom from the terrorists, then isn't it the case that wiretapping is freedom?
I hear many short sighted lefties talk about "protecting" our freedoms. What they are really talking about is squandering our precious liberty by using it up. Our liberty must be protected, not merely by intrusive government abuse into our privacy, but by refraining from its exercise. Freedom must be cherished. You don't cherish something by using it all up and wearing it out.
The article points out that the cost of upgrading the university networks would be in the neighborhood of $400 - $500 per student. I think this is more than a small sacrifice that American college students should make for our security and protecting our freedom. In fact, it's a bargain! Other Americans in the same age group are over in Iraq, putting their lives on the line and in some cases making the ultimate sacrifice so that we might have comprehensive government oversight of every aspect of our lives here at home. When you use that as your gauge, then $500 per student is cheap. Hell, I know some college students that easily spend twice that on beer in a semester.
I realize that there are some low income students that couldn't afford to pay their university wiretap fees, even if we could hide those fees in the student body activity fee. For these students, I am proposing a waiver, to be awarded after they have completed one tour of duty in Iraq. That would help the underprivileged and help beat the terrorists. Everybody wins!! Well, except the terrorists. But they don't belong in college anyway; if we don't fight them in Iraq, surely we'll have to fight them on the beaches of American universities, which would put a severe crimp in spring break.
That may or may not be the case. I wasn't discussing whether or not this would be good for Amazon.
I was discussing the impropriety of the quid pro quo that the summary suggests should occur. Which search engine a publicly traded company uses should be based on what is best for the company, not based on favors and material rewards given to the leader of that company by one of the search engine competitors.
I think it's quite telling that I make a criticism of government in general, and you take it as a criticism of your precious Bush Administration, trotting out the old "Blame Clinton for everything" argument.
For the record, I'm a registered Republican. I oppose Bush. He's doing such a crappy job that he's vastly increasing Senator Clinton's chances in 2008.
A new twist on the old Soviet Russia joke
on
OpenBSD 3.9 Released
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"How do you reward Google for letting your CEO buy stock for six cents a share? If you're Amazon, you dump Google for Windows Live Search to power subsidiary Alexa, who has not yet commented on the switch.
Jeff Bezos is not the sole proprietor of Amazon. It would be unethical for Bezos to award business to Google in exchange for a personal favor that made him more wealthy. As head of Amazon, Bezos has a responsibility to the other shareholders of Amazon. If dumping Google for Windows Live Search to power Alexa is going to maximize shareholder value, then so be it.
Just because Halliburton gets no bid sweetheart contracts from friends in the government doesn't mean that this is how business should be run.
No, he's saying that anything that doesn't confirm his right wing notions is against him, is wrong, and is therefore liberal.
I'm a registered Republican, and because I happen to think that the whole "liberal media" thing is a fiction made up by right wing ideologues to discredit both criticism and the facts, he'll accuse me of being a liberal, too. Or maybe he'll profess a disbelief in my Republican credentials. I get that all the time when I tell other Republicans that I oppose President Bush.
People who still support Bush, that meager 32%, are the true believers, fanatics. Some are fundamentalist right wing Christians, some are just caught up in the cult of partisanship. A very small minority support Bush because they benefit financially from their friendship with the administration.
Both situations are comparable in that each were defining moments for each man. In each case, the "victims" were presented with some harsh truths about themselves in public.
There are a number of differences, however. Stewart wasn't "in character" for his Crossfire appearance. Colbert was in character (which is really the only way that such criticisms can work as humor). The biggest difference was in the main targets. Colbert took on the most powerful man in the world. There's really no way to minimize this. Stewart, on the other hand, took on Tucker Carlson, who is a comparative nobody. Seriously? Who the fuck is Tucker? He's an asshole in a bowtie with a TV show. I'm not trying to play down Stewart's moment, but there is a difference in orders of magnitude.
Hopefully, both these men will have other moments, other opportunities to skewer the arrogant and the powerful.
A guy points out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. The rest of the people in the room, ashamed of their own nakedness (or perhaps fearful that their delusions of being clothed will be destroyed), pretend not to hear or dismiss the speaker as being mean-spirited and out of step with the purpose of the gathering.
WTF is wrong with you people anyway? What did we do to you to deserve getting W? Seriously, let's get this out in the open where we can discuss this is a civil way and make some sort of reparations for what ever it was that we did to you. And let's do it soon, before the twins are old enough to be elected President.
You guys aren't still mad about the Civil War are you? Can't we just let bygones be bygones?
True story: My mom died in 1991, and I was depressed. I inherited some money, so I bought my first PC, a 486, and an eighth of meth. The computer was completely disassembled within 24 hours. It took me the whole rest of the week to put it back together.
I was a total noob, so I had no idea what I was doing. The reason I took it apart in the first place was because I "broke" it. Unbeknownst to me, the 200 MB HD was actually a 100 MB drive doubled under stacker. And the first thing I did when I got the computer home was to start editing the autoexec.bat and config.sys, just as I had seen friends do on their PCs. I must have deleted a line when I was fucking about, because windows wouldn't boot. I don't know why I got it in my head that it was a hardware problem. No, that's not true. I know why. Fucking noob is why.
Anyway, that week was a crash course, and I learned a helluva lot. And I've pretty much been a geek ever since.
I don't party anymore. Eventually the speed kicked my ass and I had to stop everything. I don't really miss it, except once in a while I miss the psychedelics a little.
It's too early to tell, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that those college kids that have come down with the mumps had engaged in littering, loitering, latering, lootering, and other things that cause inappropriate teen-2-peer choice behaviors.
Give the guy some credit. Sure, he might have made an add error, but at least he didn't try to do something really retarded like divide by 0. If he had, we might still be here trying to read his post.
Thanks for the in sight. IANAProgrammer, although I do work as a freelancer/independent contractor in a creative field. Almost invariably, everything gets spelled out in the contract (or deal memo, in my case), and very rarely do I hold any creative rights. Nine jobs out of ten, I'm not on payroll, but paid as an independent contractor, even though on some jobs most of the equipment is provided by the client, while on others I am providing my own equipment.
On the other hand, I know a guy that shoots a lot of second unit "on location" footage for TV, and he almost always retains copyright. After the one to two year exclusivity requirement lapses, he turns around and sells it as stock footage.
The main reason that he has been able to negotiate these deals with producers is that he's giving them their location shots for non-union (yet still very healthy) rates. The producers tell him what they want, he goes and shoots it, then bills them for stock footage licensing. If you've ever seen King of Queens, you've probably seen his work.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey MvD! I enjoyed reading your reply.
I see by your e-mail that you're in Russia, a country and people I have always admired. Something that I never really understood about you people. For much of the 20th Century, you guys had the number one police state. Unfortunately, this security apparatus was used to prop up a corrupt socialist state controlled economy. In the eighties, you all finally realized that a capitalist free market economy was the way to go, but you didn't just throw out Marxism, you also threw out a perfectly good grass roots based police system! I know how much you ruskis like proverbs and aphorisms, so I ask you, do you have an expression similar to "Throwing the baby out with the bath water"?
What the expression means is that in the process of getting rid of something bad (used bath water, i.e., socialist economy, Marxism) you inadvertently got rid of something cute and cuddly (the baby, i.e., the police state). Big mistake! Without proper surveillance of the citizenry, how can the state insure that the rights of businesses and corporations are protected?
Anyway, please take this criticism in the spirit in which it is offered. You've already made big steps in correcting this problem by electing Vladimir Putin who hopefully will be able to reconstitute the organs. But Russia has really lost some opportunities that you'll never be able to get back. For example, take the gulags. Hello? Privatization? If you had opened up the gulags to free enterprise, you wouldn't be in the position you are today. You could be the next China!
Another bad effect of dissolving the security organs has been the phenomenal increase in crime and in the activities of the "maphia". If you had kept the KGB and other organizations intact, you wouldn't have all these problems with the maphia. The fact is, when you dissolved the police state, you released a huge pool of talented workers to the maphia. If you had kept them employed spying on the people, they wouldn't have needed to go work for the blatnyie*.
On more of a tangent, crack is a form of cocaine. Or more accurately, it's a form that the very low class drug addicts use. Higher class drug addicts (i.e., movie producers and politicians) use what is called "free base". It's essentially the same thing, but you'd never hear a political advisor say, "Hey, let's smoke some crack." That would be looked down on. Instead, he would say something like, "Hey, let's get some free base."
I hope this helps you understand American culture and language a little more. I know that some things, like humor, can not easily survive translation, but I hope this additional comment will help make my perspective more understandable.
* Blatnyie is an American slang word for a rap artist. Example: Suge Knight, co-founder of Death Row Records, is one of the better known blatnoi to come from Compton, California.
What is the deal with the liberal trolls on slashdot? Are you so inarticulate and ignorant that you can't argue a point, so you must instead censor me by modding me troll? Are you aware that you are wrong and unAmerican, but can't apologize? Or perhaps you are one of those low income students I mentioned, who could benefit from my proposed waiver program, but you're too much of a coward to put your life on the line to secure for yourself and your fellow Americans the sweet sweet benefits of liberty?
You wouldn't be "forced" to give up any freedoms if you'd refrain from exercising them so much. Our freedoms are our most precious resource, and there are some (and I suspect you're one of them*) that would waste our freedoms by overusing them. It's not like we can just drill under a wildlife refuge for new freedoms. If you want to save our freedoms, the best way is to conserve them. And the best way to conserve them is to start at home.
First, begin by keeping more of your thoughts to yourself. I'm not suggesting that you keep all thoughts to yourself and cut off all interactions with those around you, but maybe put a lid on sharing political opinions with others. Put the kibosh on criticisms of President Bush and his administration. If all Americans began conserving our precious liberty in this way, then wiretaps and such couldn't be falsely portrayed by traitors and terrorist-lovers as anti-freedom. On the contrary, such security measures can be understood properly for what they are: securing our precious freedoms, i.e., saving them for a rainy day, when we might really need them.**
* I suspect you, but I'll wait until I get word from the NSA and the CIA before filing a formal accusation in court.
** I.e., if a Democrat gets elected President, God forbid.
If it takes wiretapping to protect our freedom from the terrorists, then isn't it the case that wiretapping is freedom?
I hear many short sighted lefties talk about "protecting" our freedoms. What they are really talking about is squandering our precious liberty by using it up. Our liberty must be protected, not merely by intrusive government abuse into our privacy, but by refraining from its exercise. Freedom must be cherished. You don't cherish something by using it all up and wearing it out.
The article points out that the cost of upgrading the university networks would be in the neighborhood of $400 - $500 per student. I think this is more than a small sacrifice that American college students should make for our security and protecting our freedom. In fact, it's a bargain! Other Americans in the same age group are over in Iraq, putting their lives on the line and in some cases making the ultimate sacrifice so that we might have comprehensive government oversight of every aspect of our lives here at home. When you use that as your gauge, then $500 per student is cheap. Hell, I know some college students that easily spend twice that on beer in a semester.
I realize that there are some low income students that couldn't afford to pay their university wiretap fees, even if we could hide those fees in the student body activity fee. For these students, I am proposing a waiver, to be awarded after they have completed one tour of duty in Iraq. That would help the underprivileged and help beat the terrorists. Everybody wins!! Well, except the terrorists. But they don't belong in college anyway; if we don't fight them in Iraq, surely we'll have to fight them on the beaches of American universities, which would put a severe crimp in spring break.
I suspect that you're trolling, but in doing so (or not) you really come across as one sick mutherfukker, so ...
Thanks! I'm taking that as a compliment.
Thanks! I couldn't come up with the exact quote, and attribution would have spoiled the troll. The Lord is a Mighty Hotdog! Let's Eat!
That may or may not be the case. I wasn't discussing whether or not this would be good for Amazon.
I was discussing the impropriety of the quid pro quo that the summary suggests should occur. Which search engine a publicly traded company uses should be based on what is best for the company, not based on favors and material rewards given to the leader of that company by one of the search engine competitors.
I think it's quite telling that I make a criticism of government in general, and you take it as a criticism of your precious Bush Administration, trotting out the old "Blame Clinton for everything" argument.
For the record, I'm a registered Republican. I oppose Bush. He's doing such a crappy job that he's vastly increasing Senator Clinton's chances in 2008.
BSD confirms it. Netcraft is dead.
"How do you reward Google for letting your CEO buy stock for six cents a share? If you're Amazon, you dump Google for Windows Live Search to power subsidiary Alexa, who has not yet commented on the switch.
Jeff Bezos is not the sole proprietor of Amazon. It would be unethical for Bezos to award business to Google in exchange for a personal favor that made him more wealthy. As head of Amazon, Bezos has a responsibility to the other shareholders of Amazon. If dumping Google for Windows Live Search to power Alexa is going to maximize shareholder value, then so be it.
Just because Halliburton gets no bid sweetheart contracts from friends in the government doesn't mean that this is how business should be run.
Heh heh, completely unintentional. =)
No, he's saying that anything that doesn't confirm his right wing notions is against him, is wrong, and is therefore liberal.
I'm a registered Republican, and because I happen to think that the whole "liberal media" thing is a fiction made up by right wing ideologues to discredit both criticism and the facts, he'll accuse me of being a liberal, too. Or maybe he'll profess a disbelief in my Republican credentials. I get that all the time when I tell other Republicans that I oppose President Bush.
People who still support Bush, that meager 32%, are the true believers, fanatics. Some are fundamentalist right wing Christians, some are just caught up in the cult of partisanship. A very small minority support Bush because they benefit financially from their friendship with the administration.
Both situations are comparable in that each were defining moments for each man. In each case, the "victims" were presented with some harsh truths about themselves in public.
There are a number of differences, however. Stewart wasn't "in character" for his Crossfire appearance. Colbert was in character (which is really the only way that such criticisms can work as humor). The biggest difference was in the main targets. Colbert took on the most powerful man in the world. There's really no way to minimize this. Stewart, on the other hand, took on Tucker Carlson, who is a comparative nobody. Seriously? Who the fuck is Tucker? He's an asshole in a bowtie with a TV show. I'm not trying to play down Stewart's moment, but there is a difference in orders of magnitude.
Hopefully, both these men will have other moments, other opportunities to skewer the arrogant and the powerful.
A guy points out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. The rest of the people in the room, ashamed of their own nakedness (or perhaps fearful that their delusions of being clothed will be destroyed), pretend not to hear or dismiss the speaker as being mean-spirited and out of step with the purpose of the gathering.
WTF is wrong with you people anyway? What did we do to you to deserve getting W? Seriously, let's get this out in the open where we can discuss this is a civil way and make some sort of reparations for what ever it was that we did to you. And let's do it soon, before the twins are old enough to be elected President.
You guys aren't still mad about the Civil War are you? Can't we just let bygones be bygones?
So, where do you safely store your cojones when you are not using them? In your drawers?
Good for you!!
True story: My mom died in 1991, and I was depressed. I inherited some money, so I bought my first PC, a 486, and an eighth of meth. The computer was completely disassembled within 24 hours. It took me the whole rest of the week to put it back together.
I was a total noob, so I had no idea what I was doing. The reason I took it apart in the first place was because I "broke" it. Unbeknownst to me, the 200 MB HD was actually a 100 MB drive doubled under stacker. And the first thing I did when I got the computer home was to start editing the autoexec.bat and config.sys, just as I had seen friends do on their PCs. I must have deleted a line when I was fucking about, because windows wouldn't boot. I don't know why I got it in my head that it was a hardware problem. No, that's not true. I know why. Fucking noob is why.
Anyway, that week was a crash course, and I learned a helluva lot. And I've pretty much been a geek ever since.
I don't party anymore. Eventually the speed kicked my ass and I had to stop everything. I don't really miss it, except once in a while I miss the psychedelics a little.
Thanks for the kind words of support, but you're taking me way too seriously. =)
Right now, I'm contemplating shaving my head and letting my beard grow out to ZZ top length.
Maybe so, but it's pretty clear to many of us that Jim Allchin needs to be removed from the FF dev team, perhaps forced to retire early.
You are conveniently leaving out the possible correlation between debilitating gold rush era diseases (such as the cholera and inappropriate teen-2- peer choice behaviors.
It's too early to tell, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that those college kids that have come down with the mumps had engaged in littering, loitering, latering, lootering, and other things that cause inappropriate teen-2-peer choice behaviors.
You'll know it's ready when they throw the single walled carbon nanotube of arbitrary length at the ceiling, and it sticks.
Give the guy some credit. Sure, he might have made an add error, but at least he didn't try to do something really retarded like divide by 0. If he had, we might still be here trying to read his post.
Thanks for the in sight. IANAProgrammer, although I do work as a freelancer/independent contractor in a creative field. Almost invariably, everything gets spelled out in the contract (or deal memo, in my case), and very rarely do I hold any creative rights. Nine jobs out of ten, I'm not on payroll, but paid as an independent contractor, even though on some jobs most of the equipment is provided by the client, while on others I am providing my own equipment.
On the other hand, I know a guy that shoots a lot of second unit "on location" footage for TV, and he almost always retains copyright. After the one to two year exclusivity requirement lapses, he turns around and sells it as stock footage.
The main reason that he has been able to negotiate these deals with producers is that he's giving them their location shots for non-union (yet still very healthy) rates. The producers tell him what they want, he goes and shoots it, then bills them for stock footage licensing. If you've ever seen King of Queens, you've probably seen his work.
Thanks for the mini-lesson! You rule!
I totally empathize, man. So much so, that I put it into my sig.
As Bill Clinton used to say, "I feel your pain."