It's really amazing that a lot of posts here try to attack the EU version of free speech, while I think that a lot of (European) people would argue that the EU version is a lot better than the US version. Oh well.
I think people in the US would argue YOU DON'T HAVE IT. If people can tell you what to say, you are not free.
If you criticize me, you are caring what I think. Even if you are M$. If I didn't care what you think, I would not have read your answer, less even write this answer.
That's garbage. What is defined as "criticism?" Where does THAT legal burden end?
Is the newspaper required to run my letter to the editor? In some places of Europe it is.
That said I think your post makes a very convincing argument that could not be made by merely saying "he's well-known to fabricate stuff." since in my case and, I'm sure, the case of plenty of other people it's not well-known at all.
Fair point, I'm fairly prone to laziness upon occasion.;) Also a good point in that I'm sure many people DON'T know how fraudulent his work is, and I think it's something that should be rectified - and something I shouldn't expect people to take my word on.
The problem is that people listen to Moore, and he portrays his work as a documentary (for which he obviously won an award), yet when called on discrepancies he simply calls himself a "comedian." Personally, I don't think it's funny, and he does both his audience as well as his subject matter a great disservice. Personally, I'm very pro-gun-control, yet I hated the way he attempted to use this as a cheap springboard to suggest that murder and firearm-related violence is the end result of every one of his causes (such as the disturbing notion that getting welfare mothers to work leads to murder).
To disclose, as if it's not clear, I've never respected his work, as he has never shown a shred of objectivity in his life. His goal is typically not to educate but rather indoctrinate the public while attempting to humiliate those figures whom he holds in low regard (Charlton Heston, CEO of GM, etc). I find that sort of work exceptionally juvenile - it's a bit reminiscent of paparazi (sp?) and tabloid news magazines. It's certainly not journalism.
Ultimately, to support my original point two posts ago, I wouldn't cite Moore as evidence to save my life, as his evidence is (at best) chosen very selectively, or is (at worst) completely fabricated. So if it's Moore slamming a Republican again, I wouldn't pay a bit of attention. Business as usual, no news here, and don't let the facts get in the way of a story.
The judge in the USL-BSD case ruled that similar or identical comments don't count since they are not functional. That precedent will count against SCO.
Not sure if it's different here, but the comments seem to be evidence of a violation, not the violation in and of themselves. Because the comments are, potentially, a very unique part of a program, they make a good smoking gun. Of course, as they are not functional, they do not allow for damages in themselves.
the overlooked fact: everybody already has a right of reply on their own website.
Exactly. And I can get a free website from Geocities. People bitch about only the rich being able to afford press. Right - only the rich can afford blogs. Rich like 12 year old girls.
I lost the right to what? Saying things about someone without having to worry about that someone wanting to reply. And I win one right. The right to reply even to the fsck M$
That's not it at all. You have the right to respond to whoever the hell you want. You can write MS a letter right now. What the law is forcing is PUBLICATION. I now have the responsibility to publish a response for any asshat who reads my blog. Oh, that's great.
And as much as I don't like MS, forcing them to post every response they get to their website is retarded. So now we can slashdot them by all writing them letters they have to publish? Ridiculous. That's a monstrously unfair burden.
The problem that we need to get rid of is the perception that freedom of speech is freedom of publication - it is NOT. MS, and the rest of us, have the right to not care a bit what you think. I mean, I don't really care what you think. I'm sure you feel the same about me, which is reasonable. It's nothing personal, it's just that neither of us have opinions that are all that unique or entertaining that there is any reason why someone should be forced to publish what we say. We're just not that cool. Sorry.
What it comes down to is something we always complain about on slashdot - why should the electronic world be different than the non-electronic? If I write a letter, is the recipient required to nail it to their front door for all to see? Is the newspaper required to run my letter to the editor? Is a news program required to give me airtime?
The answer to all those questions is no, despite that some CHOOSE in SOME instances to do just that. And broadcast TV is the most heavily regulated medium of all, so if they enjoy 1st amendment protection with regard to something, so does every other medium. Singling out the internet as a medium here doesn't make any more sense than it does with the DMCA or mindless vulgarity laws (COPA), so the proposition doesn't make sense unless you're going to force every other medium to do the same. And if you want to see TV and newspapers go to crap because every asshat who can use a keyboard or a pen has the right to be published, then that's the way to do it.
How the hell does it limit free speech? Heck, how is it forced speech, you are not required to say that you agree with the criticism.
The fact that I am forced to post it meets the forced speech standard. As stated by someone else, newspapers ARE NOT required to post letters to the editor - good journalistic practice, yes, but not required. Similarly, blog writers SHOULD post responses in the interest of discussion, but requiring? That's insane.
It allows people to actually exercise their freedom of speech in a way that it matters. If microsoft says that I suck, I can say "no i don't" as many times as I want, nobody will hear it.
That's your problem - freedom of speech gives you the right to say what you want, not a medium or a forum. That's like artists who scream censorship when their work isn't subsidized by the government. They're wrong too, in that they are free to create whatever they want, and we're free to ignore it and not pay for it. For what it's worth, though, if MS's opinion of you is slanderous, you have the right to have them stop doing that if it's unfounded - one of your remedies against unfettered US free speech.
Ultimately, this is something that the Supreme Court dealt with a long time ago, check it out if you like. What Europe is doing would not be allowed here. Basically, the US view is "say what you want, however you want, however you can." By your example, get a blog if you want people to listen to you. By the marketplace of ideas, if they don't listen, perhaps it's because no one cares what you, or I, have to say.
As for the news being cleared up by right of response, that's completely infeasible and is the best evidence of the failing of your goal. So if I'm a news show like 60 minutes, I have to publish every response I get? They would cease to have a newscast. In effect, the forced speech requirement kills THEIR right to free speech. That's why it doesn't work, and won't work.
Bottom line is, the US has the most open interpretation of the 1st amendment (at least as it is written, if not implemented). Here, with few exceptions, no one can tell you what not to say - or what TO say, and it's that second part that people frequently forget about, though it's equally important.
You can still say what you want, you just have to allow the entity you are talking about a chance to reply. This has been 'good practice' in any real journalism for a while. You often see in news stories companyxxx was contacted but refused to reply or gave no comment or something.
Forced speech is illegal in the US. Also, good practice in journalism isn't law - I think it's clear by now that good journalism isn't law in the US as the jails would be currently full. There has never been any obligation to say anything in the US - outside of heavily regulated media such as TV and radio, where the use of the spectrum is gained at a tradeoff. Courts here have already ruled that the internet doesn't come under such heavy consideration.
So yes, anytime someone tells you what you have to say, there's a freedom of speech issue involved. What Europe is trying to do would be illegal in the US. The US has taken a lot of heat from the international community for what we've done, but here's a case where Europeans are the ones having their rights stolen by their governments.
Propaganda
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A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 2, Informative
Hell, what exactly was his cause? If you say gun control, then either you didn't actually watch it, or you weren't paying attention.
Gun control was certainly one of his causes. Also slamming anything right of flaming liberal was another. If you missed that, YOU weren't watching. Also remember his little acceptance speech at the Academy Awards?
Seriously, if you don't think that Moore is completely political and completely left, you're either too daft or farther left than him to even notice the difference. Nothing wrong with either, but it makes Moore less than objective.
I would say he's never done a documentary in his life - rather, all his work are conflict pieces where he creates the conflict to expose his cause. That's not a documentary, that's propaganda, whether you happen to agree with the cause or not.
Oh, and as for his fabrications:
# The Charlton Heston speech supposedly given at Denver is edited from two different speeches, one a year later and a thousand miles away. The audio is edited, with the cuts hidden by visual and pans of crowds, so as to create a misleading impression that Heston's remarks were one contiguous speech. Nor were both speeches entirely of the same general content: in fact, at least two sentences from each speech have been spliced together to form a brand new one.
# The sequence in the bank is staged, again to create a false impression. Forbes reports that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle. But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."
# The "missile manufacturing plant" actually builds civilian rockets, and converts former military missiles to carry out civilian launches.
#Mr. Moore makes the preposterous claim that a Michigan program by which welfare recipients were required to work was responsible for an incident in which a six-year-old Flint boy shot a girl to death at school. Mr. Moore doesn't mention that the boy's mother had sent him to live in a crack house where her brother and a friend kept both drugs and guns--a frequently lethal combination.
#Mr. Moore repeats the canard that the United States gave the Taliban $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001, somehow implying we were in cahoots with them. But that money actually went to U.N.-affiliated humanitarian organizations that were completely independent of the Taliban.
I could fo on, but I think you get the idea. When confronted with inaccuracies in his books, he has this answer to why he doesn't care about inaccuracies:
"No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?"
So just remember, Moore is doing 'comedy.' Real funny too.
Re:Be careful of your evidence
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A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 1
Well, he has ponied up $1.2 Billion ($1,200 million for you Brits) for fuel cell research so I would hardly say he is against oil. None of his predescesors invested this much in any form of alternative fuels. Like him or not, this is fact.
Jury's out on that, as oil can be chemically treated and used to generate H2. Could be that the oil industry sees the writing on the wall and has decided to be moderately intelligent. Could be why methanol fuel cells, which are better in almost every way, see no support.
But true, too many on this site always assume that Bush and Republicans in general are evil, so let's do give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Although you could make a case that in a lot of ways, Bill Clinton was Regan II. Not so much in terms of substantial policies, but in terms of political style. They both had a very good ability to communicate, and a good sense of the political centre (Regan might have been a right-wing wacko in practice, but you never felt like he was an extremist).
That's a very good point - both were shitpeddlers, and very few people were savvy enough to see through the screen and see that there wasn't much behind it.;) The only difference was that, while Reagan really was an actor, Clinton was only extremely intelligent and charismatic. He probably COULD have been an actor. Some might say his entire presidency, and marriage, counts as experience in that regard.
I kinda get the impression that the distinction between Regan and George Herbert Walker Bush is pretty much required reading for anyone hoping to become a successful American politician these days. Regan for what you should do, and Bush for what you shouldn't.
The sad thing is that I think Bush I (See the one there people!?!) was a very good president. He was far more moderate than was Reagan, and he wasn't very political - he was content to be President, leave the re-electing to his aides, and assume the American public was smart enough to vote for an accomplished, active, sitting President. Well, no one will make THAT mistake again.;)
Issues with current energy storage
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A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 1
First, I largely agree - my first two options would be actual conservation (GASP!) and nuclear -- but as you say, people in the US love their SUV's and hate nuclear plants - despite the fact that nuclear releases less radiation per kW than does burning coal, not to mention other nasties. Oh well.
I will, though, debate the current feasibility of some of your suggestions. First, with electric cars - a range of 125 miles is simply unacceptable when the refuel time is more on the order of hours than minutes. That won't go. 125 miles is bad for a range on an oil-powered car that you can refuel in 10 minutes, so people simply won't tolerate it for an electric car.
As far as wind - even the environmentalists hate it, It kills birds and disrupts migratory patterns, and it takes up a lot of space to collect, and there are only so many places that you can do it - ultimately, it won't solve the problem for a significant percentage of our energy consumption.
PV will be good, but right now there's a biiiiig problem. Essentially, I can do one of two things - use a single-crystal semiconductor, or a polycrystalline semiconductor. Single-crystal have the good efficiency, but they are expensive, both in terms of $ and energy to create. They have to be used for quite a while before they break even on either consideration. Polycrystalline semiconductors, such as a dye-sensitized TiO2 cell can be made cheap, but have rather low efficiency. But that's getting better, or so I'm told by others in my research group working on them.
I'm intrigued by the H2 study - if only because it was done here at Caltech.;) Bottom line is H2 will destroy ozone, but many seem to think the estimate of leakage was too high. Either way, I didn't like H2 before for other reasons. Anyone want to explain to me again why we can't use methanol for fuel cells?
Be careful of your evidence
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A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The funny thing is, even though Dubya talked about hydrogen power in a State of the Union Address, he's also slashed funding for renewable energy research by 50% (according to the book "Stupid White American" by Micheal Moore) and have infamously backed away from the Kyoto Treaty. I'm not sure what to make out of his hydrogen speech.
I'm not for dubya, and I'm pretty sure he's anti-renewable since that's bad for oil, but I don't know about that evidence. Michael Moore is famously partisan and is known to skew (or outright fabricate) evidence to fit his case/cause, as in his Columbine documentary. Second, Kyoto was simply in(un?)feasible and was overly idealistic - Europe is now admitting it can't meet the deadlines Bush said were impossible, for which they criticized him at the time.
That said, I wouldn't doubt he's on board with H2, simply because it can be generated from oil and coal. This, as opposed to methanol fuel cells, which is more likely to be generated from non-fossil sources. I've wondered for years why they prefer h2 to methanol, since methanol has a bunch of advantages (safety, higher energy density, less complicated and heavy storage equipment. Could be big oil?
But if dubya wins in 2004, the call to repeal the 22nd Ammendment (Presidential term limits) will start the day after. There were Reagan I fans who were starting to rumble about repealing it.
That happens with every popular two-term president. Happened with Ike, Truman, and Clinton as well.
You know, that's the sort of thing they may regret saying during the next DOJ/MS antitrust trial. There will be another one, of course...we all knew that right?;)
How they expect to get past the 1994 Novell (nee USL) vs Berkeley decision is beyond me. If they settled and allowed BSD to distribute (and granted license for perpetual redistribution), how do they go after Linux? Can they prove that it came from SysV and not BSD? Does it matter?
And I can't figure out still how they expect to prove that any of this has anything to do with IBM. What, so IBM now is reduced to poring over stacks of 1980's code to insert into the kernel? What the hell.
Encouraging people to waste SCO's bandwidth because they're being stupid is petty and immoral.
Petty? Abso-frigging-lutely. Immoral? Highly subjective. It's not immoral for you, so you don't do it. It might not at be immoral at all for me, so I might do it if I had a lot more free time...oh, and no chance of getting laid for the next decade.;)
As it is, I'll leave it for those of my geek brethren with more time (and angst) to kill.
Hey, I bet you meant petty as a pejorative. To me, petty usually means "fun."
Exactly. I agree, "older = more expensive" is almost universally true. The only IT-unique perspective here may be some lingering "older people don't know computers" thing, but as said by someone else, this is likely because the baby boomers (ie, gen W) didn't grow up with them.
And who can really blame employers that much for hiring younger people? These days, professionals don't typically have kids until 30. So, if I get a 22 yr old straight from college, I get someone who is healthy (cheap health plan), probably unmarried (no spousal benefits), and likely has no kids (no health benefits and such for the kids). Also, this person is likely more willing to work overtime, not having the aforementioned family to spend time with, comes for a cheaper salary, and won't be retiring anytime soon.
So, clearly, there are enormous reasons to do what is not always legal, ie to practice age discrimination. Naturally, this person is likely less experienced , but if we're talking a low-level or entry-level position, employers don't care. Also, there's a good chance the younger coder will code in modern languages more "natively" - I learned non-OOP Pascal in my CS classes, and learning OOP C++ proved to be, conceptually, nontrivial for me.
So, all together, there are some very compelling reasons for companies to hire younger coders. Some of them are shortsighted perhaps, but I wouldn't exactly expect it to change.
I don't really care if you have ICANN do it right away or if you instate an international treaty only to break it as soon as you can't get others to agree with you.
Try reading next time. The preferred idea is to have everyone sign a mutual extradiction treaty. Obviously, using the threat of turning off their TLD is a bit of a motivation. That would last 20 minutes before they caved. The internet isn't a damned right, it's a privelege, and we have no obligation to provide free communication services to a country that refuses to stop its own spammers, and suffer the spam as a result. What we don't need is every country except the Bahamas both making spam illegal and extradicting them, only to see all the spammers move to the Bahamas.
The notion that you consider turning off a TLD in response to spam which is sent from the US to the US through open relays in the sanctioned country is sickening."
Now, try some logic. My plan was an extradiction treaty. I'd hardly NEED a fucking extradiction to try an American, now would I? We'll stop our spammers, you stop yours, everyone's happy except the spammers. Unclosed servers are a related issue, but extradiction doesn't solve that anyway. Hell, we have open servers here too, we'd have to turn off access to OURSELVES, and that wouldn't make a whole damned lot of sense, would it?
Only at frequences that resonate with water (2.4ghz) like your microwave oven or your WiFi card. In the case of the WiFi card it isn't a big deal since the power is very low.
I've never even seen proof of high-intensity microwaves causing cancer, at least at intensities not high enough to cook someone. The frequency of the radiation is what matters most - cancer risk scales far more dramatically with frequency (exponential) than intensity (nearly linear).
Otherwise, a ton of microwave transmitter operators would have extra heads by now.
Slashdot Mirror
I think people in the US would argue YOU DON'T HAVE IT. If people can tell you what to say, you are not free.
That's garbage. What is defined as "criticism?" Where does THAT legal burden end?
Is the newspaper required to run my letter to the editor? In some places of Europe it is.
Where?
...playing Civilization. Bastards. I don't care if you have 20 phalanxes of infantry, they aren't beating my fucking tank! Fucking Sid Meier.
Definitely penicillin. Thank God, no more clap!
Fair point, I'm fairly prone to laziness upon occasion. ;) Also a good point in that I'm sure many people DON'T know how fraudulent his work is, and I think it's something that should be rectified - and something I shouldn't expect people to take my word on.
The problem is that people listen to Moore, and he portrays his work as a documentary (for which he obviously won an award), yet when called on discrepancies he simply calls himself a "comedian." Personally, I don't think it's funny, and he does both his audience as well as his subject matter a great disservice. Personally, I'm very pro-gun-control, yet I hated the way he attempted to use this as a cheap springboard to suggest that murder and firearm-related violence is the end result of every one of his causes (such as the disturbing notion that getting welfare mothers to work leads to murder).
To disclose, as if it's not clear, I've never respected his work, as he has never shown a shred of objectivity in his life. His goal is typically not to educate but rather indoctrinate the public while attempting to humiliate those figures whom he holds in low regard (Charlton Heston, CEO of GM, etc). I find that sort of work exceptionally juvenile - it's a bit reminiscent of paparazi (sp?) and tabloid news magazines. It's certainly not journalism.
Ultimately, to support my original point two posts ago, I wouldn't cite Moore as evidence to save my life, as his evidence is (at best) chosen very selectively, or is (at worst) completely fabricated. So if it's Moore slamming a Republican again, I wouldn't pay a bit of attention. Business as usual, no news here, and don't let the facts get in the way of a story.
Not sure if it's different here, but the comments seem to be evidence of a violation, not the violation in and of themselves. Because the comments are, potentially, a very unique part of a program, they make a good smoking gun. Of course, as they are not functional, they do not allow for damages in themselves.
Exactly. And I can get a free website from Geocities. People bitch about only the rich being able to afford press. Right - only the rich can afford blogs. Rich like 12 year old girls.
That's not it at all. You have the right to respond to whoever the hell you want. You can write MS a letter right now. What the law is forcing is PUBLICATION. I now have the responsibility to publish a response for any asshat who reads my blog. Oh, that's great.
And as much as I don't like MS, forcing them to post every response they get to their website is retarded. So now we can slashdot them by all writing them letters they have to publish? Ridiculous. That's a monstrously unfair burden.
The problem that we need to get rid of is the perception that freedom of speech is freedom of publication - it is NOT. MS, and the rest of us, have the right to not care a bit what you think. I mean, I don't really care what you think. I'm sure you feel the same about me, which is reasonable. It's nothing personal, it's just that neither of us have opinions that are all that unique or entertaining that there is any reason why someone should be forced to publish what we say. We're just not that cool. Sorry.
What it comes down to is something we always complain about on slashdot - why should the electronic world be different than the non-electronic? If I write a letter, is the recipient required to nail it to their front door for all to see? Is the newspaper required to run my letter to the editor? Is a news program required to give me airtime?
The answer to all those questions is no, despite that some CHOOSE in SOME instances to do just that. And broadcast TV is the most heavily regulated medium of all, so if they enjoy 1st amendment protection with regard to something, so does every other medium. Singling out the internet as a medium here doesn't make any more sense than it does with the DMCA or mindless vulgarity laws (COPA), so the proposition doesn't make sense unless you're going to force every other medium to do the same. And if you want to see TV and newspapers go to crap because every asshat who can use a keyboard or a pen has the right to be published, then that's the way to do it.
The fact that I am forced to post it meets the forced speech standard. As stated by someone else, newspapers ARE NOT required to post letters to the editor - good journalistic practice, yes, but not required. Similarly, blog writers SHOULD post responses in the interest of discussion, but requiring? That's insane.
It allows people to actually exercise their freedom of speech in a way that it matters. If microsoft says that I suck, I can say "no i don't" as many times as I want, nobody will hear it.
That's your problem - freedom of speech gives you the right to say what you want, not a medium or a forum. That's like artists who scream censorship when their work isn't subsidized by the government. They're wrong too, in that they are free to create whatever they want, and we're free to ignore it and not pay for it. For what it's worth, though, if MS's opinion of you is slanderous, you have the right to have them stop doing that if it's unfounded - one of your remedies against unfettered US free speech.
Ultimately, this is something that the Supreme Court dealt with a long time ago, check it out if you like. What Europe is doing would not be allowed here. Basically, the US view is "say what you want, however you want, however you can." By your example, get a blog if you want people to listen to you. By the marketplace of ideas, if they don't listen, perhaps it's because no one cares what you, or I, have to say.
As for the news being cleared up by right of response, that's completely infeasible and is the best evidence of the failing of your goal. So if I'm a news show like 60 minutes, I have to publish every response I get? They would cease to have a newscast. In effect, the forced speech requirement kills THEIR right to free speech. That's why it doesn't work, and won't work.
Bottom line is, the US has the most open interpretation of the 1st amendment (at least as it is written, if not implemented). Here, with few exceptions, no one can tell you what not to say - or what TO say, and it's that second part that people frequently forget about, though it's equally important.
Forced speech is illegal in the US. Also, good practice in journalism isn't law - I think it's clear by now that good journalism isn't law in the US as the jails would be currently full. There has never been any obligation to say anything in the US - outside of heavily regulated media such as TV and radio, where the use of the spectrum is gained at a tradeoff. Courts here have already ruled that the internet doesn't come under such heavy consideration.
So yes, anytime someone tells you what you have to say, there's a freedom of speech issue involved. What Europe is trying to do would be illegal in the US. The US has taken a lot of heat from the international community for what we've done, but here's a case where Europeans are the ones having their rights stolen by their governments.
Gun control was certainly one of his causes. Also slamming anything right of flaming liberal was another. If you missed that, YOU weren't watching. Also remember his little acceptance speech at the Academy Awards?
Seriously, if you don't think that Moore is completely political and completely left, you're either too daft or farther left than him to even notice the difference. Nothing wrong with either, but it makes Moore less than objective.
I would say he's never done a documentary in his life - rather, all his work are conflict pieces where he creates the conflict to expose his cause. That's not a documentary, that's propaganda, whether you happen to agree with the cause or not.
Oh, and as for his fabrications:
# The Charlton Heston speech supposedly given at Denver is edited from two different speeches, one a year later and a thousand miles away. The audio is edited, with the cuts hidden by visual and pans of crowds, so as to create a misleading impression that Heston's remarks were one contiguous speech. Nor were both speeches entirely of the same general content: in fact, at least two sentences from each speech have been spliced together to form a brand new one.
# The sequence in the bank is staged, again to create a false impression. Forbes reports that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle. But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."
# The "missile manufacturing plant" actually builds civilian rockets, and converts former military missiles to carry out civilian launches.
#Mr. Moore makes the preposterous claim that a Michigan program by which welfare recipients were required to work was responsible for an incident in which a six-year-old Flint boy shot a girl to death at school. Mr. Moore doesn't mention that the boy's mother had sent him to live in a crack house where her brother and a friend kept both drugs and guns--a frequently lethal combination.
#Mr. Moore repeats the canard that the United States gave the Taliban $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001, somehow implying we were in cahoots with them. But that money actually went to U.N.-affiliated humanitarian organizations that were completely independent of the Taliban.
I could fo on, but I think you get the idea. When confronted with inaccuracies in his books, he has this answer to why he doesn't care about inaccuracies:
"No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?"
So just remember, Moore is doing 'comedy.' Real funny too.
Jury's out on that, as oil can be chemically treated and used to generate H2. Could be that the oil industry sees the writing on the wall and has decided to be moderately intelligent. Could be why methanol fuel cells, which are better in almost every way, see no support.
But true, too many on this site always assume that Bush and Republicans in general are evil, so let's do give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
That's a very good point - both were shitpeddlers, and very few people were savvy enough to see through the screen and see that there wasn't much behind it. ;) The only difference was that, while Reagan really was an actor, Clinton was only extremely intelligent and charismatic. He probably COULD have been an actor. Some might say his entire presidency, and marriage, counts as experience in that regard.
I kinda get the impression that the distinction between Regan and George Herbert Walker Bush is pretty much required reading for anyone hoping to become a successful American politician these days. Regan for what you should do, and Bush for what you shouldn't.
The sad thing is that I think Bush I (See the one there people!?!) was a very good president. He was far more moderate than was Reagan, and he wasn't very political - he was content to be President, leave the re-electing to his aides, and assume the American public was smart enough to vote for an accomplished, active, sitting President. Well, no one will make THAT mistake again. ;)
I will, though, debate the current feasibility of some of your suggestions. First, with electric cars - a range of 125 miles is simply unacceptable when the refuel time is more on the order of hours than minutes. That won't go. 125 miles is bad for a range on an oil-powered car that you can refuel in 10 minutes, so people simply won't tolerate it for an electric car.
As far as wind - even the environmentalists hate it, It kills birds and disrupts migratory patterns, and it takes up a lot of space to collect, and there are only so many places that you can do it - ultimately, it won't solve the problem for a significant percentage of our energy consumption.
PV will be good, but right now there's a biiiiig problem. Essentially, I can do one of two things - use a single-crystal semiconductor, or a polycrystalline semiconductor. Single-crystal have the good efficiency, but they are expensive, both in terms of $ and energy to create. They have to be used for quite a while before they break even on either consideration. Polycrystalline semiconductors, such as a dye-sensitized TiO2 cell can be made cheap, but have rather low efficiency. But that's getting better, or so I'm told by others in my research group working on them.
I'm intrigued by the H2 study - if only because it was done here at Caltech. ;) Bottom line is H2 will destroy ozone, but many seem to think the estimate of leakage was too high. Either way, I didn't like H2 before for other reasons. Anyone want to explain to me again why we can't use methanol for fuel cells?
I'm not for dubya, and I'm pretty sure he's anti-renewable since that's bad for oil, but I don't know about that evidence. Michael Moore is famously partisan and is known to skew (or outright fabricate) evidence to fit his case/cause, as in his Columbine documentary. Second, Kyoto was simply in(un?)feasible and was overly idealistic - Europe is now admitting it can't meet the deadlines Bush said were impossible, for which they criticized him at the time.
That said, I wouldn't doubt he's on board with H2, simply because it can be generated from oil and coal. This, as opposed to methanol fuel cells, which is more likely to be generated from non-fossil sources. I've wondered for years why they prefer h2 to methanol, since methanol has a bunch of advantages (safety, higher energy density, less complicated and heavy storage equipment. Could be big oil?
That happens with every popular two-term president. Happened with Ike, Truman, and Clinton as well.
For only 70 cents a day, you can make sure that a needy child refers to Linux as GNU/Linux.
You know, that's the sort of thing they may regret saying during the next DOJ/MS antitrust trial. There will be another one, of course...we all knew that right? ;)
And I can't figure out still how they expect to prove that any of this has anything to do with IBM. What, so IBM now is reduced to poring over stacks of 1980's code to insert into the kernel? What the hell.
Funny, I wasn't aware "chuckle" was a synonym for "retch."
Petty? Abso-frigging-lutely. Immoral? Highly subjective. It's not immoral for you, so you don't do it. It might not at be immoral at all for me, so I might do it if I had a lot more free time...oh, and no chance of getting laid for the next decade. ;)
As it is, I'll leave it for those of my geek brethren with more time (and angst) to kill.
Hey, I bet you meant petty as a pejorative. To me, petty usually means "fun."
Hey, no prob. Just seeing if you were a card-carrying member of the tin-foil hat club ;)
Exactly. I agree, "older = more expensive" is almost universally true. The only IT-unique perspective here may be some lingering "older people don't know computers" thing, but as said by someone else, this is likely because the baby boomers (ie, gen W) didn't grow up with them. And who can really blame employers that much for hiring younger people? These days, professionals don't typically have kids until 30. So, if I get a 22 yr old straight from college, I get someone who is healthy (cheap health plan), probably unmarried (no spousal benefits), and likely has no kids (no health benefits and such for the kids). Also, this person is likely more willing to work overtime, not having the aforementioned family to spend time with, comes for a cheaper salary, and won't be retiring anytime soon. So, clearly, there are enormous reasons to do what is not always legal, ie to practice age discrimination. Naturally, this person is likely less experienced , but if we're talking a low-level or entry-level position, employers don't care. Also, there's a good chance the younger coder will code in modern languages more "natively" - I learned non-OOP Pascal in my CS classes, and learning OOP C++ proved to be, conceptually, nontrivial for me. So, all together, there are some very compelling reasons for companies to hire younger coders. Some of them are shortsighted perhaps, but I wouldn't exactly expect it to change.
Try reading next time. The preferred idea is to have everyone sign a mutual extradiction treaty. Obviously, using the threat of turning off their TLD is a bit of a motivation. That would last 20 minutes before they caved. The internet isn't a damned right, it's a privelege, and we have no obligation to provide free communication services to a country that refuses to stop its own spammers, and suffer the spam as a result. What we don't need is every country except the Bahamas both making spam illegal and extradicting them, only to see all the spammers move to the Bahamas.
The notion that you consider turning off a TLD in response to spam which is sent from the US to the US through open relays in the sanctioned country is sickening."
Now, try some logic. My plan was an extradiction treaty. I'd hardly NEED a fucking extradiction to try an American, now would I? We'll stop our spammers, you stop yours, everyone's happy except the spammers. Unclosed servers are a related issue, but extradiction doesn't solve that anyway. Hell, we have open servers here too, we'd have to turn off access to OURSELVES, and that wouldn't make a whole damned lot of sense, would it?
Oh, and sign your posts, coward.
I've never even seen proof of high-intensity microwaves causing cancer, at least at intensities not high enough to cook someone. The frequency of the radiation is what matters most - cancer risk scales far more dramatically with frequency (exponential) than intensity (nearly linear).
Otherwise, a ton of microwave transmitter operators would have extra heads by now.