I fail to see the horror of this experience. This is a perfect case of the police and the plant being sharp and alert for potential security problems.
After all, why would anybody take photos of a power plant? That's suspicious behavior. The authorities investigate, find out there's no harm, return your film and apologize for the inconvenience. My GOD! It's like HITLER!!!!!1
You had an interesting experience, one that you'll get a lot of milage out of for years. On the other hand, if you were an Islamofacist terrorist, and the authorities were forced to jump through excessive hoops, that power plant could be a smoking hole in a week. Or the terrorist could be gone, completely, without a trace, and the surveillance would be accomplished before somebody can wake up a judge.
The Patriot Act isn't all sweetness and light, but it's not the beginning of Orwellian oppression. It is largely a matter of updating old laws to reflect a new world--wiretapping a person, rather than a specific phone line--and lessening the barriers between authorities and the bad guys. Getting all whacky about it isn't productive.
Actually, if you found Jesus' skeleton, there would be a whole lot of very upset Christians. "Whaddaya mean Jesus is dead?"
I've said before, creationists come in all flavors. Some are real loons, sure, but so is Stephen Jay Gould. Here's a guy who wants us to accept his interpretation of dirt and rocks and fossils from millions of years ago; but when he's presented with current economic evidence, he's a goddamn Marxist. That screams "bad judgement" to me, and predisposes me to assume his science is equally flawed. Anyway, there are perfectly rational creationists who do want to find the truth, and think the modern evolutionist spiel to be less-than-convincing.
I know that I, personally, have never been sufficiently convinced that We Were All Worms Once. The proof I've been offered over the years has been the weakest sort of hand-waving. Species diversification is not evidence of species evolution--it's a poor engineer who does not build in flexibility. Similarity between fundamentals is not evidence of direct relationship--it's a poor engineer that builds each building with unique, revolutionary structure, unrelated to all others.
Indeed, the language of evolutionists, like yours, that paint all creationists (or anti-evolutionists, which are not neccessarily the same group) as fanatics and lunatics strike me as vicious propoganda. If the science is so pat, the science would speak for itself. Instead, the science is a lot of connected dots, which is fine as a working model--but if somebody can connect the dots in a different way, and invokes something the other scientists find objectionable on philosophical grounds, that doesn't give them free reign to start in with ad hominem attacks.
Part of the ID critique is that science is only looking at the evidence through the eyes of evolution. Not fully objective, it's only used to buttress pre-existing ideas. The complaint of evolution as a mere "theory" has been abused by some creationists, but the underlying idea is actually a good one. For science to work, you have to report everything, even that which may contradict your beliefs. Always seeking to prove even yourself wrong, and through that discipline, you trend towards the truth. It's good stuff, but people who don't have pet theories and pet hypothoses don't get published. They don't get funding. And "pure" science is an expensive, iterative process that provides little direct benefit other than to satisfy intellectual curiosity. So, you get the same territoriality you find in wolf packs in science as well, (proof of evolution!) and with similar results--lots of perfectly innocent trees covered in piss.
The best way to handle a job loss is to adopt a defeatist attitude right away. It puts your mind in the proper frame of reference when you can't find new work right away. Also, get right on blaming some guy who gets elected every 4 years for your current situation. It helps if there's a finger to point, and if it's some schlub who lives far away, all the better.
Or you can add in a really vile prejudice against dirty foreigners who are using their dark skin to steal your job. That will put you in good with the guys down at the pub, hunched over their cheap domestic beer.
I just wanted to let you know that I didn't read any of your post, because it looked like you were droning on and on--the first sign that somebody is hastily trying to explain away a disgusting prejudice, and which makes it particularly tiring to slog through.
I didn't immediately notice that you responded to hate-speech and campaign finance reform, two real infringements on Constitutional rights, while your complaints about religion are largely illusory. Way to not answer.
Are you saying that killing people is bad? What if a guy is trying to kill your children? What if you could kill Hitler? WHAT IF ALIENS CAME DOWN TO EARTH AND TRIED TO KILL ALL EARTHLINGS WITH TERRIBLE EYEBALL POWERS, WOULD YOU KILL kFrgTTHyyyYP TO SAVE ALL OF EARTH!!???!!
Basically, you're a silly person. If Democrats are so desperate to help people with money, they can use their own money. Only wanting to use public tax monies means they are using the irresitable power of government to dictate their own morality on Americans, who may or may not agree with the morality.
Every time I hear the boneyard (XM channel 41) guys say "fuck", I cringe, knowing some religious wacko out there is writing a letter to Michael Powel and crew.
And.. so? Letter-writing from one nut doesn't make Michael Powell sit up and bark. You reveal your own bigotry in your remark, however.
Have you tried to call somebody a "fag" recently? Described something as "totally gay"? You should try that sometime in a coffee shop, or on DailyKos or something similar. Hate-speech legislation and the like are here, now, as well as restrictions on political speech in the form of "campaign finance reform". Your lone letter-writer is a fiction you've invented from your own closet of anxieties. Here's some free advice--the Christians aren't out to get you, stop obsessing over them.
I see now that your republitard brain is even smaller then I thought.
... says the guy who can't figure out that it's two different people replying. Hey, the grandparent poster is not me. It's somebody else, with a different name. I'm a 4-digit user, which makes me smarter and better, and you're too goddamn dumb to figure it out. Who's a tard again?
He is going to gradually pull out replacing the US troops with the troops of other countries. He is going to approach countries that have been reluctant to send troops so far and try to repair the relationships with them.
Oh, by calling them names? Like "coerced", or "bribed"? You think he's going to get troops from France to go to Iraq after he's called it a quagmire, a hopeless case, a hotbed of terrorism? "Come, join le army, be killed by brown people in the desert! Viva la France!"
No, France has already said they won't go to Iraq. Germany hinted that maybe they will, but that's not what I'd call commitment. Regardless, you might notice that we're doing exactly what you suggest, now, only we're not using other countries' troops, we're using Iraqis. Which, you'll notice, are the people who live in Iraq.
That may be too nuanced for you. I'll break it down--John Kerry is dumber than Bush, and he's lied more often than Bush. At least Bush lied (if you believe he lied, which I don't) about big stuff that matters--WMDs in Iraq. Kerry lies about stupid shit--meeting with the UN Security Coucil, when he didn't; going into Cambodia, when he didn't; his goddamned stupid Lucky Hat, which is a bullshit prop. And, you're a complete tool to let your blind hatred of Bush sway you into supporting a complete douchebag for President. When G.W.Bush wins, I hope the despair and ennui is so overwhelming that you contemplate eating a bullet. Remember, use your toes and get your entire head in front of the shotgun.
No, what you're talking about it adaptation, not evolution. When it gets cold, I don't evolve into a Home coatus--I adapt to the weather by choosing a coat from my closet in addition to a shirt. Or if you prefer, it's micro- not macro-evolution, which to my knowledge has never been in dispute. We have yet, however, to see a bacteria, to pick your example, turn into a fruit-fly, or the flu virus become a caterpillar. As far as I know, we've never even seen a flagellum-less bacteria evolve flagellum, when that kind of simple information-creating evolution should be relatively easy to promote in a lab environment and would basically destroy most of the current arguments of creationists.
And all that's beside the point anyway. The creationism that most Christian schools teach is simply that of special creation of Man. Whether a snake can evolve into a salamander isn't as important as whether Man is created by God, according to Christianity.
Finally, there are doctors and researchers who do believe in the special creation of Man. They do just fine, are perfectly competant, and I wouldn't be scared to take my kids (if I had any) to one. I had my appendix removed by one, as a matter of fact. I'm still here, you may notice.
School choice: I'm not subsidizing some fundamentalist school that teaches evolution to kids who I need to be globally competitive for my national economy to survive.
Exactly how does believing that you are literally a monkey's uncle determine your competitiveness on a global scale?
What you need to be competitive in a global economy is dogged persistence, a strong work ethic, and a stable society. Fundamentalist Christian schools promote all of these things, and do a good job of teaching other fundamentals as well. An educated populace does not hinge on belief in evolution, and to insist otherwise is no different than any other superstitious belief.
Gov't mandated healthcare system: Kerry wants a single payer *insurance* system, augmented by private insurance, like Congress has. As he has repeated on TV many times. I have no love for my vampire^Winsurer, do you? It's the private insurers who mandate healthcare, like HMOs and cheapo "preferred doctor" lists.
Third-party payer systems are still third-party payer systems. The difference between a single-third-party, like the government, and many third-parties like we have now is that you can't fire the single-third-party when they fuck up.
The best solution is to return to a more pure market-oriented healthcare system, and leave insurance for the catastrophic events, as its supposed to be.
You might notice that nobody is screaming for a single-party computer buying system. That's because the computer industry is about as free-market as we've seen in recent times, and thus I can buy a Supercomputer for $400 from Sam's Club.
Build a platform like a Palm IIIxe. Add a keyboard and modem. Easily doable under $100. The IIIxe was selling new, at a profit at $200 many years ago. Assuming an economy of scale large enough (China), I can certainly see it coming in under the limit.
A Palm IIIxe isn't the fastest computer on the block, but it is capable of all of the basic computing tasks. (A friend took his and one of those folding keyboards to an archeological dig in some God-forsaken 3rd world hell-hole as a data input device instead of a laptop. It worked marvelously.) It runs for a long time on batteries, and could likely be re-fitted for solar power.
Add the power of the Internet through the modem, and you hardly need storage space at all.
Computers aren't expensive because of the hardware, or the software, really. Our expectations make the machines so costly.
Okay: George W. Bush knows what he believes. You may not agree with it, but at least you know what it is.
John F. Kerry has yet to lay out a coherent, consistent idea. You can't agree with it, because you don't know what the fuck it is. It could be anything. Will we stay in Iraq? Or not? Maybe we'll get French troops (no), or maybe we'll get German troops (maybe), or maybe we'll get Martians to come down to Earth and teach us how to sing in perfect harmony (maybe, but lots of beer will be involved).
So, in a battle of wits, George W. Bush wins against John F. Kerry. That is fucking sad.
No, you fucking moron. Your Snopes link only debunks the availability of the flu vaccine, not liability premiums.
Trial lawyers like Edwards *do* drive up the cost of the American health care. The reasons are many and complicate, which means they're beyond your comprehension, but can be condensed down to:
1) Americans stopped paying for health care via the free market system when employers, seeking to offer bennies that were tax deductable, offered 3rd party payer insurance to new hires.
2) People stopped paying for doctor visits. Are you kidding me, you morons? A doctor visit costs next to nothing. Why should you file a claim for a regular check-up? What's next? filing with your Beer Insurance for a weekly case of Bud Light? Here's a hint: if you can't afford a simple doctor visit, you should commit suicide right away. You are too poor to live.
3) Every time a surgen left a sterile, harmless sponge in some patients body after saving his drunk ass from dying from the steering wheel jutting from his chest, the judicial system flipped out and granted the "plaintiff"--a.k.a. "buttmuncher"--a huge cash settlement, of which 40% went to assholes like John "Eternal primper" Edwards. Big insurance companies would simply settle, because it's cheaper for them to do so, until the market, which never lies, encouraged a horde of like-minded assholes to sue for every damn thing under the sun.
4) Doctors, now facing $40-200K/yr bills for liability insurance, plus uncountable hours of hassle and annoyance, said "WTF, mate? I can invest what money I have in tax-free municipals and live a decent life and not have to be deposed by another goddamn prissy law-school bloodsucker every time I blow my nose."
5) The market, rearing its head again, says, "Gee--there are no doctors, and all the smart people are going into law since that's where all the money and chicks are." So it costs $10 to get a half-trained community college graduate in "Health Studies" to put a band-aid on you.
6) Bigger assholes start talking up socialized medicine, despite the obivious problems, and other morons (that's you) start buying into it.
India doesn't have the same regulatory problems that we do. They are cheaper. Do you see the connection? Fucking asshole.
Except.... they don't die. No, they live, through the magic of modern American medicine, and they leave the hospital to go vote for Hillary Clinton so they can get "free" medical care.
This is a decent idea, but there's a downside to it as well.
The most fun with Goldeneye (and its spiritual successor Perfect Dark--highly recommended, btw) is playing the multiplayer with three friends. You may be a cheapskate... err frugal consumer, but I bet you don't have three gamer friends who are cheap... pennywise as well. So while you're playing Goldeneye in single-player and having a ball, your other friends are all busy with Doom III, or GTA IV, or whatever.
So while you're saving a few bucks, you may be cheating yourself of half the fun at the same time. You haven't had a good time in Goldeneye until you've got nothing but that shitty Klobb, and your best friend is on your ass with a RPC-90, screaming "Run, bitch, daddy's gonna spank ya!"
When it's just you and some knob, you can get along by bending with the wind. When it's a "group" of "people", i.e. terrorists, and another "group" of "people", i.e. The Great Satan America, who do you get to bend? The president? He has to answer to the voters. Voters? Which ones? Who do we talk to? What if they say "no"?
Overly simplifying the issue does not make you right, nor smart, nor even relevant. And, on another note, since you equate terrorist attacks with second-hand smoke, you tell me which you would prefer--death from second-hand smoke (which you can avoid, and which takes forever anyway) or death by terrorism (which you cannot avoid, unless you live in a cave in Montana somewhere, and happens instantaneously and may end up with you leaping from the 80th story of a building that's on fire).
Is it so hard to believe a country with such a long and esteemed technological history might just possibly, maybe, increduluously sport a population more tech savy than the USdotA?
What technological history? Oh, you mean after we yanked them kicking and screaming out of the Neolithic era?
Anyway, I can't tell the difference between "tech savvy" and "electronic faddism".
Japan has "cool toys" because real estate is prohibitively expensive in Japan. Nobody ever saves for a $250,000 McMansion in Japan because there's no place to build it. So they live in 600 feet square apartments and have lots of "cool toys". Our toys are a new Rototiller and a John Deere lawn mower. I have no idea which is "cooler".
As for me--this is just me, of course--I'd rather own my house than have a Sharp PDA for no other compelling reason other than it runs Linux. Go Japan! That's how you become a world power!
Re:Not much confidence, but still a good player.
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Rio Karma User Review
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Basically, you have to whack the unit hard enough that it turns itself off and restarts. Sure, it's unsettling and even embarassing if you have to sit there in a rush-hour subway train spanking a lump of plastic for ten minutes, but it works.
Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick... what part of "totally stupid" can you not discern from this scenario? Whacking your hardware is NOT, repeat NOT an acceptable option while troubleshooting. Apple tried this with the Apple III and (rightly) got reamed for it. Almost anybody between the ages of 25 and 35 still has active muscle memory for blowing on an NES 8-bit cart, slamming it into the console, and then whacking the side in order to play Mario Bros. That's not because the 8-bit NES was an aerobic device--that's because the device and the design was a piece of shit.
In case somebody is too slow to follow this, here's a Cochran-esque mnemonic--"If you have to hit, it's a piece of shit."
Slashdot reviews are a total joke. Any sane reviewer would have gotten to the lockup and dropped the review score by a third. When they discover it's a fairly widespread problem, they'd register riokarmasdirtysecret.com and drop the score to a third. When they found out about the generally accepted solution to the problem (donkey-punching a $250 device with a minature hard drive), the score drops to "Only Fools and Degenerates With Poor Genes Buy This". In fact, most reviewers would have turned the review into a grand joke, offering alternative uses for the piece of junk hardware that involve hockey sticks, slingshots or gay porn stars.
I have only two gripes personally with the unit:
Jesus Christ on a unicycle, I think "I occasionaly have to beat the shit out of it to keep it working" would top the fucking list. Instead, there's only "an unused jack" and "it's hard to shuffle songs" make the cut. Please don't breed, KTHXBYE.
Switch to lite-mode. Looking at Slashdot's incredibly poor graphic design is strictly voluntary.
It was years before I knew that BSD looked like ass. People were bitching about games.slashdot.org for a long time--I never knew.
Lite-mode: it's your "Almost like USENET!" alternative.
Re:It will work, but that isn't good, here is why
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Broken Links No More?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This isn't a one-time, forever-and-ever-amen technology. You start with an automatic link-checker and link-fixer. Then you add features like "list all the changes so an editor can filter the results", then you move to "direct potential changes to a team of experts", and so forth and so on. The idea is pretty good. When you're a Big Company with a huge website with thousands of links, having this automagic tool is a lot better than having (unprofessional) dead links.
I, personally, hate dead links with a passion. And, usually, I can devise a Google search that will give me the new home of the old link--often nothing's changed other than the server. A tool that does this for me is useful. Sure, there's plenty of issues that need to be looked into, but that's what we used to call "the Next Version".
It's easy to nitpick this. Seeing the technology, and then seeing how it can be improved in its next iteration is what separates a visionary from a Slashdot howler monkey.
"chipping paint on Titanium Powerbooks"
Never happened to mine. It's been dropped a few times and stepped on once or twice and it's bashed and bent and held together with duct tape, but it still works just fine.
Mine came with chipped paint--I bought mine used from MacResQ (buy stuff from them, they are teh rock). I couldn't generate enough enthusiasm to care. I got a good deal from a reputable company--I knew that if the thing was DOA that the ResQ folks would take it back, unlike a random eBay asshole--and I couldn't care what it looked like. It looked used. Big whoop. A laptop with obvious wear means you actually use the thing, rather than just carry it around for show. I'll bet Stallman's laptop looks like a dog chewed it.
The important thing is that 667mhz G4 makes a sweet-ass machine. I use it as my main axe these days, and it's done yeoman's labor. It's super-sweet-ass with 10.3.
Paint chipping, feh. Sexcellent laptop for under $1K? Niiiice.
The ability? No, lots of folks have the "ability". He's already demonstrated the will to do something he knew would be (or hoped would be, which is more or less the same thing) extremely destructive.
The kid is a punk. He may always be a punk. Maybe some folks think it would be okay to hire him, but I bet most of the people who would give him a chance have never built a business themselves. When you've got this thing, this business that you've spent God knows how much time and effort building, why would you risk the whole thing by hiring a known punk? All the reasons I can think of--publicity, potential ability, altruism--fails the "will the baby eat tonight" test.
Publicity? Why not hire a well-known porn star to pose for photographs and post them daily to your web site. You'd get publicity and traffic and less risk. Ability? There's gobs of similarly talented nerds out there. If Slashdot is to judge, there's a glut of CS majors who were fired by GW Bush the same day he was inaugerated. Altruism? Give to Greenpeace.
The kid should be punted into a workhouse and made to do free tech support for the companies he harmed. Each company, in alphabetical order, until their damages have been paid back. I doubt he'd make it past the "B's" before croaking.
(A side note: Slashdotters always say that owning a tool that could be used for illegal activity is fine, and people should only be prosecuted if they use the tools for actual illegal activity. You're probably heard the litany in any random YRO article. Well, here's a punk kid who broke the law--let's see some fucking prosecution, eh?)
Slashdot Mirror
After all, why would anybody take photos of a power plant? That's suspicious behavior. The authorities investigate, find out there's no harm, return your film and apologize for the inconvenience. My GOD! It's like HITLER!!!!!1
You had an interesting experience, one that you'll get a lot of milage out of for years. On the other hand, if you were an Islamofacist terrorist, and the authorities were forced to jump through excessive hoops, that power plant could be a smoking hole in a week. Or the terrorist could be gone, completely, without a trace, and the surveillance would be accomplished before somebody can wake up a judge.
The Patriot Act isn't all sweetness and light, but it's not the beginning of Orwellian oppression. It is largely a matter of updating old laws to reflect a new world--wiretapping a person, rather than a specific phone line--and lessening the barriers between authorities and the bad guys. Getting all whacky about it isn't productive.
That's very, very funny. I also call bullshit.
I've said before, creationists come in all flavors. Some are real loons, sure, but so is Stephen Jay Gould. Here's a guy who wants us to accept his interpretation of dirt and rocks and fossils from millions of years ago; but when he's presented with current economic evidence, he's a goddamn Marxist. That screams "bad judgement" to me, and predisposes me to assume his science is equally flawed. Anyway, there are perfectly rational creationists who do want to find the truth, and think the modern evolutionist spiel to be less-than-convincing.
I know that I, personally, have never been sufficiently convinced that We Were All Worms Once. The proof I've been offered over the years has been the weakest sort of hand-waving. Species diversification is not evidence of species evolution--it's a poor engineer who does not build in flexibility. Similarity between fundamentals is not evidence of direct relationship--it's a poor engineer that builds each building with unique, revolutionary structure, unrelated to all others.
Indeed, the language of evolutionists, like yours, that paint all creationists (or anti-evolutionists, which are not neccessarily the same group) as fanatics and lunatics strike me as vicious propoganda. If the science is so pat, the science would speak for itself. Instead, the science is a lot of connected dots, which is fine as a working model--but if somebody can connect the dots in a different way, and invokes something the other scientists find objectionable on philosophical grounds, that doesn't give them free reign to start in with ad hominem attacks.
Part of the ID critique is that science is only looking at the evidence through the eyes of evolution. Not fully objective, it's only used to buttress pre-existing ideas. The complaint of evolution as a mere "theory" has been abused by some creationists, but the underlying idea is actually a good one. For science to work, you have to report everything, even that which may contradict your beliefs. Always seeking to prove even yourself wrong, and through that discipline, you trend towards the truth. It's good stuff, but people who don't have pet theories and pet hypothoses don't get published. They don't get funding. And "pure" science is an expensive, iterative process that provides little direct benefit other than to satisfy intellectual curiosity. So, you get the same territoriality you find in wolf packs in science as well, (proof of evolution!) and with similar results--lots of perfectly innocent trees covered in piss.
Or you can add in a really vile prejudice against dirty foreigners who are using their dark skin to steal your job. That will put you in good with the guys down at the pub, hunched over their cheap domestic beer.
Remember--competition is NOT your friend!
I didn't immediately notice that you responded to hate-speech and campaign finance reform, two real infringements on Constitutional rights, while your complaints about religion are largely illusory. Way to not answer.
Basically, you're a silly person. If Democrats are so desperate to help people with money, they can use their own money. Only wanting to use public tax monies means they are using the irresitable power of government to dictate their own morality on Americans, who may or may not agree with the morality.
And.. so? Letter-writing from one nut doesn't make Michael Powell sit up and bark. You reveal your own bigotry in your remark, however.
Have you tried to call somebody a "fag" recently? Described something as "totally gay"? You should try that sometime in a coffee shop, or on DailyKos or something similar. Hate-speech legislation and the like are here, now, as well as restrictions on political speech in the form of "campaign finance reform". Your lone letter-writer is a fiction you've invented from your own closet of anxieties. Here's some free advice--the Christians aren't out to get you, stop obsessing over them.
Do you get a little button from International Socialism every time you mock the Chimpler?
... says the guy who can't figure out that it's two different people replying. Hey, the grandparent poster is not me. It's somebody else, with a different name. I'm a 4-digit user, which makes me smarter and better, and you're too goddamn dumb to figure it out. Who's a tard again?
He is going to gradually pull out replacing the US troops with the troops of other countries. He is going to approach countries that have been reluctant to send troops so far and try to repair the relationships with them.
Oh, by calling them names? Like "coerced", or "bribed"? You think he's going to get troops from France to go to Iraq after he's called it a quagmire, a hopeless case, a hotbed of terrorism? "Come, join le army, be killed by brown people in the desert! Viva la France!"
No, France has already said they won't go to Iraq. Germany hinted that maybe they will, but that's not what I'd call commitment. Regardless, you might notice that we're doing exactly what you suggest, now, only we're not using other countries' troops, we're using Iraqis. Which, you'll notice, are the people who live in Iraq.
That may be too nuanced for you. I'll break it down--John Kerry is dumber than Bush, and he's lied more often than Bush. At least Bush lied (if you believe he lied, which I don't) about big stuff that matters--WMDs in Iraq. Kerry lies about stupid shit--meeting with the UN Security Coucil, when he didn't; going into Cambodia, when he didn't; his goddamned stupid Lucky Hat, which is a bullshit prop. And, you're a complete tool to let your blind hatred of Bush sway you into supporting a complete douchebag for President. When G.W.Bush wins, I hope the despair and ennui is so overwhelming that you contemplate eating a bullet. Remember, use your toes and get your entire head in front of the shotgun.
No, what you're talking about it adaptation, not evolution. When it gets cold, I don't evolve into a Home coatus--I adapt to the weather by choosing a coat from my closet in addition to a shirt. Or if you prefer, it's micro- not macro-evolution, which to my knowledge has never been in dispute. We have yet, however, to see a bacteria, to pick your example, turn into a fruit-fly, or the flu virus become a caterpillar. As far as I know, we've never even seen a flagellum-less bacteria evolve flagellum, when that kind of simple information-creating evolution should be relatively easy to promote in a lab environment and would basically destroy most of the current arguments of creationists.
And all that's beside the point anyway. The creationism that most Christian schools teach is simply that of special creation of Man. Whether a snake can evolve into a salamander isn't as important as whether Man is created by God, according to Christianity.
Finally, there are doctors and researchers who do believe in the special creation of Man. They do just fine, are perfectly competant, and I wouldn't be scared to take my kids (if I had any) to one. I had my appendix removed by one, as a matter of fact. I'm still here, you may notice.
Exactly how does believing that you are literally a monkey's uncle determine your competitiveness on a global scale?
What you need to be competitive in a global economy is dogged persistence, a strong work ethic, and a stable society. Fundamentalist Christian schools promote all of these things, and do a good job of teaching other fundamentals as well. An educated populace does not hinge on belief in evolution, and to insist otherwise is no different than any other superstitious belief.
Gov't mandated healthcare system: Kerry wants a single payer *insurance* system, augmented by private insurance, like Congress has. As he has repeated on TV many times. I have no love for my vampire^Winsurer, do you? It's the private insurers who mandate healthcare, like HMOs and cheapo "preferred doctor" lists.
Third-party payer systems are still third-party payer systems. The difference between a single-third-party, like the government, and many third-parties like we have now is that you can't fire the single-third-party when they fuck up.
The best solution is to return to a more pure market-oriented healthcare system, and leave insurance for the catastrophic events, as its supposed to be.
You might notice that nobody is screaming for a single-party computer buying system. That's because the computer industry is about as free-market as we've seen in recent times, and thus I can buy a Supercomputer for $400 from Sam's Club.
Build a platform like a Palm IIIxe. Add a keyboard and modem. Easily doable under $100. The IIIxe was selling new, at a profit at $200 many years ago. Assuming an economy of scale large enough (China), I can certainly see it coming in under the limit.
A Palm IIIxe isn't the fastest computer on the block, but it is capable of all of the basic computing tasks. (A friend took his and one of those folding keyboards to an archeological dig in some God-forsaken 3rd world hell-hole as a data input device instead of a laptop. It worked marvelously.) It runs for a long time on batteries, and could likely be re-fitted for solar power.
Add the power of the Internet through the modem, and you hardly need storage space at all.
Computers aren't expensive because of the hardware, or the software, really. Our expectations make the machines so costly.
John F. Kerry has yet to lay out a coherent, consistent idea. You can't agree with it, because you don't know what the fuck it is. It could be anything. Will we stay in Iraq? Or not? Maybe we'll get French troops (no), or maybe we'll get German troops (maybe), or maybe we'll get Martians to come down to Earth and teach us how to sing in perfect harmony (maybe, but lots of beer will be involved).
So, in a battle of wits, George W. Bush wins against John F. Kerry. That is fucking sad.
Kerry's fucking doomed.
Trial lawyers like Edwards *do* drive up the cost of the American health care. The reasons are many and complicate, which means they're beyond your comprehension, but can be condensed down to:
1) Americans stopped paying for health care via the free market system when employers, seeking to offer bennies that were tax deductable, offered 3rd party payer insurance to new hires.
2) People stopped paying for doctor visits. Are you kidding me, you morons? A doctor visit costs next to nothing. Why should you file a claim for a regular check-up? What's next? filing with your Beer Insurance for a weekly case of Bud Light? Here's a hint: if you can't afford a simple doctor visit, you should commit suicide right away. You are too poor to live.
3) Every time a surgen left a sterile, harmless sponge in some patients body after saving his drunk ass from dying from the steering wheel jutting from his chest, the judicial system flipped out and granted the "plaintiff"--a.k.a. "buttmuncher"--a huge cash settlement, of which 40% went to assholes like John "Eternal primper" Edwards. Big insurance companies would simply settle, because it's cheaper for them to do so, until the market, which never lies, encouraged a horde of like-minded assholes to sue for every damn thing under the sun.
4) Doctors, now facing $40-200K/yr bills for liability insurance, plus uncountable hours of hassle and annoyance, said "WTF, mate? I can invest what money I have in tax-free municipals and live a decent life and not have to be deposed by another goddamn prissy law-school bloodsucker every time I blow my nose."
5) The market, rearing its head again, says, "Gee--there are no doctors, and all the smart people are going into law since that's where all the money and chicks are." So it costs $10 to get a half-trained community college graduate in "Health Studies" to put a band-aid on you.
6) Bigger assholes start talking up socialized medicine, despite the obivious problems, and other morons (that's you) start buying into it.
India doesn't have the same regulatory problems that we do. They are cheaper. Do you see the connection? Fucking asshole.
Fucking ungrateful bastsards.
The most fun with Goldeneye (and its spiritual successor Perfect Dark--highly recommended, btw) is playing the multiplayer with three friends. You may be a cheapskate... err frugal consumer, but I bet you don't have three gamer friends who are cheap... pennywise as well. So while you're playing Goldeneye in single-player and having a ball, your other friends are all busy with Doom III, or GTA IV, or whatever.
So while you're saving a few bucks, you may be cheating yourself of half the fun at the same time. You haven't had a good time in Goldeneye until you've got nothing but that shitty Klobb, and your best friend is on your ass with a RPC-90, screaming "Run, bitch, daddy's gonna spank ya!"
The best defence is to avoid firefights.
Proactive peace does not scale.
When it's just you and some knob, you can get along by bending with the wind. When it's a "group" of "people", i.e. terrorists, and another "group" of "people", i.e. The Great Satan America, who do you get to bend? The president? He has to answer to the voters. Voters? Which ones? Who do we talk to? What if they say "no"?
Overly simplifying the issue does not make you right, nor smart, nor even relevant. And, on another note, since you equate terrorist attacks with second-hand smoke, you tell me which you would prefer--death from second-hand smoke (which you can avoid, and which takes forever anyway) or death by terrorism (which you cannot avoid, unless you live in a cave in Montana somewhere, and happens instantaneously and may end up with you leaping from the 80th story of a building that's on fire).
You pick. Chump.
What technological history? Oh, you mean after we yanked them kicking and screaming out of the Neolithic era?
Anyway, I can't tell the difference between "tech savvy" and "electronic faddism".
Eh? Cool toys?
Japan has "cool toys" because real estate is prohibitively expensive in Japan. Nobody ever saves for a $250,000 McMansion in Japan because there's no place to build it. So they live in 600 feet square apartments and have lots of "cool toys". Our toys are a new Rototiller and a John Deere lawn mower. I have no idea which is "cooler".
As for me--this is just me, of course--I'd rather own my house than have a Sharp PDA for no other compelling reason other than it runs Linux. Go Japan! That's how you become a world power!
Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick... what part of "totally stupid" can you not discern from this scenario? Whacking your hardware is NOT, repeat NOT an acceptable option while troubleshooting. Apple tried this with the Apple III and (rightly) got reamed for it. Almost anybody between the ages of 25 and 35 still has active muscle memory for blowing on an NES 8-bit cart, slamming it into the console, and then whacking the side in order to play Mario Bros. That's not because the 8-bit NES was an aerobic device--that's because the device and the design was a piece of shit.
In case somebody is too slow to follow this, here's a Cochran-esque mnemonic--"If you have to hit, it's a piece of shit."
Slashdot reviews are a total joke. Any sane reviewer would have gotten to the lockup and dropped the review score by a third. When they discover it's a fairly widespread problem, they'd register riokarmasdirtysecret.com and drop the score to a third. When they found out about the generally accepted solution to the problem (donkey-punching a $250 device with a minature hard drive), the score drops to "Only Fools and Degenerates With Poor Genes Buy This". In fact, most reviewers would have turned the review into a grand joke, offering alternative uses for the piece of junk hardware that involve hockey sticks, slingshots or gay porn stars.
I have only two gripes personally with the unit:
Jesus Christ on a unicycle, I think "I occasionaly have to beat the shit out of it to keep it working" would top the fucking list. Instead, there's only "an unused jack" and "it's hard to shuffle songs" make the cut. Please don't breed, KTHXBYE.
It was years before I knew that BSD looked like ass. People were bitching about games.slashdot.org for a long time--I never knew.
Lite-mode: it's your "Almost like USENET!" alternative.
I, personally, hate dead links with a passion. And, usually, I can devise a Google search that will give me the new home of the old link--often nothing's changed other than the server. A tool that does this for me is useful. Sure, there's plenty of issues that need to be looked into, but that's what we used to call "the Next Version".
It's easy to nitpick this. Seeing the technology, and then seeing how it can be improved in its next iteration is what separates a visionary from a Slashdot howler monkey.
Never happened to mine. It's been dropped a few times and stepped on once or twice and it's bashed and bent and held together with duct tape, but it still works just fine.
Mine came with chipped paint--I bought mine used from MacResQ (buy stuff from them, they are teh rock). I couldn't generate enough enthusiasm to care. I got a good deal from a reputable company--I knew that if the thing was DOA that the ResQ folks would take it back, unlike a random eBay asshole--and I couldn't care what it looked like. It looked used. Big whoop. A laptop with obvious wear means you actually use the thing, rather than just carry it around for show. I'll bet Stallman's laptop looks like a dog chewed it.
The important thing is that 667mhz G4 makes a sweet-ass machine. I use it as my main axe these days, and it's done yeoman's labor. It's super-sweet-ass with 10.3.
Paint chipping, feh. Sexcellent laptop for under $1K? Niiiice.
The kid is a punk. He may always be a punk. Maybe some folks think it would be okay to hire him, but I bet most of the people who would give him a chance have never built a business themselves. When you've got this thing, this business that you've spent God knows how much time and effort building, why would you risk the whole thing by hiring a known punk? All the reasons I can think of--publicity, potential ability, altruism--fails the "will the baby eat tonight" test.
Publicity? Why not hire a well-known porn star to pose for photographs and post them daily to your web site. You'd get publicity and traffic and less risk. Ability? There's gobs of similarly talented nerds out there. If Slashdot is to judge, there's a glut of CS majors who were fired by GW Bush the same day he was inaugerated. Altruism? Give to Greenpeace.
The kid should be punted into a workhouse and made to do free tech support for the companies he harmed. Each company, in alphabetical order, until their damages have been paid back. I doubt he'd make it past the "B's" before croaking.
(A side note: Slashdotters always say that owning a tool that could be used for illegal activity is fine, and people should only be prosecuted if they use the tools for actual illegal activity. You're probably heard the litany in any random YRO article. Well, here's a punk kid who broke the law--let's see some fucking prosecution, eh?)
Sorority. AKA "Tri-Delts", AKA "Tri-Delta: Everybody else has!". That's a whore joke, since you seem to be on the slow side.