I've had people who are so anal about answering any phone call that they go berserk at me when I don't answer my own phone (and not because they were annoyed at the ring - I have it on a very low volume - but because they simply can't accept the notion that a phone call might not always be important).
Frankly, it doesn't take much for me to not answer a call - bad time of day, bad weather, failure to send caller-ID, idiot person calling. If it's important, they'll leave a message on the voicemail. Or better still, email me.
They're pointing out that some people are simply useless. Bored rich guys are typically the most useless people we have on this planet. Along with those bimbos who walk down catwalks.
...in that case, I would institute a ban on all workplace-owned equipment in the home, as well as a ban on using all personal equipment for work when at home. Ie, the landline phone.
High vitriol is, sadly, to be expected when dealing with neo-conservatives. How else can you react to a person that is accusing you of supporting a horrendous dictator, simply because you don't agree with the method of removing him from power?
It's a simple fact of politics, ever since the neo-cons gained power: their methods of dealing with their opposition are to strongly attack the man, not the issue. They're too brainless and corrupt to do anything else.
It is one of many valid arguments. Of course if you oppose dethroning Saddam, you support leaving him in place.
Once again, you're deluded. I didn't oppose removing him from power. I opposed the method, something you're clearly too stupid to see. Nuking the entire country would have been another method to remove him; I would have opposed that too. If it was the only method, would you have approved of it? By your insane logic, of course you would have.
I opposed, and still oppose, the unsanctioned invasion of Iraq by US troops which resulted in the deaths of many innocent civilians - not to mention has invoked the wrath of the Islamic world against the west. Hence, because of the hawkish actions of the likes of you, we are all considerably more at risk of terrorist attacks.
The amazing lies you will resort to in order to defend your boy Saddam.
What I can't work out is why morons like you settled on a "if they don't support the war, they must support Saddam" argument.
Did losing the moral argument leave you without any valid argument whatsoever? Seriously, accusing people who don't support your point of view of being "Saddam supporters" is truely a sign of a intellectual inferior, someone whose entire world-view is gleaned from sound-bites on commercial television.
Come back to me when you can make a serious argument, because right now, you're demonstrating the mental capacity of a chimp. Hey, you'd make a great presidential decoy for Bush!
Nor do I see it attacking Grand Fenwick, Uruguay, or Benin. But none of that has anything to do with anything.
Of course it does. China is a dictatorship. Its government brutally suppresses its citizens. It threatens its close neighbours. And, evidentally unlike Iraq, it definitely does have weapons of mass destruction, of the nuclear variety, which it has gone to great lengths to demonstrate to the world at large.
By way of every argument that was used to justify what is rapidly becoming seen as an illegal war on Iraq, the US should be invading China to rid them of these scurges, in the same way they did in the Gulf.
But of course they won't. Why not? Because the hypocritical US government only picks targets where it knows it can win.
No, it was about stopping Saddam Hussein's constant aggression. "Brainwashing"? No. The support for the liberation had everyhing to do with an informed electorate.
Liberation, my arse. So, when is the US going to let them vote for a government of their own? And if they choose an Islamic government, will they be allowed to have it?
And I suppose that informed electorate is the same one that is being fed right-wing propaganda by Fox news?
Glad you don't support Kim like you support Saddam.
No, I do not support Saddam. Your reality is warped. I don't see the US attacking China. Clearly, in your fucked up psychology your government must support them!
Those countries are not imperialist hellholes, and they have not attacked the U.S.
Iraq never attacked the US either. Oh, a bunch of terrorists did, but since the US's security services have been so inept at actually catching them, they had to go and get a scapegoat, eh? Or was it just payback for the Bush junior, doing something his Dad never managed to do?
Another lie. Oil has nothing to do with anything.
Another lie. Oil has everything to do with the US. The US kills people to get oil. The US tramples over other countries to get oil. Oil is all that matters to the US, because without it, it can't maintain its stranglehold on the rest of the world. Iraq was about oil, revenge and brainwashing the electorate, nothing more.
Yes it does. He strongly opposed it, too. Saddam would STILL BE IN POWER if the leaders listened to the "million moron march" of the protesters.
He wouldn't have been there IN THE FIRST PLACE, if it wasn't for the support that the snivelling Yanks gave him. And now they've decided to be the world's policeman, to make George Bush look good in the eyes of the electorate?
Now, why don't you get back on the street and protest in favor of Kim Jong Il or someone like that.
Proof that your world is so black and white that you're incapable of thinking straight. I don't support him in the least.
But people like you are so inconsistent it's a wonder you can even function correctly. I expect we'll be seeing US military action against all the dictators in the world, such as Mugabe in Zimbabwe and SLORC in Burma? Oh no, I forgot, they don't have oil.
Or against the Chinese dictatorship? Oh, no, they might actually inflict some damage upon the US.
Or, now you mention it, North Korea? Hell no, they have nukes. The US only fights people it thinks it can walk over.
How about taking on those less democratic governments, like Malaysia or Singapore? Shit, can't do that. They have money and therefore they're the US's friends. Why fight them when you can sell to them?
Bollocks. I opposed the war, and still oppose the war, but that doesn't mean I'm on Saddam Hussein's side. I'm as happy as the next guy to see him in custody.
There were plenty of other ways to have his regime dismantled, but I guess you're not capable of thinking outside the square to work out how.
Australia has a preferential voting system, where you list the candidates you wish to vote for in order from 1 to N, where N is the number of candidates on the ballot paper.
If no candidate gets 50% or more of the vote, then counting goes to prefences, where the second preference of the candidate with the lowest number of votes get distributed to each other candidate, and so on, until someone gets more than 50%.
So voting for minor parties in Australia does not waste your vote.
What a load of crap. The three most productive people in our workplace are the ones who sit down, shut up and get on with their work.
Unfortunately we are forced to share our workspace with someone who simply cannot shut up - he is forever finding the most inane and stupid things to attempt to make conversation with, which inevitably interrupts us.
People are not cattle and should not be treated as such. A bit of privacy and a workplace in which they can get away from loud-mouth social climbers on mobile phones can do a considerable amount for productivity and company morale.
Do I get taxed for all my cron jobs that send me mail?
Do I get taxed for sending email to users who are on the same Unix box that I'm sending mail from?
Do I get taxed for sending email between computers that are all mine, but dispersed around the world and connected together with VPNs?
Do I get taxed when I set up VPNs to the systems of all my friends whom I email on a regular basis to avoid governments snooping to tax my email?
It will never work and even if the government attempted it, thousands of people will move their email accounts onto machines residing in countries without stupid laws attempting to tax email.
No, my box is the SMTP server. It sends out mail directly to the destination addresses. Therefore you have a choice of making me a tax collector (unworkable, due to the number of people also running boxes in such a configuration) or snooping port 25 and charging based on the amount of traffic that goes over that port (in which case you'd also be unfairly taxing people who are using port 25 legitimately for purposes other than SMTP. I have been known to run VPN links over port 25 because it was the only way to break out of a firewall in certain situations).
Even if you did succeed in getting an idiotic law like this through, I'd immediately set up VPNs to the servers of all the people I email on a regular basis to avoid the taxes (and the snooping). A bit of civil disobedience can go a long way to striking down dumb laws.
Not going to work. I don't use my ISP to send mail, at least not in a way they can detect. I use my own server, instead.
Are you going to tax me to send email between the users on my machine? If so, how are you going to monitor the logs? Are you going to give government authorities permission to audit my machine whenever they see fit to? Looking kind of authoritarian, now, isn't it?
How about cron jobs sending me email? Do I get taxed for them, too?
Instant messaging? Tax for that? What about when people get fed up with your email tax and implement an email system over an IM service instead? Or just implement some other of email over any other protocol to bypass your tax system?
Filters are an effective way of combatting spam. Much better - and less oppressive - than a tax. SpamAssassin catches 99% of the spam I receive. It, and other filters, are so effective that spammers are now changing the content of their text to attempt to bypass it. And when they do this, it reduces the effectiveness of their advertising, so in the end, they lose.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had people who are so anal about answering any phone call that they go berserk at me when I don't answer my own phone (and not because they were annoyed at the ring - I have it on a very low volume - but because they simply can't accept the notion that a phone call might not always be important).
Frankly, it doesn't take much for me to not answer a call - bad time of day, bad weather, failure to send caller-ID, idiot person calling. If it's important, they'll leave a message on the voicemail. Or better still, email me.
They're pointing out that some people are simply useless. Bored rich guys are typically the most useless people we have on this planet. Along with those bimbos who walk down catwalks.
A combination of tab-usage (makes pop-ups easy to spot), plus image blocking and FlashBlock gets rid of the most offensive ones, for me.
Turning image animation off also makes the web far more usable.
...in that case, I would institute a ban on all workplace-owned equipment in the home, as well as a ban on using all personal equipment for work when at home. Ie, the landline phone.
Tell that to the Spanish people today and see what sort of reaction you get.
High vitriol is, sadly, to be expected when dealing with neo-conservatives. How else can you react to a person that is accusing you of supporting a horrendous dictator, simply because you don't agree with the method of removing him from power?
It's a simple fact of politics, ever since the neo-cons gained power: their methods of dealing with their opposition are to strongly attack the man, not the issue. They're too brainless and corrupt to do anything else.
Once again, you're deluded. I didn't oppose removing him from power. I opposed the method, something you're clearly too stupid to see. Nuking the entire country would have been another method to remove him; I would have opposed that too. If it was the only method, would you have approved of it? By your insane logic, of course you would have.
I opposed, and still oppose, the unsanctioned invasion of Iraq by US troops which resulted in the deaths of many innocent civilians - not to mention has invoked the wrath of the Islamic world against the west. Hence, because of the hawkish actions of the likes of you, we are all considerably more at risk of terrorist attacks.
What I can't work out is why morons like you settled on a "if they don't support the war, they must support Saddam" argument.
Did losing the moral argument leave you without any valid argument whatsoever? Seriously, accusing people who don't support your point of view of being "Saddam supporters" is truely a sign of a intellectual inferior, someone whose entire world-view is gleaned from sound-bites on commercial television.
Come back to me when you can make a serious argument, because right now, you're demonstrating the mental capacity of a chimp. Hey, you'd make a great presidential decoy for Bush!
Of course it does. China is a dictatorship. Its government brutally suppresses its citizens. It threatens its close neighbours. And, evidentally unlike Iraq, it definitely does have weapons of mass destruction, of the nuclear variety, which it has gone to great lengths to demonstrate to the world at large.
By way of every argument that was used to justify what is rapidly becoming seen as an illegal war on Iraq, the US should be invading China to rid them of these scurges, in the same way they did in the Gulf.
But of course they won't. Why not? Because the hypocritical US government only picks targets where it knows it can win.
Liberation, my arse. So, when is the US going to let them vote for a government of their own? And if they choose an Islamic government, will they be allowed to have it?
And I suppose that informed electorate is the same one that is being fed right-wing propaganda by Fox news?
No, I do not support Saddam. Your reality is warped. I don't see the US attacking China. Clearly, in your fucked up psychology your government must support them!
Those countries are not imperialist hellholes, and they have not attacked the U.S.Iraq never attacked the US either. Oh, a bunch of terrorists did, but since the US's security services have been so inept at actually catching them, they had to go and get a scapegoat, eh? Or was it just payback for the Bush junior, doing something his Dad never managed to do?
Another lie. Oil has nothing to do with anything.Another lie. Oil has everything to do with the US. The US kills people to get oil. The US tramples over other countries to get oil. Oil is all that matters to the US, because without it, it can't maintain its stranglehold on the rest of the world. Iraq was about oil, revenge and brainwashing the electorate, nothing more.
He wouldn't have been there IN THE FIRST PLACE, if it wasn't for the support that the snivelling Yanks gave him. And now they've decided to be the world's policeman, to make George Bush look good in the eyes of the electorate?
Now, why don't you get back on the street and protest in favor of Kim Jong Il or someone like that.Proof that your world is so black and white that you're incapable of thinking straight. I don't support him in the least.
But people like you are so inconsistent it's a wonder you can even function correctly. I expect we'll be seeing US military action against all the dictators in the world, such as Mugabe in Zimbabwe and SLORC in Burma? Oh no, I forgot, they don't have oil.
Or against the Chinese dictatorship? Oh, no, they might actually inflict some damage upon the US.
Or, now you mention it, North Korea? Hell no, they have nukes. The US only fights people it thinks it can walk over.
How about taking on those less democratic governments, like Malaysia or Singapore? Shit, can't do that. They have money and therefore they're the US's friends. Why fight them when you can sell to them?
Bollocks. I opposed the war, and still oppose the war, but that doesn't mean I'm on Saddam Hussein's side. I'm as happy as the next guy to see him in custody.
There were plenty of other ways to have his regime dismantled, but I guess you're not capable of thinking outside the square to work out how.
No, it won't.
Australia has a preferential voting system, where you list the candidates you wish to vote for in order from 1 to N, where N is the number of candidates on the ballot paper.
If no candidate gets 50% or more of the vote, then counting goes to prefences, where the second preference of the candidate with the lowest number of votes get distributed to each other candidate, and so on, until someone gets more than 50%.
So voting for minor parties in Australia does not waste your vote.
"Do you want to have a car, a house and a family when you are 30?"
No, not really. Well, I've got the house, the other two I can well do without.
...tell a lie on a videophone than it is on a plain old audio-only phone.
I can't see it becoming too popular, somehow.
...because everyone uses their real email address when they sign up for p2p programs.
Jamming cell phone spectrum isn't going to stop their cameras from working... are people really that dumb?
...if this patent stops other people writing software to create more literary rubbish, then I'm all for it.
What a load of crap. The three most productive people in our workplace are the ones who sit down, shut up and get on with their work.
Unfortunately we are forced to share our workspace with someone who simply cannot shut up - he is forever finding the most inane and stupid things to attempt to make conversation with, which inevitably interrupts us.
People are not cattle and should not be treated as such. A bit of privacy and a workplace in which they can get away from loud-mouth social climbers on mobile phones can do a considerable amount for productivity and company morale.
Unworkable. Unworkable. Unworkable.
Do I get taxed for all my cron jobs that send me mail?
Do I get taxed for sending email to users who are on the same Unix box that I'm sending mail from?
Do I get taxed for sending email between computers that are all mine, but dispersed around the world and connected together with VPNs?
Do I get taxed when I set up VPNs to the systems of all my friends whom I email on a regular basis to avoid governments snooping to tax my email?
It will never work and even if the government attempted it, thousands of people will move their email accounts onto machines residing in countries without stupid laws attempting to tax email.
You know, I'm quite happy with voting on paper... why do we need electronic voting?
Ah, thanks. That never went anywhere because it all got too complicated for me. Didn't even know where to start.
No, my box is the SMTP server. It sends out mail directly to the destination addresses. Therefore you have a choice of making me a tax collector (unworkable, due to the number of people also running boxes in such a configuration) or snooping port 25 and charging based on the amount of traffic that goes over that port (in which case you'd also be unfairly taxing people who are using port 25 legitimately for purposes other than SMTP. I have been known to run VPN links over port 25 because it was the only way to break out of a firewall in certain situations).
Even if you did succeed in getting an idiotic law like this through, I'd immediately set up VPNs to the servers of all the people I email on a regular basis to avoid the taxes (and the snooping). A bit of civil disobedience can go a long way to striking down dumb laws.
Not going to work. I don't use my ISP to send mail, at least not in a way they can detect. I use my own server, instead.
Are you going to tax me to send email between the users on my machine? If so, how are you going to monitor the logs? Are you going to give government authorities permission to audit my machine whenever they see fit to? Looking kind of authoritarian, now, isn't it?
How about cron jobs sending me email? Do I get taxed for them, too?
Instant messaging? Tax for that? What about when people get fed up with your email tax and implement an email system over an IM service instead? Or just implement some other of email over any other protocol to bypass your tax system?
Filters are an effective way of combatting spam. Much better - and less oppressive - than a tax. SpamAssassin catches 99% of the spam I receive. It, and other filters, are so effective that spammers are now changing the content of their text to attempt to bypass it. And when they do this, it reduces the effectiveness of their advertising, so in the end, they lose.