When you go to Steve Ballmer and ask him if, you know, it might be in the best interest of humanity for you to make Internet Explorer more standards-compliant, how many chairs does he throw at your face?
I understand why you might think that. It is clearly due to a failure of the media and Congress to hold our adminsitration accountable that you still believe that the intelligence at the time supported their case for going to war.
"Saying that he "lied about WMD's" for instance is nonsense, since all intel at the time indicated that they did indeed exist."
Therre was plenty of credible intelligence at the time that said that he didn't, too. This is called "cherrypicking" intelligence. The justification that Congress voted for the war based on the same intelligence is true only because Congress was only able to look at the same intelligence that Bush himself was "looking at" - i.e. the intelligence that the administration selected because it supported the hypothesis that there were WMDs in Iraq. People within the intelligence community who disagreed with this statement were actively smeared - read: Joseph Wilson, who investigated connections between Saddam Hussein . Meanwhile there werep lenty of other assertions that the administration made or insinuated at the time to justify an invasion that didn't even have evidence, namely that Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda and was in some way direclty responsible for 9/11. See also: the Downing Street Memo, which proves that Bush was fixing intelligence around a decision that was made by neoconservatives as early as 1997 to remove Saddam Hussein from power once they had the chance. So I would call that deliberate lying. Just because it was done (at the time) with great dexterity and without leaving tracks doesn't mean it is less delibreate. Why don't you read this interview by PBS of Colonel Laurence Wilkerson. This man actually played in an integral part in *planning the war* and claims: "I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing."
"Some say that these lies have directly resulted in as many as half a million deaths." Talk about "misleading public statements". Some people say the moon landing was faked. Doesn't mean it's true.
I can't let this one go. Republican strategists tried for all 8 years of Clinton's presidency to nail him, they hated him so. The fact that the most credible charge they could come up with was lying about the Lewinsky affair(which was, I admit, stupid and unnecessary) is a testament to his relative integrity as a politician. He was under such heavy scrutiny from the Republican congress that they would have nailed him to the cross had he done something else even remotely as morally reprehensible. But none of preceding accusations levied against him held water, so they were left with the stupid Lewinsky tapes. This is not to excuse him, but to simply show that we once had a competent and relatively honest creature for our president.
This all lies in contrast, of course, to our current president, whose resignation you apparently aren't calling for. He hasn't been held accountable for a single false, misleading, or outright deceptive public statement, of which there are plenty to cite. Some say that these lies have directly resulted in as many as half a million deaths. The only reason he has gotten away with them is because he has encountered virtually no resistance or scrutiny from Congress, and has skillful deceptive tactictians who, in a very real, cynical, Machiavellian sense, have artfully deceived the entire world, America included, into turning over as much power as possible to them and their cronies. Heavy accusations, I know. But unlike many of the Republican accusations against Clinton, theseholdwater.
So what I suppose you are really complaining about is that Clinton got caught.
- Most people who murder someone will probably spend the rest of their life fucked up in the head. They have created their own punishment, living every day with the guilt.
Oh, so they feel really bad about the fact that they murdered someone. Why, that's punishment enough! I don't see why we even punish them at all!
Think about the _very_worst_thing_ you have ever done. Do you think you should be judged for the rest of your life on that one thing?
If the worst thing that I've done is murder someone, then yes. There are two dimensions of this problem.
First, the moral standpoint. the victim of a murder has lost their life, and along with it their capacity for new experience, accomplishments, and other future pleasures that living can confer upon them. If the murderer has got off scot free, then this person's has basically been rendered worthless. Punishing the murderer is an acknowledgemnet of the value of the victim's life - and the value is one that our government is based upon, and has promised to protect, even if it is too late to protect the life itself.
From a practical standpoint, the 5% number is still too high. I don't want 5% of released prisoners killing again. That's an extremely high body count when you consider how many people are released from prison everywhere.
But rehabilitation is besides the point. We must pre-empt the murder, not treat it after the fact. The idea is make the act of murdering someone - - and any crime which incurs suffering - so costly that it will be highly undesirable to do so for the rest of us. The only way we can do this is to make known that the person who commits a specific crime invariably afterwards experiences things so unpleasant that it would a foolish economic decision to commit a similar act.
So what exactly is your argument? Doesn't society have some interest in severely punish those who rob others of their rght to live? If not for moral reasons, then for practical reasons, surely, we an obligation to show that murder is not tolerated.
At least the Nickolodean shows had bona fide slime, believable plastic balls, David Coulier and Marc Summers.
This con looks like it was made with construction-paper, scrunchies, corrugated boxes that once sheltered the homeless, and second-hand curtains acquired from a repo auction.
Sigh. Seriously, what did the standards we once had for quasi-immersive real-life video game re-enactments go?
There was an omission in the summary. Here, I'll correct it.
"[...] Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who are now filthy fucking rich, bitch."
Not OCD. Sub-clinical schizophrenia. . Read all the way to the end of the article(I'm new here). If you don't want to, I'll summarize: It's more about randomness than the iPod. He eventually realizes his suspicions of programmer malfeasance are in fact an expression of his own favoritism, not the iPod's. In other words, its all in his head. So a worthwhile, interesting article, and even if he could have benefitted by experimenting himself, that wouldn't have made for a very fun read, or an interesting question to ask Steve Jobs while he had the chance.
A Congressman is IMing kids with inappropriate messages, and the question we're asking is, "Should we be watching the online conversations of our children so they aren't vulnerable topederasts and other ne'er-do-wells?
Note that this isn't a perfectly valid question, but in my view there is a much more pertinent, critical, undeniably important question begged by this particular story, which is... wait for it... wait... WHY THE HELL ARE WE ELECTING PEDERASTS TO PUBLIC OFFICE?
Point taken. But note that I didn't mean to absolve Apple of all guilt(I did say that Apple was to blame for not making iTMS music playable on any device, i.e. its failure to provide licensing for FairPlay) just to emphasize that it was the RIAA forcing people into using DRM that makes this whole scenario deadlocked to begin with, thereby preventing people from buying cross-compatible music from whichever music store they wish. And I really don't believe DRM is innately necessary, especially in its current, rigid form, and the RIAA will have to adapt to new revenue model in order for them to stay a viable business.
The author of this article seems confused, or at least implicitly blames Apple for "closing off" the iPod.
The iPod can play non-DRM'd media formats, in mp3, non-FairPlay AAC, etc...
If content from other music stores can't play on the iPod, it's not Apple's fault. It's their own fault, most probably because of the RIAA, for clinging to their own proprietary DRM.
On the other hand, it is Apple's(and the RIAA's) fault that iTMS content cannot play on other devices, and this is why we really need a way to strip FairPlay DRM.
It looks like this technology just benefits the record companies, who want to force all their music licensees into developing proprietary DRM technologies that make every single media device mutually incompatible with every other one.
Sigh.
Luckily, this is old news - Johansen had already circumvented the FairPlay encryption algorithm. He just wanted to develop something which was marketable to other music stores who want to compete with iTMS and who have the RIAA's proverbial gun to their heads. This seems like good news for everyone but the people who are buying the music, and (as I see it) the people who create it, who are tethered to an unfair distribution model.
Probably because, as the summary says, this story was buried on page 17 of the Post and needs whatever exposure it can get. Especially since it concerns a critical question regarding our current government. Namely, did they betray us? Were they negligent? Are they incompetent?
This involves a deep betrayal of all of us, of the trust of all of us. As such is relevant content for any forum of discussion, even news for nerds.
That analogy is completely inaccurate. In that scenario, you would lose at most an important piece of yourself.
And your sister.
On the other hand, Google guns+sister+erotic+asphyxiation+cliff+diving if you would like a better picture of what kind of shooting-your-sister-in-the-head scenario a nuclear war would really be like.
I'm not sure how many hits that will turn up, but I'm guessing it will be enough to give you an idea of what launching nuclear missiles at foreign countries will do for you.
The charges that make up the current in a wire travel very slowly, as you say. But electrons unlike photons don't have a set velocity. They are massive particles(meaning they have mass) so therefore their velocity depends on how much momentum/energy you give them(which is quantized.)
I agree with you mostly about Kerry, but I think his platform was obscured by the endless supply of misrepresentations coming from the media and Bush's campaign, deliberately making out Kerry's platform to be weak on security when in fact it wasn't. Kerry's platform was reasonable, and I think he showed what it was composed of during the debates. As such, the 59 million people who voted for Kerry according to his platform qualify Kerry as someone who people cared about. For the other 62 million people who didn't vote for him because he didn't have charisma or you "couldn'/t have a beer with him" or he wasn't an evangelical Christian or he appeared weak, we still have to make the case that there was election malfeasance both in 2000 and 2004 - and we have to use means other than people's sympathy for Kerry's loss, since that's not present on the other side.
Kerry is a admittedly more like a tree than a human being, but I can guarantee you he's more competent than Bush. That said, a tree would be more competent than Bush.
As you can see, my issues with Bush aren't simply ideological anytmore - they deal with the more basic issue of being qualified for the job. If you can't take in real-world factual information and make sound, reasoned decisions from it, you aren't qualified. I wouldn't trust Bush to manage a McDonald's franchise, let alone our country. The only business he hasn't run into the ground is the Texas Dodgers, but that's because he's a talented politican more than a talented leader.
Competency is a core requirement for voting for somebody, and for that reason, regardless of ideological decisions, I think you made the right decision by voting for Kerry.
Oh goodie, another opportunity for Democrats to bitch about losing in 2004 and blame anyone but themselves. Run a decent candidate (Kerry was not it) and you'll have better results.
Ignoring the fact that you have failed to rebut any of the facts or arguments presented in the article:
1. Use a word processor to replace references to Kerry and Bush and election 2004 in that article with other names and a different election.
2. Read the article.
3. Note whether you form emotions of anger or if there is a "salty discharge" flowing down your cheeks due to feelings of sadness.
Because what the article shows is that regardless of who "won" that election, our election system as 1) far from perfect and 2) even outright broken.
Now, the fact that there is even a case to be made here means that our election system is seriously flawed. Counting is a mechanical process - it should not be subject to even the slightest error, and therefore should not be subject to even the slightest doubt. Transparency and perfection are achievable. And yet, at every turn, Mr. Kennedy has been able to show the continuing presence of openings and loopholes and conflicts of interest in the counting process and the registration process.
Now, why haven't we reformed the election process? It's in everyone's interest to make sure that the will of the people is realized, correct? It's in everyone's interest to see that the votes are counted and that we live in a truly Democratic society, right? Or is it?
This is so very important. Unless we establish transparency and reliability in our voting system we are forfeiting our democracy itself.
The Kennedy article was a rehash of all the nonsense liberals have been spewing since 2004.
Since 2004 Republicans have been calling these accusations "nonsense" when it appears to be in their interest to settle the question (and thereby obtain a stronger mandate) by discrediting the facts at hand. And yet this hasn't happened. A mandate was asserted even without rigorous testing of the election results. And here you are, defaming the article and its author as "nonsensical" without actually countering any of the facts.
It's almost like one side is screaming "Our democrcacy is dying" and the other side responds by tacitly and cynically admitting "Haven't you heard? Our democracy is already dead."
So the article itself was redundant when Kennedy wrote it.
As your best friend forever George W. Bush has stated, "Sometimes you need to repeat the truth over and over, so it sinks in." In this case, of course, the "real truth" is what's at stake, and we have an obligation to discover what the real truth is, and repair it if it offends us. Lots of credible people are still reporting on this issue, yet, for some reason, it hasn't made its way into the mainstream media besides in minimal ways.
And it's been months since it was published, so why exactly is it suddenly news now?
Good f*cking question. Nothing in our society stays relevant. Important articles disappear all the time - we live in an information world where, regardless of actual relevancy, nothing stays relevant for more than 24 hours. Or it could just be a collective will of our news media not to "rock the boat" too much, as I believe Keith Olbermann points out in the article.
Oh, that's right, because the elections are just over a month away and the Democrats are offering no clear and concise alternative to Republicans so all they can do is rehash the same assertions they've been making since 2004. Heck, let's be honest, since 2000. The close election of 2000 and the close election of 2004 gave them the idea that if they try to highlight how close the election was and try to make the case that they should've won, people won't realize they have no platform themselves.
Personally I've only purchased one album from iTunes (unfortunatly I can no longer play it because I've changed computers too many times)
Just so you know, there is a button in the iTunes Music Store account information page that lets you deauthorize all the computers that you've previously authorized to play your music. It only lets you do this once a year IIRC, but it's useful if you've reached your limit of 5 computers and can't get to an authorized computer to deauthorize it.
I believe the reason was that in the book, "Where's Waldo? Find Waldo Now!", Waldo is found in one frame hiding inside a woman's vagina.
Apparently one of the frames from the adult edition of the book was mistakenly placed inside a proof for the children's edition. The scene depicted is a giant orgy.
This is, of course, a scandalous oversight. Children should not have to see Waldo's head sticking out of some poor woman's crotch.
Re:There's no such thing as art
on
Are Videogames Art?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think it has everything to do with the "what is art?" question - that's exactly the question begged by your interpretation of the piece.
This is called reflexivity - the art work interrogating itself or its medium or its exhibition, precisely to ask the question "why is this art?" You can't answer that question without first answering the question "what is art?"
Are these coughs art? Are the conversations art? If so, why? Where does the art stop and everything else begin?
Personally I don't think that's good art. I find it pretentious. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't require any technical skill. It asks obvious questions. But anything that is interpreted as a piece of art work can be considered art even if it isn't good art.
As soon as you say something is art it becomes art. The question is then "why do we say that this is art?" since there is no objective definition of "art."
The art crowd has fooled us into thinking that there is something that is objectively art or objectively "good" art. That is absurd. Art is based entirely on how its interpreted and perceived - how can it be anything before it touches your eyes or mouth? There are no concepts communicated by the art piece as an object *in itself*, just like there is nothing communicated by regular objects just in virtue of themselves. Everything we say it communicates is actually an imposition of our minds. Things outside of us have no semantic meaning by themselves, without observers.
When it encounters an audience - be it the artist him/herself or people in a crowd - it becomes art. This is radically subjective definition of art, that some people find offensive. I don't. I think it is everything art is supposed to be - human. It depends on the humans participating in the viewing and the making of it.
If you look at most of the "top rated" and "most rated" titles on YouTube right now, onlya few of them aree clearly coyrighted and illegally posted. When i go to YouTube it's mostly for original works that I can't see anywhere else.
And there a lot of situations where an illegally uploaded YouTube movie could conceivably benefit the copyright holder - in the case of posted television advertisements, for instance. Imagine all that free publiciity with literally zero air-fees. Thus, the prospect of litigation becomes less of a risk, even if it is still quite preesent.
This may not be what most people do, but I don't think saying that YouTube "has survived off of its own lawlessness" is correct. It has survived because of its reliable flash player and sheer volume of fresh content, both original and copyrighted.
Slashdot Mirror
When you go to Steve Ballmer and ask him if, you know, it might be in the best interest of humanity for you to make Internet Explorer more standards-compliant, how many chairs does he throw at your face?
We're willing to believe as few as 10.
I understand why you might think that. It is clearly due to a failure of the media and Congress to hold our adminsitration accountable that you still believe that the intelligence at the time supported their case for going to war.
"Saying that he "lied about WMD's" for instance is nonsense, since all intel at the time indicated that they did indeed exist."
Therre was plenty of credible intelligence at the time that said that he didn't, too. This is called "cherrypicking" intelligence. The justification that Congress voted for the war based on the same intelligence is true only because Congress was only able to look at the same intelligence that Bush himself was "looking at" - i.e. the intelligence that the administration selected because it supported the hypothesis that there were WMDs in Iraq. People within the intelligence community who disagreed with this statement were actively smeared - read: Joseph Wilson, who investigated connections between Saddam Hussein . Meanwhile there werep lenty of other assertions that the administration made or insinuated at the time to justify an invasion that didn't even have evidence, namely that Saddam was connected to Al Qaeda and was in some way direclty responsible for 9/11. See also: the Downing Street Memo, which proves that Bush was fixing intelligence around a decision that was made by neoconservatives as early as 1997 to remove Saddam Hussein from power once they had the chance. So I would call that deliberate lying. Just because it was done (at the time) with great dexterity and without leaving tracks doesn't mean it is less delibreate. Why don't you read this interview by PBS of Colonel Laurence Wilkerson. This man actually played in an integral part in *planning the war* and claims: "I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing."
"Some say that these lies have directly resulted in as many as half a million deaths." Talk about "misleading public statements". Some people say the moon landing was faked. Doesn't mean it's true.
A very reputable pollster recently showed with (according to him) 95% certainty that up to 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the war began, far exceeding the "official" body count.
So I include myself among those people who believe that the real body count far exceeds the official one, which stands right now at 48,000 - a lower number indeed, but one that should still offend you.
I can't let this one go. Republican strategists tried for all 8 years of Clinton's presidency to nail him, they hated him so. The fact that the most credible charge they could come up with was lying about the Lewinsky affair(which was, I admit, stupid and unnecessary) is a testament to his relative integrity as a politician. He was under such heavy scrutiny from the Republican congress that they would have nailed him to the cross had he done something else even remotely as morally reprehensible. But none of preceding accusations levied against him held water, so they were left with the stupid Lewinsky tapes. This is not to excuse him, but to simply show that we once had a competent and relatively honest creature for our president.
This all lies in contrast, of course, to our current president, whose resignation you apparently aren't calling for. He hasn't been held accountable for a single false, misleading, or outright deceptive public statement, of which there are plenty to cite. Some say that these lies have directly resulted in as many as half a million deaths. The only reason he has gotten away with them is because he has encountered virtually no resistance or scrutiny from Congress, and has skillful deceptive tactictians who, in a very real, cynical, Machiavellian sense, have artfully deceived the entire world, America included, into turning over as much power as possible to them and their cronies. Heavy accusations, I know. But unlike many of the Republican accusations against Clinton, these hold water.
So what I suppose you are really complaining about is that Clinton got caught.
Ben Affleck has vanished and now no one can save us!?
I thought Ben Affleck vanishing was saving us.
Only on slashdot can you get modded down for an anti-murder post.
Sigh.
- Most people who murder someone will probably spend the rest of their life fucked up in the head. They have created their own punishment, living every day with the guilt.
Oh, so they feel really bad about the fact that they murdered someone. Why, that's punishment enough! I don't see why we even punish them at all!
Think about the _very_worst_thing_ you have ever done. Do you think you should be judged for the rest of your life on that one thing?
If the worst thing that I've done is murder someone, then yes. There are two dimensions of this problem.
First, the moral standpoint. the victim of a murder has lost their life, and along with it their capacity for new experience, accomplishments, and other future pleasures that living can confer upon them. If the murderer has got off scot free, then this person's has basically been rendered worthless. Punishing the murderer is an acknowledgemnet of the value of the victim's life - and the value is one that our government is based upon, and has promised to protect, even if it is too late to protect the life itself.
From a practical standpoint, the 5% number is still too high. I don't want 5% of released prisoners killing again. That's an extremely high body count when you consider how many people are released from prison everywhere.
But rehabilitation is besides the point. We must pre-empt the murder, not treat it after the fact. The idea is make the act of murdering someone - - and any crime which incurs suffering - so costly that it will be highly undesirable to do so for the rest of us. The only way we can do this is to make known that the person who commits a specific crime invariably afterwards experiences things so unpleasant that it would a foolish economic decision to commit a similar act.
So what exactly is your argument? Doesn't society have some interest in severely punish those who rob others of their rght to live? If not for moral reasons, then for practical reasons, surely, we an obligation to show that murder is not tolerated.
At least the Nickolodean shows had bona fide slime, believable plastic balls, David Coulier and Marc Summers.
This con looks like it was made with construction-paper, scrunchies, corrugated boxes that once sheltered the homeless, and second-hand curtains acquired from a repo auction.
Sigh. Seriously, what did the standards we once had for quasi-immersive real-life video game re-enactments go?
There was an omission in the summary. Here, I'll correct it.
"[...] Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who are now filthy fucking rich, bitch."
Not OCD. Sub-clinical schizophrenia. . Read all the way to the end of the article(I'm new here). If you don't want to, I'll summarize: It's more about randomness than the iPod. He eventually realizes his suspicions of programmer malfeasance are in fact an expression of his own favoritism, not the iPod's. In other words, its all in his head. So a worthwhile, interesting article, and even if he could have benefitted by experimenting himself, that wouldn't have made for a very fun read, or an interesting question to ask Steve Jobs while he had the chance.
A Congressman is IMing kids with inappropriate messages, and the question we're asking is, "Should we be watching the online conversations of our children so they aren't vulnerable topederasts and other ne'er-do-wells?
Note that this isn't a perfectly valid question, but in my view there is a much more pertinent, critical, undeniably important question begged by this particular story, which is...
wait for it...
wait...
WHY THE HELL ARE WE ELECTING PEDERASTS TO PUBLIC OFFICE?
Seriously, why?
Point taken. But note that I didn't mean to absolve Apple of all guilt(I did say that Apple was to blame for not making iTMS music playable on any device, i.e. its failure to provide licensing for FairPlay) just to emphasize that it was the RIAA forcing people into using DRM that makes this whole scenario deadlocked to begin with, thereby preventing people from buying cross-compatible music from whichever music store they wish. And I really don't believe DRM is innately necessary, especially in its current, rigid form, and the RIAA will have to adapt to new revenue model in order for them to stay a viable business.
The author of this article seems confused, or at least implicitly blames Apple for "closing off" the iPod.
The iPod can play non-DRM'd media formats, in mp3, non-FairPlay AAC, etc...
If content from other music stores can't play on the iPod, it's not Apple's fault. It's their own fault, most probably because of the RIAA, for clinging to their own proprietary DRM.
On the other hand, it is Apple's(and the RIAA's) fault that iTMS content cannot play on other devices, and this is why we really need a way to strip FairPlay DRM.
It looks like this technology just benefits the record companies, who want to force all their music licensees into developing proprietary DRM technologies that make every single media device mutually incompatible with every other one.
Sigh.
Luckily, this is old news - Johansen had already circumvented the FairPlay encryption algorithm. He just wanted to develop something which was marketable to other music stores who want to compete with iTMS and who have the RIAA's proverbial gun to their heads. This seems like good news for everyone but the people who are buying the music, and (as I see it) the people who create it, who are tethered to an unfair distribution model.
Probably because, as the summary says, this story was buried on page 17 of the Post and needs whatever exposure it can get. Especially since it concerns a critical question regarding our current government. Namely, did they betray us? Were they negligent? Are they incompetent?
This involves a deep betrayal of all of us, of the trust of all of us. As such is relevant content for any forum of discussion, even news for nerds.
That analogy is completely inaccurate. In that scenario, you would lose at most an important piece of yourself.
And your sister.
On the other hand, Google guns+sister+erotic+asphyxiation+cliff+diving if you would like a better picture of what kind of shooting-your-sister-in-the-head scenario a nuclear war would really be like.
I'm not sure how many hits that will turn up, but I'm guessing it will be enough to give you an idea of what launching nuclear missiles at foreign countries will do for you.
Really, I'm not sure.
The charges that make up the current in a wire travel very slowly, as you say. But electrons unlike photons don't have a set velocity. They are massive particles(meaning they have mass) so therefore their velocity depends on how much momentum/energy you give them(which is quantized.)
Rangers, not Dodgers. Sorry.
I agree with you mostly about Kerry, but I think his platform was obscured by the endless supply of misrepresentations coming from the media and Bush's campaign, deliberately making out Kerry's platform to be weak on security when in fact it wasn't. Kerry's platform was reasonable, and I think he showed what it was composed of during the debates. As such, the 59 million people who voted for Kerry according to his platform qualify Kerry as someone who people cared about. For the other 62 million people who didn't vote for him because he didn't have charisma or you "couldn'/t have a beer with him" or he wasn't an evangelical Christian or he appeared weak, we still have to make the case that there was election malfeasance both in 2000 and 2004 - and we have to use means other than people's sympathy for Kerry's loss, since that's not present on the other side.
Kerry is a admittedly more like a tree than a human being, but I can guarantee you he's more competent than Bush. That said, a tree would be more competent than Bush.
As you can see, my issues with Bush aren't simply ideological anytmore - they deal with the more basic issue of being qualified for the job. If you can't take in real-world factual information and make sound, reasoned decisions from it, you aren't qualified. I wouldn't trust Bush to manage a McDonald's franchise, let alone our country. The only business he hasn't run into the ground is the Texas Dodgers, but that's because he's a talented politican more than a talented leader.
Competency is a core requirement for voting for somebody, and for that reason, regardless of ideological decisions, I think you made the right decision by voting for Kerry.
Ignoring the fact that you have failed to rebut any of the facts or arguments presented in the article:
1. Use a word processor to replace references to Kerry and Bush and election 2004 in that article with other names and a different election.
2. Read the article.
3. Note whether you form emotions of anger or if there is a "salty discharge" flowing down your cheeks due to feelings of sadness.
Because what the article shows is that regardless of who "won" that election, our election system as 1) far from perfect and 2) even outright broken.
Now, the fact that there is even a case to be made here means that our election system is seriously flawed. Counting is a mechanical process - it should not be subject to even the slightest error, and therefore should not be subject to even the slightest doubt. Transparency and perfection are achievable. And yet, at every turn, Mr. Kennedy has been able to show the continuing presence of openings and loopholes and conflicts of interest in the counting process and the registration process.
Now, why haven't we reformed the election process? It's in everyone's interest to make sure that the will of the people is realized, correct? It's in everyone's interest to see that the votes are counted and that we live in a truly Democratic society, right? Or is it?
This is so very important. Unless we establish transparency and reliability in our voting system we are forfeiting our democracy itself.
The Kennedy article was a rehash of all the nonsense liberals have been spewing since 2004.
Since 2004 Republicans have been calling these accusations "nonsense" when it appears to be in their interest to settle the question (and thereby obtain a stronger mandate) by discrediting the facts at hand. And yet this hasn't happened. A mandate was asserted even without rigorous testing of the election results. And here you are, defaming the article and its author as "nonsensical" without actually countering any of the facts.
It's almost like one side is screaming "Our democrcacy is dying" and the other side responds by tacitly and cynically admitting "Haven't you heard? Our democracy is already dead."
As your best friend forever George W. Bush has stated, "Sometimes you need to repeat the truth over and over, so it sinks in." In this case, of course, the "real truth" is what's at stake, and we have an obligation to discover what the real truth is, and repair it if it offends us. Lots of credible people are still reporting on this issue, yet, for some reason, it hasn't made its way into the mainstream media besides in minimal ways.
Good f*cking question. Nothing in our society stays relevant. Important articles disappear all the time - we live in an information world where, regardless of actual relevancy, nothing stays relevant for more than 24 hours. Or it could just be a collective will of our news media not to "rock the boat" too much, as I believe Keith Olbermann points out in the article.
Just so you know, there is a button in the iTunes Music Store account information page that lets you deauthorize all the computers that you've previously authorized to play your music. It only lets you do this once a year IIRC, but it's useful if you've reached your limit of 5 computers and can't get to an authorized computer to deauthorize it.
I believe the reason was that in the book, "Where's Waldo? Find Waldo Now!", Waldo is found in one frame hiding inside a woman's vagina.
Apparently one of the frames from the adult edition of the book was mistakenly placed inside a proof for the children's edition. The scene depicted is a giant orgy.
This is, of course, a scandalous oversight. Children should not have to see Waldo's head sticking out of some poor woman's crotch.
I'm not sure if you're kidding or not.
These lawyers defend people who are being sued by the RIAA. That would make them the opposite of whom you accuse them of being.
I hope you are kidding. If you aren't, please RTFA or at least RTF Headline.
If the black hole is inside the world, doesn't that mean Vonnegut will disappear into his own imagination?
/keanureeves
Woah, man. I think you just blew my mind.
keanureeves If I even have a mind....
Except it would be more like....
"Oh shit!"
I think it has everything to do with the "what is art?" question - that's exactly the question begged by your interpretation of the piece.
This is called reflexivity - the art work interrogating itself or its medium or its exhibition, precisely to ask the question "why is this art?" You can't answer that question without first answering the question "what is art?"
Are these coughs art? Are the conversations art? If so, why? Where does the art stop and everything else begin?
Personally I don't think that's good art. I find it pretentious. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't require any technical skill. It asks obvious questions. But anything that is interpreted as a piece of art work can be considered art even if it isn't good art.
As soon as you say something is art it becomes art. The question is then "why do we say that this is art?" since there is no objective definition of "art."
The art crowd has fooled us into thinking that there is something that is objectively art or objectively "good" art. That is absurd. Art is based entirely on how its interpreted and perceived - how can it be anything before it touches your eyes or mouth? There are no concepts communicated by the art piece as an object *in itself*, just like there is nothing communicated by regular objects just in virtue of themselves. Everything we say it communicates is actually an imposition of our minds. Things outside of us have no semantic meaning by themselves, without observers.
When it encounters an audience - be it the artist him/herself or people in a crowd - it becomes art. This is radically subjective definition of art, that some people find offensive. I don't. I think it is everything art is supposed to be - human. It depends on the humans participating in the viewing and the making of it.
I don't necessarily think that's true.
If you look at most of the "top rated" and "most rated" titles on YouTube right now, onlya few of them aree clearly coyrighted and illegally posted. When i go to YouTube it's mostly for original works that I can't see anywhere else.
And there a lot of situations where an illegally uploaded YouTube movie could conceivably benefit the copyright holder - in the case of posted television advertisements, for instance. Imagine all that free publiciity with literally zero air-fees. Thus, the prospect of litigation becomes less of a risk, even if it is still quite preesent.
This may not be what most people do, but I don't think saying that YouTube "has survived off of its own lawlessness" is correct. It has survived because of its reliable flash player and sheer volume of fresh content, both original and copyrighted.