so beta beta beta beta beta? what's the difference between a release and a beta if everyone gets the so called beta?
so annoying annoying annoying annoying annoying? what's the difference between a slashdot post and an annoying post if everyone gets the annoying post?
The have the right to choose what they want and what they don't want showing up in their search engine.
I'm not sure it is that simple. If users have an expectation of unbiased search results and Google makes money providing that supposedly unbiased search, then it is not a forgone conclusion that Gooogle is free to bias results in their own self-interest.
Secondly, if Google restricted their search results AT THE REQUEST OF THE GOVERNMENT then that is censorship of the press and would not be constitutional (and it can be argued that Google News is the "press" since it provides a custom-made newspaper to your desktop). However, in this case it would not be Google violating the law, but the government.
That raises an interesting question - It is clear that the government would be violating the law by censoring the press, but if a newspaper cooperated in that censorship would it also be violating the constitution? (RICO statutes and conspiracy come to mind).
I've been to Paris many times and don;t find them particularly rude. The thing most Americans find "rude" is that the Parisiens don't or won't speak English. Com'on - it IS France. Think about how you would react in your town if 30 or 40 people a day came up to you and just started speaking French and got upset if you didn't. After a while you would probably just say you didn't speak French when you really could.
I've found a good way to get shopkeepers and waiters to speak in English is to ask them if they speak English (preferably in French), and then if they say Non, start speaking in high school French (the only kind I know). After a couple of sentences the person usually admits, "Well, maybe I speak a LITTLE English". AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, do it with good will and a little humor!
And here is a good one - you often get tested by French waiters and if you fail you get lousy service. I once observed a Parisien waiter serve a British couple. He said "Madam" to the man, and "Monsueir" to the woman as he handed them their menues. They didn't bat an eye and got lousy service for the meal. Their lack of response showed the waiter that they were not listening to HIM, because everybody knows the difference between Madam and Monsueir.
Another time I saw an American woman and her daughter huffing and puffing about how the guide showing the bells at Notre Dame was not there. There was a note on the door and when the mother made the daughter go read it, the daughter huffed loudly, looked up at the sky and exclaimed " Its in FRENCH" in disgust. Reading a bit of French I looked at the sign as was amazed to see that it was actually handwritten in English, explaining that the guide was at lunch and would be back in 45 minutes. I say no wonder the French in Paris are sometimes rude to tourists - the tourists are rude first, annoyed at being rebuffed in their pursuit of a challenge-free Disneyland Europe.
Inter city trains make sense. When they can travel long distances without stopping they are at their fastest and most efficient. Urban trains make no sense, the continual stop/start nature of the journeys ruins the efficiency and average speed, the multi stage journeys required to travel anywhere but along the corridor of travel makes journey times extremely long, 2-3 times as long even accounting for road congestion.
Excuse me, but this makes no sense. Please check with the inhabitants of New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, London, Paris, Moscow and the US Northeast in general for the efficiency of their urban train systems.
He subverted the will of the American people in their choice of a president.
Which proves that your voting system is fatally flawed
"Fatally flawed" is a considerable leap in logic and hyperbole. The election process may indeed be flawed, but that was not your original point. You were expounding the virtues of the Nader candidacy and creating grand conspiracy theories about his exclusion from the debates at the command of the corporations.
I think your tendancy to jump to such extreme conclusions with such little evidence damages your credibility.
Perhaps the REAL reason Nader was not allow in the presidential debates was because neither the corporate new media, nor their advertisers had bought him off. Seems logical doesn't it?
No, it doesn't seem logical at all. It seems more logical that Nader was not on the podium because he is not a viable candidate with any chance of winning the election.
Say what you will, Nader basically decided the last election. If there was no Nader, we would have a different president right now. You sound like you think this was a good thing. Nader didn't "decide" the election, he SPOILED the election. He subverted the will of the American people in their choice of a president. Nader "decided" the election in the way that a spoiled child "decides" who gets to play by breaking all the toys.
If the best you can do to make your "candidate" an important one is to rejoice that he can totally fuck up an election at will, then you are really screwed.
Don't forget one of the basic principles of the Religious Right: Man was given dominion over all the creatures of the Earth. Therefore by definition anything Man does is right (i.e. strip mining, rain forest denudation, air pollution, species extermination, etc). Just having people around who thought this way was scary enough, but now that they have become the government and their viewpoints hve become public policy it is really frightening.
Would it not be very easy to simply mask one dot of each of the constellations on the original bill (thereby destroying the pattern), copy it, and then paste the dot back once the image is in Photoshop? This would be a bit time-consumming, but couterfeiting has always been a time-consuming trade.
Another way to get around this would be to copy the bills in many thin strips and re-assemble them in Photoshop into a whole bill.
Of course it may be that even the re-assembled image cannot be printed, but if the constellations are very subtle a counterfiet bill with some of its pattern dots removed should have no trouble passing human inspection.
Then there is the problem that the counterfeiters can simply use an old copy of Photoshop. I have versions back to 4.0 myself.
Bush attacked Kerry on his multilateralism, not because of his criticism of Bush's policies. Bush made it clear that he didn't need international authority to defend US interests. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two.
What neocon simple-think. Everything is either black or white with this ideology. Just because a President would consult with allies and try to gain other countries' support for our nation's policies does NOT mean that he has forfeit the ability to defend the country.
Bush's oft-said belief that "He doesn't need to ask anyone for permission to defend America" is just self-serving spin and a distortion of the true situation. Of course he doesn't, but neither would he have needed it if he had tried to build an alliance before going to war.
This doesn't even address whether or not attacking Iraq was really defending the country. Of course the real problem Bush had with going to the UN was that he did not have any real evidence that Iraq had any WMD.
Just as the USA has been hypocritical about the regimes that it supports,
I don't understand your reference to the US being hypercritical of the regimes we support.
the French, Germans & Russians (and to a small degree ChiComs) are being hypocritical about Iraq.
I don't think France and Germany are being hypercritical of the US because they simply refused to invade a country that was absolutely no threat to them and had no relationship to the war on terrorism. That sounds more like sovereignty to me. I also don't think it out of line for them to complain about the new American policy of pre-emptive invasion (particularly when the evidence for it was made up) - a very dangerous policy and the opposite of the US and NATO's policies of the past 50 years.
Saddam could have paraded IRBMs and nukes down Main St. Baghdad, and France/Germany/Russia would have opposed any attempts to remove them, because they had an economic stake in keeping Saddam in power.
You're making an assumption here that is a statement of belief and not fact. We don't know the answer to "what-ifs", but I suspect that if Saddam had paraded nukes and missles the French and German responses to our request would have been very different. In reality (again we get back to the bain of neocon simple-think: reality) there was NO evidence of WMDs, Saddam
in reality had no such weapons, and the French and Germans knew that.
A bit less hypocricy by all parties involved would be very useful.
I agree with this, however I am not aware that the French or Germans ever claimed they did not have economic interests in the regime. On the other hand, the Bush administration has claimed over and over again that their motives were pure and unblemished by greed and profit. Also, Saddam was the HWBush administration's great friend when he opposed the Iranians, and HWBush could not have cared less about the Kurds when Saddam gassed them (in fact we gave him the chemicals to do it). Now Bush II wants to save the US from WMD's, no, wait..., he wants to spread democracy, no, wait..., he wants to help the Iraqi people. Yes, less hypocrisy would be a good thing.
If my friend is busy skimming the books at the bank that I was planning on robbing, then yes.
Huh?
Try searching google for "germany un food for oil scandal".
I don't have to google it, I know about it. I even know about the pseudo-scandal with Annan's son working for the aid agency years ago. What does it have to do with our stupid foray into Iraq? Are you saying that because others are greedy bastards it is OK for America to be too? I don't agree - we should be better than that, not gleefully jumping in the cesspool with the others.
Agree or disagree with Iraq, the Germans and the French had an economic stake in keeping Saddam in power.
Do you think the Germans and the French aren't allowed to look after their own economic interests just because they aren't Americans? Are you pretending that Bush went into Iraq for altruistic reasons and not to gain control of its oil and play military genius with real lives?
We put Saddam in power when it suited our purposes and kept him there when it suited our purposes. Have you seen the picture of a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam? We gave Saddam those weapons he used on the Kurds, you know.
The entire metal frame of this dirigible, which was the size of a large ocean liner, was melted within seconds...reduced the entire airship to slag and ashes in under 1 minute
What you are saying just isn't true. The visual record is available and anyone can see for themselves that the ship was not reduced to slag in under a minute. Photos of the wreckage the next day show clearly defined structural beams.
Additionally, the ship did continue to support itself long enough for may passengers to escape. The ship settled to the ground (hard, I admit) when the fire broke out, but once the weight of the engines and passenger compartments were on the ground the gas envelope continued to supported itself.
As for "size of a large ocean liner", gimme a break. That is volume, not mass. Your implication that there was enough energy released in 1 minute to melt an ocean liner is absurd. There wasn't even enough energy released to melt the framework of the derigible. Almost all of the framework survived. Look at the photos.
That's because Japan/Germany were beaten into submission. Drop 2 atomic bombs on Iraq, and firebomb Baghdad and things might change.
Yes, things would change. The US would become the pariah nation of the planet. No country would trade with us, we would never get another drop of oil from anyone, and we would be embargoed in every area of trade and cooperation. The results would be either revolution or the country would be ruined economically in five years (or both). I'm not even going to mention the jihad of all jihads that would plunge the world into religious warfare for the forseeable future.
The neocon simple-thinking that military power alone will solve our problems is what has gotten this country into so much trouble. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et. al. think they are such geniuses and yet they continue to take the most imbecilic simple-minded approaches to everything.
The problem is that the neocons actually believed their own wishful-thinking ("Iraq will be easy, our military is the best", and the infamous "Mission Accomplished"), but all they have accomplished is to run us full speed into the wall of reality where thousands of insurgents have AK-47s, RPGs and IEDs. Not to mention that 60% of the world's population is coming to hate our guts with religious passion.
We now find ourselves in the murderous position of not being able to stay and not being able to leave Iraq. And although some may think that nukes will solve the problem, that is the same simple-minded reasoning that would get us even deeper into the reality shit-hole.
The Germans were asked to help fight terrorist in Afghanistan AND THEY DID HELP US. In fact they are still there helping us, as are the French.
What they refused to do, and rightly so, was help George Bush conduct his own personal trumped-up war with Saddam Hussein. With over 1,100 US troops killed to date and with the situation getting worse every day (four more Marines killed yesterday) it looks like they were right.
If your best friend asks you to help him rob a bank and you refuse and instead try to talk him out of it - are you his friend or a back-stabber?
Several months ago papers started to circulate about how to effectively ban arial photoography to prevent precise measurement and targetting of sensitive targets (nuclear power plants, etc). If you live near a target like this you'll soon notice a large fenced area with a large white square building in the center. This building hides a pulses infra red laser which is diffused skyward to destroy the autofocus of most cameras and in many cases it will destroy the camera's light element itself.
I can't believe how insane this idea is. DHS spending millions for some crazy laser thing when anyone can pecisely determine the position of anything with a stick, two nails and a protractor - as we did in geometry class in high school.
This is just a crazy as the ban on photography in the NYC subway system. For crying out loud, I could photograph every inch of any station and no one would ever be the wiser. Just put the camera in a bag or briefcase with a hole for the lens. Use one of the $2 timer chips mentioned in this article if you really want to be sneaky.
What are all these anti-terrorist experts thinking of? They seem to be concentrating great time, money and effort on solutions to non-problems that are trivial to overcome by anyone.
When a million dollar anti-camera laser can be defeated by $1.98 in school supplies or a $5 disposable fixed-focus camera we need to re-evaluate the credentials of our so-called experts. Hmmmm. I wonder if Halliburton got the contract for these anti-camera laser things?
This is a perfect example of slashdot. You SOUND as though you know what you are talking about but then you get some basic thing totally wrong and your credibility as a know-it-all goes down the drain.
(The "neutron bomb" was a planned attempt to replace the fission warheads with chemical explosives, creating a thermonuclear explosion with no radioactive fallout- a truly impressive feat if it were possible.)
You got that exactly backwards. The neutron bomb would release large amounts of neutrons and gamma radiation without the large explosion - thereby killing all living things within a large radius but causing explosion damage only within a small radius.
Compare statistics in OUR main city against Stockholm's, and be grateful you're there.
Except during the Winter or when you're on line for liquor:-p...or when you want some excitement. Imagine, four people on a balcony in Stockholm having a Crayfish Party (don't ask - it involves crayfish and vodka) singing drunken songs and the neighbors COMPLAINED to the police! Sheesh. Never would have happened in NYC.
Seriously, I've wandered the streets of Stockholm at 2AM myself and felt safe, but I've also wandered the streets of Manhattan at 2AM and felt safe, too. NYC (at least Manhattan) does not deserve its bad reputation for safety. To get back on topic though - your bicycle will definately get stolen in NY and if they can't get the whole thing they will take parts as I know from experience.
Man up and get yourself a goddam SUV! Only a damn clog-wearing fairy would ride a bike anyway! And how do you ride a bike with clogs on, anyway?!?
Hmmmm. Try riding a bike in Manhattan to see what kind of balls it takes. Then pull up to some bike messengers in that manly SUV of yours and call them fairies. (And don't even think about being able to outrun 'em.)
This is actually how the free market SHOULD work! There is a need for a service and you have an ability and so do others... so the boss hires the person that will do it for the best quality/price ratio. However now with the minimum wage laws it doesn't work that way. The government now tells employers how much a job is worth.
Yeah right. This was the way it was in the 30's during the Great Depression when companies would advertise 20 jobs and when 1,000 people showed up they would let them bid for the spots. Great way to get essentially free labor because there is always someone with a family that was going hungry who was desperate for enough money to feed their kids that night. Oh, and the next day if someone else was even hungrier the first poor schmuck was replaced.
There was almost a violent revolution in this country in the 30's, but they didn't teach you that in school, did they? The abuse of working people was what caused the rise of the great labor unions that were able to give working Americans some power over their own lives and break that master/slave relationship. So here come the wage-bidding wars back. Stupid idea.
However now with the minimum wage laws it doesn't work that way.
Do you know that the poverty rate in the US is 12.5% with 35 MILLION PEOPLE living at or below the poverty line while the average CEO makes 300 times the salary of their employees. The average CEO takes home $155,000 PER WEEK while the average worker takes home only $517 per week. I'd be very curious as to what the salary of the hospital CEO, or even the hospital administrator is that wants nurses to work for a few dollars per hour. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would today be $15.71 per hour, more than three times the current minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. If we are going to bid for salaries let's let the CEOs bid on theirs, too.
Was this bidding allowed because of the Bush administration's "simplification" of the overtime rules taking away time and a half foe millions of workers (particulary IT professionals)? Yet Bush would have us think it was going to increase the number of people who would get paid overtime. Bullshit.
Now you think it is a good idea to start allowing companies to require their employees bid on their own jobs?? Specifically in this instance there will always be a nurse who has a family emergency who needs money so desperately she or he will always be willing to bid next to nothing just to insure they get those extra hours. Talk about PREYING on the misfortune of others. The hospital administrators should be run out of town on a rail.
This won't work. The odor does not come from surface dirt, but from the organic molecules absorbed by the plastics and resins of the cases and components. Dishwashing won;t do anyting to get those out.
The only solution is to get those organic molecules out of the materials and that is not going to be easy. Here are the things I would try:
1) Heat. This increases the diffusion rate of the offending molecules from the plastics. Make sure you vent the oven to get the organic vapor out or they will just re-absorb as the unit cools.
2) Activated Carbon. Activated carbon has a great affinity for organic molecules. You may want to put each PC in a cloth bag and bury it in activated carbon for a while. Test with one first to make sure the carbon fines don't short-circuit anyhting. Get activated carbon from a scientific supply.
3) Heat and Charcoal - probably the best solution would be a conmbination of the two above solutions. I would put each PC in a cloth bag and bury the bag in a bed of activated charcoal. Bake everything on low heat for several hours (120 - 150 F). Use just a warm oven because high heat reduces the effectiveness of the activated charcoal. You can re-charge activated charcoal between uses by heating it at 350-400 F in the oven to drive the organics out of it. That will stink.
A corporation is not a person; legally, figuratively, literally, or in any other fashion. A corporation is a model of ownership, just like "sole proprietorship" or "partnership."
I guess you think if you sound positive enough people will believe you. However, in reality, a corporation IS often considered to be a person. Corpor..., Corpus..., Body..., Person... get it?
As proof of your statement, you offered...
(1) a corporation uses allocation of stock to shareholders, whether publicly traded or not
And just what does that have to do with the price of eggs? There is no reason to think that issueing stock prevents anyone from being a person. In fact it is common. People often incorporate themselves and often have investors who own a share of their earnings (prizefighters come to mind). No one would ever state that these people are not real persons. Your statement simply has no bearing on the topic.
(2) the separate entity clause, which says very clearly that the assets, debts, etc. of the corporation are separate from the assets, debts, etc. of the owners (shareholders) - meaning if a company gets sued, litigants generally can't make a claim against the shareholders' assets.
Although I don't know what "clause" you are talking about, this is a generally true statement. However once again your argument has no bearing on whether a corporation is a person or not. No one contends that the corporate entity and the stockholders are the same.
I recieved one of the notices from Paypal, and yes, they will "fine" ME if I use my money in a non-approved way. As incredibly convenient as Paypal is, i have to agree with you and will be cancelling my account.
I have always been uncomfortable with paypal's ability to enter my bank account and withdraw as much as they see fit. Now that it is their official policy to do so it pushes them over the edge.
Just who do they think they are anyway? Let them ban transactions they don't like and cancel accounts, but a FINE!? Fines are levied by the government and courts, not by for-profit entities, and even the government can't enter your bank account and take money without due process.
Because Paypal is soooo convenient I may open a special bank account with just enough money in it to cover my Paypal charges. Let them try to get any so-called "fine" out of my $20 bank account THEN.
"We don't want Kafka knocking on the door in the middle of the night," he said. But "there is some risk."
Oh that Kafka, he's a scary one.
Seriously, if the people in positions of power like this are so badly educated, we are screwed.
Oh com'on! It was just a play on words. To have Kafka himself knocking on your door in the dead of night is a pretty good image to get the point across.
Having said that, the people in power ARE that illiterate and ignorant, and we ARE screwed. And if the incompetent neo-con morons who think they are such brilliant geniuses (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and their ilk) remain in power four more years then we are REALLY screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
so beta beta beta beta beta? what's the difference between a release and a beta if everyone gets the so called beta?
so annoying annoying annoying annoying annoying? what's the difference between a slashdot post and an annoying post if everyone gets the annoying post?
The have the right to choose what they want and what they don't want showing up in their search engine.
I'm not sure it is that simple. If users have an expectation of unbiased search results and Google makes money providing that supposedly unbiased search, then it is not a forgone conclusion that Gooogle is free to bias results in their own self-interest.
Secondly, if Google restricted their search results AT THE REQUEST OF THE GOVERNMENT then that is censorship of the press and would not be constitutional (and it can be argued that Google News is the "press" since it provides a custom-made newspaper to your desktop). However, in this case it would not be Google violating the law, but the government.
That raises an interesting question - It is clear that the government would be violating the law by censoring the press, but if a newspaper cooperated in that censorship would it also be violating the constitution? (RICO statutes and conspiracy come to mind).
I've been to Paris many times and don;t find them particularly rude. The thing most Americans find "rude" is that the Parisiens don't or won't speak English. Com'on - it IS France. Think about how you would react in your town if 30 or 40 people a day came up to you and just started speaking French and got upset if you didn't. After a while you would probably just say you didn't speak French when you really could.
I've found a good way to get shopkeepers and waiters to speak in English is to ask them if they speak English (preferably in French), and then if they say Non, start speaking in high school French (the only kind I know). After a couple of sentences the person usually admits, "Well, maybe I speak a LITTLE English". AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, do it with good will and a little humor!
And here is a good one - you often get tested by French waiters and if you fail you get lousy service. I once observed a Parisien waiter serve a British couple. He said "Madam" to the man, and "Monsueir" to the woman as he handed them their menues. They didn't bat an eye and got lousy service for the meal. Their lack of response showed the waiter that they were not listening to HIM, because everybody knows the difference between Madam and Monsueir.
Another time I saw an American woman and her daughter huffing and puffing about how the guide showing the bells at Notre Dame was not there. There was a note on the door and when the mother made the daughter go read it, the daughter huffed loudly, looked up at the sky and exclaimed " Its in FRENCH" in disgust. Reading a bit of French I looked at the sign as was amazed to see that it was actually handwritten in English, explaining that the guide was at lunch and would be back in 45 minutes. I say no wonder the French in Paris are sometimes rude to tourists - the tourists are rude first, annoyed at being rebuffed in their pursuit of a challenge-free Disneyland Europe.
Inter city trains make sense. When they can travel long distances without stopping they are at their fastest and most efficient. Urban trains make no sense, the continual stop/start nature of the journeys ruins the efficiency and average speed, the multi stage journeys required to travel anywhere but along the corridor of travel makes journey times extremely long, 2-3 times as long even accounting for road congestion.
Excuse me, but this makes no sense. Please check with the inhabitants of New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, London, Paris, Moscow and the US Northeast in general for the efficiency of their urban train systems.
He subverted the will of the American people in their choice of a president.
Which proves that your voting system is fatally flawed
"Fatally flawed" is a considerable leap in logic and hyperbole. The election process may indeed be flawed, but that was not your original point. You were expounding the virtues of the Nader candidacy and creating grand conspiracy theories about his exclusion from the debates at the command of the corporations.
I think your tendancy to jump to such extreme conclusions with such little evidence damages your credibility.
Perhaps the REAL reason Nader was not allow in the presidential debates was because neither the corporate new media, nor their advertisers had bought him off. Seems logical doesn't it?
No, it doesn't seem logical at all. It seems more logical that Nader was not on the podium because he is not a viable candidate with any chance of winning the election.
Say what you will, Nader basically decided the last election. If there was no Nader, we would have a different president right now.
You sound like you think this was a good thing. Nader didn't "decide" the election, he SPOILED the election. He subverted the will of the American people in their choice of a president. Nader "decided" the election in the way that a spoiled child "decides" who gets to play by breaking all the toys.
If the best you can do to make your "candidate" an important one is to rejoice that he can totally fuck up an election at will, then you are really screwed.
Don't forget one of the basic principles of the Religious Right: Man was given dominion over all the creatures of the Earth. Therefore by definition anything Man does is right (i.e. strip mining, rain forest denudation, air pollution, species extermination, etc). Just having people around who thought this way was scary enough, but now that they have become the government and their viewpoints hve become public policy it is really frightening.
You sound like a Swiftboat Veteran For The Truth nut.
OPERA STOLE MY SHOE!
Morning Sedition: AirAmericaRadio/
Interesting, yes, but effective?
Would it not be very easy to simply mask one dot of each of the constellations on the original bill (thereby destroying the pattern), copy it, and then paste the dot back once the image is in Photoshop? This would be a bit time-consumming, but couterfeiting has always been a time-consuming trade.
Another way to get around this would be to copy the bills in many thin strips and re-assemble them in Photoshop into a whole bill.
Of course it may be that even the re-assembled image cannot be printed, but if the constellations are very subtle a counterfiet bill with some of its pattern dots removed should have no trouble passing human inspection.
Then there is the problem that the counterfeiters can simply use an old copy of Photoshop. I have versions back to 4.0 myself.
Bush attacked Kerry on his multilateralism, not because of his criticism of Bush's policies. Bush made it clear that he didn't need international authority to defend US interests. That pretty much sums up the difference between the two.
What neocon simple-think. Everything is either black or white with this ideology. Just because a President would consult with allies and try to gain other countries' support for our nation's policies does NOT mean that he has forfeit the ability to defend the country.
Bush's oft-said belief that "He doesn't need to ask anyone for permission to defend America" is just self-serving spin and a distortion of the true situation. Of course he doesn't, but neither would he have needed it if he had tried to build an alliance before going to war.
This doesn't even address whether or not attacking Iraq was really defending the country. Of course the real problem Bush had with going to the UN was that he did not have any real evidence that Iraq had any WMD.
Just as the USA has been hypocritical about the regimes that it supports,
the French, Germans & Russians (and to a small degree ChiComs) are being hypocritical about Iraq.
Saddam could have paraded IRBMs and nukes down Main St. Baghdad, and France/Germany/Russia would have opposed any attempts to remove them, because they had an economic stake in keeping Saddam in power.
A bit less hypocricy by all parties involved would be very useful.
If my friend is busy skimming the books at the bank that I was planning on robbing, then yes.
Huh?
Try searching google for "germany un food for oil scandal".
I don't have to google it, I know about it. I even know about the pseudo-scandal with Annan's son working for the aid agency years ago. What does it have to do with our stupid foray into Iraq? Are you saying that because others are greedy bastards it is OK for America to be too? I don't agree - we should be better than that, not gleefully jumping in the cesspool with the others.
Agree or disagree with Iraq, the Germans and the French had an economic stake in keeping Saddam in power.
Do you think the Germans and the French aren't allowed to look after their own economic interests just because they aren't Americans? Are you pretending that Bush went into Iraq for altruistic reasons and not to gain control of its oil and play military genius with real lives?
We put Saddam in power when it suited our purposes and kept him there when it suited our purposes. Have you seen the picture of a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam? We gave Saddam those weapons he used on the Kurds, you know.
The entire metal frame of this dirigible, which was the size of a large ocean liner, was melted within seconds...reduced the entire airship to slag and ashes in under 1 minute
What you are saying just isn't true. The visual record is available and anyone can see for themselves that the ship was not reduced to slag in under a minute. Photos of the wreckage the next day show clearly defined structural beams.
Additionally, the ship did continue to support itself long enough for may passengers to escape. The ship settled to the ground (hard, I admit) when the fire broke out, but once the weight of the engines and passenger compartments were on the ground the gas envelope continued to supported itself.
As for "size of a large ocean liner", gimme a break. That is volume, not mass. Your implication that there was enough energy released in 1 minute to melt an ocean liner is absurd. There wasn't even enough energy released to melt the framework of the derigible. Almost all of the framework survived. Look at the photos.
That's because Japan/Germany were beaten into submission. Drop 2 atomic bombs on Iraq, and firebomb Baghdad and things might change.
Yes, things would change. The US would become the pariah nation of the planet. No country would trade with us, we would never get another drop of oil from anyone, and we would be embargoed in every area of trade and cooperation. The results would be either revolution or the country would be ruined economically in five years (or both). I'm not even going to mention the jihad of all jihads that would plunge the world into religious warfare for the forseeable future.
The neocon simple-thinking that military power alone will solve our problems is what has gotten this country into so much trouble. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et. al. think they are such geniuses and yet they continue to take the most imbecilic simple-minded approaches to everything.
The problem is that the neocons actually believed their own wishful-thinking ("Iraq will be easy, our military is the best", and the infamous "Mission Accomplished"), but all they have accomplished is to run us full speed into the wall of reality where thousands of insurgents have AK-47s, RPGs and IEDs. Not to mention that 60% of the world's population is coming to hate our guts with religious passion.
We now find ourselves in the murderous position of not being able to stay and not being able to leave Iraq. And although some may think that nukes will solve the problem, that is the same simple-minded reasoning that would get us even deeper into the reality shit-hole.
The Germans were asked to help fight terrorist in Afghanistan AND THEY DID HELP US. In fact they are still there helping us, as are the French.
What they refused to do, and rightly so, was help George Bush conduct his own personal trumped-up war with Saddam Hussein. With over 1,100 US troops killed to date and with the situation getting worse every day (four more Marines killed yesterday) it looks like they were right.
If your best friend asks you to help him rob a bank and you refuse and instead try to talk him out of it - are you his friend or a back-stabber?
Several months ago papers started to circulate about how to effectively ban arial photoography to prevent precise measurement and targetting of sensitive targets (nuclear power plants, etc). If you live near a target like this you'll soon notice a large fenced area with a large white square building in the center. This building hides a pulses infra red laser which is diffused skyward to destroy the autofocus of most cameras and in many cases it will destroy the camera's light element itself.
I can't believe how insane this idea is. DHS spending millions for some crazy laser thing when anyone can pecisely determine the position of anything with a stick, two nails and a protractor - as we did in geometry class in high school.
This is just a crazy as the ban on photography in the NYC subway system. For crying out loud, I could photograph every inch of any station and no one would ever be the wiser. Just put the camera in a bag or briefcase with a hole for the lens. Use one of the $2 timer chips mentioned in this article if you really want to be sneaky.
What are all these anti-terrorist experts thinking of? They seem to be concentrating great time, money and effort on solutions to non-problems that are trivial to overcome by anyone.
When a million dollar anti-camera laser can be defeated by $1.98 in school supplies or a $5 disposable fixed-focus camera we need to re-evaluate the credentials of our so-called experts. Hmmmm. I wonder if Halliburton got the contract for these anti-camera laser things?
This is a perfect example of slashdot. You SOUND as though you know what you are talking about but then you get some basic thing totally wrong and your credibility as a know-it-all goes down the drain.
(The "neutron bomb" was a planned attempt to replace the fission warheads with chemical explosives, creating a thermonuclear explosion with no radioactive fallout- a truly impressive feat if it were possible.)
You got that exactly backwards. The neutron bomb would release large amounts of neutrons and gamma radiation without the large explosion - thereby killing all living things within a large radius but causing explosion damage only within a small radius.
"i>And before that the dreaded Vikings (especially that fellow with the axe who was the king of Iceland). So stop the fuss, ...
The Vikings were Norwegian, not Swedish. And before you say it - no, they are not the same.
Compare statistics in OUR main city against Stockholm's, and be grateful you're there.
:-p ...or when you want some excitement. Imagine, four people on a balcony in Stockholm having a Crayfish Party (don't ask - it involves crayfish and vodka) singing drunken songs and the neighbors COMPLAINED to the police! Sheesh. Never would have happened in NYC.
Except during the Winter or when you're on line for liquor
Seriously, I've wandered the streets of Stockholm at 2AM myself and felt safe, but I've also wandered the streets of Manhattan at 2AM and felt safe, too. NYC (at least Manhattan) does not deserve its bad reputation for safety. To get back on topic though - your bicycle will definately get stolen in NY and if they can't get the whole thing they will take parts as I know from experience.
Man up and get yourself a goddam SUV! Only a damn clog-wearing fairy would ride a bike anyway! And how do you ride a bike with clogs on, anyway?!?
Hmmmm. Try riding a bike in Manhattan to see what kind of balls it takes. Then pull up to some bike messengers in that manly SUV of yours and call them fairies. (And don't even think about being able to outrun 'em.)
This is actually how the free market SHOULD work! There is a need for a service and you have an ability and so do others... so the boss hires the person that will do it for the best quality/price ratio. However now with the minimum wage laws it doesn't work that way. The government now tells employers how much a job is worth.
Yeah right. This was the way it was in the 30's during the Great Depression when companies would advertise 20 jobs and when 1,000 people showed up they would let them bid for the spots. Great way to get essentially free labor because there is always someone with a family that was going hungry who was desperate for enough money to feed their kids that night. Oh, and the next day if someone else was even hungrier the first poor schmuck was replaced.
There was almost a violent revolution in this country in the 30's, but they didn't teach you that in school, did they? The abuse of working people was what caused the rise of the great labor unions that were able to give working Americans some power over their own lives and break that master/slave relationship. So here come the wage-bidding wars back. Stupid idea.
However now with the minimum wage laws it doesn't work that way.
Do you know that the poverty rate in the US is 12.5% with 35 MILLION PEOPLE living at or below the poverty line while the average CEO makes 300 times the salary of their employees. The average CEO takes home $155,000 PER WEEK while the average worker takes home only $517 per week. I'd be very curious as to what the salary of the hospital CEO, or even the hospital administrator is that wants nurses to work for a few dollars per hour. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would today be $15.71 per hour, more than three times the current minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. If we are going to bid for salaries let's let the CEOs bid on theirs, too.
Was this bidding allowed because of the Bush administration's "simplification" of the overtime rules taking away time and a half foe millions of workers (particulary IT professionals)? Yet Bush would have us think it was going to increase the number of people who would get paid overtime. Bullshit.
Now you think it is a good idea to start allowing companies to require their employees bid on their own jobs?? Specifically in this instance there will always be a nurse who has a family emergency who needs money so desperately she or he will always be willing to bid next to nothing just to insure they get those extra hours. Talk about PREYING on the misfortune of others. The hospital administrators should be run out of town on a rail.
This won't work. The odor does not come from surface dirt, but from the organic molecules absorbed by the plastics and resins of the cases and components. Dishwashing won;t do anyting to get those out.
The only solution is to get those organic molecules out of the materials and that is not going to be easy. Here are the things I would try:
1) Heat. This increases the diffusion rate of the offending molecules from the plastics. Make sure you vent the oven to get the organic vapor out or they will just re-absorb as the unit cools.
2) Activated Carbon. Activated carbon has a great affinity for organic molecules. You may want to put each PC in a cloth bag and bury it in activated carbon for a while. Test with one first to make sure the carbon fines don't short-circuit anyhting. Get activated carbon from a scientific supply.
3) Heat and Charcoal - probably the best solution would be a conmbination of the two above solutions. I would put each PC in a cloth bag and bury the bag in a bed of activated charcoal. Bake everything on low heat for several hours (120 - 150 F). Use just a warm oven because high heat reduces the effectiveness of the activated charcoal. You can re-charge activated charcoal between uses by heating it at 350-400 F in the oven to drive the organics out of it. That will stink.
A corporation is not a person; legally, figuratively, literally, or in any other fashion. A corporation is a model of ownership, just like "sole proprietorship" or "partnership."
I guess you think if you sound positive enough people will believe you. However, in reality, a corporation IS often considered to be a person. Corpor..., Corpus..., Body..., Person... get it?
As proof of your statement, you offered...
(1) a corporation uses allocation of stock to shareholders, whether publicly traded or not
And just what does that have to do with the price of eggs? There is no reason to think that issueing stock prevents anyone from being a person. In fact it is common. People often incorporate themselves and often have investors who own a share of their earnings (prizefighters come to mind). No one would ever state that these people are not real persons. Your statement simply has no bearing on the topic.
(2) the separate entity clause, which says very clearly that the assets, debts, etc. of the corporation are separate from the assets, debts, etc. of the owners (shareholders) - meaning if a company gets sued, litigants generally can't make a claim against the shareholders' assets.
Although I don't know what "clause" you are talking about, this is a generally true statement. However once again your argument has no bearing on whether a corporation is a person or not. No one contends that the corporate entity and the stockholders are the same.
I recieved one of the notices from Paypal, and yes, they will "fine" ME if I use my money in a non-approved way. As incredibly convenient as Paypal is, i have to agree with you and will be cancelling my account.
I have always been uncomfortable with paypal's ability to enter my bank account and withdraw as much as they see fit. Now that it is their official policy to do so it pushes them over the edge.
Just who do they think they are anyway? Let them ban transactions they don't like and cancel accounts, but a FINE!? Fines are levied by the government and courts, not by for-profit entities, and even the government can't enter your bank account and take money without due process.
Because Paypal is soooo convenient I may open a special bank account with just enough money in it to cover my Paypal charges. Let them try to get any so-called "fine" out of my $20 bank account THEN.
"We don't want Kafka knocking on the door in the middle of the night," he said. But "there is some risk."
Oh that Kafka, he's a scary one.
Seriously, if the people in positions of power like this are so badly educated, we are screwed.
Oh com'on! It was just a play on words. To have Kafka himself knocking on your door in the dead of night is a pretty good image to get the point across.
Having said that, the people in power ARE that illiterate and ignorant, and we ARE screwed. And if the incompetent neo-con morons who think they are such brilliant geniuses (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and their ilk) remain in power four more years then we are REALLY screwed.