Simple. You sue the state in court, just as if they had declined the FOIA requests outright. That's what the judicial branch is for- limiting the ability of the state to abuse its power.
Unless the judges there are completely corrupt, they would force at least a reasonable argument about why the state made the decisions to go with paper and in-person delivery (because they'd be ruled against with this idiotic claim), if not force the governor to release everything digitally.
Between the major newspapers and cable news outlets, the cost and effort would be minimal. All we need is competent journalism, which includes knowing the difference between things that really matter and the bullcrap which comprises most Palin-related "news".
...Which citizen's group do I send money to for the purpose of pushing legislation that requires the government is honest to the people. Lies like this should be actionable.
The legislation is already there. FOIA and related disclosure laws are thankfully in-place, though perhaps not as tough as we citizens would like. Trying to get better versions of the legislation is IMO a waste of time. Rather, I'd check out various campaign-reform groups, such as Lawrence Lessig's, and perhaps third-party/independent candidates.
As soon as IE loses majority I imagine it's remaining share will drop at an accelerated pace.
My intuition is the exact opposite for two reasons: 1) IE has for quite some time now not been the "recommended" browser by websites, so there's little holding back users who want to switch to an alternative. 2) The ratio of stubborn&clueless to likely-convert increases with every single convert. These folks aren't watching the metrics waiting to jump ship to keep "rooting for the winning team."
I see three potential exceptions to reason #2: mobile users (though I suspect this market is approaching saturation since app usage circumvents these metrics), businesses producing converts en masse via security policy (though this has to overcome rule #1 and *shudder* Sharepoint adoption) and more potential for "forced-converts" (e.g. my mother & grandmother). But I'm not so optimistic that I would expect these to produce a significant acceleration in alternative browser share.
I don't think any of those right-wing groups considers the others an enemy. They're driven by different agendas which don't necessarily conflict (thought they do conflict with their crazy counterparts on the left). On the contrary, they all contributed to the redefining of "liberal" as a bad word which they use to distract from their own radical message. And as the saying goes: "the enemy of my enemy...".
Jesus won't take away your guns (when he brings the world to a fiery end), but those PETA commie bastards will.
You don't seem to understand Israel or the broken window fallacy.
Israel has real enemies who have been trying to invade them since independence. They will develop those arms, regardless of US support. This isn't wasteful spending, it's actually less wasteful than if they had to perform the R&D themselves, rather than purchase already-developed American goods. The US isn't encouraging Israel to buy stuff it wouldn't otherwise tax its citizens to obtain.
Argue about whether or not the US should support Israel if you must, but please try not to spread your ignorance.
It's just another bombastic claim Palestinian sympathizers use to garner support from naive liberals, anti-zionists and anti-semites. It's a stupid analogy, but that's all they have. Well, that and their terrorism, but here in the US we've finally started to frown on that.
Nope. The real death cult crazies are a minority as Nadaka said. But they work together with the abortion crazies and the gay crazies and the evolution crazies and the global warming crazies and the gun crazies and so on and so on and so on. For any of these groups to point out how crazy another is would bring about their own downfall, so they play together nicely.
It's not an insignificant minority, but it's nowhere near a majority.
That may sound nice, but what you're actually doing by eliminating other tribes is reducing the size of the species' gene pool which is harmful in the long term, especially as you shrink the size of the "strong" tribe (which happens in my next point).
From a social perspective your statement ignores the fact that religion and nationalism don't only attack members of other tribes. When one of these are coupled with traditionalism (all too often the case) it's terribly cannibalistic, depriving its own flock of opportunities to diversify and advance technologically and socially. Homogeneity then leads to stagnation. Of course in such societies homogeneity (or "purity") and being stuck in place is often by definition "for the good of the ones in the flock", so to the people who share that point of view, what you said would certainly make sense.
Interesting point and I'd like to read that professor's work, but I don't believe online services are flourishing for security reasons, but rather that it's coincidental from the average user's perspective. The whole point of this story is that people are not aware and knowledgeable enough about technology and security, so I doubt they factor it in highly enough to use it in their decision to chose an online service.
Security is rarely mentioned in the list of features of these services: nothing in Flickr, Picasa, or DropBox other than to discuss how files you upload can be shared selectively rather than be public. DropBox doesn't turn up anything when you query for "virus" in the help section (and even suggests disabling your anti-virus to solve a connectivity problem). Even Google Docs which has drawn much concern on data security neglects to reassure you that documents you upload are properly safeguarded, and doesn't guarantee that downloading an MS-Office version of a document is devoid of malicious code which may have been uploaded by whoever shared it with you. There's far more concern assuring you that they perform backups and that your data won't be lost. Twitter mentions security only in the context of safeguarding your account from hijacking. Facebook's "privacy" aspects are obviously not worth mentioning and where they mention it it's due to bad publicity, not a way of attracting users away from MySpace by being a safer platform. It has taken major Twitter/EC2/PSN outages for people to even realize there's a risk in relying on online services, which still isn't being discussed in these feature sets- public understanding of availability is as meager as security.
There's certainly a risk and possibly even this hidden cost you're suggesting in using proprietary online services, but I don't see that they are being used to avoid downloading an executable file, or otherwise provide any such protection against browser-based attacks. To the contrary- all of the above popular services except for Google Docs actually encourage or even require (DropBox) users to download binaries (in the case of Facebook/Twitter mobile apps), and Facebook users are clicking random links to the same kinds of nonsense they had been getting in their email.
I like Gravel. I like Kucinich too (the "Department of Peace" is a bold piece of liberal legislation he's been working on since 2001, but sadly doesn't even get the publicity of a good ribbing on late-night television). On paper they're much closer to my ideal president.
There are two problems here, both stemming from the fact that there's not just a primary to win, but a general as well, where you don't have the luxury of only liberal voters. First, you're trying to get someone to outflank him from the anti-war left- that's exactly the wrong electoral strategy following years of this rather centrist Democrat being called everything from a USSR-loving socialist to a terrorist appeaser. Second, not nominating a sitting Democratic president tells conservative-leaning voters that the Democratic party is weak and sucks as much as it actually does. They don't win elections like that, so a Democratic primary nominee is already not worth voting for unless they can demonstrate significantly better general election political capability than Obama did. Of course neither Gravel nor Kucinich can do that. They're both intelligent guys, but they don't have any charisma: Gravel makes McCain look like a cheerful guy, and Kucinich is so goofy looking and sounding (and that's before talking about his very liberal views like the DoP) that he'd never pick up votes from the huge number of terribly shallow voters we have in the center. And when he withdrew in 2008, Kucinich endorsed Obama- that wouldn't help him this time around.
Unfortunately "anyone would be better than Obama" is idealistic daydreaming. In fact, nobody would make a better candidate than Obama given the current election system. If we had a public-funding system, and if Citizens United didn't allow even further hijacking of the political system, and if elections were about talking about real issues rather than looking good, lying the best, or just being folksy, and if nobody voted according to who their parents had or pastor told them to, then I'd completely agree with you. But we're much farther away from that system than we were back in 2008, when Ron Paul demonstrated it wasn't enough to have an honest and independent opinion as well as a large following.
Ignoring these obvious realities and handing the presidency to whichever ass-backwards throwback passes the Republican party purity test isn't going to help bring about any of these needed changes. Neither is playing partisan politics on Internet forums, which only serves to reinforce voter stupidity and stubbornness (even Slashdot is generally a useless place to discuss policy). That's what we should learn from the whole Tea Party mess- that the level-headed electorate you pointed out is missing is a requirement for a true liberal to win (or, should the American public desire, a true libertarian). Show me a viable candidate and I'll be happy to check them out, but the odds are stacked incredibly high against them in a reelection against Obama. I think a smarter move would be to try to get someone to replace Biden on the ticket, so they can run from the VP position in 2016.
As you yourself pointed out one sentence earlier- it's not called "space", but "outer space". The name means all the space outside Earth, not "emptiness". When you graduate to second grade you'll learn that Earth is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We're already using the sun and moon to generate energy, and there's lots more stuff we can take advantage of once we develop the technology. Considering oil prices aren't dropping, it's probably a good idea not to rely on it long-term. One of the missions of this flight is to get the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer installed so it can be used for detecting dark matter, which is likely a key area of research necessary for any possible uses of using what's actually out there. As stupid as your rant was, this actually is a method of government trying something which may help us develop energy. You could say it's similar to oil exploration, but with more balls and brains.
As for that idiotic political statement, NASA's funding for this mission wasn't determined by recent events. Space exploration is not responsible for the debt, nor will its de-funding solve the problem. Suggesting that taxes be used to pay for drilling reveals how little you understand government, industry and taxation. That's not the US government's job. The US government is already handing out $4B a year to these corporations and they've done nothing but stockpile. If you want more money spent on drilling, you might want to ask your friendly oil company to invest instead of hoarding money (XOM alone has over $13B cash on hand) and taking advantage of high prices (see current record profits with no equivalent uptick in R&D). Or feel free to lobby congress to nationalize the oil industry so you can complain to someone who actually listens to nutjobs.
And "treason"? Really? You might want to look up that word in a dictionary.
Who cares? Considering what space flight missions entail, lobster isn't that big of an indulgence. Getting lobster in Florida isn't hard. It's not like they were eating Russian caviar. For crying out loud, one of them just had a sandwich. This is a non-story and engaging in such speculation is as ridiculous as was the reporting.
At just past midnight local time, I'd also hardly call it breakfast. With a 9am local launch time and assuming they wouldn't eat for at least 10 hours when the reach orbit, you'd want a decent meal- not just a light breakfast of toast and jam. If the flight doc has no problem with the choice, they can eat whatever they please.
Personally, the thought of shellfish prior to that kind of acceleration into orbit makes me nauseous, but these guys are in far better shape.
Go ahead. Put your money where your mouth is, bucko.
psst... nobody remind retech that there are an array of cameras and other sensors recording his intentional jump in front of traffic. Recordings which are obviously already transferred from cache to permanent storage at the moment the car determines an anomaly has occurred.
how does it compare to clean and safe energy sources?
Oh, that's easy - it actually exists. Take a look at the pollution in China around the factories that produce the components for wind and solar plants sometime...
That's an argument for not doing business with China because it's morally wrong to take advantage of the externalities of letting their citizens and land suffer the effects of pollution.
You're not even proving that solar and wind technology necessarily generates excessive pollution, let alone that they generate a net positive amount when compared to the burning of fossil fuels.
Who were the lazy, logically-bankrupt nuclear zealots who modded this bull 'insightful'?
That's a generalized, simple-minded, single-sided and uninformed view.
"Attacks on Israelis increase" because Arab extremists do not want peace, since it conflicts with their politics. So they send a suicide bomber to an Israeli nightclub in an attempt to re-destabilize the region. Sadly, this is effective against Israeli right-wing buffoons, who play into the terrorists' hands by then moving tanks into Arab population centers, or making an inflammatory visit to a Muslim holy site. With these actions you demonstrate that you are an enemy that must be fought which was the intention in the first place. If you think that Hammas considers the killing of a handful of Israelis significant, you underestimate their capacity for strategic thinking.
But that's only half the story. There are saboteurs on the Jewish side as well- the Israeli settlers who should be viewed as equally as terrorists, despite their lesser need to rely on physical violence. These extremists also do not want peace, and will do anything to torpedo it in their wholly idiotic quest to reclaim Ancient Israel. Some of them even use physical violence, such as Rabin's killer, and those who open fire on unarmed civilians in mosques and elsewhere. In their blind pursuit of the impossible, they condemn their fellow Israelis to be attacked, just as suicide bombers invite IDF retaliation and the loss of innocent Arab lives. To criticize Hammas while giving a free pass to an Israeli prime minister who allows settlement construction and refuses to crack down on settlement activity is simply hypocritical. Even George W. Bush criticized Israeli policy in the West Bank.
Israeli military action is not an effective solution, as they have proven time and time again only to simply incite anger each time a civilian is killed. These deaths aren't intentional, of course, but that hardly matters when extremist Palestinian political groups use these to their advantage ("it wasn't an accident that Israel regrets- he's a martyr who bravely fought the evil Zionists"). Israel is clearly militarily stronger and has demonstrated its resolve and willingness to use force countless times. The Arabs cry "genocide" on every minor case of collateral damage, so how would going back to military curfews, indiscriminate nighttime raids of private homes, besieging the current equivalent of the Mukataa, or actual acts of mass death change anything? The answer is they wouldn't- you would simply be legitimizing "resistance" groups.
The whole reason Al Qaeda gains its membership is thanks to the powerful cultural rhetoric Bin Laden could use to manipulate impoverished and uneducated young men- "the infidels are killing your women and children", "the crusaders occupy holy Mecca and Medina", etc. The answer is not to bomb them into obedience, but rather to deny political groups these easy tools of manipulation. The Libyan situation demonstrates this- do not simply engage in unilateral action, forcing "liberation" when "the west" determines it wants to, as was done in Iraq, but work in concert with the population's needs and requests. Ghadaffi still places the blame on the US and Britain, but very little of the population believes him, whereas in Iraq we encountered far more native resistance.
This is of course not to say Israel should stop retaliating against terror activity (it shouldn't), and that the US should not have engaged Iraq (it shouldn't have). Rather, that there are consequences to such actions, which may or may not make the actions themselves worthwhile, and that these require a more significant analysis than the neanderthalic "they hurt me, so I must hurt them more" nonsense that hardliners parrot. So long as Israelis demonstrate their willingness to put knuckle-draggers in office, the Arabs have no reason to trust they'll ever gain true sovereignty, and part of them will turn to their own brutes for salvation. Likewise, the Arabs must learn from their idiotic election which gave Hammas legitimacy and only hurt their cause, by giving Israelis the excuse "there is no partner for peace."
Close. What I did there was point out a pointless statement with another. With your third, we can start a band.
speak out about TSA policies to anyone who will listen, on-line on my blog
Yup. That falls under the same right I stated you have.
Yeah, at least it's only us "bullies" interpreting the Constitution.... "warrantless wiretapping", "habeas corpus", "1st Amendment rights", "2nd Amendment rights", "4th Amendment rights" just as off-the-top-of-my-head examples?
Yes, yes and yes. More good examples of where you can and should use your right to peaceably object to unjust actions by your government. Did I claim otherwise? Did I accidentally praise the so-called "PATRIOT" act somewhere? Whose post were you reading? Also, two wrongs, blah blah blah: just because government oversteps its authority doesn't give you the right to break other laws et cetera.
Washington, Revere, Adams, Jefferson, Henry,... MLK, Jr.? Rosa Parks?
Good people in my book, though it's worth noting that most notables of that type risked being- or actually were imprisoned/hurt/killed as a result of their actions. Go ahead and stand up for what you believe in- did I say otherwise? But if you miss your flight or get thrown in jail for making a certain choice, don't come to me crying, or expect the supreme court to buy you lunch for your trouble. If someone thinks the right way to get the TSA to change is to verbally abuse or punch a TSA agent in the face, that's their call- I just said I think those are stupid moves. Your actual choice of using a blog sounds more reasonable. I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for the rights you want, just that there are legal consequences, and that the first amendment is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. And back to my key point- that the government is most certainly not being fascist simply by keeping the peace, or even by touching your junk.
That sentence doesn't even make logical sense... I think you were trying to say that if someone were to bluster their way through a checkpoint...
I meant if an attack happened because someone used that tactic. Try this: s/too/so/ . In other words, I suggested he's a knee-jerk government-bashing moron who wouldn't know a real fascist (or a socialist, or a communist while we're discussing improper uses of non-republic governments) if he was taken out back and shot in the head.
Nobody has been "attacked" here, save for the poor TSA agent who's being bullied by schmucks like you who think you're entitled to do whatever you want the constitution to say. You have the right to request to speak to a supervisor or to file a grievance. You can even sue the TSA if you have a problem with their policies. If you choose to act out, be disruptive and incite a riot at the airport, you open yourself to being detained just like any other crazy person.
"Arrogant complaining" is employed as a social engineering trick. I'm guessing you'd be one of the first in line to complain about the TSA being "too stupid to fall for a simple SE trick."
That's the whole point of the advisory- that it's not necessarily in a developer's interest to be sold in every outlet. Take scenario 5 from the letter which suggests a way Amazon can cause a lot of harm to a developer:
5) Amazon steeply discounts (or makes entirely free) a hit game at a time when the game is already selling extremely well. This sort of promotional activity may attract consumers away from competing markets and into Amazon’s arms. But it might actually represent a net loss for the developer, which was already doing quite well and didn’t need to firesale its game at that moment in time.
Amazon could put Angry Birds on a 100% discount to entice tens of thousands of people to add its store to their devices. It costs Amazon nothing. It's gaining customers, not making a profit, but not actually losing money, because the developer isn't making money either. The only loser is the developer, who has fewer potential customers (excluding possible sales via sequels or microtransactions, where such sales can actually make sense).
If a developer doesn't know better, they'll follow the "common sense" you pointed out. IGDA understands common sense is terrible and it is trying to help people avoid using it to make business decisions.
For someone who accuses others of focusing on rhetoric, you sure fell into that trap easily.
George W. Bush was a C average (75%) student who got accepted into elite schools only thanks to his father. In their 2000 primary Republicans chose him over McCain- a far superior candidate both in ability and experience. Then to follow up, they did their damnedest to elect Palin who you wouldn't trust to run a burger shack, let alone a large nation. You tell me what that says about them. Contrast these pinnacles of mediocrity to Obama who is undeniably intelligent and you have your answer about who made a reasonable decision based strictly on academic merit. As for that "best and brightest" bit, it's rhetorical nonsense to suggest that you should avoid electing smart people because of one anecdote. I'll see your Johnson and raise you a Jefferson.
The Democrats do "support the underdog", but not in that they try to elect the most average person they can get to run for office. Rather, they are more likely to advocate politically on behalf of the under-privileged class, such as with universal healthcare and extending unemployment benefits during the recession. That's not to say these were correct policies- I'm sure you know all about the issues discussed during the healthcare debate, and I was watching some congressional hearings earlier where there was a question about whether or not the extension of unemployment could actually have negative results. But their leaning is to support those who need help rather than give tax cuts to people who have more money than they could possibly spend. When you take into consideration that a very large number of those voting Republican are among the lowest income brackets, yet they allow themselves to be fooled into voting against their own interest. Again- you tell me what that says about Republicans who don't just go to vote in hopes of banning homosexuality and abortion.
If US citizens elected idiots like Bush (or god help us- Sarah "I can see Sparta from my... umm... Ionian buildy-thingy..." Palin) into office more regularly, I'd say sure. The thing is the average American is significantly inferior than even the mediocre politicians they elect. Tolerance for stupidity in Presidents is even more rare.
The average Athenian was properly educated for holding office, and was far more engaged in current affairs than most Americans, who care more about who's getting kicked off of Dancing with the Stars than how the Iraqi and Afghan wars are going. And even our most engaged citizens as often as not simply repeat the talking points of the party they vote for unfailingly, rather than actually try to understand the issues and make an informed, independent decision. We've already got all the randomness we can handle.
Slashdot Mirror
How do we handle government lies like this?
Simple. You sue the state in court, just as if they had declined the FOIA requests outright. That's what the judicial branch is for- limiting the ability of the state to abuse its power.
Unless the judges there are completely corrupt, they would force at least a reasonable argument about why the state made the decisions to go with paper and in-person delivery (because they'd be ruled against with this idiotic claim), if not force the governor to release everything digitally.
Between the major newspapers and cable news outlets, the cost and effort would be minimal. All we need is competent journalism, which includes knowing the difference between things that really matter and the bullcrap which comprises most Palin-related "news".
...Which citizen's group do I send money to for the purpose of pushing legislation that requires the government is honest to the people. Lies like this should be actionable.
The legislation is already there. FOIA and related disclosure laws are thankfully in-place, though perhaps not as tough as we citizens would like. Trying to get better versions of the legislation is IMO a waste of time. Rather, I'd check out various campaign-reform groups, such as Lawrence Lessig's, and perhaps third-party/independent candidates.
As soon as IE loses majority I imagine it's remaining share will drop at an accelerated pace.
My intuition is the exact opposite for two reasons:
1) IE has for quite some time now not been the "recommended" browser by websites, so there's little holding back users who want to switch to an alternative.
2) The ratio of stubborn&clueless to likely-convert increases with every single convert. These folks aren't watching the metrics waiting to jump ship to keep "rooting for the winning team."
I see three potential exceptions to reason #2: mobile users (though I suspect this market is approaching saturation since app usage circumvents these metrics), businesses producing converts en masse via security policy (though this has to overcome rule #1 and *shudder* Sharepoint adoption) and more potential for "forced-converts" (e.g. my mother & grandmother). But I'm not so optimistic that I would expect these to produce a significant acceleration in alternative browser share.
The fallacy transcends your petty politics. It's about net economic loss masked as gain, not about who gains and who loses.
You are exactly like a lobotomized apricot.
I don't think any of those right-wing groups considers the others an enemy. They're driven by different agendas which don't necessarily conflict (thought they do conflict with their crazy counterparts on the left). On the contrary, they all contributed to the redefining of "liberal" as a bad word which they use to distract from their own radical message. And as the saying goes: "the enemy of my enemy...".
Jesus won't take away your guns (when he brings the world to a fiery end), but those PETA commie bastards will.
You don't seem to understand Israel or the broken window fallacy.
Israel has real enemies who have been trying to invade them since independence. They will develop those arms, regardless of US support. This isn't wasteful spending, it's actually less wasteful than if they had to perform the R&D themselves, rather than purchase already-developed American goods. The US isn't encouraging Israel to buy stuff it wouldn't otherwise tax its citizens to obtain.
Argue about whether or not the US should support Israel if you must, but please try not to spread your ignorance.
I don't get it.
It's just another bombastic claim Palestinian sympathizers use to garner support from naive liberals, anti-zionists and anti-semites. It's a stupid analogy, but that's all they have. Well, that and their terrorism, but here in the US we've finally started to frown on that.
Nope. The real death cult crazies are a minority as Nadaka said. But they work together with the abortion crazies and the gay crazies and the evolution crazies and the global warming crazies and the gun crazies and so on and so on and so on. For any of these groups to point out how crazy another is would bring about their own downfall, so they play together nicely.
It's not an insignificant minority, but it's nowhere near a majority.
Moses: OK. Hope you had a nice day off after all that. But I want to be 100% sure about this. I have to cut my what off?
Cute. But that was pre-Moses. You're looking for Abraham in Genesis 17.
At Dell the response would probably be "Have you tried rebooting the computer?"
Or better yet: tell you to unplug that "power cable" and reconnect it, resulting in additional fried components.
That may sound nice, but what you're actually doing by eliminating other tribes is reducing the size of the species' gene pool which is harmful in the long term, especially as you shrink the size of the "strong" tribe (which happens in my next point).
From a social perspective your statement ignores the fact that religion and nationalism don't only attack members of other tribes. When one of these are coupled with traditionalism (all too often the case) it's terribly cannibalistic, depriving its own flock of opportunities to diversify and advance technologically and socially. Homogeneity then leads to stagnation. Of course in such societies homogeneity (or "purity") and being stuck in place is often by definition "for the good of the ones in the flock", so to the people who share that point of view, what you said would certainly make sense.
Interesting point and I'd like to read that professor's work, but I don't believe online services are flourishing for security reasons, but rather that it's coincidental from the average user's perspective. The whole point of this story is that people are not aware and knowledgeable enough about technology and security, so I doubt they factor it in highly enough to use it in their decision to chose an online service.
Security is rarely mentioned in the list of features of these services: nothing in Flickr, Picasa, or DropBox other than to discuss how files you upload can be shared selectively rather than be public. DropBox doesn't turn up anything when you query for "virus" in the help section (and even suggests disabling your anti-virus to solve a connectivity problem). Even Google Docs which has drawn much concern on data security neglects to reassure you that documents you upload are properly safeguarded, and doesn't guarantee that downloading an MS-Office version of a document is devoid of malicious code which may have been uploaded by whoever shared it with you. There's far more concern assuring you that they perform backups and that your data won't be lost. Twitter mentions security only in the context of safeguarding your account from hijacking. Facebook's "privacy" aspects are obviously not worth mentioning and where they mention it it's due to bad publicity, not a way of attracting users away from MySpace by being a safer platform. It has taken major Twitter/EC2/PSN outages for people to even realize there's a risk in relying on online services, which still isn't being discussed in these feature sets- public understanding of availability is as meager as security.
There's certainly a risk and possibly even this hidden cost you're suggesting in using proprietary online services, but I don't see that they are being used to avoid downloading an executable file, or otherwise provide any such protection against browser-based attacks. To the contrary- all of the above popular services except for Google Docs actually encourage or even require (DropBox) users to download binaries (in the case of Facebook/Twitter mobile apps), and Facebook users are clicking random links to the same kinds of nonsense they had been getting in their email.
I like Gravel. I like Kucinich too (the "Department of Peace" is a bold piece of liberal legislation he's been working on since 2001, but sadly doesn't even get the publicity of a good ribbing on late-night television). On paper they're much closer to my ideal president.
There are two problems here, both stemming from the fact that there's not just a primary to win, but a general as well, where you don't have the luxury of only liberal voters. First, you're trying to get someone to outflank him from the anti-war left- that's exactly the wrong electoral strategy following years of this rather centrist Democrat being called everything from a USSR-loving socialist to a terrorist appeaser. Second, not nominating a sitting Democratic president tells conservative-leaning voters that the Democratic party is weak and sucks as much as it actually does. They don't win elections like that, so a Democratic primary nominee is already not worth voting for unless they can demonstrate significantly better general election political capability than Obama did. Of course neither Gravel nor Kucinich can do that. They're both intelligent guys, but they don't have any charisma: Gravel makes McCain look like a cheerful guy, and Kucinich is so goofy looking and sounding (and that's before talking about his very liberal views like the DoP) that he'd never pick up votes from the huge number of terribly shallow voters we have in the center. And when he withdrew in 2008, Kucinich endorsed Obama- that wouldn't help him this time around.
Unfortunately "anyone would be better than Obama" is idealistic daydreaming. In fact, nobody would make a better candidate than Obama given the current election system. If we had a public-funding system, and if Citizens United didn't allow even further hijacking of the political system, and if elections were about talking about real issues rather than looking good, lying the best, or just being folksy, and if nobody voted according to who their parents had or pastor told them to, then I'd completely agree with you. But we're much farther away from that system than we were back in 2008, when Ron Paul demonstrated it wasn't enough to have an honest and independent opinion as well as a large following.
Ignoring these obvious realities and handing the presidency to whichever ass-backwards throwback passes the Republican party purity test isn't going to help bring about any of these needed changes. Neither is playing partisan politics on Internet forums, which only serves to reinforce voter stupidity and stubbornness (even Slashdot is generally a useless place to discuss policy). That's what we should learn from the whole Tea Party mess- that the level-headed electorate you pointed out is missing is a requirement for a true liberal to win (or, should the American public desire, a true libertarian). Show me a viable candidate and I'll be happy to check them out, but the odds are stacked incredibly high against them in a reelection against Obama. I think a smarter move would be to try to get someone to replace Biden on the ticket, so they can run from the VP position in 2016.
As you yourself pointed out one sentence earlier- it's not called "space", but "outer space". The name means all the space outside Earth, not "emptiness". When you graduate to second grade you'll learn that Earth is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We're already using the sun and moon to generate energy, and there's lots more stuff we can take advantage of once we develop the technology. Considering oil prices aren't dropping, it's probably a good idea not to rely on it long-term.
One of the missions of this flight is to get the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer installed so it can be used for detecting dark matter, which is likely a key area of research necessary for any possible uses of using what's actually out there. As stupid as your rant was, this actually is a method of government trying something which may help us develop energy. You could say it's similar to oil exploration, but with more balls and brains.
As for that idiotic political statement, NASA's funding for this mission wasn't determined by recent events. Space exploration is not responsible for the debt, nor will its de-funding solve the problem. Suggesting that taxes be used to pay for drilling reveals how little you understand government, industry and taxation. That's not the US government's job. The US government is already handing out $4B a year to these corporations and they've done nothing but stockpile. If you want more money spent on drilling, you might want to ask your friendly oil company to invest instead of hoarding money (XOM alone has over $13B cash on hand) and taking advantage of high prices (see current record profits with no equivalent uptick in R&D). Or feel free to lobby congress to nationalize the oil industry so you can complain to someone who actually listens to nutjobs.
And "treason"? Really? You might want to look up that word in a dictionary.
Who cares? Considering what space flight missions entail, lobster isn't that big of an indulgence. Getting lobster in Florida isn't hard. It's not like they were eating Russian caviar. For crying out loud, one of them just had a sandwich. This is a non-story and engaging in such speculation is as ridiculous as was the reporting.
At just past midnight local time, I'd also hardly call it breakfast. With a 9am local launch time and assuming they wouldn't eat for at least 10 hours when the reach orbit, you'd want a decent meal- not just a light breakfast of toast and jam. If the flight doc has no problem with the choice, they can eat whatever they please.
Personally, the thought of shellfish prior to that kind of acceleration into orbit makes me nauseous, but these guys are in far better shape.
Go ahead. Put your money where your mouth is, bucko.
psst... nobody remind retech that there are an array of cameras and other sensors recording his intentional jump in front of traffic. Recordings which are obviously already transferred from cache to permanent storage at the moment the car determines an anomaly has occurred.
Good luck with that lawsuit, idiot.
how does it compare to clean and safe energy sources?
Oh, that's easy - it actually exists. Take a look at the pollution in China around the factories that produce the components for wind and solar plants sometime...
That's an argument for not doing business with China because it's morally wrong to take advantage of the externalities of letting their citizens and land suffer the effects of pollution.
You're not even proving that solar and wind technology necessarily generates excessive pollution, let alone that they generate a net positive amount when compared to the burning of fossil fuels.
Who were the lazy, logically-bankrupt nuclear zealots who modded this bull 'insightful'?
after the next terrorist attack on U.S. interests, Mecca will become a glass factory.
Oh, well now you sound perfectly reasonable.
Idiot.
That's a generalized, simple-minded, single-sided and uninformed view.
"Attacks on Israelis increase" because Arab extremists do not want peace, since it conflicts with their politics. So they send a suicide bomber to an Israeli nightclub in an attempt to re-destabilize the region. Sadly, this is effective against Israeli right-wing buffoons, who play into the terrorists' hands by then moving tanks into Arab population centers, or making an inflammatory visit to a Muslim holy site. With these actions you demonstrate that you are an enemy that must be fought which was the intention in the first place. If you think that Hammas considers the killing of a handful of Israelis significant, you underestimate their capacity for strategic thinking.
But that's only half the story. There are saboteurs on the Jewish side as well- the Israeli settlers who should be viewed as equally as terrorists, despite their lesser need to rely on physical violence. These extremists also do not want peace, and will do anything to torpedo it in their wholly idiotic quest to reclaim Ancient Israel. Some of them even use physical violence, such as Rabin's killer, and those who open fire on unarmed civilians in mosques and elsewhere. In their blind pursuit of the impossible, they condemn their fellow Israelis to be attacked, just as suicide bombers invite IDF retaliation and the loss of innocent Arab lives. To criticize Hammas while giving a free pass to an Israeli prime minister who allows settlement construction and refuses to crack down on settlement activity is simply hypocritical. Even George W. Bush criticized Israeli policy in the West Bank.
Israeli military action is not an effective solution, as they have proven time and time again only to simply incite anger each time a civilian is killed. These deaths aren't intentional, of course, but that hardly matters when extremist Palestinian political groups use these to their advantage ("it wasn't an accident that Israel regrets- he's a martyr who bravely fought the evil Zionists"). Israel is clearly militarily stronger and has demonstrated its resolve and willingness to use force countless times. The Arabs cry "genocide" on every minor case of collateral damage, so how would going back to military curfews, indiscriminate nighttime raids of private homes, besieging the current equivalent of the Mukataa, or actual acts of mass death change anything? The answer is they wouldn't- you would simply be legitimizing "resistance" groups.
The whole reason Al Qaeda gains its membership is thanks to the powerful cultural rhetoric Bin Laden could use to manipulate impoverished and uneducated young men- "the infidels are killing your women and children", "the crusaders occupy holy Mecca and Medina", etc. The answer is not to bomb them into obedience, but rather to deny political groups these easy tools of manipulation. The Libyan situation demonstrates this- do not simply engage in unilateral action, forcing "liberation" when "the west" determines it wants to, as was done in Iraq, but work in concert with the population's needs and requests. Ghadaffi still places the blame on the US and Britain, but very little of the population believes him, whereas in Iraq we encountered far more native resistance.
This is of course not to say Israel should stop retaliating against terror activity (it shouldn't), and that the US should not have engaged Iraq (it shouldn't have). Rather, that there are consequences to such actions, which may or may not make the actions themselves worthwhile, and that these require a more significant analysis than the neanderthalic "they hurt me, so I must hurt them more" nonsense that hardliners parrot. So long as Israelis demonstrate their willingness to put knuckle-draggers in office, the Arabs have no reason to trust they'll ever gain true sovereignty, and part of them will turn to their own brutes for salvation. Likewise, the Arabs must learn from their idiotic election which gave Hammas legitimacy and only hurt their cause, by giving Israelis the excuse "there is no partner for peace."
Wow, that was clever. Did your mommy help you write that?
Fascism? You're an idiot.
Pot? Kettle? Black?
Close. What I did there was point out a pointless statement with another. With your third, we can start a band.
speak out about TSA policies to anyone who will listen, on-line on my blog
Yup. That falls under the same right I stated you have.
Yeah, at least it's only us "bullies" interpreting the Constitution.... "warrantless wiretapping", "habeas corpus", "1st Amendment rights", "2nd Amendment rights", "4th Amendment rights" just as off-the-top-of-my-head examples?
Yes, yes and yes. More good examples of where you can and should use your right to peaceably object to unjust actions by your government. Did I claim otherwise? Did I accidentally praise the so-called "PATRIOT" act somewhere? Whose post were you reading? Also, two wrongs, blah blah blah: just because government oversteps its authority doesn't give you the right to break other laws et cetera.
Washington, Revere, Adams, Jefferson, Henry,... MLK, Jr.? Rosa Parks?
Good people in my book, though it's worth noting that most notables of that type risked being- or actually were imprisoned/hurt/killed as a result of their actions. Go ahead and stand up for what you believe in- did I say otherwise? But if you miss your flight or get thrown in jail for making a certain choice, don't come to me crying, or expect the supreme court to buy you lunch for your trouble. If someone thinks the right way to get the TSA to change is to verbally abuse or punch a TSA agent in the face, that's their call- I just said I think those are stupid moves. Your actual choice of using a blog sounds more reasonable. I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for the rights you want, just that there are legal consequences, and that the first amendment is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. And back to my key point- that the government is most certainly not being fascist simply by keeping the peace, or even by touching your junk.
That sentence doesn't even make logical sense ... I think you were trying to say that if someone were to bluster their way through a checkpoint ...
I meant if an attack happened because someone used that tactic. Try this: s/too/so/ . In other words, I suggested he's a knee-jerk government-bashing moron who wouldn't know a real fascist (or a socialist, or a communist while we're discussing improper uses of non-republic governments) if he was taken out back and shot in the head.
Fascism? You're an idiot.
Nobody has been "attacked" here, save for the poor TSA agent who's being bullied by schmucks like you who think you're entitled to do whatever you want the constitution to say. You have the right to request to speak to a supervisor or to file a grievance. You can even sue the TSA if you have a problem with their policies. If you choose to act out, be disruptive and incite a riot at the airport, you open yourself to being detained just like any other crazy person.
"Arrogant complaining" is employed as a social engineering trick. I'm guessing you'd be one of the first in line to complain about the TSA being "too stupid to fall for a simple SE trick."
That's the whole point of the advisory- that it's not necessarily in a developer's interest to be sold in every outlet. Take scenario 5 from the letter which suggests a way Amazon can cause a lot of harm to a developer:
5) Amazon steeply discounts (or makes entirely free) a hit game at a time when the game is already selling extremely well. This sort of promotional activity may attract consumers away from competing markets and into Amazon’s arms. But it might actually represent a net loss for the developer, which was already doing quite well and didn’t need to firesale its game at that moment in time.
Amazon could put Angry Birds on a 100% discount to entice tens of thousands of people to add its store to their devices. It costs Amazon nothing. It's gaining customers, not making a profit, but not actually losing money, because the developer isn't making money either. The only loser is the developer, who has fewer potential customers (excluding possible sales via sequels or microtransactions, where such sales can actually make sense).
If a developer doesn't know better, they'll follow the "common sense" you pointed out. IGDA understands common sense is terrible and it is trying to help people avoid using it to make business decisions.
For someone who accuses others of focusing on rhetoric, you sure fell into that trap easily.
George W. Bush was a C average (75%) student who got accepted into elite schools only thanks to his father. In their 2000 primary Republicans chose him over McCain- a far superior candidate both in ability and experience. Then to follow up, they did their damnedest to elect Palin who you wouldn't trust to run a burger shack, let alone a large nation. You tell me what that says about them. Contrast these pinnacles of mediocrity to Obama who is undeniably intelligent and you have your answer about who made a reasonable decision based strictly on academic merit. As for that "best and brightest" bit, it's rhetorical nonsense to suggest that you should avoid electing smart people because of one anecdote. I'll see your Johnson and raise you a Jefferson.
The Democrats do "support the underdog", but not in that they try to elect the most average person they can get to run for office. Rather, they are more likely to advocate politically on behalf of the under-privileged class, such as with universal healthcare and extending unemployment benefits during the recession. That's not to say these were correct policies- I'm sure you know all about the issues discussed during the healthcare debate, and I was watching some congressional hearings earlier where there was a question about whether or not the extension of unemployment could actually have negative results. But their leaning is to support those who need help rather than give tax cuts to people who have more money than they could possibly spend. When you take into consideration that a very large number of those voting Republican are among the lowest income brackets, yet they allow themselves to be fooled into voting against their own interest. Again- you tell me what that says about Republicans who don't just go to vote in hopes of banning homosexuality and abortion.
Libya isn't a land war, not for American forces. He explicitly said he won't do that and as of now he hasn't sent an invasion force.
Come back when he does and you might have something to say against him that's actually true.
If US citizens elected idiots like Bush (or god help us- Sarah "I can see Sparta from my... umm... Ionian buildy-thingy..." Palin) into office more regularly, I'd say sure. The thing is the average American is significantly inferior than even the mediocre politicians they elect. Tolerance for stupidity in Presidents is even more rare.
The average Athenian was properly educated for holding office, and was far more engaged in current affairs than most Americans, who care more about who's getting kicked off of Dancing with the Stars than how the Iraqi and Afghan wars are going. And even our most engaged citizens as often as not simply repeat the talking points of the party they vote for unfailingly, rather than actually try to understand the issues and make an informed, independent decision. We've already got all the randomness we can handle.