"Vast majority" may be too strong. I would say that the vast majority, however, does at the very least have access to instant messaging programs. And email is NOT necessary. A phone call (or IM) can do just as well. Let's not forget that the internet wasn't a part of the average American's life until about five or ten years ago. Survival and email are separable. I'm not calling for a definite end to email, but come on. With the amount of spam email approaching 80% and showing definite signs of increasing, the email infrastructure is going to implode. When spam constitutes 98% of all email and finds a way (which WILL HAPPEN) to dodge filters, do you really think that people will rely on email as much as they do now? I hope not. We will at the very least see a movement toward a closed architecture, where some authority will be able to choose who's a member and who isn't. (Much like IM systems.) Either that or whitelisting will be the de facto standard.
In any case, open electronic mail is probably on its way out unless it can somehow become a Rule of the Internet (when has that ever happened?) that an SMTP server must be responsible for all its users before POP servers will accept its messages.
And let's not forget that filters simply dictate when you have to dig through spam, not whether you will have to dig through spam. The prospect of a false positive, especially when it comes to serious business matters, keep us looking through those spam folders. Something big is going to have to change if living with spam is not an option. (Again, in my parent post I argue that spam easily can be reduced to almost nothing.)
People are going to have to stop using email. With the vast majority of internet users using some sort of instant messaging program, it's easy to get ahold of a person on the internet. In the instances that a more formal message must be sent, we can use radical new solutions such as the postal service. Fixing SMTP won't work, a new protocol won't work, banning spam won't work, a tax on email is uncollectible and WON'T WORK.
In an unrelated rant, my username is a normal English word and my domain is a popular email domain. I get five or ten spams a week. The solution? Completely fake information when I sign up for things. The New York Times knows me as Pablo Rodriguez from River Forest, Illinois. My email for them is hotsexy69696969696969@hotmail.com. I suggest you all do the same.
No. Split infinitives (an infinitive is "to" plus a verb, such as "to run", "to fly", or "to use") are wrong. I have no idea why, but they are. There's no way to express the same idea while using the same words and being grammatically correct. The poster should read "Pay you to stop using"; the infinitive is "to stop".
I don't have the page numbers on me right now, but (and since you're AC I doubt you'll follow up on this message/be able to find it, but I post for the benefit of others) the intro/first chapter of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore gives a date and page number for a Miami Herald article. If I remember correctly, Gore would have won by Bush's standards of recounting each county, while Bush would have won by using Gore's original recounting standards. (Gore quickly, within a day or two, relented and pushed for a recount in each county.) In general that's a real great chapter to read.
Those three are all polling in the low single digits in most places/national polls except Gephardt (and that's debatable), meaning that whatever they say is no real threat to Bush's presidency. Kerry would be an exception if he had appeared. But yes, Fox isn't all THAT bad, and most of the time is as bland as the other networks. I just wish they would be more straightforward about their bias. Likewise with the other networks, if indeed they are liberal. Personally, I can hardly find an instance where the networks were liberal; in fact, they spent years trying to embarrass Clinton and after 9/11 simple dissent was extremely rare - typically the news will try to raise issues for the government and it simply didn't happen.
Most Americans know that the two-party system is corrupt, but it's hard to find enough intertia to change the system in a government that has so much antiquity and money inside. We basically don't know where to start and political parties are very unlikely to volunteer self-dissolution.
I'm very far to the left of the American political mainstream...you appear to be from Britain due to the shows you mention and the publication you mention. I'd be more at home in your political world, or probably continental Europe's.
But your condescending tone does absolutely nothing.
I remember watching Fox News Sunday (a typical political show on the regular Fox broadcast network) a few months ago for several weeks in a row and whenever they would have a Democratic congressperson for a roundtable discussion, they'd choose either Rep. Bayh or Senator Zell Miller. For those who don't know, Zell Miller votes for the Republican party line on every vote (literally) since he began to be in the Senate, I believe. Bayh has a similar record. So while people were debating the war, a new round of tax cuts, and so forth, a less informed viewer would get the perception that all sides were in agreement - wars and tax cuts for all!
Like you mentioned, they use the opposite for shows dedicated purely to "debate", choosing misinformed unelectable liberals to defend the Democratic party line and well-composed, intelligent conservatives for the Bushies. (Until they get into the "mindless rant" section of the program.)
Well, from the commerce clause alone you'd have a pretty good point, and there are definitely a lot of people on your side. But what the courts have used is the commerce clause tied in with the "necessary and proper" clause, which I also posted; it goes as follows:
"To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."
What the federal government would argue is that since water is often transported from one state to another, especially in the Plains states, (I had a hard time thinking of a good reason, actually, since I live in a Great Lakes state and somehow just assumed everyone had plenty of water in their own state) they have a right to regulate the amount of water used by certain buildings. If these buildings house companies that engage in interstate commerce, then their reasoning is reinforced.
Furthermore, the EPA is a division of the Department of the Interior, and as such the Constitution grants Congress the right to pass laws "necessary and proper" for administering the Department of the Interior. In this case, Congress passed a law several years ago creating the EPA, and each year passes a budget that gives the EPA money. If I recall, Congress can also pass a law stopping the EPA from doing certain things - but the President can veto these laws, and since the EPA is indirectly under control of the President, it's unlikely that the President would sign such things into law.
As for contrived logic, it's necessary. The Constitution is something like five pages of notebook paper long, yet it dictates what the world's richest country can and can't do. When you want nine people to decide what's gonna happen, it's basically a battle to see who can come up with the most cleverly irrelevant closing statement.
...To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
It goes on:
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
"Beginning a technology wave that will define the digital decade"
Has anyone heard anything that supports this statement? They're saying that this is the biggest change since 3.1 vs. Win95...but that was what XP was supposed to be. I'm not seeing anything on here that's wowing me.
Here's where I jump in. Nazi Germany had a completely different government. In short, a right-wing, fascist, genocidal government. From the 90s onward, the entire nation of Germany (West Germany since 1948 or so) has had a social democratic government. His argument isn't broken - yours is. Your argument is akin to blaming, say, the American group running Iraq for providing gas to kill the Kurds.
I just have to jump in here. I'm as liberal as the next guy, but Rodney King - and I want you to sit down for this - had it coming. He was completely loaded on PCP and had literally been throwing the police around for ten minutes before they took out their clubs. Both officers were considerably injured and they were acting in self-defense.
Rodney King was pulled over for going 120 in a residential area. An area where children play. He was on drugs and committed assault against two police officers and was winning. The police did what they needed to do to subdue him long enough to place him under arrest. It could be argued that the police hit him longer than necessary but it's hard to judge that from a distant camera - and probably even harder if you just were the victim of assault.
If someone was on PCP and started kicking the shit out of me, and I had a gun and a stick on me, guess which weapon I would have picked. It wouldn't matter if he were black.
Right. And from the perspective of people like my cousin, Earthlink (a bad example on my part since Earthlink does come with software...think of a local or regional ISP, perhaps) doesn't "come with" anything. I personally think that's a great thing but there are people that think that you need to have a big program or else you're getting ripped off because you have to go use other programs to get the same thing. They figure that it's the responsibility of the company to package everything together.
As an aside, I'm surprised AOL didn't do this the second Windows 95 came out and we didn't have to deal with the Winsock shit. Tentatively speaking, this is a good move by Goliath.
$500,000 * 280,000,000 = 140,000,000,000,000, or 140 trillion, about 2.85 times as large as the GDP of the entire world accoridng to the 2003 CIA Factbook.
(280,000,000 is an approximation of the population of the United States, this is a number used assuming that nobody outside of the United States has a credit card and that everyone in America has one and only one...so the number of credit cards in the world is probably higher.)
Well, then quite honestly, you're fucked. She left a form with her full name, mother's maiden name (probably), residence address and mailing address, date of birth, social security number, income level and occupation (probably) on the top of a trash heap in a high-traffic public area. It's not a big piece of work to keep it in your pocket until you get home, or even to tear the form up into pieces and then throw it out. Most people will not do anything dishonest, obviously, but it only takes one person to screw things up. She's lucky she only got the spam.
CD's is wrong. It's very common, especially in America, and it may eventually become accepted, but it's wrong. The correct way is just plain CDs, 1970s, MUDs, and so on. I learned this the hard way from a Harvard-educated English teacher.
Have you guys noticed the amount of sites that are devoted to hobbies and games related to the Google search engine? Has any other search engine had so many fanboys? (I know some people really get excited about the Archie days, but that doesn't qualify.) I found it odd...but the games are fun!
I don't normally reply to sigs. And I loathe Bush. But.
"There Ought to be Limits to Freedom!" - George W. Bush, 05/21/1999
Does anyone honestly disagree? There are lines you cannot cross. He wants to put them in different places than I do, but we both agree (and doesn't everyone besides anarchists?) that they should be there.
Slashdot Mirror
In any case, open electronic mail is probably on its way out unless it can somehow become a Rule of the Internet (when has that ever happened?) that an SMTP server must be responsible for all its users before POP servers will accept its messages.
And let's not forget that filters simply dictate when you have to dig through spam, not whether you will have to dig through spam. The prospect of a false positive, especially when it comes to serious business matters, keep us looking through those spam folders. Something big is going to have to change if living with spam is not an option. (Again, in my parent post I argue that spam easily can be reduced to almost nothing.)
In an unrelated rant, my username is a normal English word and my domain is a popular email domain. I get five or ten spams a week. The solution? Completely fake information when I sign up for things. The New York Times knows me as Pablo Rodriguez from River Forest, Illinois. My email for them is hotsexy69696969696969@hotmail.com. I suggest you all do the same.
English is dumb.
I had heard somewhere that Macromedia was a division of Microsoft. I could be wrong though.
I don't have the page numbers on me right now, but (and since you're AC I doubt you'll follow up on this message/be able to find it, but I post for the benefit of others) the intro/first chapter of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore gives a date and page number for a Miami Herald article. If I remember correctly, Gore would have won by Bush's standards of recounting each county, while Bush would have won by using Gore's original recounting standards. (Gore quickly, within a day or two, relented and pushed for a recount in each county.) In general that's a real great chapter to read.
Those three are all polling in the low single digits in most places/national polls except Gephardt (and that's debatable), meaning that whatever they say is no real threat to Bush's presidency. Kerry would be an exception if he had appeared. But yes, Fox isn't all THAT bad, and most of the time is as bland as the other networks.
I just wish they would be more straightforward about their bias. Likewise with the other networks, if indeed they are liberal. Personally, I can hardly find an instance where the networks were liberal; in fact, they spent years trying to embarrass Clinton and after 9/11 simple dissent was extremely rare - typically the news will try to raise issues for the government and it simply didn't happen.
I'm very far to the left of the American political mainstream...you appear to be from Britain due to the shows you mention and the publication you mention. I'd be more at home in your political world, or probably continental Europe's.
But your condescending tone does absolutely nothing.
Like you mentioned, they use the opposite for shows dedicated purely to "debate", choosing misinformed unelectable liberals to defend the Democratic party line and well-composed, intelligent conservatives for the Bushies. (Until they get into the "mindless rant" section of the program.)
"To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."
What the federal government would argue is that since water is often transported from one state to another, especially in the Plains states, (I had a hard time thinking of a good reason, actually, since I live in a Great Lakes state and somehow just assumed everyone had plenty of water in their own state) they have a right to regulate the amount of water used by certain buildings. If these buildings house companies that engage in interstate commerce, then their reasoning is reinforced.
Furthermore, the EPA is a division of the Department of the Interior, and as such the Constitution grants Congress the right to pass laws "necessary and proper" for administering the Department of the Interior. In this case, Congress passed a law several years ago creating the EPA, and each year passes a budget that gives the EPA money. If I recall, Congress can also pass a law stopping the EPA from doing certain things - but the President can veto these laws, and since the EPA is indirectly under control of the President, it's unlikely that the President would sign such things into law.
As for contrived logic, it's necessary. The Constitution is something like five pages of notebook paper long, yet it dictates what the world's richest country can and can't do. When you want nine people to decide what's gonna happen, it's basically a battle to see who can come up with the most cleverly irrelevant closing statement.
It goes on:
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
That's where.
Constitution of the USA
Has anyone heard anything that supports this statement? They're saying that this is the biggest change since 3.1 vs. Win95...but that was what XP was supposed to be. I'm not seeing anything on here that's wowing me.
Oh wait.
Google: Funny results FAST!
I think we found a winner!
Rodney King was pulled over for going 120 in a residential area. An area where children play. He was on drugs and committed assault against two police officers and was winning. The police did what they needed to do to subdue him long enough to place him under arrest. It could be argued that the police hit him longer than necessary but it's hard to judge that from a distant camera - and probably even harder if you just were the victim of assault.
If someone was on PCP and started kicking the shit out of me, and I had a gun and a stick on me, guess which weapon I would have picked. It wouldn't matter if he were black.
As an aside, I'm surprised AOL didn't do this the second Windows 95 came out and we didn't have to deal with the Winsock shit. Tentatively speaking, this is a good move by Goliath.
So don't use it. Don't say you "have to", either. Are you running a misconfigured OEM?
Whoa, you're right. Sorry. Unless he meant per year in which case the $500,000 is still somewhat accurate.
(280,000,000 is an approximation of the population of the United States, this is a number used assuming that nobody outside of the United States has a credit card and that everyone in America has one and only one...so the number of credit cards in the world is probably higher.)
So what was that you were saying?
Well, then quite honestly, you're fucked. She left a form with her full name, mother's maiden name (probably), residence address and mailing address, date of birth, social security number, income level and occupation (probably) on the top of a trash heap in a high-traffic public area. It's not a big piece of work to keep it in your pocket until you get home, or even to tear the form up into pieces and then throw it out. Most people will not do anything dishonest, obviously, but it only takes one person to screw things up. She's lucky she only got the spam.
Best /. ID number ever.
CD's is wrong. It's very common, especially in America, and it may eventually become accepted, but it's wrong. The correct way is just plain CDs, 1970s, MUDs, and so on. I learned this the hard way from a Harvard-educated English teacher.
Have you guys noticed the amount of sites that are devoted to hobbies and games related to the Google search engine? Has any other search engine had so many fanboys? (I know some people really get excited about the Archie days, but that doesn't qualify.) I found it odd...but the games are fun!
ahhh, yes, I remember now. My mistake, although you should maybe provide a link - give people concrete reasons to dislike Bush even more!
"There Ought to be Limits to Freedom!" - George W. Bush, 05/21/1999
Does anyone honestly disagree? There are lines you cannot cross. He wants to put them in different places than I do, but we both agree (and doesn't everyone besides anarchists?) that they should be there.