From their point of view, there are very sound reasons. State and federal agencies profit in the "war on drugs"- They don't care if it's a real threat like meth labs and the lovely people working them, or something as relatively harmless as marijuana.
Prohibition produces profits.
Profits for the drug lords, profits for the agencies and careers for the drug agents fighting them, profits for the legal system, profits for the private prisons, larger budgets for the state and federal prisons. They're not -about- to change the laws and let that kind of money and job security slip away. I'm sure that there are some good DEA agents, but think of how many DEA zealots would have to find jobs at County Sheriff's departments if they passed reasonable drug laws. Hell, the drug lords don't want reasonable drug laws, either- they'd have competition and profits would drop.
History keeps on repeating itself, which doesn't speak well of the evolution of human intelligence and ethics- Think back to the kinds of people that made money and built careers (on both sides) during alcohol prohibition. Unethical turds jump on the bandwagon that stupid, short-sighted people build (the "I don't think it's right but I'm too stupid to suggest a real solution" crowd).
As a sidebar, I wonder if JFK would have been president if Joe Kennedy hadn't fueled John's campaigns with profits made from selling illegal liquor.
Anybody care to compare the number of offensive lawsuits launched by Apple, and compare that to the number of offensive lawsuits launched by Googe?
How about comparing junk patents filed?
I was not trying to make a point that Google is actually evil. I was not comparing Google to any other corporation. What I was saying is that the mantra that everyone keeps referring to when talking about Google ("Do No Evil"), is meaningless. As I said above: They are just another corporation looking towards the next quarterly earnings report and beholden to their investors. Period. Pretty much like any other corporation.... i.e. there's nothing special about Google and I would bet that "Do No Evil" is meaningless inside the company.
Look- you need to ditch the concept that Google adheres to "Do No Evil". That train left the station a while back- They are just another corporation looking towards the next quarterly earnings report and beholden to their investors. Period. They will do what they can get away with, and when they can't get away with it, they'll apologize for their "mistake".
But then if you buy into Santorums position that education is for snobs and if your not rabidly pro Christian your anti religion robo calls may work on you.
The problem is that there are a -lot- of people out there that buy into Santorum's "message", manufactured by a sociopath, consumed by idiots.
George Carlin's Theory of General Stupidity:
Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.
Or ablative shielding, or maybe even spray dust down the anticipated threat axis. If the enemy laser emits visible light and you have an idea of the laser's frequency, maybe coat the dust particles with something of the same color, or spray multi-colored dust if you don't.
Don't dump it all on religion- while religion is and has been a very popular excuse used for legitimizing brutality and stupidity, I would say that if Mankind didn't have religion as an excuse for brainwashing, fighting wars and brutalizing itself, it would have (and has) found something else... Nationalism, wealth (someone else's), race, you name it. Parts of humanity have always rationalized some justification for shitting on other parts of humanity. Religion just happens to be one of the more convenient vehicles.
And that's exactly how they handle it at IBM- You get to choose between your job, and giving them first dibs on anything you may think up on the weekend. A condition of my employment at IBM Global Services was that if I so much as invented a better pair of scissors over the weekend, I was required to present my "invention" to management, or find myself in violation of my terms of employment. No longer work there.
Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?
Years before my son reached Middle School, I looked high and low for these people; turns out the only place I was able to find them in Houston was in a private school, being paid what they should be paid.
While there are a few great teachers scattered randomly throughout HISD, many find themselves, for the most part, saddled with a ridiculous bureaucracy and large class sizes- there's much more to it than finding great teachers. The result is, I spend almost more than I can afford to send my son to a private school.
They just got caught. They'll try again when people are distracted by something else.
Exactly. Let's not declare victory yet- This is nothing but a strategic retreat.
The intent is still there, they just met enough resistance that they figured it was prudent to fall back and re-group.
With a number of high-volume sites going black on the 18th and growing media attention, public awareness might have approached a level that SOPA proponents weren't comfortable with- If they pull the target of the protest out of harm's way before the 18th, it will reduce the impact of the protest. Now, when the 18th rolls around, congress can say "Hey! We heard you, realized SOPA was a bad idea, and have pulled it from the docket, so there's really nothing to get upset about.".
We need to stay vigilant... It's likely that the bill will be reintroduced with subtler language, or that SOPA-like riders will be introduced into other legislation, or who knows what. The entertainment industry has invested too much cash in the Congressional vending machine to walk away from this without a return.
Uhhhh.... I think he -was- stating that sexual activity -does- decline after marriage for some. I'd like to say it's funny, but after 21 years of marriage, I FAIL TO SEE THE FUCKING HUMOR. Sorry. I've been a little on edge lately.
... I do not post my financials or mortgage information. I do not post floor plans of my home, my property size or value. I do not post my private medical records, what prescriptions i may take, what cell phone plan I have, where i use my phone the most...
You don't have to. The organizations that purchase information from FB also purchase information from LexisNexis, IMS Health, ChoicePoint, MLS, Equifax etc., then aggregate it. Now they know much of your medical information, what prescriptions you take, what cell phone plan you have, your mortgage information, your property size and it's value. FB is just one cog in the wheel. The organizations that want this information don't single source it. A few pieces of relatively innocuous data posted on FB might have a higher value than you think, when correlated with other information.
US intervention has often succeeded in liberating nations...
Yes- Ask the people of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and El Salvador how those interventions went for them. Here's a reference to US interventions in the 20th and 21st centuries. Turns out we've had a very busy 100 years. Hell- I had no idea that we actually stationed troops for years in China well before WWII. Some of the interventions in the list above were likely justified, but I think Marine Major General Smedley Butler had a pretty good handle on reality when he said:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Extending these examples into modern times, I think that Iraq and the 'stans (Caspian oil pipeline) are now relatively safer places for American / Global Oil and Bank Interests. Don't worry; there's more to come- I'm sure there will be several more wars in the near future to get our minds off of the pain of dismantling / rebuilding Europe's and America's economic systems.... ahem...excuse me: "making the world safe for Democracy and Prosperity".
No offense, but I've come to believe that maybe we should go that far, with sociopaths, that is. In my experience, sociopaths rarely change, and they cause so much damage over a lifetime that it isn't such a stretch classifying them as a pestilence. Having a big ego is a different thing entirely.
I, for one, can only wonder how he managed to get married and spawn.
Sadly, there has never been a shortage of women (or men) that seem to seek out abusive partners, for whatever reason. I've never been able to figure it out.
What he's doing is advising this child regarding the point of view held by the people that will probably kick in his door at 3am. While I have a low opinion of the company in question... regardless of how negligent they are, and regardless of how correctly or incorrectly the applicable laws are interpreted and enforced, the bottom line is that those laws are squarely on the company's side- the company DIDN'T ask for a security audit from him, and LE now considers him a criminal. While he could have made something good of this without much risk to himself by dumping it anonymously in some security firm's lap (such as Secunia, mentioned above), he chose to identify himself to the company before asking for help here. It feels to me like he has ethical intentions, regardless of the "trespassing"- This situation could have had an ethically pleasing outcome and he could have walked away feeling good about it without worrying about consequences. He didn't have the years of small & medium-sized mistakes under his belt that your father probably has, so he made a massive mistake, and unfortunately someone's probably going to do really bad things to him because of it.
Yeah, I looked it up, and you're right: thousands of years of research and experience have clearly shown that anecdotes are the best method for judging the efficacy of medication. Tomorrow I'll go visit a witch doctor to ask if he perform recto-cranial extractions. I'll let you know how it goes.
Do whatever makes you happy- I'll stick with a neurologist.
The reason we prefer those eeevil, sterile, robotically produced, Big Pharma, toxic pills is because:
1. We can control for purity. You know you're getting the good stuff without any contaminants.
2. We can control for dosage. You know you're not getting too little to do any good, or overdosing yourself into a coma.
That would explain why my neurologist (and many of his peers, according to him) refuse to prescribe generic seizure medication, as many of us will seize on generics. "Sort of a crapshoot", he told me.
Spent some time there last summer. I was working within a large university in Beijing, and was interested to observe that it was a Big center of pro-State attitudes. I mean, take a Young Republicans group at a large State university and expand it to 80% of the student body, and that's what it felt like. Also, repetition, by rote and endless drilling in subjects seemed to be the focus were I was- You're correct about open thinking.
My biggest surprise, however, was while riding the train to Xian and getting up to crap at 2am, walking into the "bathroom" and almost falling into the crapping hole cut in the floor of the train. Innovative- No honey pots to clean, and stuff grows -very- well around railroad tracks.
Yep. 10 years ago, my IBM GS position went to Puna, India. I was offered something in Armonk, across the country from where I lived. Took the package, ended the unhappiest 3 years of my professional life, and never looked back. What a miserable, miserable place to work. 7 managers in 3 years.
Slashdot Mirror
From their point of view, there are very sound reasons. State and federal agencies profit in the "war on drugs"- They don't care if it's a real threat like meth labs and the lovely people working them, or something as relatively harmless as marijuana.
Prohibition produces profits.
Profits for the drug lords, profits for the agencies and careers for the drug agents fighting them, profits for the legal system, profits for the private prisons, larger budgets for the state and federal prisons. They're not -about- to change the laws and let that kind of money and job security slip away. I'm sure that there are some good DEA agents, but think of how many DEA zealots would have to find jobs at County Sheriff's departments if they passed reasonable drug laws. Hell, the drug lords don't want reasonable drug laws, either- they'd have competition and profits would drop.
History keeps on repeating itself, which doesn't speak well of the evolution of human intelligence and ethics- Think back to the kinds of people that made money and built careers (on both sides) during alcohol prohibition. Unethical turds jump on the bandwagon that stupid, short-sighted people build (the "I don't think it's right but I'm too stupid to suggest a real solution" crowd) .
As a sidebar, I wonder if JFK would have been president if Joe Kennedy hadn't fueled John's campaigns with profits made from selling illegal liquor.
Anybody care to compare the number of offensive lawsuits launched by Apple, and compare that to the number of offensive lawsuits launched by Googe?
How about comparing junk patents filed?
I was not trying to make a point that Google is actually evil. I was not comparing Google to any other corporation. What I was saying is that the mantra that everyone keeps referring to when talking about Google ("Do No Evil"), is meaningless. As I said above: They are just another corporation looking towards the next quarterly earnings report and beholden to their investors. Period. Pretty much like any other corporation.... i.e. there's nothing special about Google and I would bet that "Do No Evil" is meaningless inside the company.
Amusing that you manage to derive:
Google is being evil evil EVIL!!!
out of that.
Look- you need to ditch the concept that Google adheres to "Do No Evil". That train left the station a while back- They are just another corporation looking towards the next quarterly earnings report and beholden to their investors. Period. They will do what they can get away with, and when they can't get away with it, they'll apologize for their "mistake".
But then if you buy into Santorums position that education is for snobs and if your not rabidly pro Christian your anti religion robo calls may work on you.
The problem is that there are a -lot- of people out there that buy into Santorum's "message", manufactured by a sociopath, consumed by idiots.
George Carlin's Theory of General Stupidity:
Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.
applies very well here.
Or ablative shielding, or maybe even spray dust down the anticipated threat axis. If the enemy laser emits visible light and you have an idea of the laser's frequency, maybe coat the dust particles with something of the same color, or spray multi-colored dust if you don't.
Don't dump it all on religion- while religion is and has been a very popular excuse used for legitimizing brutality and stupidity, I would say that if Mankind didn't have religion as an excuse for brainwashing, fighting wars and brutalizing itself, it would have (and has) found something else... Nationalism, wealth (someone else's), race, you name it. Parts of humanity have always rationalized some justification for shitting on other parts of humanity. Religion just happens to be one of the more convenient vehicles.
And that's exactly how they handle it at IBM- You get to choose between your job, and giving them first dibs on anything you may think up on the weekend. A condition of my employment at IBM Global Services was that if I so much as invented a better pair of scissors over the weekend, I was required to present my "invention" to management, or find myself in violation of my terms of employment. No longer work there.
... And, if you do this, you are a complete idiot. I wouldn't recommend it.
Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?
Years before my son reached Middle School, I looked high and low for these people; turns out the only place I was able to find them in Houston was in a private school, being paid what they should be paid.
While there are a few great teachers scattered randomly throughout HISD, many find themselves, for the most part, saddled with a ridiculous bureaucracy and large class sizes- there's much more to it than finding great teachers. The result is, I spend almost more than I can afford to send my son to a private school.
It's the axe of Theseus.
They just got caught. They'll try again when people are distracted by something else.
Exactly. Let's not declare victory yet- This is nothing but a strategic retreat.
The intent is still there, they just met enough resistance that they figured it was prudent to fall back and re-group.
With a number of high-volume sites going black on the 18th and growing media attention, public awareness might have approached a level that SOPA proponents weren't comfortable with- If they pull the target of the protest out of harm's way before the 18th, it will reduce the impact of the protest. Now, when the 18th rolls around, congress can say "Hey! We heard you, realized SOPA was a bad idea, and have pulled it from the docket, so there's really nothing to get upset about.".
We need to stay vigilant... It's likely that the bill will be reintroduced with subtler language, or that SOPA-like riders will be introduced into other legislation, or who knows what. The entertainment industry has invested too much cash in the Congressional vending machine to walk away from this without a return.
Uhhhh.... I think he -was- stating that sexual activity -does- decline after marriage for some. I'd like to say it's funny, but after 21 years of marriage, I FAIL TO SEE THE FUCKING HUMOR. Sorry. I've been a little on edge lately.
... I do not post my financials or mortgage information. I do not post floor plans of my home, my property size or value. I do not post my private medical records, what prescriptions i may take, what cell phone plan I have, where i use my phone the most...
You don't have to. The organizations that purchase information from FB also purchase information from LexisNexis, IMS Health, ChoicePoint, MLS, Equifax etc., then aggregate it. Now they know much of your medical information, what prescriptions you take, what cell phone plan you have, your mortgage information, your property size and it's value. FB is just one cog in the wheel. The organizations that want this information don't single source it. A few pieces of relatively innocuous data posted on FB might have a higher value than you think, when correlated with other information.
US intervention has often succeeded in liberating nations...
Yes- Ask the people of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and El Salvador how those interventions went for them. Here's a reference to US interventions in the 20th and 21st centuries. Turns out we've had a very busy 100 years. Hell- I had no idea that we actually stationed troops for years in China well before WWII. Some of the interventions in the list above were likely justified, but I think Marine Major General Smedley Butler had a pretty good handle on reality when he said:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Extending these examples into modern times, I think that Iraq and the 'stans (Caspian oil pipeline) are now relatively safer places for American / Global Oil and Bank Interests. Don't worry; there's more to come- I'm sure there will be several more wars in the near future to get our minds off of the pain of dismantling / rebuilding Europe's and America's economic systems.... ahem...excuse me: "making the world safe for Democracy and Prosperity".
No offense, but I've come to believe that maybe we should go that far, with sociopaths, that is. In my experience, sociopaths rarely change, and they cause so much damage over a lifetime that it isn't such a stretch classifying them as a pestilence. Having a big ego is a different thing entirely.
I, for one, can only wonder how he managed to get married and spawn.
Sadly, there has never been a shortage of women (or men) that seem to seek out abusive partners, for whatever reason. I've never been able to figure it out.
What a lame, worthless argument. Just because a dumbass like O'Reilly uses their product, you're supporting what happened?
...it's nice to see it in action once in a while.
What he's doing is advising this child regarding the point of view held by the people that will probably kick in his door at 3am. While I have a low opinion of the company in question... regardless of how negligent they are, and regardless of how correctly or incorrectly the applicable laws are interpreted and enforced, the bottom line is that those laws are squarely on the company's side- the company DIDN'T ask for a security audit from him, and LE now considers him a criminal. While he could have made something good of this without much risk to himself by dumping it anonymously in some security firm's lap (such as Secunia, mentioned above), he chose to identify himself to the company before asking for help here. It feels to me like he has ethical intentions, regardless of the "trespassing"- This situation could have had an ethically pleasing outcome and he could have walked away feeling good about it without worrying about consequences. He didn't have the years of small & medium-sized mistakes under his belt that your father probably has, so he made a massive mistake, and unfortunately someone's probably going to do really bad things to him because of it.
Yeah, I looked it up, and you're right: thousands of years of research and experience have clearly shown that anecdotes are the best method for judging the efficacy of medication. Tomorrow I'll go visit a witch doctor to ask if he perform recto-cranial extractions. I'll let you know how it goes.
Do whatever makes you happy- I'll stick with a neurologist.
I can see where you get your monicker.
The reason we prefer those eeevil, sterile, robotically produced, Big Pharma, toxic pills is because:
1. We can control for purity. You know you're getting the good stuff without any contaminants. 2. We can control for dosage. You know you're not getting too little to do any good, or overdosing yourself into a coma.
That would explain why my neurologist (and many of his peers, according to him) refuse to prescribe generic seizure medication, as many of us will seize on generics. "Sort of a crapshoot", he told me.
My biggest surprise, however, was while riding the train to Xian and getting up to crap at 2am, walking into the "bathroom" and almost falling into the crapping hole cut in the floor of the train. Innovative- No honey pots to clean, and stuff grows -very- well around railroad tracks.
That's one civilisation that didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
Yep. 10 years ago, my IBM GS position went to Puna, India. I was offered something in Armonk, across the country from where I lived. Took the package, ended the unhappiest 3 years of my professional life, and never looked back. What a miserable, miserable place to work. 7 managers in 3 years.
Damn, man, she looks like Nurse Ratched.