It's interesting that they refer to a food product that is, to an extraordinarily high degree of probably, perfectly safe for consumption, as a "contaminant".
And other people think 9/11 was planned and executed by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile people fight to make creationism part of the high school science curriculum.
And many consider homeopathic medicines, also known as "water", as effective treatments.
OK, I'll bite.
Even if all the things you've said are as stated, should that mean that people shouldn't discuss them or revisit them when appropriate?
Data on the lack of safety of GM products exists. Monsanto and Bayer both have a documented history of doing the 'wrong' thing time after time. Why should we believe them now, when they are clearly making products that are specifically designed to increase their revenues at the cost of people's wellbeing - ie. more pesticide in the environment and sueing farmers in the first and third worlds into oblivion for having voliated their patents by getting their crops cross contaminated.
If a thing is 'good' then someone should be able to prove why it is good, and vice versa. If an idea is false, then it should be capable of being debunked. To just swallow the party line, simply because it is the party line is stupid.
Seems to me that the only real problem with blowing this sort of thing off by saying "this is just like last time when we tried something that had a small chance of destroying the world and it worked out okay then" is that you really only have to be wrong once.
The fact of the matter is that it is easy to fuck things up, but very difficult to fuck things up so badly that the entire world is destroyed. That would take real skill, I don't worry about it happening by accident.
Weird. Computer games can be downloaded for free, or acquired for a very small fee from your neighbourhood copy-peddler. And still the game-development industry is steadily increasing its revenues. And music? People can download any song they want through eDonkey and such, and the music industry does not seem to suffer. Movies? The movie industry gets richer and richer by the day.
You might think it is rational what you say, but practice shows differently. It seems you are not taking everything into account. Probably, if you scan this thread a little more, you'll find out what that is.
There are many people who don't use the internet at all, or don't know how to use it effectively. Whilst they might know that they could download content, they often don't know how to do it. As shocking a concept as that is for those of us with an always on connection constantly pumping the internet into us.
Case in point, I've become the defacto 'go to' person in my family and circle of friends when it comes to finding and downloading content. My family and friends aren't idiots, they just don't have the time or inclination to learn how to use the internet to the level that I do. These are the same people who just want to get stuff done on their pc's without having to think too much about it, to them it's just a fancy typewriter, etc. I've worked in a IT support role before, and I do IT support for my family and friends - exactly the same way every techie ends up doing. This is just more free tech support as far as I'm concerned.
In 5-10 years time, when the teenagers who download everything like second nature have grown up, then we will have a very different landscape to the one we have today. They know that cartels are adding nothing to the product, that they are merely gouging the market, and like me, many of them don't like what they see going on. I think that we are seeing the beginnings of change with things like the 'pirate party' - some bright young person has figured out that you can turn a flash mob into a political party and effect change. I would think that is a bigger deal than the death of the MPAA/RIAA (who are already doomed in my opinion), simply because it represents the threat of real democracy entering politics - career politicians should be scared (but they won't be scared until it's too late for them, these are the same guys who bring you 'the internet is a series of tubes').
...what the problem is with technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce?
Poor nations aren't the primary target market for GM. Monsanto and Bayer Crop Sciences don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts (and not just because they are soulless bastards either), they do them to make money. They can get more money in the developed world. Access to food and water are usually political issues. We have enough calories available to feed everyone several times over, it just isn't distributed evenly. In developed nations, nutrition issues have more to do with poor food choices than availability of nutritious foods.
A subset of the 'problems' that GM is supposed to solve either don't really exist in nature (ie. how do we make square fruits and vegetables that don't bruise) or can be addressed by proper plant breeding.
GM promotes a monoculture. This is a risky step to say the very least.
Monsanto and friends aren't making 'nutritious food', they're making crops that can resist higher doses of their insecticides. Most people (rather wisely) don't want more roundup sprayed on their food, because some of it is bound to end up in their bodies.
GM is closed source and aggressively protected by patents.
Consumers have voted with their wallets, they don't want GM. Companies are resorting to legal avenues, lobbying, etc to sneak their products out to a buying public that rejects them. Most people would rather know if they are consuming GM and have a choice on the matter than not.
Why the hell do parents let their kids on the internet unattended?
Because they think it's like TV - which in many ways it is. The problem is that it is good for organising niches, so dirty pedos can get together in ways they never could before and prey on kids they never would have found otherwise. The internet is an enabler, for *everyone*, including filthy degenerates who should be burnt at the stake.
It's a pity that Osama Bin Laden isn't a pedophile, I could really get behind the war on child molesters. Think of how many of them we could take out for the billions it's costing to fuck up the middle east.
I see where you're coming from, but my feeling is that what's noise to me might be signal to others, and vice-versa. Beethoven took some of his great symphonic themes from "mediocre" musical ditties of his day. Cubism arose in part because European artists gained exposure to "mediocre" African art and took it in unforseen directions. Warhol made art from tin can logos. The important thing is being able to connect and have access to the ideas. From there, what you do with them is limited more by your own inner creative mojo than by overexposure to crap.
The thing that acts as a crap filter is time. In visual art, generally speaking, you wait fifty years to filter the crap from masterpieces. People don't preserve crap over the long term. This works to some extent with pop culture - you can watch a 10 year old movie and still enjoy it and not be sitting there thinking 'god these effects are crap'. Conversely, no amount of time (or scientologist legwork) is going to turn Battlefield Earth into Gone with the Wind.
Are you a gamer? Are you someone who does intense multimedia work? If not, then a single-core chip is fine, much less a 4-core chip. For the vast majority of home and business desktops, chips that are considered old right now offer plenty of computing power.
I cast Dispell computing power aka. Vista
Seriously, Microsoft makes an Office suite that rapes machines to death - Vista's going to hump a hole from the top of your cpu to china.
On a side rant- known terrorists? Its been proven in a court of law? Or they confessed to it? No? Then they aren't known terrorist, they're *suspected* terrorists, and are innocent until proven guilty.
I can understand his confusion - given that the government of the day has run Gitmo and its like, freely tortures people, thinks that the Geneva convention only applies in Geneva, lies (badly) to it's people and the world, spies (badly) on it's people, invades other countries on the strength of false intelligence, etc..
The American government has no concept of justice, honesty or accountability. And the American people just don't care. The word 'revolting' doesn't even begin to cover it.
The sport *I* would like to see would be a normal sport, like football, soccer, or hockey, where the "no drugs" pretense has been dropped, no testing is perormed, and players are encouraged to enhance their performance by any means possible wink wink. A game where all the players are on uppers and going through 'roid rage would make me more interested in the sport.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, this is the sport you *already* watch - the only difference is that the players are also taking masking agents to cover up the rest of the stuff they use. Look at football (no, not soccer - they only use nose candy) or rugby, or whatever sport involving mass and strength, people don't tend to get that big without chemical assistance (not that *quickly*, anyway).
Nobody, and I mean *nobody* in professional sports is clean - they can't afford to be and remain competitive as well. It just doesn't happen in an age where you can get *rich* playing sports and the difference between winnning and losing is in the hundredths of a second.
It also stars Harrison Ford in his least favorite role.
Well, considering that he's hooked up with Calista Flockhart in real life - I think his ability to tell the different between good and 'sack of antlers' is marginal at best.
Well, if I could get past that retarded abortion called 'Microsoft Passport' I might actually try it. Straight - download - link, not brain surgery Microsoft!
I've known people who stole from their employer and viewed it as an unofficial fringe benefit of the job.
My personal favourite was my last job, everything that wasn't nailed/bolted/welded/glued to the floor would walk off sooner or later in some of the departments - it was easier for me to have a supply of replacements on hand than to try to educate the fucktards I worked with that low wage + low morale + low security = high replacement costs. I bought the same video camera 4 times, probably at least 6 laptops and christ knows how many mobiles.
My good friend who still works there seemed to define 'stealing' as what other people did, her's was somehow legitimate (call me crazy, but theft is binary in my book - you are either doing it or not, you can't half do it - the boundary isn't fuzzy). I could care less - go ahead, steal whatever you can carry - it ain't my money, but just don't pretend that what you're doing is kosher. And let me know so that I can order replacements.
The folks running pirated corporate editions or counterfeit install keys? They already work around WGA as it is. They know the score and will not be affected in the slightest.
The pirated/modified versions of Windows are orders of magnitude better than the retail product. Retail Windows is broken.
Seriously, though, doesn't Microsoft realize that significant number of users aren't going to go out and suddenly buy Windows? Sure, most (half?) will, but the rest will go hunting for a truly free (read: no-cost) alternative until a hack comes out.
Microsoft does this so people like my idiot brother go and buy a license for XP because they are too stupid to type 'WGA' or 'Genuine Advantage' into PB's or isohunt's search boxes. Someone that dumb isn't going to say 'gee, what a great opportunity to install Linux'. They don't search for solutions, they just sit there and bleat mournfully.
People only say that they use their computer for wordprocessing/other banal tasks - it's all porn and games in reality. Why would they switch to Linux and lose half their functionality on the spot and have to learn all new quirks just to get their fix? Not worth it!
It seems many of these specs are for the areo feature. Am I the only one that thinks the whole aero craze is over the top. Is it really that important to be able to see through some of your windows and have them displayed in "3d"? Most likely when I load Vista I look at that feature, say ohh thats neet, then turn them all off mostly because its just a waste of reasorces. Any one else feel the same way?
I thought it was only me! Microsoft appears to have removed everything but the chrome to hit their release target - and I'm sure as shit not going to upgrade my PC simply to get transparent windows and 20 dialog boxes to click everytime I want to do anything. What's in it for me?
I have met some quite skilled folks from India over the years. Mostly in telcos engineering departments... but they were in the US and either born here or on their way to US Citizens. The ones answering the phones while still in Bombay... chances are "idiot" is a pretty good description of their skill level and experience in whatever job they are doing. The GOOD ones get better jobs after a short time.
Anyone stuck on the phone for more than a short time is an idiot, no matter which country they happen to be in.
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It's interesting that they refer to a food product that is, to an extraordinarily high degree of probably, perfectly safe for consumption, as a "contaminant".
And other people think 9/11 was planned and executed by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile people fight to make creationism part of the high school science curriculum.
And many consider homeopathic medicines, also known as "water", as effective treatments.
OK, I'll bite.
Even if all the things you've said are as stated, should that mean that people shouldn't discuss them or revisit them when appropriate?
Data on the lack of safety of GM products exists. Monsanto and Bayer both have a documented history of doing the 'wrong' thing time after time. Why should we believe them now, when they are clearly making products that are specifically designed to increase their revenues at the cost of people's wellbeing - ie. more pesticide in the environment and sueing farmers in the first and third worlds into oblivion for having voliated their patents by getting their crops cross contaminated.
If a thing is 'good' then someone should be able to prove why it is good, and vice versa. If an idea is false, then it should be capable of being debunked. To just swallow the party line, simply because it is the party line is stupid.
Seems to me that the only real problem with blowing this sort of thing off by saying "this is just like last time when we tried something that had a small chance of destroying the world and it worked out okay then" is that you really only have to be wrong once.
The fact of the matter is that it is easy to fuck things up, but very difficult to fuck things up so badly that the entire world is destroyed. That would take real skill, I don't worry about it happening by accident.
What! You talk about porn like it's a bad thing - without it you wouldn't have the internet that you are using now. Respect the porn.
Weird. Computer games can be downloaded for free, or acquired for a very small fee from your neighbourhood copy-peddler. And still the game-development industry is steadily increasing its revenues. And music? People can download any song they want through eDonkey and such, and the music industry does not seem to suffer. Movies? The movie industry gets richer and richer by the day.
You might think it is rational what you say, but practice shows differently. It seems you are not taking everything into account. Probably, if you scan this thread a little more, you'll find out what that is.
There are many people who don't use the internet at all, or don't know how to use it effectively. Whilst they might know that they could download content, they often don't know how to do it. As shocking a concept as that is for those of us with an always on connection constantly pumping the internet into us.
Case in point, I've become the defacto 'go to' person in my family and circle of friends when it comes to finding and downloading content. My family and friends aren't idiots, they just don't have the time or inclination to learn how to use the internet to the level that I do. These are the same people who just want to get stuff done on their pc's without having to think too much about it, to them it's just a fancy typewriter, etc. I've worked in a IT support role before, and I do IT support for my family and friends - exactly the same way every techie ends up doing. This is just more free tech support as far as I'm concerned.
In 5-10 years time, when the teenagers who download everything like second nature have grown up, then we will have a very different landscape to the one we have today. They know that cartels are adding nothing to the product, that they are merely gouging the market, and like me, many of them don't like what they see going on. I think that we are seeing the beginnings of change with things like the 'pirate party' - some bright young person has figured out that you can turn a flash mob into a political party and effect change. I would think that is a bigger deal than the death of the MPAA/RIAA (who are already doomed in my opinion), simply because it represents the threat of real democracy entering politics - career politicians should be scared (but they won't be scared until it's too late for them, these are the same guys who bring you 'the internet is a series of tubes').
Because they think it's like TV - which in many ways it is. The problem is that it is good for organising niches, so dirty pedos can get together in ways they never could before and prey on kids they never would have found otherwise. The internet is an enabler, for *everyone*, including filthy degenerates who should be burnt at the stake.
It's a pity that Osama Bin Laden isn't a pedophile, I could really get behind the war on child molesters. Think of how many of them we could take out for the billions it's costing to fuck up the middle east.
The thing that acts as a crap filter is time. In visual art, generally speaking, you wait fifty years to filter the crap from masterpieces. People don't preserve crap over the long term. This works to some extent with pop culture - you can watch a 10 year old movie and still enjoy it and not be sitting there thinking 'god these effects are crap'. Conversely, no amount of time (or scientologist legwork) is going to turn Battlefield Earth into Gone with the Wind.
I cast Dispell computing power aka. Vista
Seriously, Microsoft makes an Office suite that rapes machines to death - Vista's going to hump a hole from the top of your cpu to china.
I can understand his confusion - given that the government of the day has run Gitmo and its like, freely tortures people, thinks that the Geneva convention only applies in Geneva, lies (badly) to it's people and the world, spies (badly) on it's people, invades other countries on the strength of false intelligence, etc..
The American government has no concept of justice, honesty or accountability. And the American people just don't care. The word 'revolting' doesn't even begin to cover it.
America, as it stands, is disgusting.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, this is the sport you *already* watch - the only difference is that the players are also taking masking agents to cover up the rest of the stuff they use. Look at football (no, not soccer - they only use nose candy) or rugby, or whatever sport involving mass and strength, people don't tend to get that big without chemical assistance (not that *quickly*, anyway).
Nobody, and I mean *nobody* in professional sports is clean - they can't afford to be and remain competitive as well. It just doesn't happen in an age where you can get *rich* playing sports and the difference between winnning and losing is in the hundredths of a second.
Well, considering that he's hooked up with Calista Flockhart in real life - I think his ability to tell the different between good and 'sack of antlers' is marginal at best.
Well, if I could get past that retarded abortion called 'Microsoft Passport' I might actually try it. Straight - download - link, not brain surgery Microsoft!
649.00 Euros = 825.9823 U.S. dollars = You must be fucking joking!
That's because they were off listening to their iPods like the other eleventy billion people who own one - does Apple make computers?
See, I told you that Mayhem178 was a dirty slut!
Gracious my ass. It's all just a thinly veiled plot to get America more access to smut.
My personal favourite was my last job, everything that wasn't nailed/bolted/welded/glued to the floor would walk off sooner or later in some of the departments - it was easier for me to have a supply of replacements on hand than to try to educate the fucktards I worked with that low wage + low morale + low security = high replacement costs. I bought the same video camera 4 times, probably at least 6 laptops and christ knows how many mobiles.
My good friend who still works there seemed to define 'stealing' as what other people did, her's was somehow legitimate (call me crazy, but theft is binary in my book - you are either doing it or not, you can't half do it - the boundary isn't fuzzy). I could care less - go ahead, steal whatever you can carry - it ain't my money, but just don't pretend that what you're doing is kosher. And let me know so that I can order replacements.
The pirated/modified versions of Windows are orders of magnitude better than the retail product. Retail Windows is broken.
Microsoft does this so people like my idiot brother go and buy a license for XP because they are too stupid to type 'WGA' or 'Genuine Advantage' into PB's or isohunt's search boxes. Someone that dumb isn't going to say 'gee, what a great opportunity to install Linux'. They don't search for solutions, they just sit there and bleat mournfully.
People only say that they use their computer for wordprocessing/other banal tasks - it's all porn and games in reality. Why would they switch to Linux and lose half their functionality on the spot and have to learn all new quirks just to get their fix? Not worth it!
Who knows what they would have done to him had he been reaching for a gun - 41 shots shows great restraint in policing.
I thought it was only me! Microsoft appears to have removed everything but the chrome to hit their release target - and I'm sure as shit not going to upgrade my PC simply to get transparent windows and 20 dialog boxes to click everytime I want to do anything. What's in it for me?
The skies will rain fire, the seas will turn to blood and Celine Dion will mate with the US Administration and birth the Antichrist. Repent!
It is pirates vs. ninjas, but they're sexy ninjas!
Hence forth, to be known as Roman Mir's law.
Anyone stuck on the phone for more than a short time is an idiot, no matter which country they happen to be in.