Carry a gun or a collapsible stick. They can't rob you without killing you at that point. And in some places, they rob you and kill you for shits and giggles anyways. Even if all you have is credit cards. Personally, I'm with you on that comment:)
Hell, don't use cash, the man benefits from that too... if you REAAAALLLYY wanna get 'im, use gold, silver and solid assets... I'm not quite that concerned yet as to use that sort of transaction system, but that is another approach, I wager, even more effective than cash (and far more effective in places like Africa.)
You miss the point. That credit information is MY property. If they are selling information about someone without that someone's consent, they are actually performing patent or copyright infringement (many people DO patent or copyright their names). The individual about whom the information is collected has the right to have it verified. False information is libel or defamation. The fact that governments enforce the corporate side has little to do with a "free market".
Government forced itself down everyone's throats and granted monopolies to unsurvivably huge entities (mega corporations) and now clamors that regulating small businesses is the only way to fix things. No, cancelling the privileges they granted in the first place and remunerating the tax payers they defrauded into thinking they were paying for "services" is how they will set the scales even.
Which is what the meaning of justice is, by the way, but I'm not holding my breath to see justice from the government, except maybe as bait to scam people with a bigger fraud still.
All I can say is that since I had all the ID information, and the bank had the land deeds, after a lot of hard work, and basically little to no help from the cops, I got my name "semi" cleared. I flipped that land about the same way the house flippers did, and since the cops never caught anyone after I talked to them, I'm still stuck clearing my name. Got enough cash though, and enough corporations that I don't particularly give a shit about my personal name as far as the credit bureaus are concerned. Those who know me by face know me, and those who know me by credit report or government databases are not worth my time to talk to.
Yes, I do not use credit cards much. Yes I have very good personal references (quite a few business owners and a few past work references.)
What saved me is that I did a LOT of cash business (reported to the IRS nonetheless, since several of my employees were "eligible for tax withholding", but VERY little balance in my bank accounts.) As a result, the ID thieves couldn't clean out my bank accounts... if you depend on credit cards, however, that's a bit tougher. Try using international CC's or Prepaid debit cards. They won't build up your credit rating, but if you're worried about your identity being stolen by unscrupulous merchants, a pre paid debit card contains none of your private info.
I spend more time socializing IRL with a vast group of my neighbors now that I'm out in the boonies than I did living in the big city (i've lived in several big cities so far on the East Coast of the USA) I have yet to come to the conclusion that simply because everyone there lives in a match box which is easily breached by assailants (which often happens, despite their heavily enforced "gun control") that they are safer or spend more time with shared values.
I am quite amicable in person... though I'm not exactly a fan of being disarmed so some professional victim group can "feel safer". If they don't feel safe then they simply leave me be, and I'll nod my salute to them and be on my way with the late I bought from the mom and pop coffee joint down the road from starbucks (at half the price).
Shared values, are one thing, but pretending that forcing everyone to live in matchbox apartments next door to each other in the armpits of the world (big cities) so they will "share values" is like when the communists subverted my grandparents homeland and said "all will be equally well off"... without truly saying "all will be equally POOR, and poorer than before".
Semantics, I'm sure, except that a lot of those screaming for communism and control of those "evil rich separatists" ended up being trodden underfoot by their beloved regime. Thus I'm a fan of everyone looking out for their families by doing what they think is best for themselves and family. If that involves NOT putting targets on their backs by sending them to "gun free/ disarmed victim zones" known as public schools, or by choosing to be ready to stay healthy and alive, then that is a GOOD thing.
Given that the rapists of the world have often spent time getting raped in prison, and that HIV and full blown AIDS are making massive percentages in prisons, rape is basically a death sentence nowadays. My last girlfriend practiced Krav Maga, but after she and I spent time together, she was also very proficient with a.357 snubby. That is one woman whose consent you will need before getting into her pants. If only more women were like that, we could fire the rape cops and worry about more important things. (Don't forget, women like that would survive long enough and healthy enough to become mothers, and hopefully raise children as self sufficient as themselves. Such can only be a dream for me, but like to live it whenever I can.)
almost all ad's on hot media like network TV are fraudulent
All things on TV are fraudulent, people knew this under communism. How come so much better people like western intellectuals actually watch TV? Aren't you people supposed to have side stepped outright dictatorship?
not to mention the fact that puerile consumerism crowds out much more important concerns like intelligent government or responsible parenting
Government of the few fallible mortals over the many fallible mortals, regardless of how often they cycle in and out, is either fraudulent, violent or both. Never benevolent. Government produces nothing that people cannot have amongst each other for free. Government however requires either fraudulent confiscation of property (taxes, eminent domain, bullshit drug laws, malum prohibitum crimes, etc) in order to sustain the ever growing bureaucracy.
Sort of the old adage. To retain control of a system, you must exert ever increasing amounts of control... until you reach the tipping point and the system collapses. All you had to do in the first place was let go. Of course, letting go of a free lunch is NOT what "intelligent government" is about.
Responsible parenting exists. Most of those "responsible parents" don't have TV in their homes. It is telling when several executives of top Japanese companies do NOT have TV service in their homes.
- too much noise can destroy free speech just as much as too little message.
Free speech cannot be destroyed, it can merely be masked. Everyone hears all the messages, some are just louder than others. This has been preached by every prophet and every wise man in history. "Tune out the noise of he world and listen to the quieter voice." Translate it how you will, but it still means the same damn thing.
No, he has a hatred of unsolicited mass marketing. One of the evil things that marketing parasites have managed to do is to conflate unsolicited and solicited mass marketing drivel and also conflated a free market with unlimited, unsolicited advertising.
Agreed... Mass marketing drivel. EXACTLY, so why are you watching that mass marketing drivel called TV?
Why don't you go outside, go for a swim, go get laid, go watch TV or teach your kids something, or have some kids or go raise a dog or shoot some squirrels and make a tasty soup? Oh wait, because TV's got ya, and even if it was commercial free, it would still have you by the nuts until the day you drop dead.
Everything from stupidly overpriced gym shoes to polluting 4WD's to massively overpriced cosmetic products.
Still wearing the same spit shined boots I've worn since I was in college... that or my underpriced, half off expensive hiking boots. 5 years running now, both pairs in top notch condition. Maybe instead of buying expensive, they ought to hammer a few pairs and see which lasts. Having a relative who works leather and makes boots out on the eastern block helped.
Polluting 4WD's amuse me, I use mine. I live in the boonies and I really don't want to care for a horse. You know the greatest pollution is produced by people's shit being dumped in their drinking water, treated or not, and all that power to run your TeeVee produces a LOT of pollution. If you didn't watch TV or leave it running for your kids to be braindamaged by it, you'd cut half your pollution print off by a goodly portion.
Try taking cold showers while you're at it. After all, you're complaining about the evil of consumerism, but until you've taken some steps yourself, and can apply them religiously to EVERY aspect of your life, you can't be one to talk. I generally walk the walk when it comes to my own talk. Hell my computers have been saving a LOT of power since I dropped Windows as my desktop OS. I don't game much anymore and coupled with TeeVee, I have more free time, between contracts than I know what to do with.
Hell I'll probably start another business just because I got nothing better to
Not that "good" and "evil" really need much reason to fight each other to the death. So long as each thinks it is good, and the other is evil, they won't even need me to "manipulate" them as you said. I'm more referring to saying "look I'm busy, but there he is, your forever foe!"
I've very little interest in fighting other people's battles. Judging by your sarcasm, I'm willing to believe you're not one to endure pain on someone else's behalf either, eh?
If good and evil try to get me to fight against one or the other, I would sooner get them to kill each other so they'll have something to do and leave me out of their idiocy. That you didn't read that from my lines makes me think that perhaps I should have been specific. Pity I was expecting more insight from someone as smug as you.
And no, I DON'T know what I am. I'm still in the process of knowing myself. I appreciate your sarcasm and smug humor, though.
The funniest part is that several years ago, I had a form of ID theft occur. Someone took out loans and bought property in my name... even with my SSN and all. Who lost my information? Only two candidates were possible. The credit rating agencies, or the government. Nobody else had all the data that was used, since I rarely give specific information and have a tendency to verify who holds what.
Here's the irony. I called Equifax and Experian and after verifying that the information they and I had was correct, they told me I could not receive my own credit report because I did not possess the proper ID to clear myself to them... yet when I went into trucking, they were able to run a credit check on me without so much as a single complaint!
Interesting how the actual OWNER of an identity is not permitted to know what kind of data is warehoused about him or her, but everyone else pays 15 bucks and gets a full detailed copy faxed to them over insecure lines.
I think the bullshit is in the centralized repositories of standardized and aggregated information, not the fact that it is being stolen. That is inevitable when such a heavy prize is dangled at any height. Just imagine what will happen when they tie biometric (unchangeable) data to it.
Witness protection, to say the least, will take on a WHOLE new meaning. Might change name and address and "person number" once you rat on the mafia, but you won't change your DNA or retinal scan:)
Wow, always use statistics... always. We know how accurate they are.
I prefer to talk individual examples. Mine, to be precise, and that of my friends, my associates and anyone else I've ever known to carry any sort of weapon.
According to your statistics, since I've had two incidents where I've had the option to defend myself, once with a sword and once with a gun, I should have at least 4 unintentionally shot members of my household, 7 murdered by thugs and 11 who shot themselves (after all, I was only armed with a gun for ONE of those incidents).
Hot damn... why have there been NO accidents despite a gun and live ammo being available? Oh wait. I know. I took out the mystery of the gun from everyone, even my dogs. EVERYONE has been to the range and shot my gun, as well as several of my friends guns. I took them to the range enough that they are TIRED of it. No mystery left, you put ammo into it, close it up, aim, squeeze the trigger and watermelons down range explode like water balloons... tell them flat out... "that's what happens to your friends if you point it at 'em." Its amazing how intelligent and well raised kids react when the mystery is removed.
I have another friend, NRA certified instructor. Has his kids clean all his guns when he comes back from competition. Supervised of course. They've gotten to where they hate it. 6 and 7 year olds and can clean his vintage M1 Garand better than I could.
Lots of training. They have been trained to be safe, they have experienced accidental fire at the range (one of the girls I took out as a group had her finger inside the guard of a loaded and cocked pistol, she turned to talk to me while her gun was aimed down range and she must've clenched her gun hand... and BAM, safely downrange... after that I've never had to illustrate "finger off the trigger until ready to shoot" since... an accident so to speak, in a perfectly controlled environment, and with enough witnesses to embarrass her for a LONG time.)
Wow, I'm ahead of the curve. I've had my home broken in twice by armed gang bangers (before I finally moved out of the big city) once when I was a bit of a hoplophobe (afraid of weapons, guns to be specific, kind of like you) and once afterwards. Neither resulted in a death, or rape, or anything else, but I should not have to jump out of my window of my own home, or hide or anything else. Especially when it is MY home. Any other animal, predator and many a grass eater (rhinoceros or cape buffalo anyone?) alike may have taken hostilities to defend its home.
Does that mean that 44 members of my family were shot in the process? Hot damn. I even had one member that played with a revolver I used to have... and cocked it. And then he put it down, barrel facing a brick wall (smart boy) and came RUNNING to me, and said "hey, I cocked that thing and uhhh, I'm afraid to mess with it." And he was just a GUEST in my home, imagine how I drill that training into the residents:)
BINGO... proper training averts those 44 accidental deaths that the NIH says must have occured for me to avoid being mugged or killed in my own home, not once, but TWICE... with no police anywhere in sight for hours, of course.
As for the kid with the pistol in question, he kept his finger off the trigger. His daddy taught him, and he put that training to use (course he shouldn't have handled the gun in the first place, I had that chat with his dad later, but its all very common sense stuff.)
Most people's training, with any tool, not just guns, is from what? HOLLYWOOD!! I'm sure the NIH would not ever suggest that TV watching has caused more deaths than all the privately held guns in North America, and possibly Europe. I wonder why axes are allowed in homes, since Hollywood decides to train most that axes and hammers are only tools for serial killers.... how about butcher knives? Claw Hammers? Meat cleavers?
Bingo.. train the family, train the lover, train the little cousins twice removed, hell, train the dog for all I care. When everyone knows what a tool does (power saw anyone?) they don't kill themselves with it.
Interestingly Freud seemed to think that "An often irrational fear of weapons signifies sexual immaturity." I wonder.
Kind of. Actually I don't know the way ahead. I can guess. I'm just having fun with it... plenty of people hating their lives, hating other people. I've done my share of hating. Didn't make the food taste better, the shit smell better or life feel any better. So I got tired of being angry at everything and everyone.
Not that I wouldn't kick someone's ass if they jumped me... but that is merely my becoming a consequence to their actions. I won't go hunting down some assholes and taking them down just because I'm under the impressions that "the bad guys must lose" because neither bad, nor good, have any purpose other than to give each other something to do. So being neutral gives me the lovely option to just live my life and not fight either of the two morons unless they try to fight me... and then there are those lovely options, like manipulating the polar opposites to kill each other and to leave me be...
There was a fellow, sometime ago, wrote a book called "The Monkeywrench Gang".
Irony is... he had a "recipe for freedom"... went something like this:
"How to be free, kick in your TeeVee brew your own beer, kill your own meat, build your own cabin, and piss off the front porch whenever you damn feel like it. That is how to be free."
I feel damn disappointed only that I forgot the guy's name. Good philosophy. If you can't do it yourself, then WTF are you bitching about? I was like this too, some time ago. Always bitching about the unfairness of the world. Kept me from actually living my life.
Instead of bitching about road blocks, find dynamite, instead of bitching about a river to cross, find a ford, instead of bitching about lack of time, cancel your cable, take your tv outside, and either shoot it (if you have a projectile weapon) bash it to pieces (if you have a good strong arm or a heavy melee weapon) or hook it up to a surveillance camera that you aim at your mailbox.
Voila, now you know where the mail is, and you rarely have to watch TV more than a few seconds to know all it can possibly show you. And you can finally catch that little shit from next door who keeps stealing your mail and your fear spewing newspaper! Happy joy! All of a sudden you have LOTS of time available.
Well who else is going to pay for those buildings and expensive hardware those college kids are using to keep from doing something actually useful to themselves or others?
The fact that somebody (Jack Daniels) actually found a way to benefit from it, good for them. The fact that Jack Daniels feels the need to do this makes me laugh.
What most of you don't realize is that the audience JD is targeting would have already decided they were going to somehow acquire liquor and drink it. JD, to my knowledge just needs to sway these people to THEIR side. I can see no other logical reason that people would view these ads.
Then again... I have a lot of time in my life, I don't watch TV.
Try this. I make my own vodka. I don't sell it (A, great flavor, B, uncle scam would assault me with the full weight of its bureaucratic thugs... thus, I withhold the goodies for my own consumption.)
I'll give free advice. If you spice vodka and mix it with various fruit juices (or plain water) it becomes rum. Depending on the mixtures, pure vodka can become pretty much any other drink. Just get some nice wooden barrels, proper filtration techniques and materials and distill away. (Something which you can, for the most part or a very tiny cost, make all by yourself, or the help of an industrious friend.)
Help yourself man.
I'll add a little more, I make my own wine, I often cook, I'm not great at all forms of cooking, yet, but I'm pretty good with some things (it is a LOT simpler than you think, and if you're a man, sane women will appreciate your company all the more for that skill)... but that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't go out and spend a week or more in the wild, with only a gun, a knife, a single bar of unscented soap and my knapsack for company... I have friends who take their bows, a knife and nothing but that for months on end... I'm not as tough as they are, yet. By the same token, I also occasionally enjoy going to a fancy restaurant... sometimes just to a burger joint. Its all about choices.
And short of not consuming food or air, or water, you DO always consume something, some of it is freely available in a pure form, and other stuff requires that human labor or inventivity (tool use) be applied to it in order to make that resource usable.
Stop bitching about marketing, and instead try to develop an immune system for yourself and those you love. Be immune to subliminal advertising by spotting what they are doing to you subconsciously. When you're actively looking for the pitch, you become incredibly hard to sell to. If you take it far enough, you will become impossible to sell to, even if the seller is honestly selling you something worthwhile at a good price.
Also, learn to haggle. America and the west are heading back to independence, and the vast unwashed masses will be dragged along kicking and screaming.
You have a hatred of the market, which generally just exists to fulfill wants and needs. What you may want to try is to develop the ability to make informed choices, as to what to patronize and what to avoid. What to make for yourself, and what to let others make for you... The market has existed for 6000 years that we can mostly verify, and probably much longer. Neither You nor I, nor the "anti establishment" groupies won't kill it. Rather understand it as a force, and figure out how to NOT be taken in by those who play dirty.
Personally I like having liquor in the house. Tobacco too... not cigarettes mind you, they're too cheap, too poorly filtered, and too likely to get you addicted, cigars and pipes/filler are expensive and thus reduce the smoker to actually having a reason to do it, rather than as a way to fidget... fidgeting is free using just hands and feet. I like having a pool table, a computer on which I can log into other computers and we can bitch about the unfairness of the world. Personally I like being able to shave my beard, and brush my teeth. I don't think very highly of toothpaste but I make a few of my own concoctions that do less damage and leave less crap on my teeth, and won't cause me fluorosis. I like soap. I like deodorants. I buy some, but I know how to make all of them. Amusing? Why should it be? Humans are inventive. We're the apex super predator EXACTLY because we're tool users, not just another animal. We're THE animal in our entire ecosystem. We got out of the mud through our usage of tools, especially that most important tool, that thing inside our skull. Yet once we all got out of the mud, many seem to have forgotten how and why we did it, and many are stuck bitching about how unfair the world is, rather than doing what the winners of this little ga
My own reasons for moving to the Unices was because I had more control. The tools were more available to tinker. In windows, short of working in assembler, I had little choice in messing around with things.
Linux has evolved a lot since the simple tools that it was once comprised off... but as many who tool around with Linux From scratch can tell you, it is still a relatively simple system, if only a sort of tank which is carrying a train's worth of bells and whistles.
Whereas Microsoft Windows is more like a small Trabant dragging along the same bells and whistles. Eventually the Trabant breaks down, regardless of the fact that it might be rugged as a simple vehicle. It is incapable of dragging the extra weight for very long.
Also don't forget that Microsoft went and fucked up the network stack in windows (Service Pack 2 for XP anyone?) to deny libpcap (or winpcap as it is known to windows users) for the various and sundry network analysis tools out there. Until the rework was available, most tools (starting with nmap) were severely hampered on Windows rigs.
Remember the ICMP port 139 "win nuke" ? Yeah, remember how the repeated "fixes" only actually fixed "some of the time" attacks? Every time MS fixed them, someone running the patch would complain that "it still works"? As in, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I found that if I had a firewall that dropped the packets, it stayed alive, but anytime it actually "processed" the packets the system dropped.
I STILL don't understand how that stuff worked (and no, i'm not about to hex edit my way through an entire windows core dump to try to figure out what happened, not worth my time)... but thankfully ever since I dumped Windows98 as a browsing environment, I haven't had to figure it out.
Remember those so called "tear drop" privilege escalation attacks in Windows NT, 2000 and XP? Each time they said they were fixed, and yet each time they resurfaced on patched systems? Before I quit working on Windows for a living (my last IT "job") I was given a system to 'clean' that had a virus (the name of which I forget) which utilized a privilege escalation (tear drop, yeah, the one MS said it patched a dozen different times) in order to create an account which it somehow ran as a nested parent account to that of the user. As a result it was able to capture all input and output and forward them to gods only know where. Curiously, it also slagged the system, and thus seems that it wasn't exactly what one would call an "elegant surveillance hack", not anywhere like "Sub 7" used to be.
The only logic I can get, is that Microsoft was simply trying to keep its "licensed professionals" in business. I am willing to even stand by that remark, as I am (until it expires) a Microsoft Licensed Professional, thanks to a company I worked for that paid for all of us to be "certified".
The same thing occurs in big cities, where people mingle all day long, yet many buildings use intercoms to filter out "undesirables".
I prefer being able to shoot bad guys that break into my home, or trick another user of the intercom into letting them into my "home" area.
Thus I prefer to live out towards the country, where the sheriffs tend to have less "city slicker" tendencies and enforce some bullshit regulation that says I should let someone rape my woman, kill my dog, steal my property, and that I should give him the keys to my truck and feed him too, ("give him what he wants") and maybe he'll go away and not come back next time.
I was merely pointing out that a gated community where many of my friends lived was not only secured (at the obvious entry points, the roadways) by private armed security but was also secured at the "home owner" level with the residents being more than willing to bag any crook if they ever tried to break in or steal what didn't belong to them... (think cheaper than blackwater and less gung ho, but just as professional, and that's no joke either, try to meet some of these folks and observe them before passing judgment). Also, roads were maintained privately. Most of the lines were laid privately (I'm not sure on electricity or commo, but I am fairly sure that most of those people were eccentrics, not just my friends... and well off eccentrics at that.)
Balkanize all you will. The Balkans were hell before America discovered them, they will be hell long after America changes its official language to Cantonese. I should know, I was born out there.
I responded to this exact concept above, but here's my take on it.
Schools, like governments only apply to, and turn out serfs. Those who would not be serfs will have to fix their own "schooling" once they get out. They will either privately educate their children, or home school them, if they would not have them be serfs either.
Sure, they can turn out "honest" serfs, but they'll still be nothing more than expendable cogs in the machine. And like many even here on slashdot, they will absolutely DESPISE anyone who is even attempting to not be a cog in the machine. How dare any individual attempt to be free of domination?
Actually, I was going for "verifiable work experience"... I wanted resume work... so I could vege out and have a "regular job". Same reason I did trucking and other things. Varied experience. I've got enough side income to never lift a finger except to cash checks nowadays, but it would be boring and I'd spend FAR more time on slashdot than I already do:) Definitely not a choice.
Self employment and the family business were fun and quite profitable, but neither was steady or considered "verifiable working experience" since it seems most governments and "employers" consider family members as "willing to lie for you" (as if past employers would not?). Those lines of work, however, weren't as computer related as the "resume" jobs were. I tried hard and eventually got into it. Not only was the lack of pay remarkable, but the lack of integrity and the sheer tyranny of management was amazing to me.
Years later, i look back at it as a "lesson" but back then, I really was pissed... I tried to "save" them and it didn't work. Call it a Jesus or Messiah lesson. You try to save them, they burn you at the stake. Surprise surprise, eh?
I agree with you on the accross the board raise also being a tax hike... that part of my lesson was learned more recently. During that short stint as a government employee, I experienced the daily grind of a tax fed parasite. Call it a learning experience. I've more than repaid it through my own personal taxes:)
Call it "higher powers at work" getting me out of there, call it what you will. I call it a priceless lesson. In fact MANY priceless lessons in one. Should I have children... they're going to school not at all.
I had a business on the side that paid my house off in three years after that. Why was I going to jack the tax rate up by turning them in, and getting 10 to 20 grand that year, only to see business and property taxes get jacked up to pay the government's tab?
That's what happened every other time the government is forced to pay for its crimes... it jacks up the taxes, federally or locally and wham, the victims pay for their own compensation. No thanks man. I owned a lot of quality property in the area and didn't feel like paying for it. (In retrospect, I could've spared the bad IRL karma and enjoyed watching Microsoft, the BSA and EA Games take the torch to that administration.)
I can laugh at or with you. I'm beyond hating you or anyone else who buys into this. All I'd be hating is myself so many years back. We all grow up... but we're all at different points in this story as well. There are others who are ahead of me, by far. I don't hate them either.
Slashdot Mirror
Incidentally, it has become neccessary to hereby purge DaedalusHKX and all other slashdotters from the people's vanguard.
Nice. I dig well crafted sarcasm. Best there is.
Carry a gun or a collapsible stick. They can't rob you without killing you at that point. And in some places, they rob you and kill you for shits and giggles anyways. Even if all you have is credit cards. Personally, I'm with you on that comment :)
Hell, don't use cash, the man benefits from that too... if you REAAAALLLYY wanna get 'im, use gold, silver and solid assets... I'm not quite that concerned yet as to use that sort of transaction system, but that is another approach, I wager, even more effective than cash (and far more effective in places like Africa.)
Indeed, most of that information is bought from the utilities companies, the government, banks and hospitals.
Yep, you're one more vote for me to write a nice privacy primer. Read above, I answered how I "mostly" cleared my name.
Guess you'll have to revert to downloading them for free rather than through itunes.
Car rentals are tougher, but they do take deposits.
You miss the point. That credit information is MY property. If they are selling information about someone without that someone's consent, they are actually performing patent or copyright infringement (many people DO patent or copyright their names). The individual about whom the information is collected has the right to have it verified. False information is libel or defamation. The fact that governments enforce the corporate side has little to do with a "free market".
Government forced itself down everyone's throats and granted monopolies to unsurvivably huge entities (mega corporations) and now clamors that regulating small businesses is the only way to fix things. No, cancelling the privileges they granted in the first place and remunerating the tax payers they defrauded into thinking they were paying for "services" is how they will set the scales even.
Which is what the meaning of justice is, by the way, but I'm not holding my breath to see justice from the government, except maybe as bait to scam people with a bigger fraud still.
All I can say is that since I had all the ID information, and the bank had the land deeds, after a lot of hard work, and basically little to no help from the cops, I got my name "semi" cleared. I flipped that land about the same way the house flippers did, and since the cops never caught anyone after I talked to them, I'm still stuck clearing my name. Got enough cash though, and enough corporations that I don't particularly give a shit about my personal name as far as the credit bureaus are concerned. Those who know me by face know me, and those who know me by credit report or government databases are not worth my time to talk to.
Yes, I do not use credit cards much. Yes I have very good personal references (quite a few business owners and a few past work references.)
What saved me is that I did a LOT of cash business (reported to the IRS nonetheless, since several of my employees were "eligible for tax withholding", but VERY little balance in my bank accounts.) As a result, the ID thieves couldn't clean out my bank accounts... if you depend on credit cards, however, that's a bit tougher. Try using international CC's or Prepaid debit cards. They won't build up your credit rating, but if you're worried about your identity being stolen by unscrupulous merchants, a pre paid debit card contains none of your private info.
I spend more time socializing IRL with a vast group of my neighbors now that I'm out in the boonies than I did living in the big city (i've lived in several big cities so far on the East Coast of the USA) I have yet to come to the conclusion that simply because everyone there lives in a match box which is easily breached by assailants (which often happens, despite their heavily enforced "gun control") that they are safer or spend more time with shared values.
.357 snubby. That is one woman whose consent you will need before getting into her pants. If only more women were like that, we could fire the rape cops and worry about more important things. (Don't forget, women like that would survive long enough and healthy enough to become mothers, and hopefully raise children as self sufficient as themselves. Such can only be a dream for me, but like to live it whenever I can.)
I am quite amicable in person... though I'm not exactly a fan of being disarmed so some professional victim group can "feel safer". If they don't feel safe then they simply leave me be, and I'll nod my salute to them and be on my way with the late I bought from the mom and pop coffee joint down the road from starbucks (at half the price).
Shared values, are one thing, but pretending that forcing everyone to live in matchbox apartments next door to each other in the armpits of the world (big cities) so they will "share values" is like when the communists subverted my grandparents homeland and said "all will be equally well off"... without truly saying "all will be equally POOR, and poorer than before".
Semantics, I'm sure, except that a lot of those screaming for communism and control of those "evil rich separatists" ended up being trodden underfoot by their beloved regime. Thus I'm a fan of everyone looking out for their families by doing what they think is best for themselves and family. If that involves NOT putting targets on their backs by sending them to "gun free/ disarmed victim zones" known as public schools, or by choosing to be ready to stay healthy and alive, then that is a GOOD thing.
Given that the rapists of the world have often spent time getting raped in prison, and that HIV and full blown AIDS are making massive percentages in prisons, rape is basically a death sentence nowadays. My last girlfriend practiced Krav Maga, but after she and I spent time together, she was also very proficient with a
Why don't you go outside, go for a swim, go get laid, go watch TV or teach your kids something,
Typo copy and pasting. Should read as follows:
Why don't you go outside, go for a swim, go get laid, or teach your kids something,
almost all ad's on hot media like network TV are fraudulent
All things on TV are fraudulent, people knew this under communism. How come so much better people like western intellectuals actually watch TV? Aren't you people supposed to have side stepped outright dictatorship?
not to mention the fact that puerile consumerism crowds out much more important concerns like intelligent government or responsible parenting
Government of the few fallible mortals over the many fallible mortals, regardless of how often they cycle in and out, is either fraudulent, violent or both. Never benevolent. Government produces nothing that people cannot have amongst each other for free. Government however requires either fraudulent confiscation of property (taxes, eminent domain, bullshit drug laws, malum prohibitum crimes, etc) in order to sustain the ever growing bureaucracy.
Sort of the old adage. To retain control of a system, you must exert ever increasing amounts of control... until you reach the tipping point and the system collapses. All you had to do in the first place was let go. Of course, letting go of a free lunch is NOT what "intelligent government" is about.
Responsible parenting exists. Most of those "responsible parents" don't have TV in their homes. It is telling when several executives of top Japanese companies do NOT have TV service in their homes.
- too much noise can destroy free speech just as much as too little message.
Free speech cannot be destroyed, it can merely be masked. Everyone hears all the messages, some are just louder than others. This has been preached by every prophet and every wise man in history. "Tune out the noise of he world and listen to the quieter voice." Translate it how you will, but it still means the same damn thing.
No, he has a hatred of unsolicited mass marketing. One of the evil things that marketing parasites have managed to do is to conflate unsolicited and solicited mass marketing drivel and also conflated a free market with unlimited, unsolicited advertising.
Agreed... Mass marketing drivel. EXACTLY, so why are you watching that mass marketing drivel called TV?
Why don't you go outside, go for a swim, go get laid, go watch TV or teach your kids something, or have some kids or go raise a dog or shoot some squirrels and make a tasty soup? Oh wait, because TV's got ya, and even if it was commercial free, it would still have you by the nuts until the day you drop dead.
Everything from stupidly overpriced gym shoes to polluting 4WD's to massively overpriced cosmetic products.
Still wearing the same spit shined boots I've worn since I was in college... that or my underpriced, half off expensive hiking boots. 5 years running now, both pairs in top notch condition. Maybe instead of buying expensive, they ought to hammer a few pairs and see which lasts. Having a relative who works leather and makes boots out on the eastern block helped.
Polluting 4WD's amuse me, I use mine. I live in the boonies and I really don't want to care for a horse. You know the greatest pollution is produced by people's shit being dumped in their drinking water, treated or not, and all that power to run your TeeVee produces a LOT of pollution. If you didn't watch TV or leave it running for your kids to be braindamaged by it, you'd cut half your pollution print off by a goodly portion.
Try taking cold showers while you're at it. After all, you're complaining about the evil of consumerism, but until you've taken some steps yourself, and can apply them religiously to EVERY aspect of your life, you can't be one to talk. I generally walk the walk when it comes to my own talk. Hell my computers have been saving a LOT of power since I dropped Windows as my desktop OS. I don't game much anymore and coupled with TeeVee, I have more free time, between contracts than I know what to do with.
Hell I'll probably start another business just because I got nothing better to
Not that "good" and "evil" really need much reason to fight each other to the death. So long as each thinks it is good, and the other is evil, they won't even need me to "manipulate" them as you said. I'm more referring to saying "look I'm busy, but there he is, your forever foe!"
I've very little interest in fighting other people's battles. Judging by your sarcasm, I'm willing to believe you're not one to endure pain on someone else's behalf either, eh?
If good and evil try to get me to fight against one or the other, I would sooner get them to kill each other so they'll have something to do and leave me out of their idiocy. That you didn't read that from my lines makes me think that perhaps I should have been specific. Pity I was expecting more insight from someone as smug as you.
And no, I DON'T know what I am. I'm still in the process of knowing myself. I appreciate your sarcasm and smug humor, though.
The funniest part is that several years ago, I had a form of ID theft occur. Someone took out loans and bought property in my name... even with my SSN and all. Who lost my information? Only two candidates were possible. The credit rating agencies, or the government. Nobody else had all the data that was used, since I rarely give specific information and have a tendency to verify who holds what.
:)
Here's the irony. I called Equifax and Experian and after verifying that the information they and I had was correct, they told me I could not receive my own credit report because I did not possess the proper ID to clear myself to them... yet when I went into trucking, they were able to run a credit check on me without so much as a single complaint!
Interesting how the actual OWNER of an identity is not permitted to know what kind of data is warehoused about him or her, but everyone else pays 15 bucks and gets a full detailed copy faxed to them over insecure lines.
I think the bullshit is in the centralized repositories of standardized and aggregated information, not the fact that it is being stolen. That is inevitable when such a heavy prize is dangled at any height. Just imagine what will happen when they tie biometric (unchangeable) data to it.
Witness protection, to say the least, will take on a WHOLE new meaning. Might change name and address and "person number" once you rat on the mafia, but you won't change your DNA or retinal scan
Nah, not nihilistic... but it seems you certainly seem to exude that air. Are you feeling a bit more smug than I, perhaps?
Wow, always use statistics... always. We know how accurate they are.
:)
I prefer to talk individual examples. Mine, to be precise, and that of my friends, my associates and anyone else I've ever known to carry any sort of weapon.
According to your statistics, since I've had two incidents where I've had the option to defend myself, once with a sword and once with a gun, I should have at least 4 unintentionally shot members of my household, 7 murdered by thugs and 11 who shot themselves (after all, I was only armed with a gun for ONE of those incidents).
Hot damn... why have there been NO accidents despite a gun and live ammo being available? Oh wait. I know. I took out the mystery of the gun from everyone, even my dogs. EVERYONE has been to the range and shot my gun, as well as several of my friends guns. I took them to the range enough that they are TIRED of it. No mystery left, you put ammo into it, close it up, aim, squeeze the trigger and watermelons down range explode like water balloons... tell them flat out... "that's what happens to your friends if you point it at 'em." Its amazing how intelligent and well raised kids react when the mystery is removed.
I have another friend, NRA certified instructor. Has his kids clean all his guns when he comes back from competition. Supervised of course. They've gotten to where they hate it. 6 and 7 year olds and can clean his vintage M1 Garand better than I could.
Lots of training. They have been trained to be safe, they have experienced accidental fire at the range (one of the girls I took out as a group had her finger inside the guard of a loaded and cocked pistol, she turned to talk to me while her gun was aimed down range and she must've clenched her gun hand... and BAM, safely downrange... after that I've never had to illustrate "finger off the trigger until ready to shoot" since... an accident so to speak, in a perfectly controlled environment, and with enough witnesses to embarrass her for a LONG time.)
Wow, I'm ahead of the curve. I've had my home broken in twice by armed gang bangers (before I finally moved out of the big city) once when I was a bit of a hoplophobe (afraid of weapons, guns to be specific, kind of like you) and once afterwards. Neither resulted in a death, or rape, or anything else, but I should not have to jump out of my window of my own home, or hide or anything else. Especially when it is MY home. Any other animal, predator and many a grass eater (rhinoceros or cape buffalo anyone?) alike may have taken hostilities to defend its home.
Does that mean that 44 members of my family were shot in the process? Hot damn. I even had one member that played with a revolver I used to have... and cocked it. And then he put it down, barrel facing a brick wall (smart boy) and came RUNNING to me, and said "hey, I cocked that thing and uhhh, I'm afraid to mess with it." And he was just a GUEST in my home, imagine how I drill that training into the residents
BINGO... proper training averts those 44 accidental deaths that the NIH says must have occured for me to avoid being mugged or killed in my own home, not once, but TWICE... with no police anywhere in sight for hours, of course.
As for the kid with the pistol in question, he kept his finger off the trigger. His daddy taught him, and he put that training to use (course he shouldn't have handled the gun in the first place, I had that chat with his dad later, but its all very common sense stuff.)
Most people's training, with any tool, not just guns, is from what? HOLLYWOOD!! I'm sure the NIH would not ever suggest that TV watching has caused more deaths than all the privately held guns in North America, and possibly Europe. I wonder why axes are allowed in homes, since Hollywood decides to train most that axes and hammers are only tools for serial killers.... how about butcher knives? Claw Hammers? Meat cleavers?
Bingo.. train the family, train the lover, train the little cousins twice removed, hell, train the dog for all I care. When everyone knows what a tool does (power saw anyone?) they don't kill themselves with it.
Interestingly Freud seemed to think that "An often irrational fear of weapons signifies sexual immaturity." I wonder.
Kind of. Actually I don't know the way ahead. I can guess. I'm just having fun with it... plenty of people hating their lives, hating other people. I've done my share of hating. Didn't make the food taste better, the shit smell better or life feel any better. So I got tired of being angry at everything and everyone.
Not that I wouldn't kick someone's ass if they jumped me... but that is merely my becoming a consequence to their actions. I won't go hunting down some assholes and taking them down just because I'm under the impressions that "the bad guys must lose" because neither bad, nor good, have any purpose other than to give each other something to do. So being neutral gives me the lovely option to just live my life and not fight either of the two morons unless they try to fight me... and then there are those lovely options, like manipulating the polar opposites to kill each other and to leave me be...
Oh the possibilities. Life is grand, isn't it?
There was a fellow, sometime ago, wrote a book called "The Monkeywrench Gang".
:)
Irony is... he had a "recipe for freedom"... went something like this:
"How to be free, kick in your TeeVee brew your own beer, kill your own meat, build your own cabin, and piss off the front porch whenever you damn feel like it. That is how to be free."
I feel damn disappointed only that I forgot the guy's name. Good philosophy. If you can't do it yourself, then WTF are you bitching about? I was like this too, some time ago. Always bitching about the unfairness of the world. Kept me from actually living my life.
Instead of bitching about road blocks, find dynamite, instead of bitching about a river to cross, find a ford, instead of bitching about lack of time, cancel your cable, take your tv outside, and either shoot it (if you have a projectile weapon) bash it to pieces (if you have a good strong arm or a heavy melee weapon) or hook it up to a surveillance camera that you aim at your mailbox.
Voila, now you know where the mail is, and you rarely have to watch TV more than a few seconds to know all it can possibly show you. And you can finally catch that little shit from next door who keeps stealing your mail and your fear spewing newspaper! Happy joy! All of a sudden you have LOTS of time available.
Worked for me.
Well who else is going to pay for those buildings and expensive hardware those college kids are using to keep from doing something actually useful to themselves or others?
The fact that somebody (Jack Daniels) actually found a way to benefit from it, good for them. The fact that Jack Daniels feels the need to do this makes me laugh.
What most of you don't realize is that the audience JD is targeting would have already decided they were going to somehow acquire liquor and drink it. JD, to my knowledge just needs to sway these people to THEIR side. I can see no other logical reason that people would view these ads.
Then again... I have a lot of time in my life, I don't watch TV.
You're too angry, bud.
Try this. I make my own vodka. I don't sell it (A, great flavor, B, uncle scam would assault me with the full weight of its bureaucratic thugs... thus, I withhold the goodies for my own consumption.)
I'll give free advice. If you spice vodka and mix it with various fruit juices (or plain water) it becomes rum. Depending on the mixtures, pure vodka can become pretty much any other drink. Just get some nice wooden barrels, proper filtration techniques and materials and distill away. (Something which you can, for the most part or a very tiny cost, make all by yourself, or the help of an industrious friend.)
Help yourself man.
I'll add a little more, I make my own wine, I often cook, I'm not great at all forms of cooking, yet, but I'm pretty good with some things (it is a LOT simpler than you think, and if you're a man, sane women will appreciate your company all the more for that skill)... but that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't go out and spend a week or more in the wild, with only a gun, a knife, a single bar of unscented soap and my knapsack for company... I have friends who take their bows, a knife and nothing but that for months on end... I'm not as tough as they are, yet. By the same token, I also occasionally enjoy going to a fancy restaurant... sometimes just to a burger joint. Its all about choices.
And short of not consuming food or air, or water, you DO always consume something, some of it is freely available in a pure form, and other stuff requires that human labor or inventivity (tool use) be applied to it in order to make that resource usable.
Stop bitching about marketing, and instead try to develop an immune system for yourself and those you love. Be immune to subliminal advertising by spotting what they are doing to you subconsciously. When you're actively looking for the pitch, you become incredibly hard to sell to. If you take it far enough, you will become impossible to sell to, even if the seller is honestly selling you something worthwhile at a good price.
Also, learn to haggle. America and the west are heading back to independence, and the vast unwashed masses will be dragged along kicking and screaming.
You have a hatred of the market, which generally just exists to fulfill wants and needs. What you may want to try is to develop the ability to make informed choices, as to what to patronize and what to avoid. What to make for yourself, and what to let others make for you... The market has existed for 6000 years that we can mostly verify, and probably much longer. Neither You nor I, nor the "anti establishment" groupies won't kill it. Rather understand it as a force, and figure out how to NOT be taken in by those who play dirty.
Personally I like having liquor in the house. Tobacco too... not cigarettes mind you, they're too cheap, too poorly filtered, and too likely to get you addicted, cigars and pipes/filler are expensive and thus reduce the smoker to actually having a reason to do it, rather than as a way to fidget... fidgeting is free using just hands and feet. I like having a pool table, a computer on which I can log into other computers and we can bitch about the unfairness of the world. Personally I like being able to shave my beard, and brush my teeth. I don't think very highly of toothpaste but I make a few of my own concoctions that do less damage and leave less crap on my teeth, and won't cause me fluorosis. I like soap. I like deodorants. I buy some, but I know how to make all of them. Amusing? Why should it be? Humans are inventive. We're the apex super predator EXACTLY because we're tool users, not just another animal. We're THE animal in our entire ecosystem. We got out of the mud through our usage of tools, especially that most important tool, that thing inside our skull. Yet once we all got out of the mud, many seem to have forgotten how and why we did it, and many are stuck bitching about how unfair the world is, rather than doing what the winners of this little ga
My own reasons for moving to the Unices was because I had more control. The tools were more available to tinker. In windows, short of working in assembler, I had little choice in messing around with things.
Linux has evolved a lot since the simple tools that it was once comprised off... but as many who tool around with Linux From scratch can tell you, it is still a relatively simple system, if only a sort of tank which is carrying a train's worth of bells and whistles.
Whereas Microsoft Windows is more like a small Trabant dragging along the same bells and whistles. Eventually the Trabant breaks down, regardless of the fact that it might be rugged as a simple vehicle. It is incapable of dragging the extra weight for very long.
Also don't forget that Microsoft went and fucked up the network stack in windows (Service Pack 2 for XP anyone?) to deny libpcap (or winpcap as it is known to windows users) for the various and sundry network analysis tools out there. Until the rework was available, most tools (starting with nmap) were severely hampered on Windows rigs.
Remember the ICMP port 139 "win nuke" ? Yeah, remember how the repeated "fixes" only actually fixed "some of the time" attacks? Every time MS fixed them, someone running the patch would complain that "it still works"? As in, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I found that if I had a firewall that dropped the packets, it stayed alive, but anytime it actually "processed" the packets the system dropped.
I STILL don't understand how that stuff worked (and no, i'm not about to hex edit my way through an entire windows core dump to try to figure out what happened, not worth my time)... but thankfully ever since I dumped Windows98 as a browsing environment, I haven't had to figure it out.
Remember those so called "tear drop" privilege escalation attacks in Windows NT, 2000 and XP? Each time they said they were fixed, and yet each time they resurfaced on patched systems? Before I quit working on Windows for a living (my last IT "job") I was given a system to 'clean' that had a virus (the name of which I forget) which utilized a privilege escalation (tear drop, yeah, the one MS said it patched a dozen different times) in order to create an account which it somehow ran as a nested parent account to that of the user. As a result it was able to capture all input and output and forward them to gods only know where. Curiously, it also slagged the system, and thus seems that it wasn't exactly what one would call an "elegant surveillance hack", not anywhere like "Sub 7" used to be.
The only logic I can get, is that Microsoft was simply trying to keep its "licensed professionals" in business. I am willing to even stand by that remark, as I am (until it expires) a Microsoft Licensed Professional, thanks to a company I worked for that paid for all of us to be "certified".
The same thing occurs in big cities, where people mingle all day long, yet many buildings use intercoms to filter out "undesirables".
I prefer being able to shoot bad guys that break into my home, or trick another user of the intercom into letting them into my "home" area.
Thus I prefer to live out towards the country, where the sheriffs tend to have less "city slicker" tendencies and enforce some bullshit regulation that says I should let someone rape my woman, kill my dog, steal my property, and that I should give him the keys to my truck and feed him too, ("give him what he wants") and maybe he'll go away and not come back next time.
I was merely pointing out that a gated community where many of my friends lived was not only secured (at the obvious entry points, the roadways) by private armed security but was also secured at the "home owner" level with the residents being more than willing to bag any crook if they ever tried to break in or steal what didn't belong to them... (think cheaper than blackwater and less gung ho, but just as professional, and that's no joke either, try to meet some of these folks and observe them before passing judgment). Also, roads were maintained privately. Most of the lines were laid privately (I'm not sure on electricity or commo, but I am fairly sure that most of those people were eccentrics, not just my friends... and well off eccentrics at that.)
Balkanize all you will. The Balkans were hell before America discovered them, they will be hell long after America changes its official language to Cantonese. I should know, I was born out there.
I responded to this exact concept above, but here's my take on it.
Schools, like governments only apply to, and turn out serfs. Those who would not be serfs will have to fix their own "schooling" once they get out. They will either privately educate their children, or home school them, if they would not have them be serfs either.
Sure, they can turn out "honest" serfs, but they'll still be nothing more than expendable cogs in the machine. And like many even here on slashdot, they will absolutely DESPISE anyone who is even attempting to not be a cog in the machine. How dare any individual attempt to be free of domination?
Actually, I was going for "verifiable work experience"... I wanted resume work... so I could vege out and have a "regular job". Same reason I did trucking and other things. Varied experience. I've got enough side income to never lift a finger except to cash checks nowadays, but it would be boring and I'd spend FAR more time on slashdot than I already do :) Definitely not a choice.
:)
Self employment and the family business were fun and quite profitable, but neither was steady or considered "verifiable working experience" since it seems most governments and "employers" consider family members as "willing to lie for you" (as if past employers would not?). Those lines of work, however, weren't as computer related as the "resume" jobs were. I tried hard and eventually got into it. Not only was the lack of pay remarkable, but the lack of integrity and the sheer tyranny of management was amazing to me.
Years later, i look back at it as a "lesson" but back then, I really was pissed... I tried to "save" them and it didn't work. Call it a Jesus or Messiah lesson. You try to save them, they burn you at the stake. Surprise surprise, eh?
I agree with you on the accross the board raise also being a tax hike... that part of my lesson was learned more recently. During that short stint as a government employee, I experienced the daily grind of a tax fed parasite. Call it a learning experience. I've more than repaid it through my own personal taxes
Call it "higher powers at work" getting me out of there, call it what you will. I call it a priceless lesson. In fact MANY priceless lessons in one. Should I have children... they're going to school not at all.
I had a business on the side that paid my house off in three years after that. Why was I going to jack the tax rate up by turning them in, and getting 10 to 20 grand that year, only to see business and property taxes get jacked up to pay the government's tab?
That's what happened every other time the government is forced to pay for its crimes... it jacks up the taxes, federally or locally and wham, the victims pay for their own compensation. No thanks man. I owned a lot of quality property in the area and didn't feel like paying for it. (In retrospect, I could've spared the bad IRL karma and enjoyed watching Microsoft, the BSA and EA Games take the torch to that administration.)
Nope, just looking at myself years ago.
I can laugh at or with you. I'm beyond hating you or anyone else who buys into this. All I'd be hating is myself so many years back. We all grow up... but we're all at different points in this story as well. There are others who are ahead of me, by far. I don't hate them either.