Realistically, a few little braille bumps on America's currency would be appallingly easy to add. And isn't the US in the process of replacing its currency anyway, to improve the security features and whatnot? No better time.
Now this is just a personal grudge, but... could y'all make your currency a little bit less ugly? I get the occasional American note from a tourist (call me a bad person if you must, but I savour the heartbroken look in their eyes when I tell them that American currency exchanges at par now), and they look horrible. Maybe they could be brightened up a bit? American coins aren't too shabby, but the bills look like some kind of econut's toilet paper. Green inks aren't that much more affordable than the other colours. Put some pictures of great American scientists on them, some bright colours. Maybe some unicorns and rainbows on the $50 to make homosexuals happy, a picture of Betty Page on the $5 for the rest of us, a cute little cocaine sensor on the $20... it would be fabulous!
Lies?! How about the fact that you just completely lied about guns being banned in "San Francisco" (which makes no sense at all given that SF is a city and has no power whatsoever to ban guns; you should have said California -- then I might have believed you). But California is in fact a May-Issue state. Thanks for dragging this discussion to the level of outright bullshit. Besides, even in Washington DC people are allowed to own guns. They just can't get a CCW.
Where is all this nonsense about banning guns coming from? I've said outright that I think it's a mistake to ban guns. Guns nuts are allowed their delusional fantasies just like anyone else. Banning guns just because people are likely to kill themselves or murder their families is as silly as not letting people buy ultra-toxic cleansers (like ammonia or bleach), because their children might drink it. Or like not letting people buy valium or morphine over-the-counter, just because they might get addicted -- it's their choice to make; if they want to make the wrong one, let them.
The odds of ever being the victim of violent crime are incredibly low, and they get lower every year. Granted, the US has a peculiarily high violent crime rate compared to sane countries, but it's still a remarkably safe nation to live in. Statistically, owning a gun is more likely to result in you committing a violent crime than in you preventing a violent crime. You might feel safer, but any possible increase in safety is totally offset by the reduction in safety for your family and neighbours. And even that tiny increase in safety depends on you being in a high-risk group for being a victim of violent crime.
It's interesting that you mention robbing a well-armed store. To pay for school, I work at a store. And not just any kind of store, a gas station -- the favourite target of criminals in America's fantasized idea of the armed robbery. Particularly interesting, I found, was the insurance and corporate liability situation. Corporations, naturally, will simply require whatever set of policies minimizes financial loss and legal iability. If you are ever curious about what the safest way to run a store is, find out what the requirements to get a store, its merchandise, and the life and health of its employees insured. Here's a hint: the policy will require that the store NOT have a gun and that the employees provide NO resistance to armed robbers. THAT'S the safest way to deal with robbery. In real life anyway... in the cowboy fantasy world in your head, I'm sure that trying to reach down and grab a weapon quickly enough that the meth-addict pointing a shotgun at your head doesn't have time to react is TOTALLY plausible. But never mind, I'll let you FEEL better about your fantasy.
As I said, feel free to own a gun. Just don't bother with trying to make up insane lies about them providing safety. Just out of curiosity, how many people have ever actually defended themselves with a gun? How many in a given year? How does it actually compare to the number of suicides using firearm? You call my statistics made up? Let's have a number. How many home defences are there in any given year in the USA? Honestly, you know it's a pretty small number. America has about 16000 suicides by firearm each year, and 17000 murders by firearm. Do you want to seriously claim that the number of successfull home defences is even close? Even as many as 1000? Dubious. It's unlikely that it tops 100 a year throughout the entire union.
What are frex and mill levies? Do mills still exist in large numbers? And would levies on them actually produce enough money to run a bagel shop, let alone a government?
Seriously though. I don't think it's about how much money the government takes. It's about how it's treated. It's about how open the spending and budgeting is. The people should treat the government like a service organization. How much value are you getting for your dollar? If it's low, replace the employees with new ones that will provide better value. If certain services are deemed to be unnecessary (due to, say, better services being offered privately), those services get cut. Etc. The problem is that people can get this idea that the government is just a pit into which money is thrown -- and at that point, they stop expecting to get anything back. The government becomes a villainous black-box. And when people expect the government to be corrupt and waste money... the government will end up doing exactly those things and will get away with it because that's exactly what everyone assumes they're going to do anyway.
Let's be serious for a moment: the second amendment has never actually protected the first. When the cops shut down a house party for a noise complaint, you'll notice that the NRA isn't there claiming that the partygoers have the right to shoot the cops to protect their first amendment rights. When the government threw Japanese-Americans into detention camps without just cause during WW2, no one got their guns and went to defend the liberty of those particular citizens -- and if those Japanese-Americans had tried to defend their liberty with guns, no one would have supported them. Particularly not the NRA. For every person who defends themselves with a gun, there are ten more who use their gun to murder a family member (depriving that person of "life", despite life being a first amendment right). I would even bet money that no more than 1% of NRA members would see anything wrong with the American government sending American citizens to a foreign nation (Cuba) for detention and torture without trial, simply on the grounds that they are suspected of terrorism.
The second amendment does NOT protect the first. It never has. It's highly doubtful that it ever will. The second amendment? Just a crutch for bullies who want a gun to make themselves feel big. None of them would ever actually defend any right other than the right to own a gun.
As a side note, it's interesting to observe how other western nations that don't have anything equivalent second amendment, where gun ownership is minimal to non-existent, manage to have more freedoms than Americans do. They manage to NOT elect neoconservatives that tap their phones, impose draconian security measures, force people to carry identification with them wherever they go, ban consensual sexual activities, put reporters in jail, or torture prisoners. How do they do it? By not being disgusting dirty cowards that need a gun in order to feel like they matter.
I have nothing against gun ownership personally. I don't give a fuck whether people are stupid enough to own a gun that they are 5x more likely to use on themselves than on a home-invader. I just think it's ridiculous to pretend that guns will keep you free, despite the knowledge that governments have bigger and better guns than you, and have demonstrated the ability to defeat their own people multiple times in the past. Guns didn't keep Italy or Germany free. They didn't the Russians free. They didn't keep the Chinese free. They actually helped the Iranians, the Vietnamese, and the North Koreans to impose dictatorships upon themselves (situations that those people are now powerless to rectify, despite still having guns).
Not that I disagree with the idea that government should be fiscally responsible, but...
What on Earth is the government's "lunch money", if not the money that they take from you? It's not like governments have some tax-independent revenue stream. It's not like you could simply eliminate all taxes and tell the government to get by on what's left -- what's left would be $0.00. Unless you expect the military, the police, congress, the senate, and the judiciary to all work for free, for elections to cost nothing, for highways to build themselves magically.... then the government has to take your "lunch money". There's simply no alternative -- other than anarchy ("anarchy" being the technical term for the three hour period before despotism is violentally imposed on you).
If you want to defend your right to say hideously offensive things, to have perverted sex, to follow non-christian religions or no religion at all, to criticize or lampoon the government, mock the powerful, speak publically in favour of viewpoints that oppose economic growth and big industry.... then yes, neoconservative policies are counterproductive.
If all you want to do is go to church, work hard at a meaningless job, obey your leaders, wave your flag, engage in sexual activities solely for the purposes of reproduction, and by absolutely no means die at the hands of terrorists -- then the neoconservative policies will indeed protect you. There is no state safer from external threats than a fascist state. Fascism quenches crime, sedition, rebellion, it roots out conspiracies very effectively, and keeps the population obedient and relatively content. A small number of people will complain and end up dead for their efforts, but fascists consider that a small price to pay for safety, morality, and conformity.
This all makes much more sense when you keep in mind that neocons aren't trying to protect the freedoms YOU like; they're trying to protect the freedoms THEY like. Freedoms like reading the bible, not dying in suicide bombings, and worshipping the Decider. Freedoms that cool people enjoy, like taking some speed and going down to the local dance club to pick up a likeminded neopagan slut for a night of paraphilic sex before going to an anti-government peace riot in the morning... neocons don't have even the slightest interest in protecting those freedoms. If anything, terrorism is a great excuse to take those freedoms away. And that's what you are seeing right now. Actually, to give them the benefit of the doubt, many of them are just dirty cowards who are afraid of dying... but more than a few are totally thrilled that they finally get to clamp down on all the terrible sinning going on.
All Christians oppose science. The fundamentalists do so directly, but the rest do so by validating the actions of the fundamentalists. Ask any Christian who they respect more, who they would rather have as a neighbour, who they would prefer their children to marry -- they'll pick the fundamentalist over the atheist every time. Just look at who they vote for -- a guy who thinks that the rapture is imminent and that separation of church and state is a mistake.
If you support the enemy, you ARE the enemy. Moderate Christians support fundamentalist Christians, and that makes them the enemies of science -- not to mention freedom, sex, birth control, vaccines that prevent cervical cancer, and all the other things that moderate Christians allow fundamentalist Christians to attack.
It's probably worth it if you're a CEO for a corporation. After all, CEOs don't spend their own money, they spend the company's money. It would hurt the shareholders, but if it makes the shareholders think that the CEO is doing something awesome (what could be more awesome than synergizing an IP portfolio?) that will make money, then they'll keep paying the CEO.
Bragging rights are totally worthwhile, if they keep investors happy. And corporations routinely spend up to 30% of their revenue on keeping investors happy. The cost of a few bogus patents are peanuts as a part of that.
If Microsoft demonstrates an awareness that one of their patents is being violated and then does nothing, that would constitute an abandonment of that patent. So yes, Microsoft can't claim that Linux violates one of their patents without suing a few prominent users of Linux. When those users point out that other companies have been violating the patent for years, then there's a problem.
Microsoft has lots of ridiculous, baseless, overly broad patents that were rubberstamped by the UPO, just like most other big tech firms. The whole point of such patents is that any piece of software you care to name will violate at least one of them. They don't exist to be actually enforced -- they exist to permit lawsuits that will bankrupt their opponents. But that only works if you can ensure that the number of lawsuits wont explode bankrupting you as well -- so companies only proceed when they're sure they can pull it off or they have no other recourse. Ballmer, being a paranoid schizophrenic, may feel that Microsoft is approaching that latter scenario.
I think the problem with Microsoft pointing out violations of their patents in Linux is that they would be simultaneously pointing out that many of their commercial competitors are also violating those patents. That would require them to sue those competitors, or else the patent would become invalid. Then the competitor can point out how Microsoft violates their patents.
It's like spraying poison to kill some insect. Sure, the targeted insect may die, but a lot of other things get poisoned too. Mice for instance. But mice have this nasty tendency to survive poisonings, eat up the poison, and become super toxic to their predators. The weasels, cats, owls, and snakes all die from eating toxic mice, and the mouse population explodes. So you've eliminated a moderately annoying insect and replaced it with a massive plague of toxic mice that are way worse than the insects ever were.
Is there such a thing as a legal team that isn't ruthless?
Seriously though, this is so true. The bigger an animal, the worse its death throes. It's not surprising that companies want to avoid being close to that. And a half-billion dollar contract is pretty fucking close.
I'll bet that Microsoft will pull something out of the bag and wind up a functional company again, but right now they're circling the drain.
So you're saying that it's somehow a... good idea to make long-term contracts with companies that are run by unstable lunatics like Ballmer? With companies that sic the BSA on their customers and sue them? That are circling the drain?
If anything, Steve Ballmer's behaviour is a great reason to avoid Microsoft. No one wants to be near a giant in its death throes. Would you go to the local cornerstore if you knew it was run by a paranoid schizophrenic that might put a couple of rounds of buckshot in your face if you walk into the store at the wrong moment?
What might be more interesting is the way that all these other companies are beginning to posture themselves around openness, Free patents, and some kind of IP commons. Maybe it's starting to become obvious to them just how destructive and costly these policies of using arsenals of patents to protect themselves and destroy rivals are. Vastly greater profits are possible with an intellectual commons from which everyone can benefit. It destabilizes the winner-takes-all dynamic, and allows a more diverse and competitive market to take its place.
True dat. A quick look at the way the Nazis, the Fascists, and the Soviets treated intellectuals is certainly telling, as is the number of famous "American" scientists that fled one of the aforementioned regimes. I know Canada acquired a wonderful number of Iranian intellectuals thanks to the Ayatollahs, and I'm sure the US and Europe have their share. Meanwhile, intellectuals in Iraq are being exterminated as we speak; bookstores, libraries, and archives burned; labratories plundered for scrap metal. And the Taliban did precisely the same thing when they consolidated power after the Soviets withdrawal.
It's just sad that we have even traces of it here in North America -- particularly from cops. It's just one more sign that it's time to seriously crack down on the police, restrict their authority, and increase their accountability.
There are actually very few precedents in all of recorded history for police or military officers NOT killing students. For some reason, once someone is educated, their lives become completely meaningless to people in positions of authority. The number of massacres in universities and colleges by police is staggering. There is simply no other social group that police are so completely willing to mow down in large numbers.
Hey, Timothy McVeigh converted to Islam. He converted posthumously, but he did do it. Word is that his ancestors, long ago, came out of Africa. So he was also, in point of fact, black. A black muslim terrorist? That's all I need. And don't even get started on Ted Kaczynski. I have it on good authority that he was a wiccan Nazi -- just look at the name! I'm surprised he didn't start lobbing V2 rockets at London. James Garfield was really trampled to death by wild mustangs. James Hinckley Jr was actually a Canadian with a forged birth certificate.
The simple fact is, Americans aren't terrorists. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been corrupted by public education, sharing, or evolutionists.
Wow. You'll believe anything wont you? 99% of the world's scientists say that the US is the single biggest polluter on the planet. Then some ignorant jackass tells you the opposite, and you believe them? That's wishful thinking at its most pathetic. Canada pollutes far less than the US and has far more trees. South America, even taken as a whole, pollutes far less than the US and has vastly more photosynthetic biomass than Canada and the US combined. The Amazon rainforests -- you may have heard of them? You are SERIOUSLY deluded on this one. You need to crack a book and get the stupid out of your head fast, before it reaches terminal levels.
It does seem like a silly idea -- a REALLY silly idea. Male homosexuals are rare, Linux users are rare, Ubuntu users make up only a subgroup of Linux users, and very few people want to screw around with OS-based forums and whatnot. Take the intersection of all of those groups, and you wind up with a potential audience numbering in the single digits.
Still, it's not like they force people to come to their site. It's doubtful that Christians will happen upon Gaybuntu and suddenly decide that Linux is simulataneously satanic, communist, Iranian, atheist, humanist, and Buddhist, and therefore needs to be banned by the government. The existence of gaybuntu wont taint ubuntu and make straight people avoid it. They do zero harm to anyone, other than maybe themselves by wasting their time. So it's definitely not worth getting upset about it.
Besides, sexuality and software go together like pie and iced cream. Or have you never received a good old fashioned pole-polishing while laying down some LoCs?
I suppose that to other people who hadn't read the article, it could have been hilarious. It's just that for those of us who read the articles (a vanishingly small percentage, to be sure), it just sounds stupid. There just isn't anything particularly funny about joking about what a machine might do if it were a completely different machine that operated in a radically different fashion. The automobile analogy makes perfect sense -- it refers to the fact that any incident involving someone getting pulled under would be deliberate. Your hands on the wheel of the car, deliberately steering towards the drunkard, versus the attendant's hands on the remote control, deliberately operating it so as to drag the drunkard down underground. See how that works? This isn't a urinal that automatically raises and lowers itself. It's not operated from an office miles away. It's operated by a guy standing ten feet away.
Do you really think that I'm suggesting that there is a caste system that you should be subject to?! THAT was humour (irony, technically, since I meant something other than the literal meaning of what I was saying). Obviously no one is going to force you and your family to be swineherds (not that we even have swineherds in North America, or a caste system, or intergenerational transfer of disgrace, and only very little bit of inbreeding). The idea was to illustrate how dumb it is to not read the article, or to read the article and then make jokes that would only be funny to someone who hadn't read it and doesn't realize that the system doesn't actually operate in the manner that you imply. I'm thinking that maybe you're Indian, since you seem to take the idea of a caste system rather seriously, something that no westerner would even contemplate.
But if you say that you read it, that's great. Go on making jokes that you try to pass off as being topical, but which actually refer to imaginary things that are completely different than what the article talks about. Just don't be suprised when people assume that you might be the kid that ate too much paste in kindergarten.
For the love of god, just read the fucking article. It's all there. Do you really think any city on Earth is dumb enough to build a device that would swallow people up and trap them beneath the Earth in a urine-filled coffin?
You could have figured this out from the PICTURES alone. It is startling you were too lazy to even click the link and look at the pictures.
This is why eugenics would be a good idea -- to prevent stupidity like this.
The article is VERY clear about this: the urinals don't raise and lower by themselves. They are operated by a remote control from a few feet away. So the attendant would be present and presumably see the unconscious gentleman. He could decide to lower it anyway, but that's really no different than you deciding to run down a drunk fellow who stumbles out into the road when you're driving at night.
But thank you for the wonderful post! You successfully demonstrated that you didn't actually read the article -- making you an ignorant loudmouth Plus, you managed to disgrace yourself and your children for seven generations. Your family will be placed in the unclean caste and have to marry each other.
Seriously, reading isn't as difficult as the president of the United States makes it look. It's actually well within the grasp of most people. Try it sometime, you might enjoy it.
Try and create a culture where people DON'T urinate in public places? What culture would that be? Every culture on earth has public urination. Expecting people to stop is like expecting people to not have premarital or non-reproductive sex. It's like expecting people to give up eating meat. It's like expecting people to not do things that are unhealthy, like smoking or taking drugs. It's just not going to happen, and the best thing you can possibly do is to divorce yourself of that fantasy right now. We're animals -- deal with it.
Strictly speaking, it killed the USSR -- an empire. Russia is still quite alive, and doing rather well according to recent economic data. Something about huge oil reserves or something.
What makes you think I don't believe that Bush needs to be hung, preferably while on fire and covered in something gross and sticky? I think the children of all GOP members need to be sterilized to prevent their murderous evil seed from continuing to taint this world. But that doesn't let people like Clinton off the hook for not having the tiny little shred of ethics necessary to just tell the truth. He lied in front of the supreme court, under oath. Then he ordered a military attack that killed dozens of people, just to distract people. A murderer is a murderer; Clinton may have had different reasons for lying and may have murdered fewer people, but they're still on exactly the same moral level and are both just as in need of having themselves and their spawn scoured from the Earth.
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Now this is just a personal grudge, but ... could y'all make your currency a little bit less ugly? I get the occasional American note from a tourist (call me a bad person if you must, but I savour the heartbroken look in their eyes when I tell them that American currency exchanges at par now), and they look horrible. Maybe they could be brightened up a bit? American coins aren't too shabby, but the bills look like some kind of econut's toilet paper. Green inks aren't that much more affordable than the other colours. Put some pictures of great American scientists on them, some bright colours. Maybe some unicorns and rainbows on the $50 to make homosexuals happy, a picture of Betty Page on the $5 for the rest of us, a cute little cocaine sensor on the $20 ... it would be fabulous!
Where is all this nonsense about banning guns coming from? I've said outright that I think it's a mistake to ban guns. Guns nuts are allowed their delusional fantasies just like anyone else. Banning guns just because people are likely to kill themselves or murder their families is as silly as not letting people buy ultra-toxic cleansers (like ammonia or bleach), because their children might drink it. Or like not letting people buy valium or morphine over-the-counter, just because they might get addicted -- it's their choice to make; if they want to make the wrong one, let them.
The odds of ever being the victim of violent crime are incredibly low, and they get lower every year. Granted, the US has a peculiarily high violent crime rate compared to sane countries, but it's still a remarkably safe nation to live in. Statistically, owning a gun is more likely to result in you committing a violent crime than in you preventing a violent crime. You might feel safer, but any possible increase in safety is totally offset by the reduction in safety for your family and neighbours. And even that tiny increase in safety depends on you being in a high-risk group for being a victim of violent crime.
It's interesting that you mention robbing a well-armed store. To pay for school, I work at a store. And not just any kind of store, a gas station -- the favourite target of criminals in America's fantasized idea of the armed robbery. Particularly interesting, I found, was the insurance and corporate liability situation. Corporations, naturally, will simply require whatever set of policies minimizes financial loss and legal iability. If you are ever curious about what the safest way to run a store is, find out what the requirements to get a store, its merchandise, and the life and health of its employees insured. Here's a hint: the policy will require that the store NOT have a gun and that the employees provide NO resistance to armed robbers. THAT'S the safest way to deal with robbery. In real life anyway ... in the cowboy fantasy world in your head, I'm sure that trying to reach down and grab a weapon quickly enough that the meth-addict pointing a shotgun at your head doesn't have time to react is TOTALLY plausible. But never mind, I'll let you FEEL better about your fantasy.
As I said, feel free to own a gun. Just don't bother with trying to make up insane lies about them providing safety. Just out of curiosity, how many people have ever actually defended themselves with a gun? How many in a given year? How does it actually compare to the number of suicides using firearm? You call my statistics made up? Let's have a number. How many home defences are there in any given year in the USA? Honestly, you know it's a pretty small number. America has about 16000 suicides by firearm each year, and 17000 murders by firearm. Do you want to seriously claim that the number of successfull home defences is even close? Even as many as 1000? Dubious. It's unlikely that it tops 100 a year throughout the entire union.
Seriously though. I don't think it's about how much money the government takes. It's about how it's treated. It's about how open the spending and budgeting is. The people should treat the government like a service organization. How much value are you getting for your dollar? If it's low, replace the employees with new ones that will provide better value. If certain services are deemed to be unnecessary (due to, say, better services being offered privately), those services get cut. Etc. The problem is that people can get this idea that the government is just a pit into which money is thrown -- and at that point, they stop expecting to get anything back. The government becomes a villainous black-box. And when people expect the government to be corrupt and waste money ... the government will end up doing exactly those things and will get away with it because that's exactly what everyone assumes they're going to do anyway.
The second amendment does NOT protect the first. It never has. It's highly doubtful that it ever will. The second amendment? Just a crutch for bullies who want a gun to make themselves feel big. None of them would ever actually defend any right other than the right to own a gun.
As a side note, it's interesting to observe how other western nations that don't have anything equivalent second amendment, where gun ownership is minimal to non-existent, manage to have more freedoms than Americans do. They manage to NOT elect neoconservatives that tap their phones, impose draconian security measures, force people to carry identification with them wherever they go, ban consensual sexual activities, put reporters in jail, or torture prisoners. How do they do it? By not being disgusting dirty cowards that need a gun in order to feel like they matter.
I have nothing against gun ownership personally. I don't give a fuck whether people are stupid enough to own a gun that they are 5x more likely to use on themselves than on a home-invader. I just think it's ridiculous to pretend that guns will keep you free, despite the knowledge that governments have bigger and better guns than you, and have demonstrated the ability to defeat their own people multiple times in the past. Guns didn't keep Italy or Germany free. They didn't the Russians free. They didn't keep the Chinese free. They actually helped the Iranians, the Vietnamese, and the North Koreans to impose dictatorships upon themselves (situations that those people are now powerless to rectify, despite still having guns).
What on Earth is the government's "lunch money", if not the money that they take from you? It's not like governments have some tax-independent revenue stream. It's not like you could simply eliminate all taxes and tell the government to get by on what's left -- what's left would be $0.00. Unless you expect the military, the police, congress, the senate, and the judiciary to all work for free, for elections to cost nothing, for highways to build themselves magically .... then the government has to take your "lunch money". There's simply no alternative -- other than anarchy ("anarchy" being the technical term for the three hour period before despotism is violentally imposed on you).
It depends on what you want to defend.
If you want to defend your right to say hideously offensive things, to have perverted sex, to follow non-christian religions or no religion at all, to criticize or lampoon the government, mock the powerful, speak publically in favour of viewpoints that oppose economic growth and big industry .... then yes, neoconservative policies are counterproductive.
If all you want to do is go to church, work hard at a meaningless job, obey your leaders, wave your flag, engage in sexual activities solely for the purposes of reproduction, and by absolutely no means die at the hands of terrorists -- then the neoconservative policies will indeed protect you. There is no state safer from external threats than a fascist state. Fascism quenches crime, sedition, rebellion, it roots out conspiracies very effectively, and keeps the population obedient and relatively content. A small number of people will complain and end up dead for their efforts, but fascists consider that a small price to pay for safety, morality, and conformity.
This all makes much more sense when you keep in mind that neocons aren't trying to protect the freedoms YOU like; they're trying to protect the freedoms THEY like. Freedoms like reading the bible, not dying in suicide bombings, and worshipping the Decider. Freedoms that cool people enjoy, like taking some speed and going down to the local dance club to pick up a likeminded neopagan slut for a night of paraphilic sex before going to an anti-government peace riot in the morning ... neocons don't have even the slightest interest in protecting those freedoms. If anything, terrorism is a great excuse to take those freedoms away. And that's what you are seeing right now. Actually, to give them the benefit of the doubt, many of them are just dirty cowards who are afraid of dying ... but more than a few are totally thrilled that they finally get to clamp down on all the terrible sinning going on.
If you support the enemy, you ARE the enemy. Moderate Christians support fundamentalist Christians, and that makes them the enemies of science -- not to mention freedom, sex, birth control, vaccines that prevent cervical cancer, and all the other things that moderate Christians allow fundamentalist Christians to attack.
Bragging rights are totally worthwhile, if they keep investors happy. And corporations routinely spend up to 30% of their revenue on keeping investors happy. The cost of a few bogus patents are peanuts as a part of that.
Microsoft has lots of ridiculous, baseless, overly broad patents that were rubberstamped by the UPO, just like most other big tech firms. The whole point of such patents is that any piece of software you care to name will violate at least one of them. They don't exist to be actually enforced -- they exist to permit lawsuits that will bankrupt their opponents. But that only works if you can ensure that the number of lawsuits wont explode bankrupting you as well -- so companies only proceed when they're sure they can pull it off or they have no other recourse. Ballmer, being a paranoid schizophrenic, may feel that Microsoft is approaching that latter scenario.
I think the problem with Microsoft pointing out violations of their patents in Linux is that they would be simultaneously pointing out that many of their commercial competitors are also violating those patents. That would require them to sue those competitors, or else the patent would become invalid. Then the competitor can point out how Microsoft violates their patents.
It's like spraying poison to kill some insect. Sure, the targeted insect may die, but a lot of other things get poisoned too. Mice for instance. But mice have this nasty tendency to survive poisonings, eat up the poison, and become super toxic to their predators. The weasels, cats, owls, and snakes all die from eating toxic mice, and the mouse population explodes. So you've eliminated a moderately annoying insect and replaced it with a massive plague of toxic mice that are way worse than the insects ever were.
Is there such a thing as a legal team that isn't ruthless?
Seriously though, this is so true. The bigger an animal, the worse its death throes. It's not surprising that companies want to avoid being close to that. And a half-billion dollar contract is pretty fucking close.
I'll bet that Microsoft will pull something out of the bag and wind up a functional company again, but right now they're circling the drain.
If anything, Steve Ballmer's behaviour is a great reason to avoid Microsoft. No one wants to be near a giant in its death throes. Would you go to the local cornerstore if you knew it was run by a paranoid schizophrenic that might put a couple of rounds of buckshot in your face if you walk into the store at the wrong moment?
What might be more interesting is the way that all these other companies are beginning to posture themselves around openness, Free patents, and some kind of IP commons. Maybe it's starting to become obvious to them just how destructive and costly these policies of using arsenals of patents to protect themselves and destroy rivals are. Vastly greater profits are possible with an intellectual commons from which everyone can benefit. It destabilizes the winner-takes-all dynamic, and allows a more diverse and competitive market to take its place.
It's just sad that we have even traces of it here in North America -- particularly from cops. It's just one more sign that it's time to seriously crack down on the police, restrict their authority, and increase their accountability.
There are actually very few precedents in all of recorded history for police or military officers NOT killing students. For some reason, once someone is educated, their lives become completely meaningless to people in positions of authority. The number of massacres in universities and colleges by police is staggering. There is simply no other social group that police are so completely willing to mow down in large numbers.
The simple fact is, Americans aren't terrorists. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been corrupted by public education, sharing, or evolutionists.
Wow. You'll believe anything wont you? 99% of the world's scientists say that the US is the single biggest polluter on the planet. Then some ignorant jackass tells you the opposite, and you believe them? That's wishful thinking at its most pathetic. Canada pollutes far less than the US and has far more trees. South America, even taken as a whole, pollutes far less than the US and has vastly more photosynthetic biomass than Canada and the US combined. The Amazon rainforests -- you may have heard of them? You are SERIOUSLY deluded on this one. You need to crack a book and get the stupid out of your head fast, before it reaches terminal levels.
But what about Fox News? They're not biased, they said so themselves.
Still, it's not like they force people to come to their site. It's doubtful that Christians will happen upon Gaybuntu and suddenly decide that Linux is simulataneously satanic, communist, Iranian, atheist, humanist, and Buddhist, and therefore needs to be banned by the government. The existence of gaybuntu wont taint ubuntu and make straight people avoid it. They do zero harm to anyone, other than maybe themselves by wasting their time. So it's definitely not worth getting upset about it.
Besides, sexuality and software go together like pie and iced cream. Or have you never received a good old fashioned pole-polishing while laying down some LoCs?
Do you really think that I'm suggesting that there is a caste system that you should be subject to?! THAT was humour (irony, technically, since I meant something other than the literal meaning of what I was saying). Obviously no one is going to force you and your family to be swineherds (not that we even have swineherds in North America, or a caste system, or intergenerational transfer of disgrace, and only very little bit of inbreeding). The idea was to illustrate how dumb it is to not read the article, or to read the article and then make jokes that would only be funny to someone who hadn't read it and doesn't realize that the system doesn't actually operate in the manner that you imply. I'm thinking that maybe you're Indian, since you seem to take the idea of a caste system rather seriously, something that no westerner would even contemplate.
But if you say that you read it, that's great. Go on making jokes that you try to pass off as being topical, but which actually refer to imaginary things that are completely different than what the article talks about. Just don't be suprised when people assume that you might be the kid that ate too much paste in kindergarten.
For the love of god, just read the fucking article. It's all there. Do you really think any city on Earth is dumb enough to build a device that would swallow people up and trap them beneath the Earth in a urine-filled coffin?
You could have figured this out from the PICTURES alone. It is startling you were too lazy to even click the link and look at the pictures.
The article is VERY clear about this: the urinals don't raise and lower by themselves. They are operated by a remote control from a few feet away. So the attendant would be present and presumably see the unconscious gentleman. He could decide to lower it anyway, but that's really no different than you deciding to run down a drunk fellow who stumbles out into the road when you're driving at night.
But thank you for the wonderful post! You successfully demonstrated that you didn't actually read the article -- making you an ignorant loudmouth Plus, you managed to disgrace yourself and your children for seven generations. Your family will be placed in the unclean caste and have to marry each other.
Seriously, reading isn't as difficult as the president of the United States makes it look. It's actually well within the grasp of most people. Try it sometime, you might enjoy it.
Try and create a culture where people DON'T urinate in public places? What culture would that be? Every culture on earth has public urination. Expecting people to stop is like expecting people to not have premarital or non-reproductive sex. It's like expecting people to give up eating meat. It's like expecting people to not do things that are unhealthy, like smoking or taking drugs. It's just not going to happen, and the best thing you can possibly do is to divorce yourself of that fantasy right now. We're animals -- deal with it.
Strictly speaking, it killed the USSR -- an empire. Russia is still quite alive, and doing rather well according to recent economic data. Something about huge oil reserves or something.
What makes you think I don't believe that Bush needs to be hung, preferably while on fire and covered in something gross and sticky? I think the children of all GOP members need to be sterilized to prevent their murderous evil seed from continuing to taint this world. But that doesn't let people like Clinton off the hook for not having the tiny little shred of ethics necessary to just tell the truth. He lied in front of the supreme court, under oath. Then he ordered a military attack that killed dozens of people, just to distract people. A murderer is a murderer; Clinton may have had different reasons for lying and may have murdered fewer people, but they're still on exactly the same moral level and are both just as in need of having themselves and their spawn scoured from the Earth.