...as enabled the recent SCOTUS decision, "free speech" is now whatever doesn't offend this or that corporation which has a stranglehold on you some piece of your life, or your business. It could be your bank, your internet service provider, your employer, whatever. If they don't like what you have to day, no Constitutional protection will save you.
Ironic, ain't it? That the drooling ditto-heads think that giving an alarming amount of power to corporate interests, which are quite often at odds with the interests of the citizenry, is somehow a victory for free speech. What you have seen PayPal do here is just the bow-wave of what's coming, my friends.
I do remember Somalia, and the dozens of places around the world where the very same thing goes on. And each time I see it anew, as we have over the last few days in Haiti, I am struck by how close any of us are to that same chaos. Pick any urban center in the U.S. It's food supplies lie in warehouses and supermarkets. Now apply an event (natural disaster, man-made disaster, war, whatever) of sufficient magnitude to cut off the steady supply that keeps those warehouses and stores stocked. They will last days, at most. The result will be as predictable as it has been every where else we've seen it.
You, and the rest of your bigotted, anonymous coward peers will be in my prayers, right after I finish praying for the people of Haiti. Your plight is even sadder, and undeserving of salvation as you may be, I will hope that the veil of hatred and ignorance is lifted from your eyes.
No one has said "You can't ask the question." On the other hand, the question has been answered, over and over. The required "proof" was provided. This is a matter of record, both civil and media.
Perhaps you should choose information sources other than Fox News. Maybe then, you'd know this.
Pork and corruption are not falsehoods. Neither is the collusion between the Red and Blue arms of the single party system. These are observable, measurable things. So while we are sending elected officials to serve in office, they are representing their corporate masters and their single-party interests,
No argument there, but it that is not the same thing as the tea-baggers' lame "taxation without representation" rant. Someone voted for the carpet-baggers, and it wasn't a corporation. "We get the government we deserve," is a stark truism. Now that the SCOTUS has determined that trans-national corporations have every right (and only a fraction of the tax-burden, BTW) that a citizen has, it should be a very interesting time.
A 'birther' wants to know that no one who lacks the qualifications for office may be elected.
Assumes something that is unproven, as in "a falsehood, made up of whole cloth".
Again, "uninformed" rather understates the intellect of anyone who embraces such hogwash.
A 'tea-bagger' wants no taxation without representation.
Again, a falsehood. With the exception of this or that state taxing the income or benefits of a resident of another state, simply because he/she works, or at one time worked, in the first state, and with the exception of the citizens of the District of Columbia, we are all "represented". Nice try.
You are so wrong...
But then it's easy to get confused here. Look, corporations have one primary responsibility, to make money for their shareholders. As matter of corporate fiduciary ethics (no wisecracks, I'm serious here) all other priorities are of lesser, or zero, importance. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. After all, to make money is the reason a corporation exists. At a certain point however, which can vary widely, the corporation's needs can begin to conflict with the public good. Use your own examples. They're plentiful. Often, but not always, the corporation finds itself at a crossroads, be a responsible member of society (and lose money) or use it's wealth to exert a disproportionate influence on the system of laws and government so that it can make more money.
The U.S. Constitution was drafted by men who feared tyranny. The took great pains to enact fundamental laws that would prevent it from rearing it's head in the government they hoped to create. In there world, the only thing that represented such a threat was royalty. No other individual or group could wield enough influence to supplant the rights and liberties that the Founding Fathers believed in so deeply. Today's transnational corporation makes the influence of any Eighteenth Century monarch look trivial.
The result is a steadily accelerating erosion of influence, and rights, of "the people" on the government that was set up to be of, by, and for them.
That's the first question to ask yourself, because video "conferencing", as in "more than just two endpoints" can chew up a lot of it, more or less, depending on the technology used. That said, Counterpath has a couple of products that will do multi-user video conferencing on your PC. And they're inexpensive - less than $50 per seat.
You have to use magick. You have to say the magick words, which vary greatly by denomination, and then you get your ticket out of Hell. For example, the Catholics have an elaborate series of rituals and incantations, which must be worked frequently and repeatedly to remain in effect when you actually need to cash that ticket. They do offer an on-the-spot emergency rite, that can be delivered on or about the time of death, but you have to have a priest handy or, in a pinch, someone with most of the magic words committed to memory. Other denominations simply require that you make a simple, one-time statement, professing acceptance of this or that deity as one's "own personal savior", to get a non-expiring get-out-of-Hell-free card. So much for personal responsibility.
Mod parent "Troll"...
Sorry, pal, but Tipper's anti-obscenity campaign was a pale shadow compared to the puritanical bullshit that has managed to influence so much government policy ever since "The Moral Majority" came to power in the eighties. The remnants of that influence, which was arguably at it's zenith during the previous president's administration (search "Department of Justice" and "Liberty University"), remain strong in many departments of the federal government. That reasonable people quit in disgust is hardly surprising.
We've got a lot of people here in the US right now that are running after not only RED herrings, but blue, pink, orange and red pokadotted herrings as well.
...proving that an ill-informed electorate is the most effective tool with which to attack our system of law and government. Part of me wants to blame Fox News et al, but another, darker and deeply cynical side of me wants to say, "There is no fucking hope when 'movements' like the 'birthers', tea-baggers, etc. have gained any significant traction at all, instead of being laughed right out of every single mainstream media outlet."
Flipping the nose 'up' using vectired thrust is valuable in a turning fight as it means you can bring your weapons to bear..
Yes, if you have the capability to keep the adversary in range, and successfully lock it up, and fire your weapons, after using up most of your airspeed. If the adversary is kind enough to keep flying the same altitude and heading after you "hit the breaks", that's probably doable, but if he reacts like a real fighter pilot, not so much.
"On the other hand, when asked 'Did you see anything unusual?' only about one person in three mentioned a unicycling clown. So maybe unicycling clowns aren't enough of a distraction at the University of Western Washington..."
That's not even close to "weird enough to lay down a pointer to something in the days events".
Re:When the news first aired, they talked to a loc
on
Tech NGOs Working In Haiti
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I guess you missed the frequent reports of security problems complicating the delivery of aid. Were my boots on the ground trying to deliver needed "...medicines, food and water..." and my safety were threatened, my prompt would be something along the lines of "Sucks to be you, because you just chased away all the help you're going to get," as those boots retreated from the threat. It is beyond cynical to expect medical personnel and other volunteers to work where they are not safe. Time for a reality check, my friend.
Amen.
So when, oh when, will someone do "Neuromancer" on the big screen? Maybe the whole trilogy, even? So OK, Johnny Mnemonic was a mess, but Gibson's vision, done well, would be glorious to see.
Yeah, but your country, with it's superior working conditions, health care options, etc. is, is... almost socialist, and on Fox News, they keep telling us that that's bad for us. So, you're saying, we're a bunch of idiots?
Now that we've gotten your qualifications as a debater out of the way...
You imbeciles who support the myth of global warming want to make it seem like those of us who don't are somehow "weird" but it is YOU who are the stranger in a strange land, it is YOU who has the problem, not US. The vast majority of people, when you show them the email evidence, come to the entirely rational and reasonable conclusion that global warming is a scam.
"email evidence"..., That's rich. So when your cousin sends you stuff that he clipped from World Net Daily, that's "evidence". Man... That's just... sad. So sad, in fact, that it hardly seems sporting to challenge you to actually support your regurgitated assertion that,...Gore and groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife FUND are positioned to make billions or even trillions of dollars off this scam..." But what the heck. It's a new year so, yeah, Cletus, [citation needed]. That's one of them big words that means "Y'all got any actual facts or is you just reading what your yer cousin sent you in them emails?" Please prove to us that there is somebody lining up to pay off Al Gore and Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund for sharing what they have learned by actually studying the matter. Go ahead. We'll wait.
The answer isn't to unionize to get paid more than the job is worth, the answer is to find another job.
Really? It seems to work quite well for the ditch diggers, or rather, for the ditch diggers who were smart enough to organize and negotiate a living wage through collective bargaining. Meanwhile, the Fox News-watching ditch diggers are proudly toiling for $11 an hour and no benefits.
I'd say that "the answer" is to get that union card.
I think you're being a bit short on your thinking. Where you saw some kind of magical ritual and spirit living on, I saw a high-speed universal neural interface that allowed a user to take control of local resources as necessary, and also was capable of downloading memories from an organic platform into something a little more permanent/distributed when that organic platform wasn't viable.
Just because the basis for their technology wasn't the same as ours is not a reason to dismiss it as fantasy...
Well said. Arthur C. Clarke put it even more succinctly, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Speaking for myself, I've lived long enough, or perhaps hard enough, to have learned that we should be very careful about dismissing things as "fantasy". I am a pilot. The "technology" which enables me to fly is quite mundane - simple aerodynamics and an internal combustion engine (no glider time in my log). My great, great grandfather, and certainly his father, would have laughed at the notion of man being able to fly. Were I able to take my Cessna through time and land on the road in front of Great-Great-Grandpa's house, fear and/or wonder at such a "magic" conveyance would be expected, it's technology being so far removed from anything in his experience. By the same token, his ability to "smell" rain coming, hours in advance of it's actual appearance, something of a mundane but nevertheless vitally useful skill for a man of his time in his world (American Midwest), seems almost magical to me. For either of us, the other's "magic" (my command of stick and rudder, and his knack for predicting the weather) is actually nothing more than an attunement to, or mastery of, real and knowable physical realities.
Agreed. The previews make it look like just another big-budget CGI thrill-ride. It isthat, but it is also much, much more. Yes, the story's been done before, but never quite so well, from both aesthetic and philosophical points of view. Besides, the right-wing cranks are having a spaz over it, so it gets an extra star from for just for that alone.
Slashdot Mirror
...as enabled the recent SCOTUS decision, "free speech" is now whatever doesn't offend this or that corporation which has a stranglehold on you some piece of your life, or your business. It could be your bank, your internet service provider, your employer, whatever. If they don't like what you have to day, no Constitutional protection will save you.
Ironic, ain't it? That the drooling ditto-heads think that giving an alarming amount of power to corporate interests, which are quite often at odds with the interests of the citizenry, is somehow a victory for free speech. What you have seen PayPal do here is just the bow-wave of what's coming, my friends.
I do remember Somalia, and the dozens of places around the world where the very same thing goes on. And each time I see it anew, as we have over the last few days in Haiti, I am struck by how close any of us are to that same chaos. Pick any urban center in the U.S. It's food supplies lie in warehouses and supermarkets. Now apply an event (natural disaster, man-made disaster, war, whatever) of sufficient magnitude to cut off the steady supply that keeps those warehouses and stores stocked. They will last days, at most. The result will be as predictable as it has been every where else we've seen it.
You, and the rest of your bigotted, anonymous coward peers will be in my prayers, right after I finish praying for the people of Haiti. Your plight is even sadder, and undeserving of salvation as you may be, I will hope that the veil of hatred and ignorance is lifted from your eyes.
Perhaps you should choose information sources other than Fox News. Maybe then, you'd know this.
Pork and corruption are not falsehoods. Neither is the collusion between the Red and Blue arms of the single party system. These are observable, measurable things. So while we are sending elected officials to serve in office, they are representing their corporate masters and their single-party interests,
No argument there, but it that is not the same thing as the tea-baggers' lame "taxation without representation" rant. Someone voted for the carpet-baggers, and it wasn't a corporation. "We get the government we deserve," is a stark truism. Now that the SCOTUS has determined that trans-national corporations have every right (and only a fraction of the tax-burden, BTW) that a citizen has, it should be a very interesting time.
Why not?
A 'birther' wants to know that no one who lacks the qualifications for office may be elected.
Assumes something that is unproven, as in "a falsehood, made up of whole cloth". Again, "uninformed" rather understates the intellect of anyone who embraces such hogwash.
A 'tea-bagger' wants no taxation without representation.
Again, a falsehood. With the exception of this or that state taxing the income or benefits of a resident of another state, simply because he/she works, or at one time worked, in the first state, and with the exception of the citizens of the District of Columbia, we are all "represented". Nice try.
Hear, hear!
Now..., what are we going to do about it?
You are so wrong...
But then it's easy to get confused here. Look, corporations have one primary responsibility, to make money for their shareholders. As matter of corporate fiduciary ethics (no wisecracks, I'm serious here) all other priorities are of lesser, or zero, importance. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. After all, to make money is the reason a corporation exists. At a certain point however, which can vary widely, the corporation's needs can begin to conflict with the public good. Use your own examples. They're plentiful. Often, but not always, the corporation finds itself at a crossroads, be a responsible member of society (and lose money) or use it's wealth to exert a disproportionate influence on the system of laws and government so that it can make more money.
The U.S. Constitution was drafted by men who feared tyranny. The took great pains to enact fundamental laws that would prevent it from rearing it's head in the government they hoped to create. In there world, the only thing that represented such a threat was royalty. No other individual or group could wield enough influence to supplant the rights and liberties that the Founding Fathers believed in so deeply. Today's transnational corporation makes the influence of any Eighteenth Century monarch look trivial.
The result is a steadily accelerating erosion of influence, and rights, of "the people" on the government that was set up to be of, by, and for them.
That's the first question to ask yourself, because video "conferencing", as in "more than just two endpoints" can chew up a lot of it, more or less, depending on the technology used. That said, Counterpath has a couple of products that will do multi-user video conferencing on your PC. And they're inexpensive - less than $50 per seat.
You have to use magick. You have to say the magick words, which vary greatly by denomination, and then you get your ticket out of Hell. For example, the Catholics have an elaborate series of rituals and incantations, which must be worked frequently and repeatedly to remain in effect when you actually need to cash that ticket. They do offer an on-the-spot emergency rite, that can be delivered on or about the time of death, but you have to have a priest handy or, in a pinch, someone with most of the magic words committed to memory. Other denominations simply require that you make a simple, one-time statement, professing acceptance of this or that deity as one's "own personal savior", to get a non-expiring get-out-of-Hell-free card. So much for personal responsibility.
Mod parent "Troll"...
Sorry, pal, but Tipper's anti-obscenity campaign was a pale shadow compared to the puritanical bullshit that has managed to influence so much government policy ever since "The Moral Majority" came to power in the eighties. The remnants of that influence, which was arguably at it's zenith during the previous president's administration (search "Department of Justice" and "Liberty University"), remain strong in many departments of the federal government. That reasonable people quit in disgust is hardly surprising.
We've got a lot of people here in the US right now that are running after not only RED herrings, but blue, pink, orange and red pokadotted herrings as well.
...proving that an ill-informed electorate is the most effective tool with which to attack our system of law and government. Part of me wants to blame Fox News et al, but another, darker and deeply cynical side of me wants to say, "There is no fucking hope when 'movements' like the 'birthers', tea-baggers, etc. have gained any significant traction at all, instead of being laughed right out of every single mainstream media outlet."
Flipping the nose 'up' using vectired thrust is valuable in a turning fight as it means you can bring your weapons to bear..
Yes, if you have the capability to keep the adversary in range, and successfully lock it up, and fire your weapons, after using up most of your airspeed. If the adversary is kind enough to keep flying the same altitude and heading after you "hit the breaks", that's probably doable, but if he reacts like a real fighter pilot, not so much.
"On the other hand, when asked 'Did you see anything unusual?' only about one person in three mentioned a unicycling clown. So maybe unicycling clowns aren't enough of a distraction at the University of Western Washington..."
That's not even close to "weird enough to lay down a pointer to something in the days events".
I guess you missed the frequent reports of security problems complicating the delivery of aid. Were my boots on the ground trying to deliver needed "...medicines, food and water..." and my safety were threatened, my prompt would be something along the lines of "Sucks to be you, because you just chased away all the help you're going to get," as those boots retreated from the threat. It is beyond cynical to expect medical personnel and other volunteers to work where they are not safe. Time for a reality check, my friend.
We also would have accepted 'UUCP'.
[weeps nostalgically]
Dear gawd. can you imagine typing the "bang path" to get your mail to the ISS?
Only on Slashdot would this great comment get modded "Troll".
Can you say "FidoNet"?
BTW, what's ZMH for Earth Orbit?
Amen.
So when, oh when, will someone do "Neuromancer" on the big screen? Maybe the whole trilogy, even? So OK, Johnny Mnemonic was a mess, but Gibson's vision, done well, would be glorious to see.
Yeah, but your country, with it's superior working conditions, health care options, etc. is, is... almost socialist, and on Fox News, they keep telling us that that's bad for us. So, you're saying, we're a bunch of idiots?
Exchange takes the file cache into account when setting its cache size. If you start paging it can reduce its memory usage...
All of which takes time. No, thank you.
Bite me, asshole.
Now that we've gotten your qualifications as a debater out of the way...
You imbeciles who support the myth of global warming want to make it seem like those of us who don't are somehow "weird" but it is YOU who are the stranger in a strange land, it is YOU who has the problem, not US. The vast majority of people, when you show them the email evidence, come to the entirely rational and reasonable conclusion that global warming is a scam.
"email evidence"..., That's rich. ...Gore and groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife FUND are positioned to make billions or even trillions of dollars off this scam..." But what the heck. It's a new year so, yeah, Cletus, [citation needed]. That's one of them big words that means "Y'all got any actual facts or is you just reading what your yer cousin sent you in them emails?" Please prove to us that there is somebody lining up to pay off Al Gore and Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund for sharing what they have learned by actually studying the matter. Go ahead. We'll wait.
So when your cousin sends you stuff that he clipped from World Net Daily, that's "evidence". Man... That's just... sad. So sad, in fact, that it hardly seems sporting to challenge you to actually support your regurgitated assertion that,
...in three, two, one..
"Oh my god! The CIA is in cahoots with Al Gore to advance their socialist, commie, enviro-facist agenda!"
The answer isn't to unionize to get paid more than the job is worth, the answer is to find another job.
Really? It seems to work quite well for the ditch diggers, or rather, for the ditch diggers who were smart enough to organize and negotiate a living wage through collective bargaining. Meanwhile, the Fox News-watching ditch diggers are proudly toiling for $11 an hour and no benefits.
I'd say that "the answer" is to get that union card.
I think you're being a bit short on your thinking. Where you saw some kind of magical ritual and spirit living on, I saw a high-speed universal neural interface that allowed a user to take control of local resources as necessary, and also was capable of downloading memories from an organic platform into something a little more permanent/distributed when that organic platform wasn't viable.
Just because the basis for their technology wasn't the same as ours is not a reason to dismiss it as fantasy...
Well said. Arthur C. Clarke put it even more succinctly, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Speaking for myself, I've lived long enough, or perhaps hard enough, to have learned that we should be very careful about dismissing things as "fantasy". I am a pilot. The "technology" which enables me to fly is quite mundane - simple aerodynamics and an internal combustion engine (no glider time in my log). My great, great grandfather, and certainly his father, would have laughed at the notion of man being able to fly. Were I able to take my Cessna through time and land on the road in front of Great-Great-Grandpa's house, fear and/or wonder at such a "magic" conveyance would be expected, it's technology being so far removed from anything in his experience. By the same token, his ability to "smell" rain coming, hours in advance of it's actual appearance, something of a mundane but nevertheless vitally useful skill for a man of his time in his world (American Midwest), seems almost magical to me. For either of us, the other's "magic" (my command of stick and rudder, and his knack for predicting the weather) is actually nothing more than an attunement to, or mastery of, real and knowable physical realities.
Agreed. The previews make it look like just another big-budget CGI thrill-ride. It isthat, but it is also much, much more. Yes, the story's been done before, but never quite so well, from both aesthetic and philosophical points of view. Besides, the right-wing cranks are having a spaz over it, so it gets an extra star from for just for that alone.