"I mean it is much easier to just discount everything someone says than to actually think about it, right?"
And this from the person who refuses to even read the studies done over the last 30 years that clearly prove my point. (And no, there aren't any studies that prove the opposite, I've looked.) You make my point every time you post.
You aren't about finding the truth and seeing both sides. I was really hoping you were, and would prove my suppositions wrong. If you had, I would have glady apologized for a mis-characterization and taken my lumps. Apparently my suppositions were correct. You truly have no interest in even discourse, you only want to try and marginalize me so that the facts won't get debated.
One of your buddies already modded my first post as a Troll, forcing me to re-post the data. But that's what I would expect from Liberal kooks. "Free speech for me but not for thee", Eh Mister Whirly? Oh don't worry, I won't mod you down, no matter what you say. Not now, not ever. I'd much rather have your special brand of political ignorance on full display for all to see. It makes pointing out your bias so much easier.
Oh, and in case anyone else here thinks I'm overly biased, I DON'T LIKE THE VOTING MACHINES EITHER! I think there is far too much potential for breakdown and freaky software issues to trust them. However, I think the reporting on them is WAY too biased to the left. For some reason, when discussing voting machine problems, it's always "Democrats are getting screwed by those Wascally Wepublicans!" not "E-Voting is proving itself to be problematic at best, perhaps we should step back and re-evaluate our options before diving headlong into this."
See the difference? One is politically biased ranting based on kooky conspiracy theories, and the other is reasoned discourse based on actual evidence. If we could get away from the crazed partisanship and back to actually studying the real problem, then maybe we could come up with some solutions to recommend to our duly elected leaders. As it is now, nothing is going to be accomplished and we will continue down the path towards complete usage of these questionable devices.
"All that proves is that Conservative/Republicans lie more.."
Hmm... let's see here.. I... J... K... Ahh here we are. Kooks! Alright Mister Whirly, we will just file you right in there with your buddies from Kos and the DU. You should feel right at home. Oh, I nearly forgot. Gotta line that file with tinfoil! Comfy? Good. Have fun!
Far too many things in our Country are nationalized already. While it is nice to have a single standard for many things (Web standards, document standards, etc.) The importance of a single standard diminishes when placed in the political arena. It is far more important to be able to readily hold politicians accountable for irregularities. The last thing we need is another faceless beurocracy pulling strings from behind the scenes.
What a surprise. My comment was modded down as a "Troll" by speech supressors with Mod points. Well, you only have one mod point Mr. "Free Speech for me but not for thee." But I can post many times. Here is my above post, quoted for emphasis.
"You won't find one.
Not because it hasn't happened, it probably has. But because it doesn't fit the Liberal Media Template for reporting on voting machine irregularities. Ever since 2000 with all the "Hanging Chad" crap, and for every election since then, the Template has been "Eeevil Republicans are trying to "steal" the election by rigging the polls!" Then you get unfortunate quotes from the president of Diebold (the company that makes the lion's share of the voting machines) saying that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." in 2003, and the template was set in stone from then on. (Of course, the Diebold president was talking about his campaign and fundraising efforts, but Leftists aren't known for letting the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.)
So no, you will never see a story about a poor Republican who was somehow "tricked" into voting for Democrats by the eeevil voting machines. It doesn't fit the template, and it won't get reported. Period.
Go ahead and mod me down, but speaking the truth is not trolling. It's just too bad the speech supressors with mod points won't understand that."
Since when does the political leanings of the boss dictate the leanings of the Employees? It's a matter of a culture among media elites. Not a conspiriacy of corporations. Most members of the main stream media lean hard to the left. So hard that it colors all the reporting they do. This has been proven with several studies down over the last 30 years. See here: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~digger/305/media_bias.h tm
Here's a salient quote from the article "Evidence of how hard journalists lean to the left was provided by S. Robert Lichter, then with George Washington University, in his groundbreaking 1980 survey of the media elite. Lichter's findings were authoritatively confirmed by the American Association of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1988 and 1997 surveys. The most recent ASNE study surveyed 1,037 newspaper reporters found 61 percent identified themselves as/leaning "liberal/Democratic" compared to only 15 percent who identified themselves as/leaning "conservative/Republican."
Go ahead and spend some time going through all the links on the site and reading up on it a bit. The Liberal bias in the American media (and the BBC, as recently admitted by them in a leaked internal memo) is obvious. Rupert Murdoch be damned, the Lib Media Elites will report it the way they want to. If you can't see it then you have been so blinded by partisanship that I can't help you.
I'm with you on that last point all the way Khomar.
A wise man once said "Never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence." (I'm sure someone here will inform us of who that was.)
The truth is, these machines are just poorly designed and implemented, irrespective of who made them or the makers' political affiliation. The discussion needs to be "How can we ensure the accuracy of our election process." Not "The other guy is trying to steal the election, it's a conspiracy!"
Not because it hasn't happened, it probably has. But because it doesn't fit the Liberal Media Template for reporting on voting machine irregularities. Ever since 2000 with all the "Hanging Chad" crap, and for every election since then, the Template has been "Eeevil Republicans are trying to "steal" the election by rigging the polls!" Then you get unfortunate quotes from the president of Diebold (the company that makes the lion's share of the voting machines) saying that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." in 2003, and the template was set in stone from then on. (Of course, the Diebold president was talking about his campaign and fundraising efforts, but Leftists aren't known for letting the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.)
So no, you will never see a story about a poor Republican who was somehow "tricked" into voting for Democrats by the eeevil voting machines. It doesn't fit the template, and it won't get reported. Period.
Go ahead and mod me down, but speaking the truth is not trolling. It's just too bad the speech supressors with mod points won't understand that.
The Root DNS resides in the United States. For many years it was run by the Government (ARPAnet) but was then spun off into a private entity with strong ties to the government. That's how the US controls the Internet. Since DNS is the "brain" of the Internet, and the US controls the brain, the US controls the Internet. Not to say that other countries don't control thier own sections of the internet to a certain extent, but they don't hold the root DNS.
Actually, even IF your market share is 95%. Heck, even if it's somehow 100% you still aren't required by Anti-Trust laws to hand over your core company secrets.
To extend the analogy, if Coca-Cola somehow managed to totally out-market every other cola maker in the entire world and completely "OWNED" the Cola market, they still wouldn't be required to hand out the secret formula. They just wouldn't be allowed to strong-arm thier bottlers into not allowing bottles and cans from being used for say, Faygo Orange soda. Or from preventing another Cola company from starting up and purchasing everything it needed to compete with Coca-cola.
A Monopoly isn't when one company wins the marketing game, it's when one company prevents other companies from playing. See the difference?
Just because MS is choosing to (Finally) secure thier OS doesn't mean that Symantec et al can't still offer thier products., They will simply have to rewrite them to work within the new Vista framework. And yes, as others have stated, you can easily setup Google as the default search engine os-wide. So none of them really have a leg to stand on here.
You are correct caseydk, they do indeed have opposing points of view on thier network. Not only guests, but commentators that are unabashedly liberal are part of thier line up. I would say that, on balance, they are more conservative than liberal, and those on the network that are conservative make no bones about being so.
You see, this is the difference between Conservatives and Liberals in the media (The American media particularly, but the worldwide media as well.) Conservatives (in the Anglo-American mould) will come right out and say they are conservative. They will be up-front and honest with you, and allow you to take what they say with that in mind. Liberals, on the other hand, will be entirely DIShonest about the entire affair(for the most part. There are exceptions). They will attempt to say, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they are "objective" and that you should accept what they say at face value, and never question it. Indeed, it takes the leak of an internal memo (such as the one I referenced in my earlier post) to get them to admit that they are indeed Liberals.
And yes, the tag line is "Fair and Balanced, We Report, You Decide." Nothing there about being unbiased. Frankly, with as liberal as the rest of the available Television media in the US is, I find FoxNews to BE balance, although not much of it, as even they have Liberals on thier lineup.
Of course, most Liberals would prefer that FoxNews just go away, as they don't like having thier worldview challenged. Witness the fact that my earlier post was marked as a troll for several hours today, despite being a respectful and thought-out reply, and not trollish in any way. Fortunately, some fair-minded people have since rectified that, although I would imagine the thought-suppressors will continue to try to push down any disagreements with the liberal line.
---
Instine,
It would seem to me that your big issue with FoxNews is formulaic in nature. You simply don't like the "splashy" way that they present news. I suppose that I cannot argue that, as it is a matter of personal taste. As you well know, there is indeed no accounting for anyones' taste, yours or mine. However, That does not mean that it is not "news".
All T.V. outlets in the US focus on politics, current events, sports and finance, with a dash of human interest stories to round it out. That is what news is. While one channel or another may focus on one part of the news spectrum more than the others, that doesn't make it "not news". It simply makes it "News in a format or on a subject that you don't like or aren't interested in." Again, this is fine. You are free to not like the format or the topic. However you cannot correctly say that it "just isn't news". To do this is to be factually inaccurate and intellectually dishonest.
In short, I am correct, and YOU need to reasess your definition of "news".
The BBC ADMITS that is not only NOT objective, but that they are VERY far to the left. Of course, I guess if one is already a socialist this would appear to be "objective" but to the rest of us that are more towards the center and right-of center this is hardly "Objectivity".
Sorry, but the Beeb isn't objective, and hasn't been for years. Much like many of the newsies and other media outlets in the UK, it is a prime example of what happens when with media concentration. A restriction of viewpoints to a very small selection on the overall spectrum. It's quite obvious that you have not been properly exposed to enough viewpoints if you can't see the obvious liberal slant in most British newsies.
Of course, the American news landscape is much the same. We Americans don't have the Beeb, but we do have our own Alphabet Soup of "me too" liberal outlets that all report the exact same stories in exactly the same manner with exactly the same slant and conclusions. Fox News is really the only one even slightly different. While I will readily admit that thier format is not entirely my favorite, at least I know that I'm getting a different slant on the news when I watch them. It allows me to make a more informed decision than if all I watched were CNNCBSABCNBCMSNBC et al.
I'd recommend that you start adding FoxNews to your weekly watching schedule, if for no other reason than to broaden your perspective a bit.
(And yes, I do think it's sad that an American has to tell a Brit to get a broader perspective.)
I bet you anything there is a clause in the EULA that says something like "this software is not to be used in life support equipment, nuclear power plants, or other life-critical systems."
That, and the fact that most of our nuclear power facilities are still running on Win2K. I'm not kidding. I work for a company that makes software for nuclear power facilities (and other places) and most of our customers just transitioned from NT4 within the last 2 years. By the time they start using Vista, Microsoft Windows X should be out.
Oh, and yes, I was as surprised as anybody that these places aren't running UNIX.
This is one of the great ironies of the "environmental" movement. To move forward with energy creation into more modern, less wasteful and polluting forms of energy production, we MUST take risks on technologies that in the short term (50-100 years) may run the risk of causing more environmental problems. However, many of these technologies are so villified by the Eco-religion that has taken over much of our scientific community, that little to no research is being done in those areas, and the eco-politics have (in some cases) outlawed or out-regulated these technoligies from being used. Thusly we end up stuck using old, outdated, wasteful and polluting energy technologies rather then moving forward into better alternatives.
A prime example of this is Nuclear power. A modern nuclear reactor is the safest and cleanest form of power generation around. Research into this area continues to improve the technology, making it safer and easier to use with less and less risk to the environment. Yet there hasn't been a nuclear power plant built in the United States (the world's largest energy consumer) in over 30 years! Why? Because of the eco-religionising of politics and education in the US and the world over the last 50 years. Eco-religion teaches that Nuclear = Bad. Your kids will grow up with extra limbs and three eyed fish will swim through the rivers of Springfield. It's all bullshit, of course, but that's the kind of pap that's being fed to our kids and the general populace. So much so that the NIMBY factor alone has been enough to stop most attempts at reactor building in the last 20 years. I won't even START on the ABSURD level of regulation the nuclear industry has to deal with.
I live in the Western New York area. We just had to deal with a freak October snow storm that crippled our power infrastructure due to heavy snow crushing the trees and ripping down power lines and poles. I spent 6 DAYS without electrical power or heat in my home. While I could have a backup generator to help out, my question is, why in 2006 doesn't every home have a built-in Carbon-Block nuclear power generator? Why are we still dependant on coal-fired power plants and overhead (or buried) WIRES to deliver our power? Because Eco-religion has kept our power generation capabilities in the 1950's.
Until we grow up and dump the Eco-religion for good, hard science, it will remain this way in-perpetuity or until we dont have any other choice but to move forward or return to the 14th century technologically.
It's nice to see the pseudo-intellectuals showing thier true colors. You all talk a good game, but when it comes right down to it, You're all about Oppression and Genocide. Nice.
Oh, by the way, since you obviously missed the GP's point, he was talking about how value cannot be assigned to something unless you have a sentient being to assign the value. Non-sentient species do not have the ability to assign value to anything.
Without humans or some other sentient race to assign value to Earth's existence, it's just another rock orbiting an unimpressive main sequence star in an arm of a middling sized common spiral galaxy.
With humans (or some other sentient race)it becomes home. A place of incredble intrinsic value. The cradle of life and of our civilization. And, assuming we don't kill ourselves, the place we can all look back to as we begin our inevitable migration out into the greater galaxy and the universe.
But you wouldn't understand that, You're too busy planning how to oppress the religious freedoms of other people. Nice to see you have your priorities straight. Idiot.
giorgiofr, you forget you are speaking to an American Liberal. The kind of socialist that the leaders of the old Soviet Union used to call "Useful idiots". What else would you expect BUT bullshit from them?
Actually, according to this page: http://www.nriol.com/resources/festivals/2006cal.a sp October 10th 2006 is the Indian holiday of Karva Chauth. It's a fasting holiday that has nothing whatsoever in common with April Fools Day in the U.S.
There are such a small number of games where advertising could be added in in a seamless way. We have pretty much named them all here already; Sports games, and FPS games that take place in the 20th century in an urban setting. That is IT. Sci-fi games, either MMO, RPG, or FPS won't work with ads, Fantasy games same thing. Any FPS game taking place ANYWHERE other than a modern day urban setting will look odd and out of place with ads in it. To be honest, even the games where ads stand the best chance of working STILL don't work because of the advertisers meddling with the developers' vision.
The worst part is, and what nobody is touching on yet, are the long term effects of allowing adverts in gaming. Gaming isn't like T.V. where the type of show doesn't matter to advertisers, because they can put commercials in every 10-15 minutes regardless. Since you can't do that with games, they HAVE TO pick games where the ads will "work" with the game. Games that get the reputation for being jarring, out-of-place ad fests won't sell. Thusly, the ad money will only go to games where ads can be integrated in as seamlessly as possible.
What is going to happen over time is the migration of talent and design emphasis to areas that make the most money. Let's face it, if "large gaming company A" consistently sees more profits in ad-supported games, where do you think they will be focusing all thier development attention? Over the long term we are going to see a reduction in the type of games that don't work well with the advert-supported model. Basically we will end up with no more WOWs, no more Oblivions, no more Half-lifes, no more Command and Conquers, no more of ANY OTHER kind of game EXCEPT those that work well within the Ad-Supported universe. Gaming companies will simply be unwilling to take a risk on a game they know they won't be able to reliably make advert money off of.
So enjoy your unique and creative games while they last, because the brave new world of "Walmart's Super Motocross Racing" is on the way.
Have YOU ever stopped to think that some of the things you are so pessemistic about are red-herrings? The Environment? Is there anyone other than high-schoolers, leftover hippies and Al Gore that still think we puny humans are capable of "Destroying the Environment"? And no, please don't trot out all your Pseudo-scientific "evidence" to try and convince me, it won't work.
I've had plenty of time, as a reformed environmentalist, to study the issues and learn that we humans have little to no lasting impact on the overall health of our planet's environent. Yes, we can temporarily kill small areas of the earth, but unless we work at keeping them dead, The earth reclaims those areas within a few years.
Frankly, I have seen enough data to convince me that even with a concerted effort by all humans on the earth to make it totally uninhabitable to human life, we could not accomplish it. We might make some areas really unpleasant, we might kill off most of the human population in the process, but we simply could not ruin the environment. We just don't have the power. It is a strange arrogance that makes people think that we could.
As far as war goes, there will always be wars of one kind or another for as long as people exist. That is just a fact of life, it's time to grow up and get used to it.
So stop being so emo, grow up, and for criminy's sake lose the black clothes and get some slacks and a polo shirt!
If you read above, you would see that THIS HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. One of Nasa's rockets exploded mid-flight. The RTG survived the explosion, was recovered INTACT from the ocean floor and RE-USED due to being largely undamaged. This was a decade or two ago, when the designs weren't as good as they are today. The situation you described is so unlikely as to be laughable. Stop wallowing in ignorance, READ AND LEARN.
Erm.. That would be the Yom Kippur war. Kippers are little fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kippers). Yom Kippur is a Jewish Holiday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur).
/spelling nazi
As far as the rest of your post, you hit the nail on the head. Well said.
What is commonly forgotten about that joke is that it was part of a MIC TEST. Reagan had been asked to speak into the mic so that the broadcasters could check thier mic levels so he would sound OK. Reagan pretended to start his speech for the mic test and made that ridiculous statement. It got a fair amount of laughter from the people present.
Of course, many of the liberals in the main stream media are quite humorless, and a few decided to broadcast the mic test as an actual statement by Reagan to try and make him look like a nut. It got plenty of air play at the time, and since there was no Fox News (IE: Alternate Viewpoint News Media) or Internet to allow the public to get at the truth, many people thought it WAS real. It caused real panic for some people until it was revealed as a Mic test and a joke.
It stands out as a fine example of irresponsible journalists putting politics before simply reporting facts.
like he didn't "Save the World" so much as "Not act like a nut and destroy the world".
Not that I don't appreciate him NOT launching nukes against the US and vaporizing me, but I think we could easily point out dozens if not hundreds of examples of cool heads prevailing in tense situations that might have lead to Global Thermonuclear War. I'm very glad he reacted the way he reacted, but he didn't "Save the World". To say he did is a bit of a misnomer, and tends to devalue the concept of saving the entire planet. (Something which can be said to have not been done yet, as no Planet-wide catastrophe has yet been imminent.)
So, Thank you for not starting a Nuclear war, now get back to work.
First, Bush didn't "threaten" Pakistan, he warned them strongly vis-a-vis thier weaknesses in clamping down on terrorist groups. While that sounds like a semantic argument, in Diplomatic circles it actually makes a big difference.
Secondly, While I don't want to bag on Pakistan, calling them a "Nuclear Power" is like calling a Yugo a Muscle Car. Yes, they have a small handful of Nuclear weapons, but they couldn't deliver a nuclear weapon to the shores of the US even if they wanted to. They just don't have the delivery system capable of making a strike from that range. The only countries they are a threat to are India (thier long-standing rival) and other immediately surrounding countries like Afghanistan. And since they are (ostensibly) our ally in fighting global terror, I doubt they would want to do that.
Actually, jabber was one of the options I explored. We didn't go with it because omnipod was already in use by one of our larger branches, and it was simpler to just extend the use of the product. No servers to setup, no additional hardware needed, and low licensing costs. Omnipod worked great for us. For others it might not work so great, but it was our best option.
Oh, and yes, AIM (and YIM, MSN, ICQ and IRC) is blocked at the firewall. Most IM clients are also prevented from being installed by AD policy. I also regularly audit the PC's for unauthorized software.
Our users do actually get alot of latitude with thier machines (programming shop, they have to have it) but there are certain things we do not allow. Public IM networks are one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
"I mean it is much easier to just discount everything someone says than to actually think about it, right?"
And this from the person who refuses to even read the studies done over the last 30 years that clearly prove my point. (And no, there aren't any studies that prove the opposite, I've looked.) You make my point every time you post.
You aren't about finding the truth and seeing both sides. I was really hoping you were, and would prove my suppositions wrong. If you had, I would have glady apologized for a mis-characterization and taken my lumps. Apparently my suppositions were correct. You truly have no interest in even discourse, you only want to try and marginalize me so that the facts won't get debated.
One of your buddies already modded my first post as a Troll, forcing me to re-post the data. But that's what I would expect from Liberal kooks. "Free speech for me but not for thee", Eh Mister Whirly? Oh don't worry, I won't mod you down, no matter what you say. Not now, not ever. I'd much rather have your special brand of political ignorance on full display for all to see. It makes pointing out your bias so much easier.
Oh, and in case anyone else here thinks I'm overly biased, I DON'T LIKE THE VOTING MACHINES EITHER! I think there is far too much potential for breakdown and freaky software issues to trust them. However, I think the reporting on them is WAY too biased to the left. For some reason, when discussing voting machine problems, it's always "Democrats are getting screwed by those Wascally Wepublicans!" not "E-Voting is proving itself to be problematic at best, perhaps we should step back and re-evaluate our options before diving headlong into this."
See the difference? One is politically biased ranting based on kooky conspiracy theories, and the other is reasoned discourse based on actual evidence. If we could get away from the crazed partisanship and back to actually studying the real problem, then maybe we could come up with some solutions to recommend to our duly elected leaders. As it is now, nothing is going to be accomplished and we will continue down the path towards complete usage of these questionable devices.
I'm glad your solution to speech suppression is to mis-characterize the issue. You should join the media. You'd fit in well.
"All that proves is that Conservative/Republicans lie more.."
Hmm... let's see here.. I... J... K... Ahh here we are. Kooks! Alright Mister Whirly, we will just file you right in there with your buddies from Kos and the DU. You should feel right at home. Oh, I nearly forgot. Gotta line that file with tinfoil! Comfy? Good. Have fun!
Agreed.
Far too many things in our Country are nationalized already. While it is nice to have a single standard for many things (Web standards, document standards, etc.) The importance of a single standard diminishes when placed in the political arena. It is far more important to be able to readily hold politicians accountable for irregularities. The last thing we need is another faceless beurocracy pulling strings from behind the scenes.
What a surprise. My comment was modded down as a "Troll" by speech supressors with Mod points. Well, you only have one mod point Mr. "Free Speech for me but not for thee." But I can post many times. Here is my above post, quoted for emphasis.
"You won't find one.
Not because it hasn't happened, it probably has. But because it doesn't fit the Liberal Media Template for reporting on voting machine irregularities. Ever since 2000 with all the "Hanging Chad" crap, and for every election since then, the Template has been "Eeevil Republicans are trying to "steal" the election by rigging the polls!" Then you get unfortunate quotes from the president of Diebold (the company that makes the lion's share of the voting machines) saying that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." in 2003, and the template was set in stone from then on. (Of course, the Diebold president was talking about his campaign and fundraising efforts, but Leftists aren't known for letting the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.)
So no, you will never see a story about a poor Republican who was somehow "tricked" into voting for Democrats by the eeevil voting machines. It doesn't fit the template, and it won't get reported. Period.
Go ahead and mod me down, but speaking the truth is not trolling. It's just too bad the speech supressors with mod points won't understand that."
Enjoy!
Wow. Tha's insightful commentary there. /sarcasm
h tm
Since when does the political leanings of the boss dictate the leanings of the Employees? It's a matter of a culture among media elites. Not a conspiriacy of corporations. Most members of the main stream media lean hard to the left. So hard that it colors all the reporting they do. This has been proven with several studies down over the last 30 years. See here: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~digger/305/media_bias.
Here's a salient quote from the article "Evidence of how hard journalists lean to the left was provided by S. Robert Lichter, then with George Washington University, in his groundbreaking 1980 survey of the media elite. Lichter's findings were authoritatively confirmed by the American Association of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1988 and 1997 surveys. The most recent ASNE study surveyed 1,037 newspaper reporters found 61 percent identified themselves as/leaning "liberal/Democratic" compared to only 15 percent who identified themselves as/leaning "conservative/Republican."
Go ahead and spend some time going through all the links on the site and reading up on it a bit. The Liberal bias in the American media (and the BBC, as recently admitted by them in a leaked internal memo) is obvious. Rupert Murdoch be damned, the Lib Media Elites will report it the way they want to. If you can't see it then you have been so blinded by partisanship that I can't help you.
I'm with you on that last point all the way Khomar.
A wise man once said "Never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence." (I'm sure someone here will inform us of who that was.)
The truth is, these machines are just poorly designed and implemented, irrespective of who made them or the makers' political affiliation. The discussion needs to be "How can we ensure the accuracy of our election process." Not "The other guy is trying to steal the election, it's a conspiracy!"
You won't find one.
Not because it hasn't happened, it probably has. But because it doesn't fit the Liberal Media Template for reporting on voting machine irregularities. Ever since 2000 with all the "Hanging Chad" crap, and for every election since then, the Template has been "Eeevil Republicans are trying to "steal" the election by rigging the polls!" Then you get unfortunate quotes from the president of Diebold (the company that makes the lion's share of the voting machines) saying that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." in 2003, and the template was set in stone from then on. (Of course, the Diebold president was talking about his campaign and fundraising efforts, but Leftists aren't known for letting the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.)
So no, you will never see a story about a poor Republican who was somehow "tricked" into voting for Democrats by the eeevil voting machines. It doesn't fit the template, and it won't get reported. Period.
Go ahead and mod me down, but speaking the truth is not trolling. It's just too bad the speech supressors with mod points won't understand that.
The Root DNS resides in the United States. For many years it was run by the Government (ARPAnet) but was then spun off into a private entity with strong ties to the government. That's how the US controls the Internet. Since DNS is the "brain" of the Internet, and the US controls the brain, the US controls the Internet. Not to say that other countries don't control thier own sections of the internet to a certain extent, but they don't hold the root DNS.
Actually, even IF your market share is 95%. Heck, even if it's somehow 100% you still aren't required by Anti-Trust laws to hand over your core company secrets.
To extend the analogy, if Coca-Cola somehow managed to totally out-market every other cola maker in the entire world and completely "OWNED" the Cola market, they still wouldn't be required to hand out the secret formula. They just wouldn't be allowed to strong-arm thier bottlers into not allowing bottles and cans from being used for say, Faygo Orange soda. Or from preventing another Cola company from starting up and purchasing everything it needed to compete with Coca-cola.
A Monopoly isn't when one company wins the marketing game, it's when one company prevents other companies from playing. See the difference?
Just because MS is choosing to (Finally) secure thier OS doesn't mean that Symantec et al can't still offer thier products., They will simply have to rewrite them to work within the new Vista framework. And yes, as others have stated, you can easily setup Google as the default search engine os-wide. So none of them really have a leg to stand on here.
You are correct caseydk, they do indeed have opposing points of view on thier network. Not only guests, but commentators that are unabashedly liberal are part of thier line up. I would say that, on balance, they are more conservative than liberal, and those on the network that are conservative make no bones about being so.
You see, this is the difference between Conservatives and Liberals in the media (The American media particularly, but the worldwide media as well.) Conservatives (in the Anglo-American mould) will come right out and say they are conservative. They will be up-front and honest with you, and allow you to take what they say with that in mind. Liberals, on the other hand, will be entirely DIShonest about the entire affair(for the most part. There are exceptions). They will attempt to say, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they are "objective" and that you should accept what they say at face value, and never question it. Indeed, it takes the leak of an internal memo (such as the one I referenced in my earlier post) to get them to admit that they are indeed Liberals.
And yes, the tag line is "Fair and Balanced, We Report, You Decide." Nothing there about being unbiased. Frankly, with as liberal as the rest of the available Television media in the US is, I find FoxNews to BE balance, although not much of it, as even they have Liberals on thier lineup.
Of course, most Liberals would prefer that FoxNews just go away, as they don't like having thier worldview challenged. Witness the fact that my earlier post was marked as a troll for several hours today, despite being a respectful and thought-out reply, and not trollish in any way. Fortunately, some fair-minded people have since rectified that, although I would imagine the thought-suppressors will continue to try to push down any disagreements with the liberal line.
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Instine,
It would seem to me that your big issue with FoxNews is formulaic in nature. You simply don't like the "splashy" way that they present news. I suppose that I cannot argue that, as it is a matter of personal taste. As you well know, there is indeed no accounting for anyones' taste, yours or mine. However, That does not mean that it is not "news".
All T.V. outlets in the US focus on politics, current events, sports and finance, with a dash of human interest stories to round it out. That is what news is. While one channel or another may focus on one part of the news spectrum more than the others, that doesn't make it "not news". It simply makes it "News in a format or on a subject that you don't like or aren't interested in." Again, this is fine. You are free to not like the format or the topic. However you cannot correctly say that it "just isn't news". To do this is to be factually inaccurate and intellectually dishonest.
In short, I am correct, and YOU need to reasess your definition of "news".
Not to pick nits,
, 00.html
w s/news.html?in_article_id=411846&in_page_id=1770
but you obviously haven't read this article: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3318582
Or this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/ne
The BBC ADMITS that is not only NOT objective, but that they are VERY far to the left. Of course, I guess if one is already a socialist this would appear to be "objective" but to the rest of us that are more towards the center and right-of center this is hardly "Objectivity".
Sorry, but the Beeb isn't objective, and hasn't been for years. Much like many of the newsies and other media outlets in the UK, it is a prime example of what happens when with media concentration. A restriction of viewpoints to a very small selection on the overall spectrum. It's quite obvious that you have not been properly exposed to enough viewpoints if you can't see the obvious liberal slant in most British newsies.
Of course, the American news landscape is much the same. We Americans don't have the Beeb, but we do have our own Alphabet Soup of "me too" liberal outlets that all report the exact same stories in exactly the same manner with exactly the same slant and conclusions. Fox News is really the only one even slightly different. While I will readily admit that thier format is not entirely my favorite, at least I know that I'm getting a different slant on the news when I watch them. It allows me to make a more informed decision than if all I watched were CNNCBSABCNBCMSNBC et al.
I'd recommend that you start adding FoxNews to your weekly watching schedule, if for no other reason than to broaden your perspective a bit.
(And yes, I do think it's sad that an American has to tell a Brit to get a broader perspective.)
I bet you anything there is a clause in the EULA that says something like "this software is not to be used in life support equipment, nuclear power plants, or other life-critical systems."
That, and the fact that most of our nuclear power facilities are still running on Win2K. I'm not kidding. I work for a company that makes software for nuclear power facilities (and other places) and most of our customers just transitioned from NT4 within the last 2 years. By the time they start using Vista, Microsoft Windows X should be out.
Oh, and yes, I was as surprised as anybody that these places aren't running UNIX.
This is one of the great ironies of the "environmental" movement. To move forward with energy creation into more modern, less wasteful and polluting forms of energy production, we MUST take risks on technologies that in the short term (50-100 years) may run the risk of causing more environmental problems. However, many of these technologies are so villified by the Eco-religion that has taken over much of our scientific community, that little to no research is being done in those areas, and the eco-politics have (in some cases) outlawed or out-regulated these technoligies from being used. Thusly we end up stuck using old, outdated, wasteful and polluting energy technologies rather then moving forward into better alternatives.
A prime example of this is Nuclear power. A modern nuclear reactor is the safest and cleanest form of power generation around. Research into this area continues to improve the technology, making it safer and easier to use with less and less risk to the environment. Yet there hasn't been a nuclear power plant built in the United States (the world's largest energy consumer) in over 30 years! Why? Because of the eco-religionising of politics and education in the US and the world over the last 50 years. Eco-religion teaches that Nuclear = Bad. Your kids will grow up with extra limbs and three eyed fish will swim through the rivers of Springfield. It's all bullshit, of course, but that's the kind of pap that's being fed to our kids and the general populace. So much so that the NIMBY factor alone has been enough to stop most attempts at reactor building in the last 20 years. I won't even START on the ABSURD level of regulation the nuclear industry has to deal with.
I live in the Western New York area. We just had to deal with a freak October snow storm that crippled our power infrastructure due to heavy snow crushing the trees and ripping down power lines and poles. I spent 6 DAYS without electrical power or heat in my home. While I could have a backup generator to help out, my question is, why in 2006 doesn't every home have a built-in Carbon-Block nuclear power generator? Why are we still dependant on coal-fired power plants and overhead (or buried) WIRES to deliver our power? Because Eco-religion has kept our power generation capabilities in the 1950's.
Until we grow up and dump the Eco-religion for good, hard science, it will remain this way in-perpetuity or until we dont have any other choice but to move forward or return to the 14th century technologically.
It's nice to see the pseudo-intellectuals showing thier true colors. You all talk a good game, but when it comes right down to it, You're all about Oppression and Genocide. Nice.
Oh, by the way, since you obviously missed the GP's point, he was talking about how value cannot be assigned to something unless you have a sentient being to assign the value. Non-sentient species do not have the ability to assign value to anything.
Without humans or some other sentient race to assign value to Earth's existence, it's just another rock orbiting an unimpressive main sequence star in an arm of a middling sized common spiral galaxy.
With humans (or some other sentient race)it becomes home. A place of incredble intrinsic value. The cradle of life and of our civilization. And, assuming we don't kill ourselves, the place we can all look back to as we begin our inevitable migration out into the greater galaxy and the universe.
But you wouldn't understand that, You're too busy planning how to oppress the religious freedoms of other people. Nice to see you have your priorities straight. Idiot.
Heh,
giorgiofr, you forget you are speaking to an American Liberal. The kind of socialist that the leaders of the old Soviet Union used to call "Useful idiots". What else would you expect BUT bullshit from them?
Actually, according to this page: http://www.nriol.com/resources/festivals/2006cal.a sp October 10th 2006 is the Indian holiday of Karva Chauth. It's a fasting holiday that has nothing whatsoever in common with April Fools Day in the U.S.
/ KarvaChauth.htm
Here is a URL for a full description: http://www.aryabhatt.com/fast_fair_festival/Fasts
So, as much as we might want to believe it, this isn't an Indian April Fool. They really ARE trying to enact this insanity into law.
I'm not sure if that makes it funny or sad...
"Somebody is Using My" is correct.
There are such a small number of games where advertising could be added in in a seamless way. We have pretty much named them all here already; Sports games, and FPS games that take place in the 20th century in an urban setting. That is IT. Sci-fi games, either MMO, RPG, or FPS won't work with ads, Fantasy games same thing. Any FPS game taking place ANYWHERE other than a modern day urban setting will look odd and out of place with ads in it. To be honest, even the games where ads stand the best chance of working STILL don't work because of the advertisers meddling with the developers' vision.
The worst part is, and what nobody is touching on yet, are the long term effects of allowing adverts in gaming. Gaming isn't like T.V. where the type of show doesn't matter to advertisers, because they can put commercials in every 10-15 minutes regardless. Since you can't do that with games, they HAVE TO pick games where the ads will "work" with the game. Games that get the reputation for being jarring, out-of-place ad fests won't sell. Thusly, the ad money will only go to games where ads can be integrated in as seamlessly as possible.
What is going to happen over time is the migration of talent and design emphasis to areas that make the most money. Let's face it, if "large gaming company A" consistently sees more profits in ad-supported games, where do you think they will be focusing all thier development attention? Over the long term we are going to see a reduction in the type of games that don't work well with the advert-supported model. Basically we will end up with no more WOWs, no more Oblivions, no more Half-lifes, no more Command and Conquers, no more of ANY OTHER kind of game EXCEPT those that work well within the Ad-Supported universe. Gaming companies will simply be unwilling to take a risk on a game they know they won't be able to reliably make advert money off of.
So enjoy your unique and creative games while they last, because the brave new world of "Walmart's Super Motocross Racing" is on the way.
Have YOU ever stopped to think that some of the things you are so pessemistic about are red-herrings? The Environment? Is there anyone other than high-schoolers, leftover hippies and Al Gore that still think we puny humans are capable of "Destroying the Environment"? And no, please don't trot out all your Pseudo-scientific "evidence" to try and convince me, it won't work.
I've had plenty of time, as a reformed environmentalist, to study the issues and learn that we humans have little to no lasting impact on the overall health of our planet's environent. Yes, we can temporarily kill small areas of the earth, but unless we work at keeping them dead, The earth reclaims those areas within a few years.
Frankly, I have seen enough data to convince me that even with a concerted effort by all humans on the earth to make it totally uninhabitable to human life, we could not accomplish it. We might make some areas really unpleasant, we might kill off most of the human population in the process, but we simply could not ruin the environment. We just don't have the power. It is a strange arrogance that makes people think that we could.
As far as war goes, there will always be wars of one kind or another for as long as people exist. That is just a fact of life, it's time to grow up and get used to it.
So stop being so emo, grow up, and for criminy's sake lose the black clothes and get some slacks and a polo shirt!
If you read above, you would see that THIS HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. One of Nasa's rockets exploded mid-flight. The RTG survived the explosion, was recovered INTACT from the ocean floor and RE-USED due to being largely undamaged. This was a decade or two ago, when the designs weren't as good as they are today. The situation you described is so unlikely as to be laughable. Stop wallowing in ignorance, READ AND LEARN.
Erm.. That would be the Yom Kippur war. Kippers are little fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kippers). Yom Kippur is a Jewish Holiday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur).
/spelling nazi
As far as the rest of your post, you hit the nail on the head. Well said.
What is commonly forgotten about that joke is that it was part of a MIC TEST. Reagan had been asked to speak into the mic so that the broadcasters could check thier mic levels so he would sound OK. Reagan pretended to start his speech for the mic test and made that ridiculous statement. It got a fair amount of laughter from the people present.
Of course, many of the liberals in the main stream media are quite humorless, and a few decided to broadcast the mic test as an actual statement by Reagan to try and make him look like a nut. It got plenty of air play at the time, and since there was no Fox News (IE: Alternate Viewpoint News Media) or Internet to allow the public to get at the truth, many people thought it WAS real. It caused real panic for some people until it was revealed as a Mic test and a joke.
It stands out as a fine example of irresponsible journalists putting politics before simply reporting facts.
like he didn't "Save the World" so much as "Not act like a nut and destroy the world".
Not that I don't appreciate him NOT launching nukes against the US and vaporizing me, but I think we could easily point out dozens if not hundreds of examples of cool heads prevailing in tense situations that might have lead to Global Thermonuclear War. I'm very glad he reacted the way he reacted, but he didn't "Save the World". To say he did is a bit of a misnomer, and tends to devalue the concept of saving the entire planet. (Something which can be said to have not been done yet, as no Planet-wide catastrophe has yet been imminent.)
So, Thank you for not starting a Nuclear war, now get back to work.
Ok, a couple mistakes here.
First, Bush didn't "threaten" Pakistan, he warned them strongly vis-a-vis thier weaknesses in clamping down on terrorist groups. While that sounds like a semantic argument, in Diplomatic circles it actually makes a big difference.
Secondly, While I don't want to bag on Pakistan, calling them a "Nuclear Power" is like calling a Yugo a Muscle Car. Yes, they have a small handful of Nuclear weapons, but they couldn't deliver a nuclear weapon to the shores of the US even if they wanted to. They just don't have the delivery system capable of making a strike from that range. The only countries they are a threat to are India (thier long-standing rival) and other immediately surrounding countries like Afghanistan. And since they are (ostensibly) our ally in fighting global terror, I doubt they would want to do that.
Actually, jabber was one of the options I explored. We didn't go with it because omnipod was already in use by one of our larger branches, and it was simpler to just extend the use of the product. No servers to setup, no additional hardware needed, and low licensing costs. Omnipod worked great for us. For others it might not work so great, but it was our best option.
Oh, and yes, AIM (and YIM, MSN, ICQ and IRC) is blocked at the firewall. Most IM clients are also prevented from being installed by AD policy. I also regularly audit the PC's for unauthorized software.
Our users do actually get alot of latitude with thier machines (programming shop, they have to have it) but there are certain things we do not allow. Public IM networks are one of them.