here in Belgium I pay 70€ (100$+/-) for 100Mbps, and bw cap is at 1Tb a month but we are kind of a socialist country and even unemployed I can pay that (my salary for being unemployed here is 1100€)
I think in that situation I would quite literally wank myself to death.
the only thing you need that kind of bandwidth for is entertainment
That is simply not true. One of the reasons that areas like Cornwall and Somerset are getting grants to improve broadband speed is precisely to attract businesses who can work almost anywhere provided they have the bandwidth.
Because, contrary to popular judeo-christian mythology, evolution is NOT magic.
Please defend your statement by pointing out the section of the Bible where evolution is discussed.
Because folks confusing what a bunch of right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs spout on TV vs. actual Christian religious tradition is part of the problem.
I'd say that the Book of Genesis was part of Christian tradition, and that explicitly states that God created animals and man from scratch, in direct contradiction to the Theory of Evolution.
I know it's fashionable for non-idiotic Christians to say that these unscientific bits of the Bible are, ha ha, obviously not meant to be taken literally, but if I'm asked to ignore the details of what God did when he created the universe, why should I even believe He was/is there at all?
A while back some SCA types tried recreating medieval brews, and found the alcohol content was closer to 12% than our modern 3-4%. They were surprised, but following the recipe made durn strong beer.
Isn't the argument that back when most people were agricultural workers, you basically sweated off the booze as you were working physically hard all day, plus the tasks were fairly simple, didn't involve complicated machinery or anything like too much thinking, so being a bit pissed would have been quite manageable?
I know that less than a hundred years ago in the UK, farm workers used to drink strong scrumpy (cider ) through the day quite happily.
I'm surprised the guy who made out with the $33 million got out of there alive, literally.
It's of course possible that the victims didn't realise they'd been cheated until he had scarpered with the money. That's pretty much what always happens on Hustle, my main source of inside criminal information.
and you probably dont _need_ a television, nor do you _need_ discressionary income.
there is no real difference between your extra $100 or their $33mil, its all excess, and you shouldnt be allowed to have it, right?
give'm up
Similarly, the crime of dropping a piece of litter is exactly the same as that of mass murder, because they're both wrong. Right?
Ok, but you had better not have any possessions or anything other than bare subsistence yourself. If I find out you have incredible luxuries like cars or computers when people are starving, I shall judge you to be immoral.
I bet you're one of the smartest kids in your high school debating team, right?
There are few more tedious arguments than legalistic back-to-the -Constitution ones. Most of the world is not the US, and so your Constitution doesn't have the same aura of Divine Writ for the rest of us.
The point about Marxist analysis is that it looks at the economic forces operating regardless of the particular legal/social system they're working in.
Castro and Chavez (not to mention Mao and Lenin) were a fuck sight better than their predecessors, and their problems were in both cases exacerbated by the hostility of the US to anything other than a US-friendly consumer-capitalist playground.
Marx and Engels would have been well served to have studied the works of Adam Smith
Whatever theoretical philosophical criticisms you may level against Marxism at least it doesn't have a central idea as totally fucking stupid as £the invisible hand of the market."
In his defence, he was writing before capitalism had really got going. Marx and Engels saw the actual results of pure capitalism in action, and whatever the views of rightwingers nowadays, they weren't pretty.
I imagine you are just trolling, but just so you know - the pure communism that Marx has espoused has been shown to be impossible to achieve (as the proles all starve to death). From each... to each... only works when there is an incentive to work hard - and the communism philosophy takes incentive and throws it out the window. More limited "socialist" states like much of the EU can work for longer, but eventually they have the problems that are plaguing Greece, Italy, and now Spain, and eventually France.
Yet another slashdotter who thinks that everything has to be black or white. You don't need to be a pure communist state to achieve a more reasonable distribution of wealth and resources.
In fact, it is the compromises that capitalism has made with socialism that make the mixed economic system in West at least broadly tolerable for most people.
Someone who has difficulty operating a keyboard due to disability of the hands, maybe? Could be using computer dictation software. Dictating to a real person means the real person can use their own knowledge of spelling and grammar as they write, computers still have trouble with that.
Unless you have to type/speak live, using dictation software is no excuse for not checking what you have produced.
And your solution is what? Less government. Yeah, that's working well in Somalia and other failed states.
Oh, I forgot that Somalia was a fucking TECHNOLOGICAL PARADISE when it did have a government. Clearly, government worked so well for it. Derp.
Somalia might not have been perfect when it had a functioning government, but it was a fuck of a lot better than it is now.
The way to counter the "libertarians should just move to Somalia" argument is not really to say "well, it could be worse there, at least they don't have a government".
And your solution is what, more government? Works well, in China, but also in old democracy like Germany around 1939,
and new democracies like bestest on earth USA (NDAA, jail+free rape for weed), EU banning sell of lightbulbs, and ACTA-SOPA-CIPA + DMCA.
Is the lightbulb thing really that much of an issue in the scheme of things?
"The government" is just another name for "the democratic will of the people" whatever libertarians may like to believe. Without government, the wealthy would be in total command of society.
It's deluded people like you who are the problem. The government/law that stops me and my friends from stealing your car, house and so on is the same one that prevents you from murdering slaves in factories because society has agreed how we would like things to be organised.
This may come as a surprise, but plenty of people (even those in lower income brackets) prefer to not have the government set wages and redistribute income to a great extent... even if it means that some other fellow might be making way more than themselves.
Yeah, it's known as "turkeys voting for Christmas". Especially in the US, people buy into the lie that anyone can become a billionaire, and that therefore any interference with pure laissez faire capitalism is somehow depriving them of that opportunity.
Because those 33m were stolen from the people on the street. Childish tribal mentality: I have something and you don't, therefore I owe you a cut, just because.
You only got your something because you live in a society that let you get and keep it. If we reverted to pre-civilisation, who would be on top, the single lion or the huge pack of intelligent hyenas?
Gambling is not a rational activity. But then again, nor is drinking, taking drugs or having sex with attractive strangers. It's called having fun.
There will always be people who get into trouble with gambling, same as with drinking, drugs or sex. They should be given help, not used as an excuse to stop everyone else enjoying themselves.
I'll never understand that. How are you supposed to play, if not by counting cards on your mind to decide what's your best bet? Just speak nonsense at random times just to see if you win? And how can they know you're counting cards? It's insane.
You need to look up what "counting cards" means on Google.
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here in Belgium I pay 70€ (100$+/-) for 100Mbps, and bw cap is at 1Tb a month but we are kind of a socialist country and even unemployed I can pay that (my salary for being unemployed here is 1100€)
I think in that situation I would quite literally wank myself to death.
the only thing you need that kind of bandwidth for is entertainment
That is simply not true. One of the reasons that areas like Cornwall and Somerset are getting grants to improve broadband speed is precisely to attract businesses who can work almost anywhere provided they have the bandwidth.
A 180-pound English Mastiff and a two-pound Chihuahua, are not the same species, by any definition of the term.
Yes they are. "Dog" is a species. All dogs can breed with each other. That's good enough for me.
Because, contrary to popular judeo-christian mythology, evolution is NOT magic.
Please defend your statement by pointing out the section of the Bible where evolution is discussed.
Because folks confusing what a bunch of right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs spout on TV vs. actual Christian religious tradition is part of the problem.
I'd say that the Book of Genesis was part of Christian tradition, and that explicitly states that God created animals and man from scratch, in direct contradiction to the Theory of Evolution.
I know it's fashionable for non-idiotic Christians to say that these unscientific bits of the Bible are, ha ha, obviously not meant to be taken literally, but if I'm asked to ignore the details of what God did when he created the universe, why should I even believe He was/is there at all?
Becoming rich enough that you don't have to work anymore, for example, won't make you happier.
It would certainly make me a lot happier.
Those of you in well-paying jobs that you enjoy tend to forget that most of us do jobs we either hate or, at best, are indifferent to.
And rich people rationalise their lives by not believing that truth.
A while back some SCA types tried recreating medieval brews, and found the alcohol content was closer to 12% than our modern 3-4%. They were surprised, but following the recipe made durn strong beer.
Isn't the argument that back when most people were agricultural workers, you basically sweated off the booze as you were working physically hard all day, plus the tasks were fairly simple, didn't involve complicated machinery or anything like too much thinking, so being a bit pissed would have been quite manageable?
I know that less than a hundred years ago in the UK, farm workers used to drink strong scrumpy (cider ) through the day quite happily.
I'm surprised the guy who made out with the $33 million got out of there alive, literally.
It's of course possible that the victims didn't realise they'd been cheated until he had scarpered with the money. That's pretty much what always happens on Hustle, my main source of inside criminal information.
and you probably dont _need_ a television, nor do you _need_ discressionary income. there is no real difference between your extra $100 or their $33mil, its all excess, and you shouldnt be allowed to have it, right? give'm up
Similarly, the crime of dropping a piece of litter is exactly the same as that of mass murder, because they're both wrong. Right?
Fucktard.
Ok, but you had better not have any possessions or anything other than bare subsistence yourself. If I find out you have incredible luxuries like cars or computers when people are starving, I shall judge you to be immoral.
I bet you're one of the smartest kids in your high school debating team, right?
The point about Marxist analysis is that it looks at the economic forces operating regardless of the particular legal/social system they're working in.
Castro and Chavez (not to mention Mao and Lenin) were a fuck sight better than their predecessors, and their problems were in both cases exacerbated by the hostility of the US to anything other than a US-friendly consumer-capitalist playground.
Marx and Engels would have been well served to have studied the works of Adam Smith
Whatever theoretical philosophical criticisms you may level against Marxism at least it doesn't have a central idea as totally fucking stupid as £the invisible hand of the market."
In his defence, he was writing before capitalism had really got going. Marx and Engels saw the actual results of pure capitalism in action, and whatever the views of rightwingers nowadays, they weren't pretty.
I imagine you are just trolling, but just so you know - the pure communism that Marx has espoused has been shown to be impossible to achieve (as the proles all starve to death). From each... to each... only works when there is an incentive to work hard - and the communism philosophy takes incentive and throws it out the window. More limited "socialist" states like much of the EU can work for longer, but eventually they have the problems that are plaguing Greece, Italy, and now Spain, and eventually France.
Yet another slashdotter who thinks that everything has to be black or white. You don't need to be a pure communist state to achieve a more reasonable distribution of wealth and resources.
In fact, it is the compromises that capitalism has made with socialism that make the mixed economic system in West at least broadly tolerable for most people.
Someone who has difficulty operating a keyboard due to disability of the hands, maybe? Could be using computer dictation software. Dictating to a real person means the real person can use their own knowledge of spelling and grammar as they write, computers still have trouble with that.
Unless you have to type/speak live, using dictation software is no excuse for not checking what you have produced.
Voting Democrat in the US does NOT make you a socialist, nor even left wing by world standards.
And your solution is what? Less government. Yeah, that's working well in Somalia and other failed states.
Oh, I forgot that Somalia was a fucking TECHNOLOGICAL PARADISE when it did have a government. Clearly, government worked so well for it. Derp.
Somalia might not have been perfect when it had a functioning government, but it was a fuck of a lot better than it is now.
The way to counter the "libertarians should just move to Somalia" argument is not really to say "well, it could be worse there, at least they don't have a government".
And your solution is what, more government? Works well, in China, but also in old democracy like Germany around 1939, and new democracies like bestest on earth USA (NDAA, jail+free rape for weed), EU banning sell of lightbulbs, and ACTA-SOPA-CIPA + DMCA.
Is the lightbulb thing really that much of an issue in the scheme of things?
It's deluded people like you who are the problem. The government/law that stops me and my friends from stealing your car, house and so on is the same one that prevents you from murdering slaves in factories because society has agreed how we would like things to be organised.
This may come as a surprise, but plenty of people (even those in lower income brackets) prefer to not have the government set wages and redistribute income to a great extent... even if it means that some other fellow might be making way more than themselves.
Yeah, it's known as "turkeys voting for Christmas". Especially in the US, people buy into the lie that anyone can become a billionaire, and that therefore any interference with pure laissez faire capitalism is somehow depriving them of that opportunity.
Because those 33m were stolen from the people on the street. Childish tribal mentality: I have something and you don't, therefore I owe you a cut, just because.
You only got your something because you live in a society that let you get and keep it. If we reverted to pre-civilisation, who would be on top, the single lion or the huge pack of intelligent hyenas?
So, ironically, you made them an offer they could refuse?
the fact that the opposing players cards were 'readable by security camera' is something that should worry pretty much everyone
Yes, because in a public casino you should expect total privacy. Even if you're cheating.
There will always be people who get into trouble with gambling, same as with drinking, drugs or sex. They should be given help, not used as an excuse to stop everyone else enjoying themselves.
I'll never understand that. How are you supposed to play, if not by counting cards on your mind to decide what's your best bet? Just speak nonsense at random times just to see if you win? And how can they know you're counting cards? It's insane.
You need to look up what "counting cards" means on Google.