Wow - that's all completely unconscionable, if not downright illegal. They can prohibit you from smoking on their grounds, sure, but they certainly don't have any right to force you to open your car nor can they stop you from leaving the grounds on your time to have a smoke.
I'm glad to see you've removed yourself from that situation. As an ex-smoker, I feel the pains from both sides of the argument. While I understand that there are valid concerns for the rights of the non-smoking population, lets not forget that smokers have rights too.
As to the opening of your vehicle...you didn't have to open your vehicle...you were free to refuse...and they were free to stop employing you. As to leaving the grounds, they had a paid lunch and breaks system, so you were never off the clock during a shift, therefor they could prohibit you leaving the building.
I'm a considerate smoker. I don't light up in non-smoking environments and I am considerate of others who don't smoke. However, these days I often encounter self-righteous people who think they have the right to treat smokers like HIV-carrying crackheads, heroin junkies, or someTHING less than human with no basic rights due to all the anti-smoking hysteria created by all the anti-smoking propaganda. I'm sorry, but even though I'm considerate of non-smokers, the 'second-hand smoke danger' boogeyman is far too exaggerated, way way out of hand, and being used to demonize and punish people unfairly.
I tell these anti-smoking Nazis fine, I'll stop smoking when you stop breathing all your viruses and germs into my air...you could be carrying SARS, a new strain of airborne HIV, or who knows what! And while you're at it, stop polluting my air with your vehicle(s) too, that pumps out far more toxins & carcinogens in one trip to the store than my cigarette would in 100 years. And oh, yeah...reimburse me for all the taxes on tobacco I have and will pay that you get the benefits of too. *Then* I might take your extreme stance as something other than being an ass simply because you have an inferiority complex, hunger for power, have self-esteem issues, and it's illegal to shoot you.
Is there not a designated smoking area for these people? If so, how does the dog tell the difference between a worker who smoked in the designated area verses someone who snuck one someplace inappropriate?
Designated smoking areas!?!? What, are you from the '80s?
Companies stopped providing any sort of concessions to smokers years ago. These days, walking into many workplaces is like walking into a minimum security (for now) prison.
I started working for a company in Indiana about 7-8 years ago, and right after I was hired, they instituted a zero-tolerance policy towards smokers (I smoke). It was crazy! They actually had 'monitors' that followed employees around whenever they left the main production floor to make sure they didn't smoke. They didn't SAY that's what was going on, they just quietly took one or two people every shift that were due for an employee review, and told them what they wanted. They wouldn't come out and be straight and tell the workers why they were being followed around, and it made working there a little vacation to hell. It was creepy!
You weren't even to have tobacco in your vehicle in the parking lot. Not that employees were even allowed to leave the building during their shift or anything.
If they knew you were a smoker, you were pretty much gaurunteed to be "asked" to open your car for inspection every couple weeks. Refusal meant a pink slip on the spot. Cigarette butts in the ashtray were treated the same as if you had 50 cartons and a vending machine in your car.
Even though I was very well-paid, as I worked in electrical/electronic maintenance and so escaped much of the Smoking Politburo officers' attention, I just couldn't take such a horrible work environment and "East German informer" atmosphere and quit.
Now, I run my own business where I smoke whenever I want, and there's a sign on the door that informs people that this is a smoking environment. They're free to take their business elsewhere if they object, that's fine with me. If they're such anal-retentive types, I don't want to deal with them anyways.
I had a college kid come in once and get upset that I stood there smoking and actually threatened me that he'd get the health inspectors and zoning commission to go after me.
I laughed in his face and told him good luck, as the shop is outside any city or township, and I own the building and the land.
While he stood there sputtering in outrage, I told him, "Son, you're gonna die early of a heart attack with all that anger and stress...here, have a nice relaxing smoke!".:D
Yeah, not gonna be playing Crysis on that, but Team Fortress 2 and Guild Wars aren't a problem even in an "ancient" FX5200.
Hey! I just upgraded to an FX5200 from a GeForce2 MX400 you insensitive clod!
P.S.: I'm not joking here, either! Up until a couple months ago, I *was* only using the GeForce2. CFS3 made me want to upgrade finally. Love WW2 combat flight sims. Now I've got European Air War AND CFS3!:) (victory-roll!)
Except that he's president-elect of America, which, last time I checked, wasn't a member of the EU.
Last I checked, America was also involved in the ACTA negotiations. Wouldn't the US State Department have copies of such an agreement he could release if he so chose? As a matter of fact, isn't America one of the biggest, if not *the* biggest, proponent of some of the most egregious and draconian parts of this agreement? Could he not instruct the US State Department to change terms that the US put in?
Besides, hopefully his Change mantra will include the US not strong-arming other nations into doing what we want.
If that includes not strong-arming his own and every other nation he can into an agreement with the horrid regulations/laws/rules reported to be included in ACTA, then I'm with you.
I really do hope he does live up to his campaign rhetoric and promises about being a different sort of politician that truly believes in a more open, compassionate government and doesn't pander to corporate lobbyists.
Liar. Even if the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated (and Obama has made no statements to support that) it wont force Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity or Hack $X off the air, it will just force the stations to carry an opposing view. It's telling that wingnuts are terrified of the prospect of a level playing field.
Apparently you're not aware of the history of the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was once in effect, and there was a very good reason it was discontinued. It didn't work.
Rather than broadcasters spending time and money trying to dredge up opposition pundits & viewpoints and risking possible expensive legal actions being brought against them for some perceived "unfairness" (Hey! My guys' reply to that other guys' point got cut off in the middle of his last word because of an engineering error! I'm suing!) or having to cancel and reschedule shows last-minute because one of the pundits couldn't/wouldn't show up last-minute, they simply didn't have controversial discussions, effectively silencing controversial issues from being broadcast.
"In order to avoid the requirement to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every issue raised in a story, some journalists simply avoided any coverage of some controversial issues. This "chilling effect" was just the opposite of what the FCC intended."
So, I guess if you're in favor of squelching the broadcast of opinions that you don't like but are popular, the Fairness Doctrine sounds pretty good. I wonder if the liberals in the Democratic Party would be so anxious to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine if the positions were reversed and Air America dominated the AM radio talk stations and Rush Limbaugh et-al couldn't attract enough listeners to stay afloat? I thought being liberal meant welcoming diversity of opinion? Or do they only welcome diversity of opinion (or any opinion) only so long as it's diversity of liberal opinion?
If you have another known-clean machine, then why not download and burn on there? Since a MD5 check could be intercepted by the virus too on a contaminated machine, I'm still trying to figure out if you could verify the bootable CD was clean given only infected or possibly infected computers to work with.
There comes a point where you 'what-if' yourself to a standstill. The MBR virus only has so much capability. If you assign it unlimited intelligence and power the only safe move is not to play, to steal a movie quote, and simply give up.
Wouldn't it suck if your virus noticed these downloads and "added" itself to the boot loader part of every bootable ISO you -burned-?:)
Why, if one is that paranoid, would you even think of downloading and burning it on a machine suspected of being infected? Besides, it's trivial to check.iso-image MD5 hashes to assure that the.iso is uncorrupted on another known-clean machine.
Both of the political polar extremes disgust me. I'm not voting for Obama, but it's not because of any of the garbage being spewed by either side, or that he's black. I wouldn't vote for Obama if he were running as a conservative Republican, Libertarian, Green Party, or any other party. He just doesn't have enough of a political/legislative/executive track record to be POTUS IMO no matter what he promises.
It would be like a major corporation taking some guy off the assembly line after a year on the job and making him CEO. It doesn't matter what kind of promises he makes, or how well and fast he worked making widgets. He's simply not demonstrated the competence and judgment to be CEO.
that supplies cd images online with their own mini boot os, updated monthly, that you download, burn, and then reboot into via cd
90% of users wouldn't bother. its just a giant hassle. but amongst the ultraparanoid, which you are if you know even just a little about what goes on out there, it would be a nice piece of mind guarantor
of course, this product probably already exists. in which case PLEASE TELL ME WHERE;-)
Why not simply boot into a live CD whenever you want to do online banking or other such sensitive tasks if you're that paranoid? Nearly all allow for writing to the hard drive, so it's not a problem to save any data you want around after the task is completed like online statements, etc. If you're really paranoid, use Anonym.OS put together by Kaos.Theory Security Research and based on OpenBSD with hard encryption and use of TOR as defaults?
So, what do you do when, because of the massive increase in tax, that 2% moves their wealth (and possibly also themselves) out of the country/off the radar of the tax man? Move to the next-lower 2%? Then the next lower? You'll end up with people with not enough money to move it and/or themselves out of the country/off the tax radar footing the bill. You'll also lose all the jobs and business that resulted from those 2% residing and doing business here.
That's one of the fallacies of the "tax the crap out of those rich SOBs!" mindset.
Corporations simply pass on the costs of higher taxes to consumers, or barring that, move to another country. As far as rich individuals, they've got enough money that if/when costs to live/do business here gets too high, they'll simply move themselves, their money, their business, and the jobs that money and business creates elsewhere.
Are you going to forbid transferring any money outside the country? Will you halt all foreign trade? Will you have the Coast Guard start stopping people in boats leaving the country like they do the Cuban people trying to enter the US? Will the border patrol start turning the dogs and cameras inward towards anyone trying to leave ala the Berlin Wall?
Methinks you react emotionally and not rationally.
Why doesn't the military simply save itself a lot of time and wasted effort and the rest of the people a ton of tax money and just simply report that any communications system from a wink or a semaphore to encrypted satellite communications could be used by bad guys, and that anything from a rock to a rocket could be a potential weapon?
I wanted to quickly check the ref output of a lock-in amp the other day, so I grabbed an expensive digital storage scope, waited for it to boot up, spent 5 minutes going through various menus to try to get it to actually display a waveform, swore like fuckery, gave up trying to get sense out of it and went and found a nice old analogue one that instantly displayed the wavy lines I was after.
In my environment, 99% of the time I don't need or want a user interface - I just want to see the data.
In my 35 years experience as a bench tech, a good analog 'scope is plenty for 99% of most jobs one needs a 'scope for. Quick and simple. Saving settings is as simple as leaving the control settings alone after you shut it down. I'd purchased a digital storage 'scope at one point with on-screen display and ended up reselling it and sticking with my trusty Tektronix 453. Great 'scope, and even now, some 35-40 years later, is still available through used test equipment dealers and calibration shops and is still considered a 'standard' among techs.
Most countries have given up their guns. The United States, for example.
"But I have a gun!" you cry. Well, sure. But tell me this...
Do you have a fully automatic gun with a 30-round magazine?
Do you have a tactical mortar?
Do you have fragmentation grenades?
Do you have a tank?
Do you have a nuclear-equipped ICBM?
Do you have a biological weapons facility that maintains live strains of anthrax, smallpox, and god knows what else?
The Constitution might say that we all have a right to "bear arms," but modern interpretation has lead that to really mean "only these arms." You might have a gun...
But it is just a security blanket, and only effective against thieves (enemies of our big brother government, no less).
All true, but the actual people manning those weapons are citizens and neighbors too. In the USA, if an order came down to bomb/assault a US town/city, the most likely reaction of the non-coms and even most career officers would be to refuse the order and relieve the ordering officer of duty and possibly throw him in lockup, or worst-case, shoot him if he persists/resists.
A large portion of the military these days is National Guard, and they would be even more reluctant to follow any such orders as they might be killing their own family members. Most likely, the local NG members would throw open the doors of the armories and armored unit motorpools to the citizenry under extreme circumstances and help them plan, organize, and equip themselves.
I predict we'll be seeing plenty of horribly unjust judgments become a matter of course as the war on those trying to operate outside the RIAA/MPAA cartels' control and without paying them picks up speed.
It is proof of misuse of government property, with the purpose to circumvent regulation.
Exactly what is proof of that? Can you provide any evidence? Which email(s), *specifically*, are you referring to as proof? Or are you just pulling this out of a bodily orifice? To my knowledge, there isn't any evidence that Palin either used her Yahoo email account for official State business, or used the official government email system for non-State business.
If you have proof of either, then I'm sure that the FBI, Congress, and many others would like to have a talk with you. You'd be a hero among the DailyKOS crowd if you had anything actually concrete outside of "she's a dirty Republican so she must be guilty of something".
Unless you can cite proof I must assume you're either engaged in a wet dream, are having a psychotic break with reality, or are simply astroturfing whether you're being paid or not.
Just because something bad actually happened to Palin does not discount the proof.
Proof of what? The only proof one could extract from the emails is that she was careful not to use government resources for non-governmental purposes, along with proof that many people seem to think the ends justify the means by cracking Palins' email account in the first place along with astroturfing outright lies, and that this kid was not only a partisan hack, but an extremely stupid one.
By the way, there are plenty of US citizens that do not want to pay for another personal jet for Ms H1-B Fiorina.
I'm sorry, what does this have to do with either the article or my post?
Used to have a Tele' that was blue but it the action was horrific and the intonation was out no matter what we or the shop tried.
Nice to meet another musician here!
The very first brand-new guitar I ever bought was a black/silverburst '78 Les Paul Deluxe for $500 in early 1979. Wish I still had it. Sorry to hear of your troubles with the Tele. I've owned a couple of those also and they were great instruments. Maybe you had one of the more recent ones? I don't care for any of the recent (since about 1980) Fenders or Gibsons, their material and build-quality sucks big-time. It's been extremely sad & depressing watching two such great instrument makers get destroyed by bean-counters.
I'm fortunate in that the luthier that does my guitar work (and the only person I'll let work on my guitars) is a former original Kalamazoo Gibson factory luthier who currently has his own shop as well as working part-time at Heritage Guitars. His name is Pete Moreno, and he's one of the best guitar luthiers in the world. Too bad you didn't take that Tele to him, he'd have had it straightened out no problem.
These days I play a G&L Legacy Premium strat in a 5-piece high-energy blues band. The G&L instruments put current Fenders to shame IMO. I also build (and sell, but still a one-man operation..very limited quantities and limited time for building) hand-wired tube amps of my own design to play through, since the major amp makers have suffered the same fate as Fender and Gibson at the hands of the bean-counters.
I've got a question for all the Obama Campaign/Democratic Party astroturfers here today spreading the outright lie about Palin using her personal Yahoo email account for official State business despite all the evidence and indications to the contrary.
How much do they pay you, and where does one go to sign up? Do you fill out job applications, or what?
Just curious as to what sort of compensation you're willing to accept and what kind of hoops you're willing to jump through to sell what's left of your honor and integrity. I didn't mention selling your soul because you obviously must lack one to consider doing this stuff in the first place.
Do you do it for free? If so, then I guess you didn't have any honor or integrity to sell either.
PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple â" and inventor Steve Jobs â" a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock', after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."
Didn't everyone already have a dock 9 years ago ?
Actually, I believe it's much longer ago than that. Otis Redding has prior art on that one.
It's sad that our entire foreign policy and domestic paranoia level has been upended by some very, very lucky religious fanatics.
I realize that you're a troll, as well, but its the sort of thinking that you've typed up that is ruining this country.
Calling me a 'troll' because you disagree with me and are unable to dispute my points shows the weakness of your position. Anyone that bothers to glance at my posting history will know that you're attempting to cover a weak position with ad hominim attacks. Yes, *peaceful* Muslims have been here for decades, so what's your point? We're not talking about the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.
Why do you and the other poster who replied seem to want to equate all Muslims as holding the same views? *I* certainly have not and do not equate the two, nor did the "Obsession" video. Please stop repeating the same strawman. It doesn't help your position and adds nothing to the discussion no matter how many times you repeat the same false premise. Thank you.
As to your remark about "some very very lucky religious fanatics", that's sort of the point. They aren't that lucky. It took more than one try to bring down the World Trade Center. It took more than one try to successfully bomb a US warship. It's precisely this level of persistence and determination to murder that's a major factor in what makes the radical Islamists dangerous.
Wow, this is great news! I'm so happy! I'll think I'll celebrate by meeting my old friend that was serving amidships on the Cole a while back the last I heard, and we'll go shout the news from the top of the World Trade Center!
I can see that you really do believe that the spectre of "Radical Islam" is so awful that we should scare the crap out of people in middle America about a fringe part of a religion.
So, informing people that there are people who believe God demands that they must kill anyone who doesn't share their beliefs, and have repeatedly shown they are very very serious about this, is "scaremongering"? I do not think that word means what you seem to think it means.
I mean, there are some pretty scary sects of Christianity, but I don't see anyone distributing DVDs about them and their "all the jews must die so we can go to heaven" crap. Or any of their "all gays must die" crap.
So currently and in recent history, how many nations' governments and their armies are they in charge of? How many major Western countries and their cities have they attacked? How many skyscrapers have they destroyed and how many airliners full of innocent people have they killed? None? Gee, I think you have your answer why nobody is making and distributing DVDs about them.
It definitely does not reflect the Muslim population in general.
Where in the DVD does it claim that they are talking about Muslims or Islam in general? All I saw were multiple instances where they stressed the point that most Muslims are peaceful, and that they were not condemning Islam as a whole. Maybe you got a different DVD than I did?
But please, don't start saying that it wasn't politically motivated. Only one party is going to do better from scaremongering people about how awful people with towels on their heads are going to come here and kill all of their white babies, and it's not the Democratic party
Please see my point in my first post concerning how the "Democratic Party" (feel better now?) would prefer not to have issues of defense and national security brought to the publics' attention because it puts them at a disadvantage.
And as for Hitler meeting with the Mufti, aren't you forgetting one of the architects of the Iraq invasion meeting with one of the Axis of Evil? Saddam Hussein was by no means a nice person, but I think we forget that we've been supplying the arms in that area so we can play our our "Cold War" fantasies. Or would that be the Crusades? Scary Saladin and all that...
I really don't see a point here. Every country plays the "I'm your friend today because it's expedient, but your enemy tomorrow when it's not" game. Things change. Governments change. Countries' goals and priorities change. The world changes.
As for what you call "Radical Islamist propaganda", I don't see why it should be any surprise that propaganda looks like... propaganda.
True as far as it goes, but if you actually watched the DVD, the *specific* propaganda shown looks like someone took a stash of old Nazi propaganda flyers and simply swapped symbols, as in there was more than a general resemblance born of similar purpose, as you seem to believe.
Just as most Christians are not about to burn crosses on lawns, most Muslims are not about to chop heads.
Again, the DVD took great pains not to generalize to all Muslims, and I've not generalized to all Muslims. Why do you repeat this strawman?
Get over it, world isn't as black and white as you're trying to make it.
I do not in any way consider the world "black and white". However, when large numbers of people are screaming for the death of anyone that doesn't believe exactly as they do, and have repeatedly shown they are willing and capable of doing it, and make no secret that they intend to persist in mass murder using any means they can to succeed, I think it's only those who would benefit politically from denying facts that would call this a "grey area".
A few kooks having a weekly tea party where they rail against the status quo and spout silly bigoted and hate-filled diatribes without actually doing anything to harm anyone, or without planning and carrying out acts of ma
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Wow - that's all completely unconscionable, if not downright illegal. They can prohibit you from smoking on their grounds, sure, but they certainly don't have any right to force you to open your car nor can they stop you from leaving the grounds on your time to have a smoke.
I'm glad to see you've removed yourself from that situation. As an ex-smoker, I feel the pains from both sides of the argument. While I understand that there are valid concerns for the rights of the non-smoking population, lets not forget that smokers have rights too.
As to the opening of your vehicle...you didn't have to open your vehicle...you were free to refuse...and they were free to stop employing you. As to leaving the grounds, they had a paid lunch and breaks system, so you were never off the clock during a shift, therefor they could prohibit you leaving the building.
I'm a considerate smoker. I don't light up in non-smoking environments and I am considerate of others who don't smoke. However, these days I often encounter self-righteous people who think they have the right to treat smokers like HIV-carrying crackheads, heroin junkies, or someTHING less than human with no basic rights due to all the anti-smoking hysteria created by all the anti-smoking propaganda. I'm sorry, but even though I'm considerate of non-smokers, the 'second-hand smoke danger' boogeyman is far too exaggerated, way way out of hand, and being used to demonize and punish people unfairly.
I tell these anti-smoking Nazis fine, I'll stop smoking when you stop breathing all your viruses and germs into my air...you could be carrying SARS, a new strain of airborne HIV, or who knows what! And while you're at it, stop polluting my air with your vehicle(s) too, that pumps out far more toxins & carcinogens in one trip to the store than my cigarette would in 100 years. And oh, yeah...reimburse me for all the taxes on tobacco I have and will pay that you get the benefits of too. *Then* I might take your extreme stance as something other than being an ass simply because you have an inferiority complex, hunger for power, have self-esteem issues, and it's illegal to shoot you.
Cheers!
Strat
Is there not a designated smoking area for these people? If so, how does the dog tell the difference between a worker who smoked in the designated area verses someone who snuck one someplace inappropriate?
Designated smoking areas!?!? What, are you from the '80s?
Companies stopped providing any sort of concessions to smokers years ago. These days, walking into many workplaces is like walking into a minimum security (for now) prison.
I started working for a company in Indiana about 7-8 years ago, and right after I was hired, they instituted a zero-tolerance policy towards smokers (I smoke). It was crazy! They actually had 'monitors' that followed employees around whenever they left the main production floor to make sure they didn't smoke. They didn't SAY that's what was going on, they just quietly took one or two people every shift that were due for an employee review, and told them what they wanted. They wouldn't come out and be straight and tell the workers why they were being followed around, and it made working there a little vacation to hell. It was creepy!
You weren't even to have tobacco in your vehicle in the parking lot. Not that employees were even allowed to leave the building during their shift or anything.
If they knew you were a smoker, you were pretty much gaurunteed to be "asked" to open your car for inspection every couple weeks. Refusal meant a pink slip on the spot. Cigarette butts in the ashtray were treated the same as if you had 50 cartons and a vending machine in your car.
Even though I was very well-paid, as I worked in electrical/electronic maintenance and so escaped much of the Smoking Politburo officers' attention, I just couldn't take such a horrible work environment and "East German informer" atmosphere and quit.
Now, I run my own business where I smoke whenever I want, and there's a sign on the door that informs people that this is a smoking environment. They're free to take their business elsewhere if they object, that's fine with me. If they're such anal-retentive types, I don't want to deal with them anyways.
I had a college kid come in once and get upset that I stood there smoking and actually threatened me that he'd get the health inspectors and zoning commission to go after me.
I laughed in his face and told him good luck, as the shop is outside any city or township, and I own the building and the land.
While he stood there sputtering in outrage, I told him, "Son, you're gonna die early of a heart attack with all that anger and stress...here, have a nice relaxing smoke!". :D
Strat
Yeah, not gonna be playing Crysis on that, but Team Fortress 2 and Guild Wars aren't a problem even in an "ancient" FX5200.
Hey! I just upgraded to an FX5200 from a GeForce2 MX400 you insensitive clod!
P.S.: I'm not joking here, either! Up until a couple months ago, I *was* only using the GeForce2. CFS3 made me want to upgrade finally. Love WW2 combat flight sims. Now I've got European Air War AND CFS3! :) (victory-roll!)
Cheers!
Strat
Except that he's president-elect of America, which, last time I checked, wasn't a member of the EU.
Last I checked, America was also involved in the ACTA negotiations. Wouldn't the US State Department have copies of such an agreement he could release if he so chose? As a matter of fact, isn't America one of the biggest, if not *the* biggest, proponent of some of the most egregious and draconian parts of this agreement? Could he not instruct the US State Department to change terms that the US put in?
Besides, hopefully his Change mantra will include the US not strong-arming other nations into doing what we want.
If that includes not strong-arming his own and every other nation he can into an agreement with the horrid regulations/laws/rules reported to be included in ACTA, then I'm with you.
I really do hope he does live up to his campaign rhetoric and promises about being a different sort of politician that truly believes in a more open, compassionate government and doesn't pander to corporate lobbyists.
I wouldn't bet the farm on it though.
-Strat
We can just ask President-Elect Obama to publish it after he gets sworn in! He's all about "Change", right?
Right?
-Strat
Liar. Even if the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated (and Obama has made no statements to support that) it wont force Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity or Hack $X off the air, it will just force the stations to carry an opposing view. It's telling that wingnuts are terrified of the prospect of a level playing field.
Apparently you're not aware of the history of the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was once in effect, and there was a very good reason it was discontinued. It didn't work.
Rather than broadcasters spending time and money trying to dredge up opposition pundits & viewpoints and risking possible expensive legal actions being brought against them for some perceived "unfairness" (Hey! My guys' reply to that other guys' point got cut off in the middle of his last word because of an engineering error! I'm suing!) or having to cancel and reschedule shows last-minute because one of the pundits couldn't/wouldn't show up last-minute, they simply didn't have controversial discussions, effectively silencing controversial issues from being broadcast.
From the Museum of Broadcast Communications: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fairnessdoct/fairnessdoct.htm
"In order to avoid the requirement to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every issue raised in a story, some journalists simply avoided any coverage of some controversial issues. This "chilling effect" was just the opposite of what the FCC intended."
So, I guess if you're in favor of squelching the broadcast of opinions that you don't like but are popular, the Fairness Doctrine sounds pretty good. I wonder if the liberals in the Democratic Party would be so anxious to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine if the positions were reversed and Air America dominated the AM radio talk stations and Rush Limbaugh et-al couldn't attract enough listeners to stay afloat? I thought being liberal meant welcoming diversity of opinion? Or do they only welcome diversity of opinion (or any opinion) only so long as it's diversity of liberal opinion?
Cheers!
Strat
If you have another known-clean machine, then why not download and burn on there? Since a MD5 check could be intercepted by the virus too on a contaminated machine, I'm still trying to figure out if you could verify the bootable CD was clean given only infected or possibly infected computers to work with.
There comes a point where you 'what-if' yourself to a standstill. The MBR virus only has so much capability. If you assign it unlimited intelligence and power the only safe move is not to play, to steal a movie quote, and simply give up.
Cheers!
Strat
Wouldn't it suck if your virus noticed these downloads and "added" itself to the boot loader part of every bootable ISO you -burned-? :)
Why, if one is that paranoid, would you even think of downloading and burning it on a machine suspected of being infected? Besides, it's trivial to check .iso-image MD5 hashes to assure that the .iso is uncorrupted on another known-clean machine.
Cheers!
Strat
Both of the political polar extremes disgust me. I'm not voting for Obama, but it's not because of any of the garbage being spewed by either side, or that he's black. I wouldn't vote for Obama if he were running as a conservative Republican, Libertarian, Green Party, or any other party. He just doesn't have enough of a political/legislative/executive track record to be POTUS IMO no matter what he promises.
It would be like a major corporation taking some guy off the assembly line after a year on the job and making him CEO. It doesn't matter what kind of promises he makes, or how well and fast he worked making widgets. He's simply not demonstrated the competence and judgment to be CEO.
Cheers!
Strat
that supplies cd images online with their own mini boot os, updated monthly, that you download, burn, and then reboot into via cd
90% of users wouldn't bother. its just a giant hassle. but amongst the ultraparanoid, which you are if you know even just a little about what goes on out there, it would be a nice piece of mind guarantor
of course, this product probably already exists. in which case PLEASE TELL ME WHERE ;-)
Why not simply boot into a live CD whenever you want to do online banking or other such sensitive tasks if you're that paranoid? Nearly all allow for writing to the hard drive, so it's not a problem to save any data you want around after the task is completed like online statements, etc. If you're really paranoid, use Anonym.OS put together by Kaos.Theory Security Research and based on OpenBSD with hard encryption and use of TOR as defaults?
Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/anonym-os/
More information: http://kaos.to/cms/projects/releases/anonym.os-livecd.html
Cheers!
Strat
Take all, richest 2% all foot the bill.
So, what do you do when, because of the massive increase in tax, that 2% moves their wealth (and possibly also themselves) out of the country/off the radar of the tax man? Move to the next-lower 2%? Then the next lower? You'll end up with people with not enough money to move it and/or themselves out of the country/off the tax radar footing the bill. You'll also lose all the jobs and business that resulted from those 2% residing and doing business here.
That's one of the fallacies of the "tax the crap out of those rich SOBs!" mindset.
Corporations simply pass on the costs of higher taxes to consumers, or barring that, move to another country. As far as rich individuals, they've got enough money that if/when costs to live/do business here gets too high, they'll simply move themselves, their money, their business, and the jobs that money and business creates elsewhere.
Are you going to forbid transferring any money outside the country? Will you halt all foreign trade? Will you have the Coast Guard start stopping people in boats leaving the country like they do the Cuban people trying to enter the US? Will the border patrol start turning the dogs and cameras inward towards anyone trying to leave ala the Berlin Wall?
Methinks you react emotionally and not rationally.
Cheers!
Strat
Why doesn't the military simply save itself a lot of time and wasted effort and the rest of the people a ton of tax money and just simply report that any communications system from a wink or a semaphore to encrypted satellite communications could be used by bad guys, and that anything from a rock to a rocket could be a potential weapon?
Cheers!
Strat
some 35-40 years later,
Sorry to reply to myself, but that should be 30-35 years later.
Strat
I wanted to quickly check the ref output of a lock-in amp the other day, so I grabbed an expensive digital storage scope, waited for it to boot up, spent 5 minutes going through various menus to try to get it to actually display a waveform, swore like fuckery, gave up trying to get sense out of it and went and found a nice old analogue one that instantly displayed the wavy lines I was after.
In my environment, 99% of the time I don't need or want a user interface - I just want to see the data.
In my 35 years experience as a bench tech, a good analog 'scope is plenty for 99% of most jobs one needs a 'scope for. Quick and simple. Saving settings is as simple as leaving the control settings alone after you shut it down. I'd purchased a digital storage 'scope at one point with on-screen display and ended up reselling it and sticking with my trusty Tektronix 453. Great 'scope, and even now, some 35-40 years later, is still available through used test equipment dealers and calibration shops and is still considered a 'standard' among techs.
Cheers!
Strat
Most countries have given up their guns. The United States, for example.
"But I have a gun!" you cry. Well, sure. But tell me this ...
Do you have a fully automatic gun with a 30-round magazine?
Do you have a tactical mortar?
Do you have fragmentation grenades?
Do you have a tank?
Do you have a nuclear-equipped ICBM?
Do you have a biological weapons facility that maintains live strains of anthrax, smallpox, and god knows what else?
The Constitution might say that we all have a right to "bear arms," but modern interpretation has lead that to really mean "only these arms." You might have a gun ...
But it is just a security blanket, and only effective against thieves (enemies of our big brother government, no less).
All true, but the actual people manning those weapons are citizens and neighbors too. In the USA, if an order came down to bomb/assault a US town/city, the most likely reaction of the non-coms and even most career officers would be to refuse the order and relieve the ordering officer of duty and possibly throw him in lockup, or worst-case, shoot him if he persists/resists.
A large portion of the military these days is National Guard, and they would be even more reluctant to follow any such orders as they might be killing their own family members. Most likely, the local NG members would throw open the doors of the armories and armored unit motorpools to the citizenry under extreme circumstances and help them plan, organize, and equip themselves.
Cheers!
Strat
If you don't use computers, how did you post on /.?
Easy, he just uses "old-skool" text transmission/reception equipment like this:
http://www.virhistory.com/navy/commsta/frupac-0050-vi.jpg
-along with the appropriate A/D-D/A converters and a modem.
Typos can be explained by a noisy vacuum tube.
Dang kids! Get off my lawn!
Cheers!
Strat
I predict we'll be seeing plenty of horribly unjust judgments become a matter of course as the war on those trying to operate outside the RIAA/MPAA cartels' control and without paying them picks up speed.
There, fixed that for you. :)
Cheers!
Strat
It is proof of misuse of government property, with the purpose to circumvent regulation.
Exactly what is proof of that? Can you provide any evidence? Which email(s), *specifically*, are you referring to as proof? Or are you just pulling this out of a bodily orifice? To my knowledge, there isn't any evidence that Palin either used her Yahoo email account for official State business, or used the official government email system for non-State business.
If you have proof of either, then I'm sure that the FBI, Congress, and many others would like to have a talk with you. You'd be a hero among the DailyKOS crowd if you had anything actually concrete outside of "she's a dirty Republican so she must be guilty of something".
Unless you can cite proof I must assume you're either engaged in a wet dream, are having a psychotic break with reality, or are simply astroturfing whether you're being paid or not.
Strat
Just because something bad actually happened to Palin does not discount the proof.
Proof of what? The only proof one could extract from the emails is that she was careful not to use government resources for non-governmental purposes, along with proof that many people seem to think the ends justify the means by cracking Palins' email account in the first place along with astroturfing outright lies, and that this kid was not only a partisan hack, but an extremely stupid one.
By the way, there are plenty of US citizens that do not want to pay for another personal jet for Ms H1-B Fiorina.
I'm sorry, what does this have to do with either the article or my post?
Strat
Never noticed your nick before but...
Gibson Les Paul (black like Slash).
Used to have a Tele' that was blue but it the action was horrific and the intonation was out no matter what we or the shop tried.
Nice to meet another musician here!
The very first brand-new guitar I ever bought was a black/silverburst '78 Les Paul Deluxe for $500 in early 1979. Wish I still had it. Sorry to hear of your troubles with the Tele. I've owned a couple of those also and they were great instruments. Maybe you had one of the more recent ones? I don't care for any of the recent (since about 1980) Fenders or Gibsons, their material and build-quality sucks big-time. It's been extremely sad & depressing watching two such great instrument makers get destroyed by bean-counters.
I'm fortunate in that the luthier that does my guitar work (and the only person I'll let work on my guitars) is a former original Kalamazoo Gibson factory luthier who currently has his own shop as well as working part-time at Heritage Guitars. His name is Pete Moreno, and he's one of the best guitar luthiers in the world. Too bad you didn't take that Tele to him, he'd have had it straightened out no problem.
These days I play a G&L Legacy Premium strat in a 5-piece high-energy blues band. The G&L instruments put current Fenders to shame IMO. I also build (and sell, but still a one-man operation..very limited quantities and limited time for building) hand-wired tube amps of my own design to play through, since the major amp makers have suffered the same fate as Fender and Gibson at the hands of the bean-counters.
Cheers!
Strat
I've got a question for all the Obama Campaign/Democratic Party astroturfers here today spreading the outright lie about Palin using her personal Yahoo email account for official State business despite all the evidence and indications to the contrary.
How much do they pay you, and where does one go to sign up? Do you fill out job applications, or what?
Just curious as to what sort of compensation you're willing to accept and what kind of hoops you're willing to jump through to sell what's left of your honor and integrity. I didn't mention selling your soul because you obviously must lack one to consider doing this stuff in the first place.
Do you do it for free? If so, then I guess you didn't have any honor or integrity to sell either.
Strat
PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple â" and inventor Steve Jobs â" a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock', after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."
Didn't everyone already have a dock 9 years ago ?
Actually, I believe it's much longer ago than that. Otis Redding has prior art on that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzrXc68gNjQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(Sittin'_on)_the_Dock_of_the_Bay
I know, I know, but what a great old song though. Just thought I'd add a little humor to a dry discussion and a little music to everyones' day. :)
Cheers!
Strat
The Muslims have already been here for decades.
It's sad that our entire foreign policy and domestic paranoia level has been upended by some very, very lucky religious fanatics.
I realize that you're a troll, as well, but its the sort of thinking that you've typed up that is ruining this country.
Calling me a 'troll' because you disagree with me and are unable to dispute my points shows the weakness of your position. Anyone that bothers to glance at my posting history will know that you're attempting to cover a weak position with ad hominim attacks. Yes, *peaceful* Muslims have been here for decades, so what's your point? We're not talking about the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.
Why do you and the other poster who replied seem to want to equate all Muslims as holding the same views? *I* certainly have not and do not equate the two, nor did the "Obsession" video. Please stop repeating the same strawman. It doesn't help your position and adds nothing to the discussion no matter how many times you repeat the same false premise. Thank you.
As to your remark about "some very very lucky religious fanatics", that's sort of the point. They aren't that lucky. It took more than one try to bring down the World Trade Center. It took more than one try to successfully bomb a US warship. It's precisely this level of persistence and determination to murder that's a major factor in what makes the radical Islamists dangerous.
Cheers!
Strat
.."teh muslims are coming" is a crock of crap
Wow, this is great news! I'm so happy! I'll think I'll celebrate by meeting my old friend that was serving amidships on the Cole a while back the last I heard, and we'll go shout the news from the top of the World Trade Center!
Oh, wait..
I can see that you really do believe that the spectre of "Radical Islam" is so awful that we should scare the crap out of people in middle America about a fringe part of a religion.
So, informing people that there are people who believe God demands that they must kill anyone who doesn't share their beliefs, and have repeatedly shown they are very very serious about this, is "scaremongering"? I do not think that word means what you seem to think it means.
I mean, there are some pretty scary sects of Christianity, but I don't see anyone distributing DVDs about them and their "all the jews must die so we can go to heaven" crap. Or any of their "all gays must die" crap.
So currently and in recent history, how many nations' governments and their armies are they in charge of? How many major Western countries and their cities have they attacked? How many skyscrapers have they destroyed and how many airliners full of innocent people have they killed? None? Gee, I think you have your answer why nobody is making and distributing DVDs about them.
It definitely does not reflect the Muslim population in general.
Where in the DVD does it claim that they are talking about Muslims or Islam in general? All I saw were multiple instances where they stressed the point that most Muslims are peaceful, and that they were not condemning Islam as a whole. Maybe you got a different DVD than I did?
But please, don't start saying that it wasn't politically motivated. Only one party is going to do better from scaremongering people about how awful people with towels on their heads are going to come here and kill all of their white babies, and it's not the Democratic party
Please see my point in my first post concerning how the "Democratic Party" (feel better now?) would prefer not to have issues of defense and national security brought to the publics' attention because it puts them at a disadvantage.
And as for Hitler meeting with the Mufti, aren't you forgetting one of the architects of the Iraq invasion meeting with one of the Axis of Evil? Saddam Hussein was by no means a nice person, but I think we forget that we've been supplying the arms in that area so we can play our our "Cold War" fantasies. Or would that be the Crusades? Scary Saladin and all that...
I really don't see a point here. Every country plays the "I'm your friend today because it's expedient, but your enemy tomorrow when it's not" game. Things change. Governments change. Countries' goals and priorities change. The world changes.
As for what you call "Radical Islamist propaganda", I don't see why it should be any surprise that propaganda looks like ... propaganda.
True as far as it goes, but if you actually watched the DVD, the *specific* propaganda shown looks like someone took a stash of old Nazi propaganda flyers and simply swapped symbols, as in there was more than a general resemblance born of similar purpose, as you seem to believe.
Just as most Christians are not about to burn crosses on lawns, most Muslims are not about to chop heads.
Again, the DVD took great pains not to generalize to all Muslims, and I've not generalized to all Muslims. Why do you repeat this strawman?
Get over it, world isn't as black and white as you're trying to make it.
I do not in any way consider the world "black and white". However, when large numbers of people are screaming for the death of anyone that doesn't believe exactly as they do, and have repeatedly shown they are willing and capable of doing it, and make no secret that they intend to persist in mass murder using any means they can to succeed, I think it's only those who would benefit politically from denying facts that would call this a "grey area".
A few kooks having a weekly tea party where they rail against the status quo and spout silly bigoted and hate-filled diatribes without actually doing anything to harm anyone, or without planning and carrying out acts of ma