I left out some points. nine out of ten people with schizophrenia admit to using pot.
the symptoms of schizophrenia mirror the temporary effects of marijuana.
I think this should be publicized widely, and it it's worth the risk to you, you can do what you want. I think people who use substances like this should be generally allowed to unless driving or under 18.
But anyone should be able to understand that Pot is not victimless, harmless, or whatnot. Sometimes the people that sell it sell other stuff (and I think selling meth or heroin should be a life-imprisonment offense because it is akin to murder).
If you are experiencing hallucinations, hear voices, are very paranoid, out of work, consider harming yourself, and you have used pot, you need to seek professional help and avoid pot and caffeine. Try cigarettes instead, they are proven to help make you feel a bit better.
Like I said, you agree with me generally that the war on drugs is more destructive than a lot of the stuff it's fighting.
You site a figure of drug arrests, but the example above was for someone who is in a wheelchair and weighs 80 pounds and no doubt has a medical reason to use pot and no other alternative. Don't you realize that you are making a dishonest rebuttal? We're talking about two different things! The gp said that Mitt was inhumanly unethical for not supporting pot for a very narrow class of people. That has nothing to do with recreational use or the huge arrest numbers.
So maybe you should work on your reading comprehension (which, no disrespect intended, is almost surely harmed by your overuse of marijuana). I only argued that there are many legitimate reasons to support the war on drugs, and pot has ruined many lives. I don't think it matters because pot mainly ruins the lives of idiots who overuse the drug.
There are many legitimate reasons for outlawing any substance. We can ban shoes from North Korea, even for recreational use. Fact is, laws are made by the elected. They are legitimate solely on that basis, and not on my or your personal views. I agree the War on Drugs needs to let pot users do their thing out of efficiency, but unlike you, I'm honest enough to admit that those who favor this effort do have some legitimate moral concerns to rely on. They, like Mitt, are not inhuman violators of human rights. They just disagree on a tough issue.
And yeah, it's fact, pot is linked to schizophrenia. Pot is a hallucinogen (this is widely misunderstood) and affect some people very negatively, though most people just harm themselves slightly. I like how you just rule this truth out by fiat, as though you were God or something.
Iran isn't a legitimate state. They have no right to exist, own property, have a military, etc. Because they are a bigoted evil theocracy.
The USA and Israel aren't perfect, but they are basically democratic and are fundamentally more legitimate nations than most of the middle east.
Iran has repeatedly said it will commit genocide. If you visit Iran, you will hear daily chants "maag baag Israel" calling for the destruction of those people. And it's not because of palestine (though it wouldn't be ok if it were), it's because of racism. I know this personally. That also places them in a certain category.
Also, you're probably wrong about the university stat. Saddam killed a huge number of the men in Iran (Saddam killed more muslims than any other person in the history of the world), and that affected the numbers somewhat, but statistics out of Iran are always lies. Even if they say what the Iranians want them to, they will lie about it. So yeah, they report that 70% of students are women. It's not true though. Hell if anyone knows the real figures.
If your state is not a legitimate democracy, it has no right to exist. We can't destroy every such nation for obvious reasons, but we can fuck with them however we feel we need to. Why? Why not?
The above post is directly on-topic, discussing Mitt Romney's political positions in a thread about him, and comparing Mitt to other candidates. But it's voted offtopic.
Moderating is not about who you disagree with. You may feel some kind of glee at censoring speech you don't like, but America is getting sick of the liberal fascism. I'm a liberal and I'm getting very tired of it. It makes you look like a bunch of kids. I can only imagine how different the world would be if Bush had been protested by intelligent and civil and fair people, instead of a horde of psychopaths who think pot being illegal harms hundreds of millions of Americans. I can only imagine what would have happened with the abuses in guantanamo if the protestors didn't deny the truth about 9/11 and that Bush probably wasn't lying about WMDs so much as our intelligence services have sucked since the 50s.
If you're trying to irritate me, to some extent you're succeeding. I want real change and progress and care a lot about human rights, but my civil and fair attempts to discuss this stuff is totally overwhelmed by the idiots who think Republicans are evil, there is no reason to support a war on drugs, and every other issue must be exaggerated to the point of unbelievability.
Drugs are a problem. Real people out there have good reasons for supporting the war on drugs. You're going to have to try to reason with these people if you want their votes. Most voters, with the exception of the Ron Paul supporters who also are white supremacists, are good people, with good values.
Obviously you actually want Sony to fail very passionately. You should turn that passion to something worthwhile. there might be politicians on your town or drug dealers or something that deserve your hatred.
Nintendo is doing good things and making some money, but they could be doing a lot better and are not going to make the kind of money Sony makes, even with its screwups of late. The PS3 is situated to profit from large downloadable games, the Wii lacks a decent storage to do the same. The Ps3 will probably be renting movies, too. And the PS3 has won a (very conservatively) $15 billion format war. And all this time, Sony is making buckets of cash on the PS2 to offset a lot of the costs of the stumbling PS3.
Nintendo needs to learn: it's all about the games. It's offerings are few and not great, and the customers are proving it. In Japan, where the wii is outsold by the PS3, each wii attaches to 3 games (2 if you don't count wiisports). Pathetic. The PS2, which is making money long after the gamecube is dead, is a success that Sony deserves some credit for. They got arrogant, but they quickly regrouped and 2008 will see Home, Littlebigplanet, movies, DVRs, Skype, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy. Without any of those things, Sony is still the worldwide revenue leader, and the PS3 is outselling the wii in many areas.
So yeah, Nintendo has done well, but could do better, and your expectations of the Playstation's demise are absurd. The PS2 profit model, to start at a loss and sell a lot of games, is the best model this industry has ever seen. There aren't anymore developers for Sony to pick off of Nintendo's third party corpse.
Someone says I have dismissed the rights of hundreds of millions of people, and I'm the troll? How can someone troll when there are simply replying to a personal attack? And the fella who demagogues in the most ridiculous terms possible is insightful?
Moderator: go fuck yourself, please. You're what's wrong with this society where both political factions think the other is 100% inhuman.
You should use your moderator points to determine if comments are interesting, etc. Not to upvote crap you agree with in the most childish digg-style possible. By validating the parent poster's simplistic and stupid attacks, you're fueling the fire.
Mitt Romney isn't being attacked for his view on drugs: he's being attacked for being a republican. Everyone knows it. Hillary's view on the War on Drugs is identical. Obama actually talks about ramping up the War on Drugs. But they aren't republicans so they aren't subject to the same level of attack.
Romney is showing some awareness of technology that people like Bush "uses the google" fundamentally lack. It's refreshing. Idiot trolls crawl out of the woodwork to attack Romney's entire moral system for reasons utterly irrelevant, I call them on being single-issue-selfish.
I'm not even a republican, and I'm getting sick of this crap. Every election year I have to listen to trolls validate each other's existence while hating huge segments of society. For whatever reason (likely Bush's fumbling presidency), Slashdot leans left, so Romney's embracing of technology is seen as an invitation to attack.
Well mods, if you really want to, go ahead and moderate down every single thing I have ever said. Because I disagree with you. Call me a troll for issuing obvious and relatively polite self-defense. slashdot can be another digg.com.
Ha! Romney is legitimately successful in business. Lots of folks inhereit and cheat their way into success, but Romney has proven some skill in business and economics. I should note that I don't support the guy, but he's certainly the most accomplished business person of both major parties tickets.
And I don't understand the relevance of the war on drugs to anything discussed here. The wheelchair ambush kid was not asking Mitt to cancel the war on drugs, he was asking Mitt to permit the medical use of marijuana. And I don't think Hillary, Barack, Mccain, Rudy, or Huckabee would end the war on drugs either. It's a moot point.
and probably not a significant drain on the economy compared with social security, the war on terror, or katrina relief. No issue exists in a vacuum. This kid is not a reason to legalize pot for everyone's use, and doing so would probably be a major drain on the economy. Potheads are less productive in normal jobs, much more prone to schizophrenia with its attendant expenses, and etc etc. The war on drugs is wayyyyyy too aggressive in dealing with mere users of drugs who only harm themselves, but is that the issue being discussed Mr. Strawman?
You didn't answer my question: who is your candidate?
We are in a representative republic and do not vote on issues, but rather people.
300 million people are not affected by this. That's absurd. I say fewer than one thousand people really have a legit need for medical marijuana, at least to the severe degree the example needs it. I agree his rights are violated.
Also, 300 million people do not pay their share of taxes, or even near their share, so you can't say this kid's money is being stolen, when he probably pays no federal income tax. You're just trying to goad and troll, I guess. I'm very sympathetic to this kid, but your lack pf perspective is very high.
Pot does ruin lives. It makes people paranoid and stupid and is linked to paranoid schizophrenia. It should not be legalized. Those who have severe medical problems that a doctor says mandate smoking pot have a right that the rest of us 300 million people do not have.
You think this issue compares with the war on terror? Whether you are pro-war or anti, thousands of people's lives hang in the balance. Thousands were killed on 9/11, and Saddam killed millions of people, while our effort has probably killed over 100k people. That's somewhat more important, right? You claim I dismiss "basic human rights" with no idea what basic human rights are. I wish banned smoking pot was the biggest problem in human rights in this country. While the war on drugs is very wasteful and destructive, it doesn't register at all when compared with the destructive potential of the bankruptcy of social security. Then the elderly may go without food and restorative medicine. Millions of people will actually suffer, as opposed to hundreds at most (I imagine in many cases, Romney is right and other drugs can take pot's place).
You're extremely judgmental. And compared to you, I do have it easy because I understand that other people can disagree with me and not be morally inferior. You live in a simplistic jingoistic world and must hate the vast majority of Americans (who would ban a lot of drugs and repeatedly support candidates that do). I don't have to hate them, even if I disagree with them and wish doctors could prescribe pot.
Fair enough. I'm not a big Mitt fan, but he's a economic genius and an experienced leader. And fixing this economy and handling the war are much more important that medical marijuana, though I agree with a prescription there is no reason not to permit its use. One affects hundreds of millions of people, the other affects very few people (if you use this kid as your argument).
I don't think it's sensible to pick one issue and judge everyone who disagrees with you a monster. Of course, I also don't have that kid's disease so it's easy for me to feel this way. Still, single issue voters miss the boat these days. Who is your candidate that meets your standard? I can find something inhuman about them if I really wanna.
Yeah, I don't think you really need a computer that can run games that look as good as PS3 games to do any of the tasks you listed.
And certainly, 99.99999999999 percent of folks out there don't need such a PC. I would take your bet that far fewer than a third of slashdot readers have a computer that can push games as well as a PS3 or 360. With a console I can just shove a disc in and play, and frankly, I can use my PS3 to do a lot of the things you do with your PC, such as rip dvds, code, and office stuff. So your starwman bends both ways.
And I know of no console that is $500 minimum. Nor do I see any reason to have a hard drive larger than 90 gigs if you can stream content.
And that's not even the real contest: there is no way in hell your PC is a good a value as a $130 dollar PS2 and $200 of Greatest Hits games. Most people want good games, not superleet bullshit PC games that barely work at high quality. They want stuff that works, and the best games need a large userbase, so you kinda have to follow the crowd.
Consoles are also much healthier to play than PCs. Instead of sitting in the corner at a desk, I am in the living roo mwith my family. It's trivial to pick up another controller and jump in, and there are plenty of multiplayer games made for several folks on the console. You can pretend the same is possible on PC, but it's not anywhere near the same. I cannot share a PC game with my friends and family like I can a console game. I can't count on my 5 year old kid to be able to play the PC like I can count on her to be able to play wiisports, though she does have an old PC to tinker with.
in short, you simply get a lot more fun out of your dollar by getting a console. PC gaming has become absolutely dreadful, and the games themselves, such as WoW, prove that generally mentally stunted people with severe problems stick to their PCs.
At minimum, when someone informed a candidate that a highly offensive murderous ideology.... let's say Al Qaida or Ron Paul Nazis or Scientology, is contributing thousands, then no investigation is necessary. It's time to give the money back.
Your straw man is burning, since Ron Paul was repeatedly told about this. No one asked him to investigate.
And I love the attack that I'm empowering Nazis by condemning them and helping publicize the candidate they love. Nazi's know that if anyone finds out who they like, that candidate is going down. Millions of people have taken a second to remember there are neo-nazis like Ron Paul and laughed at them. We need to always be vigilant in remembering the kind of hate that Ron Paul and his Tim McVeigh followers love to preach. We need to keep pointing it out and attacking it. Forever. Read up on some John Mill if you don't get the point.
Since this revelation came out, Ron's support has crumbled to a third of what it was. I'm proud to do my totally tiny bit to keep that going. Ron Paul MUST be marginalized and destroyed as a political force. And he has been. Yay! And libertarianism is once again proven to be the province of fucking idiots. Sad because I am sympathetic to some of their goals, but I'm thrilled to se ethe truth come out about them. Clean up your act. I have EVERY RIGHT to be outraged that you idiots would follow a monster like Ron. Read the quotes I put up north of here. That's not ok. This is America, and we ain't perfect, but that crap needs to stop infecting this nation.
Actually, internet distribution is taking off marvelously. It's not competing with blu-ray of course, but it's still a pretty big deal. the ISPs in some areas aren't prepared for it, but I think it'll all turn out ok.
When people think that internet distro is a reason why blu-ray is irrelevant, yeah that's stupid. But there's a market for instantly watching movies at reduced quality.
I just think it's an ancillary market instead of the same one.
First, it's pathetic to attack someone anonymously.
Second, fanboy of what? blu-ray? It is the better option, clearly, and the format war is over, clearly. What exactly is irrational about that?
And you don't think NPD has an interest in prolonging this format war? Then you're a freaking idiot. Go google NPD and blu-ray, NPD and hd-dvd, and add them. Compare that to NPD and staplers, or NPD and PS3.
They are thriving on this war, getting virtually all their publicity from it. Don't be such a freaking tool.
There's no reason to be a fanboy of blu-ray. It's a done deal now. Blu-ray outsold hd-dvd 9:1 without even counting the PS3. Nobody really is comparing blu-ray to anything anymore. It's pointless to try to lift blu-ray up, because it's only competing with DVDs.
I see an absurd level of HD-DVD fanboys, many simply attacking people instead of trying to come up with some argument for supporting their defunct format. That's what you're doing. Loser.
makes perfect sense. NPD is in the headlines a lot lately, but only because this format war continues. They are obviously editorilizing. And they are doing so to keep their name out there as long as possible.
google NPD, and you'll see a hell of a lot more info about hd0dvd than you will about staplers. They love these battles, live to prolong them, etc etc.
I'm a bit surprised this isn't obvious to everyone.
There is a finalized spec, but it's silly to say that Blu-ray also doesn't have a finalized spec. For watching movies, it's finalized enough. They are adding newer stupid features. Totally ok.
Cheaper for sure, but so what? Eventually blu-ray will be MUCH cheaper (I'm willing to bet money on it). And the audio codec are mandatory because HD-DVD is inferior. Period. They cannot fit uncompressed audio and must use compression, so of course there's a mandatory codec. You say space is wasted on uncompressed as though it's impossible to hear the difference. It's not, studies have proven it, I can tell, and why not have absolutely perfect audio? Audio is blu-ray's best feature.
Not sure what your point for combo discs means. I don't need combo discs for blu-ray devices because obviously blu-ray will be in every $50 drive in five years. You can't get a combo disc for most movies, since most studios aren't on HD-DVD. Just a lame point.
I can see sticking with DVD. It's certainly good enough for enjoying films. you can't beat the slection. But you insist you're sticking with HD-DVD, and I don't really know how that's possible. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that Toshiba is liquidating, the studios are leaving, and there's not going to be a bundh of players or movies to stick to. It's like my asserting I will stick to Betamax until VHS is far more compelling. WTF deos that even mean? That I won't be watching any movies? Stick away, pal. The market is choosing blu-ray 9:1 over hd-dvd without even counting PS3s, so I think you're going to change your mind.
We agree that optical is much more limited to media playback. Particularly high quality with great DRM. The HD-DVD's failure in DRM is a big reason why they lost. If you are so opposed to DRM, then you need to give up on optical movies. Perhaps that's a shame, I don't know, but it's the truth.
Oh, Scientology has definitely ruined more lives than the fucking RIAA. Jeez. Are you serious? Google Lisa Mcpherson. Eaten by roaches. Has the RIAA done that to anyone?
COS completely wipes people out. Kills. Ruins. RIAA sues people for a few grand, and those people usually broke laws that you may not agree with but our democratic system did create. RIAA also does unethical spying, etc, but as bad as that is, it's not as bad as murder or being libeled as a child molestor.
I have a test for you: go protest the RIAA. Go hold up a sign in front of one of their office saying "Please research the behavior of this organization". I think you will walk away with no serious damage to your life. Now do it to Scientology. If the prospect doesn't scare you, you don't know who you're dealing with. This is also a valid test for comparing CoS with Christianity and other religions. I can protest the Methodists and not worry about being killed or libeled.
Have some perspective please. The RIAA indeed sucks ass, but they aren't truly evil, they are just greedy and stupid.
How does it help you that HD-DVD has less DRM? What do you get out of that? Something tells me that you are precisely the reason blu-ray is winning. There really is very little reason to backup these discs until hard drive capacity is much larger. The discs are very durable and they are very large, so backup is far less likely to be your reason. Preventing piracy is a very good thing. Blu-ray has features letting you share content with other devices, etc. Pretty realistic and consumer friendly, while fucking pirates in the ass (like Sony did to lik-sang).
Now MS is not involved in HD-DVD, but has been paying tens of millions to harm blu-ray. Why? because they want both standards to fail, and realize HD-DVD lost ages ago. It's exploiting it's monopoly to interfere in an unrelated market. It's not uninformed to resist that. It would be idiotic to buy an HD-DVD player at this point.
Also, you criticize Sony for selling blu-ray players in PS3s. For selling their own product. What the hell is wrong with you? This is utterly benign conduct.
Anyway, Sony is a pretty fair competitor. They've ruled video games, pretty much still do in terms of revenue, and Nintendo and MS are thriving anyway. They have been perfectly friendly working with Toshiba and Samsung, their major competitors. They aren't zealous, they respond to poor sales by creating better products. Microsoft dominated Browsers and destoryed netscape, dominated office aps and destroyed many competitiors, same for operating systems. They force sales on customers in a way Sony just doesn't. Obviously there is no comparison.
Do you want Microsoft to dominate your living room, for the xbox to be the only viable platform for games, for MS's movie downloads to succeed? We all know this would be very bad for consumers, resulting in lower quality and higher prices and horrible DRM (bad DRM = less usable, not less pirate-able). MS is a real threat, and blu-ray and the PS3 is the only real competitor.
That's why MS is pouring so much money into this format war. You see the fact that MS isn't really invested in HD-DVD, and think that is a plus for them? It's a huge minus.
oh, and one last point: blu-ray is better. It sounds better, it holds more data, has more movies, and it moves away from the dvd forum monopoly and such shifts are generally healthy. Lack of region coding really is the only legitimate gripe I know of, and it's not a big deal for me or 99.99999999999999999999999999% of the world.
You do realize that HD-DVD players are also Japanese, right? No? You mean bigoted morons are ignorant? Shock. Frankly, Sony competes side by side against South Korean and American electronics. It just does its best, and has no monopolies. Microsoft does not compete fairly and has serious monopolies that it exploits. We're a global economy, and Sony is a lot better for us than MS is. You are free, moron, to buy stock in Sony.
And how are you beinf forced to buy a new blu-ray player? All blu-ray players play all blu-ray movies. Sure, you can't surf the internet or save clips on old ones. So what? This is a typical dishonest attack.
HD-DVD is definitely the lesser of two evil. Less fun, less successful, less content, less future, less value, less alive. It's over.
Are you insane? Warner moving over was a big deal, so why not maximize the news?
HD-DVD players are absurdly discounted, and the sales figures are cited with as much attention as the DVD forum can muster. But when blu-ray players do the same this is somehow wrong? Why?
Blu-ray won. Better business plan. They got the right partners, had their discounts at the right time, and the customer clearly prefers it. They masterfully communicated the truth: that the war is over.
Sure, NPD Microsoft, and others are pretending the war isn't over, but they don't want the war to even end. They want both standards to fail. THAT's UNETHICAL.
Blu-ray is playing fair, as far as I can tell. Certainly telling several media sources of some news that is totally accurate is not unethical.
first, it seems like there were extremely heavy handed tactics used by MS to, once again, damage a market and exploit it.
I don't think there is anything irrational in resisting Microsoft doing for the umpteenth time what they have done over and over before. They don't want HD-DVD to succeed, they want the consumers to be confused and screwed until their internet distro takes off.
And cheaper for early adopters is a piss poor reason to pick a standard. It's pretty obvious that both blu-ray and hd-dvd are plummeting in price, and in a few years there will probably be 50$ players for blu-ray.
If anything, I see a hell of a lot more irrational anti-Sony ferver in the HD-DVD camp than I see anti-MS fervor from the blu-ray folks. Blu-ray is a much better format. Uncompressed audio, larger discs, better DRM (which doesn't affect me at all but is better for studios).
What heavy handed tactics are you talking about, and are they really unique to one side? Or perhaps one side won because they were better.
At this point, if you prefer HD-DVD, it's because you're crazy. It's cheaper because it's being disposed of, at great losses. And Microsoft certainly has earned the negative reaction it gets. They can now get in line and start paying for blu-ray licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
If the extra features are important to you, yeah, you got screwed by blu-ray.
one other point, some blu-rays will let you download a movie-file to your portable device.
For the average consumer, this is enough.
And I view DRM is ok, because I don't mind the producers making tons of money. It's just a fundamental difference in opinion, I believe.
finalized referred to hd-dvd. That's why I say it doesn't matter that bluray isn't finalized.
I left out some points. nine out of ten people with schizophrenia admit to using pot.
the symptoms of schizophrenia mirror the temporary effects of marijuana.
I think this should be publicized widely, and it it's worth the risk to you, you can do what you want. I think people who use substances like this should be generally allowed to unless driving or under 18.
But anyone should be able to understand that Pot is not victimless, harmless, or whatnot. Sometimes the people that sell it sell other stuff (and I think selling meth or heroin should be a life-imprisonment offense because it is akin to murder).
If you are experiencing hallucinations, hear voices, are very paranoid, out of work, consider harming yourself, and you have used pot, you need to seek professional help and avoid pot and caffeine. Try cigarettes instead, they are proven to help make you feel a bit better.
Like I said, you agree with me generally that the war on drugs is more destructive than a lot of the stuff it's fighting.
You site a figure of drug arrests, but the example above was for someone who is in a wheelchair and weighs 80 pounds and no doubt has a medical reason to use pot and no other alternative. Don't you realize that you are making a dishonest rebuttal? We're talking about two different things! The gp said that Mitt was inhumanly unethical for not supporting pot for a very narrow class of people. That has nothing to do with recreational use or the huge arrest numbers.
So maybe you should work on your reading comprehension (which, no disrespect intended, is almost surely harmed by your overuse of marijuana). I only argued that there are many legitimate reasons to support the war on drugs, and pot has ruined many lives. I don't think it matters because pot mainly ruins the lives of idiots who overuse the drug.
There are many legitimate reasons for outlawing any substance. We can ban shoes from North Korea, even for recreational use. Fact is, laws are made by the elected. They are legitimate solely on that basis, and not on my or your personal views. I agree the War on Drugs needs to let pot users do their thing out of efficiency, but unlike you, I'm honest enough to admit that those who favor this effort do have some legitimate moral concerns to rely on. They, like Mitt, are not inhuman violators of human rights. They just disagree on a tough issue.
And yeah, it's fact, pot is linked to schizophrenia. Pot is a hallucinogen (this is widely misunderstood) and affect some people very negatively, though most people just harm themselves slightly. I like how you just rule this truth out by fiat, as though you were God or something.
Don't find it odd!
Iran isn't a legitimate state. They have no right to exist, own property, have a military, etc. Because they are a bigoted evil theocracy.
The USA and Israel aren't perfect, but they are basically democratic and are fundamentally more legitimate nations than most of the middle east.
Iran has repeatedly said it will commit genocide. If you visit Iran, you will hear daily chants "maag baag Israel" calling for the destruction of those people. And it's not because of palestine (though it wouldn't be ok if it were), it's because of racism. I know this personally. That also places them in a certain category.
Also, you're probably wrong about the university stat. Saddam killed a huge number of the men in Iran (Saddam killed more muslims than any other person in the history of the world), and that affected the numbers somewhat, but statistics out of Iran are always lies. Even if they say what the Iranians want them to, they will lie about it. So yeah, they report that 70% of students are women. It's not true though. Hell if anyone knows the real figures.
If your state is not a legitimate democracy, it has no right to exist. We can't destroy every such nation for obvious reasons, but we can fuck with them however we feel we need to. Why? Why not?
Again mods, go fuck yourself.
The above post is directly on-topic, discussing Mitt Romney's political positions in a thread about him, and comparing Mitt to other candidates. But it's voted offtopic.
Moderating is not about who you disagree with. You may feel some kind of glee at censoring speech you don't like, but America is getting sick of the liberal fascism. I'm a liberal and I'm getting very tired of it. It makes you look like a bunch of kids. I can only imagine how different the world would be if Bush had been protested by intelligent and civil and fair people, instead of a horde of psychopaths who think pot being illegal harms hundreds of millions of Americans. I can only imagine what would have happened with the abuses in guantanamo if the protestors didn't deny the truth about 9/11 and that Bush probably wasn't lying about WMDs so much as our intelligence services have sucked since the 50s.
If you're trying to irritate me, to some extent you're succeeding. I want real change and progress and care a lot about human rights, but my civil and fair attempts to discuss this stuff is totally overwhelmed by the idiots who think Republicans are evil, there is no reason to support a war on drugs, and every other issue must be exaggerated to the point of unbelievability.
Drugs are a problem. Real people out there have good reasons for supporting the war on drugs. You're going to have to try to reason with these people if you want their votes. Most voters, with the exception of the Ron Paul supporters who also are white supremacists, are good people, with good values.
Obviously you actually want Sony to fail very passionately. You should turn that passion to something worthwhile. there might be politicians on your town or drug dealers or something that deserve your hatred.
Nintendo is doing good things and making some money, but they could be doing a lot better and are not going to make the kind of money Sony makes, even with its screwups of late. The PS3 is situated to profit from large downloadable games, the Wii lacks a decent storage to do the same. The Ps3 will probably be renting movies, too. And the PS3 has won a (very conservatively) $15 billion format war. And all this time, Sony is making buckets of cash on the PS2 to offset a lot of the costs of the stumbling PS3.
Nintendo needs to learn: it's all about the games. It's offerings are few and not great, and the customers are proving it. In Japan, where the wii is outsold by the PS3, each wii attaches to 3 games (2 if you don't count wiisports). Pathetic. The PS2, which is making money long after the gamecube is dead, is a success that Sony deserves some credit for. They got arrogant, but they quickly regrouped and 2008 will see Home, Littlebigplanet, movies, DVRs, Skype, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy. Without any of those things, Sony is still the worldwide revenue leader, and the PS3 is outselling the wii in many areas.
So yeah, Nintendo has done well, but could do better, and your expectations of the Playstation's demise are absurd. The PS2 profit model, to start at a loss and sell a lot of games, is the best model this industry has ever seen. There aren't anymore developers for Sony to pick off of Nintendo's third party corpse.
Someone says I have dismissed the rights of hundreds of millions of people, and I'm the troll? How can someone troll when there are simply replying to a personal attack? And the fella who demagogues in the most ridiculous terms possible is insightful?
Moderator: go fuck yourself, please. You're what's wrong with this society where both political factions think the other is 100% inhuman.
You should use your moderator points to determine if comments are interesting, etc. Not to upvote crap you agree with in the most childish digg-style possible. By validating the parent poster's simplistic and stupid attacks, you're fueling the fire.
Mitt Romney isn't being attacked for his view on drugs: he's being attacked for being a republican. Everyone knows it. Hillary's view on the War on Drugs is identical. Obama actually talks about ramping up the War on Drugs. But they aren't republicans so they aren't subject to the same level of attack.
Romney is showing some awareness of technology that people like Bush "uses the google" fundamentally lack. It's refreshing. Idiot trolls crawl out of the woodwork to attack Romney's entire moral system for reasons utterly irrelevant, I call them on being single-issue-selfish.
I'm not even a republican, and I'm getting sick of this crap. Every election year I have to listen to trolls validate each other's existence while hating huge segments of society. For whatever reason (likely Bush's fumbling presidency), Slashdot leans left, so Romney's embracing of technology is seen as an invitation to attack.
Well mods, if you really want to, go ahead and moderate down every single thing I have ever said. Because I disagree with you. Call me a troll for issuing obvious and relatively polite self-defense. slashdot can be another digg.com.
If this thing lands in unfriendly lands, whatever's left will fetch a lot of money... or be subject to US airstrike.
Maybe it will 'accidentally' land on Iran's nuke facility! I wish our peeps were that smart.
Ha! Romney is legitimately successful in business. Lots of folks inhereit and cheat their way into success, but Romney has proven some skill in business and economics. I should note that I don't support the guy, but he's certainly the most accomplished business person of both major parties tickets.
And I don't understand the relevance of the war on drugs to anything discussed here. The wheelchair ambush kid was not asking Mitt to cancel the war on drugs, he was asking Mitt to permit the medical use of marijuana. And I don't think Hillary, Barack, Mccain, Rudy, or Huckabee would end the war on drugs either. It's a moot point.
and probably not a significant drain on the economy compared with social security, the war on terror, or katrina relief. No issue exists in a vacuum. This kid is not a reason to legalize pot for everyone's use, and doing so would probably be a major drain on the economy. Potheads are less productive in normal jobs, much more prone to schizophrenia with its attendant expenses, and etc etc. The war on drugs is wayyyyyy too aggressive in dealing with mere users of drugs who only harm themselves, but is that the issue being discussed Mr. Strawman?
You didn't answer my question: who is your candidate?
We are in a representative republic and do not vote on issues, but rather people.
300 million people are not affected by this. That's absurd. I say fewer than one thousand people really have a legit need for medical marijuana, at least to the severe degree the example needs it. I agree his rights are violated.
Also, 300 million people do not pay their share of taxes, or even near their share, so you can't say this kid's money is being stolen, when he probably pays no federal income tax. You're just trying to goad and troll, I guess. I'm very sympathetic to this kid, but your lack pf perspective is very high.
Pot does ruin lives. It makes people paranoid and stupid and is linked to paranoid schizophrenia. It should not be legalized. Those who have severe medical problems that a doctor says mandate smoking pot have a right that the rest of us 300 million people do not have.
You think this issue compares with the war on terror? Whether you are pro-war or anti, thousands of people's lives hang in the balance. Thousands were killed on 9/11, and Saddam killed millions of people, while our effort has probably killed over 100k people. That's somewhat more important, right? You claim I dismiss "basic human rights" with no idea what basic human rights are. I wish banned smoking pot was the biggest problem in human rights in this country. While the war on drugs is very wasteful and destructive, it doesn't register at all when compared with the destructive potential of the bankruptcy of social security. Then the elderly may go without food and restorative medicine. Millions of people will actually suffer, as opposed to hundreds at most (I imagine in many cases, Romney is right and other drugs can take pot's place).
You're extremely judgmental. And compared to you, I do have it easy because I understand that other people can disagree with me and not be morally inferior. You live in a simplistic jingoistic world and must hate the vast majority of Americans (who would ban a lot of drugs and repeatedly support candidates that do). I don't have to hate them, even if I disagree with them and wish doctors could prescribe pot.
Fair enough. I'm not a big Mitt fan, but he's a economic genius and an experienced leader. And fixing this economy and handling the war are much more important that medical marijuana, though I agree with a prescription there is no reason not to permit its use. One affects hundreds of millions of people, the other affects very few people (if you use this kid as your argument).
I don't think it's sensible to pick one issue and judge everyone who disagrees with you a monster. Of course, I also don't have that kid's disease so it's easy for me to feel this way. Still, single issue voters miss the boat these days. Who is your candidate that meets your standard? I can find something inhuman about them if I really wanna.
Yeah, I don't think you really need a computer that can run games that look as good as PS3 games to do any of the tasks you listed.
And certainly, 99.99999999999 percent of folks out there don't need such a PC. I would take your bet that far fewer than a third of slashdot readers have a computer that can push games as well as a PS3 or 360. With a console I can just shove a disc in and play, and frankly, I can use my PS3 to do a lot of the things you do with your PC, such as rip dvds, code, and office stuff. So your starwman bends both ways.
And I know of no console that is $500 minimum. Nor do I see any reason to have a hard drive larger than 90 gigs if you can stream content.
And that's not even the real contest: there is no way in hell your PC is a good a value as a $130 dollar PS2 and $200 of Greatest Hits games. Most people want good games, not superleet bullshit PC games that barely work at high quality. They want stuff that works, and the best games need a large userbase, so you kinda have to follow the crowd.
Consoles are also much healthier to play than PCs. Instead of sitting in the corner at a desk, I am in the living roo mwith my family. It's trivial to pick up another controller and jump in, and there are plenty of multiplayer games made for several folks on the console. You can pretend the same is possible on PC, but it's not anywhere near the same. I cannot share a PC game with my friends and family like I can a console game. I can't count on my 5 year old kid to be able to play the PC like I can count on her to be able to play wiisports, though she does have an old PC to tinker with.
in short, you simply get a lot more fun out of your dollar by getting a console. PC gaming has become absolutely dreadful, and the games themselves, such as WoW, prove that generally mentally stunted people with severe problems stick to their PCs.
At minimum, when someone informed a candidate that a highly offensive murderous ideology.... let's say Al Qaida or Ron Paul Nazis or Scientology, is contributing thousands, then no investigation is necessary. It's time to give the money back.
Your straw man is burning, since Ron Paul was repeatedly told about this. No one asked him to investigate.
And I love the attack that I'm empowering Nazis by condemning them and helping publicize the candidate they love. Nazi's know that if anyone finds out who they like, that candidate is going down. Millions of people have taken a second to remember there are neo-nazis like Ron Paul and laughed at them. We need to always be vigilant in remembering the kind of hate that Ron Paul and his Tim McVeigh followers love to preach. We need to keep pointing it out and attacking it. Forever. Read up on some John Mill if you don't get the point.
Since this revelation came out, Ron's support has crumbled to a third of what it was. I'm proud to do my totally tiny bit to keep that going. Ron Paul MUST be marginalized and destroyed as a political force. And he has been. Yay! And libertarianism is once again proven to be the province of fucking idiots. Sad because I am sympathetic to some of their goals, but I'm thrilled to se ethe truth come out about them. Clean up your act. I have EVERY RIGHT to be outraged that you idiots would follow a monster like Ron. Read the quotes I put up north of here. That's not ok. This is America, and we ain't perfect, but that crap needs to stop infecting this nation.
Actually, internet distribution is taking off marvelously. It's not competing with blu-ray of course, but it's still a pretty big deal. the ISPs in some areas aren't prepared for it, but I think it'll all turn out ok.
When people think that internet distro is a reason why blu-ray is irrelevant, yeah that's stupid. But there's a market for instantly watching movies at reduced quality.
I just think it's an ancillary market instead of the same one.
First, it's pathetic to attack someone anonymously.
Second, fanboy of what? blu-ray? It is the better option, clearly, and the format war is over, clearly. What exactly is irrational about that?
And you don't think NPD has an interest in prolonging this format war? Then you're a freaking idiot. Go google NPD and blu-ray, NPD and hd-dvd, and add them. Compare that to NPD and staplers, or NPD and PS3.
They are thriving on this war, getting virtually all their publicity from it. Don't be such a freaking tool.
There's no reason to be a fanboy of blu-ray. It's a done deal now. Blu-ray outsold hd-dvd 9:1 without even counting the PS3. Nobody really is comparing blu-ray to anything anymore. It's pointless to try to lift blu-ray up, because it's only competing with DVDs.
I see an absurd level of HD-DVD fanboys, many simply attacking people instead of trying to come up with some argument for supporting their defunct format. That's what you're doing. Loser.
makes perfect sense. NPD is in the headlines a lot lately, but only because this format war continues. They are obviously editorilizing. And they are doing so to keep their name out there as long as possible.
google NPD, and you'll see a hell of a lot more info about hd0dvd than you will about staplers. They love these battles, live to prolong them, etc etc.
I'm a bit surprised this isn't obvious to everyone.
There is a finalized spec, but it's silly to say that Blu-ray also doesn't have a finalized spec. For watching movies, it's finalized enough. They are adding newer stupid features. Totally ok.
Cheaper for sure, but so what? Eventually blu-ray will be MUCH cheaper (I'm willing to bet money on it). And the audio codec are mandatory because HD-DVD is inferior. Period. They cannot fit uncompressed audio and must use compression, so of course there's a mandatory codec. You say space is wasted on uncompressed as though it's impossible to hear the difference. It's not, studies have proven it, I can tell, and why not have absolutely perfect audio? Audio is blu-ray's best feature.
Not sure what your point for combo discs means. I don't need combo discs for blu-ray devices because obviously blu-ray will be in every $50 drive in five years. You can't get a combo disc for most movies, since most studios aren't on HD-DVD. Just a lame point.
I can see sticking with DVD. It's certainly good enough for enjoying films. you can't beat the slection. But you insist you're sticking with HD-DVD, and I don't really know how that's possible. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that Toshiba is liquidating, the studios are leaving, and there's not going to be a bundh of players or movies to stick to. It's like my asserting I will stick to Betamax until VHS is far more compelling. WTF deos that even mean? That I won't be watching any movies? Stick away, pal. The market is choosing blu-ray 9:1 over hd-dvd without even counting PS3s, so I think you're going to change your mind.
We agree that optical is much more limited to media playback. Particularly high quality with great DRM. The HD-DVD's failure in DRM is a big reason why they lost. If you are so opposed to DRM, then you need to give up on optical movies. Perhaps that's a shame, I don't know, but it's the truth.
It's inflated diction. Just like the term "inflated diction."
It's 100% understandable English, but annoying inelegant.
Oh, Scientology has definitely ruined more lives than the fucking RIAA. Jeez. Are you serious? Google Lisa Mcpherson. Eaten by roaches. Has the RIAA done that to anyone?
COS completely wipes people out. Kills. Ruins. RIAA sues people for a few grand, and those people usually broke laws that you may not agree with but our democratic system did create. RIAA also does unethical spying, etc, but as bad as that is, it's not as bad as murder or being libeled as a child molestor.
I have a test for you: go protest the RIAA. Go hold up a sign in front of one of their office saying "Please research the behavior of this organization". I think you will walk away with no serious damage to your life. Now do it to Scientology. If the prospect doesn't scare you, you don't know who you're dealing with. This is also a valid test for comparing CoS with Christianity and other religions. I can protest the Methodists and not worry about being killed or libeled.
Have some perspective please. The RIAA indeed sucks ass, but they aren't truly evil, they are just greedy and stupid.
How does it help you that HD-DVD has less DRM? What do you get out of that? Something tells me that you are precisely the reason blu-ray is winning. There really is very little reason to backup these discs until hard drive capacity is much larger. The discs are very durable and they are very large, so backup is far less likely to be your reason. Preventing piracy is a very good thing. Blu-ray has features letting you share content with other devices, etc. Pretty realistic and consumer friendly, while fucking pirates in the ass (like Sony did to lik-sang).
Now MS is not involved in HD-DVD, but has been paying tens of millions to harm blu-ray. Why? because they want both standards to fail, and realize HD-DVD lost ages ago. It's exploiting it's monopoly to interfere in an unrelated market. It's not uninformed to resist that. It would be idiotic to buy an HD-DVD player at this point.
Also, you criticize Sony for selling blu-ray players in PS3s. For selling their own product. What the hell is wrong with you? This is utterly benign conduct.
Anyway, Sony is a pretty fair competitor. They've ruled video games, pretty much still do in terms of revenue, and Nintendo and MS are thriving anyway. They have been perfectly friendly working with Toshiba and Samsung, their major competitors. They aren't zealous, they respond to poor sales by creating better products. Microsoft dominated Browsers and destoryed netscape, dominated office aps and destroyed many competitiors, same for operating systems. They force sales on customers in a way Sony just doesn't. Obviously there is no comparison.
Do you want Microsoft to dominate your living room, for the xbox to be the only viable platform for games, for MS's movie downloads to succeed? We all know this would be very bad for consumers, resulting in lower quality and higher prices and horrible DRM (bad DRM = less usable, not less pirate-able). MS is a real threat, and blu-ray and the PS3 is the only real competitor.
That's why MS is pouring so much money into this format war. You see the fact that MS isn't really invested in HD-DVD, and think that is a plus for them? It's a huge minus.
oh, and one last point: blu-ray is better. It sounds better, it holds more data, has more movies, and it moves away from the dvd forum monopoly and such shifts are generally healthy. Lack of region coding really is the only legitimate gripe I know of, and it's not a big deal for me or 99.99999999999999999999999999% of the world.
OK, at least you're honest.
You do realize that HD-DVD players are also Japanese, right? No? You mean bigoted morons are ignorant? Shock. Frankly, Sony competes side by side against South Korean and American electronics. It just does its best, and has no monopolies. Microsoft does not compete fairly and has serious monopolies that it exploits. We're a global economy, and Sony is a lot better for us than MS is. You are free, moron, to buy stock in Sony.
And how are you beinf forced to buy a new blu-ray player? All blu-ray players play all blu-ray movies. Sure, you can't surf the internet or save clips on old ones. So what? This is a typical dishonest attack.
HD-DVD is definitely the lesser of two evil. Less fun, less successful, less content, less future, less value, less alive. It's over.
How in the world is this unethical?
Are you insane? Warner moving over was a big deal, so why not maximize the news?
HD-DVD players are absurdly discounted, and the sales figures are cited with as much attention as the DVD forum can muster. But when blu-ray players do the same this is somehow wrong? Why?
Blu-ray won. Better business plan. They got the right partners, had their discounts at the right time, and the customer clearly prefers it. They masterfully communicated the truth: that the war is over.
Sure, NPD Microsoft, and others are pretending the war isn't over, but they don't want the war to even end. They want both standards to fail. THAT's UNETHICAL.
Blu-ray is playing fair, as far as I can tell. Certainly telling several media sources of some news that is totally accurate is not unethical.
NPD realizes they are irrelevant now, and no one is going to want to pay attention to them now that the format war has obviously ended.
They, like MS, have ulterior motives to having this wasteful format war continue. They are now a disgrace.
first, it seems like there were extremely heavy handed tactics used by MS to, once again, damage a market and exploit it.
I don't think there is anything irrational in resisting Microsoft doing for the umpteenth time what they have done over and over before. They don't want HD-DVD to succeed, they want the consumers to be confused and screwed until their internet distro takes off.
And cheaper for early adopters is a piss poor reason to pick a standard. It's pretty obvious that both blu-ray and hd-dvd are plummeting in price, and in a few years there will probably be 50$ players for blu-ray.
If anything, I see a hell of a lot more irrational anti-Sony ferver in the HD-DVD camp than I see anti-MS fervor from the blu-ray folks. Blu-ray is a much better format. Uncompressed audio, larger discs, better DRM (which doesn't affect me at all but is better for studios).
What heavy handed tactics are you talking about, and are they really unique to one side? Or perhaps one side won because they were better.
At this point, if you prefer HD-DVD, it's because you're crazy. It's cheaper because it's being disposed of, at great losses. And Microsoft certainly has earned the negative reaction it gets. They can now get in line and start paying for blu-ray licenses.