It's probably more that the watch is 20 years old and cheap as dirt -- I assume it's simple to find in any and every part of the world. It's probably also got a good strong current going to its alarm, and probably it's easy to access that alarm.
You do realize that when people say "I love America" they mean less "I love the part of the planet, right here, from this place to that" and more "I love the noble beliefs and ideals upon which this nation that I am a part of is based", right?
We've made missteps aplenty, but don't be so quick to join the popular kids by hating on America. There's some pretty damned good shit that America stands for, and is based on. Go ahead and point out how that wonderful idealism has been muddied and corrupted into the same old shit you see anywhere else, and I'll agree with you, but that hardly makes "I love America" a.. misplaced.. thing to say.
Holy fuck, settle down. Get the stick out of your ass.
It's not that god is an offensive label, it's simply that it's a misleading label. There's nothing godly about the higgs-boson. Calling it the god particle is really little different than calling coffee the god drink. Yeah, not a whole lot of justification for it, is there? Go crawl back under your rock. You don't even understand why it was mislabeled the god particle in the first place, nor why the label is misleading, not even what any of this even means. You just heard someone say something less than positive about something labeled "god" and got fucking self-righteously offended. Fucking pathetic.
I'm going to start calling my car the God Vehicle, AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE NAUGHT BUT A GODLESS WRETCH AND I WILL SMITE YOU WITH MY HOLY CONVEYANCE.
The fact that you think the iPad has plenty of room for a keyboard just really proves how far divorced from reality you are.
If your hands fit into gloves sized "small", you can fit your hands on an iPad keyboard.
My fingers fill the size of a key on a standard, full-sized keyboard. Insert dig about fat Americans, except I'm not, least of all my hands. That whole "don't need to hit the key!" bullshit you're touting as a feature? All that means is that I hit 3 fucking keys when I'm just trying to type a single letter, because there's not an actual keyboard, because as far as the virtual keyboard is concerned I DID hit all 3 of those fucking letters -- all because I happen to have hands larger than those deemed appropriate to the form factor of the iPad. I believe I mentioned I have difficulty with netbook keyboards as well? Fucking chiclet keys -- they suffer the same cramming, low-mobility issues.
These are not keyboards designed with function in mind. These are keyboards designed to fit a form factor first, with their usability taking a back seat. There's nothing wrong with that, until Apple apologists such as yourself step forward and tout their virtue and dismiss any contrary word as heretical -- for YOU HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE, AND IT IT STEVE! I heard the same tired arguments bandied about over the iMac's hockey-puck mouse. Please, tell me how great of an idea that was again!
Autocomplete.. is the sort of garbage I would immediately turn off -- it's not a feature-as-in-bonus, it's a feature-as-in-fixing. Autocomplete is there not to help type shit faster, but because it's difficult to type in the first place. Autocomplete increases the difficulty and time spent typing anything for anyone who makes prodigious use of superfluous vocabulary.
You call me a luddite for calling a tool precisely what it is and nothing more, you think I the fool, yet here you are trying to drive nails with a screwdriver and claiming it's the future. There's plenty of use for the iPad and other such devices. They are not panacea for all our daily woes. They are not replacement for traditional keyboards. Come back and say the same things when the screens are able to deform in such a way that you need not look at your hands to ensure proper placement, maybe then you'll have a point -- that tech is under development, and it'll probably be a good solid decade or two before it's a marketable product. Or maybe a new keyboard layout more conductive to use with a single hand could even work -- since the device itself is prone to shifting if it is, let's say, sitting in your lap. If it's on a flat surface it is at an awkward angle to read as you're typing unless you hunch over it. If you could hold with one hand while typing with the other, now THAT would be an advancement that you could perhaps justifiably croon over.
But currently? Seriously? All they did was shoehorn a keyboard onto their device not because the method in which the keyboard is implemented is an advancement, but because a keyboard is necessary. The design, layout, and use of the modern keyboard is not well-compatible with modern touchscreen technology. There is a tremendous amount of room for improvement and advancement.. though it seems you're perfectly satisfied with what you have right now. Huh. I guess YOU'RE the Luddite!
Did you look at the article earlier about the LHC? When I read it, nearly all the replies were "zzz another non-accomplishment, this is just a giant toy for these scientist geeks! all they're producing is random noise, they should never have built this thing, there's no purpose!"
seriously.
compared to that, i for one welcome our lame meme repeating commentersFUCKIJUSTDIDIT
Good thing school doesn't involve a lot of typing up papers and reports, then.
Of particular importance is exactly what you consider "pretty fast". I know people who have iPads, and who have advised against buying them if your desire is to do anything but passively absorb information from the device, specifically because the keyboard is such utter garbage. This echos my own personal experience with all touch-screen keyboards -- I would consider myself a fairly accomplished typist, normally being able to bang out 60wpm without much difficulty whatsoever (and in my heyday, 90wpm was no big deal).
There's a link for you. Two things to note: firstly, that holy shit, people actually can type >60wpm on a netbook keyboard, and secondly that those same spectacular people are barely able to break 40wpm on an iPad's virtual keyboard. Now, being a manly man of excessive manlitude, I've got a large pair of paws that will simply never be able to properly use a netbook keyboard (I'm about 4" across at the knuckles) -- I think I'd have to consider myself fortunate if I were ever able to break 30wpm on an iPad keyboard, and even that would need to be done by a furtive hunt-and-peck method.
tldr; the younger generation has absolutely not learned to use touch screen keyboards at full speed, unless your definition of full speed is the fastest speed at which the younger generation is capable with the caveat that that speed is but a fraction of the maximum typing speed capable on a traditional keyboard.
This is a video from MacLife. A few things of note. This girl is a pretty amazing typist. She also has pretty small hands. She also states at the end that mashing on the iPad, even for such a short period of time, was uncomfortable. That's the little secret nobody likes to mention. When you're using a real keyboard, the full force of your fingerstrokes is never actually transmitted to your fingertips due to the motion of the keys themselves. Energy is lost depressing the keys over the distance the key travels, and after a bit of use you actually become aware of the distance you need to press the key from "unpressed" to "fully pressed" and will not mash as hard near the bottom of the keystroke -- this was a bad habit that previous generations had to overcome on their traditional typewriters, in fact, because it's simply natural to human nature! Oh, and of course there's the energy-absorption of the keyboard itself at the bottom of the keystroke. It's not a hard surface at the bottom, there's quite a bit of give. iPad keyboard? No such thing. Every keystroke strikes a flat, hard surface with full force. That full force quickly works to numb your fingertips. Unless of course, you are merely hunt-and-pecking at a blazing 25wpm. You can probably avoid that issue if you're just dicking around.
But hey, like I said, good thing school doesn't involve writing papers and reports!
so your post is fine, except that bit about the tea party. eh, really? REALLY? no. they're not a modern nazi party, rofl. the media's tried very very hard to pin racist sentiment on them, and if you dig hard enough you will find a racist, somewhere, *anywhere*, but by and by large the tea party is not racist nor do they condone or tolerate racism.
if you want to see racism in modern america, bald-faced and bold public racism.. go to pro-immigration rallies. i'm not lying, and i wish i was; they have a thousand valid ways to make their points yet tend more towards hatred of white america as their justification for massive illegal immigration. it's awful.
It wasn't a stupid statement, it was a poorly worded statement.
Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So are swastikas, and pretty much anything related to the nazis outside of "bad things, very bad things, happened in the early half of the 20th century". I'm exaggerating but this is fucking slashdot and only a mindless pedant would misinterpret me as badly as you have.
The fact is Germany *does* censor their internet, and the content they remove *is* related to that party that was pretty big a few generations back. In other words, what I said is accurate, just not very precise -- I didn't expect, but should have I suppose, that some asshole would come by and think I was making claims that are so obviously not fucking true that even an idiot would understand that that wasn't what I was saying. Censorship is not denialism, censorship is simply not allowing certain things to be said or seen; Germany engages in censorship, regardless of whether or not the things they censor are things that any decent person would think shouldn't be said or heard. That doesn't make it magically become not-censorship.
Unfortunately I think real world politics work more like a school playground than you think.
Some of the people Saddam wanted to intimidate with the unknown-unknown of his WMD capabilities were people who lived within his borders, anyway.
Besides.. you said it yourself. He would have had to put up or shut up. That.. that's playground politics, man. That's exactly what happened, in fact. He couldn't put up, so he shut up (read: was deposed and killed, since when you expand the playground the stakes get a little higher).
There's an article from MSNBC. It pretty much says anything that needs to be said. He had nuclear ambitions, and absent intervention (read: bombs.) from more sane nations, would have eventually had himself a nice atomic bomb. It's honestly not that hard to build one, you know. To build a GOOD one? That.. now that is tricky.. but to just make a bomb that will go kaboom with nuclear force, hell, that's easier than refining the uranium!
As for his other WMDs, he did have them. We know how much he had at one time, and we know how much he dropped on the Kurds, and we know how much he surrendered, and the latter two did not add up to the initial amount. Now, yes, by the time we invaded it was pretty much safe to say that the lost amount had just gone bad, had fallen apart, were no longer viable.. but as I said, Saddam wanted people to suspect he still had them. His game was bravado. He was counting on the fact that we, and the rest of the civilized world, were loathe to invade and depose him over something that we knew he had but also knew he no longer had -- regardless of how much he acted as if he still had viable stock, he did not believe anyone would invade without hard proof. And, of course, there would never be hard proof. He bet wrong, because we elected a reckless cowboy president. And whatever else you can say about Gee-dub, Iraq is a better place now than it was under Saddam, as is the entire Middle East. There's a lot else you can say about Gee-dub, but his actions however misguided DID make at least PART of the world a better place. That might be a bitter pill to swallow but that's life.
Or maybe you're just projecting a whole bunch of bullshit to make yourself feel superior, when in fact you're too fucking dim to realize that the game is just RED FUCKING DAWN AS A VIDEO GAME.
That's it, period. It's Red Dawn, but a video game, because someone saw Red Dawn and thought "boy that'd make a pretty rad game".
Get off your high fucking horse and go find an ounce of cultural knowledge, kid.
My first play-through I was a little upset by the whole Overseer situation before I left the vault.
See, I saw him, and the security guard, and I saw that they were about to physically harm his daughter. I ran in with my baseball bat to stop the violence... I was forced to kill the guard. I didn't WANT to, but he just wouldn't stop. All I wanted to do was hit him in the leg hard enough that he would fall, shout at them to stop and find out what was going on. Sadly it's just a game, I didn't have the option to shout at his stupid face that he needed to stop, that I didn't want to kill him, that I just wanted him to not harm anyone and was willing but reluctant to use force to that end.
And, of course, the bitch was all upset that I had to kill someone. Well, me too, ya ditz, but HE WAS ABOUT TO BEAT YOU. Give me a break.
It really bothered me there was no "punch, then intimidate" option, ever. You either play it nicey-nicey (and often let people walk all over you..), or you just outright slaughter everyone. I don't know if it's just me that's odd, or the game, but I'm personally a sleeping lion and was quite upset I couldn't play the game that way.
I mean, for the love of god you'd think people would show a little respect for the guy holding a nuclear rocket launcher without him having to use it!
Saddam ACTED as if he were hiding things of the nuclear-bomb-development variety. This, too, is a fact.
Saddam WANTED THE WORLD TO SUSPECT HE WAS DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. This is also a fact.
It was just the same with all other sorts of WMDs -- whether or not there were any, Saddam's intention was always to imply that he was hiding them, but never to give any proof that he had any. Proof would have meant the whole world coming down on his head, but through his intentional deceptions he could sow doubt.
Why would he do this you ask? Simple. He wanted to swing a bigger set of balls around. When he spoke, he wanted to speak as if he had horrible weapons at his disposal that nobody knew about. That is power. He lacked the ability to overtly demonstrate or even develop that power, but he DID have the ability to make his enemies unsure of whether he actually had that power or not.
Of course, we all know how that turned out. Gee-dub called his bluff, and now he's dead. And Iraq, and the Middle East, is a better place for it.
If my housing and food are provided for, I'm telling you right now.
I'll never do anything productive, as I have no need to do so.
I'm not just saying that as a big scary threat. I'm telling you -- I know myself. This is a fact. If I know that I'll be able to live in a warm house and have food on my table, without ever doing anything to earn it, I will never do anything to earn it.
No it won't, because there is no relationship at any point to be found here. It's all fake. It TELLS YOU it's fake. This is just sad, and has no redeeming points or up sides. Just sad.
honestly the cost of disposing of that museum piece is probably greater than its value, tell your mom she probably wound up stealing from the company by throwing it in their dumpster. might make her feel better.
but salvaging the floppy drive might be worth the while. probably not. god, what's gonna happen (NUMBER) years from now when CD/DVD compatible drives are as hard to find as 3.5"ers O_o
I can only assume because at some point during its development, some big wig manager in love with power point wandered through the office and said "MPEG-2? BUT I ONLY WANT ONE IN THERE! GET RID OF THAT EXTRA ONE!"
... you completely missed the point and went straight to the personal attack. Nice.
Science, the military, industry, technology.. they're all simply tools.
When you hyphenate and append "complex" to them, the meaning is that instead of us using the tools, we are being used by the tools.
This is a problem because, as tools, they have no real ends. It's simply a cycle of failure spinning down the drain in every case. The tools need to be guided by a hand, not the hand by the tool.
Personally, I think you were just afraid of a little reading and would rather just toss out pithy insults. Whatever, fuckerface, I can do that too. No matter to me.
Wait a minute, I'm pretty sure there's been a lot more pure evil in the past 100 years coming out of Europe, Asia, and Africa than America. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, christ, do I need to go on? Compared to all that, AMERICA is the bad guy? So.. how about we kill like 25 million people today, does that mean we get a pass in your book for it 10 years from now? No? Hmm.
actually, the "scientific-technological elite" uhh kinda. they're here man.
it's called global warming.
no, i am not disagreeing that carbon dioxide levels affect blah blah so on and so forth. that does happen, that is happening, the rate at which it's been happening is fairly clear. the rate at which it'll continue from here.... wweeeeeeelllllllllll not so clear. i'll catch hell for that i'm sure, but fuck it. only a fool would put their faith in predictions of the future when past predictions of the future have never panned out. i'm not saying they're wrong, but the wise position is that they are less right than their makers purport.
on to the scitech elite.
global warming's being used as a big scary boogeyman to push all KINDS of shit at us. Green cars! Green energy! Green gas! Green.. wait. Ethanol from corn is actually a NET DRAIN of resources over simply not using it. Electric cars, after factoring in battery production and expected life, really aren't any more ecologically friendly than a high efficiency IC car. Solar panels still cost a ton to produce and only last a very few decades before they're trash.
What we have here is a group of scientists saying "Here's a problem!" and a group of technicians with products saying "Here's a solution!" and the politicians and media simply latch onto these two handles and hold on for dear life, hoping the rest of us don't catch on that they're really not actually related -- cause, hey, look all these important people who are ostensibly better than you and acting out of pure altruistic intent for all humanity, they SAY so!
There's the problem he was warning us about -- when we make any group of people into paragons of good, shit goes bad. A military-industrial complex can distort and warp shit into nasty things, and this is done because gosh, everybody likes the military, right? They protect us? And industry... they.. MAKE things. Literally make them! That's good for everyone. And suddenly, any questioning of anything from them is bad. Well, seems to me we're in a mighty similar boat right now, but we've learned to distrust -- not hate, but not acquiesce without questioning! -- the military-industrial complex, so we've moved on to the next big thing. scientific-technological complex.
While there are cases in which tasers are used inappropriately -- and I fully support any investigation into those incidents -- those are cases in which any level of force is not justified. The simple use of the taser is the problem in that situation, not the performance of the taser.. even if the taser is used on someone with a pacemaker and they die, that would not be because the taser is bad, that would be because the taser was misused.
When you're talking about the justified uses of tasers, well, who the fuck expects them to NEVER, EVER, EVER DO ANYTHING BAD EVER? An idiot, that's who.
Here's the thing -- tasers are safer than the alternative. The alternative is, if you're lucky, getting physically beaten to submission. Or shot. Those are the cases where tasers are supposed to be used, that is what they're designed for. It's not a cattle prod, to get people to just do what you want, it's a tool so that when the occasion arises that police are facing a threat that doesn't require lethal force but DOES require SOME degree of force, they can deploy a taser and decrease the risk both to themselves AND to the suspect.
A taser is not a phaser. You can't set it to stun and knock someone out for a plot-convenient length of time after which they come to, rub their head and squint and then carry on as if nothing happened. If that existed, that'd be in use, but that's make-believe.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong. What do YOU suggest is used in lieu of a taser when people start fighting with cops? I'd REALLY love to hear this. I mean, hey, if tasers are so terrible, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER!
protip: sheer physical restraint is much more dangerous to *all* involved, not just the cops.
Tasers are safe. They are not 100% won't-ever-kill-anyone safe, but absolutely nothing at all is 100% won't-ever-kill-anyone safe. GW Bush, if you recall laughing at it, was nearly killed by a pretzel. We must cease production of these allegedly delicious snacks AT ALL COSTS! Wait, no? You disagree? YOUR LOGIC IS, THEN, INCONSISTENT AND HENCE INCONSEQUENTIAL. so tired of this boring and ill-thought-out argument.
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably more that the watch is 20 years old and cheap as dirt -- I assume it's simple to find in any and every part of the world. It's probably also got a good strong current going to its alarm, and probably it's easy to access that alarm.
You do realize that when people say "I love America" they mean less "I love the part of the planet, right here, from this place to that" and more "I love the noble beliefs and ideals upon which this nation that I am a part of is based", right?
We've made missteps aplenty, but don't be so quick to join the popular kids by hating on America. There's some pretty damned good shit that America stands for, and is based on. Go ahead and point out how that wonderful idealism has been muddied and corrupted into the same old shit you see anywhere else, and I'll agree with you, but that hardly makes "I love America" a.. misplaced.. thing to say.
Holy fuck, settle down. Get the stick out of your ass.
It's not that god is an offensive label, it's simply that it's a misleading label. There's nothing godly about the higgs-boson. Calling it the god particle is really little different than calling coffee the god drink. Yeah, not a whole lot of justification for it, is there? Go crawl back under your rock. You don't even understand why it was mislabeled the god particle in the first place, nor why the label is misleading, not even what any of this even means. You just heard someone say something less than positive about something labeled "god" and got fucking self-righteously offended. Fucking pathetic.
I'm going to start calling my car the God Vehicle, AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE NAUGHT BUT A GODLESS WRETCH AND I WILL SMITE YOU WITH MY HOLY CONVEYANCE.
Please. Get the fuck out.
The fact that you think the iPad has plenty of room for a keyboard just really proves how far divorced from reality you are.
If your hands fit into gloves sized "small", you can fit your hands on an iPad keyboard.
My fingers fill the size of a key on a standard, full-sized keyboard. Insert dig about fat Americans, except I'm not, least of all my hands. That whole "don't need to hit the key!" bullshit you're touting as a feature? All that means is that I hit 3 fucking keys when I'm just trying to type a single letter, because there's not an actual keyboard, because as far as the virtual keyboard is concerned I DID hit all 3 of those fucking letters -- all because I happen to have hands larger than those deemed appropriate to the form factor of the iPad. I believe I mentioned I have difficulty with netbook keyboards as well? Fucking chiclet keys -- they suffer the same cramming, low-mobility issues.
These are not keyboards designed with function in mind. These are keyboards designed to fit a form factor first, with their usability taking a back seat.
There's nothing wrong with that, until Apple apologists such as yourself step forward and tout their virtue and dismiss any contrary word as heretical -- for YOU HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE, AND IT IT STEVE!
I heard the same tired arguments bandied about over the iMac's hockey-puck mouse. Please, tell me how great of an idea that was again!
Autocomplete.. is the sort of garbage I would immediately turn off -- it's not a feature-as-in-bonus, it's a feature-as-in-fixing. Autocomplete is there not to help type shit faster, but because it's difficult to type in the first place. Autocomplete increases the difficulty and time spent typing anything for anyone who makes prodigious use of superfluous vocabulary.
You call me a luddite for calling a tool precisely what it is and nothing more, you think I the fool, yet here you are trying to drive nails with a screwdriver and claiming it's the future.
There's plenty of use for the iPad and other such devices. They are not panacea for all our daily woes. They are not replacement for traditional keyboards.
Come back and say the same things when the screens are able to deform in such a way that you need not look at your hands to ensure proper placement, maybe then you'll have a point -- that tech is under development, and it'll probably be a good solid decade or two before it's a marketable product.
Or maybe a new keyboard layout more conductive to use with a single hand could even work -- since the device itself is prone to shifting if it is, let's say, sitting in your lap. If it's on a flat surface it is at an awkward angle to read as you're typing unless you hunch over it. If you could hold with one hand while typing with the other, now THAT would be an advancement that you could perhaps justifiably croon over.
But currently? Seriously? All they did was shoehorn a keyboard onto their device not because the method in which the keyboard is implemented is an advancement, but because a keyboard is necessary. The design, layout, and use of the modern keyboard is not well-compatible with modern touchscreen technology. There is a tremendous amount of room for improvement and advancement.. though it seems you're perfectly satisfied with what you have right now. Huh. I guess YOU'RE the Luddite!
Zing, Steve-o, zing.
Slashdot is a shit heap these days.
Did you look at the article earlier about the LHC? When I read it, nearly all the replies were "zzz another non-accomplishment, this is just a giant toy for these scientist geeks! all they're producing is random noise, they should never have built this thing, there's no purpose!"
seriously.
compared to that, i for one welcome our lame meme repeating commentersFUCKIJUSTDIDIT
Good thing school doesn't involve a lot of typing up papers and reports, then.
Of particular importance is exactly what you consider "pretty fast". I know people who have iPads, and who have advised against buying them if your desire is to do anything but passively absorb information from the device, specifically because the keyboard is such utter garbage. This echos my own personal experience with all touch-screen keyboards -- I would consider myself a fairly accomplished typist, normally being able to bang out 60wpm without much difficulty whatsoever (and in my heyday, 90wpm was no big deal).
http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/122/ipadtyping.asp
There's a link for you. Two things to note: firstly, that holy shit, people actually can type >60wpm on a netbook keyboard, and secondly that those same spectacular people are barely able to break 40wpm on an iPad's virtual keyboard. Now, being a manly man of excessive manlitude, I've got a large pair of paws that will simply never be able to properly use a netbook keyboard (I'm about 4" across at the knuckles) -- I think I'd have to consider myself fortunate if I were ever able to break 30wpm on an iPad keyboard, and even that would need to be done by a furtive hunt-and-peck method.
tldr; the younger generation has absolutely not learned to use touch screen keyboards at full speed, unless your definition of full speed is the fastest speed at which the younger generation is capable with the caveat that that speed is but a fraction of the maximum typing speed capable on a traditional keyboard.
Here's another link for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZW900ITmbo&feature=related
This is a video from MacLife. A few things of note.
This girl is a pretty amazing typist.
She also has pretty small hands.
She also states at the end that mashing on the iPad, even for such a short period of time, was uncomfortable. That's the little secret nobody likes to mention. When you're using a real keyboard, the full force of your fingerstrokes is never actually transmitted to your fingertips due to the motion of the keys themselves. Energy is lost depressing the keys over the distance the key travels, and after a bit of use you actually become aware of the distance you need to press the key from "unpressed" to "fully pressed" and will not mash as hard near the bottom of the keystroke -- this was a bad habit that previous generations had to overcome on their traditional typewriters, in fact, because it's simply natural to human nature!
Oh, and of course there's the energy-absorption of the keyboard itself at the bottom of the keystroke. It's not a hard surface at the bottom, there's quite a bit of give.
iPad keyboard? No such thing. Every keystroke strikes a flat, hard surface with full force. That full force quickly works to numb your fingertips. Unless of course, you are merely hunt-and-pecking at a blazing 25wpm. You can probably avoid that issue if you're just dicking around.
But hey, like I said, good thing school doesn't involve writing papers and reports!
(ps, i see you astroturfin', i rantin'.)
egghh.
so your post is fine, except that bit about the tea party. eh, really? REALLY? no. they're not a modern nazi party, rofl. the media's tried very very hard to pin racist sentiment on them, and if you dig hard enough you will find a racist, somewhere, *anywhere*, but by and by large the tea party is not racist nor do they condone or tolerate racism.
if you want to see racism in modern america, bald-faced and bold public racism.. go to pro-immigration rallies. i'm not lying, and i wish i was; they have a thousand valid ways to make their points yet tend more towards hatred of white america as their justification for massive illegal immigration. it's awful.
It wasn't a stupid statement, it was a poorly worded statement.
Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So are swastikas, and pretty much anything related to the nazis outside of "bad things, very bad things, happened in the early half of the 20th century". I'm exaggerating but this is fucking slashdot and only a mindless pedant would misinterpret me as badly as you have.
The fact is Germany *does* censor their internet, and the content they remove *is* related to that party that was pretty big a few generations back. In other words, what I said is accurate, just not very precise -- I didn't expect, but should have I suppose, that some asshole would come by and think I was making claims that are so obviously not fucking true that even an idiot would understand that that wasn't what I was saying. Censorship is not denialism, censorship is simply not allowing certain things to be said or seen; Germany engages in censorship, regardless of whether or not the things they censor are things that any decent person would think shouldn't be said or heard. That doesn't make it magically become not-censorship.
I'm pretty sure Germany filters out anything mentioning that party that was real big in Germany a few generations back..
Unfortunately I think real world politics work more like a school playground than you think.
Some of the people Saddam wanted to intimidate with the unknown-unknown of his WMD capabilities were people who lived within his borders, anyway.
Besides.. you said it yourself. He would have had to put up or shut up. That.. that's playground politics, man. That's exactly what happened, in fact. He couldn't put up, so he shut up (read: was deposed and killed, since when you expand the playground the stakes get a little higher).
Probably better, assuming your neighbor still numbers among the living.
Saddam did actually have a nuclear program, though.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/
There's an article from MSNBC. It pretty much says anything that needs to be said. He had nuclear ambitions, and absent intervention (read: bombs.) from more sane nations, would have eventually had himself a nice atomic bomb.
It's honestly not that hard to build one, you know. To build a GOOD one? That.. now that is tricky.. but to just make a bomb that will go kaboom with nuclear force, hell, that's easier than refining the uranium!
As for his other WMDs, he did have them. We know how much he had at one time, and we know how much he dropped on the Kurds, and we know how much he surrendered, and the latter two did not add up to the initial amount. Now, yes, by the time we invaded it was pretty much safe to say that the lost amount had just gone bad, had fallen apart, were no longer viable.. but as I said, Saddam wanted people to suspect he still had them. His game was bravado. He was counting on the fact that we, and the rest of the civilized world, were loathe to invade and depose him over something that we knew he had but also knew he no longer had -- regardless of how much he acted as if he still had viable stock, he did not believe anyone would invade without hard proof. And, of course, there would never be hard proof. He bet wrong, because we elected a reckless cowboy president. And whatever else you can say about Gee-dub, Iraq is a better place now than it was under Saddam, as is the entire Middle East. There's a lot else you can say about Gee-dub, but his actions however misguided DID make at least PART of the world a better place. That might be a bitter pill to swallow but that's life.
One of my favorite sayings of all time pops to mind.
If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!
Or maybe you're just projecting a whole bunch of bullshit to make yourself feel superior, when in fact you're too fucking dim to realize that the game is just RED FUCKING DAWN AS A VIDEO GAME.
That's it, period. It's Red Dawn, but a video game, because someone saw Red Dawn and thought "boy that'd make a pretty rad game".
Get off your high fucking horse and go find an ounce of cultural knowledge, kid.
My first play-through I was a little upset by the whole Overseer situation before I left the vault.
See, I saw him, and the security guard, and I saw that they were about to physically harm his daughter. I ran in with my baseball bat to stop the violence... I was forced to kill the guard. I didn't WANT to, but he just wouldn't stop.
All I wanted to do was hit him in the leg hard enough that he would fall, shout at them to stop and find out what was going on. Sadly it's just a game, I didn't have the option to shout at his stupid face that he needed to stop, that I didn't want to kill him, that I just wanted him to not harm anyone and was willing but reluctant to use force to that end.
And, of course, the bitch was all upset that I had to kill someone. Well, me too, ya ditz, but HE WAS ABOUT TO BEAT YOU. Give me a break.
It really bothered me there was no "punch, then intimidate" option, ever. You either play it nicey-nicey (and often let people walk all over you..), or you just outright slaughter everyone. I don't know if it's just me that's odd, or the game, but I'm personally a sleeping lion and was quite upset I couldn't play the game that way.
I mean, for the love of god you'd think people would show a little respect for the guy holding a nuclear rocket launcher without him having to use it!
You're still going on about Iraq?
Do you have no clue what was happening in Iraq?
Saddam HAD nuclear ambitions. This is a fact.
Saddam ACTED as if he were hiding things of the nuclear-bomb-development variety. This, too, is a fact.
Saddam WANTED THE WORLD TO SUSPECT HE WAS DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. This is also a fact.
It was just the same with all other sorts of WMDs -- whether or not there were any, Saddam's intention was always to imply that he was hiding them, but never to give any proof that he had any. Proof would have meant the whole world coming down on his head, but through his intentional deceptions he could sow doubt.
Why would he do this you ask? Simple. He wanted to swing a bigger set of balls around. When he spoke, he wanted to speak as if he had horrible weapons at his disposal that nobody knew about. That is power. He lacked the ability to overtly demonstrate or even develop that power, but he DID have the ability to make his enemies unsure of whether he actually had that power or not.
Of course, we all know how that turned out. Gee-dub called his bluff, and now he's dead. And Iraq, and the Middle East, is a better place for it.
If my housing and food are provided for, I'm telling you right now.
I'll never do anything productive, as I have no need to do so.
I'm not just saying that as a big scary threat. I'm telling you -- I know myself. This is a fact. If I know that I'll be able to live in a warm house and have food on my table, without ever doing anything to earn it, I will never do anything to earn it.
No it won't, because there is no relationship at any point to be found here. It's all fake. It TELLS YOU it's fake. This is just sad, and has no redeeming points or up sides. Just sad.
The profits! ba-dum-bump
honestly the cost of disposing of that museum piece is probably greater than its value, tell your mom she probably wound up stealing from the company by throwing it in their dumpster. might make her feel better.
but salvaging the floppy drive might be worth the while. probably not. god, what's gonna happen (NUMBER) years from now when CD/DVD compatible drives are as hard to find as 3.5"ers O_o
That is both the most awesome and awful thing I have ever heard
Power Point? god
I can only assume because at some point during its development, some big wig manager in love with power point wandered through the office and said "MPEG-2? BUT I ONLY WANT ONE IN THERE! GET RID OF THAT EXTRA ONE!"
... you completely missed the point and went straight to the personal attack. Nice.
Science, the military, industry, technology.. they're all simply tools.
When you hyphenate and append "complex" to them, the meaning is that instead of us using the tools, we are being used by the tools.
This is a problem because, as tools, they have no real ends. It's simply a cycle of failure spinning down the drain in every case. The tools need to be guided by a hand, not the hand by the tool.
Personally, I think you were just afraid of a little reading and would rather just toss out pithy insults. Whatever, fuckerface, I can do that too. No matter to me.
Yes, we, America, we're the bad guys.
Wait a minute, I'm pretty sure there's been a lot more pure evil in the past 100 years coming out of Europe, Asia, and Africa than America. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, christ, do I need to go on? Compared to all that, AMERICA is the bad guy? So.. how about we kill like 25 million people today, does that mean we get a pass in your book for it 10 years from now? No? Hmm.
Australia..... you guys get a pass.
South America, nobody really cares, sorry..
actually, the "scientific-technological elite" uhh kinda. they're here man.
it's called global warming.
no, i am not disagreeing that carbon dioxide levels affect blah blah so on and so forth. that does happen, that is happening, the rate at which it's been happening is fairly clear. the rate at which it'll continue from here.... wweeeeeeelllllllllll not so clear. i'll catch hell for that i'm sure, but fuck it. only a fool would put their faith in predictions of the future when past predictions of the future have never panned out. i'm not saying they're wrong, but the wise position is that they are less right than their makers purport.
on to the scitech elite.
global warming's being used as a big scary boogeyman to push all KINDS of shit at us. Green cars! Green energy! Green gas! Green.. wait. Ethanol from corn is actually a NET DRAIN of resources over simply not using it. Electric cars, after factoring in battery production and expected life, really aren't any more ecologically friendly than a high efficiency IC car. Solar panels still cost a ton to produce and only last a very few decades before they're trash.
What we have here is a group of scientists saying "Here's a problem!" and a group of technicians with products saying "Here's a solution!" and the politicians and media simply latch onto these two handles and hold on for dear life, hoping the rest of us don't catch on that they're really not actually related -- cause, hey, look all these important people who are ostensibly better than you and acting out of pure altruistic intent for all humanity, they SAY so!
There's the problem he was warning us about -- when we make any group of people into paragons of good, shit goes bad. A military-industrial complex can distort and warp shit into nasty things, and this is done because gosh, everybody likes the military, right? They protect us? And industry... they.. MAKE things. Literally make them! That's good for everyone. And suddenly, any questioning of anything from them is bad. Well, seems to me we're in a mighty similar boat right now, but we've learned to distrust -- not hate, but not acquiesce without questioning! -- the military-industrial complex, so we've moved on to the next big thing. scientific-technological complex.
While there are cases in which tasers are used inappropriately -- and I fully support any investigation into those incidents -- those are cases in which any level of force is not justified. The simple use of the taser is the problem in that situation, not the performance of the taser.. even if the taser is used on someone with a pacemaker and they die, that would not be because the taser is bad, that would be because the taser was misused.
When you're talking about the justified uses of tasers, well, who the fuck expects them to NEVER, EVER, EVER DO ANYTHING BAD EVER? An idiot, that's who.
Here's the thing -- tasers are safer than the alternative. The alternative is, if you're lucky, getting physically beaten to submission. Or shot. Those are the cases where tasers are supposed to be used, that is what they're designed for. It's not a cattle prod, to get people to just do what you want, it's a tool so that when the occasion arises that police are facing a threat that doesn't require lethal force but DOES require SOME degree of force, they can deploy a taser and decrease the risk both to themselves AND to the suspect.
A taser is not a phaser. You can't set it to stun and knock someone out for a plot-convenient length of time after which they come to, rub their head and squint and then carry on as if nothing happened. If that existed, that'd be in use, but that's make-believe.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong. What do YOU suggest is used in lieu of a taser when people start fighting with cops? I'd REALLY love to hear this. I mean, hey, if tasers are so terrible, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER!
protip: sheer physical restraint is much more dangerous to *all* involved, not just the cops.
Tasers are safe. They are not 100% won't-ever-kill-anyone safe, but absolutely nothing at all is 100% won't-ever-kill-anyone safe. GW Bush, if you recall laughing at it, was nearly killed by a pretzel. We must cease production of these allegedly delicious snacks AT ALL COSTS! Wait, no? You disagree? YOUR LOGIC IS, THEN, INCONSISTENT AND HENCE INCONSEQUENTIAL.
so tired of this boring and ill-thought-out argument.