Boy, you're sure clever. I love the way you jump to conclusions and then use those assumptions as the basis to denigrate my stance on some matter by brushing it off as "just so much babble from the bleating masses, AGAIN".
No, I don't watch Fox News. Wanna know something neat? None of the fucking news-as-entertainment stations actually provide news.
Pr0tip Billy: Stop being a dismissive douchebag. Where are YOU getting your information? Are you sitting in on these hearings? Taking notes? Hmm? I just didn't feel like citing sources. Have you done that? No? Hmm. So.. so you're saying you can't actually disprove anything I'm saying, but because you THINK that it SOUNDS LIKE it came from Fox News, it's gotta be wrong. And the only reason you think it sounds like it came from Fox News is because you disagree with what I've said and you don't care for Fox News.
I've not been following the whole shebang closely but I did hear that some poor nations were seeking reparations -- essentially, their stance being that the first world has degraded the planet while getting rich. Neighbor's peeing in your pool to avoid a higher water bill, you're going to get some sort of restitution out of him.
A lot of the reason the poor nations are trying to (fairly severely) curtail the emissions from first-world nations isn't that they care about the environment. Once again, it comes back to money. If *we* can't emit X amount of CO2, companies that make goods will move to a country with more room to spare -- or simply purchase 'carbon credits' from some poor nation that's not using their full allotment.
Now to come full circle and piss everyone off-- this is no different than health care. Rather than try to fix up the status quo so that it's better, everybody is always more eager to throw out the status quo entirely and build up a new system.. but yanno what, that doesn't work. That never works. Christ, that never works in VIDEO GAMES. Nobody can ever fully realize the repercussions of any action, and the more drastic the action, the more numerous the changes, the more complication is thrown in. Shit goes wrong. Even if it goes right *eventually*, shit will go wrong for longer than I care for shit to be wrong.
I mean, if we REAAALLLLY cared about the environment we'd all just turn off our computers, quit commuting to our jobs, kill off about 90% of the earth's population and return to living as hunter/gatherers. That's a bit too drastic, though, y'see what I mean? Those poor countries, really there's no changes in store for any of them with any sort of climate change agreement. They don't have a hat in the ring to get trampled. Of course they don't give a shit what troubles may be caused by any sort of agreement, because those troubles will be to a one in other countries while their own country can only gain from any sort of agreement.
And, again, it's harder to retrofit a ship under steam than it is to build it right initially. Poor nations want first nations to retrofit their entire economic, manufacturing, and social structure. First nations want the poor nations to just build shit right the first time around -- let's be honest, they might be jealous of our factories but why the fuck would we shut down our efficient and clean factories just to watch them move overseas to some hot hellhole and build a cheap slapshod factory that BELCHES emissions? Maybe we'd be more agreeable to concessions on our part if they were more agreeable to concessions as well.
I dug out my old microsoft precision pro. 9 buttons, hat switch, throttle, x/y/z axis.. and it was bought in a *store*.
Mech4's release has really made me realize how far PC gaming has fallen. It's really close to dead compared to where it was 10-15 years ago. So many PC games are just console games ported over..
Be interesting to see where this leads, even though I think we all know what it'll be.. that is, this just going away, quietly, when nobody's watching. Nothing'll happen. There's already been a few investigations into the whole climategate email thing.. nothing's happened. Basically there were a few *internal* investigations. I don't think any outside agency, any third party without any conflicting interest in maintaining a good face to the public and the politicans that pay them, has looked into any of it. I point that out to illustrate how little confidence I have in 'em.
except when we went the "easy way", it wasn't the "easy way". It was just "the way". We've sinced learned it's not the best way, but honestly had we not gone the "easy way" there would be no talk about easy way or hard way. SOMEBODY had to do it, somebody had to get humankind to the point where we can say "Oh, shit. Maybe this isn't good".
So now if you picture the whole world as a closed system, we've got a finite amount of stuff with which to do stuff. Iunno, effort let's call it. To keep carbon emmisions at X level, the lowest amount of effort would be to not do anything. Don't build anything else -- anywhere. What the first world nations want is to say "Don't build anything else -- except for me" The third world nations? "Tear down your shit -- so we can build it here instead"
And there's also that many poorer nations get businesses building there *BECAUSE* of their lax laws on industry and pollution.
It's not a matter of being fair to anyone, it's ALL tied up with money. You can't be fair in the way they're crying that it should be fair. Look, WE WON! We developed before they did, we figured out that actually it might not be the best idea to go around tearing everything up and burning it all down. Complaints about the situation-as-it-stands are nothing more than petty envy. We have, they don't, they're pissed about it and want to key our car.
At this point, we *can't* stop our output of carbon. They don't have an output started, so they don't have to worry.. but the developed world? We've got our own problem to deal with, and that's how to transition away from fossil fuels and reducing carbon output (I don't think there's a person alive who says that's a bad idea, but of course when you get into how soon and in what way whackos jump out from the closet screaming about riding horses tomorrow).
And really, we're not even asking them to remain in their stone age lives. Far as I'm aware, the main thing the first world nations want the third to do is when they build, to NOT build using 1880s designs and tech because they're just inefficient and needlessly filthy polluting affairs. They WANT to build that shit, because it's the cheapest way to go and global warming pff it's hot already isnt it?
And, of course, when you're building something new it's much.. much.. MUCH cheaper to just make it good, as opposed to modernizing an old existing whateverthehell. We know this, we've been doing it here.
That's really the difference, why I come off so negatively towards the third world nations in all of this. Yeah, we industrialized and advanced at the cost of the environment. And now we're trying to fix it. They're not pissed because we advanced at the cost of the environment, they're only pissed because they're not getting to do the same thing. Well, yanno what, that ship has sailed. Not anyone's fault they weren't on it, that's just how the cards fell. It's no fucking different than if they made the claim that America's economy benefited from the use of slave labor, and therefor THEY should be allowed to benefit from the use of slave labor because, liek omgosh thats only fair. Petty idiots.
I thought it failed because the poorest third were angry that they weren't going to be guilt-tripping the developed third into propping them up through international welfare.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's what actually happened.
Not a matter of "YOU BROWN FOLK STAY POOR". We drove our car through standing water and it flooded, killed our car, we've got a mess on our hands. We're waving our arms shouting "Look if you go this way, global warming. Bad shit. Go around the long way. It's harder, but if we had known about this shit we'd be going that way too".. meanwhile the third world refuses to understand what we're saying, and instead are just preoccupied with the fact that we went right through the high water and now they have to go around.... but more than that, what they REALLY want is just reparations from the industrialized world. Nothing like a big fat annual check for never managing to get a working competitive economy in order.
Are you kidding? They're way ahead of us. The Australian government has actually taken the stance that unless you have big full breasts, you're not a real woman. I mean, damn. Setting up a whole generation of girls to feel inadequate. Nice.
The conspiracy theory is just this: The ALA hasn't been in the news recently, and felt the need to make a big stink about *something* for some reason. Most likely to get exposure and hopefully increased donations. I'm not positive, but do they get any money out of the tobacco industry's big settlement bullshit? I honestly have no clue. If they do, well, must be nice to get a paycheck from the industry you're trying to take down.. I'm sure that doesn't result in any pulled punches.
Saw an article a bit ago where the author was railing against e-ciggs. One of the points was the presence of propylene glycol in the liquid that's vaporized. Drummed up the scare factor by pointing out that its most common use is ZOMG ANTIFREEZE! neglecting, of course, to mention that it's used and labeled as non-toxic antifreeze, is sprayed by the bucket onto aircraft and allowed to run off freely, and is pretty easily metabolized by any living thing. Basically it just slides right in to the normal glucose metabolism cycle. But hey, never pass up a chance to fearmonger.
I.. what? That clearly is not in response to anything I said in my post nor does it even seem to be connected in any way to your original post.
You make no sense good sir. You're making a shallow allegory between geek/nerd and race/race, but for what purpose and in response to what remains a mystery.
Oh, unless you mistook my statement that racial stereotypes can be used to glean useful information about somebody to be a statement that I support the use of racial stereotypes to glean information about somebody and then further to use that information to make decisions about the *personality and abilities* of that person. Oh, in a negative manner. People don't mind so much the positive prejudicial stereotypes. Actually, I think I nailed it. That's what you've done, isn't it? You misinterpreted what I said, severely.
What I said is useful is simply using knowledge of race and people to learn more about them without asking outright. That guy with the foreign accent clearly didn't grow up here. Hmm. Got an odd skin tone too. Of course, it would be silly to pander to your guess as to the guy's origins, but you can certainly use skin tone, facial features, and accent to form a pretty damn good guess as to where someone is from. That's just useful information as information-for-its-own-sake.
Go ahead and try to find where I suggest using any of that to prejudge people's character and abilities. I don't. That's all you. You may just simply be too immature and bullheaded to have an adult conversation on the topic of racial differences; you seem to be unable to comprehend anyone could recognize differences between different groups of people without turning the whole thing into apartheid.
Removing a word for a concept does not remove the concept. People have different skin colors. No amount of wishing will change that fact, nor the fact that we can recognize different skin colors.
Teaching people to ignore the color of other's skin is dangerous. It's equatable to abstinence-only sex ed.
Don't teach people that race doesn't exist. That's dumb. Teach that race does exist, but is ultimately irrelevant.
And, yes, racial stereotypes ARE USEFUL. You meet a random person. They look different than you, and speak in a strange accent. Without the use of racial and cultural stereotypes it would not be possible to conclude where that person is from. There are physical differences between people who come from different areas, and by having a concept of, say, a stereotypical Israeli, or Brasilian, of both physical features and manner of speaking, you are able to determine where that stranger is from. That's just useful information. You can gain knowledge through racial stereotypes. You do not necessarily have to proceed from that point to where you're reaching conclusions about the character of that person based upon that information. It's just that last step there that we have a problem with.
You obviously are not part of the Apple Collective or you would see the wisdom in only allowing 1 user and no guest account.
If someone else wants to use your iPad, good! But don't let them, because it's only YOURS. Flame their jealousy. Soon, they will cave under the pressure and buy their own iPad.
It's a single user product, you understand. Sharing is verboten.
Re:The iPad is original Apple Redux
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The iPad isn't revolutionary in the way you're saying it is. You can interact with a networked computer with a laptop or a netbook or whatever you would want to call a more standard computer (with a real keyboard, which is a boon to those who don't have fingers the thickness of a pencil). It's just harder to hold in one hand while typing (though the typing is easier).
Your statement about what the iPad does that's new itself states that nothing the iPad does is new -- it just lets us do things that we can and do already do in a way that's slightly less cumbersome. In other words, no innovation but rather just a stab at a better form.. which should be a win, except it's also crippled with limitations and drawbacks. In the end, you wind up with a product that can do the same things that other products can already do, except with a different set of good and bad points.
Plus you can't really look cool carrying something that large around. Unless the interface looks like one of the datapads from ST:TNG.. that would be pretty awesome I guess.
which is why the whole "runaway toyota" story is so sad. those people who called emergency numbers because their car was barrelling down the road at high rates of speed? None of them thought to just shift their car into neutral. Sad.:\
Er, don't you mean 70kmph? 'cause that's only about 45mph. That's not so much a big deal at all, we've got plenty of roads with 55mph speed limits that don't have any.. well, they're called on ramps or merging lanes. Slip is not a word we like to use in reference to driving except in accidents..
No, that's not the problem. The server expenses aren't servers hosting the game. Not "JimBob's 16-player Jerkhouse". More "Click here to download" type server. Microsoft isn't going to lose a (real) dime releasing this for free -- Mektek would be the one incurring all the costs for distributing it. Microsoft is worried, I think, that they'll be losing (potential) dimes on it, because Free Is Bad. And, so, because they don't want to lose potential dimes, and because they don't want to axe the whole thing outright, they're just dragging their feet and in the process Mektek has been paying for months out the ears to make sure they're prepared at any moment for the release of MW4 for free.. but they don't have the cash reserves of income to continue paying for all that extra capacity. Microsoft successfully hemmed and hawed around long enough that the whole thing's going to fall through and they can pretend it wasn't their fault, that they had all intentions of following through and are investigating other avenues.
[quote]OK, try this: Imagine that a legitimate, non-criminal corporate conglomerate was so successful and rich that it managed to take over all significant means of production and distribution. If state ownership infringes on your personal freedom, how come such corporate ownership would not?[/quote]
First of all, we do break up monopolies.
That's irrelevant.
If a company is that large, competition may be difficult to mount against them -- and, of course, they may be participating in anticompetitive practices, which would be illegal. Still, assuming the monopoly-holding company does not behave in an outright *illegal* manner, and that it is possible to compete with them in any way, competition would, we would hope, arise.
If the state is the company, the only way to get a competing company into the picture is to get rid of the government, or convince them to make a massive shift and close the company outright (with nothing left in place in the private sector to fill the void). You can't have two governments in competition. You can't compete with a government company.
I agree! If the cup was defective, McDonald's would have been at fault!
Except in the case with Leibeck, the cup was NOT defective. It was a fine cup, with a tightly secured lid. There was no contention made that the cup was at fault -- Leibeck was at fault. She removed the lid, and while doing so was squeezing the cup between her legs (I presume, as anything about the case will state that she was holding the cup between her legs). Now, squeeze a cup between your knees. While wearing sweatpants. That's not entirely a safe and sturdy place to hold on to a cup of hot liquid.
What it all boils down to is her lawyer claimed that the coffee McDonald's served was unreasonably and unsafely hot, and that coffee from other vendors is never served that hot. That's just an outright lie, and that -- and ONLY that -- is the case in a nutshell. That's the only factor that matters. And it's a lie. That's why this case still pisses me right off. McDonald's lawyers I would hope were fired for incompetence. The contention that the coffee was unusually hot is easily disprovable. Unsafe? Well, yes, coffee is unsafe. That's the nature of coffee. If you go to one of those restaurants where they cook the food at your table and you smack the cooking surface with your hand, the restaurant is not liable -- things that are hot are hot, if you don't know that it's your own dumb fault.
I dunno if you've ever bought coffee from McDonald's or anywhere else, but the cups are all non-rigid. Mostly rigid, yes, but if you squeeze them they will collapse. They're usually either a thick paper or thin foam. If there's a lid attached, it provides strength that prevents the cup from being bent into an oval shape. This is all completely obvious and self-evident to any thinking human. The container itself is completely safe under any and all normal usage. What Leibeck did was not normal. McDonald's was not -- is not! -- at fault for her injuries, regardless of what some asinine jury found.
Not full of shit in the least. The refusal of McDonald's to settle out of court is a non issue. I did not say that Liebeck was only in it for the money, I said she was at fault for her own injuries and not McDonald's. If McDonald's is not at fault, they have no cause to settle out of court. Clearly they believed they would win their case -- coffee being a hot beverage, and hot beverages being unsafe, and her performing an unsafe procedure with said unsafe beverage, how the hell could you hold McDonald's liable for that? The coffee was served hot. Coffee is hot. The container was not defective. Slam dunk, right? Weeelll.
It's not surprising in the least that the particular McDonald's in question lowered the temp on their coffee. They were pretty much required to -- after that case, if the coffee remained the same temp that was just declared unsafely hot and lost them a big hunk of cash, they would just be setting themselves up for another big loss of cash.
[quote]If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit.[/quote]
national coffee association. i bet they know a thing or two about coffee. i bet it lines up pretty damned smack-dab on with what i said. i bet i already knew that i know more about coffee than you do, but i bet i enjoy pointing it out anyway.
coffee in MY home is NOT served at 135-140 degrees. that's lukewarm coffee. now, if you take a good hot coffee, and add milk or creamer from your refrigerator, it'll probably drop that low.. but frankly (as I believe I said) that's a sin against good coffee.
Go to a local starbucks and buy a cup of coffee. Measure the temperature. Shit's HOT. I don't buy coffee from them because it's TOO hot. It's kept at the proper temp to make their mixed coffee drinks an appropriate temp, but not intended to be consumed black. Has anyone sued them for severe burns? Have any consumer protection agencies gone after them? No? Huh. I guess coffee's just fucking hot and you've gotta make sure not to burn yourself on it.
Trust me, I do feel bad for that old woman, but it's not McDonald's fault. I don't care what some jury found, you grab 12 people off the street and odds are good all 12 of them are non-reasoning imbeciles who reach judgements only through knee-jerk emotionality.
Fact is coffee is hot, and it's best served hot. I'm not saying that the contention that 180-190 is too hot to drink is incorrect -- it, in fact, IS correct -- but when you account for the shit people add to coffee, it becomes an ideal temperature. Coffee that's never too cold. At worst, you set it down for a few minutes and let it cool, if you're drinking it black. Coffee that's too hot is drinkable soon, but coffee that's too cool is never drinkable.
End of the day, that coffee would not have hurt her if she had not acted recklessly. Hold a non-rigid cup between your knees? Seriously? Go sue a car manufacturer because you got up over 100mph too fast and wrecked. I made an accurate car analogy, I win.
That's deceptive. You quoted one part of the article, which taken out of context makes it sound as if they refused less FOIA requests this year than last. That's untrue -- they refused less FOIA requests *in their entirety* this year than last, by a small amount. There's also about 10% less FOIA reqeusts this year than last (yet the ones refused in their entirety only fell ~5%). That article makes no mention of the total number of bits of information withheld. The one at breit does -- [quote]The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year...[/quote].
The conclusions are not the complete opposite, and even the 'administration-friendly' article you linked doesn't at any point insinuate that Obama's administration is any more open and transparent than Bush's.
Slashdot Mirror
Boy, you're sure clever. I love the way you jump to conclusions and then use those assumptions as the basis to denigrate my stance on some matter by brushing it off as "just so much babble from the bleating masses, AGAIN".
No, I don't watch Fox News. Wanna know something neat? None of the fucking news-as-entertainment stations actually provide news.
Pr0tip Billy: Stop being a dismissive douchebag. Where are YOU getting your information? Are you sitting in on these hearings? Taking notes? Hmm? I just didn't feel like citing sources. Have you done that? No? Hmm. So.. so you're saying you can't actually disprove anything I'm saying, but because you THINK that it SOUNDS LIKE it came from Fox News, it's gotta be wrong. And the only reason you think it sounds like it came from Fox News is because you disagree with what I've said and you don't care for Fox News.
ps: this ain't /b/. nobody 'herd' anything.
I've not been following the whole shebang closely but I did hear that some poor nations were seeking reparations -- essentially, their stance being that the first world has degraded the planet while getting rich. Neighbor's peeing in your pool to avoid a higher water bill, you're going to get some sort of restitution out of him.
A lot of the reason the poor nations are trying to (fairly severely) curtail the emissions from first-world nations isn't that they care about the environment. Once again, it comes back to money. If *we* can't emit X amount of CO2, companies that make goods will move to a country with more room to spare -- or simply purchase 'carbon credits' from some poor nation that's not using their full allotment.
Now to come full circle and piss everyone off--
this is no different than health care. Rather than try to fix up the status quo so that it's better, everybody is always more eager to throw out the status quo entirely and build up a new system.. but yanno what, that doesn't work. That never works. Christ, that never works in VIDEO GAMES. Nobody can ever fully realize the repercussions of any action, and the more drastic the action, the more numerous the changes, the more complication is thrown in. Shit goes wrong. Even if it goes right *eventually*, shit will go wrong for longer than I care for shit to be wrong.
I mean, if we REAAALLLLY cared about the environment we'd all just turn off our computers, quit commuting to our jobs, kill off about 90% of the earth's population and return to living as hunter/gatherers.
That's a bit too drastic, though, y'see what I mean? Those poor countries, really there's no changes in store for any of them with any sort of climate change agreement. They don't have a hat in the ring to get trampled. Of course they don't give a shit what troubles may be caused by any sort of agreement, because those troubles will be to a one in other countries while their own country can only gain from any sort of agreement.
And, again, it's harder to retrofit a ship under steam than it is to build it right initially. Poor nations want first nations to retrofit their entire economic, manufacturing, and social structure. First nations want the poor nations to just build shit right the first time around -- let's be honest, they might be jealous of our factories but why the fuck would we shut down our efficient and clean factories just to watch them move overseas to some hot hellhole and build a cheap slapshod factory that BELCHES emissions? Maybe we'd be more agreeable to concessions on our part if they were more agreeable to concessions as well.
I dug out my old microsoft precision pro. 9 buttons, hat switch, throttle, x/y/z axis.. and it was bought in a *store*.
Mech4's release has really made me realize how far PC gaming has fallen. It's really close to dead compared to where it was 10-15 years ago. So many PC games are just console games ported over..
Be interesting to see where this leads, even though I think we all know what it'll be.. that is, this just going away, quietly, when nobody's watching. Nothing'll happen.
There's already been a few investigations into the whole climategate email thing.. nothing's happened. Basically there were a few *internal* investigations. I don't think any outside agency, any third party without any conflicting interest in maintaining a good face to the public and the politicans that pay them, has looked into any of it. I point that out to illustrate how little confidence I have in 'em.
except when we went the "easy way", it wasn't the "easy way". It was just "the way". We've sinced learned it's not the best way, but honestly had we not gone the "easy way" there would be no talk about easy way or hard way. SOMEBODY had to do it, somebody had to get humankind to the point where we can say "Oh, shit. Maybe this isn't good".
So now if you picture the whole world as a closed system, we've got a finite amount of stuff with which to do stuff. Iunno, effort let's call it. To keep carbon emmisions at X level, the lowest amount of effort would be to not do anything. Don't build anything else -- anywhere.
What the first world nations want is to say "Don't build anything else -- except for me"
The third world nations?
"Tear down your shit -- so we can build it here instead"
And there's also that many poorer nations get businesses building there *BECAUSE* of their lax laws on industry and pollution.
It's not a matter of being fair to anyone, it's ALL tied up with money. You can't be fair in the way they're crying that it should be fair. Look, WE WON! We developed before they did, we figured out that actually it might not be the best idea to go around tearing everything up and burning it all down. Complaints about the situation-as-it-stands are nothing more than petty envy. We have, they don't, they're pissed about it and want to key our car.
At this point, we *can't* stop our output of carbon. They don't have an output started, so they don't have to worry.. but the developed world? We've got our own problem to deal with, and that's how to transition away from fossil fuels and reducing carbon output (I don't think there's a person alive who says that's a bad idea, but of course when you get into how soon and in what way whackos jump out from the closet screaming about riding horses tomorrow).
And really, we're not even asking them to remain in their stone age lives. Far as I'm aware, the main thing the first world nations want the third to do is when they build, to NOT build using 1880s designs and tech because they're just inefficient and needlessly filthy polluting affairs. They WANT to build that shit, because it's the cheapest way to go and global warming pff it's hot already isnt it?
And, of course, when you're building something new it's much.. much.. MUCH cheaper to just make it good, as opposed to modernizing an old existing whateverthehell. We know this, we've been doing it here.
That's really the difference, why I come off so negatively towards the third world nations in all of this. Yeah, we industrialized and advanced at the cost of the environment. And now we're trying to fix it. They're not pissed because we advanced at the cost of the environment, they're only pissed because they're not getting to do the same thing. Well, yanno what, that ship has sailed. Not anyone's fault they weren't on it, that's just how the cards fell. It's no fucking different than if they made the claim that America's economy benefited from the use of slave labor, and therefor THEY should be allowed to benefit from the use of slave labor because, liek omgosh thats only fair. Petty idiots.
in the pursuit of forcing their ideology on others,
I think you actually mean..
in the pursuit of whatever the hell they damn well please, be that their ideology or wallet or libido
I thought it failed because the poorest third were angry that they weren't going to be guilt-tripping the developed third into propping them up through international welfare.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's what actually happened.
Not a matter of "YOU BROWN FOLK STAY POOR". We drove our car through standing water and it flooded, killed our car, we've got a mess on our hands. We're waving our arms shouting "Look if you go this way, global warming. Bad shit. Go around the long way. It's harder, but if we had known about this shit we'd be going that way too".. meanwhile the third world refuses to understand what we're saying, and instead are just preoccupied with the fact that we went right through the high water and now they have to go around. ... but more than that, what they REALLY want is just reparations from the industrialized world. Nothing like a big fat annual check for never managing to get a working competitive economy in order.
Don't tell her too hard or the neighbors might start askin' how she keeps falling down stairs when your house is one story
In the future, tentacle monsters will sparkle.
Are you kidding? They're way ahead of us. The Australian government has actually taken the stance that unless you have big full breasts, you're not a real woman. I mean, damn. Setting up a whole generation of girls to feel inadequate. Nice.
The conspiracy theory is just this: The ALA hasn't been in the news recently, and felt the need to make a big stink about *something* for some reason. Most likely to get exposure and hopefully increased donations. I'm not positive, but do they get any money out of the tobacco industry's big settlement bullshit? I honestly have no clue. If they do, well, must be nice to get a paycheck from the industry you're trying to take down.. I'm sure that doesn't result in any pulled punches.
Saw an article a bit ago where the author was railing against e-ciggs. One of the points was the presence of propylene glycol in the liquid that's vaporized. Drummed up the scare factor by pointing out that its most common use is ZOMG ANTIFREEZE!
neglecting, of course, to mention that it's used and labeled as non-toxic antifreeze, is sprayed by the bucket onto aircraft and allowed to run off freely, and is pretty easily metabolized by any living thing. Basically it just slides right in to the normal glucose metabolism cycle. But hey, never pass up a chance to fearmonger.
I for one welcome our "HEADSHOT!"-screaming giant ant overlords?
good god that's terrifying..
I.. what? That clearly is not in response to anything I said in my post nor does it even seem to be connected in any way to your original post.
You make no sense good sir. You're making a shallow allegory between geek/nerd and race/race, but for what purpose and in response to what remains a mystery.
Oh, unless you mistook my statement that racial stereotypes can be used to glean useful information about somebody to be a statement that I support the use of racial stereotypes to glean information about somebody and then further to use that information to make decisions about the *personality and abilities* of that person. Oh, in a negative manner. People don't mind so much the positive prejudicial stereotypes.
Actually, I think I nailed it. That's what you've done, isn't it? You misinterpreted what I said, severely.
What I said is useful is simply using knowledge of race and people to learn more about them without asking outright. That guy with the foreign accent clearly didn't grow up here. Hmm. Got an odd skin tone too.
Of course, it would be silly to pander to your guess as to the guy's origins, but you can certainly use skin tone, facial features, and accent to form a pretty damn good guess as to where someone is from. That's just useful information as information-for-its-own-sake.
Go ahead and try to find where I suggest using any of that to prejudge people's character and abilities. I don't. That's all you. You may just simply be too immature and bullheaded to have an adult conversation on the topic of racial differences; you seem to be unable to comprehend anyone could recognize differences between different groups of people without turning the whole thing into apartheid.
And dude, that's your problem, not mine.
That's completely ridiculous.
Removing a word for a concept does not remove the concept. People have different skin colors. No amount of wishing will change that fact, nor the fact that we can recognize different skin colors.
Teaching people to ignore the color of other's skin is dangerous. It's equatable to abstinence-only sex ed.
Don't teach people that race doesn't exist. That's dumb. Teach that race does exist, but is ultimately irrelevant.
And, yes, racial stereotypes ARE USEFUL. You meet a random person. They look different than you, and speak in a strange accent. Without the use of racial and cultural stereotypes it would not be possible to conclude where that person is from. There are physical differences between people who come from different areas, and by having a concept of, say, a stereotypical Israeli, or Brasilian, of both physical features and manner of speaking, you are able to determine where that stranger is from. That's just useful information. You can gain knowledge through racial stereotypes. You do not necessarily have to proceed from that point to where you're reaching conclusions about the character of that person based upon that information. It's just that last step there that we have a problem with.
You obviously are not part of the Apple Collective or you would see the wisdom in only allowing 1 user and no guest account.
If someone else wants to use your iPad, good! But don't let them, because it's only YOURS. Flame their jealousy. Soon, they will cave under the pressure and buy their own iPad.
It's a single user product, you understand. Sharing is verboten.
The iPad isn't revolutionary in the way you're saying it is. You can interact with a networked computer with a laptop or a netbook or whatever you would want to call a more standard computer (with a real keyboard, which is a boon to those who don't have fingers the thickness of a pencil). It's just harder to hold in one hand while typing (though the typing is easier).
Your statement about what the iPad does that's new itself states that nothing the iPad does is new -- it just lets us do things that we can and do already do in a way that's slightly less cumbersome. In other words, no innovation but rather just a stab at a better form.. which should be a win, except it's also crippled with limitations and drawbacks. In the end, you wind up with a product that can do the same things that other products can already do, except with a different set of good and bad points.
Plus you can't really look cool carrying something that large around. Unless the interface looks like one of the datapads from ST:TNG.. that would be pretty awesome I guess.
and you can just shift an automatic into neutral.
which is why the whole "runaway toyota" story is so sad. those people who called emergency numbers because their car was barrelling down the road at high rates of speed? None of them thought to just shift their car into neutral. Sad. :\
There's very little enjoyment to be had in a 12-hour drive. Manual, automatic or otherwise.
Er, don't you mean 70kmph? 'cause that's only about 45mph. That's not so much a big deal at all, we've got plenty of roads with 55mph speed limits that don't have any.. well, they're called on ramps or merging lanes. Slip is not a word we like to use in reference to driving except in accidents..
No, that's not the problem. The server expenses aren't servers hosting the game. Not "JimBob's 16-player Jerkhouse". More "Click here to download" type server. Microsoft isn't going to lose a (real) dime releasing this for free -- Mektek would be the one incurring all the costs for distributing it. Microsoft is worried, I think, that they'll be losing (potential) dimes on it, because Free Is Bad. And, so, because they don't want to lose potential dimes, and because they don't want to axe the whole thing outright, they're just dragging their feet and in the process Mektek has been paying for months out the ears to make sure they're prepared at any moment for the release of MW4 for free.. but they don't have the cash reserves of income to continue paying for all that extra capacity. Microsoft successfully hemmed and hawed around long enough that the whole thing's going to fall through and they can pretend it wasn't their fault, that they had all intentions of following through and are investigating other avenues.
[quote]OK, try this: Imagine that a legitimate, non-criminal corporate conglomerate was so successful and rich that it managed to take over all significant means of production and distribution. If state ownership infringes on your personal freedom, how come such corporate ownership would not?[/quote]
First of all, we do break up monopolies.
That's irrelevant.
If a company is that large, competition may be difficult to mount against them -- and, of course, they may be participating in anticompetitive practices, which would be illegal. Still, assuming the monopoly-holding company does not behave in an outright *illegal* manner, and that it is possible to compete with them in any way, competition would, we would hope, arise.
If the state is the company, the only way to get a competing company into the picture is to get rid of the government, or convince them to make a massive shift and close the company outright (with nothing left in place in the private sector to fill the void). You can't have two governments in competition. You can't compete with a government company.
I agree! If the cup was defective, McDonald's would have been at fault!
Except in the case with Leibeck, the cup was NOT defective. It was a fine cup, with a tightly secured lid. There was no contention made that the cup was at fault -- Leibeck was at fault. She removed the lid, and while doing so was squeezing the cup between her legs (I presume, as anything about the case will state that she was holding the cup between her legs). Now, squeeze a cup between your knees. While wearing sweatpants. That's not entirely a safe and sturdy place to hold on to a cup of hot liquid.
What it all boils down to is her lawyer claimed that the coffee McDonald's served was unreasonably and unsafely hot, and that coffee from other vendors is never served that hot. That's just an outright lie, and that -- and ONLY that -- is the case in a nutshell. That's the only factor that matters. And it's a lie. That's why this case still pisses me right off. McDonald's lawyers I would hope were fired for incompetence. The contention that the coffee was unusually hot is easily disprovable. Unsafe? Well, yes, coffee is unsafe. That's the nature of coffee. If you go to one of those restaurants where they cook the food at your table and you smack the cooking surface with your hand, the restaurant is not liable -- things that are hot are hot, if you don't know that it's your own dumb fault.
I dunno if you've ever bought coffee from McDonald's or anywhere else, but the cups are all non-rigid. Mostly rigid, yes, but if you squeeze them they will collapse. They're usually either a thick paper or thin foam. If there's a lid attached, it provides strength that prevents the cup from being bent into an oval shape. This is all completely obvious and self-evident to any thinking human. The container itself is completely safe under any and all normal usage. What Leibeck did was not normal. McDonald's was not -- is not! -- at fault for her injuries, regardless of what some asinine jury found.
Not full of shit in the least.
The refusal of McDonald's to settle out of court is a non issue. I did not say that Liebeck was only in it for the money, I said she was at fault for her own injuries and not McDonald's. If McDonald's is not at fault, they have no cause to settle out of court. Clearly they believed they would win their case -- coffee being a hot beverage, and hot beverages being unsafe, and her performing an unsafe procedure with said unsafe beverage, how the hell could you hold McDonald's liable for that? The coffee was served hot. Coffee is hot. The container was not defective. Slam dunk, right? Weeelll.
It's not surprising in the least that the particular McDonald's in question lowered the temp on their coffee. They were pretty much required to -- after that case, if the coffee remained the same temp that was just declared unsafely hot and lost them a big hunk of cash, they would just be setting themselves up for another big loss of cash.
[quote]If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit.[/quote]
source: http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=71
national coffee association. i bet they know a thing or two about coffee. i bet it lines up pretty damned smack-dab on with what i said. i bet i already knew that i know more about coffee than you do, but i bet i enjoy pointing it out anyway.
coffee in MY home is NOT served at 135-140 degrees. that's lukewarm coffee. now, if you take a good hot coffee, and add milk or creamer from your refrigerator, it'll probably drop that low.. but frankly (as I believe I said) that's a sin against good coffee.
Go to a local starbucks and buy a cup of coffee. Measure the temperature. Shit's HOT. I don't buy coffee from them because it's TOO hot. It's kept at the proper temp to make their mixed coffee drinks an appropriate temp, but not intended to be consumed black. Has anyone sued them for severe burns? Have any consumer protection agencies gone after them? No? Huh. I guess coffee's just fucking hot and you've gotta make sure not to burn yourself on it.
Trust me, I do feel bad for that old woman, but it's not McDonald's fault. I don't care what some jury found, you grab 12 people off the street and odds are good all 12 of them are non-reasoning imbeciles who reach judgements only through knee-jerk emotionality.
Fact is coffee is hot, and it's best served hot. I'm not saying that the contention that 180-190 is too hot to drink is incorrect -- it, in fact, IS correct -- but when you account for the shit people add to coffee, it becomes an ideal temperature. Coffee that's never too cold. At worst, you set it down for a few minutes and let it cool, if you're drinking it black. Coffee that's too hot is drinkable soon, but coffee that's too cool is never drinkable.
End of the day, that coffee would not have hurt her if she had not acted recklessly. Hold a non-rigid cup between your knees? Seriously? Go sue a car manufacturer because you got up over 100mph too fast and wrecked. I made an accurate car analogy, I win.
When you can't argue rationally, attack personally.
It's ok, I *revel* in it. G'nite moonbat.
That's deceptive. You quoted one part of the article, which taken out of context makes it sound as if they refused less FOIA requests this year than last. That's untrue -- they refused less FOIA requests *in their entirety* this year than last, by a small amount. There's also about 10% less FOIA reqeusts this year than last (yet the ones refused in their entirety only fell ~5%). That article makes no mention of the total number of bits of information withheld. The one at breit does -- [quote]The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year ...[/quote].
The conclusions are not the complete opposite, and even the 'administration-friendly' article you linked doesn't at any point insinuate that Obama's administration is any more open and transparent than Bush's.