He "forgot to mention" the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Yasser Arafat's granddad)'s collusion with Hitler and the forming of Arab SS brigades to implement the "final solution" along the Mediterranean coast, too.
Not just that: the very land on which most of the "Palestinian Refugee Camps" are part was actually supposed to be the "Palestinian" portion of the partition. The Arab armies claimed it for themselves (Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt) and then stuffed the Arab "Palestinians" into so-called" refugee camps" on the very same place that was supposed to have been their state in order to have a captive, poor population that could be easily manipulated for PR benefit.
Quoth Khaled Al-Azm (Syrian PM during the 1948 war) in his memoirs:
Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon the Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed, we have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes....
Or how about UNRWA director Ralph Galloway?
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die.
Or how about King Hussein of Jordan?
Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestinian people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and,I could say, even criminal.
Castlecops were volunteers. Spammers do what they do for a living. Eventually, the volunteers have to get back to the real world, while the spammers keep going and going because you're hitting them in the pocketbook.
Either we need a lot more volunteers, or we need to start imposing the the death sentence on convicted spammers and get the root problem solved.
FAirytales written by Arabs infuse the problem, perhaps.
Of course, occasionally one breaks down and tells the truth, like Khaled Al-Azm (Syrian PM in 1948 when they invaded) who stated the following in his memoirs:
"Since 1948, it is we who have demanded the return of the refugees, while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon a million Arab refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure on them to leave. We have accustomed them to begging...we have participated in lowering their morale and social level...Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson and throwing stones upon men, women and children...all this in the service of political purposes..."
Heck when the Arabs think you're not looking, they freely admit this to themselves. From the official Palestinian Authority Newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006 edition:
the leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the Nakba in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those Arkuvian promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events...
I think you're sadly misinformed, and so are those who slapped my information with a "-1 troll" because it got in the way of their propaganda efforts.
Other than the Palestinians were in fact living there and the way political events turned out where in fact removed by force.
Hmm, problems with your "theory"?
#1 - Arab nations told them to "get out of the way" for the war to kill the Jews.
#2 - Arab nations then failed to finish off killing the Jews, luckily for the world (I say so because of the sheer number of technological and medical advances to come from Israel in the last 50 years).
#3 - The areas which had been designated as "Palestine" by the original 1948 partition plan were taken over not by the "Eevil Joos", as claimed, but by Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt. The "Refugees" from Gaza and the West Bank were not "refugees" from Jewish settlement, but displaced by the invasion of ARAB armies and usurpation of the "palestinian"-intended land.
There's no valid reasoning at all. The 1948-1949 war resulted in Israel surviving, subsequent wars in which the Arabs lost territory were all started by the Arabs themselves. Further, look into citizenship law in Arab nations: no "Palestinian", no matter what, is allowed to get citizenship in another Arab nation for "fear of diluting their claim towards the eventual dissolution of the rogue Jewish state" (quote from the Saudi statute). The "Palestinian" side is not legitimate at all, it's simply one of the world's sickest propaganda campaigns, and the worst part is that the Palestinians are too brainwashed to notice that the rest of the Arabs deliberately keep them poor and pent up just for the propaganda ploys.
Anybody who says "Democrat representatives" rather than the grammatically correct "Democratic representatives" is a right-winger pushing an agenda [wikipedia.org], and their assertions should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yawn.
"Will not forbid reintroduction of" is a long, long way from "Will reintroduce". She's not saying in that quote that she's going to actually do anything to reinstate the fairness doctrine. What she IS saying is that if some fringe player like Dennis Kucinich decides to grandstand on the issue and introduce a bill that everyone knows will fail, she's not going to waste time and political capital trying to stop him.
Quite the reverse: She is the Speaker of the House and thus has total control to set the agenda.
NO BILL REACHES THE FLOOR EXCEPT BY HER SAY-SO.
When she says she "will not forbid reintroduction", what she is issuing is an open invitation to submit same.
Pelosi's personal preferences aren't particularly interesting. There's a big difference between "things Nancy Pelosi would like to see" and "things Nancy Pelosi thinks she can get 218 House votes, 60 Senate votes, and the endorsement of the President for." If she doesn't think an issue rises to the latter level, she's not going to push it - why attach your name to something you know would be defeated?
See above. See also what happens when she manages to get Democrat control of the House, 58 Democrat Senators + 2 RINOs, and Kamerad Obama on the same line.
And then there's the small matter that regardless of what Pelosi would do, Barack Obama has explicitly rejected reinstating the Fairness Doctrine:
(A) - no, Obama didn't say anything: it was his Press Secretary saying it.
(B) - Meanwhile, Obama just tapped Henry Rivera as his FCC Transition Czar. Why is this significant? Because Rivera is a heavy Democrat supporter of "fairness doctrine" reinstatement.
(C) - Obama's insiders have also mentioned that their new push will not be called "fairness doctrine", but will push and tweak the policy into re-creation through changes and abusive threats of violations (combining "permanent station advisory boards" packed with left-wingers from each locality along with "accelerated reviews" every 2 years rather than the standard 8 year term) of the current FCC "localism" clauses, which require broadcasters to "serve their local communities" in order to retain their licenses. (letter from Obama on September 20, 2007 to FCC hearing of Operation Push, in Chicago).
All of which reinforces my original point
All of which points out that what you were just shoveling came direct out of the horse's stall.
It may seem cool to get your news from bloggers but they aren't news sources they just voice opinions they aren't held to any standards.
Newspapers haven't had standards at least since the 1970s.
Even broadcast news is all opinion pieces these days.
"Duh." Anyone who watched the insane rush to anoint Barack Obama and the nastiness with which every member of the press treated the other side (not to mention the witch-hunt mentality towards the few actually neutral reporters who dared to ask Obama/Biden the TOUGH questions) will realize this.
Again, "Duh." The populace hasn't demanded balanced news, so it's dying. The recent push for the reinstitution of the "Fairness Doctrine" by the Dems is not really about "fairness", it's about their trying to take a stab at media outlets that don't carry their party line; you can be damn sure they would claim the "big" news networks are already "fair" and so "don't need changing" while they try to censor out anyone that doesn't agree with them.
Free speech and freedom of the press were separate things in the Constitution for a reason. One is opinion and one is supposed to preserve the right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government.
"The right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government" - sadly, the idea of "objective news" is nigh impossible to find. There are so many ways to tilt a story:
- Weasel words - Incendiary words - Selective sourcing - Abuse of statistics ("counting the hits, forgetting the misses", etc)
And that's just a few.
It'll be a sad day when the last newspaper closes.
Funny, I think the opposite. Newspapers will either adapt, or they won't. I'd rather have a lot more, smaller newspapers (and local papers seem to do just fine, because they can get locally-targeted advertising) competing and catching each other's mistakes than one big conglomerate that simply wants to indoctrinate, lie to, deceive, manipulate, and tilt the story over and over and over again.
That's one thing they already did: Hubbard began publishing his "books", if you can call them that, in the early 1950s (Dianetics was first published in 1950). It wasn't until a few years later, when he was under investigation for making false medical claims, that they (as one ex-$cieno put it) "Dragged a cross in the door, put collars on and renamed the leaders 'Ministers'" and rebranded their brand of snake oil a "religion" as a dodge against medical fraud and tax laws.
Here's a great site covering the "evolution" of $cientology from a mere fraud to a bona fide nut cult.
The best way to memorialize someone isn't to cry boo-hoo over the fact that they died... but to celebrate what they gave us in their life. I'm sure there are an absolute ton of wonderful stories about her, and if you feel the need to make a joke related to her career... you validate her career and life by doing so.
"She's dead, Jim." But at the same time the memories of her live on, and all she contributed to our lives will not be soon forgotten.
Raise a glass and make a toast: to Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before starting at the very beginning.
What part of being able to carry cargo did you not get?
Plus, public transportation sucks donkey balls. No, seriously - my commute would take 3 times as long and twice the distance (since I would have to make multiple connections and wait for each one). My travel in "public transportation" to visit the 'rents would take over a fucking day.
No Thank You.
You can do it. It's just not convenient or as easy as having your own car.
Catch a plane, and get a taxi when you get there. Any reason why you can't take a plane?
Because it's goddamn fucking expensive! Last time I ran the numbers (when gas was $3.70 a gallon) it STILL cost me twice as much to fly and rent a car to visit my parents, as opposed to driving the 500 miles to see them and having my own car when I got there (which also, incidentally, gave me the freedom to stay as long as I felt like without having to worry about missing a pre-scheduled plane flight).
Oh, and with my own car, I was also able to bring back a ton of cargo (a good chunk of the stuff my mother insists I take back to my own place) that there's no fucking way I could have spent the money to ship separately or check in baggage.
Why is work so far from home?
Because people don't have the option of moving every time they change jobs, especially if they have a lease that's not due or (worse yet) a mortgage.
Why do so many businesses and government offices cluster into one small city area?
To be near to each other, because business transactions go on between them. Businesses have to interact with government, businesses with businesses, etc. It is more efficient, for instance, for a bunch of restaurants to exist around a bunch of other businesses to serve the breakfast/lunch/dinner crowds at the time.
If they would spread their offices out to near where people live, people could travel a short distance to work.
Or, likely as not, people from one population area would wind up at some point changing jobs and having a job in a NEW population area further away... and there's your commute.
Most people want somewhere to live, something to drink, something to eat, a job, some entertainment.
Most people also: -don't want a ton of people driving through the neighborhood to get to shops -don't want a massive amount of noise (from things like sports stadiums) right next to their house at night. -don't want to have the blaring bright lights of a ton of businesses keeping them up at night
Need I go on?
Why have we set up a society where people regularly travel 50 miles a day to go to work?
Because the workings of the marketplace, the desires of people to separate busy business centers from quiet neighborhood settings, and the fact that land very close to businesses invariably costs a metric butt-ton of money (which means your usual wage-slave can't even afford to live there if they WANTED to live close to work) have made it so.
People going to and fro for no good reason.
No, plenty of reasons, both good and bad. Also, reality.
Tsunamis/underwater earthquakes shift things significantly (and do direct damage).
A shift of just a couple feet in the tidal lines radically changes the amount of power generated, since tidal generation relies on the push/pull of the water's rush and the turbine's "best placement" is so that it's half-submerged halfway through the tidal shift.
And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?
And your proof to the contrary is... what, exactly?
Regarding the tech specs you were given: Do you have whitepapers showing differently? I work with these technologies and they all behave the way Mory said. Thermal degradation (cells losing power when they are outside their "optimal" operating temperature range) is a particularly vexing problem of every single battery and capacitor technology in use today.
Or, the engineers that designed the car had half a brain, and built in a reserve with a governor. Once the main cells are depleted, a reserve set of cells kicks in, with a governor that limits speed to, say, 25mph.
In other words, the car is carrying weight it (theoretically) is not intended to dip into. Brilliant! I can see that getting dropped REALLY QUICK.
And that's not counting the damage to the "reserve battery" of holding a full charge indefinitely "until needed." There is indeed nothing in the world quite like finding out your "failsafe" device has failed.
Before you ask: the "reserve" in a normal car isn't a separate tank. It's simply a level below which the fuel gauge reads "Empty" deliberately early, so that the user knows "better get gas right quick." The gas in the "reserve" doesn't go stale because it mixes with the new fuel on a fill-up and gets replaced over the normal course of a few fill-ups.
Or, the engineers that designed the car built it so the battery packs are replaceable on the fly.
I'd just like to note that nobody has yet designed an electric car to do either of the things you suggest.
just a reality resulting from the demographics the parties draw from... poor non-english speaking people trend as democrats
In other words, the Democrat party and their policies are defined by getting the votes of the stupid, uninformed, and clueless.
Glad to know they're being guided by an informed electorate as George Washington warned us we needed... uhm whoops!
Really? What voting system requires you to have a majority of the POSSIBLE votes?
The electoral college.
All that I've ever seen have required you to have the majority of CAST votes.
See above re: democrats voted for primarily by the uninformed and the stupid. Which are you, merely uninformed or stupid?
Its pretty lousy policy at the -federal- level that you can even have swing states that decide elections.
No, it's great policy for a country consisting of states themselves. The US presidential election is decided not by one "national" election, but by 51 (50 states plus DC) simultaneous STATE elections.
Of course you would know this were you not a democrat and therefore at very least uninformed if not worse by your own admission.
All voting machines have a margin of error - accounting for the likelihood of a misread, a data entry error (someone hitting the wrong button), or other malfunctions.
The voting machines used across the USA have an average margin of error of at least 1.5%, sometimes more depending on whose analysis you are using.
Al Gore "won" the popular vote by less than 1% nationwide. That means that all you can say is he had a statistical dead heat in the popular vote. If you wanted to have a national recount, there were plenty of states with margins that could easily have swung the other way around and not gone for Gore in a recount, it's just that Florida (and in particular, a couple of Florida counties) got focused on.
Of course, the OTHER option would have been to throw Florida's votes out, and then turn it over to the constitutional option when nobody has a majority... which means... oh, yeah, a vote by Congress with one vote apportioned to each state delegation. And the Republicans handily controlled that particular vote method at the time.
Frankly, given Florida was as close as it was, and a recount effort was not possible, and a federal deadline was looming, the fairest thing for Florida to have done, would have been to allocate its electoral votes evenly... say 13 for Bush, 12 for Gore. (Given that Bush had won the initial count.) And the election would have gone to Gore (278 to 259). Of course that would probably violate the Florida constitution/rules/whatever...
You're right, it would have violated the Florida statutes on electoral apportionment. And frankly, setting it up that way would be pretty lousy policy regardless, since it would give Florida that much less clout overall (ever noticed that nobody, political campaigning/advertising-wise, gives a crap about the couple of states that DO send in a "roughly proportional" number of electors?)
In perspective: - I saw the signature Moryath had before he put it on hiatus during the election. It wasn't provocative and had been there long before Obama was even nominated (or won enough votes to be the "presumptive nominee"), yet Obamatons were routinely verbally attacking Moryath and downmodding incredibly insightful, well-thought-out and sourced posts for the mere presence of the signature.
- For some reason, the same downmodding on slashdot does NOT happen to people for having some pretty disgusting anti-Bush/"antiwar" hippie signatures.
- For anyone who is a fan of the movie Idiocracy, or who has paid attention to their Civics and History courses, there comes a time when they realize that the current form of "Democracy" is having problems because the vote is not an informed choice.
Seriously, I want you to think about this. Not just in America, but everywhere, what percentage of voters do you think are actually of decent IQ and possessing enough knowledge to understand what they are voting on?
This is the point of the Mencken quote that Moryath posts, and whether or not you like it or not, I think it's a valid insight into the problems we are facing today. Far too many "votes" are cast, from the Presidency on downwards, with the people pulling the lever having absolutely no fucking clue what they are doing except that "that guy has X skin color", "I ain't voting for no ticket with a wimmin on it", or other reasons that have no place in the ballot box.
In short, the "right to vote" and "responsibility to vote" are bad ideas. Citizens should carry the responsibility to educate themselves on the issues and candidates and then, only when educated, cast an informed ballot so as not to fuck the rest of us over with their cluelessly random "choice."
As for the other things you write: His generalization that the left needs to do "homework" because they lack an understanding of the Geneva Conventions has no basis. Many people on the left have studied the Geneva Conventions quite thoroughly.
And many more have absolutely no fucking clue what the Geneva Conventions say , but shout about "war crimes" in between taking bong hits anyways. see above: YOU may have studied the Geneva Conventions thoroughly. I guarantee that most of your fellow travelers have not, because there are people who hold the same views as you who are morons.
Those statements are faulty generalizations on which he seems to have built at least part of his argument.
No, those statements are pretty accurate generalizations of the course of history surrounding Islamic society in warfare, both in wars between competing Islamic factions and between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, as they refer to societies of Muslims and exterior non-Islamic societies (and please note, dar al-harb literally means "domain of WAR", which is another point against your theory).
Many Islamic groups adhere quite strictly to a moral code, and, in fact, many of the Islamic militants fighting in Iraq are acting on the conviction that our culture and our invasion of Iraq go against that code.
If you insist on claiming that the Koran's "moral code" is in any way compatible with the Geneva Conventions, how about I start going through the list of things the Koran lists that are completely contradictory to them, starting with the taking of slaves from the battlefield or the killing of prisoners who fail to convert to Islam (unless they're valuable in which case they are to be ransomed for tribute)? I warn you now, I'll have a field day with this one.
The left-wing kook crowd (all too prevalent on Slashdot) seems to think that it's perfectly OK that someone broke into Palin's email, AND that un-warranted illegal checks were run countless times on anyone who had an actual critical question about Obama, and yet thinks it's not okay that someone wanted to find out who Obama was talking to on the phone?
What if it turns out that long after he'd supposedly "cut off" certain people (Wright, Ayers, the various members of his campaign committee who had to be booted for connections to Hamas fundraising or lobbyist scandals, etc) he was still talking to them five times a week? Wouldn't that be a little "suspicious"?
And shouldn't we, to use the same argument the left-wing kooks used to justify invading the privacy of Palin, "have the right to know"?
If you read the post, the following things were pretty clear:
(A) The hardware was designated LONG before he even considered trying Linux. (B) The cost to purchase other hardware is prohibitive at this point in time.
My problem is the user tried MythTV with hardware that was documented would not work very well and then blamed MythTV and Linux that they didn't work very well.
As long as Linux's community is more content to groan and whine and point fingers rather than fixing problems, Linux is in trouble. Whether or not they particularly like ATi, Linux will not grow by insisting on only certain hardware - first because it needs as much compatibility as possible, and second because it causes just such bad experiences like this when linux zealots are overenthusiastic and tell people that their system will run find and be ultra-happy with Linux when it quite possibly won't be.
The other problem I see here is the sheer number of linux zealots outright flaming the guy for telling what his problems were.
Let's face it, the LAST thing you want to do is tell someone who eventually you'd like to become a linux user (and they claim they want everyone to use Linux) "you suck", "you shouldn't be allowed to have a computer", "you should just get a Tivo", "you're stupid for buying hardware X", or anything else of the sort. You only contribute to their negative impression of Linux by doing so.
Anyone with any marketing sense will at this point remind you: one upset customer is worth 100 happy customers. People may tell one or two friends about their good experience at Restaurant X, but they will tell EVERYONE about Restaurant Y where the food was burned, the waitress was rude and late and caught making out with the busboy rather than checking her tables, and the check came back with a 20% gratuity already added on despite the crappy service. The same holds true for this: instead of this guy having one experience and saying "oh well, I guess it didn't work out" he's tried again and again, each time being told "ok they fixed it now, it'll work", each time it doesn't, AND he gets flamed by idiots and linux zealots for even bringing his bad experience up.
In the long run, this kind of behavior has only hurt the Linux community, and Linux zealots really need to realize this. You've driven away a ton of potential users.
Downmodding someone who's had a bad experience with a Linux distribution or a piece of Linux software isn't going to help, and neither is badmouthing them.
Now for my personal issue:
The documentation I've found, for any flavor of Linux, is (in descending order of maddening potential)
(A) poorly written (B) contradictory (C) arcane (as in, has a bunch of steps and scripts that would work fine... as long as NONE of them has a problem, in which case good luck finding out how the problem occurred or how to fix it) (D) written for the wrong version (instructions for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn no longer worked correctly on Gutsy Gibbon, no longer worked correctly on Hardy Heron, etc) (E) simply not present.
That's a problem. That's at least as big a barrier to entry as insisting people build a new box for their Linux purpose, rather than being able to use existing hardware that they probably purchased long before anyone even asked them to try Linux out.
And just to be perfectly clear, and at the risk of repeating myself: you can't go around badmouthing people for having the "wrong" hardware when you are the ones trying to get them to use your software.
No wonder people don't take Linux seriously on the big market. I'm starting, based on the behavior of writers in this thread, to wonder if they actually want people to use Linux or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Power corrupts
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Petty power corrupts all out of proportion to the real amount of power.
Politicians are endowed with a special mix of petty and absolute power such that they are all 100% corrupt while not being absolutely powerful.
He "forgot to mention" the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Yasser Arafat's granddad)'s collusion with Hitler and the forming of Arab SS brigades to implement the "final solution" along the Mediterranean coast, too.
Not just that: the very land on which most of the "Palestinian Refugee Camps" are part was actually supposed to be the "Palestinian" portion of the partition. The Arab armies claimed it for themselves (Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt) and then stuffed the Arab "Palestinians" into so-called" refugee camps" on the very same place that was supposed to have been their state in order to have a captive, poor population that could be easily manipulated for PR benefit.
Quoth Khaled Al-Azm (Syrian PM during the 1948 war) in his memoirs:
Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon the Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed, we have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes ....
Or how about UNRWA director Ralph Galloway?
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die.
Or how about King Hussein of Jordan?
Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestinian people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and,I could say, even criminal.
Basic problem:
Castlecops were volunteers. Spammers do what they do for a living. Eventually, the volunteers have to get back to the real world, while the spammers keep going and going because you're hitting them in the pocketbook.
Either we need a lot more volunteers, or we need to start imposing the the death sentence on convicted spammers and get the root problem solved.
FAirytales written by Arabs infuse the problem, perhaps.
Of course, occasionally one breaks down and tells the truth, like Khaled Al-Azm (Syrian PM in 1948 when they invaded) who stated the following in his memoirs:
"Since 1948, it is we who have demanded the return of the refugees, while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon a million Arab refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure on them to leave. We have accustomed them to begging...we have participated in lowering their morale and social level...Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson and throwing stones upon men, women and children...all this in the service of political purposes..."
Heck when the Arabs think you're not looking, they freely admit this to themselves. From the official Palestinian Authority Newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006 edition:
the leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the Nakba in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those Arkuvian promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events...
I think you're sadly misinformed, and so are those who slapped my information with a "-1 troll" because it got in the way of their propaganda efforts.
Not to mention the claim about aluminum being "hard to get".
Then again, given what the last order of aluminum pipes that were SUPPOSED to go towards rebuilding the greenhouses the Palestinians themselves destroyed were instead used for, I'm not too surprised about this one.
Other than the Palestinians were in fact living there and the way political events turned out where in fact removed by force.
Hmm, problems with your "theory"?
#1 - Arab nations told them to "get out of the way" for the war to kill the Jews.
#2 - Arab nations then failed to finish off killing the Jews, luckily for the world (I say so because of the sheer number of technological and medical advances to come from Israel in the last 50 years).
#3 - The areas which had been designated as "Palestine" by the original 1948 partition plan were taken over not by the "Eevil Joos", as claimed, but by Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt. The "Refugees" from Gaza and the West Bank were not "refugees" from Jewish settlement, but displaced by the invasion of ARAB armies and usurpation of the "palestinian"-intended land.
There's no valid reasoning at all. The 1948-1949 war resulted in Israel surviving, subsequent wars in which the Arabs lost territory were all started by the Arabs themselves. Further, look into citizenship law in Arab nations: no "Palestinian", no matter what, is allowed to get citizenship in another Arab nation for "fear of diluting their claim towards the eventual dissolution of the rogue Jewish state" (quote from the Saudi statute). The "Palestinian" side is not legitimate at all, it's simply one of the world's sickest propaganda campaigns, and the worst part is that the Palestinians are too brainwashed to notice that the rest of the Arabs deliberately keep them poor and pent up just for the propaganda ploys.
And especially given that regulatory agencies and courts have been loaded conservative for most of recent history
In what universe do you live? This is completely untrue.
Anybody who says "Democrat representatives" rather than the grammatically correct "Democratic representatives" is a right-winger pushing an agenda [wikipedia.org], and their assertions should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yawn.
"Will not forbid reintroduction of" is a long, long way from "Will reintroduce". She's not saying in that quote that she's going to actually do anything to reinstate the fairness doctrine. What she IS saying is that if some fringe player like Dennis Kucinich decides to grandstand on the issue and introduce a bill that everyone knows will fail, she's not going to waste time and political capital trying to stop him.
Quite the reverse: She is the Speaker of the House and thus has total control to set the agenda.
NO BILL REACHES THE FLOOR EXCEPT BY HER SAY-SO.
When she says she "will not forbid reintroduction", what she is issuing is an open invitation to submit same.
Pelosi's personal preferences aren't particularly interesting. There's a big difference between "things Nancy Pelosi would like to see" and "things Nancy Pelosi thinks she can get 218 House votes, 60 Senate votes, and the endorsement of the President for." If she doesn't think an issue rises to the latter level, she's not going to push it - why attach your name to something you know would be defeated?
See above. See also what happens when she manages to get Democrat control of the House, 58 Democrat Senators + 2 RINOs, and Kamerad Obama on the same line.
And then there's the small matter that regardless of what Pelosi would do, Barack Obama has explicitly rejected reinstating the Fairness Doctrine:
(A) - no, Obama didn't say anything: it was his Press Secretary saying it.
(B) - Meanwhile, Obama just tapped Henry Rivera as his FCC Transition Czar. Why is this significant? Because Rivera is a heavy Democrat supporter of "fairness doctrine" reinstatement.
(C) - Obama's insiders have also mentioned that their new push will not be called "fairness doctrine", but will push and tweak the policy into re-creation through changes and abusive threats of violations (combining "permanent station advisory boards" packed with left-wingers from each locality along with "accelerated reviews" every 2 years rather than the standard 8 year term) of the current FCC "localism" clauses, which require broadcasters to "serve their local communities" in order to retain their licenses. (letter from Obama on September 20, 2007 to FCC hearing of Operation Push, in Chicago).
All of which reinforces my original point
All of which points out that what you were just shoveling came direct out of the horse's stall.
It may seem cool to get your news from bloggers but they aren't news sources they just voice opinions they aren't held to any standards.
Newspapers haven't had standards at least since the 1970s.
Even broadcast news is all opinion pieces these days.
"Duh." Anyone who watched the insane rush to anoint Barack Obama and the nastiness with which every member of the press treated the other side (not to mention the witch-hunt mentality towards the few actually neutral reporters who dared to ask Obama/Biden the TOUGH questions) will realize this.
Of course, there's plenty of other evidence why this was the case.
Objective news is a dying thing.
Again, "Duh." The populace hasn't demanded balanced news, so it's dying. The recent push for the reinstitution of the "Fairness Doctrine" by the Dems is not really about "fairness", it's about their trying to take a stab at media outlets that don't carry their party line; you can be damn sure they would claim the "big" news networks are already "fair" and so "don't need changing" while they try to censor out anyone that doesn't agree with them.
Free speech and freedom of the press were separate things in the Constitution for a reason. One is opinion and one is supposed to preserve the right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government.
"The right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government" - sadly, the idea of "objective news" is nigh impossible to find. There are so many ways to tilt a story:
- Weasel words
- Incendiary words
- Selective sourcing
- Abuse of statistics ("counting the hits, forgetting the misses", etc)
And that's just a few.
It'll be a sad day when the last newspaper closes.
Funny, I think the opposite. Newspapers will either adapt, or they won't. I'd rather have a lot more, smaller newspapers (and local papers seem to do just fine, because they can get locally-targeted advertising) competing and catching each other's mistakes than one big conglomerate that simply wants to indoctrinate, lie to, deceive, manipulate, and tilt the story over and over and over again.
That's one thing they already did: Hubbard began publishing his "books", if you can call them that, in the early 1950s (Dianetics was first published in 1950). It wasn't until a few years later, when he was under investigation for making false medical claims, that they (as one ex-$cieno put it) "Dragged a cross in the door, put collars on and renamed the leaders 'Ministers'" and rebranded their brand of snake oil a "religion" as a dodge against medical fraud and tax laws.
Here's a great site covering the "evolution" of $cientology from a mere fraud to a bona fide nut cult.
Cult of $cientology's standard response to ANYTHING is "freedom of religion, nyah nyah nyah."
Caught evading taxes and breaking into the IRS? No problem - "Freedom of Religion."
Caught Trying to drive someone to suicide and framing them for crimes they didn't commit? No problem - "Freedom of Religion."
Making false medical claims? Drag a cross in the door, claim "Freedom of Religion."
Killed Someone? after removing them from a hospital? No problem - it was "Freedom of Religion."
Take advantage of a poor man having a stroke and playing "Weekend at Bernie's" with him to badmouth your critics? No problem - "Freedom of Religion."
Framing people? Lying about them under oath? "Fair Game" is a "Freedom of Religion" practice.
Ordering someone killed? Sorry, that's a practice of "Freedom of Religion."
No shit.
The best way to memorialize someone isn't to cry boo-hoo over the fact that they died... but to celebrate what they gave us in their life. I'm sure there are an absolute ton of wonderful stories about her, and if you feel the need to make a joke related to her career... you validate her career and life by doing so.
"She's dead, Jim." But at the same time the memories of her live on, and all she contributed to our lives will not be soon forgotten.
Raise a glass and make a toast: to Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before starting at the very beginning.
What part of being able to carry cargo did you not get?
Plus, public transportation sucks donkey balls. No, seriously - my commute would take 3 times as long and twice the distance (since I would have to make multiple connections and wait for each one). My travel in "public transportation" to visit the 'rents would take over a fucking day.
No Thank You.
You can do it. It's just not convenient or as easy as having your own car.
I'm also not fucking insane.
Catch a plane, and get a taxi when you get there. Any reason why you can't take a plane?
Because it's goddamn fucking expensive! Last time I ran the numbers (when gas was $3.70 a gallon) it STILL cost me twice as much to fly and rent a car to visit my parents, as opposed to driving the 500 miles to see them and having my own car when I got there (which also, incidentally, gave me the freedom to stay as long as I felt like without having to worry about missing a pre-scheduled plane flight).
Oh, and with my own car, I was also able to bring back a ton of cargo (a good chunk of the stuff my mother insists I take back to my own place) that there's no fucking way I could have spent the money to ship separately or check in baggage.
Why is work so far from home?
Because people don't have the option of moving every time they change jobs, especially if they have a lease that's not due or (worse yet) a mortgage.
Why do so many businesses and government offices cluster into one small city area?
To be near to each other, because business transactions go on between them. Businesses have to interact with government, businesses with businesses, etc. It is more efficient, for instance, for a bunch of restaurants to exist around a bunch of other businesses to serve the breakfast/lunch/dinner crowds at the time.
If they would spread their offices out to near where people live, people could travel a short distance to work.
Or, likely as not, people from one population area would wind up at some point changing jobs and having a job in a NEW population area further away... and there's your commute.
Most people want somewhere to live, something to drink, something to eat, a job, some entertainment.
Most people also:
-don't want a ton of people driving through the neighborhood to get to shops
-don't want a massive amount of noise (from things like sports stadiums) right next to their house at night.
-don't want to have the blaring bright lights of a ton of businesses keeping them up at night
Need I go on?
Why have we set up a society where people regularly travel 50 miles a day to go to work?
Because the workings of the marketplace, the desires of people to separate busy business centers from quiet neighborhood settings, and the fact that land very close to businesses invariably costs a metric butt-ton of money (which means your usual wage-slave can't even afford to live there if they WANTED to live close to work) have made it so.
People going to and fro for no good reason.
No, plenty of reasons, both good and bad. Also, reality.
Lessee...
Tsunamis/underwater earthquakes shift things significantly (and do direct damage).
A shift of just a couple feet in the tidal lines radically changes the amount of power generated, since tidal generation relies on the push/pull of the water's rush and the turbine's "best placement" is so that it's half-submerged halfway through the tidal shift.
I'd call it pretty significant.
And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?
And your proof to the contrary is... what, exactly?
Regarding the tech specs you were given: Do you have whitepapers showing differently? I work with these technologies and they all behave the way Mory said. Thermal degradation (cells losing power when they are outside their "optimal" operating temperature range) is a particularly vexing problem of every single battery and capacitor technology in use today.
Or, the engineers that designed the car had half a brain, and built in a reserve with a governor. Once the main cells are depleted, a reserve set of cells kicks in, with a governor that limits speed to, say, 25mph.
In other words, the car is carrying weight it (theoretically) is not intended to dip into. Brilliant! I can see that getting dropped REALLY QUICK.
And that's not counting the damage to the "reserve battery" of holding a full charge indefinitely "until needed." There is indeed nothing in the world quite like finding out your "failsafe" device has failed.
Before you ask: the "reserve" in a normal car isn't a separate tank. It's simply a level below which the fuel gauge reads "Empty" deliberately early, so that the user knows "better get gas right quick." The gas in the "reserve" doesn't go stale because it mixes with the new fuel on a fill-up and gets replaced over the normal course of a few fill-ups.
Or, the engineers that designed the car built it so the battery packs are replaceable on the fly.
I'd just like to note that nobody has yet designed an electric car to do either of the things you suggest.
If she's that loud, her vocalizations could probably power other "battery operated" devices she may use...
just a reality resulting from the demographics the parties draw from... poor non-english speaking people trend as democrats
In other words, the Democrat party and their policies are defined by getting the votes of the stupid, uninformed, and clueless.
Glad to know they're being guided by an informed electorate as George Washington warned us we needed... uhm whoops!
Really? What voting system requires you to have a majority of the POSSIBLE votes?
The electoral college.
All that I've ever seen have required you to have the majority of CAST votes.
See above re: democrats voted for primarily by the uninformed and the stupid. Which are you, merely uninformed or stupid?
Its pretty lousy policy at the -federal- level that you can even have swing states that decide elections.
No, it's great policy for a country consisting of states themselves. The US presidential election is decided not by one "national" election, but by 51 (50 states plus DC) simultaneous STATE elections.
Of course you would know this were you not a democrat and therefore at very least uninformed if not worse by your own admission.
Bullshit.
All voting machines have a margin of error - accounting for the likelihood of a misread, a data entry error (someone hitting the wrong button), or other malfunctions.
The voting machines used across the USA have an average margin of error of at least 1.5%, sometimes more depending on whose analysis you are using.
Al Gore "won" the popular vote by less than 1% nationwide. That means that all you can say is he had a statistical dead heat in the popular vote. If you wanted to have a national recount, there were plenty of states with margins that could easily have swung the other way around and not gone for Gore in a recount, it's just that Florida (and in particular, a couple of Florida counties) got focused on.
Of course, the OTHER option would have been to throw Florida's votes out, and then turn it over to the constitutional option when nobody has a majority... which means... oh, yeah, a vote by Congress with one vote apportioned to each state delegation. And the Republicans handily controlled that particular vote method at the time.
Frankly, given Florida was as close as it was, and a recount effort was not possible, and a federal deadline was looming, the fairest thing for Florida to have done, would have been to allocate its electoral votes evenly ... say 13 for Bush, 12 for Gore. (Given that Bush had won the initial count.) And the election would have gone to Gore (278 to 259). Of course that would probably violate the Florida constitution/rules/whatever...
You're right, it would have violated the Florida statutes on electoral apportionment. And frankly, setting it up that way would be pretty lousy policy regardless, since it would give Florida that much less clout overall (ever noticed that nobody, political campaigning/advertising-wise, gives a crap about the couple of states that DO send in a "roughly proportional" number of electors?)
Allow me to point you to something that explains much of the disagreement you are having:
People who hold the same views as you are morons.
In perspective:
- I saw the signature Moryath had before he put it on hiatus during the election. It wasn't provocative and had been there long before Obama was even nominated (or won enough votes to be the "presumptive nominee"), yet Obamatons were routinely verbally attacking Moryath and downmodding incredibly insightful, well-thought-out and sourced posts for the mere presence of the signature.
- For some reason, the same downmodding on slashdot does NOT happen to people for having some pretty disgusting anti-Bush/"antiwar" hippie signatures.
- For anyone who is a fan of the movie Idiocracy, or who has paid attention to their Civics and History courses, there comes a time when they realize that the current form of "Democracy" is having problems because the vote is not an informed choice.
Seriously, I want you to think about this. Not just in America, but everywhere, what percentage of voters do you think are actually of decent IQ and possessing enough knowledge to understand what they are voting on?
This is the point of the Mencken quote that Moryath posts, and whether or not you like it or not, I think it's a valid insight into the problems we are facing today. Far too many "votes" are cast, from the Presidency on downwards, with the people pulling the lever having absolutely no fucking clue what they are doing except that "that guy has X skin color", "I ain't voting for no ticket with a wimmin on it", or other reasons that have no place in the ballot box.
In short, the "right to vote" and "responsibility to vote" are bad ideas. Citizens should carry the responsibility to educate themselves on the issues and candidates and then, only when educated, cast an informed ballot so as not to fuck the rest of us over with their cluelessly random "choice."
As for the other things you write:
His generalization that the left needs to do "homework" because they lack an understanding of the Geneva Conventions has no basis. Many people on the left have studied the Geneva Conventions quite thoroughly.
And many more have absolutely no fucking clue what the Geneva Conventions say , but shout about "war crimes" in between taking bong hits anyways. see above: YOU may have studied the Geneva Conventions thoroughly. I guarantee that most of your fellow travelers have not, because there are people who hold the same views as you who are morons.
Those statements are faulty generalizations on which he seems to have built at least part of his argument.
No, those statements are pretty accurate generalizations of the course of history surrounding Islamic society in warfare, both in wars between competing Islamic factions and between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb, as they refer to societies of Muslims and exterior non-Islamic societies (and please note, dar al-harb literally means "domain of WAR", which is another point against your theory).
Many Islamic groups adhere quite strictly to a moral code, and, in fact, many of the Islamic militants fighting in Iraq are acting on the conviction that our culture and our invasion of Iraq go against that code.
If you insist on claiming that the Koran's "moral code" is in any way compatible with the Geneva Conventions, how about I start going through the list of things the Koran lists that are completely contradictory to them, starting with the taking of slaves from the battlefield or the killing of prisoners who fail to convert to Islam (unless they're valuable in which case they are to be ransomed for tribute)? I warn you now, I'll have a field day with this one.
Wow, seriously, you want to know what makes you a troll?
First off, you attacked someone for their signature. That's at least four kinds of lame.
Then you go off attacking a perfectly valid statement without any proof to the contrary.
I think Mory is right, you're nothing but a wingnut troll.
"It is better to stay quiet and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
Regarding you, sir, there remains no doubt.
No shit.
The left-wing kook crowd (all too prevalent on Slashdot) seems to think that it's perfectly OK that someone broke into Palin's email, AND that un-warranted illegal checks were run countless times on anyone who had an actual critical question about Obama, and yet thinks it's not okay that someone wanted to find out who Obama was talking to on the phone?
What if it turns out that long after he'd supposedly "cut off" certain people (Wright, Ayers, the various members of his campaign committee who had to be booted for connections to Hamas fundraising or lobbyist scandals, etc) he was still talking to them five times a week? Wouldn't that be a little "suspicious"?
And shouldn't we, to use the same argument the left-wing kooks used to justify invading the privacy of Palin, "have the right to know"?
If you read the post, the following things were pretty clear:
(A) The hardware was designated LONG before he even considered trying Linux.
(B) The cost to purchase other hardware is prohibitive at this point in time.
My problem is the user tried MythTV with hardware that was documented would not work very well and then blamed MythTV and Linux that they didn't work very well.
As long as Linux's community is more content to groan and whine and point fingers rather than fixing problems, Linux is in trouble. Whether or not they particularly like ATi, Linux will not grow by insisting on only certain hardware - first because it needs as much compatibility as possible, and second because it causes just such bad experiences like this when linux zealots are overenthusiastic and tell people that their system will run find and be ultra-happy with Linux when it quite possibly won't be.
The other problem I see here is the sheer number of linux zealots outright flaming the guy for telling what his problems were.
Let's face it, the LAST thing you want to do is tell someone who eventually you'd like to become a linux user (and they claim they want everyone to use Linux) "you suck", "you shouldn't be allowed to have a computer", "you should just get a Tivo", "you're stupid for buying hardware X", or anything else of the sort. You only contribute to their negative impression of Linux by doing so.
Anyone with any marketing sense will at this point remind you: one upset customer is worth 100 happy customers. People may tell one or two friends about their good experience at Restaurant X, but they will tell EVERYONE about Restaurant Y where the food was burned, the waitress was rude and late and caught making out with the busboy rather than checking her tables, and the check came back with a 20% gratuity already added on despite the crappy service. The same holds true for this: instead of this guy having one experience and saying "oh well, I guess it didn't work out" he's tried again and again, each time being told "ok they fixed it now, it'll work", each time it doesn't, AND he gets flamed by idiots and linux zealots for even bringing his bad experience up.
In the long run, this kind of behavior has only hurt the Linux community, and Linux zealots really need to realize this. You've driven away a ton of potential users.
Downmodding someone who's had a bad experience with a Linux distribution or a piece of Linux software isn't going to help, and neither is badmouthing them.
Now for my personal issue:
The documentation I've found, for any flavor of Linux, is (in descending order of maddening potential)
(A) poorly written
(B) contradictory
(C) arcane (as in, has a bunch of steps and scripts that would work fine... as long as NONE of them has a problem, in which case good luck finding out how the problem occurred or how to fix it)
(D) written for the wrong version (instructions for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn no longer worked correctly on Gutsy Gibbon, no longer worked correctly on Hardy Heron, etc)
(E) simply not present.
That's a problem. That's at least as big a barrier to entry as insisting people build a new box for their Linux purpose, rather than being able to use existing hardware that they probably purchased long before anyone even asked them to try Linux out.
And just to be perfectly clear, and at the risk of repeating myself: you can't go around badmouthing people for having the "wrong" hardware when you are the ones trying to get them to use your software.
No wonder people don't take Linux seriously on the big market. I'm starting, based on the behavior of writers in this thread, to wonder if they actually want people to use Linux or not.