I hope you slit your lying tongue with your razor tomorrow morning then choke to death on your own blood.
Ah, now I see why the F/OSS is so warmly embraced throughout the IT landscape.
Were it not for Opera, Mozilla, et al, introducing things like tabs, etc., we'd all still be stuck with the same old shift year after year
Yeah, it's a shame we can't just download and instal them. Rats.
It's trivial to make a high quality system where that isn't the case.
So get off your lazy ass and make one. If it's so trivial, and the market for people who actually know and care what the differences are between the file system and the app layer is so huge, then you should be able to make a ton of money with your new OS. Just like Steve Jobs, I suppose, right? Why not? Obviously, plenty of people are happy to buy an OS with a different architecture and presentation, and they can. But you'd still prefer that the government was in the software design business. You'd prefer that a judge spend a couple of years weighing in on a topic that will be old news before he even comes to terms with 10% of the implications of what he's talking about. Why? What's your interest in state-run software design standards?
I mean, I don't want to interrupt you or anything, but since it's trivial to build, market, and support an OS, you shouldn't be busy all afternoon. Do send around a link to the 30-day demo version when you've got it wrapped up though, OK? For the moment, you seem a little stressed out, since you're whining like a vapid junior high school girl on meth.
The girl did not want them to publish it (and had legal rights to stop them), while the newspaper, as part of a business, did want to publish it.
No, they did this without her knowledge. They didn't say, "We're planning on taking your rant, and running it as a pretend letter to the editor that we'll say you wrote to us, and we're just telling about that little bit of fraud on our part in case you want to hire a lawyer or anything." If anything, they grabbed it and falsely ran it a a letter to the editor specifically so that they wouldn't have to whittle it down into a fair-use excerpt and provide some sort of proper, actual-journalism context so that readers of the paper could understand how it came to be printed. Her wishes had nothing to do with it. Her principal found it online (while trolling her MySpace page, which is fascinating all by itself), and then when to his friend the newspaper editor and arranged to have her MySpace post run as if it were a letter that the girl had sent to the paper.
The only reason they put a browser into Windows at first was to kill Netscape.
The only reason any software company puts a feature in their software is because they expect it to attract and keep users, customers, etc. Is it really your contention that MS's actual goal was the destruction of a company, rather than increasing sales of their own software? Why shouldn't Microsoft want to sell more of their own loaded-up OSes, just like Apple does? Should the iPhone ship without a browser, and force you to run out, find, evaluate, and pick between Opera and Safari et al? Or might the vast majority of Apple's customers actually be rather pleased that their iPhone just comes with what the software designers thought was the right way to get them started, and the right thing to keep them as brand-thinking customers?
Do you think that Apple, with their hugely dominant iPhone and iPod, should have to take special care to make sure that the team from MS that makes and markets the Zune doesn't get their feelings hurt, and gets to have a special little protected place in the market? I mean, if MS wants to write a piece of software for use on the iPhone, should Apple back away, remove their own app in that class, and make sure that their competition gets to move into their platform instead? Why? Why not simply say, "make your own damn iPod-killer if you think you can," and watch what happens (or doesn't). Which is exactly what Apple has done. The Zune slumbers, in obscurity. Quick! Sue somebody! Apple's being mean by having the dominant platform and their own apps! Waaaaaah!
Listen you flaming jackass NOONE considers a Web Browser to be an essential part of the operating system!
Really? Just about every normal person I know who opens up a computer from the shrink wrap does consider it essential to be able get on the web. Immediately. So why should the company that's making the operating system and selling it to you not provide that basic, fundamental tool, right along with the other basic, fundamental tools they include? Are you just as upset that they're not providing free marketing to third party text editor vendors? Third party disk admin tools? Who are you to say what a private company should, or should not consider to be a foundational application that their millions of customers are likely to want from the moment the machine first boots up? Never mind, I know who.
You just said it's an essential component. Thanks for agreeing with the Justice Department.
No, I just agreed with Microsoft. They said it's important to be there. The government - who you obviously think should be designing software for you (what's it like to want that Nanny State so badly?) - said that it's not, and should be thought of as a separate tool.
It's nice to have. But not necessay
For you, perhaps. Do you really think that the vast majority of computer users really make a distinction between the kernel and the handful of apps that they fully expect to find available to them when they unwrap a computer? You need to get out of the basement more often, and interact with actual, typical computer users who buy one to do things like surf the web... not type in sudo apt-get somepackagename at a blinking cursor. You do know which decade this is, right? Web connectivity/access is part and parcel of the computer-using experience and expectation of pretty much everybody. Except Mac users, of course. Oh wait, they also get an Apple brand web browser in front of them when they boot up the first time, too. Eeeeeevil!
MS used its MONOPOLY in Operating Systems to stifle the browser segment
How about the Notepad Text Editor segment? How about the TCP/IP stack segment? How about the disk defragging segment? Should all of those be ripped out of the operating system? I consider a web browser to be an essential part of the operating system. I don't ever want to install an operating system that doesn't natively know how to grab an IP address from DHCP, resolve hostnames, connecto to web sites, and show me information. But you think that I should not be able to do that without interacting with third parties and their own software.
Why arent you simply saying that Microsoft should not be allowed to make operating systems? That's the logical step for your point of view. Even though there are other operating systems to choose from, you find that MS should not be allowed to have a definition of what a web browser is, as it relates to their own OS. Why? What about Firefox and Opera and Chrome and Safari is it that MS is suppressing? Or are you really just complaining because most people are lazy, and don't want to have to assemble their own operating system out of essential modules (like a web browser), and would rather just have something that works? They can buy that from Apple, or they can buy it from Microsoft. But you think one of them shouldn't be allowed to compete in the providing of an operating system that has vital things (like web browsing capability) already installed - even though they can run out and download any other tool they want, any time they want.
The fact that Explorer is just an extension of IE (XP still opens IE when you type a url into the adress bar of Explorer) speaks for itself
Yeah, it's almost like you have this "operating system," and it's designed to open files and stuff. And it's almost like the company that makes that operating system is, you know, a software company. And it's almost like they've realized that a browser-type app is the right front-end metaphor for most of the information that typical users of their operating system will want to see. So Eeeeeevil of them to provide a basic information tool as a built-in and well-integrated part of the operating system that is being used to, you know, work with information.
I suppose you'd also prefer that their OS didn't ship with a file system, or at least preferred that the file system was very poorly coupled to the operating system and the user experience? Excellent idea! In fact, the operating system maker has no business deciding what tools their customers might find useful. Other companies and governments should be in charge of designing the software made by that company. We can't have companies deciding what features to add to their own products, or what sort coupling with a web browser their own operating system should have. No way. That's too much freedom for a software company. We can't have freedom. We have to have software designed by goverment committees and courts! Unless, of course, it's a Mac, and that's OK. Or a Linux distro.
Thinking about it is a crime.
Writing about it is a crime.
Drawing about it is a crime.
Is prodding the TSA into making you be one of the thounsands of people that they pull aside each day (I've been one of them) for a closer look, so that your script (on paper? how blog-a-liciously convenient!) will pass temporarily through the hands of agents, so that you can pimp your products to a wider audience via outraged, sympathetic Useful Idiot anecdote-fueled foot-stomping on Slashfot... is that a crime? I guess we'll never know, since he was locked away. Oh, I guess not. He wasn't. Or charged. Or anything.
The irony that the papers they were reading were a fictional account of a government agency grabbing more authority than they should have is just the funny part of it all.
No, the irony is that the steps the author took to make sure he got one of the more close inspections of his gear so that he could have this anecdote to publish while getting dupes like you to believe that this is something other than a publicity stunt... the irony is that despite the sophomoric transparency of the whole thing, you fell for it.
Not really. If you are in the business of being a recording studio, the copyrighted material that you and the artists with which you work produce has a very real, commercial value to it. If you RTFA/S you'll see that some of the legal vagueness on this one surrounds the fact that her MySpace rant wasn't published in any sort of commercial context. It's just her, ranting. That doesn't have anything to do with whether or not she owns the copyright, but it has a lot to do with what's at stake when someone infringes on those copyrights. So, people who don't feel like meeting the price an artist is asking for the work they're selling, and simply rip it off, instead, are - correctly - the targets of a different sort of attention, legally. They're ripping someone off to avoid having to pay what the seller is asking. The MySpace rant wasn't for sale, and she doesn't earn her income through publishing her writings. That's an important consideration in arriving at a sense of what's at stake in the infringement.
The real issue is whether or not the newspaper knew they were misrepresenting the provenance of the "letter." The school principal sounds like a first rate asshat. Being buddies with the newspaper editor, it sounds unlikely that the "letter" made it into the Dear Editors area without it being well understood that it was a hatchet job. So, principal and editor are sleazy jerks. Fair enough, and this does strike me as a case of infringment, and other things besides. But the damages from the infringment aren't in the form of chipping away at what the rant author does for a living. And that's what's different, in this case, compared to a million kids buying themselves another Grande Iced Skim Half-Caffe Lattecino with the few bucks they saved by systematically ripping off the music of their favorite artists instead of paying a couple of bucks for it.
Oh well, we'll just leech it from thepiratebay.org
And if you don't like the price of some other import, do you just get some guys together, do down to the port and steal the stuff off the boat? If you don't like the price, consider not buying it and not ripping it off. Consider inspiring a company that is based in your own economy to produce an operating system you want, at a lower price. But mostly, just have the intellectual honest to not rip off something just because you don't like the price. Or do you do the same in restaurants? Do you hop the fence into concerts that you think aren't fair because they have a price? Or do you have the integrity to just not go? Or, is it OK for someone to set a price on what they make and sell, but you, in particular, get to take that away from them when it suits you, personally? Should your employer get to decide, at the end of your pay period, that he thinks you're a little over priced that week? Yeah, I thought so.
Iraq sold roughly $31 billion worth of oil in 2007, and double that in 2008. 2009 will be more still. That is damned peculiar, for "no one" buying it. It's a shame you haven't learned, yet, to use Google, and occasionally read about which companies and countriesare regularly buying from Iraq. Because, you know, you'd look like less of an ass and whatnot.
Iraq's government hasn't even settled the issue of which companies get to pay Iraq in exchange for the rights to work on that country's oil infrastructure and be involved in the selling of that country's oil. You know, selling. On the world market. It's a commodity. There is no "taking" going on. The US is putting more cash into supporting Iraq's nascent police and military and civil institutions than Iraq is making while selling oil (to the entire world market). US oil companies get to bid on that commodity just like European and Asian ones do.
Or, do you have a specific example of how the US government is actually filling up boats with oil in the middle of the night and not paying for it? No? I didn't think so.
I am sick of hearing people consider "growing the economy" the highest, most noble goal humankind can aspire to.
The only economy that can afford to invest in the shiny new technology that (as it has been doing for decades) improves our air/water quality, dramatically improves efficiencies and productivity per person and per acre and per hour... is a thriving and growing one.
His son isn't drafted to die in an oil field halfway across the world?
Yes, we're seeing a lot of that, now. The draft is a real burden. We may need one, though, when huge new taxes rock the economy, and places like Mexico completely fall apart at the seams.
His wife doesn't die of lung cancer from air pollution?
Maybe she should stop smoking. That's a much bigger problem than the pollution that we've hugely reduced over the last few decades. Of course, you trolling well know that.
having to wear oxygen masks when they go outside 40 years from now?
Yes, because if we don't do anything hugely punishing to everyone in the economy, we'll suddenly all be driving 1964 Buick station wagons again, with leaded gas.
As someone who lives northwest of town, I'd be loading up rifle magazines. It would be ugly. A total fiasco, and no doubt about it. At least I'm usually upwind of DC, so there's that (for the fallout!).
I really can't imagine any civilized way in which the handful of arteries that drain the inside-the-beltway area could handle it. I mean, think what happens when we get an inch of snow! That's all The Terrorists need: a snow making machine.
But going from that to "minorities don't exist" is a stretch.
Who's stretching? I don't care what color people are. I only care what they do.
But since the political left seems absolutely obsessed about pigeon-holing people into skin-based groups, let's play that game. Are there more "white" people, or more "not white" people in the world? How about in, say, Washington, DC? How about in... Mississippi? China? France? Morocco?
These things vary by geography. By continent, by nation, and in the US... by zip code. In any way that matters (say, at the fire department level), all statistical demographic considerations about group identity are local. But if the same firefighter relocates from, say, Boston to Washington, DC, the skin pigment math utterly changes. So, there either are no minorities, or everyone is a minority. Either way, the constitution should apply evenly across the board. That includes fire department promotions, school admissions, etc. Unless you think that the constitutional guarantee of equal protection should be applied only in certain zip codes.
This isn't 1950 any more. There are no government agencies, statutes, policies, practices, or preferences that put a given DNA group at a disadvantage. Well, except white firefighters, apparently. And certain school applicants. This isn't about minorities, since there's no such thing in any meaningful way. Hey, I'm only one of two "white" guys in my entire neighborhood. If minorities do exist, then I'm one of them. How does it help to say so? It doesn't make a bit of difference. My neighbors are either great people or asshats, based on how they conduct themselves, just like in any neighborhood. The only difference is that if I went to my local county to apply for subsidized housing in my current neighborhood, they would treat me better - by policy - if weren't lilly white. Funny, but true.
You prove your insularity by referring to the world outside the US as a "smaller environment".
No, I referred to Australia as a smaller environment. Which it is. Significantly.
Bigot? From the dictionary: "one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Now, which of us finds the product of the other's country to be that which "really pisses them off?" Right. That's you. Not that you're really using the word correctly, but in the slightly twisted context that you're using it, you're the one exhibiting exactly what you're complaining about. If you were less of the "narrow minded" that you're complaining about, you'd recognize that it's your own narrow mindedness that thinks the rest of the world should be catering to you. Here's narrow-minded: having a hissy fit when a foreign company's products reflect the fact that they're from a foreign country. Why those annoying, lazy foreign bastards! Who cares if you sound like a bigot when you say that, right? They're too lazy and foreign to do what you want!
thoughtless decisions made by insular assholes like yourself
Insular? I make do with products from all over the world, and have no problem dealing with the idiosyncratic ways in which their countries of origin impact their design and function. The insular person (you) is the one that bitches about things not being perfectly tuned to his own, smaller environment. You want things to be just so, for you, in your local way. I personally don't get in a twist over print size defaults like "A4" when I'd really rather it was more like 8.5 x 11, which is my default. But you know, it doesn't get me apoplectic like does you, and I certainly don't find it to be "those damn Germans" etc who "really piss me off"... because, I don't get really pissed off over that sort of thing. It's a shame you do - what a waste of life.
It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack
Impossible.
I live near DC, and carry a balance on my Citibank Visa card. At these interest rates, they won't let anything happen to me. The nation's capital is safe. As long as you don't ride the Metro, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you slit your lying tongue with your razor tomorrow morning then choke to death on your own blood.
Ah, now I see why the F/OSS is so warmly embraced throughout the IT landscape.
Were it not for Opera, Mozilla, et al, introducing things like tabs, etc., we'd all still be stuck with the same old shift year after year
Yeah, it's a shame we can't just download and instal them. Rats.
It's trivial to make a high quality system where that isn't the case.
So get off your lazy ass and make one. If it's so trivial, and the market for people who actually know and care what the differences are between the file system and the app layer is so huge, then you should be able to make a ton of money with your new OS. Just like Steve Jobs, I suppose, right? Why not? Obviously, plenty of people are happy to buy an OS with a different architecture and presentation, and they can. But you'd still prefer that the government was in the software design business. You'd prefer that a judge spend a couple of years weighing in on a topic that will be old news before he even comes to terms with 10% of the implications of what he's talking about. Why? What's your interest in state-run software design standards?
I mean, I don't want to interrupt you or anything, but since it's trivial to build, market, and support an OS, you shouldn't be busy all afternoon. Do send around a link to the 30-day demo version when you've got it wrapped up though, OK? For the moment, you seem a little stressed out, since you're whining like a vapid junior high school girl on meth.
In XP...
Let's see, that would the operating system that's about to be two generations old, now?
The girl did not want them to publish it (and had legal rights to stop them), while the newspaper, as part of a business, did want to publish it.
No, they did this without her knowledge. They didn't say, "We're planning on taking your rant, and running it as a pretend letter to the editor that we'll say you wrote to us, and we're just telling about that little bit of fraud on our part in case you want to hire a lawyer or anything." If anything, they grabbed it and falsely ran it a a letter to the editor specifically so that they wouldn't have to whittle it down into a fair-use excerpt and provide some sort of proper, actual-journalism context so that readers of the paper could understand how it came to be printed. Her wishes had nothing to do with it. Her principal found it online (while trolling her MySpace page, which is fascinating all by itself), and then when to his friend the newspaper editor and arranged to have her MySpace post run as if it were a letter that the girl had sent to the paper.
Can you not see the difference, here?
The only reason they put a browser into Windows at first was to kill Netscape.
The only reason any software company puts a feature in their software is because they expect it to attract and keep users, customers, etc. Is it really your contention that MS's actual goal was the destruction of a company, rather than increasing sales of their own software? Why shouldn't Microsoft want to sell more of their own loaded-up OSes, just like Apple does? Should the iPhone ship without a browser, and force you to run out, find, evaluate, and pick between Opera and Safari et al? Or might the vast majority of Apple's customers actually be rather pleased that their iPhone just comes with what the software designers thought was the right way to get them started, and the right thing to keep them as brand-thinking customers?
Do you think that Apple, with their hugely dominant iPhone and iPod, should have to take special care to make sure that the team from MS that makes and markets the Zune doesn't get their feelings hurt, and gets to have a special little protected place in the market? I mean, if MS wants to write a piece of software for use on the iPhone, should Apple back away, remove their own app in that class, and make sure that their competition gets to move into their platform instead? Why? Why not simply say, "make your own damn iPod-killer if you think you can," and watch what happens (or doesn't). Which is exactly what Apple has done. The Zune slumbers, in obscurity. Quick! Sue somebody! Apple's being mean by having the dominant platform and their own apps! Waaaaaah!
Listen you flaming jackass NOONE considers a Web Browser to be an essential part of the operating system!
Really? Just about every normal person I know who opens up a computer from the shrink wrap does consider it essential to be able get on the web. Immediately. So why should the company that's making the operating system and selling it to you not provide that basic, fundamental tool, right along with the other basic, fundamental tools they include? Are you just as upset that they're not providing free marketing to third party text editor vendors? Third party disk admin tools? Who are you to say what a private company should, or should not consider to be a foundational application that their millions of customers are likely to want from the moment the machine first boots up? Never mind, I know who.
You just said it's an essential component. Thanks for agreeing with the Justice Department.
No, I just agreed with Microsoft. They said it's important to be there. The government - who you obviously think should be designing software for you (what's it like to want that Nanny State so badly?) - said that it's not, and should be thought of as a separate tool.
It's nice to have. But not necessay
For you, perhaps. Do you really think that the vast majority of computer users really make a distinction between the kernel and the handful of apps that they fully expect to find available to them when they unwrap a computer? You need to get out of the basement more often, and interact with actual, typical computer users who buy one to do things like surf the web... not type in sudo apt-get somepackagename at a blinking cursor. You do know which decade this is, right? Web connectivity/access is part and parcel of the computer-using experience and expectation of pretty much everybody. Except Mac users, of course. Oh wait, they also get an Apple brand web browser in front of them when they boot up the first time, too. Eeeeeevil!
MS used its MONOPOLY in Operating Systems to stifle the browser segment
How about the Notepad Text Editor segment? How about the TCP/IP stack segment? How about the disk defragging segment? Should all of those be ripped out of the operating system? I consider a web browser to be an essential part of the operating system. I don't ever want to install an operating system that doesn't natively know how to grab an IP address from DHCP, resolve hostnames, connecto to web sites, and show me information. But you think that I should not be able to do that without interacting with third parties and their own software.
Why arent you simply saying that Microsoft should not be allowed to make operating systems? That's the logical step for your point of view. Even though there are other operating systems to choose from, you find that MS should not be allowed to have a definition of what a web browser is, as it relates to their own OS. Why? What about Firefox and Opera and Chrome and Safari is it that MS is suppressing? Or are you really just complaining because most people are lazy, and don't want to have to assemble their own operating system out of essential modules (like a web browser), and would rather just have something that works? They can buy that from Apple, or they can buy it from Microsoft. But you think one of them shouldn't be allowed to compete in the providing of an operating system that has vital things (like web browsing capability) already installed - even though they can run out and download any other tool they want, any time they want.
Are you even listening to yourself?
The fact that Explorer is just an extension of IE (XP still opens IE when you type a url into the adress bar of Explorer) speaks for itself
Yeah, it's almost like you have this "operating system," and it's designed to open files and stuff. And it's almost like the company that makes that operating system is, you know, a software company. And it's almost like they've realized that a browser-type app is the right front-end metaphor for most of the information that typical users of their operating system will want to see. So Eeeeeevil of them to provide a basic information tool as a built-in and well-integrated part of the operating system that is being used to, you know, work with information.
I suppose you'd also prefer that their OS didn't ship with a file system, or at least preferred that the file system was very poorly coupled to the operating system and the user experience? Excellent idea! In fact, the operating system maker has no business deciding what tools their customers might find useful. Other companies and governments should be in charge of designing the software made by that company. We can't have companies deciding what features to add to their own products, or what sort coupling with a web browser their own operating system should have. No way. That's too much freedom for a software company. We can't have freedom. We have to have software designed by goverment committees and courts! Unless, of course, it's a Mac, and that's OK. Or a Linux distro.
Welcome to the era of Thought Crime.
Thinking about it is a crime.
Writing about it is a crime.
Drawing about it is a crime.
Is prodding the TSA into making you be one of the thounsands of people that they pull aside each day (I've been one of them) for a closer look, so that your script (on paper? how blog-a-liciously convenient!) will pass temporarily through the hands of agents, so that you can pimp your products to a wider audience via outraged, sympathetic Useful Idiot anecdote-fueled foot-stomping on Slashfot... is that a crime? I guess we'll never know, since he was locked away. Oh, I guess not. He wasn't. Or charged. Or anything.
The irony that the papers they were reading were a fictional account of a government agency grabbing more authority than they should have is just the funny part of it all.
No, the irony is that the steps the author took to make sure he got one of the more close inspections of his gear so that he could have this anecdote to publish while getting dupes like you to believe that this is something other than a publicity stunt... the irony is that despite the sophomoric transparency of the whole thing, you fell for it.
if (you == RIAA) {
throw COPY_VIOLATION;
} else {
throw NOBODY_CARES;
Not really. If you are in the business of being a recording studio, the copyrighted material that you and the artists with which you work produce has a very real, commercial value to it. If you RTFA/S you'll see that some of the legal vagueness on this one surrounds the fact that her MySpace rant wasn't published in any sort of commercial context. It's just her, ranting. That doesn't have anything to do with whether or not she owns the copyright, but it has a lot to do with what's at stake when someone infringes on those copyrights. So, people who don't feel like meeting the price an artist is asking for the work they're selling, and simply rip it off, instead, are - correctly - the targets of a different sort of attention, legally. They're ripping someone off to avoid having to pay what the seller is asking. The MySpace rant wasn't for sale, and she doesn't earn her income through publishing her writings. That's an important consideration in arriving at a sense of what's at stake in the infringement.
The real issue is whether or not the newspaper knew they were misrepresenting the provenance of the "letter." The school principal sounds like a first rate asshat. Being buddies with the newspaper editor, it sounds unlikely that the "letter" made it into the Dear Editors area without it being well understood that it was a hatchet job. So, principal and editor are sleazy jerks. Fair enough, and this does strike me as a case of infringment, and other things besides. But the damages from the infringment aren't in the form of chipping away at what the rant author does for a living. And that's what's different, in this case, compared to a million kids buying themselves another Grande Iced Skim Half-Caffe Lattecino with the few bucks they saved by systematically ripping off the music of their favorite artists instead of paying a couple of bucks for it.
Is that what we mere mortals call a 'storm'?
What, are you trying to make some sort of humor event?
Oh well, we'll just leech it from thepiratebay.org
And if you don't like the price of some other import, do you just get some guys together, do down to the port and steal the stuff off the boat? If you don't like the price, consider not buying it and not ripping it off. Consider inspiring a company that is based in your own economy to produce an operating system you want, at a lower price. But mostly, just have the intellectual honest to not rip off something just because you don't like the price. Or do you do the same in restaurants? Do you hop the fence into concerts that you think aren't fair because they have a price? Or do you have the integrity to just not go? Or, is it OK for someone to set a price on what they make and sell, but you, in particular, get to take that away from them when it suits you, personally? Should your employer get to decide, at the end of your pay period, that he thinks you're a little over priced that week? Yeah, I thought so.
$799 = £899
What country uses A-with-a-hat-on pounds?
Those of us in the tiny mountainous principality of Asshatteryburg, you insensitive clod!
It was originally "Hapsburg," but you know what happens when stuff gets written down without a spellchecker over the years.
Since you guys invaded no one buys oil from Iraq.
Iraq sold roughly $31 billion worth of oil in 2007, and double that in 2008. 2009 will be more still. That is damned peculiar, for "no one" buying it. It's a shame you haven't learned, yet, to use Google, and occasionally read about which companies and countries are regularly buying from Iraq. Because, you know, you'd look like less of an ass and whatnot.
Iraq, or are you permanently unconscious?
Iraq's government hasn't even settled the issue of which companies get to pay Iraq in exchange for the rights to work on that country's oil infrastructure and be involved in the selling of that country's oil. You know, selling. On the world market. It's a commodity. There is no "taking" going on. The US is putting more cash into supporting Iraq's nascent police and military and civil institutions than Iraq is making while selling oil (to the entire world market). US oil companies get to bid on that commodity just like European and Asian ones do.
Or, do you have a specific example of how the US government is actually filling up boats with oil in the middle of the night and not paying for it? No? I didn't think so.
The ones we take oil from do want to nuke us.
Please list the countries from which we "take" oil.
I am sick of hearing people consider "growing the economy" the highest, most noble goal humankind can aspire to.
The only economy that can afford to invest in the shiny new technology that (as it has been doing for decades) improves our air/water quality, dramatically improves efficiencies and productivity per person and per acre and per hour... is a thriving and growing one.
His son isn't drafted to die in an oil field halfway across the world?
Yes, we're seeing a lot of that, now. The draft is a real burden. We may need one, though, when huge new taxes rock the economy, and places like Mexico completely fall apart at the seams.
His wife doesn't die of lung cancer from air pollution?
Maybe she should stop smoking. That's a much bigger problem than the pollution that we've hugely reduced over the last few decades. Of course, you trolling well know that.
having to wear oxygen masks when they go outside 40 years from now?
Yes, because if we don't do anything hugely punishing to everyone in the economy, we'll suddenly all be driving 1964 Buick station wagons again, with leaded gas.
Who killed JFK
The mob. They hated him and his brother.
what happened to Building 7?
Fatigued superstructure from the shower of massive pieces of the collapsing adjoining buildings and the fire from generator fuel.
Of course, you know that. Nice troll, though!
evacuate D.C.
As someone who lives northwest of town, I'd be loading up rifle magazines. It would be ugly. A total fiasco, and no doubt about it. At least I'm usually upwind of DC, so there's that (for the fallout!).
I really can't imagine any civilized way in which the handful of arteries that drain the inside-the-beltway area could handle it. I mean, think what happens when we get an inch of snow! That's all The Terrorists need: a snow making machine.
But going from that to "minorities don't exist" is a stretch.
Who's stretching? I don't care what color people are. I only care what they do.
But since the political left seems absolutely obsessed about pigeon-holing people into skin-based groups, let's play that game. Are there more "white" people, or more "not white" people in the world? How about in, say, Washington, DC? How about in... Mississippi? China? France? Morocco?
These things vary by geography. By continent, by nation, and in the US... by zip code. In any way that matters (say, at the fire department level), all statistical demographic considerations about group identity are local. But if the same firefighter relocates from, say, Boston to Washington, DC, the skin pigment math utterly changes. So, there either are no minorities, or everyone is a minority. Either way, the constitution should apply evenly across the board. That includes fire department promotions, school admissions, etc. Unless you think that the constitutional guarantee of equal protection should be applied only in certain zip codes.
This isn't 1950 any more. There are no government agencies, statutes, policies, practices, or preferences that put a given DNA group at a disadvantage. Well, except white firefighters, apparently. And certain school applicants. This isn't about minorities, since there's no such thing in any meaningful way. Hey, I'm only one of two "white" guys in my entire neighborhood. If minorities do exist, then I'm one of them. How does it help to say so? It doesn't make a bit of difference. My neighbors are either great people or asshats, based on how they conduct themselves, just like in any neighborhood. The only difference is that if I went to my local county to apply for subsidized housing in my current neighborhood, they would treat me better - by policy - if weren't lilly white. Funny, but true.
You prove your insularity by referring to the world outside the US as a "smaller environment".
No, I referred to Australia as a smaller environment. Which it is. Significantly.
Bigot? From the dictionary: "one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Now, which of us finds the product of the other's country to be that which "really pisses them off?" Right. That's you. Not that you're really using the word correctly, but in the slightly twisted context that you're using it, you're the one exhibiting exactly what you're complaining about. If you were less of the "narrow minded" that you're complaining about, you'd recognize that it's your own narrow mindedness that thinks the rest of the world should be catering to you. Here's narrow-minded: having a hissy fit when a foreign company's products reflect the fact that they're from a foreign country. Why those annoying, lazy foreign bastards! Who cares if you sound like a bigot when you say that, right? They're too lazy and foreign to do what you want!
Right, there is no such thing as discrimination in current society.
There sure is. Just ask the guys who made the mistake of being the wrong color when they passed the New Haven fire department's promotion test.
thoughtless decisions made by insular assholes like yourself
... because, I don't get really pissed off over that sort of thing. It's a shame you do - what a waste of life.
Insular? I make do with products from all over the world, and have no problem dealing with the idiosyncratic ways in which their countries of origin impact their design and function. The insular person (you) is the one that bitches about things not being perfectly tuned to his own, smaller environment. You want things to be just so, for you, in your local way. I personally don't get in a twist over print size defaults like "A4" when I'd really rather it was more like 8.5 x 11, which is my default. But you know, it doesn't get me apoplectic like does you, and I certainly don't find it to be "those damn Germans" etc who "really piss me off"
Hmm. Definitely the wolverine, no question. Thanks for the better option!
It seems like just one or two nukes could make the U.S. nearly incapable of defending itself against a serious attack
Impossible.
I live near DC, and carry a balance on my Citibank Visa card. At these interest rates, they won't let anything happen to me. The nation's capital is safe. As long as you don't ride the Metro, anyway.