You used a straw man saying that he said Iraq was peachy before we got there
No, he brought up two unrelated issues, and I addressed each of them. My whole point is that they ARE unrelated. Saddam needed to go away, for a lot of reasons including his refusal to come clean on his weapons programs, his continued attacks on peacekeeping aircraft, his payments to terrorists, and more. That's one topic. Iran is, right now, doing its best to prevent a West-friendly democracy from easing into a relatively peaceful, Turkey-like existence. That's a separate issue.
Saying that we shouldn't be clear, right now, about what Iran is doing, because they didn't have anything to do with Saddam's financial skimming and infrastructure neglect makes no flippin' sense whatseover.
Over 70% of the American population supports immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Cite a reliable source for that number. I think you'll find that the majority of the US wish it was over, and quickly, but aren't such fools as to think that just packing up and leaving is actually in anyone's interests, excepts Iran's.
And if the factions in Iraq are truly intent on civil war, they'll wait as long as needed to have one.
The factions in Iraq are far more inclined to get pissed at each other when operatives from, equipped, and/or financed/trained by Iran blow things up specifically to inflame sectarian conflicts. That's exactly the point.
I know of a few candidates for president that would end the war immediately, and I don't think it's fair to categorize them as mistaken.
You're as confused as they are, then. You can't just "end the war." If we could just "end the war," then it would already BE ended. You want to end our involvement IN the war, and seem to have a preference for the all-out, world destablizing conflict that would ensue if the Turks, the Iranians, the Syrians, and everyone else suddenly decided it was time to annex and fight over Iraq. Why is it you prefer that outcome over a constitutional democracy?
What's slipping past you is that they could defund the war immediately by preventing any spending bill from hitting the floor.
But they DON'T, because they know they can't and shouldn't. Because they'd only have to spend far more in money and lives later as a result. You know that, too. But you're so busy looking for a local political fight on other matters that you're willing to pretend that's not true just so you can bitch about the current administration.
Remember the lies about WMD?
No, actually. I remember that every other major power in the world developed similar intel, and that Saddam visibly had giant piles of some of the nastiest chemical weapons ever made, and refused to destroy them or show what he'd done with them. By the way, do YOU know where all of that VX went? No one else does, either.
Fox News still counts as the mass media and does NOT count as an intelligent place.
Out of curiosity, why throw that straw man in there? What does one network's counter-leaning against several other others that clearly and loudly lean WAY the other direction have to do with the thread? I replied to someone who decided to throw in a non-sequitor about how since Iran was responsible for Saddam's failure to build and maintain public infrastructure, that we shouldn't worry about what Iran IS doing, right now, in the way of killing the people in Iraq who are trying to undo decades of Saddam's neglect and malice. What on EARTH does that have to do with the fact that you prefer the way CNN spins the news?
Yes, because it was Iran that destroyed that country's infrastructure (water, sewers, roads, bridges, airports, hospitals, museums, everything except the oil infrastructure), disbanded its military and police, and wrote their new constitution so its mercenary army is above the law and no court in the country can touch them.
If you really want to go to a lot of trouble to point out that you're a troll, why not just explain it directly? Why use all the BS code-satire?
Iraq's infrastructure was completely in the dumps long before 2003. The UN sanctions, combined with Saddam's skimming all of the actual remaining cash flow to rebuild his military and his personal tribal palaces, saw to it that nothing was being spend to fix the craptastic power grid, refineries, and plumbing. You really think that the previous military and law enforcement regimes were bastions of just, and even-handed peacekeeping? You mean, like, in between burying non-Sunnis in mass graves, shooting at NATO aircraft ever week for years after signing a cease-fire that said they wouldn't, after invading a neighboring country? Yes, those were the good old days.
It wasn't Iran that did that, it was Saddam. And now it's Iran's mullahs that don't want anything healthy, peaceful, and democratic thriving next door, since they know that that's exactly what most of their younger populat desparately want right there in their own country. And so we have Iran shipping troops, explosives, cash, and more aross the border in an attempt, via badly painted proxies, to prevent things from productively moving ahead. Why is you'd prefer that? What's your point, exactly?
Are you actually under the impression that Iran is just a warm and fuzzy neighbor that only wants to help out, now that their poor Sunni tyrant next door is out of power, and, alas, as dead as the millions of people that died when he started a war with Iran, too? Yeesh.
Which, BTW I consider one of the most tragic things to happen to America in the last 100 years.
Which is more tragic: you get the permit to make use of a facility such as a convention center to hold a political event for you and your fellows, pay to make sure that police and rescue people are on hand to keep entrance and exit from the building safe, and then anyone with a length of chain or a giant puppet gets to shut down your event? Or, you get to exercise your First Amendment Rights just like anyone who goes to the same trouble to book that facility, get a parade permit, etc?
The most tragic thing to happen to the country in the last 100 years is that people of all idealogies actually get their rights defended and don't have to give up on their right to peacably assemble because someone else wants to shout them down? That, to you, is tragic? If you want to hold an event, you ALSO get to have it without it being shut down by the sort of people that throw bricks at bystanders.
You have it totally backwards. You can stand on a streetcorner any time you want and say anything you want. And you can go to the trouble of arranging for a larger event - including the protections needed for access to and from it - any time you want, just like anyone else can. As much as some peoople might WANT to disrupt your ability to speak, assemble, and hold events like political rallies, they don't get to. They don't get to block the street that you've arranged to use. They don't get to smash your vehicles or burn your signs. You don't get to do it them, and they don't get to do it to you. Equal protection means just that. If you're the sort that thinks it's UN-equal when you don't get to shout down someone else's speech or throw paint on their parade float or smash a Starbucks window just to show how cool you are and how righteous your point of view is, well, then you're just wrong and there's really no talking to. Luckily, you can't stop me from talking, and I can't stop you. Go ahead: book a parade venue, and see what happens when I go online to a couple thousand loony buddies and threaten to shut down your route. What happens is that your rights are protected.
No, they really aren't. If they were they would have actually opposed the Iraq War like they should have.
You're confused. The lefter-leaning networks have always backed the lefter-leaning candidates and their more centrest party-mates. They still do. That's not exactly surprising.
What seems to be slipping past you is the large number of Democrat politicians that did support going after Saddam's regime, and which today - right now - if asked about yanking troops out of a country that is being actively destabilized by Iran, would confess that they know that's a really bad idea. The ones proclaiming that they'd "end the war" the moment they had the authority to remove troops are either lying (most likely), or are mistaken (in that they'd change their minds the moment the responsibility was actually in their laps). They don't HAVE the authority or the responsibility, and don't have any shame about using that comfortable position to make craven politics out of saying what they WOULD do, and how wrong someone else is doing it. Either way, networks like CBS, and CNN, and NPR, and NBC continue to spin coverage towards the Democrats because that's where their politics lay. Stop conflating two separate issues.
The last time I drove around Cape Breton - it was early October and the colors finally made me understand the red maple leaf on the flag - it was a lovely afternoon. We pitched a small campsite in a place with a name something like "Killmychickencluck," and had a lovely evening. We woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a bull moose roaming around the camp, and barely fell back asleep. When we woke up again, there was a roughly 2-inch layer of spikey frost on everything. It was spectacular. We tried to talk to the locals about it, but We're Not From Around There, and they didn't take to us very well, I'm afraid. But we were able to gather that the weather just gets more interesting from then until, say, May. Wouldn't it make more sense to park this sort of thing somewhere with a bit more year-round opportunity for doing business, climate-wise? It's a bit of a drive down to Halifax, but there was a lovely Italian place for dinner, and a Holiday Inn with a clean pool. And, men in kilts working the tourist stops. But they had entirely the wrong accent for that, thus producing a sort of Highland Dissonance Syndrome that counteracted all tourist spending urges. Perhaps adding rocket ships to the mix will fix that.
Which, apparently, means you are far more likely to believe you've seen a ghost, too. And whether or not you actually believe in the false dichotomy you're preaching, you're still preaching it.
I happen to have lived in Cameroon during the "bank failure" and you couldn't make an bank withdrawal
My neighbor is from Cameroon. Thing like that are one of the reasons he moved here.
You're making generalizations and sounding like an ass.
You mean, generalizations like... like the people who work in finance, banking, and all of the behind-the-scenes telecomm and other plumbing that allows people to NOT have to work out of wheelbarrow should take a back seat to... someone else?
Secondly, there's a difference between the "banking system" and the "society". A collapse of the banking system would not create social collapse. Argentina had a banking collapse, and they got through it. I'd rather live through an Argentinian style crisis than a "Hot Zone".
You're confusing the failure of a bank's investments/investors, or other macro-economic issues that revolve around a healthy banking system (financially) with failure of the ability to actually write a check or wire some money. The people in Argentina didn't lose the ability wire money.
I'm not the one spending US dollars that have lost 35% of their value over the last 6 years, but you probably are
And luckily you're not making any assumptions or generalizations either, right?
We have to protect our banking system! We should definitely start some kind of a group that would be willing to donate food, medicines, educational supplies or potable water to the banking system. We can't let anything bad happen to them.
You know, sarcasm can be a really elegant tool, when it isn't used in the service of ignorance.
You think the economy would suck if a whole lot of people couldn't physically go to work or handle food? How much MORE do you think it would suck if everyone who was still participating in a wounded economy had to also drive around wheelbarrows of barter goods in order to get anything done? A well-oiled electronic banking system could well be one of the most important assets in preventing social collapse in the event of a particularly ugly pandemic. So, what will YOU be bartering? Copies of Ubuntu on cool purple DVDs? Your three extra pairs of clean socks? Your ability to dig out latrines? Hmmm. Many a modern economy is more convenient than a medieval one, and worth protecting. No banking system, no modern economy.
Stop bringing the straw man of movies into this. Some movies are worthy of seeing in a theater. I will pay for that. No one but you brought up movies. We're talking of music.
Stop? Why? YOU'RE the one that's bringing up the issue of producing something first, and then collecting money for it after the fact as people enjoy it, and saying that's a bad thing. A film could be shown millions of times after it's been produced. So what if YOU will pay for that. You know perfectly well that plenty of people who rip of music rip of movies, too, for exactly the same reason: they want it, and don't feel like paying for their entertainment. Are you saying that someone who spends millions of dollars to make a film should only be able to earn their money when the film is played in a huge, ugly, energy-inefficient building which you have to drive to in order to use, but that if the film is ripped off and played on a 60-inch plasma in front of your couch, then that's just too bad for the film maker?
There's simply no way you can be so intellectually dishonest as to think there's any meaningful philosophical separation between a laboriously created audio recording and a laboriously created film. The fact that you're pretending there is shows how craven you're being in defense of being able to rip off music.
So, the fact that a US-made (or norweigan-made) software program was used for censorship (or military encryption, or...) should not itself be alarming. The title should be more like, "US firm sold censorship software to Burmese military".
Come now! You're losing all of your slashdottedness! If the headline doesn't make it sound like President Bush personally made a phone call to make sure that a US firm, no doubt owned by Halliburton, has tech support people on site helping with deployment, raping villages on weekends, and sending back container loads of gold and diamonds to Dick Cheney's gardener, who buries them in the back yard under a tree shaped like the Masonic logo... well, then, that's just not a slashdot story then, is it?
Why not also say, "US-made butterknives may have been used by Nazis to gouge out eyeballs!" Or, more to the point, "Information Hosted On US Websites Used By Burma Military Suppressors". You know, like, footage from CNN, or Google Earth?
I grow so weary of people looking to blame the tool, and not the person using it. Do we REALLY have to go one step farther than, "Corrupt, Evil Military Dictatorship Behaves As Usual In Myanmar" to pretty much cover all the bases? A regime like that is going to use buckets, mops, computer parts, clothing, antibiotics, tires, and everything else that any other government uses in its daily operations. Fussing about from which company it was indirectly purchased might be interesting if that company appears to actually have an interest in furthering that government's actions, but mostly it seems more appropriate to actually talk about the idealogy of the regime that's causing the trouble in the first place. It seems rather likely that Iran - even as they ship vehicle-destroying bombs and technicians to Iraq to kill people - probably has more than one institution or government entity running both open-source stuff AND pirated proprietary stuff within their IT universe. So what. It's not going to slow them down to beat up Microsoft, or Dell, or Symantec, or anyon else about it. Loudly doing that is just a way to avoid speaking about the actual problem, which is the regime itself - and that regime really doesn't care what is thought about them by the same demographic that would stamp its feet about the effectiveness of a software company's restrictions policy. We're talking about regimes that simply kill people, in large numbers, in the street, for having the wrong opinion. They'll get their tools - butterknives and software - either way. People who want to complain should be complaining about why the regimes themselves are being proactively supported by places like China, Russia, or Venezuela.
The parent post did say "to a level of quality that far surpasses the demands of regular popular music". Not a very high bar, and certainly not as high as you're setting.
The point is that his observation about whether and how you can make certain types of recordings/images at home has nothing do to, whatsoever, with whether it's reasonable for someone else to rip off that work afterwards. If you want to give it away to promote your other ventures, that's fantastic. But that's up to you, not the person who simply wants it whether you've put a price on it or not.
It's never been easier to produce music in the comfort of your own home
Really? You can seat a 40-piece orchestra in your home? You can shoot a mountaineering scene for a complex film in your home? You set up a grand piano and a choir in your home? No wonder you don't care that it costs money up front to prepare films and recordings as parts of large projects - you're obviously already very wealthy.
You need to earn your money just like everyone else
It's a shame you can't get your head around the fact that some performances take years of prep and production work, and involve poeple who can only come together in the studio or in some other collaborative manner. Such recordings have plenty of audience interest, and involve material that can never provide income for the performers as they tour bars or concert halls selling t-shirts and getting a cut of the beer gross.
There ARE people who want to purchase a compilation of recordings from over time, or ensemble pieces that involved many studio sessions to create. They WANT the artists to be able to dedicate their time (and thus derive their income from) sales after the fact of doing that hard work. I don't want your desire to have that recording for free to prevent me from being able to purchase such recordings. But the sentiment that such recordinds should be fair game for ripping off because you'd rather suck down smoke or stand in line to take a piss at a concert venue is a false dichotomy. If you think a band can make a good living by giving away their work, and charging you for tickets and bumper stickers, great. I'm sure you can persuade them all to pursue that approach. But that has nothing to do with whether or not its up to YOU spread a studio work around to 100,000 of your very best personal, and completely anonymous, friends.
Don't like musicians and filmakers who choose to work FIRST and entertain their audience afterwards? Then don't do business with those people. Why are you ranting? Just do business with people who don't want to charge you any money for their studio work, and you'll both be happy. Leave the people who want to see films made or other long-term projects evolve do what they want. You can just ignore it. Except you can't, because you want those things too, you just want to be entertained for free.
Trying to sow FUD about file sharing through this etymological fallacy only proves the *AA's level of desperation, and your defense of their crimes against language only proves you're a tool. "piracy" applied to file sharing is the same as a godwin: it's making a mountain out of a molehill.
You mean, sort of like trying to obscure the fact that you're ripping off someone's work by referring to it as "sharing?"
only think that what they do is silly because that is your childish imagination telling you so.
But they could do every bit of what they do in terms of charitable activities without a single sworn cermony, official set of robes, or any of the other trappings. Masonic lodges are "pretty open?" So, what are they doing with the time that's not very open? How does the secretive stuff contribute to their charitable activiies? Groups like the Boy Scouts also do charitable work, but feel no need to have closed-door swearing-in shindigs. C'mon, fess up. It's just like a fraternity, in the sense that some of what's done to make sure that people feel it's important is pure theatrics. And, that's silly. Because if you really felt that it was important to donate to a cause or volunteer time, you wouldn't need to be sworn in or become a member. You'd just do it.
This isn't just a passive downgrading. This is active blocking.
You could also call it "preserving their limited bandwidth to handle the sort of traffic that most of their customers need, and which would really feel like bad performance if it was laggy"
way to be ignorant about something you know nothing about. I love how everyone speak about masons out of ignorance and just look stupid
You DO understand, right, that they go to a lot of trouble to be secretive? The worst part is that they do it for no particularly good reason. They're a social club. Fine. Delightful. But because they feel better and more exclusive by conducting silly secret rituals, they deliberately cultivate the sense that they have something to hide. Everyone knows they're not hiding some world domination conspiracy. They're just hiding the fact that what they do behind the scenes is slightly silly. If they STOPPED doing the behind the scenes silly stuff, then that would be an acknowledgement that it IS (and always has been) silly. Secret societies are, well, silly. Also, you need to lighten up a little bit.
Will THAT monstrosity be removed in Dan Brown's next book -> movie? His next one is about the Masons, and we know they don't tolerate that sort of frivality.
I seem to recall something regarding mob opinion as being one of the most accurate predictors of hard-to-predict things
From the article you link to:
... resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group...
And it's the "often" that's the problem here. How many times is "often" out of 100? How many times is the mob "often" correct about things they cannot know anything about? And when it comes to specific issues that require technical expertise, why do you think that the mob will do a good job? Because you'll make sure to send around e-mail telling them how to think about an issue they don't personally understand? That's pretty much like lobbying and educating a legistlative official, isn't it? Only, vastly less efficient for everyone involved.
I assume you are referring to Al Gore's film here. In which case, it would indeed be remarkable if a filmmaker won a Nobel prize for a film, rather than, say, an Oscar. However, that's not what happened is it. He actually won (jointly) for 20 years of effort in raising awareness of the issue of global warming.
No chance at all that he'd have gained that particular degree of notoriety without the large box office proceeds accompanying his fear-o-tainment piece, and the months of breathless press coverage that accompanied it. Sure, the movie was just a piece of the package, but it was the most widely circulated, and is being treated in schools with the deference normally given to actual science texts. He was clever to use that medium.
It's funny, but for it to be insulting (as the nature of your remarks suggests) tells us more about your world view than anything.
You're totally missing the point. I'm referring to the tone of the person to whom I responded, who was comparing the visa-issuing climates between Nigeria and the U.S. This has nothing to do with Gates, it has to do with pointing out the absurdity of the equity that comment was trying to fake into sounding real just to get in a little sport U.S.-bashing.
Slashdot Mirror
You used a straw man saying that he said Iraq was peachy before we got there
No, he brought up two unrelated issues, and I addressed each of them. My whole point is that they ARE unrelated. Saddam needed to go away, for a lot of reasons including his refusal to come clean on his weapons programs, his continued attacks on peacekeeping aircraft, his payments to terrorists, and more. That's one topic. Iran is, right now, doing its best to prevent a West-friendly democracy from easing into a relatively peaceful, Turkey-like existence. That's a separate issue.
Saying that we shouldn't be clear, right now, about what Iran is doing, because they didn't have anything to do with Saddam's financial skimming and infrastructure neglect makes no flippin' sense whatseover.
At least under Saddam, some fraction of the population (though nowhere near a majority) had a reasonable expectation of a semi-peaceful existence.
As hundreds of thousands of their countrymen/women were killed and dumped in mass graves to keep it that way. What is WRONG with you?
Over 70% of the American population supports immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Cite a reliable source for that number. I think you'll find that the majority of the US wish it was over, and quickly, but aren't such fools as to think that just packing up and leaving is actually in anyone's interests, excepts Iran's.
And if the factions in Iraq are truly intent on civil war, they'll wait as long as needed to have one.
The factions in Iraq are far more inclined to get pissed at each other when operatives from, equipped, and/or financed/trained by Iran blow things up specifically to inflame sectarian conflicts. That's exactly the point.
I know of a few candidates for president that would end the war immediately, and I don't think it's fair to categorize them as mistaken.
You're as confused as they are, then. You can't just "end the war." If we could just "end the war," then it would already BE ended. You want to end our involvement IN the war, and seem to have a preference for the all-out, world destablizing conflict that would ensue if the Turks, the Iranians, the Syrians, and everyone else suddenly decided it was time to annex and fight over Iraq. Why is it you prefer that outcome over a constitutional democracy?
What's slipping past you is that they could defund the war immediately by preventing any spending bill from hitting the floor.
But they DON'T, because they know they can't and shouldn't. Because they'd only have to spend far more in money and lives later as a result. You know that, too. But you're so busy looking for a local political fight on other matters that you're willing to pretend that's not true just so you can bitch about the current administration. Remember the lies about WMD?
No, actually. I remember that every other major power in the world developed similar intel, and that Saddam visibly had giant piles of some of the nastiest chemical weapons ever made, and refused to destroy them or show what he'd done with them. By the way, do YOU know where all of that VX went? No one else does, either.
Fox News still counts as the mass media and does NOT count as an intelligent place.
Out of curiosity, why throw that straw man in there? What does one network's counter-leaning against several other others that clearly and loudly lean WAY the other direction have to do with the thread? I replied to someone who decided to throw in a non-sequitor about how since Iran was responsible for Saddam's failure to build and maintain public infrastructure, that we shouldn't worry about what Iran IS doing, right now, in the way of killing the people in Iraq who are trying to undo decades of Saddam's neglect and malice. What on EARTH does that have to do with the fact that you prefer the way CNN spins the news?
Yes, because it was Iran that destroyed that country's infrastructure (water, sewers, roads, bridges, airports, hospitals, museums, everything except the oil infrastructure), disbanded its military and police, and wrote their new constitution so its mercenary army is above the law and no court in the country can touch them.
If you really want to go to a lot of trouble to point out that you're a troll, why not just explain it directly? Why use all the BS code-satire?
Iraq's infrastructure was completely in the dumps long before 2003. The UN sanctions, combined with Saddam's skimming all of the actual remaining cash flow to rebuild his military and his personal tribal palaces, saw to it that nothing was being spend to fix the craptastic power grid, refineries, and plumbing. You really think that the previous military and law enforcement regimes were bastions of just, and even-handed peacekeeping? You mean, like, in between burying non-Sunnis in mass graves, shooting at NATO aircraft ever week for years after signing a cease-fire that said they wouldn't, after invading a neighboring country? Yes, those were the good old days.
It wasn't Iran that did that, it was Saddam. And now it's Iran's mullahs that don't want anything healthy, peaceful, and democratic thriving next door, since they know that that's exactly what most of their younger populat desparately want right there in their own country. And so we have Iran shipping troops, explosives, cash, and more aross the border in an attempt, via badly painted proxies, to prevent things from productively moving ahead. Why is you'd prefer that? What's your point, exactly?
Are you actually under the impression that Iran is just a warm and fuzzy neighbor that only wants to help out, now that their poor Sunni tyrant next door is out of power, and, alas, as dead as the millions of people that died when he started a war with Iran, too? Yeesh.
Which, BTW I consider one of the most tragic things to happen to America in the last 100 years.
Which is more tragic: you get the permit to make use of a facility such as a convention center to hold a political event for you and your fellows, pay to make sure that police and rescue people are on hand to keep entrance and exit from the building safe, and then anyone with a length of chain or a giant puppet gets to shut down your event? Or, you get to exercise your First Amendment Rights just like anyone who goes to the same trouble to book that facility, get a parade permit, etc?
The most tragic thing to happen to the country in the last 100 years is that people of all idealogies actually get their rights defended and don't have to give up on their right to peacably assemble because someone else wants to shout them down? That, to you, is tragic? If you want to hold an event, you ALSO get to have it without it being shut down by the sort of people that throw bricks at bystanders .
You have it totally backwards. You can stand on a streetcorner any time you want and say anything you want. And you can go to the trouble of arranging for a larger event - including the protections needed for access to and from it - any time you want, just like anyone else can. As much as some peoople might WANT to disrupt your ability to speak, assemble, and hold events like political rallies, they don't get to. They don't get to block the street that you've arranged to use. They don't get to smash your vehicles or burn your signs. You don't get to do it them, and they don't get to do it to you. Equal protection means just that. If you're the sort that thinks it's UN-equal when you don't get to shout down someone else's speech or throw paint on their parade float or smash a Starbucks window just to show how cool you are and how righteous your point of view is, well, then you're just wrong and there's really no talking to. Luckily, you can't stop me from talking, and I can't stop you. Go ahead: book a parade venue, and see what happens when I go online to a couple thousand loony buddies and threaten to shut down your route. What happens is that your rights are protected.
No, they really aren't. If they were they would have actually opposed the Iraq War like they should have.
You're confused. The lefter-leaning networks have always backed the lefter-leaning candidates and their more centrest party-mates. They still do. That's not exactly surprising.
What seems to be slipping past you is the large number of Democrat politicians that did support going after Saddam's regime, and which today - right now - if asked about yanking troops out of a country that is being actively destabilized by Iran, would confess that they know that's a really bad idea. The ones proclaiming that they'd "end the war" the moment they had the authority to remove troops are either lying (most likely), or are mistaken (in that they'd change their minds the moment the responsibility was actually in their laps). They don't HAVE the authority or the responsibility, and don't have any shame about using that comfortable position to make craven politics out of saying what they WOULD do, and how wrong someone else is doing it. Either way, networks like CBS, and CNN, and NPR, and NBC continue to spin coverage towards the Democrats because that's where their politics lay. Stop conflating two separate issues.
The last time I drove around Cape Breton - it was early October and the colors finally made me understand the red maple leaf on the flag - it was a lovely afternoon. We pitched a small campsite in a place with a name something like "Killmychickencluck," and had a lovely evening. We woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a bull moose roaming around the camp, and barely fell back asleep. When we woke up again, there was a roughly 2-inch layer of spikey frost on everything. It was spectacular. We tried to talk to the locals about it, but We're Not From Around There, and they didn't take to us very well, I'm afraid. But we were able to gather that the weather just gets more interesting from then until, say, May. Wouldn't it make more sense to park this sort of thing somewhere with a bit more year-round opportunity for doing business, climate-wise? It's a bit of a drive down to Halifax, but there was a lovely Italian place for dinner, and a Holiday Inn with a clean pool. And, men in kilts working the tourist stops. But they had entirely the wrong accent for that, thus producing a sort of Highland Dissonance Syndrome that counteracted all tourist spending urges. Perhaps adding rocket ships to the mix will fix that.
But what do I know I'm a liberal
Which, apparently, means you are far more likely to believe you've seen a ghost , too. And whether or not you actually believe in the false dichotomy you're preaching, you're still preaching it.
I happen to have lived in Cameroon during the "bank failure" and you couldn't make an bank withdrawal
My neighbor is from Cameroon. Thing like that are one of the reasons he moved here.
You're making generalizations and sounding like an ass.
You mean, generalizations like... like the people who work in finance, banking, and all of the behind-the-scenes telecomm and other plumbing that allows people to NOT have to work out of wheelbarrow should take a back seat to... someone else?
Secondly, there's a difference between the "banking system" and the "society". A collapse of the banking system would not create social collapse. Argentina had a banking collapse, and they got through it. I'd rather live through an Argentinian style crisis than a "Hot Zone".
You're confusing the failure of a bank's investments/investors, or other macro-economic issues that revolve around a healthy banking system (financially) with failure of the ability to actually write a check or wire some money. The people in Argentina didn't lose the ability wire money.
I'm not the one spending US dollars that have lost 35% of their value over the last 6 years, but you probably are
And luckily you're not making any assumptions or generalizations either, right?
We have to protect our banking system! We should definitely start some kind of a group that would be willing to donate food, medicines, educational supplies or potable water to the banking system. We can't let anything bad happen to them.
You know, sarcasm can be a really elegant tool, when it isn't used in the service of ignorance.
You think the economy would suck if a whole lot of people couldn't physically go to work or handle food? How much MORE do you think it would suck if everyone who was still participating in a wounded economy had to also drive around wheelbarrows of barter goods in order to get anything done? A well-oiled electronic banking system could well be one of the most important assets in preventing social collapse in the event of a particularly ugly pandemic. So, what will YOU be bartering? Copies of Ubuntu on cool purple DVDs? Your three extra pairs of clean socks? Your ability to dig out latrines? Hmmm. Many a modern economy is more convenient than a medieval one, and worth protecting. No banking system, no modern economy.
Stop bringing the straw man of movies into this. Some movies are worthy of seeing in a theater. I will pay for that. No one but you brought up movies. We're talking of music.
Stop? Why? YOU'RE the one that's bringing up the issue of producing something first, and then collecting money for it after the fact as people enjoy it, and saying that's a bad thing. A film could be shown millions of times after it's been produced. So what if YOU will pay for that. You know perfectly well that plenty of people who rip of music rip of movies, too, for exactly the same reason: they want it, and don't feel like paying for their entertainment. Are you saying that someone who spends millions of dollars to make a film should only be able to earn their money when the film is played in a huge, ugly, energy-inefficient building which you have to drive to in order to use, but that if the film is ripped off and played on a 60-inch plasma in front of your couch, then that's just too bad for the film maker?
There's simply no way you can be so intellectually dishonest as to think there's any meaningful philosophical separation between a laboriously created audio recording and a laboriously created film. The fact that you're pretending there is shows how craven you're being in defense of being able to rip off music.
So, the fact that a US-made (or norweigan-made) software program was used for censorship (or military encryption, or...) should not itself be alarming. The title should be more like, "US firm sold censorship software to Burmese military".
Come now! You're losing all of your slashdottedness! If the headline doesn't make it sound like President Bush personally made a phone call to make sure that a US firm, no doubt owned by Halliburton, has tech support people on site helping with deployment, raping villages on weekends, and sending back container loads of gold and diamonds to Dick Cheney's gardener, who buries them in the back yard under a tree shaped like the Masonic logo... well, then, that's just not a slashdot story then, is it?
Why not also say, "US-made butterknives may have been used by Nazis to gouge out eyeballs!" Or, more to the point, "Information Hosted On US Websites Used By Burma Military Suppressors". You know, like, footage from CNN, or Google Earth?
I grow so weary of people looking to blame the tool, and not the person using it. Do we REALLY have to go one step farther than, "Corrupt, Evil Military Dictatorship Behaves As Usual In Myanmar" to pretty much cover all the bases? A regime like that is going to use buckets, mops, computer parts, clothing, antibiotics, tires, and everything else that any other government uses in its daily operations. Fussing about from which company it was indirectly purchased might be interesting if that company appears to actually have an interest in furthering that government's actions, but mostly it seems more appropriate to actually talk about the idealogy of the regime that's causing the trouble in the first place. It seems rather likely that Iran - even as they ship vehicle-destroying bombs and technicians to Iraq to kill people - probably has more than one institution or government entity running both open-source stuff AND pirated proprietary stuff within their IT universe. So what. It's not going to slow them down to beat up Microsoft, or Dell, or Symantec, or anyon else about it. Loudly doing that is just a way to avoid speaking about the actual problem, which is the regime itself - and that regime really doesn't care what is thought about them by the same demographic that would stamp its feet about the effectiveness of a software company's restrictions policy. We're talking about regimes that simply kill people, in large numbers, in the street, for having the wrong opinion. They'll get their tools - butterknives and software - either way. People who want to complain should be complaining about why the regimes themselves are being proactively supported by places like China, Russia, or Venezuela.
The parent post did say "to a level of quality that far surpasses the demands of regular popular music". Not a very high bar, and certainly not as high as you're setting.
The point is that his observation about whether and how you can make certain types of recordings/images at home has nothing do to, whatsoever, with whether it's reasonable for someone else to rip off that work afterwards. If you want to give it away to promote your other ventures, that's fantastic. But that's up to you, not the person who simply wants it whether you've put a price on it or not.
It's never been easier to produce music in the comfort of your own home
Really? You can seat a 40-piece orchestra in your home? You can shoot a mountaineering scene for a complex film in your home? You set up a grand piano and a choir in your home? No wonder you don't care that it costs money up front to prepare films and recordings as parts of large projects - you're obviously already very wealthy.
You need to earn your money just like everyone else
It's a shame you can't get your head around the fact that some performances take years of prep and production work, and involve poeple who can only come together in the studio or in some other collaborative manner. Such recordings have plenty of audience interest, and involve material that can never provide income for the performers as they tour bars or concert halls selling t-shirts and getting a cut of the beer gross.
There ARE people who want to purchase a compilation of recordings from over time, or ensemble pieces that involved many studio sessions to create. They WANT the artists to be able to dedicate their time (and thus derive their income from) sales after the fact of doing that hard work. I don't want your desire to have that recording for free to prevent me from being able to purchase such recordings. But the sentiment that such recordinds should be fair game for ripping off because you'd rather suck down smoke or stand in line to take a piss at a concert venue is a false dichotomy. If you think a band can make a good living by giving away their work, and charging you for tickets and bumper stickers, great. I'm sure you can persuade them all to pursue that approach. But that has nothing to do with whether or not its up to YOU spread a studio work around to 100,000 of your very best personal, and completely anonymous, friends.
Don't like musicians and filmakers who choose to work FIRST and entertain their audience afterwards? Then don't do business with those people. Why are you ranting? Just do business with people who don't want to charge you any money for their studio work, and you'll both be happy. Leave the people who want to see films made or other long-term projects evolve do what they want. You can just ignore it. Except you can't, because you want those things too, you just want to be entertained for free.
Trying to sow FUD about file sharing through this etymological fallacy only proves the *AA's level of desperation, and your defense of their crimes against language only proves you're a tool. "piracy" applied to file sharing is the same as a godwin: it's making a mountain out of a molehill.
You mean, sort of like trying to obscure the fact that you're ripping off someone's work by referring to it as "sharing?"
only think that what they do is silly because that is your childish imagination telling you so.
But they could do every bit of what they do in terms of charitable activities without a single sworn cermony, official set of robes, or any of the other trappings. Masonic lodges are "pretty open?" So, what are they doing with the time that's not very open? How does the secretive stuff contribute to their charitable activiies? Groups like the Boy Scouts also do charitable work, but feel no need to have closed-door swearing-in shindigs. C'mon, fess up. It's just like a fraternity, in the sense that some of what's done to make sure that people feel it's important is pure theatrics. And, that's silly. Because if you really felt that it was important to donate to a cause or volunteer time, you wouldn't need to be sworn in or become a member. You'd just do it.
If the ISP cannot deliver, say, 8 mbit, maybe they should stop selling that, and rather sell something that they can deliver.
Sure. But that's a slightly different conversation than the prevailing "Oh noes! Teh evil corporate goons are trying to haxx0r my free music!"
This isn't just a passive downgrading. This is active blocking.
You could also call it "preserving their limited bandwidth to handle the sort of traffic that most of their customers need, and which would really feel like bad performance if it was laggy"
way to be ignorant about something you know nothing about. I love how everyone speak about masons out of ignorance and just look stupid
You DO understand, right, that they go to a lot of trouble to be secretive? The worst part is that they do it for no particularly good reason. They're a social club. Fine. Delightful. But because they feel better and more exclusive by conducting silly secret rituals, they deliberately cultivate the sense that they have something to hide. Everyone knows they're not hiding some world domination conspiracy. They're just hiding the fact that what they do behind the scenes is slightly silly. If they STOPPED doing the behind the scenes silly stuff, then that would be an acknowledgement that it IS (and always has been) silly. Secret societies are, well, silly. Also, you need to lighten up a little bit.
Will THAT monstrosity be removed in Dan Brown's next book -> movie? His next one is about the Masons, and we know they don't tolerate that sort of frivality.
I seem to recall something regarding mob opinion as being one of the most accurate predictors of hard-to-predict things
... resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group ...
From the article you link to:
And it's the "often" that's the problem here. How many times is "often" out of 100? How many times is the mob "often" correct about things they cannot know anything about? And when it comes to specific issues that require technical expertise, why do you think that the mob will do a good job? Because you'll make sure to send around e-mail telling them how to think about an issue they don't personally understand? That's pretty much like lobbying and educating a legistlative official, isn't it? Only, vastly less efficient for everyone involved.
I assume you are referring to Al Gore's film here. In which case, it would indeed be remarkable if a filmmaker won a Nobel prize for a film, rather than, say, an Oscar. However, that's not what happened is it. He actually won (jointly) for 20 years of effort in raising awareness of the issue of global warming.
No chance at all that he'd have gained that particular degree of notoriety without the large box office proceeds accompanying his fear-o-tainment piece, and the months of breathless press coverage that accompanied it. Sure, the movie was just a piece of the package, but it was the most widely circulated, and is being treated in schools with the deference normally given to actual science texts. He was clever to use that medium.
It's funny, but for it to be insulting (as the nature of your remarks suggests) tells us more about your world view than anything.
You're totally missing the point. I'm referring to the tone of the person to whom I responded, who was comparing the visa-issuing climates between Nigeria and the U.S. This has nothing to do with Gates, it has to do with pointing out the absurdity of the equity that comment was trying to fake into sounding real just to get in a little sport U.S.-bashing.