Well, at least we live in a country where we have dictionaries and whatnot that allow us to look up that word and understand what it actually means, and then look around the world and see where it's actually true.
You know, in countries next door to places where contractors actually do get bugged, kidnapped, and killed by people with a political agenda. If you're in that line of work, you've been to seminars where other guys in that line of work tell you what it's like to have your hotel room surveiled, your luggage tracked, or your co-workers decapitated. Canada isn't next door to Iran, but it is a place - just like the US - through which flows (and in which lives) folks with certain connections to operations like Hamas or countries like China and Iran that have a long track record of military and industrial espionage. Do you REALLY think that the US is a "totalitarian" state? What word do you use for places like Cuba, where (unlike the US or Canada) you can get shot for desparately trying to leave. Or North Korea? Are you THAT addled by your dislike for the US that you're that willing to close your eyes to places where such nonsense is the very nature of daily life and death, just so you're more comfortable using that label to score political points?
If it is illegal in both places, why is he being sent to the US? He should be charged in Australia.
It's called an extradition treaty. The particulars of where a prosecution for a crime that both parties recognize as such are set out in a treaty, or the treaty indicates that the particulars can be determined on a case-by-case basis. If someone was sitting in the US, cracking into Weta's facilities Down Under to cause trouble or steal material, it's a fair bet that person would be finding themselves in hot legal water Down Under. And extradition would kick right in going the other direction.
It's not okay to come here and remake us into an analog of your home country. We're going to resent that, and we do.
Right. I get that. I'm trying to understand why YOUR notion produces such vitriol on the other side. Yes, we're a nation of immigrants. And the large economy which that nation eventually built - and which is the lure for people from all over the world - settled on a particular sensibility about language, work ethic, etc. Our culture is defined not by whether you're of Scandinavian or Central American or African extraction, but by how we DO things. So, much of what's Really Wrong about how immigration is currently turning into a big gimme-fest if you can physically walk into the country and give birth, is counter to that culture. So... when people actually come out and SAY that, why the screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth reaction from people that think our borders should be wide open? Or should I simply place those reactions into the context of from where they issue: the sort of Hugo-Chavez-esque take on things that villifies the U.S. for having the very things that all of those immigrants are trying to get in the first place?
I don't see anything wrong with this. If you don't like it, you should have immigrated into a different country.
I'll confess some curiosity about how you feel about the same subject in the US. Are those communities in the US that are starting to pass legislation pointing in the same direction (and being pillaried by the left for doing so) doing something wrong? If not, why is there such gnashing of teeth over it... because such movements make it more difficult to bolster the rolls of voting blocks that are typically adopted by the left? Seriously: why does the very same sentiment in the US produce such vitriol?
but that's really just the same thing as society paying for it, we've just migrated the cost from a tax into insurance premiums
But it's not really the same as sociey paying for it... it's the same as (well, it IS) the other people in that insured group paying for it. It could be just the 100 other people in that person's company, who are co-insured, paying for it. Some disease might cost $1 million to treat while that person yet lives... and 100 people get to pay for it in your scenario. And, of course, most employers will HAVE to bail on providing insurance under those circumstances, or they and the other employees will go broke paying for it.
If by "progress," you mean the erosion of any incentive for long-haul, difficult, expensive creative projects that don't involve performing in bars, then, sure, I guess.
Maybe not so bad as losing your entire monthly product, per se... but it does happen. I'll bet their accounting, HR, and other back office systems are probably fine. This stuff is always ugliest at the department server level in smaller operations. I'll bet they get some good Mea Culpa 2.0 editorials out of it, though.
I fail to see the point of cheating to get on the front page of a site with even less intelligent discourse than Slashdot.
Leaving aside for the moment that it probably wasn't all that expensive... there are financial incentives for getting eyeballs on content. It can, through various mechanisms, increase the apparent credibility of a site, and thus eventually your Google rankings... it can rather immediately produce a shot of impression stats and AdSense revenue, and so on. It can also make the "author" of an article about how it was done more credible as a consultant for both the manipulators and manipulatees in such scenarios. And, putting aside all of those rational reasons: some people are just vain and like to see their name appear on someone else's web site. People spend money and time in much greater amounts for wildly sillier reasons just to feel some fake love from a crowd to which they feel some tenuous affinity. But I'm guessing it's more about the other reasons I cite, above.
why does it matter to us what Iran chooses for messages in its own country
Because it provides some more insight into a country with a culture (or, at least - and worse - a government) that thinks it's reasonable to arrest people based on hair styling... and which is busy cranking up a uraniam enrichment program, and which speaks in terms of wiping other countries off the map (you know, countries that don't tow their line, religiously). It DOES matter, because it helps to come to terms with the fact that the people running that country are sitting on a huge oil reserve, are running their economy into the ground (making them more likely to make bad decisions about their dealings with others), spend a lot of their cash on directly and overtly supporting terrorist organizations, are busy doing plenty to destablize the new governments in their neighboring countries.
Because we don't live in a vacuum, and what happens in that country can dramatically impact what China does, what Russia does, and what the rest of the world does. They CAN govern as they see fit, I suppose - but if you want to put your head in the sand about the coupling of a soon-to-be-nuke-armed crazyland of medieval-minded thugocrats with their slightly-slow-on-the-uptake new realizations about net-based communications, fine. But don't act surprised when they spend some of their oil revenue to fund violent third parties that would like to see that same world view shape the future of, say, all of Africa - where they're already getting traction.
Most of the internet is a fluffy cloud, with little lightning bolts connecting it to little brick walls with holes through them, behind which are lots of little white boxes with numbers. The rest of the internet is a series of PowerPoint slides labled "ROI" and "incredible growth" and "first mover."
How do they ID hate speech? Is a cartoon Mohamed hate speech? How about a cartoon Jesus (South Park anyone?)
You don't get it, do you? Just asking that question is hate speech, as pliable as that nonsensical concept is for all those that thrive on being victims and profiting from victims they've defined into existence. Because it implies that the Politically Correct Nanny Police might, themselves, be mistaken... and that means that you hate forcible-nurturing, holier-than-thou, elitist, professional It-Takes-A-Village socialist-types. Calling it what it is, and pointing that stuff out, takes away some of their power - and you're seeing the EU take steps to make that erosion of their power illegal. Ugh.
did you ever consider how much money Chinese companies have funned to the GOP via WALMART
Wal-Mart is under a microscope. The SEC, the FEC, and all of the Wal-Mart haters out there scrutinize every aspect of their cash flow. It's taxed when they earn it, taxed when they spend it on imports, taxed when they pay it to employees, and tracked when they donate it to campaigns/political parties.
When someone like Gore shows up at a monastary as the star attraction at a political event, and contrary to federal law, the event is used to solicit campaign cash (this is NOT in dispute), it matters. When the same guy conducts campaign fundraising coffee-meetings in the White House (what was the count? around 100?) and makes fundraising calls from the White House (what did the investigators come up with, around 40 before they stopped counting?), there's a pattern that suggests he was scarcely coming clean when he said he didn't know that cashless nuns were channeling bucks for the Democrats from somewhere besides thin air.
So, what you're saying is that two wrongs make a right?
No, I'm saying that promulgating paranoid delusions about vast, sinister Bond-villain entities controlling the internet from their underground lair IS a wrong. Doing wrong (such as registerting untold thousands of bogus Democrat voters, for which people are being prosecuted) is doing wrong. Wishing that you could assign similar wrongs to the people you don't like is another wrong. So, let's see some actual evidence of actual systematic electioneering by the Republicans that rises to the same level as activist groups manufacturing fictional Democrats by the tens of thousands (which has happened in the last couple of elections). Two wrongs don't make a right. But a fantasy wrong that didn't even happen is... just that. Whereas paper mills cranking out straight ticket Democrat voters named "Donald Trump" from Missouri leave a pretty big trail, right to actual jail.
No, we just need to convince everyone that the two party system breeds corruption and incompetence.
Alas, one of the other options is to have a big ol' brawl between a couple dozen smaller entities, none of which represent anything like a significant part of the population on most topics. I'm not registered with either party, and don't vote a straight ticket unless it just happens to line up that way, candidate-by-candidate. But look at what happens in Germany, for example. Total electoral mayhem among a bunch of squabbling parties that each get at best 10% of the vote, and then, by the time all the back-room-dealmaking is done so that they can all agree on how to conduct themselves, you've essentially got a complete standstill, with nothing able to be done except endless bickering over political correctness as it applies to the best way to do nothing. Yes, sometimes the government that does least is best, but some places need change (Germany is one of them), and they're in a stalemate. France is also looking at the product of a multi-party runoff, and guess what: it's down to a conservative and a socialist.
No, the problem here is the sense of entitlement in the culture. Since people now think that the government is there to give them things that other people have paid for, elections have become all about who can shape that "vision." We get what we whinily think we deserve: people fighting, a la a Donald Trump show, for the right to be the Nannies that run the Nanny State.
Actually, I was referring to the implications of the Republicans having direct access to the IP traffic in the state that flipped the last election. I guess you were a little bit too thick to pick up on that as the implication of the article.
How is that ANY different than the influence that people at Google have? How about any number of service providers, hosting shops, major networking contractors which are owned by loyal Democrats, or Greens, or good old fashioned Libertarians? "IP traffic" passes through the hands of all sorts of people in a position to control it. Check out the cash behind operations like MoveOn.org, and you'll find plenty of people in the networking business.
Soros isn't defending torture. Everyone chooses their battles.
No. He puts his money behind candidates that will NOT come right out and say they wouldn't use coercive interrogation techniques with kind folks like Al Qaeda operators and financiers. The folks he backs are splitting hairs over what they'll call torture while trying to manufacture outrage, but will not say that they'll tie the military's hands when it comes to some bomb factory foreman they've just caught slaughtering innocent people. Get Hillary Clinton, or John Edwards to talk about it: they'll say "no torture," but they'll be predictably spineless when asked to actually define what that means. Why? Because even they know that people like KSM gave up hugely important intel in exchange for more comfortable conditions than the ones in which he was first kept after getting caught. Soros is all the worse for backing people who tap-dance around the subject, trying to have it both ways.
Well, since you carry on as if you KNOW this, rather than wish it were true because it helps you feel more comfortable about the villain mythology you've wrapped around your world view, please point to the actual evidence by which you've drawn that conclusion. We do, of course, have abundant actual evidence (as in, arrests, stacks of thousands of fraudulant fictional voter registrations) showing blatant attempts at election manipulation on behalf of democrats in the last election. So, please set this straight by pointing out actual evidence instead of ranting like a paranoid loon.
In being "terrified" that a web hosting company with extra capacity would be used to host a very busy site right before the traffic spikes during a large public event? "Terrified" that most people that run large businesses and are known to other people in a particular sector of industry or public affairs happen to be... GASP!... people who have their own public opinions? Why aren't you "terrified" of George Soros? Or, doesn't some guy with billions of dollars to spend swearing that his only purpose in life will be to influence an election bother you, since he's going to influence it in the way you personally want? Also: there may be a different brand of coffee in the office coffee maker today. I thought I'd warn you, so you wouldn't be terrified by the implications.
Our democracy is in great peril as long as these "win at all costs" idiots are in the game.
Well, what a relief that the democrats would never stoop to grandstanding, using foreign money to fund campaigns, submit thousands of fraudulant voter registrations in key races, retain congressmen caught with $90k of bribe cash in their freezers (and put them on the Homeland Security oversight committee! you can't make stuff like that up!), etc. Do you REALLY think that the other party's habit of doing things like taking election cash from China as donations through a monestary in California DOESN'T count as "win at all costs?" You need a different complaint.
Yeah, yeah. And some say "new Senate majority leader makes shady real estate deals in Las Vegas and hides the income" or "the Democrat congressman from Louisiana with $90,000 of bribes found in his freezer was just put by Pelosi on the committee overseeing Homeland Security affairs" too. Are you really prepared to assert that none of the thousands of career agency and departmental procurement people that have their hands in the administration of federal IT contracts weren't hired during the previous administration, or don't consider themselves to be Democrats? Wake me up when the party you clearly prefer doesn't, while wagging its finger at the other party and promising to cut down on pet project funding once they got control of congress, graft almost $4 billions in pork onto a defense appropriations bill (peanut storage? giving tax dollars to spinach growers that weren't insured against e coli losses?) to buy supporting votes from their otherwise skittish fellow party members. Nah, never mind. Cuz, that would require some honesty about your double standards. Want to bitch about politicians? Fine. Me too. Just don't pretend that your preferred political camp isn't also a fabulous source of shallow, grasping, corrupt twits and the inevitable resulting satire.
... because there's nothing like good, intellectual think tank, I always say.
must resist Great Disturbance In The Force joke...
on
Blackberry Network is Down
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Because millions of voices really ARE crying out in pain. Man, the cooler we make things, and the more that entire business cultures get built around this stuff, the more fragile it is. Just think of the war stories we're going to hear about people who've come to utterly depends on their Crackberries having lost a deal, not heard that a critical server was down, not realized that a surgery had been rescheduled, and so on. I wouldn't make a living if people didn't depend on fancy networked technologies, but it sure does feel like a house of cards, some days.
The thing that ppl come for though is provided by the ppl. (User-generated) content is king!
Content is indeed king, but without the infrastructure (which is hideously expensive, and where a lot of the usual ad revenue ends up going), there would be no vehicle for it. People (even geeks, strangely) seem to gloss over that little bit of the overhead when they're feeling more righteous or possesive/protective/needy about the content in question. No question that slashdotters feel some ownership over what they contribute to the hive mind... but if they ALL stripped the ads out of the picture, it would die in a hurry.
Hey you know what by your logic we should just kill off the bottom 80% and everything would be just lovely.
My logic? All I'm doing is telling you what the numbers are, and making sure that no one confuses the GP's assertion about "partisan lies" when we refer to where the tax burden in this country really is, and where the money goes. I'm reporting it, and you're the one assuming it's some sort of call to arms rather than just a simple refuation of someone else's spin.
Slashdot Mirror
When you live in a totalitarian state
Well, at least we live in a country where we have dictionaries and whatnot that allow us to look up that word and understand what it actually means, and then look around the world and see where it's actually true.
You know, in countries next door to places where contractors actually do get bugged, kidnapped, and killed by people with a political agenda. If you're in that line of work, you've been to seminars where other guys in that line of work tell you what it's like to have your hotel room surveiled, your luggage tracked, or your co-workers decapitated. Canada isn't next door to Iran, but it is a place - just like the US - through which flows (and in which lives) folks with certain connections to operations like Hamas or countries like China and Iran that have a long track record of military and industrial espionage. Do you REALLY think that the US is a "totalitarian" state? What word do you use for places like Cuba, where (unlike the US or Canada) you can get shot for desparately trying to leave. Or North Korea? Are you THAT addled by your dislike for the US that you're that willing to close your eyes to places where such nonsense is the very nature of daily life and death, just so you're more comfortable using that label to score political points?
If it is illegal in both places, why is he being sent to the US? He should be charged in Australia.
It's called an extradition treaty. The particulars of where a prosecution for a crime that both parties recognize as such are set out in a treaty, or the treaty indicates that the particulars can be determined on a case-by-case basis. If someone was sitting in the US, cracking into Weta's facilities Down Under to cause trouble or steal material, it's a fair bet that person would be finding themselves in hot legal water Down Under. And extradition would kick right in going the other direction.
It's not okay to come here and remake us into an analog of your home country. We're going to resent that, and we do.
Right. I get that. I'm trying to understand why YOUR notion produces such vitriol on the other side. Yes, we're a nation of immigrants. And the large economy which that nation eventually built - and which is the lure for people from all over the world - settled on a particular sensibility about language, work ethic, etc. Our culture is defined not by whether you're of Scandinavian or Central American or African extraction, but by how we DO things. So, much of what's Really Wrong about how immigration is currently turning into a big gimme-fest if you can physically walk into the country and give birth, is counter to that culture. So... when people actually come out and SAY that, why the screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth reaction from people that think our borders should be wide open? Or should I simply place those reactions into the context of from where they issue: the sort of Hugo-Chavez-esque take on things that villifies the U.S. for having the very things that all of those immigrants are trying to get in the first place?
I don't see anything wrong with this. If you don't like it, you should have immigrated into a different country.
I'll confess some curiosity about how you feel about the same subject in the US. Are those communities in the US that are starting to pass legislation pointing in the same direction (and being pillaried by the left for doing so) doing something wrong? If not, why is there such gnashing of teeth over it... because such movements make it more difficult to bolster the rolls of voting blocks that are typically adopted by the left? Seriously: why does the very same sentiment in the US produce such vitriol?
but that's really just the same thing as society paying for it, we've just migrated the cost from a tax into insurance premiums
But it's not really the same as sociey paying for it... it's the same as (well, it IS) the other people in that insured group paying for it. It could be just the 100 other people in that person's company, who are co-insured, paying for it. Some disease might cost $1 million to treat while that person yet lives... and 100 people get to pay for it in your scenario. And, of course, most employers will HAVE to bail on providing insurance under those circumstances, or they and the other employees will go broke paying for it.
So, he's all set for high-quality editing jobs that will take quotes like that and produce nice little YouTube videos that say:
... restricting ... citizens. We should ... make sure that our ... networks benefit from them in all ... ways."
"I am a strong believer in
This is progress
If by "progress," you mean the erosion of any incentive for long-haul, difficult, expensive creative projects that don't involve performing in bars, then, sure, I guess.
Maybe not so bad as losing your entire monthly product, per se... but it does happen. I'll bet their accounting, HR, and other back office systems are probably fine. This stuff is always ugliest at the department server level in smaller operations. I'll bet they get some good Mea Culpa 2.0 editorials out of it, though.
I fail to see the point of cheating to get on the front page of a site with even less intelligent discourse than Slashdot.
Leaving aside for the moment that it probably wasn't all that expensive... there are financial incentives for getting eyeballs on content. It can, through various mechanisms, increase the apparent credibility of a site, and thus eventually your Google rankings... it can rather immediately produce a shot of impression stats and AdSense revenue, and so on. It can also make the "author" of an article about how it was done more credible as a consultant for both the manipulators and manipulatees in such scenarios. And, putting aside all of those rational reasons: some people are just vain and like to see their name appear on someone else's web site. People spend money and time in much greater amounts for wildly sillier reasons just to feel some fake love from a crowd to which they feel some tenuous affinity. But I'm guessing it's more about the other reasons I cite, above.
why does it matter to us what Iran chooses for messages in its own country
... and which is busy cranking up a uraniam enrichment program, and which speaks in terms of wiping other countries off the map (you know, countries that don't tow their line, religiously). It DOES matter, because it helps to come to terms with the fact that the people running that country are sitting on a huge oil reserve, are running their economy into the ground (making them more likely to make bad decisions about their dealings with others), spend a lot of their cash on directly and overtly supporting terrorist organizations, are busy doing plenty to destablize the new governments in their neighboring countries.
Because it provides some more insight into a country with a culture (or, at least - and worse - a government) that thinks it's reasonable to arrest people based on hair styling
Because we don't live in a vacuum, and what happens in that country can dramatically impact what China does, what Russia does, and what the rest of the world does. They CAN govern as they see fit, I suppose - but if you want to put your head in the sand about the coupling of a soon-to-be-nuke-armed crazyland of medieval-minded thugocrats with their slightly-slow-on-the-uptake new realizations about net-based communications, fine. But don't act surprised when they spend some of their oil revenue to fund violent third parties that would like to see that same world view shape the future of, say, all of Africa - where they're already getting traction.
Most of the internet is a fluffy cloud, with little lightning bolts connecting it to little brick walls with holes through them, behind which are lots of little white boxes with numbers. The rest of the internet is a series of PowerPoint slides labled "ROI" and "incredible growth" and "first mover."
How do they ID hate speech? Is a cartoon Mohamed hate speech? How about a cartoon Jesus (South Park anyone?)
You don't get it, do you? Just asking that question is hate speech, as pliable as that nonsensical concept is for all those that thrive on being victims and profiting from victims they've defined into existence. Because it implies that the Politically Correct Nanny Police might, themselves, be mistaken... and that means that you hate forcible-nurturing, holier-than-thou, elitist, professional It-Takes-A-Village socialist-types. Calling it what it is, and pointing that stuff out, takes away some of their power - and you're seeing the EU take steps to make that erosion of their power illegal. Ugh.
did you ever consider how much money Chinese companies have funned to the GOP via WALMART
Wal-Mart is under a microscope. The SEC, the FEC, and all of the Wal-Mart haters out there scrutinize every aspect of their cash flow. It's taxed when they earn it, taxed when they spend it on imports, taxed when they pay it to employees, and tracked when they donate it to campaigns/political parties.
When someone like Gore shows up at a monastary as the star attraction at a political event, and contrary to federal law, the event is used to solicit campaign cash (this is NOT in dispute), it matters. When the same guy conducts campaign fundraising coffee-meetings in the White House (what was the count? around 100?) and makes fundraising calls from the White House (what did the investigators come up with, around 40 before they stopped counting?), there's a pattern that suggests he was scarcely coming clean when he said he didn't know that cashless nuns were channeling bucks for the Democrats from somewhere besides thin air.
So, what you're saying is that two wrongs make a right?
No, I'm saying that promulgating paranoid delusions about vast, sinister Bond-villain entities controlling the internet from their underground lair IS a wrong. Doing wrong (such as registerting untold thousands of bogus Democrat voters, for which people are being prosecuted) is doing wrong. Wishing that you could assign similar wrongs to the people you don't like is another wrong. So, let's see some actual evidence of actual systematic electioneering by the Republicans that rises to the same level as activist groups manufacturing fictional Democrats by the tens of thousands (which has happened in the last couple of elections). Two wrongs don't make a right. But a fantasy wrong that didn't even happen is... just that. Whereas paper mills cranking out straight ticket Democrat voters named "Donald Trump" from Missouri leave a pretty big trail, right to actual jail.
No, we just need to convince everyone that the two party system breeds corruption and incompetence.
Alas, one of the other options is to have a big ol' brawl between a couple dozen smaller entities, none of which represent anything like a significant part of the population on most topics. I'm not registered with either party, and don't vote a straight ticket unless it just happens to line up that way, candidate-by-candidate. But look at what happens in Germany, for example. Total electoral mayhem among a bunch of squabbling parties that each get at best 10% of the vote, and then, by the time all the back-room-dealmaking is done so that they can all agree on how to conduct themselves, you've essentially got a complete standstill, with nothing able to be done except endless bickering over political correctness as it applies to the best way to do nothing. Yes, sometimes the government that does least is best, but some places need change (Germany is one of them), and they're in a stalemate. France is also looking at the product of a multi-party runoff, and guess what: it's down to a conservative and a socialist.
No, the problem here is the sense of entitlement in the culture. Since people now think that the government is there to give them things that other people have paid for, elections have become all about who can shape that "vision." We get what we whinily think we deserve: people fighting, a la a Donald Trump show, for the right to be the Nannies that run the Nanny State.
Actually, I was referring to the implications of the Republicans having direct access to the IP traffic in the state that flipped the last election. I guess you were a little bit too thick to pick up on that as the implication of the article.
How is that ANY different than the influence that people at Google have? How about any number of service providers, hosting shops, major networking contractors which are owned by loyal Democrats, or Greens, or good old fashioned Libertarians? "IP traffic" passes through the hands of all sorts of people in a position to control it. Check out the cash behind operations like MoveOn.org, and you'll find plenty of people in the networking business.
Soros isn't defending torture. Everyone chooses their battles.
No. He puts his money behind candidates that will NOT come right out and say they wouldn't use coercive interrogation techniques with kind folks like Al Qaeda operators and financiers. The folks he backs are splitting hairs over what they'll call torture while trying to manufacture outrage, but will not say that they'll tie the military's hands when it comes to some bomb factory foreman they've just caught slaughtering innocent people. Get Hillary Clinton, or John Edwards to talk about it: they'll say "no torture," but they'll be predictably spineless when asked to actually define what that means. Why? Because even they know that people like KSM gave up hugely important intel in exchange for more comfortable conditions than the ones in which he was first kept after getting caught. Soros is all the worse for backing people who tap-dance around the subject, trying to have it both ways.
That's how they do all these things
Well, since you carry on as if you KNOW this, rather than wish it were true because it helps you feel more comfortable about the villain mythology you've wrapped around your world view, please point to the actual evidence by which you've drawn that conclusion. We do, of course, have abundant actual evidence (as in, arrests, stacks of thousands of fraudulant fictional voter registrations) showing blatant attempts at election manipulation on behalf of democrats in the last election. So, please set this straight by pointing out actual evidence instead of ranting like a paranoid loon.
Am I alone?
... GASP! ... people who have their own public opinions? Why aren't you "terrified" of George Soros? Or, doesn't some guy with billions of dollars to spend swearing that his only purpose in life will be to influence an election bother you, since he's going to influence it in the way you personally want? Also: there may be a different brand of coffee in the office coffee maker today. I thought I'd warn you, so you wouldn't be terrified by the implications.
In being "terrified" that a web hosting company with extra capacity would be used to host a very busy site right before the traffic spikes during a large public event? "Terrified" that most people that run large businesses and are known to other people in a particular sector of industry or public affairs happen to be
Our democracy is in great peril as long as these "win at all costs" idiots are in the game.
Well, what a relief that the democrats would never stoop to grandstanding, using foreign money to fund campaigns, submit thousands of fraudulant voter registrations in key races, retain congressmen caught with $90k of bribe cash in their freezers (and put them on the Homeland Security oversight committee! you can't make stuff like that up!), etc. Do you REALLY think that the other party's habit of doing things like taking election cash from China as donations through a monestary in California DOESN'T count as "win at all costs?" You need a different complaint.
Yeah, yeah. And some say "new Senate majority leader makes shady real estate deals in Las Vegas and hides the income" or "the Democrat congressman from Louisiana with $90,000 of bribes found in his freezer was just put by Pelosi on the committee overseeing Homeland Security affairs" too. Are you really prepared to assert that none of the thousands of career agency and departmental procurement people that have their hands in the administration of federal IT contracts weren't hired during the previous administration, or don't consider themselves to be Democrats? Wake me up when the party you clearly prefer doesn't, while wagging its finger at the other party and promising to cut down on pet project funding once they got control of congress, graft almost $4 billions in pork onto a defense appropriations bill (peanut storage? giving tax dollars to spinach growers that weren't insured against e coli losses?) to buy supporting votes from their otherwise skittish fellow party members. Nah, never mind. Cuz, that would require some honesty about your double standards. Want to bitch about politicians? Fine. Me too. Just don't pretend that your preferred political camp isn't also a fabulous source of shallow, grasping, corrupt twits and the inevitable resulting satire.
... because there's nothing like good, intellectual think tank , I always say.
Because millions of voices really ARE crying out in pain. Man, the cooler we make things, and the more that entire business cultures get built around this stuff, the more fragile it is. Just think of the war stories we're going to hear about people who've come to utterly depends on their Crackberries having lost a deal, not heard that a critical server was down, not realized that a surgery had been rescheduled, and so on. I wouldn't make a living if people didn't depend on fancy networked technologies, but it sure does feel like a house of cards, some days.
The thing that ppl come for though is provided by the ppl. (User-generated) content is king!
Content is indeed king, but without the infrastructure (which is hideously expensive, and where a lot of the usual ad revenue ends up going), there would be no vehicle for it. People (even geeks, strangely) seem to gloss over that little bit of the overhead when they're feeling more righteous or possesive/protective/needy about the content in question. No question that slashdotters feel some ownership over what they contribute to the hive mind... but if they ALL stripped the ads out of the picture, it would die in a hurry.
Hey you know what by your logic we should just kill off the bottom 80% and everything would be just lovely.
My logic? All I'm doing is telling you what the numbers are, and making sure that no one confuses the GP's assertion about "partisan lies" when we refer to where the tax burden in this country really is, and where the money goes. I'm reporting it, and you're the one assuming it's some sort of call to arms rather than just a simple refuation of someone else's spin.