The question is whether you can reach this beampointing accuracy on a target that moves at 10 km/s. That shouldn't be too hard, since the trajectory of a satellite is known well in advance and you only have to trigger the laser pulse with an accuracy of a few tenths of a millisecond.
Well, you can also allow for some error, and just spend all week hammering away in the general neighborhood (microrad-wise). It's not like we're talking missle defense, here, where you get one or two shots at being perfectly on target. With satellites, you get to keep trying over and over again, and then smack it a couple more times just for fun. No point obsessing over your ability to hit it with a single rifle shot when you can use a repeating shotgun. Or 10 shotguns from 10 different mountains in China. Somebody stop me from continuing this analogy, please... but you get my point, I hope.
If the same thing had happened now do you think people in other countries trust America enough that they would be confident that America hadn't launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike?
Yes, because it would be just as pointless now as it would have been then. Even the actually crazy ones, like North Korea, despite their ranting, know that it's in any way useful for us to literally remove that entire country from the earth in the way that would be suggested by the phantom launch portrayed by the radar ghosts described in TFA.
The tone of the article is a little annoying. You know, the problem with the nuclear tension was Ronald Reagan's fault for calling the Soviet Union what it was, etc. But the writing celebrates the man who didn't do something that didn't need doing because he had the good sense to think about what he was not seeing. It's a shame that "heroism" and "professional competence" are so easily tangled up in such coverage. I'm glad there wasn't a launch, but I'm also glad for every single day that everyone with the ability - recently or today - to let loose with nukes competently, doing their jobs, does not.
Even so, coal mining in its current form is extremely destructive
How about littering every ridgetop and field not within the eyesight of rich eco-lobbyists with giant, bird-slaughtering windmills? Or having people cut down even more rainforest and slurp up even more aquifers to grow crops intended for ethanol? "Destructive" is a relative term.
not only were there dozens of them, one was Carl Sagan. I immediately shelved the book, since they obviously weren't using authorities as authors.
Look, just because he was one of the authors (as in, "person employed to produce the thing you'll be reading") doesn't mean his role in producing that book was: "content expert." In fact, his greatest talent was in making technical, or conceptually complex issues more digestible by the lay reader (or viewer). If I was writing a book that included material derived from or supported by science from multiple disciplines, and I had the budget to put a guy like Sagan on the team, you better believe I'd do it. Just for the readability of it. Most scientists are terrible writers.
So. You think we should actually include positions like "Deputy Undersecretary Of Transportation for Ice Cream Truck Regulation" part of the general federal election? How about his boss? And his boss's boss? And above him? Oh, right, we already do that. Was the Secretary Of Transportation under Bill Clinton acting according some idyllic democratic principle, but the same role under a different administration is suddenly Junior Ceasar?
Wake up. We elect an executive administration specifically to get things done, and they appoint people into thousands of roles as part of that job. Every administration has different priorities and policies, but if they had to try to get anything done while dealing with - what, thousands of departmental bureaucrats all of whom had to run campaigns to get their office? - you'd have absolutely no ability to focus on anything.
Every four years you get to vote for the person who appoints such people, and every 4 or 6 years, you get to vote for the legislators that fund what they do (or not).
So, what's your problem? Don't like the reality of the structure of the executive branch of government, or just don't like it when you don't like who happens to head it at certain times? Or maybe, as is more likely, you know all of this and you're just trolling in hopes of scoring some lame political points with whatever percentage of this audience actually does not know how it works, and wants to hear you paint some Emperor image of the presidency. Just remember, if you ever to get together enough votes for someone you do like better, whatever FUD you spread about the nature of the office and its interaction with other agencies is going to impact that person, too.
What's evil about Venezuela that makes them distinctly evil compared to, say, Sweden?
I didn't say "Venezuela," I said "Hugo Chavez."
Try some of his recent gems on for size:
How about their new law requiring that Venezuelan radio use at least 50% of their air time for local (national) music. How horrible, right? It's the fact that the government there is specifying entertainment music ratios - and it's indicative of the usual nanny state stuff... but with jail time consquences if you (as a radio station owner) broadcast X-too-many minutes of the non-approved music.
Or, how about his recent visit to Iran, where he indicated that he would support that regime "no matter what." That would be Iran, the most visible government source of terrorist cash and logistical support in that entire region.
Of course, he's up for "election" this year, so - shocking! - all of his primary politcal opponents are, of course, suddenly facing criminal prosecution, holding the threat of jail time over their heads. The top election monitoring group in that country meticulously documented Chavez' manipulation of the last election, and on releasing that report, the leader of that group are now up on treason charges. As soon as some European Union ambassadors indicated that they were about to attend those trials in person, the trials were shuffled off to another court in pending status - keeping Chavez's basicl political critics in prison until the election is over.
Reports of staggering corruption, spiraling street violence, and a disintigrating infrastructure are being eclipsed, in the local Venezuelan press, by coverage of the sort of speeches in which Chavez rants on and on about how prepared he is to repel the imminent US invasion of Venezuela.
There's plenty more (his gushing support for the totalitarian regime in Cuba, for example), but the real point is: tell me the people of Sweden would tolerate any of that sort of crap, and then we'll have something to talk about. That the guy is pledging his support for an apocolyptic loon like Iran's president (who just today was describing the entire west as "doomed," etc) should be enough for you to put aside whatever bit of drama you think is scoring points when you purchase gas from Chavez's oil retailing operations contrary to what your local politcal opponents might would do. If you can't tell the difference between Chavez's bustling little Castro-like regime and Sweden, then no wonder you're confused over supporting a guy like Hugo.
Re:kudos to the austronauts and cosmonauts
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one has to admire their quiet selfless heroism
Quiet? OK, I guess. Heroism? Certainly courage, anyway. Selfless? Why toss that word out there? It doesn't mean anything in this context. They have a completely selfish reason to work through this problem gracefully: survival, and some lessening of their discomfort while this thing gets mopped up. What choice do they have? They (themselves) chose to get involved with the program each for their own reasons. This is the sort of risk they knew they'd face, and they're carrying on with some quality stoicism, here, not martyrdom or an abandonment of themselves in face of some difficulty. There are thousands of people who would jump at the chance to do exactly what those folks are doing - and "selflessness" has got nothing to do with it.
Apparently Matt Damon will be playing the Young Aragorn at The Westernesse Academy.
Gilbert Gottried will play the prankish young Gandalf (or, "G-Dalf," as he was known at the time, back when he was wearing his floppy hat all backwards n'stuff).
The disturbing possibility that video you're watching isn't amateur after all? So what? If it's grinding some rhetorical axe, then your critical thinking skills should already be kicking in. If it's simply entertaining, who cares?
You want disturbing? I'll tell you what's disturbing. Finding out, on the same day, that the Blair Witch and Santa Claus aren't real. At least, once you've digested that bit of shock, you're better able to deal with the fact that some people will use anonymous, free venues to blow a little smoke around, for both artistic- and agenda-driven reasons. Guess what: it's completely freakin' free! Relax, already!
NO! I buy my gas from Citgo *BECAUSE* I have been told NOT TO by people who I do not respect because they insinuate that my moderate political views are tantamount to treason. That's the short and long of it.
First, I said nothing about "treason." I said, "please."
Second, if did observe that it was treasonous to, say, send a check to some account that funds training for the people that equip suicide bombers planning to attack a naval base, would you do it, just because someone observed that fact out loud?
Just because the right thing to do sometimes intersects what someone not in your political camp also would like you to do doesn't make you right for doing the wrong thing. For example, I think that the anti-abortion nutcases are, well, netcases. So, if someone that I consider to be a shrill twit (oh, say, Barabara Streisand, or George Soros) says I should vote against someone on some other grounds (say, gun control, etc), and also says that I should vote against someone on the abortion issue, doesn't mean I'll give up my position (or actions) on one thing because they happen to like my take on the other. The coincidence of someone to your "right" than you, politically, being just as happy about less success than a guy like Chavez as you might be - even if for slightly different reasons - should make you walk away from pushing dollars to a guy like that.
This is why boycotting gas stations based on the name on the sign is idiotic.
Do you really think that the parent company doesn't make money off of the franchise fees? If there was no money in setting up franchises, they wouldn't do it. Further, some (though certainly not all) stations are owned and operated by the parent company, a la the Starbucks model. I think you're also underestimating the psychological impact of knowing that you're doing business, however indirectly, with Hugo Chavez and his increasingly dictatorial regime. There's something to that.
Keep screaming at people. Drive them under the *lash* to do *exactly* the thing you hate.
Um, how exactly does appealing to your sense that Chavez's approach to sqashing the liberty of his own people, and that of wider Central/South America, equate to "the lash?"
Asking you to think about it is hardly "screaming."
Now: your turn to explain why the Chavez world view is rational, good for freedom of expression and free trade, and the right thing for the people whose lives he's attempting to influence. Your turn to explain how buying your fuel from nationalized retailer that says he's doing it for his people even as his country's murder rate, poverty, and corruption are surging off the charts.
And, by avoiding that Citgo station, you're also avoiding sending the profits on that purchase right to good old "America Is Teh Evil, Iran Is Our Brother" Hugo Chavez. A lot of people don't know that Citgo is owned by the nationalized Venezuelan oil company. Don't send cash to that idiot, please. His local crude oil is highly sulfurous, which makes refining it expensive. He can only sell it competitively if the easier-to-refine stuff from other places (say, the middle east) are made more expensive because of market pressures or jitteriness. He has a vested interest in stirring the pot. Friction between, say, Iran and the west is in his favor.
Oh, and he gets the vast majority of his investment cash through big-ticket commitments to China. They've got cash (ours!), and he's got the energy they need to prop up their economic house of cards. Making his operations more comfortable by filling up at a Citgo, personally, may not make that much of a difference... but your half-mile drive to the competition is worth more than just the extra couple dollars you save. Just sayin'.
I've got a machine with the Alanis Morisette Signature-Series Ironic Cooling System. Of course, just like the unit in TFA isn't really "ionic," her's isn't ironic, either. Which makes this actually ironic! Yeah, I really do think.
Look, my wife was born in Germany. And we she saw that I was sitting on a Saturday morning commenting on slashdot, she was not amused. Especially when she realized I was cracking on Germans. QED, or close to it. I believe she said something along the lines of, "If you're trying to make a humorous point, how about I just put one your head with that iron pot. You know, the one I use for Hasenpfeffer. Idiot." Or something similarly nuanced, and softened by years of süsse, leichte Verbindung.
I'm sorry, but the worst website I have ever seen has to be http://hosanna1.com/
It's pretty hard to disagree with you. And as a guy who has built a lot of dog-related web content for and about dog breeders, I can tell you that the design sensibilities that result in outbreaks like this is more of an epidemic than a fluke.
That being said, I have to wonder: why, when, and how did you find that spectacular web site? Yes, I'm looking for SEO tips.:P
i see your 5 artists and raise you 5000 who benefit by having their music shared
But it doesn't matter. Artists that want to spread their material for free have a zillion mechanisms through which to do so. Artists that want to exercise their copyright as part of a different set of goals or priorities will appreciate that MS is doing this. It's that simple. Artists already, and always have had, the option handing out their music for free, it that's what they want to do. I'm reminded of the notion of the people that want to eat in a restaurant without inhaling smoke. Just because they're choosing not to smoke doesn't mean they're free from the smoke that the guy next to them is producing. With copyright, you can opt in or out as an artist - but people who are too cheap to pay the artists they claim to respect what those artists are asking for their work have really altered the landscape.
The good news: if you and the artists with whom you have some particular music-wants-to-be-free relationship want to, you can simply ignore this product. If enough do, it will simply go away. In the meantime, it has no way of preventing you from doing what you're already doing using other tools, whether your favorite musician it or not.
fact is, bands make _much_ more money from concert sales that record sales, and sharing music has a huge impact on that
Some of the best music ever recorded is produced by studio talent that have zero interest in going on tour, or which could never possibly drag 15 people with them everywhere they'd have to go to earn a living if they couldn't charge for their recordings. "Bands" in the sense that you're using that word are only a small part of the copyright landscape.
I think this has been blown out of all proportion by those looking for another MS bash.
You only think it has? Come, sir! You are too modest, or too worried about upsetting the MS-bashing trolls. It has, and of course that was inevitable. When you see the strings "Microsoft" and "DRM" in a slashdot headline or summary, it might as well translate to "Abandon All Reason, Ye Who Enter Here."
What part of small constitutional republic not an empire don't you understand?
What part of "defense" don't you understand? There are places in the world (say, Taliban-run Afghanistan) that are used as bases to train for and launch attacks on our soil. Our requests to such government as there was there to turn over the people who had set up shop in that country for that purpose were, of course, ignored. Self defense demands that we put a stop to such threats, especially as the people involved openly proclaim their desire for large-scale WMDs. That's not something you can react to, it's something you have to prevent. To the extent it has to be prevented elsewhere, that's where we have to go.
And, if there was some demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Washington DC and the Chinese started blasting US citizens in the vicinity of the Chinese embassy with high intensity microwaves, then the Washington DC "natives" would think that was totally OK.
Do you have any idea how quickly a violent mob outside a DC-located embassy would be dispersed by our own people to avoid exactly that sort of fearful pressure on the people inside the Chinese embassy? That's the whole point. We don't get a lot of flaming riots and religiously-stoked molotov-cocktail-throwing chanting crowds in the US (except after vital sporting events), so the Chinese guards at their embassy really don't have to think about this sort of thing, since they've got their local embassy parked in a country that doesn't operate by angry mob in the first place.
New laws enacted without record of who voted for them?
Anyone who says this is happening is lying for politcal points. Whether or not some committee recomends a particular bit of legislation means nothing in terms of a real (and per-representative-recorded) vote on the floor of the House and the Senate. No one can hide from their record when actually voting for/against a law, and that has not happened in this case.
Further, you'll notice that even the rabid Bush-bashing types were quick to say that it's not that they don't want tools like this to be available to counter-intel/counter-terrorism types, it's that they were having fun saying Bush wasn't doing in accordance with any particular legislation. So, here's the pending legislation. If his detractors (who still say they don't want to deprive security folks of these tools) weren't lying, then they should be all for this. It will be interesting to see who was lying, as opposed to who was just being lazy for TV cameras while whining about programs that were in long (and productive) use.
Are you so unable to think back even a few years to when our troops, along with those of other countries, were used - as an example - to help disarm the "ethnic-cleansing" Serbs who were slaughtering Muslims by the village-full in places like Croatia and Bosnia? Marines stood outside of every building that housed a local negotiation between our diplomats and the local militants. It was routine for the ethnic Serbs to do a lot more than throw rocks our troops while our troops were providing a peaceful spot in which to conduct that village's disarmament talks.
Would you rather that those Marines killed, or disbursed said Serbs, or simply that a few Marines die during events like that (never mind getting the NATO/UN/State Department peoplep they're protecting killed)? Presuming (though I can't really tell) that you'd just as soon see the diplomats and the Marines live through such days, and that you'd also just as soon not see them have to use lethal force to prevent being overrun by one half of the village, wouldn't you rather they had the means by which to keep a clear space around where the work is being done, with no casualties?
Assuming you can bring yourself to be that reasonable, you have to then discuss how they do it. Sure, they can use teargas. But that's dangerous - even though that has been tested by our own police on our own citizens in riots over the years. But a newer tool, that doesn't involve inciniaries and respiratory nastiness is worth a try. But wouldn't it be better, in terms of Al Jazeera-ness, if some Serb who's already looking for ways to describe NATO's prevention of their ethnic cleansing as somehow unfair to be deprived of the chance to say that we're using crowd control technology that we don't consider safe enough to also use when our own law enforcement people have to break up some drunken fraternity's car-burning binge in the middle of a college campus after a ball game.
I presume you consider it reasonable for law enforcement to use teargas when you've got some mob of drunks burning cars in your town, right? Then why shouldn't the very same police who already, and always have had the obligation to do that very thing be working with less dangerous technologies, since you can set your watch by the recurrance of such events, right here in the US? And when we've shown ourselves that such tools are safer, and more humane, and more practical, that's exactly when the military - when called upon to do very similar things in peacekeeping abroad - can use the same technologies with both logistical and diplomatic comfort. And fewer people get hurt.
You're so anxious to make the US the bad guy at every turn that you can't see something perfectly reasonable right in front of your face. Something that hurts fewer people is exactly how you help avoid long-term anti-American hostility. That's a lot better than using a bullet, or having someone get smacked in the head with a CS cannister.
So basically, you think that unless I can control the greater American population
Nonsense. I'm saying that the odds are very, very good that if you're walking down the street with your giant puppet attempting to show the irony of The Man in his role as a figurehead in the context of the futility of existence and thus why minimum wages in Malaysia should be subsidized by people living in certain US zip codes - or whatever you're doing - and right there is a group of people that clearly are about to do some damage or violence... that you can either stop them yourself (yes, because they are endangering you, too), or you can walk right over, yourself, and ask a police officer to intercede.
Anyone who tells you that they can't spot the Starbucks-smashers or the car-burners about to go to town in the middle of their glowing, rosy, smiling Rainbows And Unicorns Society Of Gentle People demonstration is outright lying.
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The question is whether you can reach this beampointing accuracy on a target that moves at 10 km/s. That shouldn't be too hard, since the trajectory of a satellite is known well in advance and you only have to trigger the laser pulse with an accuracy of a few tenths of a millisecond.
Well, you can also allow for some error, and just spend all week hammering away in the general neighborhood (microrad-wise). It's not like we're talking missle defense, here, where you get one or two shots at being perfectly on target. With satellites, you get to keep trying over and over again, and then smack it a couple more times just for fun. No point obsessing over your ability to hit it with a single rifle shot when you can use a repeating shotgun. Or 10 shotguns from 10 different mountains in China. Somebody stop me from continuing this analogy, please... but you get my point, I hope.
If the same thing had happened now do you think people in other countries trust America enough that they would be confident that America hadn't launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike?
Yes, because it would be just as pointless now as it would have been then. Even the actually crazy ones, like North Korea, despite their ranting, know that it's in any way useful for us to literally remove that entire country from the earth in the way that would be suggested by the phantom launch portrayed by the radar ghosts described in TFA.
The tone of the article is a little annoying. You know, the problem with the nuclear tension was Ronald Reagan's fault for calling the Soviet Union what it was, etc. But the writing celebrates the man who didn't do something that didn't need doing because he had the good sense to think about what he was not seeing. It's a shame that "heroism" and "professional competence" are so easily tangled up in such coverage. I'm glad there wasn't a launch, but I'm also glad for every single day that everyone with the ability - recently or today - to let loose with nukes competently, doing their jobs, does not.
Even so, coal mining in its current form is extremely destructive
How about littering every ridgetop and field not within the eyesight of rich eco-lobbyists with giant, bird-slaughtering windmills? Or having people cut down even more rainforest and slurp up even more aquifers to grow crops intended for ethanol? "Destructive" is a relative term.
not only were there dozens of them, one was Carl Sagan. I immediately shelved the book, since they obviously weren't using authorities as authors.
Look, just because he was one of the authors (as in, "person employed to produce the thing you'll be reading") doesn't mean his role in producing that book was: "content expert." In fact, his greatest talent was in making technical, or conceptually complex issues more digestible by the lay reader (or viewer). If I was writing a book that included material derived from or supported by science from multiple disciplines, and I had the budget to put a guy like Sagan on the team, you better believe I'd do it. Just for the readability of it. Most scientists are terrible writers.
These are unelected officials making law by fiat.
So. You think we should actually include positions like "Deputy Undersecretary Of Transportation for Ice Cream Truck Regulation" part of the general federal election? How about his boss? And his boss's boss? And above him? Oh, right, we already do that. Was the Secretary Of Transportation under Bill Clinton acting according some idyllic democratic principle, but the same role under a different administration is suddenly Junior Ceasar?
Wake up. We elect an executive administration specifically to get things done, and they appoint people into thousands of roles as part of that job. Every administration has different priorities and policies, but if they had to try to get anything done while dealing with - what, thousands of departmental bureaucrats all of whom had to run campaigns to get their office? - you'd have absolutely no ability to focus on anything.
Every four years you get to vote for the person who appoints such people, and every 4 or 6 years, you get to vote for the legislators that fund what they do (or not).
So, what's your problem? Don't like the reality of the structure of the executive branch of government, or just don't like it when you don't like who happens to head it at certain times? Or maybe, as is more likely, you know all of this and you're just trolling in hopes of scoring some lame political points with whatever percentage of this audience actually does not know how it works, and wants to hear you paint some Emperor image of the presidency. Just remember, if you ever to get together enough votes for someone you do like better, whatever FUD you spread about the nature of the office and its interaction with other agencies is going to impact that person, too.
What's evil about Venezuela that makes them distinctly evil compared to, say, Sweden?
I didn't say "Venezuela," I said "Hugo Chavez."
Try some of his recent gems on for size:
How about their new law requiring that Venezuelan radio use at least 50% of their air time for local (national) music. How horrible, right? It's the fact that the government there is specifying entertainment music ratios - and it's indicative of the usual nanny state stuff... but with jail time consquences if you (as a radio station owner) broadcast X-too-many minutes of the non-approved music.
Or, how about his recent visit to Iran, where he indicated that he would support that regime "no matter what." That would be Iran, the most visible government source of terrorist cash and logistical support in that entire region.
Of course, he's up for "election" this year, so - shocking! - all of his primary politcal opponents are, of course, suddenly facing criminal prosecution, holding the threat of jail time over their heads. The top election monitoring group in that country meticulously documented Chavez' manipulation of the last election, and on releasing that report, the leader of that group are now up on treason charges. As soon as some European Union ambassadors indicated that they were about to attend those trials in person, the trials were shuffled off to another court in pending status - keeping Chavez's basicl political critics in prison until the election is over.
Reports of staggering corruption, spiraling street violence, and a disintigrating infrastructure are being eclipsed, in the local Venezuelan press, by coverage of the sort of speeches in which Chavez rants on and on about how prepared he is to repel the imminent US invasion of Venezuela.
There's plenty more (his gushing support for the totalitarian regime in Cuba, for example), but the real point is: tell me the people of Sweden would tolerate any of that sort of crap, and then we'll have something to talk about. That the guy is pledging his support for an apocolyptic loon like Iran's president (who just today was describing the entire west as "doomed," etc) should be enough for you to put aside whatever bit of drama you think is scoring points when you purchase gas from Chavez's oil retailing operations contrary to what your local politcal opponents might would do. If you can't tell the difference between Chavez's bustling little Castro-like regime and Sweden, then no wonder you're confused over supporting a guy like Hugo.
one has to admire their quiet selfless heroism
Quiet? OK, I guess. Heroism? Certainly courage, anyway. Selfless? Why toss that word out there? It doesn't mean anything in this context. They have a completely selfish reason to work through this problem gracefully: survival, and some lessening of their discomfort while this thing gets mopped up. What choice do they have? They (themselves) chose to get involved with the program each for their own reasons. This is the sort of risk they knew they'd face, and they're carrying on with some quality stoicism, here, not martyrdom or an abandonment of themselves in face of some difficulty. There are thousands of people who would jump at the chance to do exactly what those folks are doing - and "selflessness" has got nothing to do with it.
Apparently Matt Damon will be playing the Young Aragorn at The Westernesse Academy.
Gilbert Gottried will play the prankish young Gandalf (or, "G-Dalf," as he was known at the time, back when he was wearing his floppy hat all backwards n'stuff).
The disturbing possibility that video you're watching isn't amateur after all? So what? If it's grinding some rhetorical axe, then your critical thinking skills should already be kicking in. If it's simply entertaining, who cares?
You want disturbing? I'll tell you what's disturbing. Finding out, on the same day, that the Blair Witch and Santa Claus aren't real. At least, once you've digested that bit of shock, you're better able to deal with the fact that some people will use anonymous, free venues to blow a little smoke around, for both artistic- and agenda-driven reasons. Guess what: it's completely freakin' free! Relax, already!
NO! I buy my gas from Citgo *BECAUSE* I have been told NOT TO by people who I do not respect because they insinuate that my moderate political views are tantamount to treason. That's the short and long of it.
First, I said nothing about "treason." I said, "please."
Second, if did observe that it was treasonous to, say, send a check to some account that funds training for the people that equip suicide bombers planning to attack a naval base, would you do it, just because someone observed that fact out loud?
Just because the right thing to do sometimes intersects what someone not in your political camp also would like you to do doesn't make you right for doing the wrong thing. For example, I think that the anti-abortion nutcases are, well, netcases. So, if someone that I consider to be a shrill twit (oh, say, Barabara Streisand, or George Soros) says I should vote against someone on some other grounds (say, gun control, etc), and also says that I should vote against someone on the abortion issue, doesn't mean I'll give up my position (or actions) on one thing because they happen to like my take on the other. The coincidence of someone to your "right" than you, politically, being just as happy about less success than a guy like Chavez as you might be - even if for slightly different reasons - should make you walk away from pushing dollars to a guy like that.
This is why boycotting gas stations based on the name on the sign is idiotic.
Do you really think that the parent company doesn't make money off of the franchise fees? If there was no money in setting up franchises, they wouldn't do it. Further, some (though certainly not all) stations are owned and operated by the parent company, a la the Starbucks model. I think you're also underestimating the psychological impact of knowing that you're doing business, however indirectly, with Hugo Chavez and his increasingly dictatorial regime. There's something to that.
Keep screaming at people. Drive them under the *lash* to do *exactly* the thing you hate.
Um, how exactly does appealing to your sense that Chavez's approach to sqashing the liberty of his own people, and that of wider Central/South America, equate to "the lash?"
Asking you to think about it is hardly "screaming."
Now: your turn to explain why the Chavez world view is rational, good for freedom of expression and free trade, and the right thing for the people whose lives he's attempting to influence. Your turn to explain how buying your fuel from nationalized retailer that says he's doing it for his people even as his country's murder rate, poverty, and corruption are surging off the charts.
Citgo stations
And, by avoiding that Citgo station, you're also avoiding sending the profits on that purchase right to good old "America Is Teh Evil, Iran Is Our Brother" Hugo Chavez. A lot of people don't know that Citgo is owned by the nationalized Venezuelan oil company. Don't send cash to that idiot, please. His local crude oil is highly sulfurous, which makes refining it expensive. He can only sell it competitively if the easier-to-refine stuff from other places (say, the middle east) are made more expensive because of market pressures or jitteriness. He has a vested interest in stirring the pot. Friction between, say, Iran and the west is in his favor.
Oh, and he gets the vast majority of his investment cash through big-ticket commitments to China. They've got cash (ours!), and he's got the energy they need to prop up their economic house of cards. Making his operations more comfortable by filling up at a Citgo, personally, may not make that much of a difference... but your half-mile drive to the competition is worth more than just the extra couple dollars you save. Just sayin'.
I've got a machine with the Alanis Morisette Signature-Series Ironic Cooling System. Of course, just like the unit in TFA isn't really "ionic," her's isn't ironic, either. Which makes this actually ironic! Yeah, I really do think.
A pirated copy genuinely does not come with the same support from the publisher that a properly licensed copy does. It's that simple.
Look, my wife was born in Germany. And we she saw that I was sitting on a Saturday morning commenting on slashdot, she was not amused. Especially when she realized I was cracking on Germans. QED, or close to it. I believe she said something along the lines of, "If you're trying to make a humorous point, how about I just put one your head with that iron pot. You know, the one I use for Hasenpfeffer. Idiot." Or something similarly nuanced, and softened by years of süsse, leichte Verbindung.
Germans are never amused.
I'm sorry, but the worst website I have ever seen has to be http://hosanna1.com/
:P
It's pretty hard to disagree with you. And as a guy who has built a lot of dog-related web content for and about dog breeders, I can tell you that the design sensibilities that result in outbreaks like this is more of an epidemic than a fluke.
That being said, I have to wonder: why, when, and how did you find that spectacular web site? Yes, I'm looking for SEO tips.
i see your 5 artists and raise you 5000 who benefit by having their music shared
But it doesn't matter. Artists that want to spread their material for free have a zillion mechanisms through which to do so. Artists that want to exercise their copyright as part of a different set of goals or priorities will appreciate that MS is doing this. It's that simple. Artists already, and always have had, the option handing out their music for free, it that's what they want to do. I'm reminded of the notion of the people that want to eat in a restaurant without inhaling smoke. Just because they're choosing not to smoke doesn't mean they're free from the smoke that the guy next to them is producing. With copyright, you can opt in or out as an artist - but people who are too cheap to pay the artists they claim to respect what those artists are asking for their work have really altered the landscape.
The good news: if you and the artists with whom you have some particular music-wants-to-be-free relationship want to, you can simply ignore this product. If enough do, it will simply go away. In the meantime, it has no way of preventing you from doing what you're already doing using other tools, whether your favorite musician it or not.
fact is, bands make _much_ more money from concert sales that record sales, and sharing music has a huge impact on that
Some of the best music ever recorded is produced by studio talent that have zero interest in going on tour, or which could never possibly drag 15 people with them everywhere they'd have to go to earn a living if they couldn't charge for their recordings. "Bands" in the sense that you're using that word are only a small part of the copyright landscape.
I think this has been blown out of all proportion by those looking for another MS bash.
You only think it has? Come, sir! You are too modest, or too worried about upsetting the MS-bashing trolls. It has, and of course that was inevitable. When you see the strings "Microsoft" and "DRM" in a slashdot headline or summary, it might as well translate to "Abandon All Reason, Ye Who Enter Here."
What part of small constitutional republic not an empire don't you understand?
What part of "defense" don't you understand? There are places in the world (say, Taliban-run Afghanistan) that are used as bases to train for and launch attacks on our soil. Our requests to such government as there was there to turn over the people who had set up shop in that country for that purpose were, of course, ignored. Self defense demands that we put a stop to such threats, especially as the people involved openly proclaim their desire for large-scale WMDs. That's not something you can react to, it's something you have to prevent. To the extent it has to be prevented elsewhere, that's where we have to go.
And, if there was some demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Washington DC and the Chinese started blasting US citizens in the vicinity of the Chinese embassy with high intensity microwaves, then the Washington DC "natives" would think that was totally OK.
Do you have any idea how quickly a violent mob outside a DC-located embassy would be dispersed by our own people to avoid exactly that sort of fearful pressure on the people inside the Chinese embassy? That's the whole point. We don't get a lot of flaming riots and religiously-stoked molotov-cocktail-throwing chanting crowds in the US (except after vital sporting events), so the Chinese guards at their embassy really don't have to think about this sort of thing, since they've got their local embassy parked in a country that doesn't operate by angry mob in the first place.
New laws enacted without record of who voted for them?
Anyone who says this is happening is lying for politcal points. Whether or not some committee recomends a particular bit of legislation means nothing in terms of a real (and per-representative-recorded) vote on the floor of the House and the Senate. No one can hide from their record when actually voting for/against a law, and that has not happened in this case.
Further, you'll notice that even the rabid Bush-bashing types were quick to say that it's not that they don't want tools like this to be available to counter-intel/counter-terrorism types, it's that they were having fun saying Bush wasn't doing in accordance with any particular legislation. So, here's the pending legislation. If his detractors (who still say they don't want to deprive security folks of these tools) weren't lying, then they should be all for this. It will be interesting to see who was lying, as opposed to who was just being lazy for TV cameras while whining about programs that were in long (and productive) use.
Are you so unable to think back even a few years to when our troops, along with those of other countries, were used - as an example - to help disarm the "ethnic-cleansing" Serbs who were slaughtering Muslims by the village-full in places like Croatia and Bosnia? Marines stood outside of every building that housed a local negotiation between our diplomats and the local militants. It was routine for the ethnic Serbs to do a lot more than throw rocks our troops while our troops were providing a peaceful spot in which to conduct that village's disarmament talks.
Would you rather that those Marines killed, or disbursed said Serbs, or simply that a few Marines die during events like that (never mind getting the NATO/UN/State Department peoplep they're protecting killed)? Presuming (though I can't really tell) that you'd just as soon see the diplomats and the Marines live through such days, and that you'd also just as soon not see them have to use lethal force to prevent being overrun by one half of the village, wouldn't you rather they had the means by which to keep a clear space around where the work is being done, with no casualties?
Assuming you can bring yourself to be that reasonable, you have to then discuss how they do it. Sure, they can use teargas. But that's dangerous - even though that has been tested by our own police on our own citizens in riots over the years. But a newer tool, that doesn't involve inciniaries and respiratory nastiness is worth a try. But wouldn't it be better, in terms of Al Jazeera-ness, if some Serb who's already looking for ways to describe NATO's prevention of their ethnic cleansing as somehow unfair to be deprived of the chance to say that we're using crowd control technology that we don't consider safe enough to also use when our own law enforcement people have to break up some drunken fraternity's car-burning binge in the middle of a college campus after a ball game.
I presume you consider it reasonable for law enforcement to use teargas when you've got some mob of drunks burning cars in your town, right? Then why shouldn't the very same police who already, and always have had the obligation to do that very thing be working with less dangerous technologies, since you can set your watch by the recurrance of such events, right here in the US? And when we've shown ourselves that such tools are safer, and more humane, and more practical, that's exactly when the military - when called upon to do very similar things in peacekeeping abroad - can use the same technologies with both logistical and diplomatic comfort. And fewer people get hurt.
You're so anxious to make the US the bad guy at every turn that you can't see something perfectly reasonable right in front of your face. Something that hurts fewer people is exactly how you help avoid long-term anti-American hostility. That's a lot better than using a bullet, or having someone get smacked in the head with a CS cannister.
So basically, you think that unless I can control the greater American population
Nonsense. I'm saying that the odds are very, very good that if you're walking down the street with your giant puppet attempting to show the irony of The Man in his role as a figurehead in the context of the futility of existence and thus why minimum wages in Malaysia should be subsidized by people living in certain US zip codes - or whatever you're doing - and right there is a group of people that clearly are about to do some damage or violence... that you can either stop them yourself (yes, because they are endangering you, too), or you can walk right over, yourself, and ask a police officer to intercede.
Anyone who tells you that they can't spot the Starbucks-smashers or the car-burners about to go to town in the middle of their glowing, rosy, smiling Rainbows And Unicorns Society Of Gentle People demonstration is outright lying.