Its starting to seem like the *only* reason politicians get involved in politics is so they can rake off the cash from political contributions and "favors" done by lobby groups, then when they retire, get a massively profitable position on a board of directors for some company that bought and for them while they were in politics.
Maybe the first thing that should happen when you get elected to any office is that your bank records and financial statements become a matter of public record, updated on a daily basis...
So essentially your politicians are a bunch of money-grubbing whores who try to get all the cash they can to ensure they keep their jobs. Moreover, because you have very frequent elections, they probably spend a lot of their time engaged in turning another lobby-group/corporate trick in order to keep the money flowing in so they can stay in power.
Does this leave them any time to actually try to do the things they were ostensibly elected to do?
Glad to hear it. Men may brush off threats and abuse on the Internet - and perhaps women need to grow a thicker skin in some cases - but the reality is that women who state anything remotely challenging are subject to harassment and abuse, and indeed death and rape threats on a regular basis. My wife gave up playing a few MMOs due to the *continuous* sexual harassment she received whenever she logged in - and this when its a given that every female character is actually a guy according to most male gamers (silly but it is the reason so few women want to actually admit they are female).
Were it not for the anonymity we enjoy on many websites, this would happen a lot less. That anonymity lets us post our thoughts and opinions freely and should be treasured (although seemingly its not really anonymity given the NSA etc) and its a shame that asshats feel compelled to spew forth idiotic and offensive vitriol just because they can - or because they were abused, or can't get laid, or are so obnoxious no one wants to be their friend or whatever other source of all that mindless rage and anger is. Trolls ruin the web for a lot of people.
I know there are a lot of websites my wife will simply not visit any more because bullshit like this goes on, on a regular basis. I sincerely hope they find cause to charge the guy who was arrested and he receives a harsh punishment that is well publicized if he is found guilty. Perhaps that might deter some idiots in the future.
Its a pretty rare film that I will actually go see in the Theatre for pretty much exactly the reasons you mention. I see maybe 1 film a year on average, 2 in a rare year.
I also got rid of cable for the same reason. Nothing worth watching for the ridiculous cost of the service.
I can wait to watch it on DvD or from some online source like Netflix (or Bittorrent for that matter).
In order to simplify the FISA applications, the NSA has simply divided the world into 4 populations, and by means of this 3 hop capability, the application can simply read "Group 1", "Group 2", "Group 3" or "Group 4", although there may be an "All of the Above" option, who knows. In any case the applications are stamped as Approved prior to being completed.
Sadly, they are stuck in the mindset that things were that way and thus will always be that way and that they deserve the profit margin they were used to in the market they understand, just because they are used to it. They don't want to adapt, and sadly the legal system is supporting them in the preservation of their outdated business model. I too used to download tv shows, now I have Netflix and the BBC app for my wife's iPad and hardly ever consider downloading things because a CONVENIENT and AFFORDABLE method of obtaining those things legally is available to me. I am not surprised at the results in Norway at all.
The MPAA/RIAA just has to clue into the fact that they can make up their profits by selling to more people at a lower price, rather than fewer people at a higher price and still make some money.
Of course I am sure they are also worried that there will in fact be little need for them down the road as more artists and content producers cut out the middle men. That concern I understand.
Inside of the US most people view "Socialism" as being virtually identical with "Communism". Very few Americans seem to be able to make the distinction between a Socialist Democracy and a Socialist Totalitarian state. Hell, many can't even tell that Communism and Fascism are on the opposite end of the political spectrum.Thus they seem to equate Canada's Healthcare system with the Totalitarian government in Cuba.
Outside of the US many recognize that the Government can handle some aspects of the economy effectively in many ways, and that sometimes this is preferable to having Corporations run things. Of course the recent trend towards Rightwing governments here in Canada means that a lot of those government organizations (Crown Corporations we call them here) are being dismantled and replaced with non-government corporations, or at least the rules are being changed so it makes little difference. I hope this trend ends eventually when people realize that our Conservative Overlords are destroying the country in the name of sucking up to the US Republican party and to major Corporate interests and not acting in the interests of the Canadian citizenry, but I may hope in vain.
Two thoughts: First of all, he made it to Russia when everyone thought he was still in Hong Kong. Obviously he is pretty canny and aware of the abilities of the US to track him. I think its entirely possible that he has already left the airport and is en route to somewhere else. In fact the whole episode with the Bolivian president's jet might simply have been a distraction engineered to cover Snowden leaving Moscow to go somewhere else. Secondly, when I was in the USSR many many years ago we landed at Shermeyetyevo Dva (2). The map I saw of the airport indicated that the reporters were in a section that had Terminals D, E and F (or something like that). There are 2 airports there, is it possible that the reason the reporters haven't seen Snowden or any evidence of his presence at Shermeyetyevo airport is because they are Dva (2) and he is at (Odin) 1? Third thought: if he makes it to a country that offers him refuge, this is going to make a great movie plot sometime. Of course thats assuming the US doesn't simply assassinate him.
No, its not a piece of shit country, its got piece of shit people running the place and they have created a system that ensures they stay in power. The country itself is very decent overall. In a sense you have put a lot of people in jail who shouldn't be there as part of the "War on Drugs" fiasco, and a lot of politicians, corporate CEOs and Intelligence types who should be put in jail but haven't.
Feudalism never really left our culture, it just changed its colours. There is the law for the rich and powerful, then there is the law for the peons:(
I think you have hit the nail on the head, only I am thinking of those who blindly accept the loss of privacy, rights of free speech, right to assemble in protest etc in order to permit the Authorities to fight "Terrorism". Yes, detecting terrorist plots before they become terrorist events is a good thing but there needs to be some transparency in *how* they are being detected and some dialog concerning how far rights of privacy can be violated and under what circumstances, rather than the NSA just sucking up everything they want whenever they deem it necessary. As well of course, people need to be able to disagree with the government and its actions, and that same government having complete access to all our secrets means it can, should it choose to do so (and currently we would never know) use that ability to blacklist anyone who disagrees with it. Just blindly accepting that the powers that be know what they are doing seems incredibly stupid to me, but perhaps thats this "inner policeman" taking over in some minds...
Ultimately, yes, we the voters are responsible. While its true the Conservatives engaged in all sorts of illegal shenanigans during the election (transfers of campaign cash, robocalling etc) to ensure they hung on to power, the result was not enough to throw the election. Therefore its our citizenry who are to blame for the fact that Harper is in power and remains there - and now has a majority. If the 60% who did not vote showed up in any substantial numbers to cast their ballot it might have made for a very different outcome. Of course a lot of those are students, the unemployed, the homeless etc who have problems with registering to vote, or getting to a polling station etc, which doesn't help. The rich, retired, conservative types can more easily vote I suspect.
Guaranteed that our country is willingly sharing all of our data with the US. I don't doubt it for a minute. And its likely been doing it since Echelon was first built, now just more efficiently than before. I have zero faith in Steven Harper's credibility or integrity at any rate.
Well there haven't been enough foreign generated terrorist attacks on the US to use them as a justification for all this paranoia and rape of personal privacy. Therefore they have to concentrate on home grown terrorists - encouraging them where necessary to cross the line - to justify it all. At the moment the only thing offering us any privacy seems to be the limits placed by technology on maintaining the data and analyzing/searching it. The 1m sq foot data center in Utah and the 600k sq foot one in Maryland would seem to be the next step in resolving the issue of handling the volume. The thing that gets me is all these stories about the agreement with Verizon that leaked. That agreement is pretty much useless unless all the other cellphone and Internet providers have also made the same agreement, otherwise what happens with a Verizon customer calls a Bell customer? The NSA only gets half the data? I can't see them as able to accept that.
The Canadian government seems to hold near-monopolies in very high favour. The result is always that the customer gets screwed completely. The Telephone industry here is a great example.
I'm sick of it too, since its obvious to any Canadian that we do not say "aboot", but most Americans are completely unable to hear the difference, and do hear it as "aboot". Its a dialect thing. The same thing is true when we listen to some US accents, they seem to lengthen many many vowels to our ears. Their "About" is more like "Abawwwwt":P
Except by making a gratuitous sequel (or reboot) of a great movie, they usually manage to offend the fans of the original, plus since they seldom "get" what the appeal of the original is, they usually don't make a better sequel - thus turning off the younger fans that might have adopted the new version.
And of course, since the redo is big budget, they have to run it through the hands of a few writers to be sure its got the seal of approval that the backers want, and in the process anything good or quirky is ironed out and the script conforms to the cliches that worked in the past based on market research and analysis. Usually this means more Splosions.
Increasingly/. is all about pointless uninformative one line comments. In that its very much like reddit. I used to come here for interesting stories and responses, but now I have to wade through 100 pointless quips to get to one informative one.
If I recall correctly some of the minor species languages that you encounter in Star Wars were actually people speaking various African languages - which caused a lot of humour when the movies played in Kenya etc.
That I could read the comments and be sure they would be full of people saying essentially "Fat people are fat because they eat too much" which is pure ignorance. Admittedly eating a high calorie diet will make you fatter if you don't burn off the calories at the same time for a typical person, but there are a lot of other reasons why someone ends up obese, ranging from lifestyle choices (where they are at fault) to depression, medical conditions, bad diet due to poverty (the cheap processed foods that poor folks often end up buying are also the least healthy shit sold as food), etc. But I knew I would see the "blame the fat people" line first and foremost, scattered throughout the comments for one simple reason: even in our age of political correctness, fat people are the one public group everyone feels okay about laughing at or making cruel comments. Everyone seems to agree its okay to be biased against fat people, period. The results of this study come as no surprise to me at all.
I interpreted that as meaning "Homeless/Drug Addicts" when I read it. We have our Urban Culture here in my town too. Often seen screaming at the top of their lungs, walking haphazardly across the street in front of traffic and most popularly crouched by the side of the street sorting out endless reams of shit in whatever bag or backpack they are carrying.
But a little while ago they were planning to raise their data rates, which meant *everyones* data rate was going to go up, no matter what their service provider, because Bell owns the vast majority of the internet lines across the entire country.
They *are* effectively a monopoly, just as our cellphone carriers (Bell included) charge roughly the same high rates (Canadians pay some of the highest fees in the world) because there is *no* real competition, just the appearance of it. Most of the smaller providers actually belong to one of the bigger players for instance. Their sole purpose seems to make it look like there is more choice, but its a sham.
Sounds awfully Utopian. I find it much easier to believe in a future where the very very very rich run just about everything according to their tastes, the rich serve their needs and get elected to run the government according to their instructions, and the rest of the population is either starving in crime infested ghettos, or serving time in the state supported corporate prisons. For robots to be worth using, they have to do the labour cheaper than slaves^HH^H foreign employees can in say Thailand or China. If a robot can do it more effectively and cheaply than slave labour then it will replace the slave labour, otherwise major corporations will continue to exploit the poor in foreign countries as they do whenever possible these days. In either case the number of jobs that pay a fair wage by our standards will only decrease over time. The corporations are winning, humanity is losing, generally speaking.
Slashdot Mirror
Its starting to seem like the *only* reason politicians get involved in politics is so they can rake off the cash from political contributions and "favors" done by lobby groups, then when they retire, get a massively profitable position on a board of directors for some company that bought and for them while they were in politics.
Maybe the first thing that should happen when you get elected to any office is that your bank records and financial statements become a matter of public record, updated on a daily basis...
So essentially your politicians are a bunch of money-grubbing whores who try to get all the cash they can to ensure they keep their jobs. Moreover, because you have very frequent elections, they probably spend a lot of their time engaged in turning another lobby-group/corporate trick in order to keep the money flowing in so they can stay in power.
Does this leave them any time to actually try to do the things they were ostensibly elected to do?
Glad to hear it. Men may brush off threats and abuse on the Internet - and perhaps women need to grow a thicker skin in some cases - but the reality is that women who state anything remotely challenging are subject to harassment and abuse, and indeed death and rape threats on a regular basis. My wife gave up playing a few MMOs due to the *continuous* sexual harassment she received whenever she logged in - and this when its a given that every female character is actually a guy according to most male gamers (silly but it is the reason so few women want to actually admit they are female).
Were it not for the anonymity we enjoy on many websites, this would happen a lot less. That anonymity lets us post our thoughts and opinions freely and should be treasured (although seemingly its not really anonymity given the NSA etc) and its a shame that asshats feel compelled to spew forth idiotic and offensive vitriol just because they can - or because they were abused, or can't get laid, or are so obnoxious no one wants to be their friend or whatever other source of all that mindless rage and anger is. Trolls ruin the web for a lot of people.
I know there are a lot of websites my wife will simply not visit any more because bullshit like this goes on, on a regular basis. I sincerely hope they find cause to charge the guy who was arrested and he receives a harsh punishment that is well publicized if he is found guilty. Perhaps that might deter some idiots in the future.
Its a pretty rare film that I will actually go see in the Theatre for pretty much exactly the reasons you mention. I see maybe 1 film a year on average, 2 in a rare year.
I also got rid of cable for the same reason. Nothing worth watching for the ridiculous cost of the service.
I can wait to watch it on DvD or from some online source like Netflix (or Bittorrent for that matter).
In order to simplify the FISA applications, the NSA has simply divided the world into 4 populations, and by means of this 3 hop capability, the application can simply read "Group 1", "Group 2", "Group 3" or "Group 4", although there may be an "All of the Above" option, who knows.
In any case the applications are stamped as Approved prior to being completed.
But.. But.. Its Mentally Unstable and its got the intelligence of a 4 yr old. Surely its already *passed* the level of your typical CEO?
Sadly, they are stuck in the mindset that things were that way and thus will always be that way and that they deserve the profit margin they were used to in the market they understand, just because they are used to it. They don't want to adapt, and sadly the legal system is supporting them in the preservation of their outdated business model.
I too used to download tv shows, now I have Netflix and the BBC app for my wife's iPad and hardly ever consider downloading things because a CONVENIENT and AFFORDABLE method of obtaining those things legally is available to me. I am not surprised at the results in Norway at all.
The MPAA/RIAA just has to clue into the fact that they can make up their profits by selling to more people at a lower price, rather than fewer people at a higher price and still make some money.
Of course I am sure they are also worried that there will in fact be little need for them down the road as more artists and content producers cut out the middle men. That concern I understand.
Inside of the US most people view "Socialism" as being virtually identical with "Communism". Very few Americans seem to be able to make the distinction between a Socialist Democracy and a Socialist Totalitarian state. Hell, many can't even tell that Communism and Fascism are on the opposite end of the political spectrum.Thus they seem to equate Canada's Healthcare system with the Totalitarian government in Cuba.
Outside of the US many recognize that the Government can handle some aspects of the economy effectively in many ways, and that sometimes this is preferable to having Corporations run things. Of course the recent trend towards Rightwing governments here in Canada means that a lot of those government organizations (Crown Corporations we call them here) are being dismantled and replaced with non-government corporations, or at least the rules are being changed so it makes little difference. I hope this trend ends eventually when people realize that our Conservative Overlords are destroying the country in the name of sucking up to the US Republican party and to major Corporate interests and not acting in the interests of the Canadian citizenry, but I may hope in vain.
Two thoughts:
First of all, he made it to Russia when everyone thought he was still in Hong Kong. Obviously he is pretty canny and aware of the abilities of the US to track him. I think its entirely possible that he has already left the airport and is en route to somewhere else. In fact the whole episode with the Bolivian president's jet might simply have been a distraction engineered to cover Snowden leaving Moscow to go somewhere else.
Secondly, when I was in the USSR many many years ago we landed at Shermeyetyevo Dva (2). The map I saw of the airport indicated that the reporters were in a section that had Terminals D, E and F (or something like that). There are 2 airports there, is it possible that the reason the reporters haven't seen Snowden or any evidence of his presence at Shermeyetyevo airport is because they are Dva (2) and he is at (Odin) 1?
Third thought: if he makes it to a country that offers him refuge, this is going to make a great movie plot sometime. Of course thats assuming the US doesn't simply assassinate him.
No, its not a piece of shit country, its got piece of shit people running the place and they have created a system that ensures they stay in power. The country itself is very decent overall. In a sense you have put a lot of people in jail who shouldn't be there as part of the "War on Drugs" fiasco, and a lot of politicians, corporate CEOs and Intelligence types who should be put in jail but haven't.
Feudalism never really left our culture, it just changed its colours. There is the law for the rich and powerful, then there is the law for the peons :(
I think you have hit the nail on the head, only I am thinking of those who blindly accept the loss of privacy, rights of free speech, right to assemble in protest etc in order to permit the Authorities to fight "Terrorism". Yes, detecting terrorist plots before they become terrorist events is a good thing but there needs to be some transparency in *how* they are being detected and some dialog concerning how far rights of privacy can be violated and under what circumstances, rather than the NSA just sucking up everything they want whenever they deem it necessary.
As well of course, people need to be able to disagree with the government and its actions, and that same government having complete access to all our secrets means it can, should it choose to do so (and currently we would never know) use that ability to blacklist anyone who disagrees with it.
Just blindly accepting that the powers that be know what they are doing seems incredibly stupid to me, but perhaps thats this "inner policeman" taking over in some minds...
Ultimately, yes, we the voters are responsible. While its true the Conservatives engaged in all sorts of illegal shenanigans during the election (transfers of campaign cash, robocalling etc) to ensure they hung on to power, the result was not enough to throw the election. Therefore its our citizenry who are to blame for the fact that Harper is in power and remains there - and now has a majority.
If the 60% who did not vote showed up in any substantial numbers to cast their ballot it might have made for a very different outcome. Of course a lot of those are students, the unemployed, the homeless etc who have problems with registering to vote, or getting to a polling station etc, which doesn't help. The rich, retired, conservative types can more easily vote I suspect.
Guaranteed that our country is willingly sharing all of our data with the US. I don't doubt it for a minute. And its likely been doing it since Echelon was first built, now just more efficiently than before. I have zero faith in Steven Harper's credibility or integrity at any rate.
Well there haven't been enough foreign generated terrorist attacks on the US to use them as a justification for all this paranoia and rape of personal privacy. Therefore they have to concentrate on home grown terrorists - encouraging them where necessary to cross the line - to justify it all.
At the moment the only thing offering us any privacy seems to be the limits placed by technology on maintaining the data and analyzing/searching it. The 1m sq foot data center in Utah and the 600k sq foot one in Maryland would seem to be the next step in resolving the issue of handling the volume.
The thing that gets me is all these stories about the agreement with Verizon that leaked. That agreement is pretty much useless unless all the other cellphone and Internet providers have also made the same agreement, otherwise what happens with a Verizon customer calls a Bell customer? The NSA only gets half the data? I can't see them as able to accept that.
The Canadian government seems to hold near-monopolies in very high favour. The result is always that the customer gets screwed completely. The Telephone industry here is a great example.
I'm sick of it too, since its obvious to any Canadian that we do not say "aboot", but most Americans are completely unable to hear the difference, and do hear it as "aboot". Its a dialect thing. :P
The same thing is true when we listen to some US accents, they seem to lengthen many many vowels to our ears. Their "About" is more like "Abawwwwt"
Except by making a gratuitous sequel (or reboot) of a great movie, they usually manage to offend the fans of the original, plus since they seldom "get" what the appeal of the original is, they usually don't make a better sequel - thus turning off the younger fans that might have adopted the new version.
And of course, since the redo is big budget, they have to run it through the hands of a few writers to be sure its got the seal of approval that the backers want, and in the process anything good or quirky is ironed out and the script conforms to the cliches that worked in the past based on market research and analysis. Usually this means more Splosions.
Increasingly /. is all about pointless uninformative one line comments. In that its very much like reddit. I used to come here for interesting stories and responses, but now I have to wade through 100 pointless quips to get to one informative one.
If I recall correctly some of the minor species languages that you encounter in Star Wars were actually people speaking various African languages - which caused a lot of humour when the movies played in Kenya etc.
That I could read the comments and be sure they would be full of people saying essentially "Fat people are fat because they eat too much" which is pure ignorance. Admittedly eating a high calorie diet will make you fatter if you don't burn off the calories at the same time for a typical person, but there are a lot of other reasons why someone ends up obese, ranging from lifestyle choices (where they are at fault) to depression, medical conditions, bad diet due to poverty (the cheap processed foods that poor folks often end up buying are also the least healthy shit sold as food), etc.
But I knew I would see the "blame the fat people" line first and foremost, scattered throughout the comments for one simple reason: even in our age of political correctness, fat people are the one public group everyone feels okay about laughing at or making cruel comments. Everyone seems to agree its okay to be biased against fat people, period.
The results of this study come as no surprise to me at all.
I interpreted that as meaning "Homeless/Drug Addicts" when I read it. We have our Urban Culture here in my town too. Often seen screaming at the top of their lungs, walking haphazardly across the street in front of traffic and most popularly crouched by the side of the street sorting out endless reams of shit in whatever bag or backpack they are carrying.
But a little while ago they were planning to raise their data rates, which meant *everyones* data rate was going to go up, no matter what their service provider, because Bell owns the vast majority of the internet lines across the entire country.
They *are* effectively a monopoly, just as our cellphone carriers (Bell included) charge roughly the same high rates (Canadians pay some of the highest fees in the world) because there is *no* real competition, just the appearance of it. Most of the smaller providers actually belong to one of the bigger players for instance. Their sole purpose seems to make it look like there is more choice, but its a sham.
Sounds awfully Utopian. I find it much easier to believe in a future where the very very very rich run just about everything according to their tastes, the rich serve their needs and get elected to run the government according to their instructions, and the rest of the population is either starving in crime infested ghettos, or serving time in the state supported corporate prisons.
For robots to be worth using, they have to do the labour cheaper than slaves^HH^H foreign employees can in say Thailand or China. If a robot can do it more effectively and cheaply than slave labour then it will replace the slave labour, otherwise major corporations will continue to exploit the poor in foreign countries as they do whenever possible these days. In either case the number of jobs that pay a fair wage by our standards will only decrease over time.
The corporations are winning, humanity is losing, generally speaking.
Marriage vow, pah! You will have to agree to the EULA :P