Oddly enough, I just installed Cinnamon and Mate yesterday. KDE is too buggy and I refuse to use Gnome (but I have tried it). All of the older window managers that I recall really seem stale now: E16, FVWM, Blackbox, etc. I tested out E17 excitedly but it is way too buggy. I have been using WindowMaker and it mostly works but still feels... limited.
So I edit xinitrc to add the mate startup, exec mate_desktop or somesuch because I want to try it first since I am thinking I will likely go to Cinnamon. I execute startx... and not quite orgasmic, but god it felt GOOD. I quickly went in and started to try and tweak some things to make it more like I want it and still see evidence of previous damage by the Gnome devs but holy crap it felt good!
Classic mode has to compete with Mate. Mate does not have to compete with Classic mode. Mate is winning and judging by the Gnome devs past actions, Gnome will never really be able to compete. Gnome is dead to me.
I really should try Cinnamon but I doubt that I will. Mate feels THAT good. Just wow. So very nice.
I hate to state the obvious but put in cheat codes and then don't do violent things. Running people over in intersections is just as violent as the real world is if you drive like a maniac. Most of the violence is because YOU started it.
You are then free to wander about the world doing whatever piques your interest. That is generally how I play... except I did the missions to unlock everything instead of using cheat codes.
Keep deluding yourself that IT is a revenue generator. Try pitching that to the VP of IS/IT while he stares at the spreadsheet showing the hundreds of thousands of dollars you requested that quarter to upgrade XYZ.
That is because you are doing it wrong...
Try showing the VP what IT enables and what those hundreds of thousands of dollars will enhance.
You: "Sir, we need $125k for new servers and database licenses."
VP: "Shortly after hell freezes over. We have to make this quarter's profit deadline and spending that money now will cause us to miss it and the CEO will not get his 5m bonus for meeting projected profits."
You: "Well yea, the CEO will have to sacrifice his $5m bonus to get these servers up and running but we are currently rate limited on transactions. By spending this money, we will enable another $200m in revenue."
VP: "You have a valid point there. Let me talk to the CEO."
Three days later...
VP: "Denied."
Oops. I guess being rational makes no difference. The CEO wanted his $5m and everything else be damned because he has a golden parachute anyways. *sigh*
That said, yes, there probably a lot of people too clueless to realize that the one game that is probably the most famous of all games in the world for not being for kids isn't for kids.
And why is it not for kids? I have a 3 year old playing GTA San Andreas and he absolutely LOVES it. He begs to come over and play it at my place. He gets so excited it is almost like heroin for a junky.
But here is the deal: He has no idea what a hooker is or any of that other "bad" stuff. He likes to explore the world on foot, bicycle, motorcycle, car, boat, and airplane. He does not have simulated sex with the women in the game because he has no idea what that even is. He does not kill people, he has absolutely no interest in it. Why would he?
Just because these things are possible in the game, that does NOT mean the game is about that. Just because those actions are possible in real life, it does not mean that real life is about that.
Sure, the missions may lead you down some dark paths but by the time you are old enough to do the missions, you should be old enough to deal with what the missions entail.
I can not comment on the GTAV yet as I have no console to play it on, I only do computers, but the missions themselves on the San Andreas and earlier were not really so bad that a youngster would get twisted or psychotic.
What you and the guy above you do not seem to understand is that Microsoft software SUCKS. The focus of the software is to make Microsoft money whereas the focus should be on providing software that people want to actually use. Since they have a monopoly, they do not have to actually care about making software that people want to use...
Except for the fact that they just burned a billion fucking dollars and seemed surprised over it... and are getting ready to do it AGAIN. And that is what the article is about and that you and the parent seem to be completely missing.
It's part of their long-term strategy to get into the living room, which has been very successful. I know many people who have an Xbox for the sole purpose of accessing movie rentals, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and play an occasional game or two.
Um, the XBOX sucks at this. The playstation is MUCH better. The reason why is that you must PAY for xbox live in order to do anything other than play games. Netflix is simply inaccessible without a valid xbox live membership whereas with the playstation, Netflix works just fine without any extra costs for the console.
I dislike both Sony and Microsoft and I will be buying neither console.
But, as the excellent little book "Peopleware" put it: "Adding manpower to a late project makes it later."
I don't know about that...
I was put on a project that was already 6 months late. There were 8 people on the project already. I removed the need for all of those people and had everything up to speed within 2 weeks. All I did was write some code to parse data and interface with LDAP amongst other trivial things.
Another project I was put on had been stalled for 3 months. Two days later, I had their project back on track and almost complete.
Granted, I am not a "normal" person, but if you put me on a project, I get things done.
why the fuck, does every american citizen say, that surveilance is okay, when its sure, that no american citizens are targeted?
This is actually really simple. I will approach it from two sides for clarity.
As an American, do I give a fuck if Germany is spying on me? Not really. Why? They can not do anything to me. They can not take my house, my family, my job, affect my social environment, or do anything else to me that I care about. I suppose they could kill me... but is that something I really need to worry about from Germany?
As an American, do I give a fuck if America is spying on me? You betcha! Why? They can do all sorts of things to me. They can take my house, my family, my job, affect my social environment,, or do lots of other things to me that I care about. I suppose they could kill me... but it that something I really need to worry about from America?
There are still two other viewpoints to describe this from but I am assuming you are smart enough to construct those two yourself.
I just hope it was a mistake on her part, otherwise privacy will be criminalized.
I hate to say "Duh!" at a time like this, but seriously, considering all of the stuff we have learned about the NSA and GCHQ, outlawing privacy seems to be the EXACT aim of all of this crap.
Enjoy the golden handcuffs. (You can do some miraculous communication (golden) but it will all be monitored (handcuffs))
if you have fast enough internet to stream, there's no need to hoard stuff any more.
Not true at all. The stuff you hoard may not be available anywhere anymore, especially in its original form. If you do not hoard, the internet becomes the Memory Hole. We were always at war with Eurasia and Han never shot first.
He was not a scientist as a child. All he heard was that we were in the middle of an ice age and that our activities were likely bringing it back sooner.
It does not matter if it was true or if there was a scientific consensus. What matters is perception. Due to previous scaremongering, what is happening sounds like more scaremongering. Perhaps the scaremongering aspect should be dealt with because honestly, even if "it" (what exactly?) is "true" (for certain variations of true), it is all being promulgated in a scaremongering way: OMG!!!! If we don't do this, we are all going to dieeeeeeeeeee. Holy crap! It is already too late to stop it and all we can do is mitigate it somewhat (by paying billions to... someone?).
Seriously, WTF?
I am sure the people who want to pollute are behind a lot of the hyperbole but it seems to frame everything everyone says.
For myself, I do not much care if the planet becomes hotter, colder, wetter, or drier. WHat I care about a LOT is whether or not the air is fit to breathe or the water is fit to drink. Filling the atmosphere and oceans with nasty chemicals and and compounds has to stop.
This part of the debate is suspiciously absebce from the debate. It is all about CO2 and if it can cause warming. Who cares? It can turn the oceans into an acid bath.
mooo
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO
on
Inside OS X Mavericks
·
· Score: 1
I bet most of those folks are using older machines that can't use 10.7+.
Maybe. Maybe not. For myself, I have a 15 inch macbook pro that is capable of running the latest but I chose to stay on Snow Leopard. The "integration" of the app store with the OS was a severe turnoff for me. Rather like slapping makeup and perfume on a drugged up alcoholic *hooker: It is still gross.
Honestly, there have been no changes to the operating system that interest me enough to switch. There have been no upgrades to its performance or usability that interest me.
*For those who are not lining things up properly, the app store is the hooker and the perfume and makeup is OS X.
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still voting to increase evil.
Even if it were true that voting a 3rd party is "wasting" your vote, that is still not as bad as voting to increase evil.
So what happens when even the third party candidates are unacceptable? Ron Paul? Please. Whacky communists? No thanks. There are absolutely no candidates that I would vote for. Does that mean I should not vote for a president? Or, should I vote for the candidate, third party or not, that would do the least amount of harm?
Socialism is necessary not because everyone is good, but because everyone *is* self interested and self justifying. Without some sort of correcting mechanism(e.g. redistribution of wealth by the government), self-interest compounds upon self-interest, amplifying inequality
This is an interesting argument and should be discussed. The problem with it is when it is applied to people who legitimately earn the entirety of their wealth, they will feel treated unjustly.
An illustration: A person figures out how to do something miraculous with common sea water. People REALLY want this product and have no problems giving all of their disposable income endlessly to this person for the product.
At what point do you (we?) decide that this accumulation of wealth is unfair to the general public? If it is unfair, how/why?
I agree that using wealth to gather more wealth is problematic for a society since the logical conclusion is that one person will control all of the wealth. Socialism (the ideal) could prevent that, but the policies will unfairly hit those who are generating new wealth.
What is the proper solution (accepting that ideal Socialism would even work)?
They also release games on steam at the same time all over the world to my knowledge which is another reason why people pirate, to obtain something that is not yet available by legal means in the their country.
Funny that you should say that just now...
A day or two ago, someone mentioned that Steam was having a huge summer sale so I decided to randomly browse some of the games they had for sale. I have $2.63 in my Steam wallet but I do have a credit card just in case I saw something I REALLY wanted.
To make a long story short, I did not see anything that I really wanted but I did see a game for something like $2.50. The game was called FTL and it looked like something I was willing to try for the risk of the chump change I had in my Steam wallet... so I click on it to buy it. The buy screen comes up and I choose the Steam Wallet option to pay for it.
And the buy screen comes up and I have this feeling of deja vu and click on Steam Wallet as my payment and clicked okay... and the buy screen comes up. This time I know for a fact that something is not working correctly...
And I see this message saying that my Steam Wallet is not valid from the country I am currently in. WTF? I am an American being shown American prices from an American store with American money that was earned in America... and I can't buy the program because my IP is in another country?
Just when I start feeling less ruffled about the Steam DRM, it leaps up and shoves itself down my throat... again. Fuck.
Yes, I know I could just VPN back to America and everything would be peachy... and that those evil nasty pirates from other countries who want to pay American prices could just as easily VPN back to America to get those same prices... so what is the point of restriction to begin with? Stupid, ineffective DRM strikes again. Fuck
Hm. I mostly agree with you. I am curious though, did Martin attack Zimmerman because he felt threatened? For myself, I would be utterly creeped out by some guy following me around while I am minding my own business. I would also feel threatened. If I would have had a phone, I would have called the police to report the situation.
Honestly, it seems that Zimmerman bears some responsibility for causing the situation to occur in the first place. Should it be murder in the first or second degree? I doubt it, but I do not know enough about the case to say for sure.
I agree that it's a stupid idea, but there is almost nothing about text that makes it special.
Almost nothing? Seriously? That "almost nothing" part that does in fact make it special is that it is human readable. THAT is something special and it is NOT almost nothing. I do not want a one-use app that is inflexible to monitor or change stuff. I want simple text that can be manipulated in any way my mind sees fit. Keep your dark and obscure data away to yourself and stop promulgating it as a standard for everyone.
Guns escalate violence, so, e.g., a drunken brawl that would result in a black eye or two turns into a multiple homocide when guns are available. While addressing the underlying violence problem itself is fundamental, fixing the gun problem at least significantly ameliorates the symptoms of the underlying disease.
So nobody should be able to defend themselves in the name of preventing one person from being able to, more easily, kill many? I am not sure I understand your logic here. Okay fine, it is harder for one person to kill 50 people quickly. They will have to use bombs to do that now... but, now, nobody can defend themselves against someone who is physically bigger and stronger.
It seems to me that more people will suffer so that you can feel safer about being victimized in a mass shooting spree.
Hell, most people aren't even willing to see a 1% increase in their taxes in order to fix this nation's problems.
Well duh. Most people know that the 1% "extra" tax will not go towards fixing this country's problems. It will merely help inflate the size of the government so its excesses can grow to even more stupefying grandeur. Would you agree to a 1% extra tax if you knew that to be the case?
Only a few people even give the slightest fuck about the current revelations, anyway. The distortion field of Slashdot and Reddit (ugh) give the impression that it's the biggest thing in the world and the entire population is angry, but that could not be further from the case.
Honestly, most people just want to live their lives. All of this lust-for-power drama is not something they want to participate in. Not everyone wants to rule the world.
Of course, lots of people do in fact want to rule the world... and those that just want to live their lives are going to be cannon fodder and hostages. That is no reason to denigrate them.
They (the people who just want to live their lives) are the majority. That is why the politician's job is so easy: The people they are supposed to take care of do not want to be involved in the care taking, which allows some seriously bad actors onto the stage. But what is a rational person to do? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best while doing what little they can do.
Also, try arguing with an American in person. Observe the others around you as well. It is almost like you were in a fight, the unpleasantness to the viewers and the participants. See how disagreement is so contentious and how you will be judged and grudges formed simply by your disagreement.
I am an American. I ran across someone like you in Amsterdam. He wanted to argue about shit that was being done in the name of the American government. All I could say was that I, as a person, act rationally and that I ultimately have no control, despite voting, of what those who serve me do. He wanted this huge argument, rather like you seem to do and he was the one being an ass, not me, the American.
Perhaps you need to speak to more Americans rather than just observe the media and make assumptions and judgments. You may find that there are quite a few of us who are rational and capable of actual discourse.
Ultimately, what you are doing is akin to racism: Taking a stereotype and applying that to all Americans. It is like saying all Italians are lazy or all French are arrogant or all Polish are stupid. None of those statements are true. There are stupid arrogant and lazy people from all races, religions, and nationalities.
Your rant is incredibly insightful; however, you seem to not understand that Microsoft has a rock solid monopoly. Their motivation is purely monetary and they are already guaranteed your money for the basic operating system. That means there is no incentive to actually care about that portion of it.
In other words, the only thing that they have any incentive to care about as far as their operating system goes is how to use it to monetize other products. Of course, this will interfere with basic usage of the OS, but why should they even care? You WILL buy it (for now).
Slashdot Mirror
Oddly enough, I just installed Cinnamon and Mate yesterday. KDE is too buggy and I refuse to use Gnome (but I have tried it). All of the older window managers that I recall really seem stale now: E16, FVWM, Blackbox, etc. I tested out E17 excitedly but it is way too buggy. I have been using WindowMaker and it mostly works but still feels ... limited.
So I edit xinitrc to add the mate startup, exec mate_desktop or somesuch because I want to try it first since I am thinking I will likely go to Cinnamon. I execute startx... and not quite orgasmic, but god it felt GOOD. I quickly went in and started to try and tweak some things to make it more like I want it and still see evidence of previous damage by the Gnome devs but holy crap it felt good!
Classic mode has to compete with Mate. Mate does not have to compete with Classic mode. Mate is winning and judging by the Gnome devs past actions, Gnome will never really be able to compete. Gnome is dead to me.
I really should try Cinnamon but I doubt that I will. Mate feels THAT good. Just wow. So very nice.
I like you.
Your view is real and your consciousness is semi-wild. You are an actual person.
Cheers
I hate to state the obvious but put in cheat codes and then don't do violent things. Running people over in intersections is just as violent as the real world is if you drive like a maniac. Most of the violence is because YOU started it.
You are then free to wander about the world doing whatever piques your interest. That is generally how I play... except I did the missions to unlock everything instead of using cheat codes.
Keep deluding yourself that IT is a revenue generator. Try pitching that to the VP of IS/IT while he stares at the spreadsheet showing the hundreds of thousands of dollars you requested that quarter to upgrade XYZ.
That is because you are doing it wrong...
Try showing the VP what IT enables and what those hundreds of thousands of dollars will enhance.
You: "Sir, we need $125k for new servers and database licenses."
VP: "Shortly after hell freezes over. We have to make this quarter's profit deadline and spending that money now will cause us to miss it and the CEO will not get his 5m bonus for meeting projected profits."
You: "Well yea, the CEO will have to sacrifice his $5m bonus to get these servers up and running but we are currently rate limited on transactions. By spending this money, we will enable another $200m in revenue."
VP: "You have a valid point there. Let me talk to the CEO."
Three days later...
VP: "Denied."
Oops. I guess being rational makes no difference. The CEO wanted his $5m and everything else be damned because he has a golden parachute anyways. *sigh*
That said, yes, there probably a lot of people too clueless to realize that the one game that is probably the most famous of all games in the world for not being for kids isn't for kids.
And why is it not for kids? I have a 3 year old playing GTA San Andreas and he absolutely LOVES it. He begs to come over and play it at my place. He gets so excited it is almost like heroin for a junky.
But here is the deal: He has no idea what a hooker is or any of that other "bad" stuff. He likes to explore the world on foot, bicycle, motorcycle, car, boat, and airplane. He does not have simulated sex with the women in the game because he has no idea what that even is. He does not kill people, he has absolutely no interest in it. Why would he?
Just because these things are possible in the game, that does NOT mean the game is about that. Just because those actions are possible in real life, it does not mean that real life is about that.
Sure, the missions may lead you down some dark paths but by the time you are old enough to do the missions, you should be old enough to deal with what the missions entail.
I can not comment on the GTAV yet as I have no console to play it on, I only do computers, but the missions themselves on the San Andreas and earlier were not really so bad that a youngster would get twisted or psychotic.
What you and the guy above you do not seem to understand is that Microsoft software SUCKS. The focus of the software is to make Microsoft money whereas the focus should be on providing software that people want to actually use. Since they have a monopoly, they do not have to actually care about making software that people want to use...
Except for the fact that they just burned a billion fucking dollars and seemed surprised over it... and are getting ready to do it AGAIN. And that is what the article is about and that you and the parent seem to be completely missing.
Moooo
It's part of their long-term strategy to get into the living room, which has been very successful. I know many people who have an Xbox for the sole purpose of accessing movie rentals, Netflix, Hulu Plus, and play an occasional game or two.
Um, the XBOX sucks at this. The playstation is MUCH better. The reason why is that you must PAY for xbox live in order to do anything other than play games. Netflix is simply inaccessible without a valid xbox live membership whereas with the playstation, Netflix works just fine without any extra costs for the console.
I dislike both Sony and Microsoft and I will be buying neither console.
But, as the excellent little book "Peopleware" put it: "Adding manpower to a late project makes it later."
I don't know about that...
I was put on a project that was already 6 months late. There were 8 people on the project already. I removed the need for all of those people and had everything up to speed within 2 weeks. All I did was write some code to parse data and interface with LDAP amongst other trivial things.
Another project I was put on had been stalled for 3 months. Two days later, I had their project back on track and almost complete.
Granted, I am not a "normal" person, but if you put me on a project, I get things done.
(CAPTCHA was slacken. Weird)
why the fuck, does every american citizen say, that surveilance is okay, when its sure, that no american citizens are targeted?
This is actually really simple. I will approach it from two sides for clarity.
As an American, do I give a fuck if Germany is spying on me? Not really. Why? They can not do anything to me. They can not take my house, my family, my job, affect my social environment, or do anything else to me that I care about. I suppose they could kill me... but is that something I really need to worry about from Germany?
As an American, do I give a fuck if America is spying on me? You betcha! Why? They can do all sorts of things to me. They can take my house, my family, my job, affect my social environment,, or do lots of other things to me that I care about. I suppose they could kill me... but it that something I really need to worry about from America?
There are still two other viewpoints to describe this from but I am assuming you are smart enough to construct those two yourself.
Kind regards
I just hope it was a mistake on her part, otherwise privacy will be criminalized.
I hate to say "Duh!" at a time like this, but seriously, considering all of the stuff we have learned about the NSA and GCHQ, outlawing privacy seems to be the EXACT aim of all of this crap.
Enjoy the golden handcuffs. (You can do some miraculous communication (golden) but it will all be monitored (handcuffs))
if you have fast enough internet to stream, there's no need to hoard stuff any more.
Not true at all. The stuff you hoard may not be available anywhere anymore, especially in its original form. If you do not hoard, the internet becomes the Memory Hole. We were always at war with Eurasia and Han never shot first.
Who cares? You are missing his point.
He was not a scientist as a child. All he heard was that we were in the middle of an ice age and that our activities were likely bringing it back sooner.
It does not matter if it was true or if there was a scientific consensus. What matters is perception. Due to previous scaremongering, what is happening sounds like more scaremongering. Perhaps the scaremongering aspect should be dealt with because honestly, even if "it" (what exactly?) is "true" (for certain variations of true), it is all being promulgated in a scaremongering way: OMG!!!! If we don't do this, we are all going to dieeeeeeeeeee. Holy crap! It is already too late to stop it and all we can do is mitigate it somewhat (by paying billions to... someone?).
Seriously, WTF?
I am sure the people who want to pollute are behind a lot of the hyperbole but it seems to frame everything everyone says.
For myself, I do not much care if the planet becomes hotter, colder, wetter, or drier. WHat I care about a LOT is whether or not the air is fit to breathe or the water is fit to drink. Filling the atmosphere and oceans with nasty chemicals and and compounds has to stop.
This part of the debate is suspiciously absebce from the debate. It is all about CO2 and if it can cause warming. Who cares? It can turn the oceans into an acid bath.
mooo
I bet most of those folks are using older machines that can't use 10.7+.
Maybe. Maybe not. For myself, I have a 15 inch macbook pro that is capable of running the latest but I chose to stay on Snow Leopard. The "integration" of the app store with the OS was a severe turnoff for me. Rather like slapping makeup and perfume on a drugged up alcoholic *hooker: It is still gross.
Honestly, there have been no changes to the operating system that interest me enough to switch. There have been no upgrades to its performance or usability that interest me.
*For those who are not lining things up properly, the app store is the hooker and the perfume and makeup is OS X.
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still voting to increase evil.
Even if it were true that voting a 3rd party is "wasting" your vote, that is still not as bad as voting to increase evil.
So what happens when even the third party candidates are unacceptable? Ron Paul? Please. Whacky communists? No thanks. There are absolutely no candidates that I would vote for. Does that mean I should not vote for a president? Or, should I vote for the candidate, third party or not, that would do the least amount of harm?
Socialism is necessary not because everyone is good, but because everyone *is* self interested and self justifying. Without some sort of correcting mechanism(e.g. redistribution of wealth by the government), self-interest compounds upon self-interest, amplifying inequality
This is an interesting argument and should be discussed. The problem with it is when it is applied to people who legitimately earn the entirety of their wealth, they will feel treated unjustly.
An illustration: A person figures out how to do something miraculous with common sea water. People REALLY want this product and have no problems giving all of their disposable income endlessly to this person for the product.
At what point do you (we?) decide that this accumulation of wealth is unfair to the general public? If it is unfair, how/why?
I agree that using wealth to gather more wealth is problematic for a society since the logical conclusion is that one person will control all of the wealth. Socialism (the ideal) could prevent that, but the policies will unfairly hit those who are generating new wealth.
What is the proper solution (accepting that ideal Socialism would even work)?
They also release games on steam at the same time all over the world to my knowledge which is another reason why people pirate, to obtain something that is not yet available by legal means in the their country.
Funny that you should say that just now...
A day or two ago, someone mentioned that Steam was having a huge summer sale so I decided to randomly browse some of the games they had for sale. I have $2.63 in my Steam wallet but I do have a credit card just in case I saw something I REALLY wanted.
To make a long story short, I did not see anything that I really wanted but I did see a game for something like $2.50. The game was called FTL and it looked like something I was willing to try for the risk of the chump change I had in my Steam wallet... so I click on it to buy it. The buy screen comes up and I choose the Steam Wallet option to pay for it.
And the buy screen comes up and I have this feeling of deja vu and click on Steam Wallet as my payment and clicked okay... and the buy screen comes up. This time I know for a fact that something is not working correctly...
And I see this message saying that my Steam Wallet is not valid from the country I am currently in. WTF? I am an American being shown American prices from an American store with American money that was earned in America... and I can't buy the program because my IP is in another country?
Just when I start feeling less ruffled about the Steam DRM, it leaps up and shoves itself down my throat... again. Fuck.
Yes, I know I could just VPN back to America and everything would be peachy... and that those evil nasty pirates from other countries who want to pay American prices could just as easily VPN back to America to get those same prices... so what is the point of restriction to begin with? Stupid, ineffective DRM strikes again. Fuck
Hm. I mostly agree with you. I am curious though, did Martin attack Zimmerman because he felt threatened? For myself, I would be utterly creeped out by some guy following me around while I am minding my own business. I would also feel threatened. If I would have had a phone, I would have called the police to report the situation.
Honestly, it seems that Zimmerman bears some responsibility for causing the situation to occur in the first place. Should it be murder in the first or second degree? I doubt it, but I do not know enough about the case to say for sure.
I agree that it's a stupid idea, but there is almost nothing about text that makes it special.
Almost nothing? Seriously? That "almost nothing" part that does in fact make it special is that it is human readable. THAT is something special and it is NOT almost nothing. I do not want a one-use app that is inflexible to monitor or change stuff. I want simple text that can be manipulated in any way my mind sees fit. Keep your dark and obscure data away to yourself and stop promulgating it as a standard for everyone.
Guns escalate violence, so, e.g., a drunken brawl that would result in a black eye or two turns into a multiple homocide when guns are available. While addressing the underlying violence problem itself is fundamental, fixing the gun problem at least significantly ameliorates the symptoms of the underlying disease.
So nobody should be able to defend themselves in the name of preventing one person from being able to, more easily, kill many? I am not sure I understand your logic here. Okay fine, it is harder for one person to kill 50 people quickly. They will have to use bombs to do that now... but, now, nobody can defend themselves against someone who is physically bigger and stronger.
It seems to me that more people will suffer so that you can feel safer about being victimized in a mass shooting spree.
Hell, most people aren't even willing to see a 1% increase in their taxes in order to fix this nation's problems.
Well duh. Most people know that the 1% "extra" tax will not go towards fixing this country's problems. It will merely help inflate the size of the government so its excesses can grow to even more stupefying grandeur. Would you agree to a 1% extra tax if you knew that to be the case?
Some people... /me walks away shaking his head
Only a few people even give the slightest fuck about the current revelations, anyway. The distortion field of Slashdot and Reddit (ugh) give the impression that it's the biggest thing in the world and the entire population is angry, but that could not be further from the case.
Honestly, most people just want to live their lives. All of this lust-for-power drama is not something they want to participate in. Not everyone wants to rule the world.
Of course, lots of people do in fact want to rule the world... and those that just want to live their lives are going to be cannon fodder and hostages. That is no reason to denigrate them.
They (the people who just want to live their lives) are the majority. That is why the politician's job is so easy: The people they are supposed to take care of do not want to be involved in the care taking, which allows some seriously bad actors onto the stage. But what is a rational person to do? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best while doing what little they can do.
American working poor live well enough
No. No they do not.
Also, try arguing with an American in person. Observe the others around you as well. It is almost like you were in a fight, the unpleasantness to the viewers and the participants. See how disagreement is so contentious and how you will be judged and grudges formed simply by your disagreement.
I am an American. I ran across someone like you in Amsterdam. He wanted to argue about shit that was being done in the name of the American government. All I could say was that I, as a person, act rationally and that I ultimately have no control, despite voting, of what those who serve me do. He wanted this huge argument, rather like you seem to do and he was the one being an ass, not me, the American.
Perhaps you need to speak to more Americans rather than just observe the media and make assumptions and judgments. You may find that there are quite a few of us who are rational and capable of actual discourse.
Ultimately, what you are doing is akin to racism: Taking a stereotype and applying that to all Americans. It is like saying all Italians are lazy or all French are arrogant or all Polish are stupid. None of those statements are true. There are stupid arrogant and lazy people from all races, religions, and nationalities.
Yours truly,
An American
Your rant is incredibly insightful; however, you seem to not understand that Microsoft has a rock solid monopoly. Their motivation is purely monetary and they are already guaranteed your money for the basic operating system. That means there is no incentive to actually care about that portion of it.
In other words, the only thing that they have any incentive to care about as far as their operating system goes is how to use it to monetize other products. Of course, this will interfere with basic usage of the OS, but why should they even care? You WILL buy it (for now).
Right now, if you have an Android based device, you cannot even upgrade your version without the blessing of the service provider.
You are clearly an American who has never left America. A virgin. How cute :)