"Treating your customers like idiots and trying to hide what you've done, though, is not something that is going to fly in this day and age"
Uh... what about the RIAA? well, I guess they're not really trying to hide anything, but rather sticking it in everybody's faces and claiming its legal...
people already kill the shit out of the cane toads, to no avail. They have no natural predators in Australia. This ravens eating them from the belly is the first I've heard of anything eating them. They find snakes all the time, dead with cane toads in their mouths. The cane toads tadpoles both hatch and sprout legs and come to land earlier than any native toad species, thus effectively locking down all toad habitat and food supplies. Plus they're poisonous from the moment the eggs are laid. which is just awesome. the video posted above is sweet.
"Its just so hard to justify $600+ MacTax for 1lb of less weight and a few minor extras"
Um... why exactly do you think its appropriate to compare Macs and Acers? Maybe a more appropriate comparison would be Macbook and Sony Vaio. Which with comparable stats have comparable prices. clearly, if you compare Mac prices with one of the cheaper PC manufacturers, you'll be ending up with this supposed "MacTax," but if you compare like with like, you find that laptops are just expensive.
oh, whatever, if there's one thing the patriarchy can understand, its the appeal of suckin' on a finely crafted cuban phallic symbol. I, for one, say go for it. They're far superior
"A second mom can love her daughter very dearly, but (unless the difference between genders is far more superficial than commonly-accepted evidence seems to indicate) she can never be the girl's father"
I realize you were at least in part clarifying an earlier post, and am not trying to be unnecessarily argumentative, but...
this argument is not really an agrument against same-sex marriage, as much as it is for the presence of both mother and father roles in the childs life. If the alternative to 2 mommies is one mommy, how could 2 mommies be worse (apart from the standard religious objections) in terms of providing parental support for the child? There are loads of single-parent households, in which children are raised quite normally. though they do tend to seek stronger connections with outside adults to fill the vacant parent role (speaking purely from observation of friends here./caveat) there is nothing worse, to my mind about having two of "one parent" over having one of that same parental role.
that said, I'm not sure that this bears on the discussion of WoW. which is of course, the most quintessential/. happening ever. a really interesting debate completely unrelated to the parent story. yay us.
Ah, yes, the old "dont like what someone's saying, call them a noob" reply. I'm not new here, I'm just wondering at the naivete that says that sony is somehow different in its pre-market bragging than any other company. I'm not talking about Sony's other corporate practices, I'm talking about its marketing practices. To say Sony must be full of shit with their PS3 claims because of the rootkit clusterfuck is specious reasoning at best. I'm not saying that I dont disbelieve their claims, I just think that maybe you should contemplate learning how to form a decent argument before spouting off like an idiot.
only a fool or an idiot believes what any corporation says about any product in its pre-launch phase. why sony in particular has earned your ire, I honestly cant fathom
true. but at the same time, apples level of evil exploitation of its quasi monopoly is far less than M$'s. I prefer the massive corporation who's going to fuck me more gently.
I dont think anyone is under the delusion that anything is altruistic about their actions. I think that it is a good stance for google to be taking, because is it mutually beneficial to everyone. this would, of course, include google themselves. this proposal would result in a complete upheaval in the way costs are distributed. well, it would if it were not a blatant and retarded attempt to invent a new class of customers to bill ON TOP of the existing point-of-access customer-billing scheme already in place. In so far as the giants of content providers (google and M$) will never go along with this, it is unlikely to trickle down to the little guys. nevertheless, bell south and verizon can just go right to hell as far as I'm concerned
not if the "sale" license is written like a software or commercial music sale license. then they would only have use of the info as long as they used it in a manner agreeable to us. of course, the mere mention that WE might do something like this will probably get me flamed, but given that B.S. is legal, we might as well get some use out of it too.
"So I guess you are against the New Orleans mayor, for saying that God was punishing Americans, by "sending hurricane after hurricane" because we are in Iraq? Should he not be allowed to say those things, espescially in public, because he is a figurehead? It was an official, Government sponsored parade on MLK day. Should a person be disallowed to show a religion merely because they are in an elected office?"
yes, I am against him saying that. not because its a public religious display, but because its fucking stupid. It may also be his sincere belief. Using your religious beliefs as a political attack is at the very least in bad taste, especially when we are talking about the deaths of hundreds and the suffering of millions. I have no problem with politicians saying "god bless america." I have no problem with individuals expressing their individual faith, no matter what office they hold. criticizing bush by saying god is punishing his decisions by hurling hurricanes at the gulf is snarky bullshit.
"On a similar note... what if the President wants to go to church? The Secret Service members would be forced to attend. Should the President then be disallowed attendance in a house of worship? Either way it will be unfair to someone"
The secret service agents are willing to sacrifice their lives for the president. They are bound to keep his secrets and protect him at all costs. Obviously, sitting through a religious service not of their preference is a part of that sacrifice. this example is a blatant rhetorical nonsense. the president is not foisting his religion on the secret service agents by attending church. He must however exercise discretion with regards to the extent that he allows his own personal faith to be an overt part of his official duties. Though I find W. to be a mildly evangelical wacko, even he is mostly appropriate when it comes to making it clear that though his religion does affect his decisions, and opinions, it remains his own personal faith. Though he does try to facilitate a deeper integration of church and state than I am comfortable with, I certainly dont think that he seriously wants to establish christianity as the official religion of the State.
though I do think he wants to establish patriotism as the official religion of the State. *sarcasm*
Essentially, I think that the government, and persons in positions of power particularly, should deemphasize the role of their faith somewhat, if only to avoid the perception, whether valid or not, that said faith will be foisted upon the masses. You can conduct yourself in accordance with the tenets of any religion without necessarily shouting from the rooftops which one it is. the moral imperatives of many religions are actually quite similar, so I simply wonder why such a great importance is placed on certain religious politicians specifying that they're devotees of one prophet or another.
"When somebody prays or carries out other religious expression during meetings or on government property, it does not force everyone else to support their religion. I, personally, think it's stupid and offensive to bring overt religious activity into a government meeting (like praying before a school awards dinner), but that's not government supporting religion (it's government tolerance of specific religious individuals who feel that they should conduct that religious activity at that time and place), and it's not at all unreasonable to use government property for religious activity as long as it's done in a fair and equitable manner"
well, having seen several church-group meetings at both city-halls and public library meeting rooms, I'd say that you dont know what you're talking about. The mere fact that the courthouse in alabama cannot have the statue of the 10 commandments in front in no way prevents people from gathering at that same spot and discussing the 10 commandments. The fact that it would be inappropriate for a city councilor to open an official meeting with a prayer in no way prevents him from saying one to him or herself silently.
yeah, didnt they make a movie about this? starring Sam Neil? faster than light travel?
I seem to remember everything going horribly wrong.
I'm pretty content with the dimensions I have grown accustomed to travelling in.
I agree wholeheartedly. I was just being sarcastic. the entire system is being shaped by the Bush administration to cut out due process, because due process protects not just the people involved, but the sanctity of Just Means. For the bush administration, the ends justify the means, ergo unJust Means are permissible in the pursuit of Just Ends, and thats bs
I was going to reply, and say how I thought you were being a little over the top, but then I realized how futile it would be to reply to someone who has clearly already been carted off by homeland security for hating freedom and pissing on the proud, patriotic work that the goverenment has to do to keep it safe from all the people who are trying to destroy it by thinking freely.
seriously tho, I'm reminded of a george carlin rant about airport security. we can make planes as safe as we want, and then the terrorists will just start other crowded places: orgies, porn-shops, titty-bars and gangbangs... you know... entertainment venues!
due process is for countries that hate freedom anyways
actually, a friend went in to buy a shuffle with cash and was told that they dont accept cash for "large" purchases. I didnt know that 150 bucks was considered a large purchase in a store that will sell your an $8,000 computer system, but, hey...
"Raising kids to believe in mythology is child abuse"
well, thats taking things a little too far. If faith is a large part of your moral life, then it would be seem like neglect not to expose your children to faith. Kids do discover their own faith. In my case, I was raised very christian, but very liberally christian. the focus was always on living a good life and being a good person, not on believing in an invisible man in a particular fashion. I have since pretty much abandoned christianity, and stopped going to my parents church. because I realized that I wasnt into it anymore. what you mean to say, is that indoctrinating children in a particular brand of mythology at the expense of allowing the child to form his/her own particular brand of faith is child abuse. religion is a perfectly reasonable part of a freely chosen life, and whatever your feelings about the ways in which the larger branches of organized faith conduct themselves, if you reject the notion that people can have faith and not be retards, then you are every bit the closed-minded ass that the ID folks are.
that said, I dont understand why the ID folks have such trouble with evolution. so it sortof contradicts genesis. like you can be a devout christian and not deal with the internal contradictions of the bible? pick a topic, and the bible says at least 3 different things in different places. Even the pope says that there is nothing in genesis to say that evolution is untrue. the point of genesis is to establish that there is a god and he created us and everything else. doesnt necessarily have to be word for word about how he/she did it. I mean, think about it. so we take science back as far as it can go - to the big bang. what sparked the big bang, tho? we dont know, because we CANT know, there is, as yet, no scientific explanation for the cause of the initial genesis of the universe. we can kind of explain how, but not why. perhaps the ID folks should just back the fuck up and realize that science answers HOW questions, and religion answers WHY questions, and there is no reason that they should be incompatible unless they're trying to poach on the other's territory.
I take your point, however, I would argue that the very nature of the revelation in question shows thta we do not live in as free a democracy as we like to think. When the story you're about to report concerns how the executive branch has seriously ignored the constitutional guarantee of due process and ordered domestic spying without judicial oversight, would you really feel entirely sure of your constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press? or would you perhaps take a step back and make sure that your claims were as rock-solid as possible, and present the public not with a simple article, but with a solidly-researched and exhaustively explained record of events? were I the editor of the NYT, I would also have have been very circumspect in approaching the presentation of this story.
"No matter what your opinion of Bush, the author comes out looking slimy. In my opinion, deservedly so"
no, the author comes out looking like instead of writing an article about it and letting it devolve into the standard fox/nyt fight back and forth, he chose to sit back and research the shit out of it, then publish something that cannot be brushed away, something thorough and well reasoned.
until we know the exact circumstances of the editorial decision not to print a year ago, it would be inappropriate to label the move opportunistic, well, any more opportunistic than a republican criticisng a liberal for sleazy business practices.
They said that they delayed a year to do more research. DOESNT IT SEEM LIKELY THAT A YEAR'S WORTH OF RESEARCH MIGHT PRODUCE ENOUGH MATERIAL FOR A BOOK!!??? I for one, think it just might.
And another thing, the NYT article very gingerly mentioned that the white house asked them not to publish. doesnt it seem likely that such a request, from the executive branch of the federal govt might make a paper a little hesitant to rush off and go shouting that the pres. had been violating the constitution and his oath of office? It would make ME slow down and do some research, that's for fucking sure.
Gettting a full book's worth of info and then putting that out there is a much less easily dismissed statement than a few articles. Given the Bush administration's ability to talk its way out of immediate criticism of gross misconduct, I'd say that the NYT's actions were the only reasonable response to white house pressure not to publish.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrm, any chance you guys just... sucked at the sailing?
I mean, no offense or anything, but come on.
"Treating your customers like idiots and trying to hide what you've done, though, is not something that is going to fly in this day and age"
Uh... what about the RIAA?
well, I guess they're not really trying to hide anything, but rather sticking it in everybody's faces and claiming its legal...
people already kill the shit out of the cane toads, to no avail.
They have no natural predators in Australia. This ravens eating them from the belly is the first I've heard of anything eating them.
They find snakes all the time, dead with cane toads in their mouths.
The cane toads tadpoles both hatch and sprout legs and come to land earlier than any native toad species, thus effectively locking down all toad habitat and food supplies.
Plus they're poisonous from the moment the eggs are laid. which is just awesome.
the video posted above is sweet.
whatever, the internet can go hang.
I'm more impressed with his work protecting the space-time continueum.
no, he should go by mike. everything was fine till I was 9 and that no talent ass-clown got famous and started making music.
"Its just so hard to justify $600+ MacTax for 1lb of less weight and a few minor extras"
Um... why exactly do you think its appropriate to compare Macs and Acers? Maybe a more appropriate comparison would be Macbook and Sony Vaio. Which with comparable stats have comparable prices. clearly, if you compare Mac prices with one of the cheaper PC manufacturers, you'll be ending up with this supposed "MacTax," but if you compare like with like, you find that laptops are just expensive.
Micheal Bolton: and what's this I hear about you having trouble with your TPS reports?
Samir: yeah, didnt you get that memo?
oh, whatever, if there's one thing the patriarchy can understand, its the appeal of suckin' on a finely crafted cuban phallic symbol.
I, for one, say go for it.
They're far superior
"A second mom can love her daughter very dearly, but (unless the difference between genders is far more superficial than commonly-accepted evidence seems to indicate) she can never be the girl's father"
/caveat) there is nothing worse, to my mind about having two of "one parent" over having one of that same parental role.
/. happening ever. a really interesting debate completely unrelated to the parent story.
I realize you were at least in part clarifying an earlier post, and am not trying to be unnecessarily argumentative, but...
this argument is not really an agrument against same-sex marriage, as much as it is for the presence of both mother and father roles in the childs life. If the alternative to 2 mommies is one mommy, how could 2 mommies be worse (apart from the standard religious objections) in terms of providing parental support for the child?
There are loads of single-parent households, in which children are raised quite normally. though they do tend to seek stronger connections with outside adults to fill the vacant parent role (speaking purely from observation of friends here.
that said, I'm not sure that this bears on the discussion of WoW. which is of course, the most quintessential
yay us.
Ah, yes, the old "dont like what someone's saying, call them a noob" reply.
I'm not new here, I'm just wondering at the naivete that says that sony is somehow different in its pre-market bragging than any other company.
I'm not talking about Sony's other corporate practices, I'm talking about its marketing practices.
To say Sony must be full of shit with their PS3 claims because of the rootkit clusterfuck is specious reasoning at best.
I'm not saying that I dont disbelieve their claims, I just think that maybe you should contemplate learning how to form a decent argument before spouting off like an idiot.
only a fool or an idiot believes what any corporation says about any product in its pre-launch phase.
why sony in particular has earned your ire, I honestly cant fathom
well, you clearly have no prejudices.
maybe you should, in fact, wait till you see it.
bah,
thats how everybody thinks, or we'd all be vegan luddites.
I just phrased it pragmatically
true.
but at the same time, apples level of evil exploitation of its quasi monopoly is far less than M$'s.
I prefer the massive corporation who's going to fuck me more gently.
I dont think anyone is under the delusion that anything is altruistic about their actions. I think that it is a good stance for google to be taking, because is it mutually beneficial to everyone. this would, of course, include google themselves. this proposal would result in a complete upheaval in the way costs are distributed. well, it would if it were not a blatant and retarded attempt to invent a new class of customers to bill ON TOP of the existing point-of-access customer-billing scheme already in place.
In so far as the giants of content providers (google and M$) will never go along with this, it is unlikely to trickle down to the little guys.
nevertheless, bell south and verizon can just go right to hell as far as I'm concerned
not if the "sale" license is written like a software or commercial music sale license. then they would only have use of the info as long as they used it in a manner agreeable to us.
of course, the mere mention that WE might do something like this will probably get me flamed, but given that B.S. is legal, we might as well get some use out of it too.
"So I guess you are against the New Orleans mayor, for saying that God was punishing Americans, by "sending hurricane after hurricane" because we are in Iraq? Should he not be allowed to say those things, espescially in public, because he is a figurehead? It was an official, Government sponsored parade on MLK day. Should a person be disallowed to show a religion merely because they are in an elected office?"
yes, I am against him saying that. not because its a public religious display, but because its fucking stupid. It may also be his sincere belief. Using your religious beliefs as a political attack is at the very least in bad taste, especially when we are talking about the deaths of hundreds and the suffering of millions. I have no problem with politicians saying "god bless america." I have no problem with individuals expressing their individual faith, no matter what office they hold. criticizing bush by saying god is punishing his decisions by hurling hurricanes at the gulf is snarky bullshit.
"On a similar note... what if the President wants to go to church? The Secret Service members would be forced to attend. Should the President then be disallowed attendance in a house of worship? Either way it will be unfair to someone"
The secret service agents are willing to sacrifice their lives for the president. They are bound to keep his secrets and protect him at all costs. Obviously, sitting through a religious service not of their preference is a part of that sacrifice. this example is a blatant rhetorical nonsense. the president is not foisting his religion on the secret service agents by attending church. He must however exercise discretion with regards to the extent that he allows his own personal faith to be an overt part of his official duties. Though I find W. to be a mildly evangelical wacko, even he is mostly appropriate when it comes to making it clear that though his religion does affect his decisions, and opinions, it remains his own personal faith. Though he does try to facilitate a deeper integration of church and state than I am comfortable with, I certainly dont think that he seriously wants to establish christianity as the official religion of the State.
though I do think he wants to establish patriotism as the official religion of the State.
*sarcasm*
Essentially, I think that the government, and persons in positions of power particularly, should deemphasize the role of their faith somewhat, if only to avoid the perception, whether valid or not, that said faith will be foisted upon the masses. You can conduct yourself in accordance with the tenets of any religion without necessarily shouting from the rooftops which one it is. the moral imperatives of many religions are actually quite similar, so I simply wonder why such a great importance is placed on certain religious politicians specifying that they're devotees of one prophet or another.
"When somebody prays or carries out other religious expression during meetings or on government property, it does not force everyone else to support their religion. I, personally, think it's stupid and offensive to bring overt religious activity into a government meeting (like praying before a school awards dinner), but that's not government supporting religion (it's government tolerance of specific religious individuals who feel that they should conduct that religious activity at that time and place), and it's not at all unreasonable to use government property for religious activity as long as it's done in a fair and equitable manner"
well, having seen several church-group meetings at both city-halls and public library meeting rooms, I'd say that you dont know what you're talking about. The mere fact that the courthouse in alabama cannot have the statue of the 10 commandments in front in no way prevents people from gathering at that same spot and discussing the 10 commandments. The fact that it would be inappropriate for a city councilor to open an official meeting with a prayer in no way prevents him from saying one to him or herself silently.
yeah, didnt they make a movie about this? starring Sam Neil? faster than light travel? I seem to remember everything going horribly wrong. I'm pretty content with the dimensions I have grown accustomed to travelling in.
I agree wholeheartedly. I was just being sarcastic. the entire system is being shaped by the Bush administration to cut out due process, because due process protects not just the people involved, but the sanctity of Just Means. For the bush administration, the ends justify the means, ergo unJust Means are permissible in the pursuit of Just Ends, and thats bs
I was going to reply, and say how I thought you were being a little over the top, but then I realized how futile it would be to reply to someone who has clearly already been carted off by homeland security for hating freedom and pissing on the proud, patriotic work that the goverenment has to do to keep it safe from all the people who are trying to destroy it by thinking freely.
seriously tho, I'm reminded of a george carlin rant about airport security. we can make planes as safe as we want, and then the terrorists will just start other crowded places: orgies, porn-shops, titty-bars and gangbangs... you know... entertainment venues!
due process is for countries that hate freedom anyways
actually, a friend went in to buy a shuffle with cash and was told that they dont accept cash for "large" purchases. I didnt know that 150 bucks was considered a large purchase in a store that will sell your an $8,000 computer system, but, hey...
"Raising kids to believe in mythology is child abuse"
well, thats taking things a little too far.
If faith is a large part of your moral life, then it would be seem like neglect not to expose your children to faith.
Kids do discover their own faith. In my case, I was raised very christian, but very liberally christian. the focus was always on living a good life and being a good person, not on believing in an invisible man in a particular fashion. I have since pretty much abandoned christianity, and stopped going to my parents church.
because I realized that I wasnt into it anymore.
what you mean to say, is that indoctrinating children in a particular brand of mythology at the expense of allowing the child to form his/her own particular brand of faith is child abuse.
religion is a perfectly reasonable part of a freely chosen life, and whatever your feelings about the ways in which the larger branches of organized faith conduct themselves, if you reject the notion that people can have faith and not be retards, then you are every bit the closed-minded ass that the ID folks are.
that said, I dont understand why the ID folks have such trouble with evolution. so it sortof contradicts genesis. like you can be a devout christian and not deal with the internal contradictions of the bible? pick a topic, and the bible says at least 3 different things in different places. Even the pope says that there is nothing in genesis to say that evolution is untrue. the point of genesis is to establish that there is a god and he created us and everything else. doesnt necessarily have to be word for word about how he/she did it.
I mean, think about it. so we take science back as far as it can go - to the big bang. what sparked the big bang, tho? we dont know, because we CANT know, there is, as yet, no scientific explanation for the cause of the initial genesis of the universe. we can kind of explain how, but not why.
perhaps the ID folks should just back the fuck up and realize that science answers HOW questions, and religion answers WHY questions, and there is no reason that they should be incompatible unless they're trying to poach on the other's territory.
I take your point, however, I would argue that the very nature of the revelation in question shows thta we do not live in as free a democracy as we like to think.
When the story you're about to report concerns how the executive branch has seriously ignored the constitutional guarantee of due process and ordered domestic spying without judicial oversight, would you really feel entirely sure of your constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press? or would you perhaps take a step back and make sure that your claims were as rock-solid as possible, and present the public not with a simple article, but with a solidly-researched and exhaustively explained record of events?
were I the editor of the NYT, I would also have have been very circumspect in approaching the presentation of this story.
"No matter what your opinion of Bush, the author comes out looking slimy. In my opinion, deservedly so"
no, the author comes out looking like instead of writing an article about it and letting it devolve into the standard fox/nyt fight back and forth, he chose to sit back and research the shit out of it, then publish something that cannot be brushed away, something thorough and well reasoned.
until we know the exact circumstances of the editorial decision not to print a year ago, it would be inappropriate to label the move opportunistic, well, any more opportunistic than a republican criticisng a liberal for sleazy business practices.
They said that they delayed a year to do more research. DOESNT IT SEEM LIKELY THAT A YEAR'S WORTH OF RESEARCH MIGHT PRODUCE ENOUGH MATERIAL FOR A BOOK!!??? I for one, think it just might.
And another thing, the NYT article very gingerly mentioned that the white house asked them not to publish. doesnt it seem likely that such a request, from the executive branch of the federal govt might make a paper a little hesitant to rush off and go shouting that the pres. had been violating the constitution and his oath of office? It would make ME slow down and do some research, that's for fucking sure.
Gettting a full book's worth of info and then putting that out there is a much less easily dismissed statement than a few articles. Given the Bush administration's ability to talk its way out of immediate criticism of gross misconduct, I'd say that the NYT's actions were the only reasonable response to white house pressure not to publish.