Tibet isn't so simple as a lot of people make it out to be. The fact is, yes, China shouldn't have taken over in the first place and yes, a lot of China's policies towards Tibet have been unfair since the take over. On the other hand, Tibet used to be an undeveloped shithole of a theocracy. Since China came in the standard of living has vastly improved, and personally, I'd prefer a secular autocracy to a theocracy any day of the week (though ideally of course, I'd have neither:) ).
INT. SMALL WOODEN SHACK SOMEWHERE IN APPALACHIA - NIGHT
BOBBY SUE enters stage right, catching BOBBY JOE at a makeshift workbench covered in sections of pipe, wires, and indeterminate objects.
BOBBY SUE: Bobby Joe!! What're y'all doing with that pipe!?
BOBBY JOE looks calmly at BOBBY SUE -- perhaps even seductively.
BOBBY JOE: Gosh sis, don't worry I dun learn't a thing're two pipes.
BOBBY SUE: Oh, Bobby Joe!
BOBBY SUE licks her lips, briefly exposing her tooth before..
FADE TO BLACK
{{Bom chicka bow wow}}
(Because we've had just as many terrorists of domestic extraction as we've had foreign ones. Turns out there's nuts willing to blow themselves up for a cause in every country...)
Seems like a bassackwards solution to me. There's plenty of things the government should be taking care of that they're not, and plenty of things that they should be doing, and are, but in an unnecessarily inefficient way. Rather than gunning for more inefficiency so that the government can't do things they shouldn't, which they seem to manage to do just fine anyway, why not elect leaders and enact laws that prevent the abuse from happening in the first place?
Advocating increased inefficiency as the solution to bad government is like saying that you can't run very well in clown shoes so we can lower the crime rate by making everyone wear clown shoes so they can't get away from the cops. It doesn't really address the root of the problem, barely addresses the symptoms and brings a host of new problems along for the ride.
So by climategate you mean that thing where one study had some minor flaws that faux-news and the other conservative propaganda outlets blew completely out of proportion and tried used to tar every climate scientist with the same brush? You'll have to excuse me if I don't give a flying fuck about it...
So basically what you're saying is you've never cracked a history book open and live in a magic fantasy land where corporations don't fuck people over at every chance, laws are made in arbitrarily in a vacuum and there's no such thing as a market failure.
Thanks for proving your complete and utter idiocy, I now know I can safely ignore any and all of your posts without missing anything of value...
And of course there's also the utilitarian argument, all those people that get fucked over now for being too poor or cheap would be happier because they wouldn't get fucked over, all those people who'd have to pay for them to not be fucked over would, generally, be paying a similar or lesser amount (collective bargaining means that the more people pay into a service the less it costs per-head(usually)) and would live in a friendlier, nicer society while doing so. Everyone wins, everyone's happy.
But we can't have that, cause it's socialism. Which may or may not be against a document written by slave holding tax-dodgers in the 18th century and in any event is scary because it's like communism or fascism or something. You don't want to be a comminazzy like HITLER or STALIN do you? TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND! Greetings, citizen!
The most efficient option would've been single payer. We have some of the highest per-capita health-care costs in the developed world for a service that doesn't even cover everyone (In other words, we pay more and get less). No chance in hell of that happening though, anyone who voted for it would get bricks thrown through their window by the teabaggers and faux news would roast them 24/7...
Yes, but that's a little tangential to the issue at hand because those legal users who don't manually dl the files are usually using the technology baked into another piece of software and, as such, aren't using a general purpose torrent client at all...
And of course because they excised the Bombadil subplot they also cut the Barrow Blades subplot so there was no explanation for how the sword hurt the witch-king. I mean if regular swords would hurt the fucker you'd think someone would've just stabbed him in the face by then...
Stop, for just a moment, and think before you open your mouth. Less stupid shit might come out if you do.
Unless you seriously believe that there's nothing the government does better than private industry. If that's the case I'd like to direct your attention to police, firemen, roads, the military, consumer protection laws etc...
To spell it out, without regulation businesses will take undue advantage of their employees and customers and while the free market would theoretically solve this issue it's quite possible to bypass the mechanisms that would fix this by creating a monopoly or oligopoly. Likewise, unions can't protect their members without government support because companies will just bring in scabs or union busters. And if a company owns all the channels of communication what's to stop them from just preventing anyone from finding out about how many people their other operations are fucking over?
Even if you ignore that issue, the fact of the matter is that there are some necessary services (examples above) that just won't get done adequately by private industry. These are services that simply can't (or shouldn't) be run at a profit or that can't realistically choose not to help someone just because they chose not to pony up (and if the government wasn't collecting taxes some people would certainly make that choice).
Of course there's also the management of public resources. The classic example there is the "Tragedy of the Commons". Imagine a town field. Farmers can all graze their animals there for free. Individually it makes sense to do as much grazing there as possible, less feed to buy, more profits. You get the idea. But if everyone does that all the grass will die and then no one will be able to graze there anymore. Now if you're a hardcore libertarian you're probably thinking "somone should just buy up the field, and charge for it's use, then they'll have an incentive to prevent overgrazing" and while that might be a viable solution for that particular problem there are plenty of things where it just won't work. Take pollution. You almost certainly live in a first world nation and while many (myself included) would argue that we need stricter environmental laws no one alive in the first world today has experienced the worst excesses people will inflict on the environment in the name of profit. Rivers and lakes turned to toxic sludge, mountains leveled to get the coal from under them (oh wait we still do this) and so much soot in the air that every exposed surface gets turned black (google peppered moth for an idea of how extreme this was).
Seriously, we need the government and we need it to be able to actually get shit done. You can (and should) argue about just what it should be doing but to suggest that it shouldn't be doing anything or should be completely abolished goes beyond naivete and straight into the realm of delusional fantasy. We've seen what a state looks like without a government (Somalia), we've seen the excesses that corporations go to when they're not properly leashed, all I can really add at this point is that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it...
Republicans-Fuck you over directly. Sell your ass to the corporations and then let the Jesus freaks tell you what you can do with it.
Democrats-Pretend that they're going to do something helpful. Roll over and die or, at best, start prevaricating at the slightest hint of an opportunity to actually do so.
Turns out that when it costs millions upon millions of dollars to get elected to any position that's even moderately important and everyone is sponsored by the same corporations that the only differences in policy will come down into what demographic a given party has tricked into giving a shit about them (and even then only insofar as it doesn't cut into anyone's profits). Wouldn't want to put a stop to the -bribes- campaign donations after all...
Numerous studies have confirmed the effect over the years. The general consensus is that it comes down to identifying words by their overall shape and reading them in one go when they're in mixed case vs reading them one letter at a time in ALLCAPS. But don't take my word for it.
Yep, and New Yorkers deserve every cent the feds decide to spend there. The more urban states pay more to the federal government than they get back in aid. The more rural states get more federal money back as aid than they pay out in taxes. Most of that's down to the corn lobby and other bullshit like that. When you (I know, don't assume, but you sound like a cunt anyway so I don't really care) flyover fucks actually start paying your fair share of taxes then you can bitch about how much gets collected and how it gets spent. Of course that'll never happen because the 2 house system is broken at a fundamental level (Firstly the concept (of the senate) is outdated and hearkens back to when the states were independent entities to a much greater extent and there wasn't that much difference between states population density wise and it made sense to keep the (geographically) larger states from being able to arbitrarily boss around the smaller states just because they happen to encompass more area, and hence more people. This shouldn't really matter any more since 90% of the important stuff happens federally now anyway so representation shouldn't really be allocated on the basis of states bossing each other around. It wouldn't be such an issue either but the HOR isn't really directly proportional to population so each citizen in say, Iowa, gets more representation that each person in say, California. This happens in the Electoral College (another anachronistic remnant of the 18th century we'd be much better off without). Basically, what it all adds up to is that small states get undue power in the government and rural interests suck up a bunch of federal money in the form of stupid pork, get to set a bunch of regressive, reactionary social policies and fuck over the cities at every turn and then bitch about it whenever the federal government happens to do something for urban parts of the country by mistake ).
Xmarks handled it automatically, no real effort needed past the initial install. I've switched to firefox sync. It's almost as good and I don't really need to sync cross browser so I'm not really troubled by this, but I can definitely see how someone might be...
Strangely divided on this. On the one hand I agree with you up to #4. On the other hand, sarcasm can be hard to detect on the interwebs but the transhumanist and the atheist in me are both pretty sure they want to start flaming you over #5.:/
That's just patently untrue. I'm not knocking commercial space flight, I think it's pretty important myself. But you have to acknowledge who actually invented most of the technology, who did the risky, pioneering work before anyone else could afford to, who laid down the groundwork. The fact of the matter is that, while commercial interests may ultimately bring the benefits of space to the masses, it was and will probably continue to be the government that kicked down the door and made it all possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Tibet isn't so simple as a lot of people make it out to be. The fact is, yes, China shouldn't have taken over in the first place and yes, a lot of China's policies towards Tibet have been unfair since the take over. On the other hand, Tibet used to be an undeveloped shithole of a theocracy. Since China came in the standard of living has vastly improved, and personally, I'd prefer a secular autocracy to a theocracy any day of the week (though ideally of course, I'd have neither :) ).
INT. SMALL WOODEN SHACK SOMEWHERE IN APPALACHIA - NIGHT
BOBBY SUE enters stage right, catching BOBBY JOE at a makeshift workbench covered in sections of pipe, wires, and indeterminate objects.
BOBBY SUE: Bobby Joe!! What're y'all doing with that pipe!?
BOBBY JOE looks calmly at BOBBY SUE -- perhaps even seductively.
BOBBY JOE: Gosh sis, don't worry I dun learn't a thing're two pipes.
BOBBY SUE: Oh, Bobby Joe!
BOBBY SUE licks her lips, briefly exposing her tooth before..
FADE TO BLACK
{{Bom chicka bow wow}}
(Because we've had just as many terrorists of domestic extraction as we've had foreign ones. Turns out there's nuts willing to blow themselves up for a cause in every country...)
Seems like a bassackwards solution to me. There's plenty of things the government should be taking care of that they're not, and plenty of things that they should be doing, and are, but in an unnecessarily inefficient way. Rather than gunning for more inefficiency so that the government can't do things they shouldn't, which they seem to manage to do just fine anyway, why not elect leaders and enact laws that prevent the abuse from happening in the first place?
Advocating increased inefficiency as the solution to bad government is like saying that you can't run very well in clown shoes so we can lower the crime rate by making everyone wear clown shoes so they can't get away from the cops. It doesn't really address the root of the problem, barely addresses the symptoms and brings a host of new problems along for the ride.
woperson?
Don't worry, there'll be plenty of bees there, we can sell their honey to offset the cost of the experiment.
So by climategate you mean that thing where one study had some minor flaws that faux-news and the other conservative propaganda outlets blew completely out of proportion and tried used to tar every climate scientist with the same brush? You'll have to excuse me if I don't give a flying fuck about it...
So basically what you're saying is you've never cracked a history book open and live in a magic fantasy land where corporations don't fuck people over at every chance, laws are made in arbitrarily in a vacuum and there's no such thing as a market failure.
Thanks for proving your complete and utter idiocy, I now know I can safely ignore any and all of your posts without missing anything of value...
And of course there's also the utilitarian argument, all those people that get fucked over now for being too poor or cheap would be happier because they wouldn't get fucked over, all those people who'd have to pay for them to not be fucked over would, generally, be paying a similar or lesser amount (collective bargaining means that the more people pay into a service the less it costs per-head(usually)) and would live in a friendlier, nicer society while doing so. Everyone wins, everyone's happy.
But we can't have that, cause it's socialism. Which may or may not be against a document written by slave holding tax-dodgers in the 18th century and in any event is scary because it's like communism or fascism or something. You don't want to be a comminazzy like HITLER or STALIN do you? TRUST THE COMPUTER! THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND! Greetings, citizen!
The most efficient option would've been single payer. We have some of the highest per-capita health-care costs in the developed world for a service that doesn't even cover everyone (In other words, we pay more and get less). No chance in hell of that happening though, anyone who voted for it would get bricks thrown through their window by the teabaggers and faux news would roast them 24/7...
I don't know about Ubuntu but Debian's had 'check a box' surround sound support for a while now and since Ubuntu is Debian based...
Yes, but that's a little tangential to the issue at hand because those legal users who don't manually dl the files are usually using the technology baked into another piece of software and, as such, aren't using a general purpose torrent client at all...
Let me know when you're opening the portal back to your home dimension, I want to go with you...
And of course because they excised the Bombadil subplot they also cut the Barrow Blades subplot so there was no explanation for how the sword hurt the witch-king. I mean if regular swords would hurt the fucker you'd think someone would've just stabbed him in the face by then...
Stop, for just a moment, and think before you open your mouth. Less stupid shit might come out if you do.
Unless you seriously believe that there's nothing the government does better than private industry. If that's the case I'd like to direct your attention to police, firemen, roads, the military, consumer protection laws etc...
To spell it out, without regulation businesses will take undue advantage of their employees and customers and while the free market would theoretically solve this issue it's quite possible to bypass the mechanisms that would fix this by creating a monopoly or oligopoly. Likewise, unions can't protect their members without government support because companies will just bring in scabs or union busters. And if a company owns all the channels of communication what's to stop them from just preventing anyone from finding out about how many people their other operations are fucking over?
Even if you ignore that issue, the fact of the matter is that there are some necessary services (examples above) that just won't get done adequately by private industry. These are services that simply can't (or shouldn't) be run at a profit or that can't realistically choose not to help someone just because they chose not to pony up (and if the government wasn't collecting taxes some people would certainly make that choice).
Of course there's also the management of public resources. The classic example there is the "Tragedy of the Commons". Imagine a town field. Farmers can all graze their animals there for free. Individually it makes sense to do as much grazing there as possible, less feed to buy, more profits. You get the idea. But if everyone does that all the grass will die and then no one will be able to graze there anymore. Now if you're a hardcore libertarian you're probably thinking "somone should just buy up the field, and charge for it's use, then they'll have an incentive to prevent overgrazing" and while that might be a viable solution for that particular problem there are plenty of things where it just won't work. Take pollution. You almost certainly live in a first world nation and while many (myself included) would argue that we need stricter environmental laws no one alive in the first world today has experienced the worst excesses people will inflict on the environment in the name of profit. Rivers and lakes turned to toxic sludge, mountains leveled to get the coal from under them (oh wait we still do this) and so much soot in the air that every exposed surface gets turned black (google peppered moth for an idea of how extreme this was).
Seriously, we need the government and we need it to be able to actually get shit done. You can (and should) argue about just what it should be doing but to suggest that it shouldn't be doing anything or should be completely abolished goes beyond naivete and straight into the realm of delusional fantasy. We've seen what a state looks like without a government (Somalia), we've seen the excesses that corporations go to when they're not properly leashed, all I can really add at this point is that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it...
Republicans-Fuck you over directly. Sell your ass to the corporations and then let the Jesus freaks tell you what you can do with it.
Democrats-Pretend that they're going to do something helpful. Roll over and die or, at best, start prevaricating at the slightest hint of an opportunity to actually do so.
Turns out that when it costs millions upon millions of dollars to get elected to any position that's even moderately important and everyone is sponsored by the same corporations that the only differences in policy will come down into what demographic a given party has tricked into giving a shit about them (and even then only insofar as it doesn't cut into anyone's profits). Wouldn't want to put a stop to the -bribes- campaign donations after all...
Numerous studies have confirmed the effect over the years. The general consensus is that it comes down to identifying words by their overall shape and reading them in one go when they're in mixed case vs reading them one letter at a time in ALLCAPS. But don't take my word for it.
Yep, and New Yorkers deserve every cent the feds decide to spend there. The more urban states pay more to the federal government than they get back in aid. The more rural states get more federal money back as aid than they pay out in taxes. Most of that's down to the corn lobby and other bullshit like that. When you (I know, don't assume, but you sound like a cunt anyway so I don't really care) flyover fucks actually start paying your fair share of taxes then you can bitch about how much gets collected and how it gets spent. Of course that'll never happen because the 2 house system is broken at a fundamental level (Firstly the concept (of the senate) is outdated and hearkens back to when the states were independent entities to a much greater extent and there wasn't that much difference between states population density wise and it made sense to keep the (geographically) larger states from being able to arbitrarily boss around the smaller states just because they happen to encompass more area, and hence more people. This shouldn't really matter any more since 90% of the important stuff happens federally now anyway so representation shouldn't really be allocated on the basis of states bossing each other around. It wouldn't be such an issue either but the HOR isn't really directly proportional to population so each citizen in say, Iowa, gets more representation that each person in say, California. This happens in the Electoral College (another anachronistic remnant of the 18th century we'd be much better off without). Basically, what it all adds up to is that small states get undue power in the government and rural interests suck up a bunch of federal money in the form of stupid pork, get to set a bunch of regressive, reactionary social policies and fuck over the cities at every turn and then bitch about it whenever the federal government happens to do something for urban parts of the country by mistake ).
*insert malicious code to be run via Buffer Overflow*
G4 has a future?
And shall the recursive jokes ensue...
Xmarks handled it automatically, no real effort needed past the initial install. I've switched to firefox sync. It's almost as good and I don't really need to sync cross browser so I'm not really troubled by this, but I can definitely see how someone might be...
Strangely divided on this. On the one hand I agree with you up to #4. On the other hand, sarcasm can be hard to detect on the interwebs but the transhumanist and the atheist in me are both pretty sure they want to start flaming you over #5. :/
If you wait a week or so that problem goes away. A little less if you cut off the water too...
(as opposed to government sponsored spaceflight)
That's just patently untrue. I'm not knocking commercial space flight, I think it's pretty important myself. But you have to acknowledge who actually invented most of the technology, who did the risky, pioneering work before anyone else could afford to, who laid down the groundwork. The fact of the matter is that, while commercial interests may ultimately bring the benefits of space to the masses, it was and will probably continue to be the government that kicked down the door and made it all possible.
So basically, what you're saying is that your 'mom' is a trap?