If you can't find a John McCain supporter, it's because you're not looking. If you really want to know why they plan on voting for him, you should ask. If you're in college, try looking for your college's young republicans or equivalent organization. There will be one.
Sure, I don't agree with a lot of their issues but man, anything's better than this business cabal that's running the country into the ground.
Maybe to a certain extent, but this is almost as much the Democrats' fault as the Republicans. How many Democrats voted against the war in Iraq? Barely any. How many Democrats refused to support Bush's plan for the economy and foreign policy? A few more, but still not very many. That number has increased recently, but until the last couple years wasn't even a majority *in their own party*.
Who would you rather vote for? The fools that are destroying our country, or the fools that allowed them to? That's a pretty poor choice if you ask me.
Voting Democratic even if you don't support their platform is compromising before the process even begins. I personally will be voting for none of the above.
Even in Cali, $75k is a pretty good salary. The average salary in LA County is $40k. If you have two working parents and the other makes average wage that is 115k a year. You badly need to get some perspective if you think that's barely enough to scrape by.
Since Mexico was pretty firmly in the US sphere of influence, it lands squarely there.
Except that the Mexican people, and the Mexican left (which has traditionally controlled the country) can't stand US interference. It is pretty much the only country in the Western Hemisphere that does not allow the US to control its policy. It is one of the few countries in the world that does not allow the US military on its soil.
Mexico does, however, serve as a good example of the type of country you get if you let libertarian ideals of no regulation and limited government go to their natural conclusion: a few rich families control basically everything worth controlling, and a majority of everyone else is dirt poor and suffers.
Mexico has *never* been anything resembling a libertarian utopia. They were an empire in the early 19th century, and effectively an empire in the late 19th century/early 20th century. They nationalized most industries after the 1914(?) revolution and the government literally controls every natural resource in the country. Nobody but Pemex is allowed to exploit or sell petroleum resources. Mining is similar but much less lucrative. If you want to look at a country that is a bad example for libertarian ideals, look at a country like Somalia. Mexico is an example of how socialism sometimes turns into oligarchy (although the oligarchy existed for hundreds of years before socialism) and exploitation of the poor. Thankfully in the last 20 years they've gotten rid of the more excessive parts of the socialist state and become a real democracy. Mexico should rightfully be competitive with the US in every area, and it appears they're moving in that direction.
First, he didn't call it a third world country. Second, it actually is a third world country. So the only reason Mexicans would be disgusted is if they were stupid and easily offended.
Could someone enlighten me as to what this is? I've seen it a few times on slashdot, and I understand the meaning from context, but where does it come from?
Listen, I'm not saying Apple is a poorly run company, or that Microsoft is getting a good return on R&D spending. Not every Microsoft post has to turn into an MS vs. Apple flamewar. I don't give a shit if you think Apple is the better company, at this point I probably agree. It doesn't matter how much cash Apple has or their business model. This is about MS.
I'm saying *at this specific point* it makes sense to do the buyback. It's a poor idea to have that much cash sitting around unless you plan on using it immediately. The Yahoo deal fell through, so they're doing the most prudent thing at this time. You don't need $40 billion in cash to plan for the future.
Agreed. Microsoft is only declining in market share, and that was inevitable. Ten years ago, neither Apple nor Linux were viable competitors for the huge majority of consumers. That's changed, so naturally more users would migrate to both. But MS still has incredible sales. Vista has been selling like crazy, even with all the bad press and lower market share. It's just that they're no longer the only game in town.
Apple isn't buying back its stock because it thinks it can make more for investors building new business than it can by simply giving the money back.
Apple also doesn't have $40 billion in cash. Microsoft is already spending plenty of money on R&D and marketing, it's not like they're cutting this amount from those budgets. They've determined that the money will be better put to use this way. I'm inclined to believe them until they're proven otherwise, especially with the markets looking the way they are currently.
The first is that correlation does not equal causation. Sure, the US has very liberal firearm laws, but that's not really the most important factor. Take a look at Canada. They have similar gun laws, but a much lower murder rate. Brazil has more restrictive laws, but a much higher murder rate.
The largest factor for these high murder rates is poverty. The US is a very wealthy place but neighborhoods of extreme poverty exist in most cities. Generally speaking wealthy people don't kill each other, poor people do. Passing a law criminalizing guns wouldn't save many lives, fixing the root cause would.
Second, waving a gun at somebody is a crime in the US. You just can't go about brandishing firearms here. I'm not sure why you seem to think that would make it more difficult to catch criminals. In the US having a automatic weapon (usually) doesn't make you a criminal, so they don't need to be caught. They only need to be caught if they actually commit a crime.
GP poster is obviously a moron, but to properly compare you should use the overall homicide rate. Obviously the UK will have fewer firearm homicides, they have a few levels of magnitude fewer firearms. Overall rates, while still lower, are not as dramatic.
Maybe if it was graphic, realistic violence. But I would doubt cartoon GTA or Halo-style violence desensitizes very much. That's worlds away from actual violence. Even on graphic shows like the Sopranos or whatever, the violence is very stylized and not depicted in a realistic way.
A better example would be something like snuff films. But if you're watching snuff films, my guess is that you already have problems.
Does it really matter? There's no way of telling one Anonymous attack from another, that's the point. If you trust Anonymous as a group you're crazy, there's no sort of cohesive leadership or ideals there. Other than 4chan there's not even a central meeting place. It's just a mask for various hackers and quasi political groups. There is no group. The only things that holds Anonymous together is, well, anonymity.
Anonymous could protest in front of a Scientology building, hold a Ron Paul fundraiser, or punch your grandmother in the face. It's all the same.
The argument is valid no matter the messenger. Why wouldn't Matt Damon have valid opinions? Because he's good looking and stars in action movies?
The fact is if McCain gets elected Sarah Palin will be next in line to a 73 year old man with a history of cancer. (To paraphrase Damon again) we need to know if she really thinks there were dinosaurs here 5,000 years ago. That's pretty important information, troll.
Well put. It is also worth nothing that this economic crisis is about much more than the mortgage industry. We are seeing some pretty huge weaknesses in our economy across the board. Unfortunately it now seems that subprime lending was just the tip of the iceberg.
They are not willing to take any chances, even when their backs are up against the wall. They were completely dependent on gas guzzling behemoths like the F150 and their various SUV's. Yet when the opportunity comes up to do something unique and become a market leader, they are too risk averse to do it.
They could import these cars, selling them in relatively small quantities for a small profit, and then later do things to bring the costs down. Move the engine manufacturing to the US/Mexico. Use that famous lobbying ability that kept SUV's viable to reduce diesel taxes.
The Japanese companies didn't become as successful as they are overnight. Ford will not be able to compete with them until they take a long-term approach. Instead of burning through cash trying to maintain their current business model, how about investing that in new facilities that will create the next generation of cars. Focusing only on quarterly reports is what got them into this mess in the first place.
If you like David Foster Wallace or would like to get a good idea of his style without diving headfirst into a novel, check out Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. It has the full range of his work, from literary criticism to a hilarious essay describing his trip to a porn convention and various rambling thoughts on pornography's relationship with "regular" society and art. There's some really great stuff in that.
Why would having terminal cancer change anything? I hate to break it to you, but we're all going to die. Everyone has terminal cancer. If that's going to convince you to commit suicide you might as well get it out of the way now.
You have no idea what his life was like, or what sort of distress caused him to do this. Maybe he was mentally ill, something terrible had just happened to him, and he just became overwhelmed. It happens.
So take you condescending attitude and fuck off. DFW contributed a great deal to our society, and he was obviously a person with great personal anguish. There's a slight, minuscule inkling of truth to what you are saying, but calling him a coward does nothing but make you look like the dick you are. We all know suicide is a pointless affair, that's why we're all still here.
It's easy, MP3's are good enough. The huge majority of people can barely tell the difference between 96kbps crap and FLAC on a perfect system. Nobody I know can tell the difference between V0 MP3's and CD/FLAC quality. Almost everybody can see the difference between a DVD on a 23 inch screen and a Blu-Ray on a 52" screen.
Plus, there is the status of having a massive TV. It's big and people can see it. All stereo systems pretty much look the same if you don't know what you're looking at.
Don't underestimate such a simple motivator. It's the reason why up until this year car companies couldn't make trucks or SUVs too big to sell regardless of practicality.
And I know plenty of movie buffs that don't have a nice TV setup. Me and most of my friends are all hardcore movie buffs and most of the time we're watching films on a 21" TV, 19" computer monitor, or at the viewing station in our university library. I also know plenty of music buffs that haven't bought "full" quality music in years. There's a generation coming up pretty quick that might have *never* listened to a high-fidelity recording. It doesn't mean they like music any less than people that masturbate to their hi-fi systems.
The purpose of government is to provide a sense of security; to provide an environment in which you can flourish.
No, the purpose of government is to provide *actual* security while maintaining civil liberties. There is no evidence that these cameras will reduce crime, as they've been used elsewhere with negligible results, and they definitely are at conflict with civil liberties.
What Newark needs is better education, increased economic opportunity, and more and better-trained policemen *on the streets*, not sitting on their asses miles away. If the social problems of poverty and crime were solved by sticking cameras on street corners, every country in the world would do it and we wouldn't see any more violent crime.
When people think of the desert, they typically think of Sahara or Arabian-style massive sand dunes that are nearly all barren. That's not the case in the US, with a few small exceptions. In the Great Basin, which is where I grew up, it's almost entirely desert. But this includes massive forests, large wildlife populations, and they are all very dependent on a limited amount of water. Most of the water is supplied through spring runoff into the rivers, which is where most cities (Salt Lake, Reno, any city dependent on the Colorado) directly get their water from. The runoff also replenishes groundwater, which is heavily used and sometimes transported hundreds of miles to feed cities.
The water in nearly every metro area in the west uses travels through the desert, the prime examples being the Colorado River or Rio Grande. It's not just a lifeless tube, the entire desert is dependent on it, and nearly anything you do in the watershed ends up in the river. Pollute part of the desert, that is going to find its way into the drinking water of every major city in the Southwest. That's one of the reasons the environment is so fragile. A poor snow year or some sort of ecological disaster in Central Colorado has direct effect from Texas to California. An aquifer running low might force people in six states to redrill wells and put even more strain on other water resources.
And the desert produces *MASSIVE* amounts of food. Large portions of the southern Central Valley in California is naturally desert. Most of Colorado, Western Kansas, Western Nebraska, and Western Oklahoma is desert. All the farms there and elsewhere are fed off of irrigation water, because there is not enough natural rainfall to regularly produce food. Same with the Palouse and other major food-producing regions in the Northwest. If you've ever driven through Southern Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, you may notice massive farms sitting right next to "lifeless" desert land. The Inland Empire area of Southern California, while not as big of an agricultural region as it used to be, is still extremely productive. As is the Imperial Valley. I could list off desert agricultural zones for as long as you have time.
Now a lot of that itself is destructive of the natural ecosytem, so it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the original conversation. I'm not a NIMBY-er and I'm very ok with controlled, limited exploitation of the natural environment. I just hate it when people have a pre-conceived notion that 1/3 of the country is useless and they can dump all their unwanted crap on us. Keeping our land pristine is just as important as keeping your land pristine, and I don't understand how people justify thinking otherwise in their heads.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't find a John McCain supporter, it's because you're not looking. If you really want to know why they plan on voting for him, you should ask. If you're in college, try looking for your college's young republicans or equivalent organization. There will be one.
Maybe to a certain extent, but this is almost as much the Democrats' fault as the Republicans. How many Democrats voted against the war in Iraq? Barely any. How many Democrats refused to support Bush's plan for the economy and foreign policy? A few more, but still not very many. That number has increased recently, but until the last couple years wasn't even a majority *in their own party*.
Who would you rather vote for? The fools that are destroying our country, or the fools that allowed them to? That's a pretty poor choice if you ask me.
Voting Democratic even if you don't support their platform is compromising before the process even begins. I personally will be voting for none of the above.
Even in Cali, $75k is a pretty good salary. The average salary in LA County is $40k. If you have two working parents and the other makes average wage that is 115k a year. You badly need to get some perspective if you think that's barely enough to scrape by.
Except that the Mexican people, and the Mexican left (which has traditionally controlled the country) can't stand US interference. It is pretty much the only country in the Western Hemisphere that does not allow the US to control its policy. It is one of the few countries in the world that does not allow the US military on its soil.
Mexico has *never* been anything resembling a libertarian utopia. They were an empire in the early 19th century, and effectively an empire in the late 19th century/early 20th century. They nationalized most industries after the 1914(?) revolution and the government literally controls every natural resource in the country. Nobody but Pemex is allowed to exploit or sell petroleum resources. Mining is similar but much less lucrative. If you want to look at a country that is a bad example for libertarian ideals, look at a country like Somalia. Mexico is an example of how socialism sometimes turns into oligarchy (although the oligarchy existed for hundreds of years before socialism) and exploitation of the poor. Thankfully in the last 20 years they've gotten rid of the more excessive parts of the socialist state and become a real democracy. Mexico should rightfully be competitive with the US in every area, and it appears they're moving in that direction.
First, he didn't call it a third world country. Second, it actually is a third world country. So the only reason Mexicans would be disgusted is if they were stupid and easily offended.
Could someone enlighten me as to what this is? I've seen it a few times on slashdot, and I understand the meaning from context, but where does it come from?
Listen, I'm not saying Apple is a poorly run company, or that Microsoft is getting a good return on R&D spending. Not every Microsoft post has to turn into an MS vs. Apple flamewar. I don't give a shit if you think Apple is the better company, at this point I probably agree. It doesn't matter how much cash Apple has or their business model. This is about MS.
I'm saying *at this specific point* it makes sense to do the buyback. It's a poor idea to have that much cash sitting around unless you plan on using it immediately. The Yahoo deal fell through, so they're doing the most prudent thing at this time. You don't need $40 billion in cash to plan for the future.
You fail at logic. However, you do win the prize for shortest distance between contradicting statements. Congratulations!
Agreed. Microsoft is only declining in market share, and that was inevitable. Ten years ago, neither Apple nor Linux were viable competitors for the huge majority of consumers. That's changed, so naturally more users would migrate to both. But MS still has incredible sales. Vista has been selling like crazy, even with all the bad press and lower market share. It's just that they're no longer the only game in town.
Apple also doesn't have $40 billion in cash. Microsoft is already spending plenty of money on R&D and marketing, it's not like they're cutting this amount from those budgets. They've determined that the money will be better put to use this way. I'm inclined to believe them until they're proven otherwise, especially with the markets looking the way they are currently.
I just have two counterpoints to make.
The first is that correlation does not equal causation. Sure, the US has very liberal firearm laws, but that's not really the most important factor. Take a look at Canada. They have similar gun laws, but a much lower murder rate. Brazil has more restrictive laws, but a much higher murder rate.
The largest factor for these high murder rates is poverty. The US is a very wealthy place but neighborhoods of extreme poverty exist in most cities. Generally speaking wealthy people don't kill each other, poor people do. Passing a law criminalizing guns wouldn't save many lives, fixing the root cause would.
Second, waving a gun at somebody is a crime in the US. You just can't go about brandishing firearms here. I'm not sure why you seem to think that would make it more difficult to catch criminals. In the US having a automatic weapon (usually) doesn't make you a criminal, so they don't need to be caught. They only need to be caught if they actually commit a crime.
GP poster is obviously a moron, but to properly compare you should use the overall homicide rate. Obviously the UK will have fewer firearm homicides, they have a few levels of magnitude fewer firearms. Overall rates, while still lower, are not as dramatic.
Melodramatic, huh? Well, they started it.
Strange to see how Apple has come around the last 25 years.
Maybe if it was graphic, realistic violence. But I would doubt cartoon GTA or Halo-style violence desensitizes very much. That's worlds away from actual violence. Even on graphic shows like the Sopranos or whatever, the violence is very stylized and not depicted in a realistic way.
A better example would be something like snuff films. But if you're watching snuff films, my guess is that you already have problems.
Does it really matter? There's no way of telling one Anonymous attack from another, that's the point. If you trust Anonymous as a group you're crazy, there's no sort of cohesive leadership or ideals there. Other than 4chan there's not even a central meeting place. It's just a mask for various hackers and quasi political groups. There is no group. The only things that holds Anonymous together is, well, anonymity.
Anonymous could protest in front of a Scientology building, hold a Ron Paul fundraiser, or punch your grandmother in the face. It's all the same.
Because he was quoting him. Matt Damon made a salient point and he was quoting him. Try again.
The argument is valid no matter the messenger. Why wouldn't Matt Damon have valid opinions? Because he's good looking and stars in action movies?
The fact is if McCain gets elected Sarah Palin will be next in line to a 73 year old man with a history of cancer. (To paraphrase Damon again) we need to know if she really thinks there were dinosaurs here 5,000 years ago. That's pretty important information, troll.
Well put. It is also worth nothing that this economic crisis is about much more than the mortgage industry. We are seeing some pretty huge weaknesses in our economy across the board. Unfortunately it now seems that subprime lending was just the tip of the iceberg.
They are not willing to take any chances, even when their backs are up against the wall. They were completely dependent on gas guzzling behemoths like the F150 and their various SUV's. Yet when the opportunity comes up to do something unique and become a market leader, they are too risk averse to do it.
They could import these cars, selling them in relatively small quantities for a small profit, and then later do things to bring the costs down. Move the engine manufacturing to the US/Mexico. Use that famous lobbying ability that kept SUV's viable to reduce diesel taxes.
The Japanese companies didn't become as successful as they are overnight. Ford will not be able to compete with them until they take a long-term approach. Instead of burning through cash trying to maintain their current business model, how about investing that in new facilities that will create the next generation of cars. Focusing only on quarterly reports is what got them into this mess in the first place.
If you like David Foster Wallace or would like to get a good idea of his style without diving headfirst into a novel, check out Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. It has the full range of his work, from literary criticism to a hilarious essay describing his trip to a porn convention and various rambling thoughts on pornography's relationship with "regular" society and art. There's some really great stuff in that.
RIP DFW.
Why would having terminal cancer change anything? I hate to break it to you, but we're all going to die. Everyone has terminal cancer. If that's going to convince you to commit suicide you might as well get it out of the way now.
You have no idea what his life was like, or what sort of distress caused him to do this. Maybe he was mentally ill, something terrible had just happened to him, and he just became overwhelmed. It happens.
So take you condescending attitude and fuck off. DFW contributed a great deal to our society, and he was obviously a person with great personal anguish. There's a slight, minuscule inkling of truth to what you are saying, but calling him a coward does nothing but make you look like the dick you are. We all know suicide is a pointless affair, that's why we're all still here.
It's easy, MP3's are good enough. The huge majority of people can barely tell the difference between 96kbps crap and FLAC on a perfect system. Nobody I know can tell the difference between V0 MP3's and CD/FLAC quality. Almost everybody can see the difference between a DVD on a 23 inch screen and a Blu-Ray on a 52" screen.
Plus, there is the status of having a massive TV. It's big and people can see it. All stereo systems pretty much look the same if you don't know what you're looking at.
Don't underestimate such a simple motivator. It's the reason why up until this year car companies couldn't make trucks or SUVs too big to sell regardless of practicality.
And I know plenty of movie buffs that don't have a nice TV setup. Me and most of my friends are all hardcore movie buffs and most of the time we're watching films on a 21" TV, 19" computer monitor, or at the viewing station in our university library. I also know plenty of music buffs that haven't bought "full" quality music in years. There's a generation coming up pretty quick that might have *never* listened to a high-fidelity recording. It doesn't mean they like music any less than people that masturbate to their hi-fi systems.
No, the purpose of government is to provide *actual* security while maintaining civil liberties. There is no evidence that these cameras will reduce crime, as they've been used elsewhere with negligible results, and they definitely are at conflict with civil liberties.
What Newark needs is better education, increased economic opportunity, and more and better-trained policemen *on the streets*, not sitting on their asses miles away. If the social problems of poverty and crime were solved by sticking cameras on street corners, every country in the world would do it and we wouldn't see any more violent crime.
Try again.
Where I come from that's called a circle jerk.
Unusual relationship you have there, but to each his own I suppose.
When people think of the desert, they typically think of Sahara or Arabian-style massive sand dunes that are nearly all barren. That's not the case in the US, with a few small exceptions. In the Great Basin, which is where I grew up, it's almost entirely desert. But this includes massive forests, large wildlife populations, and they are all very dependent on a limited amount of water. Most of the water is supplied through spring runoff into the rivers, which is where most cities (Salt Lake, Reno, any city dependent on the Colorado) directly get their water from. The runoff also replenishes groundwater, which is heavily used and sometimes transported hundreds of miles to feed cities.
The water in nearly every metro area in the west uses travels through the desert, the prime examples being the Colorado River or Rio Grande. It's not just a lifeless tube, the entire desert is dependent on it, and nearly anything you do in the watershed ends up in the river. Pollute part of the desert, that is going to find its way into the drinking water of every major city in the Southwest. That's one of the reasons the environment is so fragile. A poor snow year or some sort of ecological disaster in Central Colorado has direct effect from Texas to California. An aquifer running low might force people in six states to redrill wells and put even more strain on other water resources.
And the desert produces *MASSIVE* amounts of food. Large portions of the southern Central Valley in California is naturally desert. Most of Colorado, Western Kansas, Western Nebraska, and Western Oklahoma is desert. All the farms there and elsewhere are fed off of irrigation water, because there is not enough natural rainfall to regularly produce food. Same with the Palouse and other major food-producing regions in the Northwest. If you've ever driven through Southern Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, you may notice massive farms sitting right next to "lifeless" desert land. The Inland Empire area of Southern California, while not as big of an agricultural region as it used to be, is still extremely productive. As is the Imperial Valley. I could list off desert agricultural zones for as long as you have time.
Now a lot of that itself is destructive of the natural ecosytem, so it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the original conversation. I'm not a NIMBY-er and I'm very ok with controlled, limited exploitation of the natural environment. I just hate it when people have a pre-conceived notion that 1/3 of the country is useless and they can dump all their unwanted crap on us. Keeping our land pristine is just as important as keeping your land pristine, and I don't understand how people justify thinking otherwise in their heads.