SVG is just for vector graphics of course, but there are plenty of ways to present video via JavaScript without using a plugin monster like Flash or Silverlight. That's what Apple does, and there's no shortage of web users unable to watch the iPhone and Leopard ads on Apple's site.
Using the presentation of web video as a killer app for browser middleware is absurdly ridiculous.
So let's take the third application of Flash/Silverlight beyond animated ads and framing video: rich apps. Apple is also proving that this can be done just as well using a JavaScript framework with MobileMe. Yes, Apple had problems getting their servers up to serve the few million upgrading.Mac users and an an influx of new iPhone MM subscribers, but the apps work pretty well, and they outclass anything I've seen built in Flash/Flex/AIR.
Apple isn't alone in proving that Flash/Silverlight is unnecessary, but the company is also actively working to kill both by making neither work on the iPhone. Linux users should congratulate Apple's efforts to scrape this unnecessary middleware from the web, as web apps designed to run in JavaScript will also run in Linux (and JavaScript can be optimized by the FOSS community openly without patent threats from Adobe/Microsoft).
You don't even have to like Apple's hardware to appreciate what its doing for open source.
Yes, the amount they "outweigh" initial investments is called "profits."
However, the masses aren't complaining, just a few people here on Slashdot who think that not wanting to pay for things is an enlightened political ideology.
I'm all for intellectual socialism, where smart people take over and run things and prevent outrageous profit-taking by the ultra rich, but this is America. I find it hard to empathize with the fat slobs who sit around and passively complain about how much they are being charged to afford their affluent slob lifestyles rather than taking any actual action to stop the trend toward fascism, in most cases because they are actually benefiting from corporate profiteering and don't want to upset the trough that feeds them the slop they want to be cheaper.
For the record, I hate AT&T nearly as much as Verizon and Sprint, and I think the RIAA is largely ridiculous in every way. The only reason I can stand Apple is that it constantly titillates my passive consumption of technology in a uniquely entertaining way. I also am angry about the US' slide into complacent servitude to corporatism, but I blame my inaction on the ineffectual efforts of anyone else to do anything to really change things, and I lack the energy to fix everything myself.
So I'm not being elitist, I'm just tired of hearing ideological complaint dressed up as a significant opinion. One might as well put a "save the planet" bumper sticker on one's SUV. At least those people pay for gas; the gimme-gimme-free crowd wants to just steal their pop music and mobile Internet access, something that's hard to get behind as a political expression of "free speech."
In both your examples, your evil companies have invested shit-tons of money into creating the economic pool you want to swim in. You are surprised that they want to impose rules to earn profits on their investment?
Without AT&T, you wouldn't have AT&T's phone service, and without AT&T's investment in the iPhone, you probably wouldn't have $199 access to an OS X-based smartphone that costs $700.
Without the RIAA, you wouldn't have artists getting million dollar contract advances to create albums, nor any rock and roll lifestyle to inspire artists to make music. That's a bad thing if all you like is folk hippie music, but most people like commercial lala popular music, hence the name Pop.
I'm not saying that AT&T and the RIAA aren't greedy assholes, I'm only saying that your outrage is rather naive and silly. "Just restricts the consumer"? You do realize that the purpose of companies is to make profits, right? They don't exist to titillate you at affordable prices.
Don't be a dick. Nobody cares about feature phones or Fisher Price phones or how many tens of millions of subsidized instant eWaste phones were sold to unsuspecting working class people by the big mobile outfits.
It's quite obvious that I'm talking about the market for things that compare to the iPhone. Scurry back under your rock, troll. You never have anything interesting to say.
Hi troll: I've never had an apple store affiliate account.
I did set up one for iTunes, but wasn't making enough to bother with making links. I still post links to the iTunes of the week, largely so I remember to snag them for free. Actually I don't write for money, I write to offer people something different to read.
If I wanted to blog for money, I'd put up pictures of kittens and link jack the articles that worked last month, and post them to Digg. That would bore me.
According to real statistics, well over 80% of iPhone users "use more than ten functions," and even more use Safari for browsing. That's why the phone has a majority share (~75%) of mobile website traffic in stats despite "only" taking 27% of the new phones sold in the US and only having been on the market for a year.
Web development is for the web, not targeted at the iPhone. Whether or not key customers can view your content is a big deal. iPhone users will have more impact than their numbers suggest, just as Mac users do.
The fact that this also benefits Linux users is just a nice finish.
Over a thousand of my readers wrote Digg to ask it to stop censoring my articles (and cc:ed me) after a small contingent of Digg users complained that I was poking at their Xbox, Zune, and Windows Enthusiast views.
Digg has never accused me of creating scores of accounts, and some anonymous blog entry is not "credible evidence."
Promoting articles I write by submitting them to sites designed for that purpose is not spam.
Windows costs twice as much at retail (and few buy either at full retail). Many people get new releases with new computer purchases. No computer is worth upgrading for 7 years.
But the biggest problem with your numerology is that Mac OS X has been worth it to the 20 million people who are going out of their way to fund its development. Windows hasn't sold enthusiastically since 1995; its all just OEM bundled licensing that shows up by default on new PCs, a market that is now leveling off and is going to see very little new growth.
The Blue and White G3s came out years BEFORE Mac OS X. Apple said they would run Mac OS X, not run every version ever released ten years into the future.
"I remember when Apple said that everything from the Blue & White G3 onward (and certain PowerBook G3s) were always going to be able to run Mac OS X."
"I remember when Apple said that everything from the Blue & White G3 onward (and certain PowerBook G3s) were - going to be able to run Mac OS X."
"who said anything about abandoning alternative energy research?"
WTF jackass. Were you in a coma when Bush became president and canceled every reasonable alternative energy program in existence, and then blew smoke about Hydrogen, a technology that wouldn't be commercially viable for at least another 20 years and until gasoline hit $10 a gallon? Nobody cares what you would do theoretically, if you had the political capital to tear up Alaska, we're talking about what Bush actually did.
And jackass, you can prattle on about "straw man" arguments, but when you write "you say that me and my kind are against all forms of alternative energy," it shows who really is tearing up fallacy in dramatic fashion. I never represented your position. I couldn't care less what you think. I'm talking about what matters and what happened. Bush stopped alternative energy research. That's why virtually no American progress in alternative energy was made in 8 years. Considerable technological progress has been made in other areas since the days of Mac OS X 10.0 beta.
And in the area of nuclear power, Bush did absolutely nothing to lead the US into clean electricity generation of any kind. He can't even pronounce the word nuclear correctly.
The US decreased its production of oil when prices came down in the Middle East. Failing to tear up Alaska did not "decrease production." Please elaborate on what brilliant Bush Energy Policies were stopped by the Democratic congress. Then outline why said policies were stopped by democrats when republicans held congress from Clinton through Bush's first term? Yes Jackass, it's you that has trouble with your thinking. Calling me a retard doesn't cut it when you are so slow yourself.
And before you congratulate yourself further for "understanding supply and demand," how about reading up on what a cartel is and what it does to competition? Ever hear of OPEC? The US could strip mine Alaska and OPEC could make the whole operation a bust simply by turning its valve.
Three generations of fascist Bushes isn't an old historical tale, its a pattern, jackass. It's you that brought up ideas from the past that are irrelevant. A family that prays together that industry and government stays together, and is currently in power and defying the law is fucking relevant, neanderthal neocon jackass.
You were identified as a troll above, I should have taken note. "Those billions in bailouts were to help the poor who got in over their heads?" An Ignorant Troll! And now a Jackass Ignorant Troll. This was never a conversation about what you would do to Alaska for a quick profit, unaware of OPEC's pricing power in the oil market. It's about the fascist, short term profiteering that criminals in the administration were able to perpetrate with the full support of asshole traitors such as yourself, apparently clueless when it comes to matching up republican ideals of limited government and fiscal responsibility with the neocon republican reality of fascist police state government expansion and unlimited egregious debt spending.
- that Iraq was being troublesome in selling off oil unbound by the OPEC cartel? - that Bush/Cheney contractors were lined up to rebuild Iraq after its destruction by invasion? - that the oil industry is benefitting from higher oil prices? - that Bush needed to repay the political wealth that paid to install him as president? - that Bush immediately stopped all reasonable alternative fuel / battery research (save the Hydrogen pipe dream!), a move that could only possibly make higher oil prices unavoidable? - that Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and was an Islamic enemy of Saudi Arabia?
There's nothing even remotely controversial about any of that. You'll need to do more than huff about it being a wacko theory. Even those who believed there might be WMDs in Iraq knew at the time that it was just being used as a convenient excuse for invading the country and plundering its oil reserves.
Do you really think that the invasion of Iraq was all just a righteous effort to establish democracy, and that Iraq simply won the Democracy Freedom Lottery for no particular reason over Burma, North Korea, Tibet, East Africa, etc. ? For that matter, why was Iraq in line to get neoconned ahead of the Saudi Kingdom, where hands are cut off?
At some point, you're going to have to start supporting your beliefs. Doubting everything only gets you so far.
You are grossly misstating reality. Correlation is not causation.
The bubble of a long economic upturn cycle (longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history) did begin to crash in 2000, the last year Clinton was in office. However, if you want to suggest the economic downturn was the fault of Clinton, you should articulate why. Was it his balanced budget and a reported federal surplus that caused increasingly speculative investors to lose their money?
The real crush to the US economy happened in 2001 as a result of 9/11. That likely wasn't Bush's fault either (unless you believe he planned the attacks, and that would require some leaps of logic given his complete failure in planning the invasion of Iraq) although its hard to point out what exactly Bush did to get the economy back on track. Feeble tax rebates? Tax cuts for the ultra rich, who subsequently spent that windfall on foreign goods from China, employment of overseas labor, and investment in offshore banking?
In the last 8 years, the economy hasn't come anywhere close to matching the roar of the late 90s. 9/11 has been blamed for everything ever since, but shouldn't the US have recovered somewhat in nearly 8 years? The WTC wasn't rebuilt, Osama wasn't found, the archaic airport control systems that allowed hijacked planes to be flown deep into Manhattan without any any real warning was never upgraded, the airline industry was handicapped with a ridiculous terrorism canard, energy policy was put on ice so that oil profits could roll in up until the current crisis facing transportation and national security, and on top of all that incompetence, Bush starts a war on two fronts, one of which was based entirely upon fraud, completely unmanaged by clueless morons, and spends trillions of dollars accomplishing nothing but converting a secular, stable country into a rabid violent wasteland brewing terrorism.
So Clinton passed Bush a legacy that included a balanced budget, a federal surplus, and a prude's nightmare involving oral sex. And Bush? He spends wildly, accomplishes nothing with all that spending apart from enriching a few well placed friends in oil and defense, leaves the country vulnerable to attack, unprepared for storm emergencies or new attacks, and then passes on a huge debt, economic crisis, energy policy crisis, education crisis, trade crisis, and a full suite of other unsolved problems on to the next president.
And during all that, Bush played up an asinine role as a complete dumbass, making the US look stupid and creating a huge vacuum of goodwill internationally.
Having any other president could only improve matters. McCain would be an improvement, were he not an ancient old man who long gave up any maverick ideas to become a party stooge. The man can barely operate a computer. If Omama were nothing but charismatic, he'd be a 3000% improvement. I could be a better president than Bush, and I have no executive skills. At least I can listen to smarter people and give a shit about the country.
Right, and the religion on the right is different. Uh, no, it's even more hateful, with evangelists blaming WTC terrorism on gays or social liberalism. They also dance far to the right of reasonable in racist rhetoric, the difference being that rather than promoting some populist idea of reparations among blacks, they incite hatred of all minorities and support Bill O'Reilley's patriarchal white supremacy ideology.
Suggesting that Obama is a puppet of radical black baptist churches is as ridiculous as trying to suggest he's muslim. The right is working hard to do both, while being far more disgusting in their deep rimming of dirty religious assholes.
Well, as Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time." The neocons just got very at fooling enough of the masses.
It's really elitist to be able to convince working/middle class people that police state fascism, a repeal of basic human rights, and a focus on religious crusades and torture inquisitions is the right direction to push in -- and keep it going for an 8 year period.
If it wasn't so criminally tragic, I could say bravo. The worst part is that the supposedly "liberal" media has become nothing more than a PR deployment system, so there is no fourth estate informing or challenging the increasingly fascist-feudal government and its enrapturement with religion.
The American people have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps too embarrassed to admit how screwed up everything is. That's why Obama's hope message actually inspires. It has actually melted my cynicism slightly.
My criticism of relevant and timely issues of today is not an endorsement or excusing of any past wrongs committed by another party.
At the same time, Clinton didn't turn the US into a police state and broadly spy on citizens, send people to a torture camp for years without any charges, suspend basic civil rights, etc.
I like how neocons feel justified in supporting fascism and treason simply because they can criticize democrats from two generations ago as an excuse for their own destruction of the country today.
Also, FDR's democratic party has very little in common with todays democratic party, or the relevant issues of 2008.
I'd also say that both major parties have a lot to answer for, but suggesting that the high crimes of the current administration should be ignored because of minor controversies you can dredge up from the past is ridiculous. It's also ridiculous that acting democrats have done nothing to address those same crimes.
I am criticizing the neocon machine that has run from Reagan through two Bushes, not defending democrats as ideal and infallible. Conversely, you are dismissing high crimes by saying others have done wrong previously. My position makes sense, yours does not.
Yes, the only answer to the completely incompetent energy policy that resulted in $4.50 gas in 2008 was tearing up Alaska wilderness to look for oil. Abandonment of any Investigation of reasonable alternative energy sources and spending trillions on invading a sovereign nation to create a perpetual mess in the Middle East is immaterial, and high gas prices are all the fault of environmentalists, despite the 76 cent gas under Clinton. You jackass.
You are also unaware that US corporations are skirting taxes, moving operations overseas (Ford's $4 billion plant in Mexico?) and hiring overseas labor? Really? You "keep hearing that," remember? Let the facts penetrate your neocon shell.
Clinton did not spend trillions of dollars occupying Bosnia, destroying the country, dismissing the existing police creating anarchy and chaos, and then allowing warlords and radical clerics to take over the country. Jackass. I didn't mention Bosnia because you had already masturbated it out.
Iraq is now "a thriving democracy" in the Mid East? Are you fucking nuts? It's a war zone that breeds terrorists and creates hopeless poverty, which is the fertile ground of future terrorism.
Your hypocrisy is so evident when you say the Bush complex "might not be fascist, but if it is, who cares, kennedys owned stocks that caused the depression." WTF, do you even believe the BS you breathe?
You are a delusional idiot completely incapable of thinking for yourself. That's why I can't handle neocons. I can understand and even identify with a broad range of conservative thought, but blind propagandistic neocons with their Rapture and opposition to civil rights and support of torture and excuses for fascism and support of high crimes - you sir are simply a traitor.
The US gets its oil from the Middle East, not Venezuela. Saudi Arabia and OPEC nations are strategic partners of the US, despite OPEC acting in its own interests.
Bush said he would use his Saudi influence pressure OPEC to open the supply of oil. That hasn't happened. Iraq is certainly not supplying enough oil today to lower prices.
Are you arguing that oil prices aren't higher, that high prices are not benefitting Bush & Co, or that the sky isn't blue?
Invading Iraq wasn't an effort to obtain free oil for America, it was an effort to stop Saddam Hussein from dumping his oil on the market and lowering prices (and profits) for OPEC aligned oil producers.
It also intended to destroy Iraq's infrastructure and then rebuild it using Bush/Cheney linked contractors paid for by Iraq's oil (oil that would not hit the market and lower prices).
Gas is now approaching $5 per gallon: mission accomplished!
Did you really think an oil man, albeit a failed one, was trying to obtain a new oil source to provide US consumers with lower prices? He profits from selling oil, and profits more from selling oil at higher prices.
Invading Iraq wasn't about creating an oil colony, it was about empowering Bush's oil partners, including the Saudi bin Ladens who benefitted so much from pulling rival oil from Iraq (a rival secular state that didn't practice the same form of Islam) off the market.
It also wasn't about containing radical Islam. Bush converted Iraq from a secular state that was an enemy of Saudi terrorists into a radically fire breathing terrorist training camp with groups that are now supportive of Al Qaeda and/or ready to plot their own attacks on the US and any foreigners in the area.
Again, Mission Accomplished! The world is now safer for Bush/Saudi oil profits, Cheney's military contractors, fundamentalist terrorists, US police state fascism, and higher energy costs are helping to subsidize everything.
"Those billions in bailouts were to help the poor who got in over their heads" No, it was to shore up the bankers. The "poor" (in many cases middle class homeowners) are not in those homes because they can't afford them. The bailouts are helping bankers who now owe other financial interests because their bad loans failed. If you knew what was going on in the world, I wouldn't need to clue you in on that.
"Those tax cuts sure helped me out." Right, and how is $4 gas and an extremely devalued dollar impacting that? Are you aware that your debt is now astronomical due to the Iraq war, or have you not gotten that far in your finances yet? That's economics you tit.
The ultra rich and welfare corporations are not "opening savings accounts" and investing in America, they're taking their money overseas, hiring foreigners, and selling off assets to China for a quick profit.
And FYI: Nazi Germany wasn't the only fascist country in the 30s that blamed its problems on Jews or some other scapegoat. Just because you are a simpleton doesn't change the fact that the US doesn't need to kill 6 million people to be headed in the wrong direction.
And "the US has not conquered a single country since the 1800s?" You must not be aware that the US has waged attacks on a variety of countries that it did not make into new states. Hawaii was taken over in the middle of the 1900s, the Philippines were grabbed and lost, Laos was bombed without ever being annexed, and then you have Reagan's legacy of illegal attacks on sovereign countries, followed by Bush's.
Bush hasn't turned Iraq into a US state, but it sure is getting more investment than any actual states.
Speaking of whom, perhaps you're aware that Bush's grandfather along with other industrialists supported a Nazi-sympathetic fascism in the US prior to WW II. Linking the Bush family fortunes to two eras of military industrial fascism is not a stretch, it's simple reality.
Nothing you've said is even remotely non-ridiculous.
The reason its called "welfare" is a clue as to why the government needs to do it. Without welfare, poverty engenders crime and other social ills that are far more costly than ideal social welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare and food stamps.
If you really think that the government needs to be out of the business of supporting society, perhaps you need to tune into reality instead of right wing radio.
You benefit more from welfare than the recipients do.
"unless you can give me an example of the government taking your money and giving it directly to a CEO of a megacorp"
Surely you jest. Have you not been paying attention? Those billions of bailouts for home loan vendors on a federal level? Direct subsidies of big box retailers on a local level?
Are you really so stupid as to think that those recent tax breaks significantly benefit anyone beyond the ultra rich in the short term? Your dollars are quickly becoming worthless and their future value is being buried in the Iraq sand in the name of neocon Crusades.
Seriously, if you think you're benefitting from the move toward fascism and the expensive campaign to wage a perpetual propaganda war on Jews (ahem) Islam, then maybe you should have paid more attention to the flaws discovered in that political strategy back in the 30s.
Slashdot Mirror
SVG is just for vector graphics of course, but there are plenty of ways to present video via JavaScript without using a plugin monster like Flash or Silverlight. That's what Apple does, and there's no shortage of web users unable to watch the iPhone and Leopard ads on Apple's site.
Using the presentation of web video as a killer app for browser middleware is absurdly ridiculous.
So let's take the third application of Flash/Silverlight beyond animated ads and framing video: rich apps. Apple is also proving that this can be done just as well using a JavaScript framework with MobileMe. Yes, Apple had problems getting their servers up to serve the few million upgrading .Mac users and an an influx of new iPhone MM subscribers, but the apps work pretty well, and they outclass anything I've seen built in Flash/Flex/AIR.
Apple isn't alone in proving that Flash/Silverlight is unnecessary, but the company is also actively working to kill both by making neither work on the iPhone. Linux users should congratulate Apple's efforts to scrape this unnecessary middleware from the web, as web apps designed to run in JavaScript will also run in Linux (and JavaScript can be optimized by the FOSS community openly without patent threats from Adobe/Microsoft).
You don't even have to like Apple's hardware to appreciate what its doing for open source.
Symbiotic: What Apple Does for Open Source
No, seitan is a wheat-based meat replacement for vegetarians, it's just they THEY don't know how to spell.
Warning: Google Maps Walking directions are in Beta
Yes, the amount they "outweigh" initial investments is called "profits."
However, the masses aren't complaining, just a few people here on Slashdot who think that not wanting to pay for things is an enlightened political ideology.
I'm all for intellectual socialism, where smart people take over and run things and prevent outrageous profit-taking by the ultra rich, but this is America. I find it hard to empathize with the fat slobs who sit around and passively complain about how much they are being charged to afford their affluent slob lifestyles rather than taking any actual action to stop the trend toward fascism, in most cases because they are actually benefiting from corporate profiteering and don't want to upset the trough that feeds them the slop they want to be cheaper.
For the record, I hate AT&T nearly as much as Verizon and Sprint, and I think the RIAA is largely ridiculous in every way. The only reason I can stand Apple is that it constantly titillates my passive consumption of technology in a uniquely entertaining way. I also am angry about the US' slide into complacent servitude to corporatism, but I blame my inaction on the ineffectual efforts of anyone else to do anything to really change things, and I lack the energy to fix everything myself.
So I'm not being elitist, I'm just tired of hearing ideological complaint dressed up as a significant opinion. One might as well put a "save the planet" bumper sticker on one's SUV. At least those people pay for gas; the gimme-gimme-free crowd wants to just steal their pop music and mobile Internet access, something that's hard to get behind as a political expression of "free speech."
In both your examples, your evil companies have invested shit-tons of money into creating the economic pool you want to swim in. You are surprised that they want to impose rules to earn profits on their investment?
Without AT&T, you wouldn't have AT&T's phone service, and without AT&T's investment in the iPhone, you probably wouldn't have $199 access to an OS X-based smartphone that costs $700.
Without the RIAA, you wouldn't have artists getting million dollar contract advances to create albums, nor any rock and roll lifestyle to inspire artists to make music. That's a bad thing if all you like is folk hippie music, but most people like commercial lala popular music, hence the name Pop.
I'm not saying that AT&T and the RIAA aren't greedy assholes, I'm only saying that your outrage is rather naive and silly. "Just restricts the consumer"? You do realize that the purpose of companies is to make profits, right? They don't exist to titillate you at affordable prices.
Warning: Google Maps Walking directions are in Beta
Don't be a dick. Nobody cares about feature phones or Fisher Price phones or how many tens of millions of subsidized instant eWaste phones were sold to unsuspecting working class people by the big mobile outfits.
It's quite obvious that I'm talking about the market for things that compare to the iPhone. Scurry back under your rock, troll. You never have anything interesting to say.
... from the mouth of an anonymous coward!
Hi troll: I've never had an apple store affiliate account.
I did set up one for iTunes, but wasn't making enough to bother with making links. I still post links to the iTunes of the week, largely so I remember to snag them for free. Actually I don't write for money, I write to offer people something different to read.
If I wanted to blog for money, I'd put up pictures of kittens and link jack the articles that worked last month, and post them to Digg. That would bore me.
According to real statistics, well over 80% of iPhone users "use more than ten functions," and even more use Safari for browsing. That's why the phone has a majority share (~75%) of mobile website traffic in stats despite "only" taking 27% of the new phones sold in the US and only having been on the market for a year.
Web development is for the web, not targeted at the iPhone. Whether or not key customers can view your content is a big deal. iPhone users will have more impact than their numbers suggest, just as Mac users do.
The fact that this also benefits Linux users is just a nice finish.
Sorry that's not true and you know it.
Over a thousand of my readers wrote Digg to ask it to stop censoring my articles (and cc:ed me) after a small contingent of Digg users complained that I was poking at their Xbox, Zune, and Windows Enthusiast views.
Digg has never accused me of creating scores of accounts, and some anonymous blog entry is not "credible evidence."
Promoting articles I write by submitting them to sites designed for that purpose is not spam.
Articles actually outlining features on Snow Leopard & SL Server and what they mean for users:
WWDC 2008: New in Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard Server Takes on Exchange, SharePoint
Apple's Mobile Me Takes On Exchange, Mobile Mesh
Puma was a free release.
2001-2007 is seven years.
Windows costs twice as much at retail (and few buy either at full retail). Many people get new releases with new computer purchases. No computer is worth upgrading for 7 years.
But the biggest problem with your numerology is that Mac OS X has been worth it to the 20 million people who are going out of their way to fund its development. Windows hasn't sold enthusiastically since 1995; its all just OEM bundled licensing that shows up by default on new PCs, a market that is now leveling off and is going to see very little new growth.
WWDC 2008: Predictions & What to Expect: Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Future UI Designs in Mac OS X 10.6
WWDC 2008: Moscone West Spy Shots!
The Blue and White G3s came out years BEFORE Mac OS X. Apple said they would run Mac OS X, not run every version ever released ten years into the future.
"I remember when Apple said that everything from the Blue & White G3 onward (and certain PowerBook G3s) were always going to be able to run Mac OS X."
"I remember when Apple said that everything from the Blue & White G3 onward (and certain PowerBook G3s) were - going to be able to run Mac OS X."
There, fixed that for you.
"who said anything about abandoning alternative energy research?"
WTF jackass. Were you in a coma when Bush became president and canceled every reasonable alternative energy program in existence, and then blew smoke about Hydrogen, a technology that wouldn't be commercially viable for at least another 20 years and until gasoline hit $10 a gallon? Nobody cares what you would do theoretically, if you had the political capital to tear up Alaska, we're talking about what Bush actually did.
And jackass, you can prattle on about "straw man" arguments, but when you write "you say that me and my kind are against all forms of alternative energy," it shows who really is tearing up fallacy in dramatic fashion. I never represented your position. I couldn't care less what you think. I'm talking about what matters and what happened. Bush stopped alternative energy research. That's why virtually no American progress in alternative energy was made in 8 years. Considerable technological progress has been made in other areas since the days of Mac OS X 10.0 beta.
And in the area of nuclear power, Bush did absolutely nothing to lead the US into clean electricity generation of any kind. He can't even pronounce the word nuclear correctly.
The US decreased its production of oil when prices came down in the Middle East. Failing to tear up Alaska did not "decrease production." Please elaborate on what brilliant Bush Energy Policies were stopped by the Democratic congress. Then outline why said policies were stopped by democrats when republicans held congress from Clinton through Bush's first term? Yes Jackass, it's you that has trouble with your thinking. Calling me a retard doesn't cut it when you are so slow yourself.
And before you congratulate yourself further for "understanding supply and demand," how about reading up on what a cartel is and what it does to competition? Ever hear of OPEC? The US could strip mine Alaska and OPEC could make the whole operation a bust simply by turning its valve.
Three generations of fascist Bushes isn't an old historical tale, its a pattern, jackass. It's you that brought up ideas from the past that are irrelevant. A family that prays together that industry and government stays together, and is currently in power and defying the law is fucking relevant, neanderthal neocon jackass.
You were identified as a troll above, I should have taken note. "Those billions in bailouts were to help the poor who got in over their heads?" An Ignorant Troll! And now a Jackass Ignorant Troll. This was never a conversation about what you would do to Alaska for a quick profit, unaware of OPEC's pricing power in the oil market. It's about the fascist, short term profiteering that criminals in the administration were able to perpetrate with the full support of asshole traitors such as yourself, apparently clueless when it comes to matching up republican ideals of limited government and fiscal responsibility with the neocon republican reality of fascist police state government expansion and unlimited egregious debt spending.
What exactly are you taking issue with:
- that Iraq was being troublesome in selling off oil unbound by the OPEC cartel?
- that Bush/Cheney contractors were lined up to rebuild Iraq after its destruction by invasion?
- that the oil industry is benefitting from higher oil prices?
- that Bush needed to repay the political wealth that paid to install him as president?
- that Bush immediately stopped all reasonable alternative fuel / battery research (save the Hydrogen pipe dream!), a move that could only possibly make higher oil prices unavoidable?
- that Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and was an Islamic enemy of Saudi Arabia?
There's nothing even remotely controversial about any of that. You'll need to do more than huff about it being a wacko theory. Even those who believed there might be WMDs in Iraq knew at the time that it was just being used as a convenient excuse for invading the country and plundering its oil reserves.
Do you really think that the invasion of Iraq was all just a righteous effort to establish democracy, and that Iraq simply won the Democracy Freedom Lottery for no particular reason over Burma, North Korea, Tibet, East Africa, etc. ? For that matter, why was Iraq in line to get neoconned ahead of the Saudi Kingdom, where hands are cut off?
At some point, you're going to have to start supporting your beliefs. Doubting everything only gets you so far.
You are grossly misstating reality. Correlation is not causation.
The bubble of a long economic upturn cycle (longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history) did begin to crash in 2000, the last year Clinton was in office. However, if you want to suggest the economic downturn was the fault of Clinton, you should articulate why. Was it his balanced budget and a reported federal surplus that caused increasingly speculative investors to lose their money?
The real crush to the US economy happened in 2001 as a result of 9/11. That likely wasn't Bush's fault either (unless you believe he planned the attacks, and that would require some leaps of logic given his complete failure in planning the invasion of Iraq) although its hard to point out what exactly Bush did to get the economy back on track. Feeble tax rebates? Tax cuts for the ultra rich, who subsequently spent that windfall on foreign goods from China, employment of overseas labor, and investment in offshore banking?
In the last 8 years, the economy hasn't come anywhere close to matching the roar of the late 90s. 9/11 has been blamed for everything ever since, but shouldn't the US have recovered somewhat in nearly 8 years? The WTC wasn't rebuilt, Osama wasn't found, the archaic airport control systems that allowed hijacked planes to be flown deep into Manhattan without any any real warning was never upgraded, the airline industry was handicapped with a ridiculous terrorism canard, energy policy was put on ice so that oil profits could roll in up until the current crisis facing transportation and national security, and on top of all that incompetence, Bush starts a war on two fronts, one of which was based entirely upon fraud, completely unmanaged by clueless morons, and spends trillions of dollars accomplishing nothing but converting a secular, stable country into a rabid violent wasteland brewing terrorism.
So Clinton passed Bush a legacy that included a balanced budget, a federal surplus, and a prude's nightmare involving oral sex. And Bush? He spends wildly, accomplishes nothing with all that spending apart from enriching a few well placed friends in oil and defense, leaves the country vulnerable to attack, unprepared for storm emergencies or new attacks, and then passes on a huge debt, economic crisis, energy policy crisis, education crisis, trade crisis, and a full suite of other unsolved problems on to the next president.
And during all that, Bush played up an asinine role as a complete dumbass, making the US look stupid and creating a huge vacuum of goodwill internationally.
Having any other president could only improve matters. McCain would be an improvement, were he not an ancient old man who long gave up any maverick ideas to become a party stooge. The man can barely operate a computer. If Omama were nothing but charismatic, he'd be a 3000% improvement. I could be a better president than Bush, and I have no executive skills. At least I can listen to smarter people and give a shit about the country.
Right, and the religion on the right is different. Uh, no, it's even more hateful, with evangelists blaming WTC terrorism on gays or social liberalism. They also dance far to the right of reasonable in racist rhetoric, the difference being that rather than promoting some populist idea of reparations among blacks, they incite hatred of all minorities and support Bill O'Reilley's patriarchal white supremacy ideology.
Suggesting that Obama is a puppet of radical black baptist churches is as ridiculous as trying to suggest he's muslim. The right is working hard to do both, while being far more disgusting in their deep rimming of dirty religious assholes.
Pull your tongue out and go brush your teeth.
Well, as Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time." The neocons just got very at fooling enough of the masses.
It's really elitist to be able to convince working/middle class people that police state fascism, a repeal of basic human rights, and a focus on religious crusades and torture inquisitions is the right direction to push in -- and keep it going for an 8 year period.
If it wasn't so criminally tragic, I could say bravo. The worst part is that the supposedly "liberal" media has become nothing more than a PR deployment system, so there is no fourth estate informing or challenging the increasingly fascist-feudal government and its enrapturement with religion.
The American people have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps too embarrassed to admit how screwed up everything is. That's why Obama's hope message actually inspires. It has actually melted my cynicism slightly.
My criticism of relevant and timely issues of today is not an endorsement or excusing of any past wrongs committed by another party.
At the same time, Clinton didn't turn the US into a police state and broadly spy on citizens, send people to a torture camp for years without any charges, suspend basic civil rights, etc.
I like how neocons feel justified in supporting fascism and treason simply because they can criticize democrats from two generations ago as an excuse for their own destruction of the country today.
Also, FDR's democratic party has very little in common with todays democratic party, or the relevant issues of 2008.
I'd also say that both major parties have a lot to answer for, but suggesting that the high crimes of the current administration should be ignored because of minor controversies you can dredge up from the past is ridiculous. It's also ridiculous that acting democrats have done nothing to address those same crimes.
I am criticizing the neocon machine that has run from Reagan through two Bushes, not defending democrats as ideal and infallible. Conversely, you are dismissing high crimes by saying others have done wrong previously. My position makes sense, yours does not.
Yes, the only answer to the completely incompetent energy policy that resulted in $4.50 gas in 2008 was tearing up Alaska wilderness to look for oil. Abandonment of any Investigation of reasonable alternative energy sources and spending trillions on invading a sovereign nation to create a perpetual mess in the Middle East is immaterial, and high gas prices are all the fault of environmentalists, despite the 76 cent gas under Clinton. You jackass.
You are also unaware that US corporations are skirting taxes, moving operations overseas (Ford's $4 billion plant in Mexico?) and hiring overseas labor? Really? You "keep hearing that," remember? Let the facts penetrate your neocon shell.
Clinton did not spend trillions of dollars occupying Bosnia, destroying the country, dismissing the existing police creating anarchy and chaos, and then allowing warlords and radical clerics to take over the country. Jackass. I didn't mention Bosnia because you had already masturbated it out.
Iraq is now "a thriving democracy" in the Mid East? Are you fucking nuts? It's a war zone that breeds terrorists and creates hopeless poverty, which is the fertile ground of future terrorism.
Your hypocrisy is so evident when you say the Bush complex "might not be fascist, but if it is, who cares, kennedys owned stocks that caused the depression." WTF, do you even believe the BS you breathe?
You are a delusional idiot completely incapable of thinking for yourself. That's why I can't handle neocons. I can understand and even identify with a broad range of conservative thought, but blind propagandistic neocons with their Rapture and opposition to civil rights and support of torture and excuses for fascism and support of high crimes - you sir are simply a traitor.
The US gets its oil from the Middle East, not Venezuela. Saudi Arabia and OPEC nations are strategic partners of the US, despite OPEC acting in its own interests.
Bush said he would use his Saudi influence pressure OPEC to open the supply of oil. That hasn't happened. Iraq is certainly not supplying enough oil today to lower prices.
Are you arguing that oil prices aren't higher, that high prices are not benefitting Bush & Co, or that the sky isn't blue?
Invading Iraq wasn't an effort to obtain free oil for America, it was an effort to stop Saddam Hussein from dumping his oil on the market and lowering prices (and profits) for OPEC aligned oil producers.
It also intended to destroy Iraq's infrastructure and then rebuild it using Bush/Cheney linked contractors paid for by Iraq's oil (oil that would not hit the market and lower prices).
Gas is now approaching $5 per gallon: mission accomplished!
Did you really think an oil man, albeit a failed one, was trying to obtain a new oil source to provide US consumers with lower prices? He profits from selling oil, and profits more from selling oil at higher prices.
Invading Iraq wasn't about creating an oil colony, it was about empowering Bush's oil partners, including the Saudi bin Ladens who benefitted so much from pulling rival oil from Iraq (a rival secular state that didn't practice the same form of Islam) off the market.
It also wasn't about containing radical Islam. Bush converted Iraq from a secular state that was an enemy of Saudi terrorists into a radically fire breathing terrorist training camp with groups that are now supportive of Al Qaeda and/or ready to plot their own attacks on the US and any foreigners in the area.
Again, Mission Accomplished! The world is now safer for Bush/Saudi oil profits, Cheney's military contractors, fundamentalist terrorists, US police state fascism, and higher energy costs are helping to subsidize everything.
"The surge is working" and "bush is going to clean up the Iraq war in six months" and Obama and McCain don't disagree on fundamentals?
I agree with Obama, you're an undereducated moron.
But nice string-along-a-jingos. That's some tightly packed ignorance you've canned.
Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech
"Those billions in bailouts were to help the poor who got in over their heads" No, it was to shore up the bankers. The "poor" (in many cases middle class homeowners) are not in those homes because they can't afford them. The bailouts are helping bankers who now owe other financial interests because their bad loans failed. If you knew what was going on in the world, I wouldn't need to clue you in on that.
"Those tax cuts sure helped me out." Right, and how is $4 gas and an extremely devalued dollar impacting that? Are you aware that your debt is now astronomical due to the Iraq war, or have you not gotten that far in your finances yet? That's economics you tit.
The ultra rich and welfare corporations are not "opening savings accounts" and investing in America, they're taking their money overseas, hiring foreigners, and selling off assets to China for a quick profit.
And FYI: Nazi Germany wasn't the only fascist country in the 30s that blamed its problems on Jews or some other scapegoat. Just because you are a simpleton doesn't change the fact that the US doesn't need to kill 6 million people to be headed in the wrong direction.
And "the US has not conquered a single country since the 1800s?" You must not be aware that the US has waged attacks on a variety of countries that it did not make into new states. Hawaii was taken over in the middle of the 1900s, the Philippines were grabbed and lost, Laos was bombed without ever being annexed, and then you have Reagan's legacy of illegal attacks on sovereign countries, followed by Bush's.
Bush hasn't turned Iraq into a US state, but it sure is getting more investment than any actual states.
Speaking of whom, perhaps you're aware that Bush's grandfather along with other industrialists supported a Nazi-sympathetic fascism in the US prior to WW II. Linking the Bush family fortunes to two eras of military industrial fascism is not a stretch, it's simple reality.
Nothing you've said is even remotely non-ridiculous.
The reason its called "welfare" is a clue as to why the government needs to do it. Without welfare, poverty engenders crime and other social ills that are far more costly than ideal social welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare and food stamps.
If you really think that the government needs to be out of the business of supporting society, perhaps you need to tune into reality instead of right wing radio.
You benefit more from welfare than the recipients do.
"unless you can give me an example of the government taking your money and giving it directly to a CEO of a megacorp"
Surely you jest. Have you not been paying attention? Those billions of bailouts for home loan vendors on a federal level? Direct subsidies of big box retailers on a local level?
Are you really so stupid as to think that those recent tax breaks significantly benefit anyone beyond the ultra rich in the short term? Your dollars are quickly becoming worthless and their future value is being buried in the Iraq sand in the name of neocon Crusades.
Seriously, if you think you're benefitting from the move toward fascism and the expensive campaign to wage a perpetual propaganda war on Jews (ahem) Islam, then maybe you should have paid more attention to the flaws discovered in that political strategy back in the 30s.