Given that the majority of long-range transportation & shipping during World War II was by sea, rather than by air, it's naive at best to suggest that having a large and powerful navy to defend supply & troop movement lines from U-Boats wasn't a factor in the defense of Britain.
Just a wild guess, but I presume that if that's the case, you end up making angry posts to slashdot about how all of your friends and coworkers are too stupid to use software which is complicated to install and complicated to use?
If this is the way people are going to get the ability to encrypt/sign emails, then yeah, they're not going to use it.
If this is the list of features "customers" are expected to make sense of, then yeah, they're not going to use it.
GPG is great software, but it's not exactly trivial to set up properly & use, and it doesn't appear as if the developers make much of an effort to make it easy to set up properly and use.
Yes, it's easy to Google this term. Yes, the reader could have done a search. But writing style standards generally suggest that the abbreviation should be spelled out, then included parenthetically after the full spelling, for abbreviations.
If the editors could be bothered to, you know, edit things for clarity, they could have written:
"[...] Adrian Hands was suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS - also sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease) and had lost motor skills..."
Look at it this way: if you're a writer, do you want people reading what you wrote, or do you want their focus taken away from your work when they start googling all the medical terms you use? If you don't care about the quality of the summaries, why don't we just turn Slashdot into a giant list of links, with helpful summaries such as "LOL COOL!"?
If you ignore infant death, the so called remarkable progress [...]
You DO realize that infants are, technically, human beings, right?
Seems to me that "ignoring infant death" or "putting less [...] value" on them would sort of be at odds with the goal of developing "more love for man in general," then, wouldn't it?
Reducing infant mortality is often low-hanging fruit - proper nutrition, proper immunizations, proper sanitation, etc make for dramatic reductions in mortality rates. Curing cancer? Curing heart disease? Curing strokes? Pretty fucking complex, unless you've got a miracle cure in your back pocket that you haven't told us about.
Glenn Beck is more than just some kind of shock talk show host.
No, I'm afraid that is *all* he is. He is listened to by a small fraction of the population (9 million - around 3%). Assuming every one of them is a voter, and every one of them votes exactly the way he tells them, the Glenn Beck listenership accounted for ~7% of the votes cast in 2008. It's likely that the actual percentage of people who both listen to him, vote, and vote exactly the way he would want them to, is somewhat lower than that. That's not mainstream. If the best example of his influence you can come up with is Victoria Jackson - an aging comedian best known for her time on Saturday Night Live in the late 1980's - then I'd suggest his influence is far less frightening than you suggest.
This is not to say that his violent rhetoric is "okay" since it's only reaching a small portion of the audience. But to claim that he's representative of mainstream conservative thought would be just as much an exaggeration as suggesting that the people showing up to MoveOn.org rallies and biting peoples' fingers off are representative of mainstream liberal thought. It's also worth noting that your own link provides numerous examples of Mr. Beck clearly and explicitly stating that the use of violence is misguided, wrong, and completely detrimental to advancing any political process: "The minute you become violent, which you're not going to do -- hear me clearly, for the record. Violence will destroy the republic. The person that picks up a gun, a bomb, anything, a knife, a rope, they will destroy the republic. Reject violence every step of the way."
If Glenn Beck saying "grab a torch" is an incitement to violence, Rep. Capuano's "sometimes you gotta get a little bloody" is certainly as much of an incitement. Pres. Obama's remark about "hand to hand combat" on Capitol Hill is also just as much an incitement - his message was clear: "If we don't keep the Republicans out, governance will devolve into a fistfight." Now, do I actually believe that any of them is *seriously* expecting people to go out and beat the stuffing out of the first person that disagrees with them? NO. They're all *quite obviously* using vivid violent imagery as a way of grabbing the listener's attention, as a way of stirring up some emotions. Unfortunately, fear & anger are two of the easier ones to stir, and ALL of our politicians have learned that lesson well, and apply it with remarkable, ham-fisted regularity.
There will always be some number of mentally ill people who will act out violently, and blame some aspect of politics for their actions. No amount of "controlling violent rhetoric" will change that fact. However, there are a lot of regular people - conservative and liberal alike - who are more than willing to turn things into a mob scene when they're in a large group and they get their passions whipped up into a frenzy, and that's the danger inherent to this style of speaking. It's wrong when Mr. Beck does it, it's wrong when Rep. Capuano does it, it's wrong when Pres. Obama does it.
The TL;DR point of this all is simply this: if you're basing your opinion of the "violence" of someone's speech solely on whether or not there's a -D or an -R after their name, and giving some people a pass based on that one-letter suffix, then you're engaging in base hypocrisy. Both sides do it, both sides are equally wrong to do it. I'd much rather they both focus on facts, and stirring constructive impulses in people, but long, nuanced and complex points don't fit well into the 5-minute window between commercial breaks, and don't fit well into the 5 minute speech you need to give before your rushed off to the next 15 of the day's fundraisers to give the same 5 minute speech. So, to build an emotional connection, politicians hit the fear & anger buttons, and move on to the next show.
-- Glenn Beck is not a "mainstream politician on the right". He's a guy who's payed to say provocative shit in the media to generate viewer numbers. Those ratings are turned into profits by the Fox News Channel through the magic of advertising. Much like Howard Stern's detractors listen to him for long stretches of time "just to hear what he's going to say next," Glenn Beck is in the same business.
-- He uses violent rhetoric because it's provocative: it's attention grabbing, it's sensationalist, and it gets people watching. This does not excuse it, in my opinion, but he is no more making "violent threats" than any of the examples below are *actually* threatening violence. Read on.
would you care to cite some examples of left-wing politicians or their supporters inciting their audience to violence on a mainstream news outlet
I would!
-- Rep. Mike Capuano, Democrat, my home state of Massachusetts. Remarking on the collective bargaining legislation in Wisconsin: "It's more than just sending an email that gets you going. Every once in a while, you gotta get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."
-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Speaking to folks at a fundraiser: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Talking about Republican prospects in the 2010 midterm elections"They are fired up. They are mobilized. They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate. If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."
-- Liberal talk show hosts like Beck are fewer & harder to find, but looking over various comments made by Randi Rhodes, Charles Bouley, Mike Malloy, and others... there are examples of violent rhetoric being used.
-- You could also check out the video embedded in this next link: in which a MoveOn supporter allegedly "chokes" a conservative protester. I'm inclined to believe there's not a lot of "choking" going on, but certainly there's still no need for him to be putting his hands around the other man's neck at a political protest, is there?
Look, it's easy to characterize violent rhetoric from liberals as "far, far left" activity, that's way out of the mainstream - nobody wants to believe that "their team" could be capable of the sorts of things that "those people" do, and so it's a natural reaction that you'd want to distance yourself from it. Much like conservatives will distance themselves from anybody who is *actually* preaching violence against liberals, and agree with you that it's the "whacko right nutjobs" who are talking like that.
The fact of the matter is that it's not just the whacko fringes using the rhetoric, on EITHER side. It's absolutely appropriate to be as disgusted with it from Republicans as it is to be disgusted with it from Democrats. Both of them should know how to behave better. But if you're really going to say that you don't mind if "your team" uses that kind of rhetoric, but you're going to object whenever the "other team" does, then you're just a hypocrite.
The question is whether or not it's a threat or incitement to violence, not whether or not somebody has already pulled the trigger as a result. And in all your name-calling, I notice you couldn't answer the question of how bullets get into someone's head except through violent means. Try again, pottymouth.
Since you seem to have reading comprehension issues, nowhere in there did I defend Sarah Palin's choice of ad campaign, or even her as a politician or a person. I'm simply pointing out a tremendous double standard - her campaign ad had tenuous-at-best relevance to Mr. Loughner's actions, but she was castigated for using "violent imagery" as if she were the sole - or even a proximal - cause of the incident.
And yet we have someone threatening to "put his bullets" in someone's head, and people are struggling to come up with a way to explain how it's not *really* a threat, and didn't *actually* threaten harm. The double standard is simply breathtaking, and your furiously ham-fisted and vulgar response simply underscores the point: rather than acknowledge that this man made a real threat by any reasonable standard of judgement, you'll simply call me a "repulsive cunt" and report in for your Anti-Tea Party Rant profile badge over on DKos.
Oh come the fuck on. Pray tell, what's the mechanism by which someone's bullets would get inside someone else's head, if not through the action of someone pulling a trigger? Is he going to surgically implant them in a willing patient, and has Mr. Cantor already signalled his & his family's willingness to have bullets surgically implanted in their heads in a painless & harmless medical procedure performed by (or financed by) Mr. LeBoon?
Sarah Palin's campaign puts together a poster with a fairly standard "target" symbol that happens to be a gun sight, and she's a bloodthirsty villain who advocates violence, but a guy records himself saying that "my bullets [...] will be placed in your heads," is not threatening, or encouraging, violence against an elected official?
I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to excuse this behavior - it's inappropriate on every level, regardless of the man's political affiliation. He deserves the full attention of law enforcement, and he's receiving exactly that now. Take his article and s/Cantor/Pelosi/g and tell me you wouldn't be howling for Rush Limbaugh's blood right now, in addition to advocating that the man making the threat, and at least 5-10% of the rest of conservatives (who "obviously" think the same way as this guy, on account of knowing how to use a gun), should be locked up?
Actually he makes a very good point. 18 Wisconsin congressmen reported death threats after the collective bargaining bill was passed there recently. Yet, you actually do have to go looking to find anything about it on most nationwide news sites. That link above is from a daily newspaper in a small town in central Wisconsin. I'm surprised I wasn't able to at easily find a wire service story about the death threats, given the hysterical nature of the rest of the coverage of the issue.
considering that CNN did report that death threats have led to at least one set of charges, it's hard to imagine that Fox News was just making shit up about the threats, as you're trying to suggest.
A public YouTube video should be considered to some degree a forum of symbolic speech as the media,
And if Dan Rather got on the news and said, "My Congressman Eric Cantor [...] you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads," it wouldn't be a free speech issue either. It's a pretty direct threat: "my bullets will be placed in your heads." How do bullets usually get inside of someone's body again?
Most likely the majority of mankind won't be able to use it directly because it is locked down under some DRM or otherwise unusable except by said company or developer's sanction.
No, most likely the majority of mankind won't be able to us it directly because they haven't the time, the inclination, or the skills to do so, even if every scrap of source code ever written was freely available under GPLv3-or-later copyrights.
Pssh. "being a scientist" is clearly about having an advanced degree, securing grant funding, and publishing your results in the journal of the american obscure science academy.
Every scientist who has ever existed on earth has been a lab-coated, grant-securing, well-published geek. Didn't you get the memo?
I'm stunned by the number of/.ers who both complain that the US government has been corrupted by corporations, and avocate systems where we trust the government implicitly, often in the same post!
You'd think that a bunch of self-proclaimed science and tech geeks would at least be self-consistent in their beliefs, but you're right.
It's odd how the government is "a police state" that's overrun with corporate greed and cronyism, hell-bent on subjugating the unfortunate citizens of the third world in a relentless quest for "moar oylz!" on the one hand, and on the other hand, anybody who would argue against a national ID card is a right-wing libertarian nutter who must be the type to watch Glenn Beck and live on a separatist homestead in Montana.
Because the government that was a horrible police state? That was Dubya's, not the CURRENT government - they're transparent, not ruled by "core-pirate greed", not wasteful, and totally respectful of the territorial rights of sovereign nations. And we all know that the Pax Obama will last forever and ever, world without end, amen.
Oh man, I totally hate it when that happens. I was just talking to Santa Claus about that the other day:
"So I'm standing there, dude, and our hot nude coworker - you know the one, sits next to the Easter Bunny, across from the Tooth Fairy? Yeah, that's the one. So she comes strutting by, with that POW POW, you know what I mean, right? And wouldn't you know it - I popped a raging boner right there, couldn't even help it. Fucking Amazon warriors, man... I love that they're so into IT."
We high-fived, and then we just laughed and laughed.
Later on, the fucking leprechauns from accounting and the chupacabra from security (you know Leonard, right? That greasy little pointy-fanged fuck), stole the goddamned screws out of my desk as a prank - third time this month, I'm getting so tired of this frat-house bullshit. I was going to report it to management, but Count Chocula and Cap'n Crunch were at an off-site, or harvesting Crunchberries or some shit, so I just said fuck it and went to have beers with Peter Pan. We totally messed with some hotties at the bar, too - they fell for that "Did you wanna see Tinkerbell?" gag he does, you know the one.
Depends - if the fabric is thick, or there's multiple layers, it'll take time for the liquid to soak through (time to cool), plus some of the heat will be transferred to the fabric, rather than your skin. However, if it's very hot liquid, the fabric might stay hot, and keep the hot liquid against the skin for longer, which could exacerbate a burn.
On the whole, I'd expect that getting splashed with hot coffee would hurt more on bare skin than it would soaking through a pair of jeans and underwear.
Honest question - if you actually do have to carry something around to sit on, why not just... wear boxers? No need to "carry something around" to sit on, and you're still *mostly* al fresco.
I wash my hands numerous times through the day, I don't crap on my hands or fling my turds at other people, I don't eat at my desk, and nobody else uses my keyboard.
So yes... yes, my keyboard is more sanitary than a fabric meeting room chair's seat that has had a bunch of hairy, sweaty asses all over it all day, week in and week out, for months.
I've been in the men's room and unfortunately overheard some of the more... explosive... performances put on by coworkers - I'm sure you can imagine. I don't want to sit in ANY chair they've sat in with no clothes on, unless I'm in a level 4 biosafety suit.
Since when is 1.35 million "a lot" of money for a development project, anyway? How big a staff does 1.35 million fund over six months? I'm guessing that'd cover 10-15 people making 75-100k/yr (factoring in benefits and the like) for a 6 month project, and that's if all of that money was strictly staffing costs, and didn't include service contracts for things like the move to a "cloud" hosting provider?
It doesn't seem that inordinately expensive to me, as development projects go.
My only real complaint so far would be that the fonts they're using look kind of ugly (weird jaggedy aliasing artifacts) in every browser I've looked at it in except IE.
Yes, I know that you believe that it's nothing but garbage.
Yes, I know that you believe it's all marketing.
You still have not answered the fucking question: if "marketing" makes garbage a best-seller, why isn't it doing even BETTER things for all the competitors, who you claim are producing superior devices with far better finish, functionality, and software? Marketing is the execution of a set of practices - it's not some magic pixie dust that some companies have and others don't. So why aren't the better products with just-as-good marketing selling better than the garbage?
I'll help you out and provide the answer for you: It's NOT "all marketing". Apple's devices are largely commodity components, (so nothing special there, but stopping the analysis at that point is akin to suggesting I could make a meal just as tasty & appealing as a professional chef if we both had the exact same ingredients to start with). Apple's products, however, run a fairly tightly integrated set of software that is put through fairly extensive rounds of polish and "fit and finish" testing, and wrapped up in a nice looking / well-designed package. That right there pretty much guarantees the device will be "pretty good" - it's got good hardware, good software, and it's wrapped up in an attractive package. But THEN, apple sits down and begin the marketing by telling the average user, "look what you can do with this device." They show off the function of the device, not the *specs* of the device. Go watch any iPad ad - there's precious little mention of gigahertz and gigabits and technical specs, they tell you (and show you) what it can do for you, first, last, and always.
Compare with competitors: Largely commodity components (again, nothing special there), but running a rough conglomeration of software that is put through a "good enough to ship" set of quality checks, and wrapped up in packaging that is largely, and obviously, designed to keep the price down: cheap-looking and cheap feeling black plastic with painted-on chrome trim and poorly fitted casing is the overwhelming design aesthetic for most of these devices. Then, rather than sit down and show you all the cool shit you can do with the device, they drone on about MhZ, and GBs, and USB ports, and never get around to telling you what it's *for*. And to top it all off, you're told "Well, we know we told you you could use Flash, but we won't ACTUALLY ship flash for another 6 months, so you can't watch flash on this device... yet. And the components and software will *totally* get better over time, we promise. And you can actually write your own software if you want, because it's OPEN. Oh yeah, and since Google won't let us use the Android Market, you pretty much have to write your own software if you want anything custom-built for this device."
Let's look at a Galaxy Tab ad: "It's time for an optimized email environment. Augmented reality and navigation services with a large display. A full web-browsing experience. E-reading solutions wherever and whenever you go. And a complete communications solution. Perfect - in itself. More possibilities on the go!" This, over a cheesy "hip" song, which is obviously mostly artificial, showing you this laundry list of "features" that are mostly alien sounding - who talks like this? "I want an optimized email environment, please." "Could I have an augmented reality device with navigation services?" It's jargony, it's stilted, and it doesn't MEAN anything to anybody who's not a geek and already *well aware* of what a Galaxy Tab is.
Now let's look at the latest iPad ad: "This is what we believe: technology alone is not enough. Faster, thinner, lighter - those are all good things. But when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful - even magical. That's when you leap forward. That's when you end up with something... like this." This, over an
Well, with an eloquent argument like that, how can we help but declare you the winner?
Care to point out some reasonable alternatives - with similar specs - that are more than a hundred or so dollars away from an equivalent Macbook? I'll wait.
Not mine, but it seems to be the prevailing slashdot "wisdom". I was pointing out that your comment, about people having memories, and companies having reputations, goes a long way towards explaining why Apple does so well: people remember that the Apple products have tended to be pretty well-made and durable, while the competitors have tended to be more buggy and problematic.
But people love to imply that the only reason Apple does well is that there are some sort of brainless legion of morons out there who mindlessly buy whatever Apple puts on sale without regard for its quality, when there are so many better, more deserving products available You can't have spent any time on Slashdot, and not have noticed that attitude.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that the majority of long-range transportation & shipping during World War II was by sea, rather than by air, it's naive at best to suggest that having a large and powerful navy to defend supply & troop movement lines from U-Boats wasn't a factor in the defense of Britain.
Just a wild guess, but I presume that if that's the case, you end up making angry posts to slashdot about how all of your friends and coworkers are too stupid to use software which is complicated to install and complicated to use?
If this is the way people are going to get the ability to encrypt/sign emails, then yeah, they're not going to use it.
If this is the list of features "customers" are expected to make sense of, then yeah, they're not going to use it.
GPG is great software, but it's not exactly trivial to set up properly & use, and it doesn't appear as if the developers make much of an effort to make it easy to set up properly and use.
Yes, it's easy to Google this term. Yes, the reader could have done a search. But writing style standards generally suggest that the abbreviation should be spelled out, then included parenthetically after the full spelling, for abbreviations.
If the editors could be bothered to, you know, edit things for clarity, they could have written:
"[...] Adrian Hands was suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS - also sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease) and had lost motor skills..."
Look at it this way: if you're a writer, do you want people reading what you wrote, or do you want their focus taken away from your work when they start googling all the medical terms you use? If you don't care about the quality of the summaries, why don't we just turn Slashdot into a giant list of links, with helpful summaries such as "LOL COOL!"?
You DO realize that infants are, technically, human beings, right?
Seems to me that "ignoring infant death" or "putting less [...] value" on them would sort of be at odds with the goal of developing "more love for man in general," then, wouldn't it?
Reducing infant mortality is often low-hanging fruit - proper nutrition, proper immunizations, proper sanitation, etc make for dramatic reductions in mortality rates. Curing cancer? Curing heart disease? Curing strokes? Pretty fucking complex, unless you've got a miracle cure in your back pocket that you haven't told us about.
Why don't you supply some facts to back up what he said, since he's apparently not interested in doing so?
I mean, since the facts get in the way of conservatives' worldview, I suppose you must have a binder full of examples you can share with us, right?
Or are we supposed to accept your vague assurances that the facts exist?
And yet the "rich people", even with what you seem to feel are criminally low rates, already pay the bulk of the taxes the government takes in.
Imagine that.
No, I'm afraid that is *all* he is. He is listened to by a small fraction of the population (9 million - around 3%). Assuming every one of them is a voter, and every one of them votes exactly the way he tells them, the Glenn Beck listenership accounted for ~7% of the votes cast in 2008. It's likely that the actual percentage of people who both listen to him, vote, and vote exactly the way he would want them to, is somewhat lower than that. That's not mainstream. If the best example of his influence you can come up with is Victoria Jackson - an aging comedian best known for her time on Saturday Night Live in the late 1980's - then I'd suggest his influence is far less frightening than you suggest.
This is not to say that his violent rhetoric is "okay" since it's only reaching a small portion of the audience. But to claim that he's representative of mainstream conservative thought would be just as much an exaggeration as suggesting that the people showing up to MoveOn.org rallies and biting peoples' fingers off are representative of mainstream liberal thought. It's also worth noting that your own link provides numerous examples of Mr. Beck clearly and explicitly stating that the use of violence is misguided, wrong, and completely detrimental to advancing any political process: "The minute you become violent, which you're not going to do -- hear me clearly, for the record. Violence will destroy the republic. The person that picks up a gun, a bomb, anything, a knife, a rope, they will destroy the republic. Reject violence every step of the way."
If Glenn Beck saying "grab a torch" is an incitement to violence, Rep. Capuano's "sometimes you gotta get a little bloody" is certainly as much of an incitement. Pres. Obama's remark about "hand to hand combat" on Capitol Hill is also just as much an incitement - his message was clear: "If we don't keep the Republicans out, governance will devolve into a fistfight." Now, do I actually believe that any of them is *seriously* expecting people to go out and beat the stuffing out of the first person that disagrees with them? NO. They're all *quite obviously* using vivid violent imagery as a way of grabbing the listener's attention, as a way of stirring up some emotions. Unfortunately, fear & anger are two of the easier ones to stir, and ALL of our politicians have learned that lesson well, and apply it with remarkable, ham-fisted regularity.
There will always be some number of mentally ill people who will act out violently, and blame some aspect of politics for their actions. No amount of "controlling violent rhetoric" will change that fact. However, there are a lot of regular people - conservative and liberal alike - who are more than willing to turn things into a mob scene when they're in a large group and they get their passions whipped up into a frenzy, and that's the danger inherent to this style of speaking. It's wrong when Mr. Beck does it, it's wrong when Rep. Capuano does it, it's wrong when Pres. Obama does it.
The TL;DR point of this all is simply this: if you're basing your opinion of the "violence" of someone's speech solely on whether or not there's a -D or an -R after their name, and giving some people a pass based on that one-letter suffix, then you're engaging in base hypocrisy. Both sides do it, both sides are equally wrong to do it. I'd much rather they both focus on facts, and stirring constructive impulses in people, but long, nuanced and complex points don't fit well into the 5-minute window between commercial breaks, and don't fit well into the 5 minute speech you need to give before your rushed off to the next 15 of the day's fundraisers to give the same 5 minute speech. So, to build an emotional connection, politicians hit the fear & anger buttons, and move on to the next show.
Several points:
-- Glenn Beck is not a "mainstream politician on the right". He's a guy who's payed to say provocative shit in the media to generate viewer numbers. Those ratings are turned into profits by the Fox News Channel through the magic of advertising. Much like Howard Stern's detractors listen to him for long stretches of time "just to hear what he's going to say next," Glenn Beck is in the same business.
-- He uses violent rhetoric because it's provocative: it's attention grabbing, it's sensationalist, and it gets people watching. This does not excuse it, in my opinion, but he is no more making "violent threats" than any of the examples below are *actually* threatening violence. Read on.
I would!
-- Rep. Mike Capuano, Democrat, my home state of Massachusetts. Remarking on the collective bargaining legislation in Wisconsin: "It's more than just sending an email that gets you going. Every once in a while, you gotta get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."
-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Speaking to folks at a fundraiser: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
-- Pres. Barack Obama, Democrat. Talking about Republican prospects in the 2010 midterm elections"They are fired up. They are mobilized. They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate. If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."
-- Liberal talk show hosts like Beck are fewer & harder to find, but looking over various comments made by Randi Rhodes, Charles Bouley, Mike Malloy, and others... there are examples of violent rhetoric being used.
-- Famous recent example would be where a supporter of Pres. Obama's health care plan bit off part of a conservative protester's finger in an apparent fit of rage over their disagreement.
-- You could also check out the video embedded in this next link: in which a MoveOn supporter allegedly "chokes" a conservative protester. I'm inclined to believe there's not a lot of "choking" going on, but certainly there's still no need for him to be putting his hands around the other man's neck at a political protest, is there?
Look, it's easy to characterize violent rhetoric from liberals as "far, far left" activity, that's way out of the mainstream - nobody wants to believe that "their team" could be capable of the sorts of things that "those people" do, and so it's a natural reaction that you'd want to distance yourself from it. Much like conservatives will distance themselves from anybody who is *actually* preaching violence against liberals, and agree with you that it's the "whacko right nutjobs" who are talking like that.
The fact of the matter is that it's not just the whacko fringes using the rhetoric, on EITHER side. It's absolutely appropriate to be as disgusted with it from Republicans as it is to be disgusted with it from Democrats. Both of them should know how to behave better. But if you're really going to say that you don't mind if "your team" uses that kind of rhetoric, but you're going to object whenever the "other team" does, then you're just a hypocrite.
The question is whether or not it's a threat or incitement to violence, not whether or not somebody has already pulled the trigger as a result. And in all your name-calling, I notice you couldn't answer the question of how bullets get into someone's head except through violent means. Try again, pottymouth.
Since you seem to have reading comprehension issues, nowhere in there did I defend Sarah Palin's choice of ad campaign, or even her as a politician or a person. I'm simply pointing out a tremendous double standard - her campaign ad had tenuous-at-best relevance to Mr. Loughner's actions, but she was castigated for using "violent imagery" as if she were the sole - or even a proximal - cause of the incident.
And yet we have someone threatening to "put his bullets" in someone's head, and people are struggling to come up with a way to explain how it's not *really* a threat, and didn't *actually* threaten harm. The double standard is simply breathtaking, and your furiously ham-fisted and vulgar response simply underscores the point: rather than acknowledge that this man made a real threat by any reasonable standard of judgement, you'll simply call me a "repulsive cunt" and report in for your Anti-Tea Party Rant profile badge over on DKos.
Oh come the fuck on. Pray tell, what's the mechanism by which someone's bullets would get inside someone else's head, if not through the action of someone pulling a trigger? Is he going to surgically implant them in a willing patient, and has Mr. Cantor already signalled his & his family's willingness to have bullets surgically implanted in their heads in a painless & harmless medical procedure performed by (or financed by) Mr. LeBoon?
Sarah Palin's campaign puts together a poster with a fairly standard "target" symbol that happens to be a gun sight, and she's a bloodthirsty villain who advocates violence, but a guy records himself saying that "my bullets [...] will be placed in your heads," is not threatening, or encouraging, violence against an elected official?
I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to excuse this behavior - it's inappropriate on every level, regardless of the man's political affiliation. He deserves the full attention of law enforcement, and he's receiving exactly that now. Take his article and s/Cantor/Pelosi/g and tell me you wouldn't be howling for Rush Limbaugh's blood right now, in addition to advocating that the man making the threat, and at least 5-10% of the rest of conservatives (who "obviously" think the same way as this guy, on account of knowing how to use a gun), should be locked up?
Actually he makes a very good point. 18 Wisconsin congressmen reported death threats after the collective bargaining bill was passed there recently. Yet, you actually do have to go looking to find anything about it on most nationwide news sites. That link above is from a daily newspaper in a small town in central Wisconsin. I'm surprised I wasn't able to at easily find a wire service story about the death threats, given the hysterical nature of the rest of the coverage of the issue.
considering that CNN did report that death threats have led to at least one set of charges, it's hard to imagine that Fox News was just making shit up about the threats, as you're trying to suggest.
And if Dan Rather got on the news and said, "My Congressman Eric Cantor [...] you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads," it wouldn't be a free speech issue either. It's a pretty direct threat: "my bullets will be placed in your heads." How do bullets usually get inside of someone's body again?
No, most likely the majority of mankind won't be able to us it directly because they haven't the time, the inclination, or the skills to do so, even if every scrap of source code ever written was freely available under GPLv3-or-later copyrights.
Pssh. "being a scientist" is clearly about having an advanced degree, securing grant funding, and publishing your results in the journal of the american obscure science academy.
Every scientist who has ever existed on earth has been a lab-coated, grant-securing, well-published geek. Didn't you get the memo?
But she was raised in Jersey.
You can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take Jersey out of the girl.
You'd think that a bunch of self-proclaimed science and tech geeks would at least be self-consistent in their beliefs, but you're right.
It's odd how the government is "a police state" that's overrun with corporate greed and cronyism, hell-bent on subjugating the unfortunate citizens of the third world in a relentless quest for "moar oylz!" on the one hand, and on the other hand, anybody who would argue against a national ID card is a right-wing libertarian nutter who must be the type to watch Glenn Beck and live on a separatist homestead in Montana.
Because the government that was a horrible police state? That was Dubya's, not the CURRENT government - they're transparent, not ruled by "core-pirate greed", not wasteful, and totally respectful of the territorial rights of sovereign nations. And we all know that the Pax Obama will last forever and ever, world without end, amen.
Oh man, I totally hate it when that happens. I was just talking to Santa Claus about that the other day:
"So I'm standing there, dude, and our hot nude coworker - you know the one, sits next to the Easter Bunny, across from the Tooth Fairy? Yeah, that's the one. So she comes strutting by, with that POW POW, you know what I mean, right? And wouldn't you know it - I popped a raging boner right there, couldn't even help it. Fucking Amazon warriors, man... I love that they're so into IT."
We high-fived, and then we just laughed and laughed.
Later on, the fucking leprechauns from accounting and the chupacabra from security (you know Leonard, right? That greasy little pointy-fanged fuck), stole the goddamned screws out of my desk as a prank - third time this month, I'm getting so tired of this frat-house bullshit. I was going to report it to management, but Count Chocula and Cap'n Crunch were at an off-site, or harvesting Crunchberries or some shit, so I just said fuck it and went to have beers with Peter Pan. We totally messed with some hotties at the bar, too - they fell for that "Did you wanna see Tinkerbell?" gag he does, you know the one.
Depends - if the fabric is thick, or there's multiple layers, it'll take time for the liquid to soak through (time to cool), plus some of the heat will be transferred to the fabric, rather than your skin. However, if it's very hot liquid, the fabric might stay hot, and keep the hot liquid against the skin for longer, which could exacerbate a burn.
On the whole, I'd expect that getting splashed with hot coffee would hurt more on bare skin than it would soaking through a pair of jeans and underwear.
Honest question - if you actually do have to carry something around to sit on, why not just... wear boxers? No need to "carry something around" to sit on, and you're still *mostly* al fresco.
I wash my hands numerous times through the day, I don't crap on my hands or fling my turds at other people, I don't eat at my desk, and nobody else uses my keyboard.
So yes... yes, my keyboard is more sanitary than a fabric meeting room chair's seat that has had a bunch of hairy, sweaty asses all over it all day, week in and week out, for months.
I've been in the men's room and unfortunately overheard some of the more... explosive... performances put on by coworkers - I'm sure you can imagine. I don't want to sit in ANY chair they've sat in with no clothes on, unless I'm in a level 4 biosafety suit.
Since when is 1.35 million "a lot" of money for a development project, anyway? How big a staff does 1.35 million fund over six months? I'm guessing that'd cover 10-15 people making 75-100k/yr (factoring in benefits and the like) for a 6 month project, and that's if all of that money was strictly staffing costs, and didn't include service contracts for things like the move to a "cloud" hosting provider?
It doesn't seem that inordinately expensive to me, as development projects go.
My only real complaint so far would be that the fonts they're using look kind of ugly (weird jaggedy aliasing artifacts) in every browser I've looked at it in except IE.
Yes, I know that you believe that it's nothing but garbage.
Yes, I know that you believe it's all marketing.
You still have not answered the fucking question: if "marketing" makes garbage a best-seller, why isn't it doing even BETTER things for all the competitors, who you claim are producing superior devices with far better finish, functionality, and software? Marketing is the execution of a set of practices - it's not some magic pixie dust that some companies have and others don't. So why aren't the better products with just-as-good marketing selling better than the garbage?
I'll help you out and provide the answer for you: It's NOT "all marketing". Apple's devices are largely commodity components, (so nothing special there, but stopping the analysis at that point is akin to suggesting I could make a meal just as tasty & appealing as a professional chef if we both had the exact same ingredients to start with). Apple's products, however, run a fairly tightly integrated set of software that is put through fairly extensive rounds of polish and "fit and finish" testing, and wrapped up in a nice looking / well-designed package. That right there pretty much guarantees the device will be "pretty good" - it's got good hardware, good software, and it's wrapped up in an attractive package. But THEN, apple sits down and begin the marketing by telling the average user, "look what you can do with this device." They show off the function of the device, not the *specs* of the device. Go watch any iPad ad - there's precious little mention of gigahertz and gigabits and technical specs, they tell you (and show you) what it can do for you, first, last, and always.
Compare with competitors: Largely commodity components (again, nothing special there), but running a rough conglomeration of software that is put through a "good enough to ship" set of quality checks, and wrapped up in packaging that is largely, and obviously, designed to keep the price down: cheap-looking and cheap feeling black plastic with painted-on chrome trim and poorly fitted casing is the overwhelming design aesthetic for most of these devices. Then, rather than sit down and show you all the cool shit you can do with the device, they drone on about MhZ, and GBs, and USB ports, and never get around to telling you what it's *for*. And to top it all off, you're told "Well, we know we told you you could use Flash, but we won't ACTUALLY ship flash for another 6 months, so you can't watch flash on this device... yet. And the components and software will *totally* get better over time, we promise. And you can actually write your own software if you want, because it's OPEN. Oh yeah, and since Google won't let us use the Android Market, you pretty much have to write your own software if you want anything custom-built for this device."
Let's look at a Galaxy Tab ad: "It's time for an optimized email environment. Augmented reality and navigation services with a large display. A full web-browsing experience. E-reading solutions wherever and whenever you go. And a complete communications solution. Perfect - in itself. More possibilities on the go!" This, over a cheesy "hip" song, which is obviously mostly artificial, showing you this laundry list of "features" that are mostly alien sounding - who talks like this? "I want an optimized email environment, please." "Could I have an augmented reality device with navigation services?" It's jargony, it's stilted, and it doesn't MEAN anything to anybody who's not a geek and already *well aware* of what a Galaxy Tab is.
Now let's look at the latest iPad ad: "This is what we believe: technology alone is not enough. Faster, thinner, lighter - those are all good things. But when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful - even magical. That's when you leap forward. That's when you end up with something... like this." This, over an
Well, with an eloquent argument like that, how can we help but declare you the winner?
Care to point out some reasonable alternatives - with similar specs - that are more than a hundred or so dollars away from an equivalent Macbook? I'll wait.
I guess my math teacher learned the blue collar version of that: "stand up, speak up, and shut up."
Not mine, but it seems to be the prevailing slashdot "wisdom". I was pointing out that your comment, about people having memories, and companies having reputations, goes a long way towards explaining why Apple does so well: people remember that the Apple products have tended to be pretty well-made and durable, while the competitors have tended to be more buggy and problematic.
But people love to imply that the only reason Apple does well is that there are some sort of brainless legion of morons out there who mindlessly buy whatever Apple puts on sale without regard for its quality, when there are so many better, more deserving products available You can't have spent any time on Slashdot, and not have noticed that attitude.