But if the Future was now a few years ago, then the Future was Web 2.0 which is now old, does this mean the new Future of XHTML is old? Does that mean the Future itself is old? That would mean... wait... I'm confused... This is just like Spaceballs!
So, uh, what about all the Clinton supporters that aren't upset about him repeatedly letting Osama go, even when the Pakistanis were offering him on a silver platter, or when he lied under oath, or when he stole from and vandalised the White House, or a million other things? Most Presidents have broken some law or the Constitution at some time or another (FDR anyone?) so why are people so uniquely willing to believe that Bush is special in this way? The assumption for ALL POLITICIANS and ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS should be that THEY ARE UP TO NO GOOD, even though _most_ probably aren't any worse than than could be expected. I don't think that most of the governmental actions that most people are worried about are real, and that the things they should be concerned about are being larely ignored, and that useless propaganda distracts from the real issues. Don't think that one side is worse just because the other has better hate slogans - your side probably sucks as bad. For the record, I would've voted for Cthulhu in the last election.
Ok. I agree with your first point - most music is shit. So, let's say, theoretically, I hear about a band, or a song by them on the radio or TV, and that's all the info I have to go on. Now, given the assumption that 90% of modern music is formulated garbage, do I go to Best Buy, buy a CD, learn that only one track is semi-decent, and then feel good about spending my $15? Fuck no. Here's a solution: I download things I think I might like, say, 100 tracks. Now, 90% is garbage and a waste of hard disk space. DELETE! Okay, so now I have ten tracks that are good (or at least to my liking), probably from 2 or 3 bands. Get a little more of each (10 songs each maybe), then see if the quality is consistent. I'm lucky today, so 2 bands are. Now, I go out and buy their CDs with no apprehension and experience no buyer's remorse. Or, since most manufactured music is crap, maybe I discover an independant or foreign band (there's a German, a Swedish, and a Norwegian [take a wild guess as to the kind of music I like] band that are among my favorite 10 that I have NEVER heard in the USA). So now I have $30 well spent, instead of $15 I regret. They get more profit, and get more of what I want. Am I a dick?
Just try to remember that all generalizations are dangerous, including this one.
The real question is whether or not this will actually lead to any improvements in performance, heat production, and energy efficiency. It is still too early to tell, but I applaud Intel even though I believe AMD's current line surpasses Intel's in most ways. This is what a free market brings, competetive innovation that allows a consumer to get good, new technology (a more even production distribution would be nice). This is why I like the graphics card market - sure, the insane competition between ATI and NVidia mean I have to buy a new card every few years to keep up, but we will have the Matrix in no time. It's a small price to pay in the long run.
If Google, IBM, MS, AMD, Intel, and all other major US tech companies boycotted China, yes, eventually the market would be filled by Chinese companies. But that's not the point of boycotting or going on a strike - we may all boycott Sony, but I am the only one in my area that even heard about what Sony did. Just because *I* will not likely be able to change Sony's ways doesn't mean *I* am about to start buying their stuff again. Or MS's stuff. Ghandi's strikes took a long time to mean anything, and his long jail stays and malnutrition may have really been hard on him and his followers, but that certainly stopped no one. Google and others may have to take some legal heat and go on a profit strike, but that's the price of "do no evil". As a great man once said: "A threat to Justice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere."
Dude, it is entirely possible to lean libertarian without being a mindless party follower. I'm for smaller and less govt., but how about one step at a time? How about fewer Govt. handouts, less jail time and more fines, or a million better things to do first. Maybe cutting the NSA and CIA budgets, since they fucked up on 9/11 anyway (too much info, too little cooperation, and Clinton passing up Osama on a silver platter)? Cars kill eight times more Americans a year than 9/11, the anthrax attacks, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have combined (42443 deaths in USA 2001, lss then 5,500 in the War on Terror. How about a War on Cars?). I love my libraries and want to keep them, but I would love to see a third of our Government gone. Btw, screw big book companies, they cave to easily to community pressure to remove "offensive" books and don't offer upsetting titles (effectively censoring authors out of fear of offending one whiny customer).
Macrobe - because the Internet needs more Flash and PDFs.
(Macromedia and Adobe, in case you can't tell)
Seriously, I have Adblock, PDFdownload (can choose to view in tab or window, or dl), and NoScript because I hate and find Flash and PDFs useless 95% of the time.
You go into your booth. You take a paper ballot and fill it out. You finish, then run it through the machine. This machine cannot interperet results and cannot communicate with anything. The machine displays each line (image only, a slice of a scanning), one at a time, with a next and a back button to allow you to take your time. At the end it shows the whole form and your choices. Then it asks you if it is correct. If you say no, it shreds it, keeps it internally, and tells you to try again. Then, when it is correct, you drop the form in a box. The boxes are collected at the end of the day, and are taken to and area where they are fed into a machine that scans it in the exact same way, only this machine has OSS that can interperet it (probably needs to be reset for each form each election, like a Scantron grading scanner). There is no reciept, to prevent anyone from learning your vote (to punish or reward people for voting one way). Then, the machine totals all results for all entries, which are then printed out into a tamper evident container, which is then taken to the central counting machine, where all boxes are broken and the area totals are placed in the central counting machine, which then prints the results for the whole thing. The area totals are also checked by hand. This allows for manual checking by the voter and the counters, and seems to me to be more difficult to compromise. Any thoughts?
I like where this is going. While I do think the Nokia 770 concept is really cool, rather than building stripped-down laptop/cellphone/pda hybrid thingys, why not focus on wireless dumb terminals that access larger servers to do their computing and storage? Picture this: a folding device (like a Nintendo DS or like two PSPs on a hinge) with one screen as a display, and one as a reconfigurable control pad (like the DS touchscreen maybe?) or maybe a qwerty thumbboard (dunno how good a touchscreen setting of that'll be without a stylus), with an earpiece/mic cable thing (so NOT used like a N-Gayge); then a small amount of RAM and tiny processor (about as much or a little more than a Nokia 770, a PSP or DS amount maybe?) and a cell phone/bluetooth/802.11b/g/n communications array. Then all data storage, programs, and real computing power could be accessed wirelessly (maybe Remote Access your home computer?). This would be a lot cheaper, smaller, and (depending on your computer and connectivity) more powerful. USB could allow for connecting a hard drive, external DVD player, battery, or other device. I'd buy one. Of course, wireless speeds are probably still too slow for this, but with the advent of fiber lines, cable, and bpl, along with 802.11n, this could own. I like where this is going. While I do think the Nokia 770 concept is really cool, rather than building stripped-down laptop/cellphone/pda hybrid thingys, why not focus on wireless dumb terminals that access larger servers to do their computing and storage? Picture this: a folding device (like a Nintendo DS or like two PSPs on a hinge) with one screen as a display, and one as a reconfigurable control pad (like the DS touchscreen maybe?) or maybe a qwerty thumbboard (dunno how good a touchscreen setting of that'll be without a stylus), with an earpiece/mic cable thing (so NOT used like a N-Gayge); then a small amount of RAM and tiny processor (about as much or a little more than a Nokia 770, a PSP or DS amount maybe?) and a cell phone/bluetooth/802.11b/g communications array. Then all data storage, programs, and real computing power could be accessed wirelessly (maybe Remote Access your home computer?). This would be a lot cheaper, smaller, and (depending on your computer and connectivity) more powerful. USB could allow for connecting a hard drive, external DVD player, battery, or other device. I'd buy one.
In response to your sig, no it isn't. Weed smoking is prevalent throughout all levels of my school (including the preps, yes, alot of them), and I live in a nice area and go to a nationally well-ranked school. I don't know about anything more serious, but I'm sure it's there. And the funny thing is no one acts like it's a problem!
I was on a program pirating spree recently, and had maybe two dozen progs to try before I bought any. One program was labled IE7 beta. But lo and behold, I open up the IE7 beta and Norton comes screaming VIRUS! VIRUS! VIRUS! and I just burst out laughing - of course a M$ product is a virus (technically though, Windows is a bug, according to one joke). Now, I was pretty sure that several of these.rar files were viri, but it was a school pc so I didn't think about it much. I also noticed after this that most of these file were 851.7KB exactly, too small for most proggys and a clear indicator of a virus, so I wiped them all. But man oh man my webmastering class thought it was funny.
You have an internet connection apparently, so... how can you not have... what... I don't... Where the HELL _do_ you live? As for Amerocentrism, all periods in history were (primary superpower)centric. Rome was Rome-centric, the British Empire was Britcentric, the Cold War era was Soviet, China, American, and Western Europe-centric. Today, the US, the EU, China, Japan, and the Middle Eastern nations are the most important. Don't feel bad if your country isn't one of the movers and shakers - remeber the Chinese curse about living in interesting times (I'm American btw, and I sometimes wish we were more like the Swiss, only with nukes instead of an army and the Alps).
I feel kinda the same as most other people here. I love games, and I know a ton of people that love WoW, so sometimes I feel like playing it, but I am also glad that I don't. While I like the concept of MMORPGs, I feel that the whole leveling thing is best left to a single-player rpg, like the soon-to-be-realeased PS2 game Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, and the rerelease of the original on the PSP. In SP leveling rpgs, your incentive is only to beat the game (and in good rpgs this means you don't have to spend hours running around for random battles). Multiplayer RPGs should be more focused on the roleplayng and the economy, or simulated socioeconomic interaction. Face of Mankind (fomportal.com) is in open beta and looks like it's trying this idea, I might look into EVE Online, and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is going for an interesting fps/rpg combo as well (no leveling or stats but a trade economy and lots of customization and interaction beyond shooting). For someone who wants a more realistic (i.e. wounding, aiming, etc.) fps, look for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth on Xbox (and hopefully PC someday...). I usually only buy about the four of five of the best or better games a year, so that I can play a good amount, without playing all the time or never finishing anything, but right now MMOs are just not what I am looking for. I'll wait till the genre matures.
"On the Internet, no one can hear you being subtle" - Linus Torvalds (I think it goes like that). Dude. Sarcasm. Sorry if it wasn't too clear, but seriously. Herbal remedies? Come on, I was making fun of the prevalence of them and society's continual belief that science is just another form of "magic" on equal terms with snake oil. I think herbal remedies should be given a scientific trial on the off chance one is useful, but I wouldn't go and become a breatharian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breatharian anytime soon. Come on, this is/., what the hell would some newage (rhymes with sewage) freak be doing here? Is my sig not geeky enough?
Pssh. Please. Was she cheating with a sharp object or something? Don't worry, a little duct tape is all you need to patch that "relationship" back together. Or did the cheating start after you joined/.?
I'm not gonna risk trusting medical advances that will likely be overtaken by herbal remedies and holistic healing to bring me back from the dead, or trusting the law not to change to count corpsicles as dead people. Why not just do http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/06/27/19232 59.shtml?tid=191&tid=14 when the medical bills start pileing up? They'll probably at least have a cancer killer and cybernetic replacements for everything short of the prefrontal lobe alot sooner than a reanimator. Sure, the inflated money might not pay all of your medical bills, but it's a better shot than we have now. And once you are a brain in a mech your living expenses will be a little lower (cause you'll only need a little nutrient paste to feed your brain and some nuclear fuel rods!). I can't wait, sign me up now. I hate my pathetic malnourished pale skinny short weak and fragile body - I wanna look like the mecha in the Armored Core games. That'll kick ass.
/. owes every site we've ever ruined (except fopr the few that deserved it), our mothers for letting us stay in the basement, all the animals used to test vaseline and hand lotion, Natalie Portman, the USA, all of Europe, the Amish, Linux developers, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Great Cthulhu, and the RIAA/MPAA great, big, apologies. Who am I forgetting?
Nononono, the only corporations that were making money off of oil in Iraq were Russian, German, and French. US oil took a big hit after the start of Iraqi Freedom. And recently, when they finally start making a nice profit, the Govt. decides to tax it away (hence more price raising). Why are the same people that oppose drilling in Alaska the ones saying that we are in Iraq for oil? If we are in Iraq for oil (which isn't true), and we can't get it in Alaska, and we can't build nuclear reactors, and you won't drive anything but an SUV, where the FUCK are we supposed to be getting this energy? You see, oil is a scarce resource (as in the economic term scarce) and the most efficient way to ration out something not required for survival (like food, water, medical supplies, etc.) is utilizing the law of supply and demand. This of course depends on the absence of monopolies. Don't you think it's amazing that oil, which has to be found, drilled for, pumped out of the ground, shipped halfway across the world, refined in a multimillion dollar refinery, and then transported to a gas starion is cheaper than water, something we need to live and much more plentiful than gas? The only real way to get anyone to drive more efficient cars and save electricity is by adjusting the price of it to reflect the supply. We've been spoiled by dollar-gallon gas (in the US), which is an artificial situation created by governments, which is why we are in an energy crisis now. But yes, our corporations have too much leeway, as does our government, as does our media, as do religious organizations, as do idiots.
Slashdot Mirror
But if the Future was now a few years ago, then the Future was Web 2.0 which is now old, does this mean the new Future of XHTML is old? Does that mean the Future itself is old? That would mean... wait... I'm confused... This is just like Spaceballs!
So, uh, what about all the Clinton supporters that aren't upset about him repeatedly letting Osama go, even when the Pakistanis were offering him on a silver platter, or when he lied under oath, or when he stole from and vandalised the White House, or a million other things? Most Presidents have broken some law or the Constitution at some time or another (FDR anyone?) so why are people so uniquely willing to believe that Bush is special in this way? The assumption for ALL POLITICIANS and ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS should be that THEY ARE UP TO NO GOOD, even though _most_ probably aren't any worse than than could be expected. I don't think that most of the governmental actions that most people are worried about are real, and that the things they should be concerned about are being larely ignored, and that useless propaganda distracts from the real issues. Don't think that one side is worse just because the other has better hate slogans - your side probably sucks as bad. For the record, I would've voted for Cthulhu in the last election.
Ok. I agree with your first point - most music is shit. So, let's say, theoretically, I hear about a band, or a song by them on the radio or TV, and that's all the info I have to go on. Now, given the assumption that 90% of modern music is formulated garbage, do I go to Best Buy, buy a CD, learn that only one track is semi-decent, and then feel good about spending my $15? Fuck no. Here's a solution: I download things I think I might like, say, 100 tracks. Now, 90% is garbage and a waste of hard disk space. DELETE! Okay, so now I have ten tracks that are good (or at least to my liking), probably from 2 or 3 bands. Get a little more of each (10 songs each maybe), then see if the quality is consistent. I'm lucky today, so 2 bands are. Now, I go out and buy their CDs with no apprehension and experience no buyer's remorse. Or, since most manufactured music is crap, maybe I discover an independant or foreign band (there's a German, a Swedish, and a Norwegian [take a wild guess as to the kind of music I like] band that are among my favorite 10 that I have NEVER heard in the USA). So now I have $30 well spent, instead of $15 I regret. They get more profit, and get more of what I want. Am I a dick?
Just try to remember that all generalizations are dangerous, including this one.
http://70.86.201.113/imageserv2/temporary/PBF018AD TheFirstSnowflakeofWinter.html
The real question is whether or not this will actually lead to any improvements in performance, heat production, and energy efficiency. It is still too early to tell, but I applaud Intel even though I believe AMD's current line surpasses Intel's in most ways. This is what a free market brings, competetive innovation that allows a consumer to get good, new technology (a more even production distribution would be nice). This is why I like the graphics card market - sure, the insane competition between ATI and NVidia mean I have to buy a new card every few years to keep up, but we will have the Matrix in no time. It's a small price to pay in the long run.
If Google, IBM, MS, AMD, Intel, and all other major US tech companies boycotted China, yes, eventually the market would be filled by Chinese companies. But that's not the point of boycotting or going on a strike - we may all boycott Sony, but I am the only one in my area that even heard about what Sony did. Just because *I* will not likely be able to change Sony's ways doesn't mean *I* am about to start buying their stuff again. Or MS's stuff. Ghandi's strikes took a long time to mean anything, and his long jail stays and malnutrition may have really been hard on him and his followers, but that certainly stopped no one. Google and others may have to take some legal heat and go on a profit strike, but that's the price of "do no evil". As a great man once said: "A threat to Justice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere."
Dude, it is entirely possible to lean libertarian without being a mindless party follower. I'm for smaller and less govt., but how about one step at a time? How about fewer Govt. handouts, less jail time and more fines, or a million better things to do first. Maybe cutting the NSA and CIA budgets, since they fucked up on 9/11 anyway (too much info, too little cooperation, and Clinton passing up Osama on a silver platter)? Cars kill eight times more Americans a year than 9/11, the anthrax attacks, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have combined (42443 deaths in USA 2001, lss then 5,500 in the War on Terror. How about a War on Cars?). I love my libraries and want to keep them, but I would love to see a third of our Government gone. Btw, screw big book companies, they cave to easily to community pressure to remove "offensive" books and don't offer upsetting titles (effectively censoring authors out of fear of offending one whiny customer).
less government would mean "don't take mine and don't take his, leave us alone" for _most_ things.
Macrobe - because the Internet needs more Flash and PDFs.
(Macromedia and Adobe, in case you can't tell)
Seriously, I have Adblock, PDFdownload (can choose to view in tab or window, or dl), and NoScript because I hate and find Flash and PDFs useless 95% of the time.
You go into your booth. You take a paper ballot and fill it out. You finish, then run it through the machine. This machine cannot interperet results and cannot communicate with anything. The machine displays each line (image only, a slice of a scanning), one at a time, with a next and a back button to allow you to take your time. At the end it shows the whole form and your choices. Then it asks you if it is correct. If you say no, it shreds it, keeps it internally, and tells you to try again. Then, when it is correct, you drop the form in a box. The boxes are collected at the end of the day, and are taken to and area where they are fed into a machine that scans it in the exact same way, only this machine has OSS that can interperet it (probably needs to be reset for each form each election, like a Scantron grading scanner). There is no reciept, to prevent anyone from learning your vote (to punish or reward people for voting one way). Then, the machine totals all results for all entries, which are then printed out into a tamper evident container, which is then taken to the central counting machine, where all boxes are broken and the area totals are placed in the central counting machine, which then prints the results for the whole thing. The area totals are also checked by hand. This allows for manual checking by the voter and the counters, and seems to me to be more difficult to compromise. Any thoughts?
I like where this is going. While I do think the Nokia 770 concept is really cool, rather than building stripped-down laptop/cellphone/pda hybrid thingys, why not focus on wireless dumb terminals that access larger servers to do their computing and storage? Picture this: a folding device (like a Nintendo DS or like two PSPs on a hinge) with one screen as a display, and one as a reconfigurable control pad (like the DS touchscreen maybe?) or maybe a qwerty thumbboard (dunno how good a touchscreen setting of that'll be without a stylus), with an earpiece/mic cable thing (so NOT used like a N-Gayge); then a small amount of RAM and tiny processor (about as much or a little more than a Nokia 770, a PSP or DS amount maybe?) and a cell phone/bluetooth/802.11b/g/n communications array. Then all data storage, programs, and real computing power could be accessed wirelessly (maybe Remote Access your home computer?). This would be a lot cheaper, smaller, and (depending on your computer and connectivity) more powerful. USB could allow for connecting a hard drive, external DVD player, battery, or other device. I'd buy one. Of course, wireless speeds are probably still too slow for this, but with the advent of fiber lines, cable, and bpl, along with 802.11n, this could own. I like where this is going. While I do think the Nokia 770 concept is really cool, rather than building stripped-down laptop/cellphone/pda hybrid thingys, why not focus on wireless dumb terminals that access larger servers to do their computing and storage? Picture this: a folding device (like a Nintendo DS or like two PSPs on a hinge) with one screen as a display, and one as a reconfigurable control pad (like the DS touchscreen maybe?) or maybe a qwerty thumbboard (dunno how good a touchscreen setting of that'll be without a stylus), with an earpiece/mic cable thing (so NOT used like a N-Gayge); then a small amount of RAM and tiny processor (about as much or a little more than a Nokia 770, a PSP or DS amount maybe?) and a cell phone/bluetooth/802.11b/g communications array. Then all data storage, programs, and real computing power could be accessed wirelessly (maybe Remote Access your home computer?). This would be a lot cheaper, smaller, and (depending on your computer and connectivity) more powerful. USB could allow for connecting a hard drive, external DVD player, battery, or other device. I'd buy one.
In response to your sig, no it isn't. Weed smoking is prevalent throughout all levels of my school (including the preps, yes, alot of them), and I live in a nice area and go to a nationally well-ranked school. I don't know about anything more serious, but I'm sure it's there. And the funny thing is no one acts like it's a problem!
I was on a program pirating spree recently, and had maybe two dozen progs to try before I bought any. One program was labled IE7 beta. But lo and behold, I open up the IE7 beta and Norton comes screaming VIRUS! VIRUS! VIRUS! and I just burst out laughing - of course a M$ product is a virus (technically though, Windows is a bug, according to one joke). Now, I was pretty sure that several of these .rar files were viri, but it was a school pc so I didn't think about it much. I also noticed after this that most of these file were 851.7KB exactly, too small for most proggys and a clear indicator of a virus, so I wiped them all. But man oh man my webmastering class thought it was funny.
See SCO for further details.
You have an internet connection apparently, so... how can you not have... what... I don't... Where the HELL _do_ you live? As for Amerocentrism, all periods in history were (primary superpower)centric. Rome was Rome-centric, the British Empire was Britcentric, the Cold War era was Soviet, China, American, and Western Europe-centric. Today, the US, the EU, China, Japan, and the Middle Eastern nations are the most important. Don't feel bad if your country isn't one of the movers and shakers - remeber the Chinese curse about living in interesting times (I'm American btw, and I sometimes wish we were more like the Swiss, only with nukes instead of an army and the Alps).
I feel kinda the same as most other people here. I love games, and I know a ton of people that love WoW, so sometimes I feel like playing it, but I am also glad that I don't. While I like the concept of MMORPGs, I feel that the whole leveling thing is best left to a single-player rpg, like the soon-to-be-realeased PS2 game Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, and the rerelease of the original on the PSP. In SP leveling rpgs, your incentive is only to beat the game (and in good rpgs this means you don't have to spend hours running around for random battles). Multiplayer RPGs should be more focused on the roleplayng and the economy, or simulated socioeconomic interaction. Face of Mankind (fomportal.com) is in open beta and looks like it's trying this idea, I might look into EVE Online, and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is going for an interesting fps/rpg combo as well (no leveling or stats but a trade economy and lots of customization and interaction beyond shooting). For someone who wants a more realistic (i.e. wounding, aiming, etc.) fps, look for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth on Xbox (and hopefully PC someday...). I usually only buy about the four of five of the best or better games a year, so that I can play a good amount, without playing all the time or never finishing anything, but right now MMOs are just not what I am looking for. I'll wait till the genre matures.
"On the Internet, no one can hear you being subtle" - Linus Torvalds (I think it goes like that). Dude. Sarcasm. Sorry if it wasn't too clear, but seriously. Herbal remedies? Come on, I was making fun of the prevalence of them and society's continual belief that science is just another form of "magic" on equal terms with snake oil. I think herbal remedies should be given a scientific trial on the off chance one is useful, but I wouldn't go and become a breatharian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breatharian anytime soon. Come on, this is /., what the hell would some newage (rhymes with sewage) freak be doing here? Is my sig not geeky enough?
Pssh. Please. Was she cheating with a sharp object or something? Don't worry, a little duct tape is all you need to patch that "relationship" back together. Or did the cheating start after you joined /.?
That is unbelievably cool. Cyborgs own, and it'll be neat to see what kinda stuff will be around when the current generation gets old.
I'm not gonna risk trusting medical advances that will likely be overtaken by herbal remedies and holistic healing to bring me back from the dead, or trusting the law not to change to count corpsicles as dead people. Why not just do http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/06/27/19232 59.shtml?tid=191&tid=14 when the medical bills start pileing up? They'll probably at least have a cancer killer and cybernetic replacements for everything short of the prefrontal lobe alot sooner than a reanimator. Sure, the inflated money might not pay all of your medical bills, but it's a better shot than we have now. And once you are a brain in a mech your living expenses will be a little lower (cause you'll only need a little nutrient paste to feed your brain and some nuclear fuel rods!). I can't wait, sign me up now. I hate my pathetic malnourished pale skinny short weak and fragile body - I wanna look like the mecha in the Armored Core games. That'll kick ass.
Or pr0no.
/. owes every site we've ever ruined (except fopr the few that deserved it), our mothers for letting us stay in the basement, all the animals used to test vaseline and hand lotion, Natalie Portman, the USA, all of Europe, the Amish, Linux developers, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Great Cthulhu, and the RIAA/MPAA great, big, apologies. Who am I forgetting?
Nononono, the only corporations that were making money off of oil in Iraq were Russian, German, and French. US oil took a big hit after the start of Iraqi Freedom. And recently, when they finally start making a nice profit, the Govt. decides to tax it away (hence more price raising). Why are the same people that oppose drilling in Alaska the ones saying that we are in Iraq for oil? If we are in Iraq for oil (which isn't true), and we can't get it in Alaska, and we can't build nuclear reactors, and you won't drive anything but an SUV, where the FUCK are we supposed to be getting this energy? You see, oil is a scarce resource (as in the economic term scarce) and the most efficient way to ration out something not required for survival (like food, water, medical supplies, etc.) is utilizing the law of supply and demand. This of course depends on the absence of monopolies. Don't you think it's amazing that oil, which has to be found, drilled for, pumped out of the ground, shipped halfway across the world, refined in a multimillion dollar refinery, and then transported to a gas starion is cheaper than water, something we need to live and much more plentiful than gas? The only real way to get anyone to drive more efficient cars and save electricity is by adjusting the price of it to reflect the supply. We've been spoiled by dollar-gallon gas (in the US), which is an artificial situation created by governments, which is why we are in an energy crisis now. But yes, our corporations have too much leeway, as does our government, as does our media, as do religious organizations, as do idiots.
Could one President be named who hasn't tried to increase the power of the presidency?
scares me much more than death!