Now why on Earth would China go out of it's way to destabilize the world?
Because they're tired of working themselves to death and getting peanuts for their efforts? Because nationalism isn't just a disease that hippies accuse conservatives of suffering from?
The intent is never to destabilize the world - the intent is to get a better deal for your people.
You also seem to think that South Korea can't fend for itself.
I'm sure they can. I'm also sure that the US presence is the main reason China is at least tugging on the NK reigns a bit. Whether South Korea can defeat North Korea isn't really a question; whether South Korea can beat a Chinese-backed North Korea isn't either.
And if it did go nuclear you can be sure there wouldn't be much left of NK.
Well that's a great comfort. Instead of half a peninsula wiped off the earth, it would be a full peninsula.
Oil prices? Let them go. It will only be a good thing in the end.
I, unfortunately, do not have your gift for seeing the future. All I can do is look at short term trends. I fail to see how short term disaster will lead to long-term benefit, but I won't pretend to be psychic.
The world will not disintegrate if the US decides to not be the world police. Too many people are making too much money. And those interests want a world where they can continue to do so.
That assessment hinges on the assumption that most people are intelligent and rational. Can you see why I might be a tad concerned?
So bring a picture of whatever YOU like to fuck when you go into space. There should be more fucking (straight,gay,whatever) and less concern over what someone else faps to,
Uh, have you actually seen the size of those apollo modules? You'd be lucky if you managed to jerk off without elbowing your buddy in the face.
Nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of good luck.
Since luck has no physical property or defined quantity, that phrase is largely meaningless. It would be equally accurate to say that nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of ether.
The one thing we do know is that a large percentage of those who "make it big" through no effort of their own end up making it small again, with an equal amount of effort. Keeping your money is just as hard as making it, if not more so.
Since the US seems to have so many problems at home, why don't you try this for a generation - recall all your troops, close fucking Guantanamo Bay ( you are in violation of the "agreement" that was forced upon Cuba way back), stop meddling in other countries politics and try to find ways to teach geography to your citizens that don't involve bombings and troop deployments.
Sounds good. Boot out the UN, stop giving out foreign aid, don't bother trying to control the price of oil. Ignore the North Koreans and hang the South out to dry. Let China kick the shit out of anyone they don't like. Then kick back, crack a beer, and watch the world disintegrate. I'm with ya. Being Canadian, I'll probably get to watch most of the ICBM's go by. Should be a kickass light-show, eh?
At 15 seconds per captcha, you'd have to work for 4 hours straight with no breaks for that one dollar. Although I was thinking they'd probably get 25 cents, which would put them at 16 hours for a dollar.
Either way, that really frames the whole disparity-of-income/living-standards thing in a way that speaks to me. It's one thing to read that the average person in India makes less than $1,000 a year. It's quite another to realize that some poor bastard is sitting at a computer for a whole day, doing nothing but solving captchas, and walking away with a buck or two. I can't imagine doing that kind of work in the first place - given the choice between that and breaking rocks in a quarry, I'd go with the latter. Get some sunshine at least. If you offered me $100 an hour, I'd think about solving captchas for you - no way I'd go near 'em for anything less.
1000 captchas solved by humans for $2? WTF? Who do they have working on these things? Even that Indian tech-support drone I talked to yesterday would fetch more money than that...
I will try not to in future. But it is frightening to hear such things in mainstream Environmentalist discourse.
I don't usually agree with the extreme enviro-nuts, but it's silly to say that this position is "frightening". If me and my neighbour share a water-well, and he insists on dumping lead-paint into it on a daily basis, that's a serious issue for me. I'll first ask him to stop, and try to reason with him, but if he keeps doing it I have no problem at all with beating some sense into him. There's no question that environmental damage CAN be a reason to go to war - it just has to be severe enough to justify it. The question isn't whether we'll go to war to protect our environment - the question is where we draw the line.
Neither of those words mean what you think they mean. "Republic" just means a nation without a monarch. "Democracy" means rule by the people. The majority of first world nations are democratic republics. Nations which retain a monarch - like the UK and Canada - aren't technically republics in name, though they are in practice (the monarch serves as a figurehead, and retains no real power over the affairs of the state). There is nothing in the definition of "republic" which exclude democracy, and there is nothing in the definition of "democracy" which exclude republics.
The grossest thing about meat in the grocery store is all the chemicals they have to spray the meat down with to kill all the bad stuff and disease picked up from the animal from living in such poor conditions.
Well that's a load of shit. Please, do tell us which horrible horrible "chemicals" are sprayed on these poor diseased carcases, exactly. Maybe you could also link to a peer-reviewed study showing the significantly higher incidence of disease amongst animals raised using different methods. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Got any citations for any of that? Because what I've read about Swedish gun laws is quite a bit different. For one thing, you can legally buy handguns if you're a member of a shooting club. And i think the 10 year sentence is for weapons used in the commission of a crime (ignoring the question of parole rates, and the fact that long sentences generally don't seem to be much of a deterrent). Canada has laws and measures which are somewhat similar, but getting a handgun is pretty damn easy in any major city.
It's actually quite difficult to snipe from a moving ship.
If by "ship" you mean "6 foot inflatable dingy", then yeah, it is. If, on the other hand, by "ship" you mean "cargo-hauler the size of several football fields" then no, it's not.
I doubt that a woman of her "intellectual prowess" has even heard of cosmic irony, let alone composed a song about it. Either way, that's not a "definition of irony", it's a definition of "cosmic irony".
That's perfect. You're listening to a song called "ironic", in which nothing is actually ironic, while responding to an article which misuses the word "ironic".
Like I said, I don't see politicians being murdered at meetings with a pair of kitchen scissors.
I don't see midgets being killed with a gun during a full moon while the tide is low. I do, however, see people being killed with scissors on a fairly regular basis. Google it.
How much does this have to do with things like Netflix now being in Canada?
Probably a lot. My father recently decided that he was tired of paying $100 a month for his Bell Satellite TV, and would rather pay $8 a month for Netflix. I crunched some numbers for him and showed him that he'd have to spend at least an extra $20 per month on his internet connection, and that's assuming that his household goes through only an average of 2 hours of SD TV per day. I'm guessing that was their intent - charge ridiculous amounts for bandwidth in order to keep their customers from abandoning their satellite-based TV offering.
That's exactly right. All the little guys are pissed at bell. Initially, it was because bell started throttling download speeds even on the bulk-bandwidth it sold to other providers if they thought it might be P2P traffic. One of those companies - Acanac - said fuck that shit, and created an SSL gateway to allow their technically-minded customers to get around the throttling. Now Bell seems to have won the right to not only throttle speeds, but also charge extra based on usage. It's retarded. This is exactly the opposite of free-market capitalism - the "alternative companies" have basically become just an extension of the Bell marketing and tech-support departments.
It's funny. I don't see many politicians in public places being killed with knives, meat cleavers or axes and chainsaws.
Right, but it happens every day with guillotines.
Yes they do, and they use them to get from A to B. There are a lot of dangerous things people have access to, but funnily enough they aren't designed completely for the purpose of killing someone.
Ah, that asinine old argument. As if objects give a shit what they're designed to do. Dozens of everyday objects are better murder weapons than a gun, but a gun is meant to kill people, so it's eeeevil!
I'm surrounded by superstitious fuckwads, I swear...
No, my point was that if nearly every person in the US had a guillotine then it would be very very bloody.
Yeah, I don't think so. Every person in the US has a knife. Most have a meat-cleaver. A whole bunch have axes and chainsaws. Hell, pretty much everyone has a 1-or-more-tonne device capable of moving at 100+ miles per hour. But you think the addition of guillotines would be the tipping point? Right. Go on, pull the other one.
Slashdot Mirror
Now why on Earth would China go out of it's way to destabilize the world?
Because they're tired of working themselves to death and getting peanuts for their efforts? Because nationalism isn't just a disease that hippies accuse conservatives of suffering from?
The intent is never to destabilize the world - the intent is to get a better deal for your people.
You also seem to think that South Korea can't fend for itself.
I'm sure they can. I'm also sure that the US presence is the main reason China is at least tugging on the NK reigns a bit. Whether South Korea can defeat North Korea isn't really a question; whether South Korea can beat a Chinese-backed North Korea isn't either.
And if it did go nuclear you can be sure there wouldn't be much left of NK.
Well that's a great comfort. Instead of half a peninsula wiped off the earth, it would be a full peninsula.
Oil prices? Let them go. It will only be a good thing in the end.
I, unfortunately, do not have your gift for seeing the future. All I can do is look at short term trends. I fail to see how short term disaster will lead to long-term benefit, but I won't pretend to be psychic.
The world will not disintegrate if the US decides to not be the world police. Too many people are making too much money. And those interests want a world where they can continue to do so.
That assessment hinges on the assumption that most people are intelligent and rational. Can you see why I might be a tad concerned?
Eh. It's just like the real police - everyone loves to hate them, but they still have 911 is on speed dial.
So bring a picture of whatever YOU like to fuck when you go into space. There should be more fucking (straight,gay,whatever) and less concern over what someone else faps to,
Uh, have you actually seen the size of those apollo modules? You'd be lucky if you managed to jerk off without elbowing your buddy in the face.
No, that was just 1,000,000 geeks all trying to place a bid at the same time.
Nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of good luck.
Since luck has no physical property or defined quantity, that phrase is largely meaningless. It would be equally accurate to say that nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of ether.
The one thing we do know is that a large percentage of those who "make it big" through no effort of their own end up making it small again, with an equal amount of effort. Keeping your money is just as hard as making it, if not more so.
Since the US seems to have so many problems at home, why don't you try this for a generation - recall all your troops, close fucking Guantanamo Bay ( you are in violation of the "agreement" that was forced upon Cuba way back), stop meddling in other countries politics and try to find ways to teach geography to your citizens that don't involve bombings and troop deployments.
Sounds good. Boot out the UN, stop giving out foreign aid, don't bother trying to control the price of oil. Ignore the North Koreans and hang the South out to dry. Let China kick the shit out of anyone they don't like. Then kick back, crack a beer, and watch the world disintegrate. I'm with ya. Being Canadian, I'll probably get to watch most of the ICBM's go by. Should be a kickass light-show, eh?
Yeah, I agree, Saddam should really have asked for their consent before he ass-raped the entire nation.
At 15 seconds per captcha, you'd have to work for 4 hours straight with no breaks for that one dollar. Although I was thinking they'd probably get 25 cents, which would put them at 16 hours for a dollar.
Either way, that really frames the whole disparity-of-income/living-standards thing in a way that speaks to me. It's one thing to read that the average person in India makes less than $1,000 a year. It's quite another to realize that some poor bastard is sitting at a computer for a whole day, doing nothing but solving captchas, and walking away with a buck or two. I can't imagine doing that kind of work in the first place - given the choice between that and breaking rocks in a quarry, I'd go with the latter. Get some sunshine at least. If you offered me $100 an hour, I'd think about solving captchas for you - no way I'd go near 'em for anything less.
1000 captchas solved by humans for $2? WTF? Who do they have working on these things? Even that Indian tech-support drone I talked to yesterday would fetch more money than that ...
I will try not to in future. But it is frightening to hear such things in mainstream Environmentalist discourse.
I don't usually agree with the extreme enviro-nuts, but it's silly to say that this position is "frightening". If me and my neighbour share a water-well, and he insists on dumping lead-paint into it on a daily basis, that's a serious issue for me. I'll first ask him to stop, and try to reason with him, but if he keeps doing it I have no problem at all with beating some sense into him. There's no question that environmental damage CAN be a reason to go to war - it just has to be severe enough to justify it. The question isn't whether we'll go to war to protect our environment - the question is where we draw the line.
Neither of those words mean what you think they mean. "Republic" just means a nation without a monarch. "Democracy" means rule by the people. The majority of first world nations are democratic republics. Nations which retain a monarch - like the UK and Canada - aren't technically republics in name, though they are in practice (the monarch serves as a figurehead, and retains no real power over the affairs of the state). There is nothing in the definition of "republic" which exclude democracy, and there is nothing in the definition of "democracy" which exclude republics.
The grossest thing about meat in the grocery store is all the chemicals they have to spray the meat down with to kill all the bad stuff and disease picked up from the animal from living in such poor conditions.
Well that's a load of shit. Please, do tell us which horrible horrible "chemicals" are sprayed on these poor diseased carcases, exactly. Maybe you could also link to a peer-reviewed study showing the significantly higher incidence of disease amongst animals raised using different methods. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Hey, I've always thought it's better when she cries.
So true!.
Got any citations for any of that? Because what I've read about Swedish gun laws is quite a bit different. For one thing, you can legally buy handguns if you're a member of a shooting club. And i think the 10 year sentence is for weapons used in the commission of a crime (ignoring the question of parole rates, and the fact that long sentences generally don't seem to be much of a deterrent). Canada has laws and measures which are somewhat similar, but getting a handgun is pretty damn easy in any major city.
It's actually quite difficult to snipe from a moving ship.
If by "ship" you mean "6 foot inflatable dingy", then yeah, it is. If, on the other hand, by "ship" you mean "cargo-hauler the size of several football fields" then no, it's not.
Aww, someone's got a crush :)
I doubt that a woman of her "intellectual prowess" has even heard of cosmic irony, let alone composed a song about it. Either way, that's not a "definition of irony", it's a definition of "cosmic irony".
That's perfect. You're listening to a song called "ironic", in which nothing is actually ironic, while responding to an article which misuses the word "ironic".
Like I said, I don't see politicians being murdered at meetings with a pair of kitchen scissors.
I don't see midgets being killed with a gun during a full moon while the tide is low. I do, however, see people being killed with scissors on a fairly regular basis. Google it.
I don't think
Yeah, I know.
How much does this have to do with things like Netflix now being in Canada?
Probably a lot. My father recently decided that he was tired of paying $100 a month for his Bell Satellite TV, and would rather pay $8 a month for Netflix. I crunched some numbers for him and showed him that he'd have to spend at least an extra $20 per month on his internet connection, and that's assuming that his household goes through only an average of 2 hours of SD TV per day. I'm guessing that was their intent - charge ridiculous amounts for bandwidth in order to keep their customers from abandoning their satellite-based TV offering.
Bell Canada is THE WORST COMPANY IN ALL OF CANADA
I dunno, Rogers is giving them a run for their money. It's hard to decide which one is more incompetent / corrupt / douchebag-y.
That's exactly right. All the little guys are pissed at bell. Initially, it was because bell started throttling download speeds even on the bulk-bandwidth it sold to other providers if they thought it might be P2P traffic. One of those companies - Acanac - said fuck that shit, and created an SSL gateway to allow their technically-minded customers to get around the throttling. Now Bell seems to have won the right to not only throttle speeds, but also charge extra based on usage. It's retarded. This is exactly the opposite of free-market capitalism - the "alternative companies" have basically become just an extension of the Bell marketing and tech-support departments.
It's funny. I don't see many politicians in public places being killed with knives, meat cleavers or axes and chainsaws.
Right, but it happens every day with guillotines.
Yes they do, and they use them to get from A to B. There are a lot of dangerous things people have access to, but funnily enough they aren't designed completely for the purpose of killing someone.
Ah, that asinine old argument. As if objects give a shit what they're designed to do. Dozens of everyday objects are better murder weapons than a gun, but a gun is meant to kill people, so it's eeeevil!
I'm surrounded by superstitious fuckwads, I swear ...
No, my point was that if nearly every person in the US had a guillotine then it would be very very bloody.
Yeah, I don't think so. Every person in the US has a knife. Most have a meat-cleaver. A whole bunch have axes and chainsaws. Hell, pretty much everyone has a 1-or-more-tonne device capable of moving at 100+ miles per hour. But you think the addition of guillotines would be the tipping point? Right. Go on, pull the other one.
Just look at the murder rates in the US vs in Europe. I would say that the country with lower murder rates is more civilized.
That would make North Korea a very civilized country indeed.
You want to outlaw guillotines? Really? What else? Samurai swords? Nun-chucks? Big sticks?