There is NOT a free market for concert venues. If a band wants to play, they HAVE to use Ticketmaster, becuase Ticketmaster bullies venues into not booking bands that won't use TM. Pearl Jam tried getting out from under them way back when they thought $50-$60 were unreasonable prices for concerts and were trying to get them back down in the neighborhood of $18.
Sorry, if you can't be bothered to read ALL the statements in a comment please keep your ignorant opinions to yourself.
Do you think speech which reveals intelligence secrets and undermines our ability to defend ourselves is protected and not treason?
I think speech which undermines the Administration politically, embarasses them, and reveals that they've been lying to us is patriotism of the highest order. Democracy without transparency isn't democracy. It's kabuki. If we cannot see what our government is doing how are we to judge whether they're doing our bidding?
No matter how juicy the secret may be, USA Today knows the government can freely request phone records without any court order
Says you. Time will tell. The utility of being able to spy on every American's phone records without warrants has yet to be proven by you or anyone else. FISA provided for emergency wiretaps but mandated that warrants be filed within 72 hours. The only reason for bypassing this protection was to permit spying without oversight, and nowhere was it determined that the National Security Agency should be allowed to spy on Americans calling Americans, and certainly not without oversight. You seem to be forgetting who ultimately cuts the checks in this system -- it's not the government. The real bosses are, by a growing majority, not pleased that their employees have been spying on them. Rationalize away all you like. I don't like being spied on, and I'm in the firm majority in believing that.
When the "classified information" is actually just highly embarassing to the administration, then it's not at all equivalent to shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. It's more like shouting "fire" when, well, there's a fire.
You still haven't made your case. Given that A) Google's spam filters are nearly 100% perfect in delivering spam to a clearly-labeled mailbox, and B) most people don't open up their spam messages (and when I did open a few of mine I noticed that most of the time no adsense words appeared on the right), your original assertion that Google is somehow encouraging these people or even giving them a pass in order to make money off them is patently absurd.
If you don't open the spam, the only thing you get adsense-wise are smart-ass webclips to spam recipies. So you have to open the message for adsense to kick in.
The links in the post you directed me to show two pictures of only incidental damage to WTC 7, and an eyewitness account stating how they allowed the fires to burn because they were afraid of building collapse (not surprising, since they'd already witnessed their comrades die in the 'collapses' of WTC 1 & 2).
Nowhere in these links is any evidence to support your ridiculous claim of 'severe damage'....did you think I wouldn't check?
Um, well, I also looked in the links, and I actually read the interviews. Maybe you didn't. Here's a callout that may help you:
From This link:
. . . [B]ut then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn't look good.
That's a hole 20 stories tall in your argument as well. I wonder what other minor, incidental damage there may be.
Why do you say that? I'm curious, because in the 2 years that I've had Gmail, NOT ONE spam mail, not a SINGLE ONE, has made it into my inbox. They do a highly effective job of keeping spam away from me. If I do get an email message I don't want, it's because I failed to opt out.
I installed Blue Security more to throw my weight behind the community than because I needed it. If everybody on the planet used Gmail, there wouldn't be spam anymore. No matter how many random phrases these imbeciles come up with, the spam filter figures them out instantly and sorts them accordingly.
The Bush administration has successfully kept the US free of terrorist attacks since 9/11/01. But his very success had lead to a sense of complacency, particularly among ultra-myopic Bush-haters.
Terror around the world has increased exponentially. That it is occuring in other nations like Iraq MORE now than it did before does not mean we are safer. You have cheese for brains if you think it does. You are mistaking not being fooled anymore with complacency.
In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
Wrong, putz. I do think this war is hopped-up and phoney. It would be a real war if we had done something about the nation primarily responsible for the attacks. But instead of starting a shooting war, we could have gently begun to disentangle our economy from that of the Saudis, maybe even looking for ways to reduce our oil consumption by improving energy efficiency and actively seeking alternatives? It would have forced the corrupt House of Saud to look to building their economy on something besides privledge of oil ownership, and they might have taken some resources away from funding schools staffed by clerics screaming Death to America. But that would have made too much sense, to take away the props of our enemy. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and boy was Isaac Asimov ever dead-on right about that one!
Or people who have cut their land lines (like me) in order to #1 offload the cost of having a landline I don't use, and #2 stop the flood of unwanted calls to my house. I have not had a landline for two months now, and I am so not missing it.
Corporate profits are up across the board. Companies are raking it in. I'm having a difficult time imagining these people going home crying because they just can't keep up with the costs of SOX.
One company? Was Tyco the same company? How about WorldCom? Were they just another division of Enron? Arthur Anderson? Global Crossing? Adelphia? All divisions of that one company.
Maybe it's like the McGregor guy. He built a very fine bar. But do they call him McGregor the bar builder? No! He built a very fine fence. Do they call him McGregor the fence builder? No way! But you fuck one goat . . .
Unfortunately, this is a problem. The public should NOT be given the right to vote. Governance is an actual skill, and voting is part of that. Governance does not come naturally. Voting should be a PRIVELEDGE, and NOT a right. Like drivers licenses. You should be qualified about the issues you are voting for before you are allowed to vote one it.
Who gives the tests? Who decides what is "qualified?" As soon as you start introducing barriers to voting, you disenfranchise people for spurious reasons. Notwithstanding the enormous burden this would place on the government to weed out and defend disenfranchisement, this belies the entire concept from which representative democracy arose in the first place -- the right to redress of grievances. People don't need a degree to know they've been aggrieved, and they don't vote for a specific issue, they vote for a person whom they will entrust to REPRESENT them on all issues. That person in turn takes an oath to defend the constitution, and makes a promise to represent his/her constituency. The promise is enforced by the threat that upon the expiration of his term, he may or may not be considered for continuation in his job based on whether or not he has made most of his constituents happy.
To illustrate, consider that a dumb retard in Alabama is gonna vote for a president about issues like economics and diplomacy. Now, how is that retard supposed to be any more qualified in economics than a PhD economics professor in Chicago? Why SHOULD that alabama retard be given ANY influence over society? Just because he's alive? Being alive does NOT qualify you influence over other people. Heck, most people don't even have the capability to control their OWN lives.
This is where I have problems with your elitism. I don't think I have to spend a lot of time debunking your ignorance and prejudice. There are plenty of intelligent people in Alabama, and they know all about what is or is not making them happy. They may take some time to see they're being fucked by their rep, but they will figure it out eventually. It's not your place to decide whether they are worthy of having a voice in their own affairs. That is the cornerstone of Democracy.
The failure in a voting public is apparent here. You people have been bred to believe that voting is somehow 'good'. Unfortunately, it results in the most average of political leadership: the candidate with the most mass appeal will win. And, mass appeal doesn't mean success. The public is going to vote for the guy with the prettiest hair, or is "like them", which has nothing to do with how sound their economic policies are. Policy and pretty hair have nothing to do with each other, no matter how hard conservatives try to their correlation.
More elitism, to the point of being an asshole. I guess the best way I can explain my objection is this: thousands of years of feudalism left us with a system where wealthy inbred dolts fought with each other over the best way to assfuck their population. Periodically that population would rise up and revolt, because it occured to them that the monarchy wasn't any fucking smarter than they were.
Democracy is no better than any other system. It GUARANTEES that your leaders are, at best, average. At least with a monarchy or dictatorship, it's possible to come up with a leader that's above average.
Quantify this. If your leader is answerable to no-one, in whose fucking interest are his actions?
Democracy is a horrible idea. In addition, representative democracy is a horrible idea. In our system, we elect a representative on issues like economics and diplomacy. Why are we defining ONE reprsentative to handle EVERY issue? Does a PhD in economics automatically qualify you as an expert diplomat? Does the fact that you own a pest-removal company or run a baseball team mean you're going to also make the best decisions about free-trade or human rights? Of course not.
Again, who the hell are you to select leaders? Who is
I find your opinions alarming. It is widely believed that Democracy is in fact the worst form of government that has ever been tried -- except all the others. I thought that was Mark Twain, but I found it attributed to Churchill out on the Internet.
To tie myself to a chain of technology that is obsolete and will never progress any further? To buy a piece of equipment that cannot be repaired, and will be impossible to find parts and service for? For the sake of watching three movies?
I actually have about 20 laserdiscs in my collection (I was stupid and bought it in about 1993, at the pre-dawn of the DVD age). But the ones that I really wanted to see I've already got DVD's for excepting Star Wars, and the special editions were almost good enough to be watchable that I decided not to go out and spend $50 or $75 on a piece of equipment for just those three movies.
If these DVD's of the original versions aren't anything more than laserdisc rips, however, I may consider giving money to a pawnshop rather than George Lucas for the privledge of watching something I've already bought five or six times.
Contrary to popular belief it is James Earl Jones voicing Vader in the strangely sounding scene where he calls to ready his Star Destroyer.
Link!
(scroll down to the audio changes)
However, it was 20 years since he did Empire at that point. Plus, who knows what kind of shoddy job was done editing the sound in.
No attribution is supplied for this assertion. I can damn well identify a voice, regardless of the age. It fucking does not sound like him at all. No technical explanation can possibly describe the voice not having the same timbre or pitch. What it sounds like is someone doing a very very bad imitation of Jones. And until given some kind of actual credible documentation otherwise I will continue to assume that is exactly the case.
One of two entities can control what the government does, but regardless the government will determine what is done on the Internet. If you as the individual do nothing and ask your government to do nothing (in the service of "freedom" or whatever it is you think you're supporting) you will cede control to the other power center of our system, money and its associated interests. They will then determine what the government will do, and it will definitely not be in your interests. Regardless, this power will be wielded through government. You can either choose to voice your concerns through that government or cynically pretend that it can't or shouldn't be done and let someone else have control.
Do you mean the idiotic sequence they inserted with Vader "going to his shuttle" where they couldn't even be bothered to hire James Earl Jones for 10 seconds of dialogue dubbing -- which additionally ruined the entire soundtrack by putting a dead-ass-dragging darth vader's theme in the middle of the escape from Bespin sequence?
That one galled me more than Han shooting first, and it was mostly because there was so little reason for it to have been there -- I as a 10-year-old understood perfectly that Vader could have caught a shuttle to his star destroyer in the time allowed. I didn't have to fucking have it spelled out for me, and I especially didn't need to see it done so badly. I mean, there were maybe 2 or 3 things in all of the special editions that were done so well they were a pleasure to see -- the re-done Mos Eisley, and the liftoff of the Millenium Falcon from same, but they didn't clean up a lot of the obvious green blotches on the screen left over during the final battle scene, and almost all of the extras were in some way slopped in there. It's like we've got a clone of George Lucas monkeying with his films, because whatever touch he had in the '80's with filmmaking he's completely lost -- he thinks nothing of shattering the rhythm of a scene with gratutious special effects or fanboi money shots. This applies to the new films as well. It's like they were made by a different person.
I still own the originals on laserdisc, but like a complete tool I will probably be buying these re-issues because the resolution is higher on DVD. And my LD player is broken and I can't think of a good reason to replace it.
There's been an SEP field planted right in the middle of DC for six years. Its effects were most powerfully felt in the press room, where reporters repeatedly were unable to ask probing or even intelligent questions due to their lack of interest in the public interest. Apparently the field is breaking down, now.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, if you can't be bothered to read ALL the statements in a comment please keep your ignorant opinions to yourself.
I think speech which undermines the Administration politically, embarasses them, and reveals that they've been lying to us is patriotism of the highest order. Democracy without transparency isn't democracy. It's kabuki. If we cannot see what our government is doing how are we to judge whether they're doing our bidding?
No matter how juicy the secret may be, USA Today knows the government can freely request phone records without any court order
Says you. Time will tell. The utility of being able to spy on every American's phone records without warrants has yet to be proven by you or anyone else. FISA provided for emergency wiretaps but mandated that warrants be filed within 72 hours. The only reason for bypassing this protection was to permit spying without oversight, and nowhere was it determined that the National Security Agency should be allowed to spy on Americans calling Americans, and certainly not without oversight. You seem to be forgetting who ultimately cuts the checks in this system -- it's not the government. The real bosses are, by a growing majority, not pleased that their employees have been spying on them. Rationalize away all you like. I don't like being spied on, and I'm in the firm majority in believing that.
Provide examples, please.
When the "classified information" is actually just highly embarassing to the administration, then it's not at all equivalent to shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. It's more like shouting "fire" when, well, there's a fire.
Those are MY civil rights you're giving away. Because of YOUR fear. I don't recall you asking my permission.
You still haven't made your case. Given that A) Google's spam filters are nearly 100% perfect in delivering spam to a clearly-labeled mailbox, and B) most people don't open up their spam messages (and when I did open a few of mine I noticed that most of the time no adsense words appeared on the right), your original assertion that Google is somehow encouraging these people or even giving them a pass in order to make money off them is patently absurd.
If you don't open the spam, the only thing you get adsense-wise are smart-ass webclips to spam recipies. So you have to open the message for adsense to kick in.
Nowhere in these links is any evidence to support your ridiculous claim of 'severe damage'....did you think I wouldn't check?
Um, well, I also looked in the links, and I actually read the interviews. Maybe you didn't. Here's a callout that may help you: From This link:
That's a hole 20 stories tall in your argument as well. I wonder what other minor, incidental damage there may be.
You haven't explained how Google makes money off spam, if they block it. You're making one hell of a logical leap.
I installed Blue Security more to throw my weight behind the community than because I needed it. If everybody on the planet used Gmail, there wouldn't be spam anymore. No matter how many random phrases these imbeciles come up with, the spam filter figures them out instantly and sorts them accordingly.
Terror around the world has increased exponentially. That it is occuring in other nations like Iraq MORE now than it did before does not mean we are safer. You have cheese for brains if you think it does. You are mistaking not being fooled anymore with complacency.
In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
Wrong, putz. I do think this war is hopped-up and phoney. It would be a real war if we had done something about the nation primarily responsible for the attacks. But instead of starting a shooting war, we could have gently begun to disentangle our economy from that of the Saudis, maybe even looking for ways to reduce our oil consumption by improving energy efficiency and actively seeking alternatives? It would have forced the corrupt House of Saud to look to building their economy on something besides privledge of oil ownership, and they might have taken some resources away from funding schools staffed by clerics screaming Death to America. But that would have made too much sense, to take away the props of our enemy. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and boy was Isaac Asimov ever dead-on right about that one!
Or people who have cut their land lines (like me) in order to #1 offload the cost of having a landline I don't use, and #2 stop the flood of unwanted calls to my house. I have not had a landline for two months now, and I am so not missing it.
Corporate profits are up across the board. Companies are raking it in. I'm having a difficult time imagining these people going home crying because they just can't keep up with the costs of SOX.
One company? Was Tyco the same company? How about WorldCom? Were they just another division of Enron? Arthur Anderson? Global Crossing? Adelphia? All divisions of that one company.
Maybe it's like the McGregor guy. He built a very fine bar. But do they call him McGregor the bar builder? No! He built a very fine fence. Do they call him McGregor the fence builder? No way! But you fuck one goat . . .
Are you talking about small to medium corporations, publicly held?
The shareholders who are going to get reamed?
Who gives the tests? Who decides what is "qualified?" As soon as you start introducing barriers to voting, you disenfranchise people for spurious reasons. Notwithstanding the enormous burden this would place on the government to weed out and defend disenfranchisement, this belies the entire concept from which representative democracy arose in the first place -- the right to redress of grievances. People don't need a degree to know they've been aggrieved, and they don't vote for a specific issue, they vote for a person whom they will entrust to REPRESENT them on all issues. That person in turn takes an oath to defend the constitution, and makes a promise to represent his/her constituency. The promise is enforced by the threat that upon the expiration of his term, he may or may not be considered for continuation in his job based on whether or not he has made most of his constituents happy.
To illustrate, consider that a dumb retard in Alabama is gonna vote for a president about issues like economics and diplomacy. Now, how is that retard supposed to be any more qualified in economics than a PhD economics professor in Chicago? Why SHOULD that alabama retard be given ANY influence over society? Just because he's alive? Being alive does NOT qualify you influence over other people. Heck, most people don't even have the capability to control their OWN lives.
This is where I have problems with your elitism. I don't think I have to spend a lot of time debunking your ignorance and prejudice. There are plenty of intelligent people in Alabama, and they know all about what is or is not making them happy. They may take some time to see they're being fucked by their rep, but they will figure it out eventually. It's not your place to decide whether they are worthy of having a voice in their own affairs. That is the cornerstone of Democracy.
The failure in a voting public is apparent here. You people have been bred to believe that voting is somehow 'good'. Unfortunately, it results in the most average of political leadership: the candidate with the most mass appeal will win. And, mass appeal doesn't mean success. The public is going to vote for the guy with the prettiest hair, or is "like them", which has nothing to do with how sound their economic policies are. Policy and pretty hair have nothing to do with each other, no matter how hard conservatives try to their correlation.
More elitism, to the point of being an asshole. I guess the best way I can explain my objection is this: thousands of years of feudalism left us with a system where wealthy inbred dolts fought with each other over the best way to assfuck their population. Periodically that population would rise up and revolt, because it occured to them that the monarchy wasn't any fucking smarter than they were.
Democracy is no better than any other system. It GUARANTEES that your leaders are, at best, average. At least with a monarchy or dictatorship, it's possible to come up with a leader that's above average.
Quantify this. If your leader is answerable to no-one, in whose fucking interest are his actions?
Democracy is a horrible idea. In addition, representative democracy is a horrible idea. In our system, we elect a representative on issues like economics and diplomacy. Why are we defining ONE reprsentative to handle EVERY issue? Does a PhD in economics automatically qualify you as an expert diplomat? Does the fact that you own a pest-removal company or run a baseball team mean you're going to also make the best decisions about free-trade or human rights? Of course not.
Again, who the hell are you to select leaders? Who is
In any case you are categorically wrong.
His customer base most likely isn't going to have the technological savvy to realize that a digital disconnect sounds different than an analog one.
THEN hang up. Gotta put some effort into your act!!
I actually have about 20 laserdiscs in my collection (I was stupid and bought it in about 1993, at the pre-dawn of the DVD age). But the ones that I really wanted to see I've already got DVD's for excepting Star Wars, and the special editions were almost good enough to be watchable that I decided not to go out and spend $50 or $75 on a piece of equipment for just those three movies.
If these DVD's of the original versions aren't anything more than laserdisc rips, however, I may consider giving money to a pawnshop rather than George Lucas for the privledge of watching something I've already bought five or six times.
No attribution is supplied for this assertion. I can damn well identify a voice, regardless of the age. It fucking does not sound like him at all. No technical explanation can possibly describe the voice not having the same timbre or pitch. What it sounds like is someone doing a very very bad imitation of Jones. And until given some kind of actual credible documentation otherwise I will continue to assume that is exactly the case.
One of two entities can control what the government does, but regardless the government will determine what is done on the Internet. If you as the individual do nothing and ask your government to do nothing (in the service of "freedom" or whatever it is you think you're supporting) you will cede control to the other power center of our system, money and its associated interests. They will then determine what the government will do, and it will definitely not be in your interests. Regardless, this power will be wielded through government. You can either choose to voice your concerns through that government or cynically pretend that it can't or shouldn't be done and let someone else have control.
That one galled me more than Han shooting first, and it was mostly because there was so little reason for it to have been there -- I as a 10-year-old understood perfectly that Vader could have caught a shuttle to his star destroyer in the time allowed. I didn't have to fucking have it spelled out for me, and I especially didn't need to see it done so badly. I mean, there were maybe 2 or 3 things in all of the special editions that were done so well they were a pleasure to see -- the re-done Mos Eisley, and the liftoff of the Millenium Falcon from same, but they didn't clean up a lot of the obvious green blotches on the screen left over during the final battle scene, and almost all of the extras were in some way slopped in there. It's like we've got a clone of George Lucas monkeying with his films, because whatever touch he had in the '80's with filmmaking he's completely lost -- he thinks nothing of shattering the rhythm of a scene with gratutious special effects or fanboi money shots. This applies to the new films as well. It's like they were made by a different person.
I still own the originals on laserdisc, but like a complete tool I will probably be buying these re-issues because the resolution is higher on DVD. And my LD player is broken and I can't think of a good reason to replace it.
There's been an SEP field planted right in the middle of DC for six years. Its effects were most powerfully felt in the press room, where reporters repeatedly were unable to ask probing or even intelligent questions due to their lack of interest in the public interest. Apparently the field is breaking down, now.