it's not about affecting the case directly. it's about getting the word out about what information is trying to be sealed in hopes that those who read it in the public sector will be outraged enough to do something about it even if all they do is talk to a friend because the power lies in the hands of the people no matter what the court rulings are, they just rarely get pissed off enough to use that power.
A little more elaboration on this: The former (big brother) corporation that you are speaking of was known as "Ma Bell." Which held a complete monopoly on telecommunications services throughout the United States.
In 1984 Bell Systems were forced into a divestiture. Bell was required by law to split up all of it's assets and become seperate companies. These new companies each controlled a geographic portion of the United States, they were known as RBOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies). Known coloquially as "Baby Bells" these companies carried on where Bell Systems left off without so much as a blurp because they were the same people and executives just shuffled around into different positions and no longer OFFICIALLY answering to the same board of directors. However each and every one of these RBOC's were aware that their respective companies would make more money the more they were able to grow and since they already had established business relationships with the other executives from the former Bell Systems the logical way to grow was through business relationships with those other entities.
Now the Baby Bells were Seven independent companies whose names you'll probably still recognize today which are: BellSouth, US West, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, NYNEX, and Bell Atlantic.
Later, Bell Atlantic merged with NYNEX to create Verizon, and Southwestern Bell merged with Ameritech and Pacific Telesis under the name of SBC or Southwestern Bell Corporation. Also US West changed it's name to Qwest and then outside company AT&T merged with SBC effectively bringing back together over 40% of the former monopoly along with one of the largest telecom companies to have arisen from the ensuing telecom wars that occurred after divestiture.
In March of this year a merger was proposed between AT&T and Bellsouth now these companies actually already have a very close relationship because the cell phone company Cingular Wireless is actually a joint venture owned by Bellsouth and SBC , so the gap has already been bridged it's just a matter of bringing the rest of the pieces together. Hopefully this gives a little more information as to the nature of the AT&T beast that we are currently dealing with.
Oh yah as a side note Verizon (which as i mentioned earlier is 2 of the 7 baby bells) controls the largest and number one cell phone company in the U.S. The second largest cell company (at least the last time i checked) is Cingular and AT&T is the third largest. So as you can see if this merger goes through (it may have already i don't know as i haven't been keeping up with it) then there will only be a small handful of telecom companies out there to combat the Bells on the level of landline phones and also the 3 biggest cellular carriers will be owned by (maybe not memebers of the same corporation exactly but let's just say, people who's interests are mutually united). Scary stuff really.
what is commonly considered to be logical thought is actually just what is considered as the current sociological norm.
for instance in nazi germany when the holocaust was first ramping up it was the opinion of "logical" members of german society that the people who were being incarcerated, tortured and killed were political criminals and a danger to their way of life which is why (along with a shitty economic climate in that country at the time) they were able to rationalize allowing their government to do what it did.
now i'm not calling people who don't believe every conspiracy nut who throws a half-cracked idea out there nazis. I'm just saying that if you're not willing to admit that you *MIGHT* be wrong about the current situation (not that you are..just that it is possible for you to be) then you have suffered through the same type of indoctrination that they did, whether the effects can be as devastating or not is a topic for a different discussion.
now see...doesn't that feel better? like i said i'm not a libertarian but that being said i honestly don't care what other people think about my sanity or lack there-of.
but honestly you make some very good points in this post points which i will address later when i have a little bit more time, or at least attempt to address.
actually though you have shown that you know quite a lot about libertarianism already and since my original reply to your post was to inform someone who really didn't seem to know much about it and instead seemed to just be reposting other peoples rants on it i'm not so sure that i need to bother with a rebuttal, but i will do what i can, you have earned that much.
Allow me to offer you a word of warning just as you did for me. Know that if you go around posting other peoples statements all of the time then lots of people will be quick to label you as unoriginal and unknowledgable and not all of them will be a big enough asshole to call you on it and then stay on top of you long enough to find out that you actually DO know what you're talking about like i did...they will just read the post and dismiss you as a moron, anyway that's it, like i said i'll get back to you on some of these points a little later...probably after work when i've got some free time.
sincerity is a rare thing...suddenly i feel like the wrong kind of asshole...accept my apology i will read your response when i get a minute to do so as i am pretty busy at work right now also
i don't want your pity...and yes i get the difference between degrading an ideal and degrading a race...i guess you're right it's more like making fun of a religion and then hiding behind the fact that it was a joke (it's okay i didn't mean to say that all muslims are terrorists...it was just a joke).
and it was quite obvious that you were just being flippant and didn't care to read the post, but since you responded to something that you didn't care to read well...
don't feel obligated to offer an actual debate on this issue, it's obvious that you didn't believe most of your own horse-shit or you would've spent more time in responding to my statement, also something of note is that if you had read the post to begin with you would know that all of your claims of superiority due to not being a libertarian are falling on deaf ears since i'm NOT A LIBERTARIAN, in fact i have an anarcho-leaning political philosophy myself but i felt the need to take up for the libertarian philosophy just because it was dismissed with a copy and paste post that required no thought and was simply regurgitated anti-libertarian propaganda. Ironic that the article that you posted denounced the spouting of party rhetoric and pamphleteering don't you think?
anyway if you want to have a discussion about it fine but don't feel obligated in order to keep from hurting my feelings because i assure you that i'm an asshole all of the time it's just in my nature and has nothing to do with your flippant dismissmal of a well-thought out argument, after all this is slashdot...gotta be used to that type of thing
um...yah i felt like continuing the rant but i changed my mind so....CHEERS!
uuum...yah it's a joke at the expense of a group of people though that's like saying "all blacks are stupid" and then defending yourself with "it's a joke"...also i would like to point out that if you had actually READ my rebuttal you would see that i realized that it was a joke and that i actually even thought that some of it was funny and IN FACT even had a post-specific meme for identifying parts of the post which were only facecious and needed no rebuttal (it was FS by the way). you know what...nevermind
although some of this was funny (particularly the parts about armaments) it is still pretty flawed although i can see how libertarianism could be perceived this way to someone who never bothered to look into it so:
I present to you a response to the above-claims (this is a reposting of the original document in italics with comments inserted by me in bold:
Introduction
One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat". i have no response to this...sure i'll grant this one to you
This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!
Philosophy
* In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion. This is true also. Man did dwell in a state of nature or rather as every other animal in nature (research darwin for more on this). Beyond Darwin this is also true up through the hunter/gatherer periods of mankind where the only thing that mattered was survival of oneself and the species, however once groups became more important than the individual (ie: government) it became necessary to worry about a myriad of things other than just ones own well being, which effectively "tempted man into initial coercion."
* Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand. while not exactly true this isn't totally false either and i already explained this a little above
* We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang. Incorrect. Libertarians do not feel that anyone gets "lucky breaks" but they also do not feel that one should be given "breaks" the basic ideal is that if you work hard enough you can acheive whatever you desire and for someone to be given something that they did not earn is an afront to all of those who worked harder than that person. Also, not all Libertarians are "the meritorious few" in fact. I grew up in a very poor home and am to this day, quite broke.
* Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government. partially correct. government SHOULD not own things because government only exists to protect it's people from infringing upon one anothers rights, in order to perform this task, no ownership is needed.
* Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist. okay. this part as you well know is simply meant to be a facecious statement heralding the stupidity of libertarians, as there are quite a few statements like this one contained herein i shall heretofore comment on these simply with "FS"
* Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion. Do you want your parents to control your life? Do you want to turn out exactly like them? That's fine if you do hell it's your choice, but most of us would rather make our own decisions and then if we end up like our parents well, at least it was by choice and not by force.
* Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation. FS
* Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia.
Well it's been longer than a year since i last watched so maybe you just feel differently than i do on this subject. Seems to me that they literally echo the administration on most issues. You mention immigration policy well i'll buy that it seems that MOST of the republican members of the administration disagree with Bush about this. However on some other issues they're not quite as harsh take for instance when the wiretapping story broke, Fox news only spent a couple of minutes on it because they said that they wanted to get on to "more important issues" and then they did human interest stories all day. Like i said though, maybe we just disagree on this, i'm sure that it's a case of differing opinions and not a case of one person or the other being totally wrong probably the perception is just different from where i stand than it is for you. Although i will add one last thing. When i first started feeling that Fox news was completely biased, i had not yet heard anything from the other news sources or major media (or even any of my friends) about them being biased, it just seemed to me that they were. So while this may be a case of my position in life perceiving them as being biased it is at the very least (in my case) NOT a case of echoing the "liberal media" or towing the party line. (espeically since i'm a registered republican)
i can understand how you would come to that conclusion and i'm not sure if maybe there was some level of sarcasm in the statements that the aformentioned person made as i didn't see this particular interview. One thing that i will tell you is that you should judge for yourself. Sit down and watch hannity and colmes or the o'reily factor or just read the "fox facts" at the bottom of the screen during a normal news broadcast, to me it seems pretty well to just repeat everything that the republican administration says and never question anything but feel free to draw your own conclusions, after all, that's what freedom is all about.
for the most part i think that the amount of skepticism shown in your post is healthy. i just wanted to correct one thing.
although the bush administration has shown itself to be incompetent the NSA has not...in fact other than getting caught illegaly wire-tapping they've shown them selves to be pretty well infallible for instance with sept. 11th the intelligence was there it was just mishandled by other agencies and bobbled by the bush administration. point is that just because the bush administration wouldn't know what to do with this information if they got it, doesn't mean that i want the nsa to get it because later they may turn it over to someone who would.
okay apparently i'm in a mood to make suggestions today so:
I suggest a new meme: RTFP (READ THE FUCKING POSTS).
If i see one more post on here by someone who apparently doesn't seem to realize as has been pointed out NUMEROUS fucking times that what wired did was not illegal...i don't even know what i'll do because it hurts my head so badly to think about it...probably my brain will just die out of despair for the human race and i'll become a vegetable.
I mean i understand that we can't read every single branch here, but at least skim through them. This issue has come up and been pointed out so many times that if you even read 5 or 6 posts before writing one then you were BOUND to run into it and on top of that RTFA also because it was in THERE TOO...
*breathes out slowly*....calm down...it's okay...sorry that got a little out of hand.
well you got the basic gist of it. and yes i agree it is best to target the lower half because the upper half is fickle due to their level of intelligence whereas the lower half value "loyalty" above almost all else since they are unable to choose right from wrong based on their on logical decisions.
and yes IQ is pretty useless in all actuality, in fact many of the people who i know with high IQ's are so focused on certain fields that they no longer are able to use that knowledge for what is known as "common sense", not really able to think objectively about anything other than their current obsession.
i really only attempted to make a point because you didn't say why you disagreed with his statement or why it was wrong, i think i managed to point out why it was wrong as well as why it was right though so i think we're done
Okay BOJ: I have to say that i usually enjoy your posts and this one is no exception BUT i have a point of order that i would like to address.
We ALL need to stop using the term "otherwise the terrorists win." Although it is a valid argument it is also a very flawed one. It IS and HAS BEEN (ever since 09/11/2001) a trite and uninspired regurgitation of fears that have already taken form.
The idea is that if we keep reminding each other what we should or should not do in order to keep the terrorists from winning then it will do some good. What does it mean for the terrorists to win though? If by changing our way of life they win (which is the implication inherent in the aformentioned statement) then it's too late, they have won and it's time that we all came to accept that fact. As soon as even ONE person feels threatened by terrorism or is in fear of a terrorist, whose purpose by definition is to instill terror, has succeeded. What we need to worry about is not whether or not the terrorists win in this regard, we need to worry about whether or not we will allow the victory that they have secured and the fear that they have instilled to cause us to be subjugated by those who will take advantage of it.
It is with this in mind that i suggest an alternate statement to replace "the terrorists win" and that is, "we are RULED by terror."
Hope you don't take offense to this BOJ. It's nothing personal your utterance of said statement just happened to be the straw that sent me into a fervor, your statements still ring true.
#1: YES! 3/4's of the people are of average intelligence or higher. Now obviously this isn't EXACTLY true it would probably be more like 3/5's. Or if you want a VEEEEERY simplified breakdown you would just say HALF. But the basic breakdown remains the same (25% are severely below average, 25% are enormously above average and 50% are close enough to average that you may as well call them average). Obviously none of this pans out exactly if you were to take the I.Q.'s of everyone in the world and plot them on a graph. In that case you would find that they were spread pretty evenly but there would be more of them that congregated near the "average" point than anywhere else after all that's what makes it average. So if you want to be a math-snob about it then the statement is grossly incorrect but it works pretty well for simplification purposes.
#2: now here's the part that i agree with you on. I am unable to find any poll numbers that suggest that any large amount of the population is calling for the impeachment of the president (although i wouldn't be surprised to find out that they are). In fact the only poll that i've been able to find regarding this subject is one that was released by Fox news (which gives it a little less credibility due to the network that it came from) which states that 62 percent of people polled did NOT feel that Bush should be impeached : http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseacti on/viewItem/itemID/11956. so...there's a bit of constructive criticism mixed with a bit of a pat on the back for not automatically assuming that what some/.'er said was correct.
if i had points i would mod you up. Thank the 13 hells that someone other than myself finally pointed out that left and right is incorrect. Not only that but went a step further and invoked the Nolan Chart....BRAVO!
*carbonautomotons faith in mankind grew 0.0000001 sizes that day*
Whereas the Scotsman example is using the "no true..." statement to describe a group of people who are only alike in their cultural heritage. The Conservative statement is using it to describe a group of people who all subscribe to the same political ideology and how said people would react to a certain situation which falls within the scope of ideals subscribed to by the group. It's really a very different situation than the way that you describe it.
Now that being said i'm kind of playing devils advocate here because i agree with what you're trying to accomplish in invalidating the "no true conservative" argument, just not the way that you went about it. The real reason why said argument is invalid in any discussion of current politics is because (as has been pointed out by many others on this board thus far) no classical or, for the purpose of continuity, "true" conservatives really exist as an actual tangible part of current U.S. politics.
Now i also agree with the original statement that started this debate in regard to their assertions about "true" republicans. Unfortunately, the fact that i agree that the statement is true does not mean that it holds any weight in the current topic of discussion or does any of us any good whatsoever (unless of course someone who was reading this just so happened to be in the market for a new political philosophy).
so by this line of logic there never should've been a published outing of the Watergate scandal. The information should've been turned over to republican members of some senate oversight committee (who stood to benefit from it), that way it is safely out of the public (the victim's) hands. Let's be honest. If the legislature has been voting on this then they are not victims. We are. A victim deserves to know what crime is being perpetrated against them. Oh yah not to mention that your argument has no bearing because (read the 70 or so other posts that mention this also for reference) the seal on these documents did not apply to the source of the documents. This means that the public (ESPECIALLY THE PRESS) is free to talk about it and disseminate it all they want.
i think you are confusing the issue a bit here actually. Did you READ the article that this thread is about? This isn't about collecting a list of phone numbers that someone dialed at all. It's about monitoring ALL of the specific data that is being transferred accross a network and collecting the information for the purposes of turning it over to a government agency. This isn't just about the information that a conversation occured, make no mistake about it...this IS about the content.
Now companies like AT&T and most other large companies who deal with information as well have internal rules regarding the transfer of proprietary information to outside agencies, governments, etc. any customer of theirs who knows about this would have an expectation of privacy and in my opinion that expectation would be entirely reasonable given the situation. Since AT&T is a multi-national corporation with (seemingly at least) no ties to the United States government, a reasonable person most likely would expect that what they do on the internet while it may not exactly be PRIVATE would at least not be given away freely by their ISP...in FACT
The above web-address is to AT&T's Privacy Policy. Please note in particular paragraph 13 under the heading "disclosure" where it states:
"AT&T will not sell, trade, or disclose to third parties any customer identifiable information derived from the registration for or use of an AT&T online service -- including customer names and addresses -- without the consent of the customer (except as required by subpoena, search warrant, or other legal process or in the case of imminent physical harm to the customer or others)."
Now since (as i'm sure you've heard in reports from the "liberal media") these programs were in existence outside of U.S. legality and without the issuing of a warrant, it is this citizens understanding that the dissemination of said material is in violation of AT&T's self imposed rules ala' the rights to privacy which they (apparently falsely) offer to their customers. I also feel that the very EXISTENCE of this statement in AT&T's "Privacy Policy" reinforces my earlier statements about a customers expectation of privacy when using AT&T to connect to the internet.
Now while it is yet to be determined whether or not AT&T actually gave any information to the government or if so what information they gave, to be more specific: was the information associated with the customers name etc. or was it a general bulk of information showing that *someone* had been visiting *such and such websites* and had been speaking to *so and so* about *blah blah blah.* Note that this kind of information would either be useless making this possibility bloody unlikely or would indirectly give up the information that is not supposed to be given away, in which case they may not have actually violated their agreement with the customer but they are most definitely not innocent due to their ethical violations. Anyway although the legality of the situation has yet to be determined the fact remains that there IS an expectation to privacy.
There are many other entries in that Privacy Policy that would lead one to believe that they DO have an expectation of privacy so feel free to peruse that at your leisure and then get back to me with your counter-argument after looking into your claims a little further before making them.
okay that argument was just silly. patients don't get turned away they just get charged directly for their care. if they can't pay in cash then they get billed for it just like it works now. this is a strawman. you're trying to change things that no one recommended changing in order to look my plan look like a failure.
unless i missed something in that cost analysis your assessment is...yup...it's wrong.
for further clarification RTFA page 10 under that big bold heading that says VALUE.
i'm not saying i'm sold on this cpu at all! BUT...if price is a deciding factor (which it is) i don't want you to think that the AMD automatically wins.
Further research shows a maximum buy it now price on ebay for the Core Duo T2600 is $400.00/U.S. While the Max buy it now price on ebay for the AMD Athlon 64 FX60 is $890.00/U.S. With a difference in price that is THAT large you can even buy the necessary motherboard for the T2600 and still come out cheaper. (that is just in case you wouldn't have to change your motherboard to upgrade to the FX60)
Granted as a scientific experiment simply checking the ebay prices is a relatively small sample group. However under these particular circumstances based on the price:power ratio the Intel chip wins BIG.
oh yah and most of those sound effects have been used in rap, usually as censoring material though (take wu tang's forever album whose censoring included, bees buzzing, random kung-fu-fight noises, women moaning, swords clashing together, etc.).
As I was reading this article and considering why this type of thing keeps coming up, a thought occured to me.
Does anyone else think that maybe it's possible that the reason lawmakers keep trying to pass these bills and actually seem to think that it's a good idea is a result of their age and not their political affiliation? I mean think about it, the majority of these people are over 40, they may have played pacman or even owned an atari 2600 at some point but video games were not as prevalent in their lives as they were in later generations. Now I'm not saying that there aren't people of their generation who play or who have always been active in the video game community but those tend to be people in lines of work that are more adjacent to gaming than politics are. I think that it's highly possible that the problem is that due to their age they still see video games as a toy instead of a legitimate entertainment device like the television. Maybe that is why they are so concerned about a video games effect on children. I mean think about it. If a toy (say an action figure) was marketed so that the character that it portrayed was a psycho-pathic gun wielding maniac (GI Joe excluded for obvious reasons) then there would definitely be a lot of public outrage about it even if it weren't marketed to children since the general public perception of action figures is that they are FOR children. I just think that these lawmakers can't imagine anyone EXCEPT a child playing a video game and thus assume that the industries are lying when they say that the game is not meant for children.
Just a thought. Anybody agree? Disagree?...I'm open to suggestions here.
so because all political scientists aren't anarchists then they are all ingrained in the system? that's a preposterous assumption. In fact most of the political science professors that i worked with believed that at least some parts of the anarchial system of government could be beneficial (although the disagreed on what specifically those were and where they would benefit society). I think that your problem with political scientists is that they formulate their own independent opinions on all issues rather than subscribing to one established governmental (or anti-governmental in this case) system with a blanket of ideas that they can pull from their party handbook.
Slashdot Mirror
it's not about affecting the case directly. it's about getting the word out about what information is trying to be sealed in hopes that those who read it in the public sector will be outraged enough to do something about it even if all they do is talk to a friend because the power lies in the hands of the people no matter what the court rulings are, they just rarely get pissed off enough to use that power.
A little more elaboration on this: The former (big brother) corporation that you are speaking of was known as "Ma Bell." Which held a complete monopoly on telecommunications services throughout the United States.
In 1984 Bell Systems were forced into a divestiture. Bell was required by law to split up all of it's assets and become seperate companies. These new companies each controlled a geographic portion of the United States, they were known as RBOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies). Known coloquially as "Baby Bells" these companies carried on where Bell Systems left off without so much as a blurp because they were the same people and executives just shuffled around into different positions and no longer OFFICIALLY answering to the same board of directors. However each and every one of these RBOC's were aware that their respective companies would make more money the more they were able to grow and since they already had established business relationships with the other executives from the former Bell Systems the logical way to grow was through business relationships with those other entities.
Now the Baby Bells were Seven independent companies whose names you'll probably still recognize today which are: BellSouth, US West, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, NYNEX, and Bell Atlantic.
Later, Bell Atlantic merged with NYNEX to create Verizon, and Southwestern Bell merged with Ameritech and Pacific Telesis under the name of SBC or Southwestern Bell Corporation. Also US West changed it's name to Qwest and then outside company AT&T merged with SBC effectively bringing back together over 40% of the former monopoly along with one of the largest telecom companies to have arisen from the ensuing telecom wars that occurred after divestiture.
In March of this year a merger was proposed between AT&T and Bellsouth now these companies actually already have a very close relationship because the cell phone company Cingular Wireless is actually a joint venture owned by Bellsouth and SBC , so the gap has already been bridged it's just a matter of bringing the rest of the pieces together. Hopefully this gives a little more information as to the nature of the AT&T beast that we are currently dealing with.
For more information on this i recommend checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System
Oh yah as a side note Verizon (which as i mentioned earlier is 2 of the 7 baby bells) controls the largest and number one cell phone company in the U.S. The second largest cell company (at least the last time i checked) is Cingular and AT&T is the third largest. So as you can see if this merger goes through (it may have already i don't know as i haven't been keeping up with it) then there will only be a small handful of telecom companies out there to combat the Bells on the level of landline phones and also the 3 biggest cellular carriers will be owned by (maybe not memebers of the same corporation exactly but let's just say, people who's interests are mutually united). Scary stuff really.
what is commonly considered to be logical thought is actually just what is considered as the current sociological norm.
for instance in nazi germany when the holocaust was first ramping up it was the opinion of "logical" members of german society that the people who were being incarcerated, tortured and killed were political criminals and a danger to their way of life which is why (along with a shitty economic climate in that country at the time) they were able to rationalize allowing their government to do what it did.
now i'm not calling people who don't believe every conspiracy nut who throws a half-cracked idea out there nazis. I'm just saying that if you're not willing to admit that you *MIGHT* be wrong about the current situation (not that you are..just that it is possible for you to be) then you have suffered through the same type of indoctrination that they did, whether the effects can be as devastating or not is a topic for a different discussion.
now see...doesn't that feel better? like i said i'm not a libertarian but that being said i honestly don't care what other people think about my sanity or lack there-of.
but honestly you make some very good points in this post points which i will address later when i have a little bit more time, or at least attempt to address.
actually though you have shown that you know quite a lot about libertarianism already and since my original reply to your post was to inform someone who really didn't seem to know much about it and instead seemed to just be reposting other peoples rants on it i'm not so sure that i need to bother with a rebuttal, but i will do what i can, you have earned that much.
Allow me to offer you a word of warning just as you did for me. Know that if you go around posting other peoples statements all of the time then lots of people will be quick to label you as unoriginal and unknowledgable and not all of them will be a big enough asshole to call you on it and then stay on top of you long enough to find out that you actually DO know what you're talking about like i did...they will just read the post and dismiss you as a moron, anyway that's it, like i said i'll get back to you on some of these points a little later...probably after work when i've got some free time.
sincerity is a rare thing...suddenly i feel like the wrong kind of asshole...accept my apology i will read your response when i get a minute to do so as i am pretty busy at work right now also
that's not what it's for...it's to keep out those goddamned mongorians
i don't want your pity...and yes i get the difference between degrading an ideal and degrading a race...i guess you're right it's more like making fun of a religion and then hiding behind the fact that it was a joke (it's okay i didn't mean to say that all muslims are terrorists...it was just a joke).
and it was quite obvious that you were just being flippant and didn't care to read the post, but since you responded to something that you didn't care to read well...
don't feel obligated to offer an actual debate on this issue, it's obvious that you didn't believe most of your own horse-shit or you would've spent more time in responding to my statement, also something of note is that if you had read the post to begin with you would know that all of your claims of superiority due to not being a libertarian are falling on deaf ears since i'm NOT A LIBERTARIAN, in fact i have an anarcho-leaning political philosophy myself but i felt the need to take up for the libertarian philosophy just because it was dismissed with a copy and paste post that required no thought and was simply regurgitated anti-libertarian propaganda. Ironic that the article that you posted denounced the spouting of party rhetoric and pamphleteering don't you think?
anyway if you want to have a discussion about it fine but don't feel obligated in order to keep from hurting my feelings because i assure you that i'm an asshole all of the time it's just in my nature and has nothing to do with your flippant dismissmal of a well-thought out argument, after all this is slashdot...gotta be used to that type of thing
um...yah i felt like continuing the rant but i changed my mind so....CHEERS!
uuum...yah it's a joke at the expense of a group of people though that's like saying "all blacks are stupid" and then defending yourself with "it's a joke"...also i would like to point out that if you had actually READ my rebuttal you would see that i realized that it was a joke and that i actually even thought that some of it was funny and IN FACT even had a post-specific meme for identifying parts of the post which were only facecious and needed no rebuttal (it was FS by the way). you know what...nevermind
well your signature certainly seems to sum it up.
although some of this was funny (particularly the parts about armaments) it is still pretty flawed although i can see how libertarianism could be perceived this way to someone who never bothered to look into it so:
I present to you a response to the above-claims (this is a reposting of the original document in italics with comments inserted by me in bold:
Introduction
One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat". i have no response to this...sure i'll grant this one to you
This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!
Philosophy
* In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion. This is true also. Man did dwell in a state of nature or rather as every other animal in nature (research darwin for more on this). Beyond Darwin this is also true up through the hunter/gatherer periods of mankind where the only thing that mattered was survival of oneself and the species, however once groups became more important than the individual (ie: government) it became necessary to worry about a myriad of things other than just ones own well being, which effectively "tempted man into initial coercion."
* Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand. while not exactly true this isn't totally false either and i already explained this a little above
* We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang. Incorrect. Libertarians do not feel that anyone gets "lucky breaks" but they also do not feel that one should be given "breaks" the basic ideal is that if you work hard enough you can acheive whatever you desire and for someone to be given something that they did not earn is an afront to all of those who worked harder than that person. Also, not all Libertarians are "the meritorious few" in fact. I grew up in a very poor home and am to this day, quite broke.
* Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government. partially correct. government SHOULD not own things because government only exists to protect it's people from infringing upon one anothers rights, in order to perform this task, no ownership is needed.
* Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist. okay. this part as you well know is simply meant to be a facecious statement heralding the stupidity of libertarians, as there are quite a few statements like this one contained herein i shall heretofore comment on these simply with "FS"
* Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion. Do you want your parents to control your life? Do you want to turn out exactly like them? That's fine if you do hell it's your choice, but most of us would rather make our own decisions and then if we end up like our parents well, at least it was by choice and not by force.
* Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation. FS
* Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia.
Well it's been longer than a year since i last watched so maybe you just feel differently than i do on this subject. Seems to me that they literally echo the administration on most issues. You mention immigration policy well i'll buy that it seems that MOST of the republican members of the administration disagree with Bush about this. However on some other issues they're not quite as harsh take for instance when the wiretapping story broke, Fox news only spent a couple of minutes on it because they said that they wanted to get on to "more important issues" and then they did human interest stories all day. Like i said though, maybe we just disagree on this, i'm sure that it's a case of differing opinions and not a case of one person or the other being totally wrong probably the perception is just different from where i stand than it is for you. Although i will add one last thing. When i first started feeling that Fox news was completely biased, i had not yet heard anything from the other news sources or major media (or even any of my friends) about them being biased, it just seemed to me that they were. So while this may be a case of my position in life perceiving them as being biased it is at the very least (in my case) NOT a case of echoing the "liberal media" or towing the party line. (espeically since i'm a registered republican)
i can understand how you would come to that conclusion and i'm not sure if maybe there was some level of sarcasm in the statements that the aformentioned person made as i didn't see this particular interview. One thing that i will tell you is that you should judge for yourself. Sit down and watch hannity and colmes or the o'reily factor or just read the "fox facts" at the bottom of the screen during a normal news broadcast, to me it seems pretty well to just repeat everything that the republican administration says and never question anything but feel free to draw your own conclusions, after all, that's what freedom is all about.
for the most part i think that the amount of skepticism shown in your post is healthy. i just wanted to correct one thing.
although the bush administration has shown itself to be incompetent the NSA has not...in fact other than getting caught illegaly wire-tapping they've shown them selves to be pretty well infallible for instance with sept. 11th the intelligence was there it was just mishandled by other agencies and bobbled by the bush administration. point is that just because the bush administration wouldn't know what to do with this information if they got it, doesn't mean that i want the nsa to get it because later they may turn it over to someone who would.
okay apparently i'm in a mood to make suggestions today so:
...i don't even know what i'll do because it hurts my head so badly to think about it...probably my brain will just die out of despair for the human race and i'll become a vegetable.
I suggest a new meme: RTFP (READ THE FUCKING POSTS).
If i see one more post on here by someone who apparently doesn't seem to realize as has been pointed out NUMEROUS fucking times that what wired did was not illegal
I mean i understand that we can't read every single branch here, but at least skim through them. This issue has come up and been pointed out so many times that if you even read 5 or 6 posts before writing one then you were BOUND to run into it and on top of that RTFA also because it was in THERE TOO...
*breathes out slowly*....calm down...it's okay...sorry that got a little out of hand.
well you got the basic gist of it. and yes i agree it is best to target the lower half because the upper half is fickle due to their level of intelligence whereas the lower half value "loyalty" above almost all else since they are unable to choose right from wrong based on their on logical decisions.
and yes IQ is pretty useless in all actuality, in fact many of the people who i know with high IQ's are so focused on certain fields that they no longer are able to use that knowledge for what is known as "common sense", not really able to think objectively about anything other than their current obsession.
i really only attempted to make a point because you didn't say why you disagreed with his statement or why it was wrong, i think i managed to point out why it was wrong as well as why it was right though so i think we're done
Okay BOJ: I have to say that i usually enjoy your posts and this one is no exception BUT i have a point of order that i would like to address.
We ALL need to stop using the term "otherwise the terrorists win." Although it is a valid argument it is also a very flawed one. It IS and HAS BEEN (ever since 09/11/2001) a trite and uninspired regurgitation of fears that have already taken form.
The idea is that if we keep reminding each other what we should or should not do in order to keep the terrorists from winning then it will do some good. What does it mean for the terrorists to win though? If by changing our way of life they win (which is the implication inherent in the aformentioned statement) then it's too late, they have won and it's time that we all came to accept that fact. As soon as even ONE person feels threatened by terrorism or is in fear of a terrorist, whose purpose by definition is to instill terror, has succeeded. What we need to worry about is not whether or not the terrorists win in this regard, we need to worry about whether or not we will allow the victory that they have secured and the fear that they have instilled to cause us to be subjugated by those who will take advantage of it.
It is with this in mind that i suggest an alternate statement to replace "the terrorists win" and that is, "we are RULED by terror."
Hope you don't take offense to this BOJ. It's nothing personal your utterance of said statement just happened to be the straw that sent me into a fervor, your statements still ring true.
a couple of things...
i on/viewItem/itemID/11956. so...there's a bit of constructive criticism mixed with a bit of a pat on the back for not automatically assuming that what some /.'er said was correct.
#1: YES! 3/4's of the people are of average intelligence or higher. Now obviously this isn't EXACTLY true it would probably be more like 3/5's. Or if you want a VEEEEERY simplified breakdown you would just say HALF. But the basic breakdown remains the same (25% are severely below average, 25% are enormously above average and 50% are close enough to average that you may as well call them average). Obviously none of this pans out exactly if you were to take the I.Q.'s of everyone in the world and plot them on a graph. In that case you would find that they were spread pretty evenly but there would be more of them that congregated near the "average" point than anywhere else after all that's what makes it average. So if you want to be a math-snob about it then the statement is grossly incorrect but it works pretty well for simplification purposes.
#2: now here's the part that i agree with you on. I am unable to find any poll numbers that suggest that any large amount of the population is calling for the impeachment of the president (although i wouldn't be surprised to find out that they are). In fact the only poll that i've been able to find regarding this subject is one that was released by Fox news (which gives it a little less credibility due to the network that it came from) which states that 62 percent of people polled did NOT feel that Bush should be impeached : http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseact
if i had points i would mod you up. Thank the 13 hells that someone other than myself finally pointed out that left and right is incorrect. Not only that but went a step further and invoked the Nolan Chart....BRAVO!
*carbonautomotons faith in mankind grew 0.0000001 sizes that day*
I wouldn't exactly call it a ploy in this case.
Whereas the Scotsman example is using the "no true..." statement to describe a group of people who are only alike in their cultural heritage. The Conservative statement is using it to describe a group of people who all subscribe to the same political ideology and how said people would react to a certain situation which falls within the scope of ideals subscribed to by the group. It's really a very different situation than the way that you describe it.
Now that being said i'm kind of playing devils advocate here because i agree with what you're trying to accomplish in invalidating the "no true conservative" argument, just not the way that you went about it. The real reason why said argument is invalid in any discussion of current politics is because (as has been pointed out by many others on this board thus far) no classical or, for the purpose of continuity, "true" conservatives really exist as an actual tangible part of current U.S. politics.
Now i also agree with the original statement that started this debate in regard to their assertions about "true" republicans. Unfortunately, the fact that i agree that the statement is true does not mean that it holds any weight in the current topic of discussion or does any of us any good whatsoever (unless of course someone who was reading this just so happened to be in the market for a new political philosophy).
so by this line of logic there never should've been a published outing of the Watergate scandal. The information should've been turned over to republican members of some senate oversight committee (who stood to benefit from it), that way it is safely out of the public (the victim's) hands. Let's be honest. If the legislature has been voting on this then they are not victims. We are. A victim deserves to know what crime is being perpetrated against them. Oh yah not to mention that your argument has no bearing because (read the 70 or so other posts that mention this also for reference) the seal on these documents did not apply to the source of the documents. This means that the public (ESPECIALLY THE PRESS) is free to talk about it and disseminate it all they want.
Thank you drive through
i think you are confusing the issue a bit here actually. Did you READ the article that this thread is about? This isn't about collecting a list of phone numbers that someone dialed at all. It's about monitoring ALL of the specific data that is being transferred accross a network and collecting the information for the purposes of turning it over to a government agency. This isn't just about the information that a conversation occured, make no mistake about it...this IS about the content.
Now companies like AT&T and most other large companies who deal with information as well have internal rules regarding the transfer of proprietary information to outside agencies, governments, etc. any customer of theirs who knows about this would have an expectation of privacy and in my opinion that expectation would be entirely reasonable given the situation. Since AT&T is a multi-national corporation with (seemingly at least) no ties to the United States government, a reasonable person most likely would expect that what they do on the internet while it may not exactly be PRIVATE would at least not be given away freely by their ISP...in FACT
http://www.att.com/privacy/#protects
The above web-address is to AT&T's Privacy Policy. Please note in particular paragraph 13 under the heading "disclosure" where it states:
"AT&T will not sell, trade, or disclose to third parties any customer identifiable information derived from the registration for or use of an AT&T online service -- including customer names and addresses -- without the consent of the customer (except as required by subpoena, search warrant, or other legal process or in the case of imminent physical harm to the customer or others)."
Now since (as i'm sure you've heard in reports from the "liberal media") these programs were in existence outside of U.S. legality and without the issuing of a warrant, it is this citizens understanding that the dissemination of said material is in violation of AT&T's self imposed rules ala' the rights to privacy which they (apparently falsely) offer to their customers. I also feel that the very EXISTENCE of this statement in AT&T's "Privacy Policy" reinforces my earlier statements about a customers expectation of privacy when using AT&T to connect to the internet.
Now while it is yet to be determined whether or not AT&T actually gave any information to the government or if so what information they gave, to be more specific: was the information associated with the customers name etc. or was it a general bulk of information showing that *someone* had been visiting *such and such websites* and had been speaking to *so and so* about *blah blah blah.* Note that this kind of information would either be useless making this possibility bloody unlikely or would indirectly give up the information that is not supposed to be given away, in which case they may not have actually violated their agreement with the customer but they are most definitely not innocent due to their ethical violations. Anyway although the legality of the situation has yet to be determined the fact remains that there IS an expectation to privacy.
There are many other entries in that Privacy Policy that would lead one to believe that they DO have an expectation of privacy so feel free to peruse that at your leisure and then get back to me with your counter-argument after looking into your claims a little further before making them.
THANKS!
okay that argument was just silly. patients don't get turned away they just get charged directly for their care. if they can't pay in cash then they get billed for it just like it works now. this is a strawman. you're trying to change things that no one recommended changing in order to look my plan look like a failure.
unless i missed something in that cost analysis your assessment is...yup...it's wrong.
for further clarification RTFA page 10 under that big bold heading that says VALUE.
i'm not saying i'm sold on this cpu at all! BUT...if price is a deciding factor (which it is) i don't want you to think that the AMD automatically wins.
Further research shows a maximum buy it now price on ebay for the Core Duo T2600 is $400.00/U.S. While the Max buy it now price on ebay for the AMD Athlon 64 FX60 is $890.00/U.S. With a difference in price that is THAT large you can even buy the necessary motherboard for the T2600 and still come out cheaper. (that is just in case you wouldn't have to change your motherboard to upgrade to the FX60)
Granted as a scientific experiment simply checking the ebay prices is a relatively small sample group. However under these particular circumstances based on the price:power ratio the Intel chip wins BIG.
oh yah and most of those sound effects have been used in rap, usually as censoring material though (take wu tang's forever album whose censoring included, bees buzzing, random kung-fu-fight noises, women moaning, swords clashing together, etc.).
As I was reading this article and considering why this type of thing keeps coming up, a thought occured to me.
Does anyone else think that maybe it's possible that the reason lawmakers keep trying to pass these bills and actually seem to think that it's a good idea is a result of their age and not their political affiliation? I mean think about it, the majority of these people are over 40, they may have played pacman or even owned an atari 2600 at some point but video games were not as prevalent in their lives as they were in later generations. Now I'm not saying that there aren't people of their generation who play or who have always been active in the video game community but those tend to be people in lines of work that are more adjacent to gaming than politics are. I think that it's highly possible that the problem is that due to their age they still see video games as a toy instead of a legitimate entertainment device like the television. Maybe that is why they are so concerned about a video games effect on children. I mean think about it. If a toy (say an action figure) was marketed so that the character that it portrayed was a psycho-pathic gun wielding maniac (GI Joe excluded for obvious reasons) then there would definitely be a lot of public outrage about it even if it weren't marketed to children since the general public perception of action figures is that they are FOR children. I just think that these lawmakers can't imagine anyone EXCEPT a child playing a video game and thus assume that the industries are lying when they say that the game is not meant for children.
Just a thought. Anybody agree? Disagree?...I'm open to suggestions here.
so because all political scientists aren't anarchists then they are all ingrained in the system? that's a preposterous assumption. In fact most of the political science professors that i worked with believed that at least some parts of the anarchial system of government could be beneficial (although the disagreed on what specifically those were and where they would benefit society). I think that your problem with political scientists is that they formulate their own independent opinions on all issues rather than subscribing to one established governmental (or anti-governmental in this case) system with a blanket of ideas that they can pull from their party handbook.