You mean in general, or inside the libertarian movement? because the former is almost certainly true, but the latter I doubt.
"Your thinking is rather shoddy. Discovery Channel is not "forced"--it's the profit motive and human nature at work. Congratulations, you've discovered one of the bad things humanity does."
You think that the threat of being bankrupted doesn't force them to do something, and accuse ME of shoddy thinking? Really? And congratulations, you got my point... humanity does shitty things, with or without a government.
"There's a difference between "asshole" injustice and "infringing on someone's rights" injustice. This is the case of the former. Most we can do in any really free system is inform others."
Actually, we could start running boycotts of the credit card companies and demand that they quit being such assholes. While we're at it, we should probably demand they end the practice of billing merchants for accepting cards and disallowing minimum purchase requirements. These are costs that should be paid by the people who actually profit when consumers use credit, specifically banks.
"Discovery also accepts advertising dollars from less-than-stellar businesses such as ones selling "detoxifiers" and crystals and other hocus-pocus shit... I was pretty struck when I saw some of the commercials they air."
And what alternative do you propose? should they just close up shop instead?
"So what, exactly, do you propose? Have a law be passed saying that credit card companies can't withdraw their support of a network if the network airs something critical of them? It sucks, but the simple fact is is that you can't expect a God or Government to come down and make everything all right."
If anything, I propose a boycott of Amex/Visa/MC. But thanks for putting words in my mouth.
"By the way, recall not too long ago the hackers of the Boston subway cards or whatever; that was the government doing pretty much the same thing--except, of course, it was threats of jail, not withholding money."
And we in Massachusetts have the power to change their minds by voting. When democratic governments do things the people dislike, they can be stopped with ease, but when major corporations do things the people dislike they cannot. Simple.
"People, or groups of them, will always be dicks in any system. To claim that libertarianism has a "major flaw" due to a human constant is really poor."
The major flaw isn't that the constant exists, the major flaw is that it does absolutely nothing to correct for that constant. Anarcho-communism has the same flaw, the main difference being that Libertarianism seeks to empower that constant, where Anarchism simply appears oblivious to it. Doing away with a controllable government for the sake of allowing an economic theory to run things instead is simple folly.
"The idea here is that there should not be anything resembling a profit motive behind your choice of candidate"
So defense and civil contractors must also be barred, as well as anybody in a regulated industry and certainly in an industry with subsidy programs in place. Also all government employees at any level which receives federal aid. pretty much, if you have a job, and the government has anything to do with that job, you mustn't vote for fear there will be a financial motive for you to do so. This blocks everyone from teachers to factory workers to lawyers to bankers to investors and pretty much everyone else as well from voting at all, with perhaps the sole exception of people who live purely off of the land and don't even touch money. I bet we'd start seeing a lot more politicians from Lancaster County.
What's my point? Stop trying to discriminate against voters with whom you disagree and couching it in terms of who "contributes' to society and who doesn't. All US citizens (except some convicted felons) get to vote, that's how it works, deal.
Not saying this is the case, as I don't live in Alaska and don't care, but if she's a lousy governor than it would make perfect sense for her Wikipedia page to focus on things she screwed up.
Honestly, if she is/was a good governor, then edit the page to reflect that, don't just bitch that the page is "unbalanced" because it doesn't spend an equal amount of words on her good points and bad points.
You missed the valid argument of the CC companies paying the bills. The CC companies aren't forced to advertise on Discovery, but Discovery IS forced, by virtue of having bills to pay, to seek advertising revenue from the CC companies. This is one of the major flaws in most libertarian and anarchist theories: government has no monopoly on tyranny or injustice.
Then burn it to DVD. The point is that if you need more than 16 gb of data storage you're either being really lazy or doing things that put you well outside the needs of a normal user.
Given the number of/.ers who will cut your balls off for suggesting that setting up redundant off-site back-ups for your personal porn collection might be overkill, it's surprising that nobody seems to think even *having* 16gb of data on your disk is a terrible idea, let alone scoffing at the idea you don't need a whole lot more.
Yeah, actually it is. And if it isn't, you can just swap out one for another. Or you could store your hundreds of hours of anime you only watch once a year on a big ol' external HDD. Heck, you could probably just let it live in the BitTorrent cloud where you got it all in the first place; it's not like you'll never have broadband again.
So I take it that you already own your home for which you paid cash, and you never intend to purchase or rent another for the rest of your life. You also, apparently, have no need to ever take on any sort of student loan for yourself or (perhaps future) family. You must also have an extremely high paying job from which you simply cannot be fired and which you will never wish to leave (surprise surprise, a lot of employers use credit checks to see if you're "responsible") as well as a tremendous amount of liquid assets in reserve and a healthy investment portfolio (must be almost all foreign investments) which can adequately provide for you on the off chance that you are sick or injured or retired and lose your primary cash flow.
If the above is true, then two things follow: you actually might not need credit, and you're so far from being a normal American/European/human that your opinion on this subject honestly doesn't count. On the other hand, if the above is untrue, then you are quite mistaken about the value of your credit rating.
"We should be thrilled that there is a country that is so messed up that people are willing to come here and travel from place to place, season to season and do hard work, even for decent pay."
We seem to agree on the most important part. Now how do we convince those Minuteman idiots?
Fine, if you want to hit people like nation states you can... just be sure to follow the treaties into which our Congress has lawfully entered (which are, per the Constitution, binding as the law of the land) with regard to how you do so. The administration is trying to call the prisoners criminals when challenged that they are not following international law on POWs, and trying to call them POWs when challenged that they aren't treating them in accordance with Constituional law as criminals.
So far they've managed to hide behind the Orwellian term "unlawful enemy combatant", which blurs the line between "criminal" and "enemy combatant" while supposedly dodging both terms which would force the application of a set of existing law. This is a morally and legally indefensible course of action, but they've managed to stall the opposition for a couple of years by crafting the rules such that they are virtually impossible to challenge (it's awfully hard to use a Constitutional defense when you are never put on trial, let alone allowed to speak to a lawyer, and our court system can do little in a case which has never come to court or appeared in public record) and fighting even the smallest challenges tooth and nail. That it will fail is inevitable, and everyone (well, everyone who matters) has known it since the beginning, but in the mean time...
Yes, I too demand the right to work in a shit-hole factory making cheap plastic junk for $2 an hour. Damn Disney for offshoring that portion of their business!
Oh, and all those illegal immigrants are snapping up high-paying jobs in the fields of picking fruit and washing dishes. Those are some of the best wages around, just check out the minimum wages for agricultural and restaurant (tipped, but one might be surprised how often the exact details of how this is calculated can be ignored) work. Through the roof! I will not rest until all real Americans are guaranteed the right to work shitty jobs that nobody wants for money that might as well bear the top-hatted Monopoly guy for all that it's worth just like those border-jumping furiners!
Nothing, unless you're an ableist bigot who only values people who aren't otherly-abled. Gimp is kind of like the n-word for cripples.
That's why I use it so much, at heart I am just such an ableist bigot because cripples piss me off. "Wah, this random building isn't wheelchair accessible, somebody pay a couple million dollars to acommodate me!" "Well, the problem seems to be just a short staircase going down, I'm pretty sure we can get you down those..." *kick*
Yes, I know, I'm kharmically guaranteeing that my children will be paraplegics and I will develop a terrible degenerative disease and be confined to a wheelchair. Such is the price of humor.
"I was thinking they'd be a viable alternative to mercury-filled CCFL's."
They still are, and truth be told CCFLs, despite containing mercury, are a viable alternative to incandescents which aren't exactly made of sunshine and pixy dust. The real problem is that we expect to just be able to throw everything in a bucket, ship it off to the dump and never have to worry or think about it again. That has never been a reasonable thought, but we're just starting to figure that out now. When the expectation is impossible to achieve, you shouldn't be surprised by disappointment.
In the mean time, I'd suggest not crushing up and snorting your LEDs, because even if the cancer doesn't kill you, I'm sure that the deadly poisons and glass fragments will.
Yes, chickens are dumb. That has little to no relevance to whether magpies are smart because they aren't the same species.
Some birds (corvids, parrots, ) ARE quite smart, some (chickens, domesticated turkeys) are much less smart. Similarly, some mammals (dolphins, chimpanzees) are very intelligent, while others (manatees, people who enjoy country music) are notoriously stupid.
It also comes in boxes. And if you're REALLY lucky and in a country where refrigeration is just becoming widespread so theequipment is still somewhat expensive and difficult to find, it even sits out on a shelf.
It honestly took me three days to figure out where the fuck Costa Rican grocery stores keep the milk.
Probable cause is actually the bar set for the lowest grade of warrant, so yes, they do in fact need a warrant to search your vehicle. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either wrong or lying. You are correct in listing what qualifies as probable cause, however, because all of those behaviors/observations are consistent with a crime being committed (the exception being that swerving is generally considered to be probable cause to pull somebody over, but without further cause a sobriety test is usually not permitted; there are legitimate reasons a driver could swerve).
The real problem is that some areas will actually set up de facto road blocks and demand to search random cars on the suspicion of nothing in particular. This is patently illegal, and every person who simply allows an unreasonable search of their effects without cause makes the problem worse.
Slashdot Mirror
"few think libertarianism would be a utopia."
You mean in general, or inside the libertarian movement? because the former is almost certainly true, but the latter I doubt.
"Your thinking is rather shoddy. Discovery Channel is not "forced"--it's the profit motive and human nature at work. Congratulations, you've discovered one of the bad things humanity does."
You think that the threat of being bankrupted doesn't force them to do something, and accuse ME of shoddy thinking? Really? And congratulations, you got my point... humanity does shitty things, with or without a government.
"There's a difference between "asshole" injustice and "infringing on someone's rights" injustice. This is the case of the former. Most we can do in any really free system is inform others."
Actually, we could start running boycotts of the credit card companies and demand that they quit being such assholes. While we're at it, we should probably demand they end the practice of billing merchants for accepting cards and disallowing minimum purchase requirements. These are costs that should be paid by the people who actually profit when consumers use credit, specifically banks.
"Discovery also accepts advertising dollars from less-than-stellar businesses such as ones selling "detoxifiers" and crystals and other hocus-pocus shit... I was pretty struck when I saw some of the commercials they air."
And what alternative do you propose? should they just close up shop instead?
"So what, exactly, do you propose? Have a law be passed saying that credit card companies can't withdraw their support of a network if the network airs something critical of them? It sucks, but the simple fact is is that you can't expect a God or Government to come down and make everything all right."
If anything, I propose a boycott of Amex/Visa/MC. But thanks for putting words in my mouth.
"By the way, recall not too long ago the hackers of the Boston subway cards or whatever; that was the government doing pretty much the same thing--except, of course, it was threats of jail, not withholding money."
And we in Massachusetts have the power to change their minds by voting. When democratic governments do things the people dislike, they can be stopped with ease, but when major corporations do things the people dislike they cannot. Simple.
"People, or groups of them, will always be dicks in any system. To claim that libertarianism has a "major flaw" due to a human constant is really poor."
The major flaw isn't that the constant exists, the major flaw is that it does absolutely nothing to correct for that constant. Anarcho-communism has the same flaw, the main difference being that Libertarianism seeks to empower that constant, where Anarchism simply appears oblivious to it. Doing away with a controllable government for the sake of allowing an economic theory to run things instead is simple folly.
"The idea here is that there should not be anything resembling a profit motive behind your choice of candidate"
So defense and civil contractors must also be barred, as well as anybody in a regulated industry and certainly in an industry with subsidy programs in place. Also all government employees at any level which receives federal aid. pretty much, if you have a job, and the government has anything to do with that job, you mustn't vote for fear there will be a financial motive for you to do so. This blocks everyone from teachers to factory workers to lawyers to bankers to investors and pretty much everyone else as well from voting at all, with perhaps the sole exception of people who live purely off of the land and don't even touch money. I bet we'd start seeing a lot more politicians from Lancaster County.
What's my point? Stop trying to discriminate against voters with whom you disagree and couching it in terms of who "contributes' to society and who doesn't. All US citizens (except some convicted felons) get to vote, that's how it works, deal.
Not saying this is the case, as I don't live in Alaska and don't care, but if she's a lousy governor than it would make perfect sense for her Wikipedia page to focus on things she screwed up.
Honestly, if she is/was a good governor, then edit the page to reflect that, don't just bitch that the page is "unbalanced" because it doesn't spend an equal amount of words on her good points and bad points.
You missed the valid argument of the CC companies paying the bills. The CC companies aren't forced to advertise on Discovery, but Discovery IS forced, by virtue of having bills to pay, to seek advertising revenue from the CC companies.
This is one of the major flaws in most libertarian and anarchist theories: government has no monopoly on tyranny or injustice.
Then burn it to DVD. The point is that if you need more than 16 gb of data storage you're either being really lazy or doing things that put you well outside the needs of a normal user.
Given the number of /.ers who will cut your balls off for suggesting that setting up redundant off-site back-ups for your personal porn collection might be overkill, it's surprising that nobody seems to think even *having* 16gb of data on your disk is a terrible idea, let alone scoffing at the idea you don't need a whole lot more.
Yeah, actually it is. And if it isn't, you can just swap out one for another. Or you could store your hundreds of hours of anime you only watch once a year on a big ol' external HDD. Heck, you could probably just let it live in the BitTorrent cloud where you got it all in the first place; it's not like you'll never have broadband again.
So I take it that you already own your home for which you paid cash, and you never intend to purchase or rent another for the rest of your life. You also, apparently, have no need to ever take on any sort of student loan for yourself or (perhaps future) family. You must also have an extremely high paying job from which you simply cannot be fired and which you will never wish to leave (surprise surprise, a lot of employers use credit checks to see if you're "responsible") as well as a tremendous amount of liquid assets in reserve and a healthy investment portfolio (must be almost all foreign investments) which can adequately provide for you on the off chance that you are sick or injured or retired and lose your primary cash flow.
If the above is true, then two things follow: you actually might not need credit, and you're so far from being a normal American/European/human that your opinion on this subject honestly doesn't count. On the other hand, if the above is untrue, then you are quite mistaken about the value of your credit rating.
Oh yeah! I guess that without the *blinks* in "*blink* It's *blink* not a *blink* gim*blink*mick! *blink* *blink*" I missed it.
That has to be one of the best penis pill ad spoofs I've ever read. Kudos on that classy rewrite.
My only question is where the reasonably attractive blond chick who blinks too damn much comes in.
Worse than that. They're outside. In the wild.
Jiggawatt transmission is easy, trivial even. it just takes the proper application of flux capacitors.
"We should be thrilled that there is a country that is so messed up that people are willing to come here and travel from place to place, season to season and do hard work, even for decent pay."
We seem to agree on the most important part. Now how do we convince those Minuteman idiots?
Actually yes, you just need to find the right babes.
Fine, if you want to hit people like nation states you can... just be sure to follow the treaties into which our Congress has lawfully entered (which are, per the Constitution, binding as the law of the land) with regard to how you do so. The administration is trying to call the prisoners criminals when challenged that they are not following international law on POWs, and trying to call them POWs when challenged that they aren't treating them in accordance with Constituional law as criminals.
So far they've managed to hide behind the Orwellian term "unlawful enemy combatant", which blurs the line between "criminal" and "enemy combatant" while supposedly dodging both terms which would force the application of a set of existing law. This is a morally and legally indefensible course of action, but they've managed to stall the opposition for a couple of years by crafting the rules such that they are virtually impossible to challenge (it's awfully hard to use a Constitutional defense when you are never put on trial, let alone allowed to speak to a lawyer, and our court system can do little in a case which has never come to court or appeared in public record) and fighting even the smallest challenges tooth and nail. That it will fail is inevitable, and everyone (well, everyone who matters) has known it since the beginning, but in the mean time...
Yes, I too demand the right to work in a shit-hole factory making cheap plastic junk for $2 an hour. Damn Disney for offshoring that portion of their business!
Oh, and all those illegal immigrants are snapping up high-paying jobs in the fields of picking fruit and washing dishes. Those are some of the best wages around, just check out the minimum wages for agricultural and restaurant (tipped, but one might be surprised how often the exact details of how this is calculated can be ignored) work. Through the roof! I will not rest until all real Americans are guaranteed the right to work shitty jobs that nobody wants for money that might as well bear the top-hatted Monopoly guy for all that it's worth just like those border-jumping furiners!
"comparing the two is like comparing an Audi TT with your mom's Volkswagen"
I'd much rather drive a swank Jetta than a TT. Just saying.
At level 40 it is safe to assume you are the biggest baddest smuggest prick motherfucker around.
Besides, what if you're trying to out-dance Gimpus the God of Wobbling?
Nothing, unless you're an ableist bigot who only values people who aren't otherly-abled. Gimp is kind of like the n-word for cripples.
That's why I use it so much, at heart I am just such an ableist bigot because cripples piss me off. "Wah, this random building isn't wheelchair accessible, somebody pay a couple million dollars to acommodate me!" "Well, the problem seems to be just a short staircase going down, I'm pretty sure we can get you down those..." *kick*
Yes, I know, I'm kharmically guaranteeing that my children will be paraplegics and I will develop a terrible degenerative disease and be confined to a wheelchair. Such is the price of humor.
"I was thinking they'd be a viable alternative to mercury-filled CCFL's."
They still are, and truth be told CCFLs, despite containing mercury, are a viable alternative to incandescents which aren't exactly made of sunshine and pixy dust. The real problem is that we expect to just be able to throw everything in a bucket, ship it off to the dump and never have to worry or think about it again. That has never been a reasonable thought, but we're just starting to figure that out now. When the expectation is impossible to achieve, you shouldn't be surprised by disappointment.
In the mean time, I'd suggest not crushing up and snorting your LEDs, because even if the cancer doesn't kill you, I'm sure that the deadly poisons and glass fragments will.
Yes, chickens are dumb. That has little to no relevance to whether magpies are smart because they aren't the same species.
Some birds (corvids, parrots, ) ARE quite smart, some (chickens, domesticated turkeys) are much less smart. Similarly, some mammals (dolphins, chimpanzees) are very intelligent, while others (manatees, people who enjoy country music) are notoriously stupid.
It also comes in boxes. And if you're REALLY lucky and in a country where refrigeration is just becoming widespread so theequipment is still somewhat expensive and difficult to find, it even sits out on a shelf.
It honestly took me three days to figure out where the fuck Costa Rican grocery stores keep the milk.
Q: How do you say 'goddamn idiot" in two words without just saying it?
A: "Anonymous Coward"
RTCW is not the original game. It's a sequel that was made about 10 years after the original.
The original was awesome for its time, and I'm not sure it's really fair to judge it against HL or other MUCH more modern games.
Probable cause is actually the bar set for the lowest grade of warrant, so yes, they do in fact need a warrant to search your vehicle. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either wrong or lying. You are correct in listing what qualifies as probable cause, however, because all of those behaviors/observations are consistent with a crime being committed (the exception being that swerving is generally considered to be probable cause to pull somebody over, but without further cause a sobriety test is usually not permitted; there are legitimate reasons a driver could swerve).
The real problem is that some areas will actually set up de facto road blocks and demand to search random cars on the suspicion of nothing in particular. This is patently illegal, and every person who simply allows an unreasonable search of their effects without cause makes the problem worse.
You are correct that you were modded inappropriately, but I think the reason is that there's no "-1 clearly has no sense of humor" mod.
Pointing out inaccuracies (especially ones that depend largely on perspective) in jokes just makes you look like a douche.