Jobber of the Week

This reminds me of the PBS Frontline brouhaha recently. PBS gave every station an uncensored copy with more violence, real f-words, etc, and told them they could air it at their own peril or air their silly little "war is heck" cutting job instead. Lastly, fuck Ted Whoever that I've never even heard of. The FCC cannot decide to go after cable. And no, Congress cannot tell the FCC to go after cable. The government is unable to go after cable because the court system has already stripped the government of this ability. Anybody saying they want to regulate indecency standards on cable is just blowing air or trying to get in with the family values crew.

There's a ton of people in this thread that are blaming the US needlessly. There's also a lot of people who are letting their overweening patriotism blind them from every single scenario. I've always been cold on the missile shield, although the emergence of rogue nations with big bombs has made me rethink my position on the issue, and I think everyone should do the same. However, I still retain my position against it, not because of the situation above but because of situations that may involve nations that aren't rogues. I think there may be a time where America is some how violent/corrupt/whatever enough in the world that it actually earns a bomb landing somewhere on the mainland. We are not, currently, at that point, or anywhere near it. I think that should be obvious, but I want to get it out of the way. But, all this talk about the bombing in Japan doing horrible things for people in the fallout zone but in the long run bringing about a positive change in the country are blind to the possibilities of this sort of move being necessary with the United States in the centuries of our descendants. I cannot trust the US, forever and into the future, to be always so just and right that it deserves to be the only invincible piece of property on the globe.

Actually Mike, I'm not really complaining so much about this, because if nothing else it's an investment to make sure we won't have problems in the future, just like you said. I'm talking about that whole Iraq boondoggle and it's "Oops, out of money, time to go ask Congress for billions again" thing. I'm not even speaking out so much against the war itself but how it was done, with us footing nearly the whole bill.

Like Microsoft did with WindowsXP, Adobe has put an online key authorization on Photoshop.

And yet he can barely speak on behalf of his own people without them wanting to throw shit at him. Wonder why that is? I don't know how much oil we use will come out of ANWR, but let's just use a nice number and say 10%. If we looked at all the things we use oil for and managed to come up with alternatives so that we're using 10% less oil, we wouldn't need to drill in ANWR at all.

This is encouraging news, but to address an issue... Why the fuck does MY money have to fund so much democracy, which is expensive either way you do it? Go find somebody else to bill the next time some people need to be liberated or nail it to the UN's door at night or something. Seriously, I know you like to make a big "so I guess the left DOESN'T care about human rights after all" thing about Iraq, and no, I don't care about human rights when it comes to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars that I must pitch in for, an estimate that does an injustice by itself in putting no value on the lives lost. That's why I'm so tired of this "America must place the throbbing cock of freedom in the vagina of every dictatorship we can find and shoot our wad of democracy" rhetoric. Fuck no, that's expensive. And of course, in the end, they will not use the money they charge for the war on paying off the war, but will buy some new toys, instead leaving us with an even higher national debt as they leave office. I guess this is a part of my larger complaint with government, but I'm just tired of letting them get away with it over and over again.

Never Scared >> Bring The Pain. "You motherfuckaaa! I hate this shit!"

Maybe you can cook something from..

Leo was a pretty good actor in the sense that I went into the film thinking "WTF he looks nothing like Hughes" and left the theater feeling like it didn't matter because he did a convincing job in every scene he was in. I agree that Scorsese deserves something, but I don't think this is the film he should be getting it for. He's done so much better before. This film has it's flawed moments, such as the flight of the Spruce Goose was played up as some far more dramatic and important even than it really was. I kind of got the feeling that they did that only because they lacked much of any other kind of climax.

And we're wondering why we're so disliked. Even if we don't announce a timetable for obvious reasons (i.e. terrorists pop out of the woodwork the day after) it'd be nice if I didn't feel like Washington was really flying blind without one.

Hey kids, let's play interpret the post! To say that terrorist attacks are a result of "Muslims hating freedom and democracy" is to say that you clearly have an unrealistic grasp of the world. If that were the case you'd be seeing attacks on places like Amsterdam and Sweden. Okay, fair enough. I'm including this piece simply because it sets the subject of the whole. In this case, terrorist attacks. Seriously, all it takes is a bit of research and rational thought. Western culture isn't they're cup of tea, but the most obvious issues Translation: "Sure, there's a culture boundary, but you forgot about these other important issues that spark terror attacks." Now, i'm not saying that all of their reasons are justified Translation: "I'm not saying each and every one of these reasons validates terrorism..." some are , some aren't Translation: "...But some of them do." but to totally ignore these issues and pass off terrorist attacks Translation: The subject hasn't moved from terror attacks since it started. In no way is that implied. You fail at English, since there's no other logical conclusion from that statement, even though you're going around and telling us what you really intended now. This is the beginning of the path that turned Kamui from irritating poster to hilarious punchline.

Buy.com is clearing out 40GB iPods w/ shipping for $350.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but OWNED. Hard. You almost never mentioned hating the West, C-Bacon. In fact, the few times you did mention it, you basically called it a scapegoat of the ignorant. While I'd agree with you on that fact, it was never the focus of your post beyond that point. You basically said that there are reasons and positions and opinions that validate terrorism. Now, you are furiously backstepping with the "what I really meant to say" routine. If history repeats itself, you will make a post in Hardcore Discussion about how you were playing us for fools and think we're all idiots anyway, before someone comes along and bans you.

Eric, all I'm saying about software is that iTunes is much more polished than a lot of the other players software. iRivers I don't really have a problem with. They definitely have their place as they make a lot of different kind of players and they're very compatable, even with Linux. Creative, last I checked, gives you software on the CD and if you don't have the CD you're dead in the water. There's a reason so many people are buying Notmad Explorer (very useful program if you have one of those players, btw.) Because Creative Labs has always been about decent hardware backed up by software that feels like amatuer night at the High School programming club. iRiver has it's place, Rio has carved out a niche of innovative tech adoption with Karma and will hopefully follow up with that innovation with Karma II or Chroma or whatever it's successor model being developed is. Sony screwed up with the ATRAC thing on their player, but now that they've finally come to reality it will be interesting to see what they create, and the kind of appeal their name attracts can't be ignored. Their first player, although a dud, had the kind of battery life that iPod owners would kill for. Dell and Creative, however, are just simply hanging onto the coattails of the others right now, AFAIC.

Holy crap, I'm shocked that Mike didn't pick up on the same vibe I did (that "some of these reasons justify terrorism" bit.) I thought it'd spawn at least two uses of "sub-human monkeys" and a surreal moment where we're both arguing the same side of an issue. Although the latter is still happening.

You're not saying that it's stupid to get kids interested in music, are you? I think I'm just misinterpreting though. It's a shame how many schools are losing music programs. Does it really matter? He's shooting at the wrong targets. He's going off against the children/teen media and it's marketing machine. This is really not the root of the problem. I mean, for the first page we were drawing comparisons and contrasts between the US and Japan. Now, exactly where is all this uneducational trash TV the kids are watching coming from? Last I checked, Hollywood had little to do with Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Power Rangers, and so many other fads that have come down the pipe in recent years. Now, I could point out on a map where it's all coming from, but that would be a little insulting to everyone's intelligence. And the kids in that source country manage to watch these shows, collect the toys, and while they're a bit more antisocial on the whole compared to ours, they don't test as bad as we do. So scratch that idea. Cerebus basically had it right in an earlier post. It's parents and it's the culture parents are raising their children in. Either you give them the leeway to slack or you breed an emotional complex where getting a C+ is an insult to your family and you should probably just put the bullet in your brain right now.

Power outlet. Only takes a couple hours. You only plug into the computer to transfer songs. It should be noted that Shuffle, being basically a tiny USB device with a line out jack, doesn't have any other method of charging. And with the new reduced price Minis, they've cut some costs by removing the AC adapter. Adapters are now only boxed in with the original full-size iPod designs (iPod & iPod Photo.)

Not really. Quality software, the most well-known and well-stocked music store, and in the low-end range there's not many formats that support higher quality formats than MP3 like AAC or lossless. That IS worth something, unless your only goal is to walk down the street and listen to the same 96Kbps Green Day MP3 that you downloaded from Kazaa.

Well, I give him the benefit of the doubt in that he probably said more and the article didn't print it. The wording in that passage, though, was kind of sad. It had a sense of "This would be a bad thing, and moreover it could play badly for us politically."

Exactly what reasons justify killing thousands of innocents that have little weight in setting the country's foreign policy actions? Inquiring minds want to know. I'm biting my nails over here in anticipation. Well, it's always good to know who your friends are, I guess...

Fuckin a. A broken clock really is right twice a day.

I am shocked, SHOCKED, that the Vatican statement had almost nothing to do with what's right in the eyes of the Lord but concern that political aftershocks may work against their agenda. Anyway, at least we can finally get on to the appeals courts now.

Normally, I wouldn't complain about such a post, but I've learned from Verne's previous posts that he's pretty conservative. The "if the parents don't want to, they shouldn't have to" attitude from the farthest right side of the arena always makes me laugh with it's irony. It's the parents' choice to say whether or not the plug is pulled and doctors and other people shouldn't have any say otherwise. Of course, if the subject some parents choose to pull the plug on is a fetus, then things turn 100% and the parents have no right to make this decision and someone else must speak up on behalf of those who can't speak for themselves.

Nice to see that our "post-September 11th world" of fear and irrational trust in the government as a safety net has cultivated such intelligent thought. I look with bemusement to the day when we're "spreading freedom" while not exercising any ourselves. Now I'm curious to see what the most educated countries are.

I had an Ecology teacher who was in a coma but still concious for several days. She described it as the most frightening thing in her life. Something about how you want to scream at people to not come to the conclusion that you're "gone" but no matter how hard you try you can't do anything. On the other hand, this woman's degenerative state is so bad that I think keeping her around is only prolonging the pain. Fuck Jeb Bush for trying to write laws to keep her around. Find a humane way to put her down and move on.