>what the hell is shampoo?

Fake doodoo.

To be pedantic, though...

As Red Dwarf references go, that one is not so obscure. Or maybe you meant read Dwarf was obscure itself.

Anyway. Anyone not familiar with Red Dward should make sure to google red dwarf torrent. It's the greatest thing since sliced monty python.

Too lazy (or whateve - I don't actually believe people are lazy as much as I think they feel more or less angst about doing things) to ... now I forget what I was too lazy for. Anyway.

Isn't this old news? Didn't I hear German Mc Schnizel rant about this issue a week or more ago and wasn't he saying that it's just a website that is down due to not having funding for the website or whatever, while ftp servers and things were chugging along as they always had been?

So no need to panic. Slackware is slackware and don't need no stinking websites, but could possibly use some donations for renting a webserver for people who like that kind of thing to look at.

Who's gonna grab the power left behind by a shrinking government, though? The ones that all ready own the big government. That's who.

So making government bigger is worse if it isn't one of, for and by the people. But making it smaller won't help, either. Corporations will get even more direct power and corporations are not even the slightest bit democratic.

Government needs to be made better. More decentralized direct power to the people. In the short to medium turn that doesn't seem very plausible.

Maybe one should just go out and fuck shit up.

>Personally, I use the word "painkiller" a lot. When asked about specific types I say Ibuprofen, Aspirin or Paracetamol.

Aspirin? ASPIRIN !?! That's acetylsalicylic acid, damn you!

This.

(also what I said somewhere in this discussion, but mainly this.)

True.

And the submitter should beware not to drown any spark the nephew thinks he may have. Therefore, it is very important to try to understand where the kid is coming from and where he wants to go.

Maybe programming can be it, but it might be some other, more general interest in computers, if the kid isn't quote clear on what programming is.

Explore with your nephw. If it turns out programming was not exactly what the kid will find interesting, at least you might be able to teach him to be a power user. Or if the nephew decides on pretty much any other interest, you could probably still help him get the most out of a computer to pursue whatever it is he might find a passion for.

Nowadays a computer (and perhaps even some custom app you design together) could be useful even if the kid wants to be a ballet-anthropologist, drag queen or beekeper or whatever.

A better "screen" would be one that was all about the haptic, that consisted of thousands of tiny tiny rods that would pertrude to form shapes. A rod for a pixel.

Is there anything like that? How would it be done? How ridiculously prohibitively expensive would it be?

But how about Juan Carlos?

And if not blatantly criminally sadistic fascists or behaving otherwise illegally, what bothers me in everyday dealings with cops or guards or bouncers is their bullying attitude.

It doesn't apply to all of them, of course, and even the asshole ones may behave nicely to people that look like upstanding members of the community on the right side of legality.

But asshole behaviour is too widespread.

They could enforce their rules calmly, respectfully and courteously, but they don't. They enjoy giving their treatment of their fellow citizen that extra authoritarian bullying quality, even if just by conveing that attitude in their tone of voice or by snyde remarks.

>Somebody who spuriously throws unfounded accusations of racism is just as reprehensible as a racist.

I don't know... I think a racist is worse.

And while maybe not the shoe-in lock of the week play, claiming that racism is showing in the statement that minority pupils should have their education provided by members of the majority in the language of the majority, doesn't strike me as a taking a wild chance at impossible odds either.

Perhaps a more sensible retort would be something along the lines of:

"Oh dear! I'm not very knowledgeable about learning and the enormous privilege of my belonging to the majority language, class, ethnicity and culture has blocked my view in such major ways that I inadvertently come off as possibly a bit racist. I wouldn't want that. Thank you for calling me out, it will help me become a better person. I stand corrected."

>The quickest way to learn...is to have people in schools speak it to you all day till you get it.

I don't know... Wouldn't it be more efficient and quicker if someone could tell me in my own language what an english word means than for me to be talked english at until I get it?

Sure, there are benefits of being "submerged" in another language, and there is a place for that in learning a language, but on its own, I don't think it's the quickest way to learn.

>is the union there to protect careers or ensure quality education?

A teachers union would be there to drive the interests of the teachers, I presume.

Teachers, by the nature of their calling, may often be intersted in the quality of education, of course, and many of those teachers might be against having washed out bored collegues around, the kind that are plowing the path of least resistance through their workdays without any inspiration whatsoever.

The union is for those tired teachers too, though, so if a teachers career was at odds with the quality of education, the job of the member of the union probably would and should trump the quality of education, as far as the union is concerned.

Not their fault, but very convenient for them.

It is wondrous system, funneling money upwards to the owners of the world by means of voluntary association of the poor in China and everyone in between.

And you can make it too. With a dream, some hard work and sticktoitiveness, you too can be a multinational megacorporation and bazillionaire.

The playingfield is not level, though, so in general, the richer you allready are, the more likely you are to make even more money in the babylon system.

If you have the nerve to be ruthless, not hesitating to trample down your fellow earthicans in the climb up, up, up the ziggurat, you'll have an edge.

Good Luck!

>Maybe if Google and MS duke it out enough, all of their little wrong-doings will get pointed out, fixed, and society may actually advance!

Interesting point and probably true to some extent, but I can't help but think of R and D of american politics. They'll bash each other over certain things, but many things they do agree on silently (like having a 2-party system, probably, for example) and those things will not improve.

They may be different in many ways and one may be better or worse than the other, but in many ways they both suck profoundly, from certain perspectives.