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Comment Re: WSJ is owned by NewsCorp now, right? (Score 1) 231

If one side is lying and the other side is telling the truth, then the truth is not somewhere in the middle.

While that may be true in general, you seem to be making the unwarranted assumption that MSNBC is necessarily telling the truth. It's far more likely that both Fox and MSNBC are telling the truth about some bits, and lies about others and so "splitting the difference," or trying to take the most true(ish?) bits from each source would lead one closer to a balanced understanding of the topic at hand.

Don't fool yourself, both sides are full of shit, it's just different colors of shit.

Comment Re:Political hit job (Score 2) 102

Sure, the Clintons should just slink off into anonymity and let the Bush family take over the US, because the gop is saying mean things about them

You say that as if Hillary is the only possible Democratic candidate who could beat Jeb Bush. If anything, she's got less of a chance than some other candidate with less baggage and skeletons in the closet.

It's only mid-2016 and I'm already sick of this idea that Hillary is the inevitable candidate, let alone a shoe in for victory.

Comment Re:So, when has this not been true? (Score 1) 609

So you're saying (to paraphrase Dazed and Confused):

That's the thing I hate about niggers, man. I get older and they stay the same.

Gee, I wonder if you didn't start out a racist douche bag even before your glorious fiscally conservative transformation, because your dog-whistle bullshit (rioters, muggers, rapists, murders, ratchets) isn't fooling anybody.

Comment Re:One Assumption (Score 1) 609

Well he's not wrong, he just papered over the "wealth and family connections" with "etc." It makes more sense if you expand that out:

That would be supply and demand. Few people have the talent, drive, courage, wealth, and family connections to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but anyone with a pulse can push a broom.

Much better.

Comment Re: "If you have nothing to hide..." (Score 1) 203

It was also, incontrovertibly, a terrorist act. Does the the intent of that particular bit of civil disobedience out weigh the illegality of the act? If so, at what point to we draw the line between legitimate civil disobedience and outright terrorism? In that vein, what exactly, does this particular CVS have to do with race relations and the actions of the local Police? Is there some collusion between the Police and CVS that is causing Baltimore police to unfairly target specific racial groups?

Since the likely answer is "No", what then is the political benefit of looting CVS, given that we've already established that CVS had nothing whatsoever to do with the events that lead to the death of Mr. Gray.

I'm all for sticking it to the man, but the Men that run CVS are almost certainly not the same ones that have engendered an environment where Police abuse alleged perpetrators with impunity. Barring any involvement by the management of CVS in the culture of the local police, I can't see any logical reason why looting their stores is anything but opportunistic criminality that is trying to wield current events as a shield against obvious wrong doing.

Comment Re:They did this with Occupy Wall Street (Score 1) 203

And it appears lieing and misconstruing facts to someone's advantage is still in practice.

Because the Trail of Tears and other atrocities against "Native Americans" never happened.

Wrong or right, there were atrocities committed by the American government against Native peoples. Perhaps those acts were supported by a majority of the population. Doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Comment Re:They did this with Occupy Wall Street (Score 0) 203

You silly, misguided plebe. Those brave Corporate execs are the Job Creators that give your miserable existence and modicum of meaning. The malfeasance of the banking industry created some jobs, and therefore was right. The calculus is simple, Jobs Created > Public Harm. That's all Real Americans care about anyway, none of this prattle about Rights or Justice or any other Liberal twaddle.

Comment Re:truly an inspiration. (Score 1) 494

The best part about the so-called Rapture is that it isn't even biblical. It's just wishful thinking on the part of a particular strain of Baptist Christianity who thought it'd be awfully nice of God to let his most true followers (i.e., them) to skip out on all that nasty business of the Tribulation and Satan running amok. Guess those faithful transcribers of God's inerrant word, A.K.A, the Bible, just forgot to add that part in or something. I'm sure it was an oversight.

Comment Re:Not Brick (Score 1) 179

You can buy a replacement board, it takes like 5 minutes to pry the case open, remove a few screws, pull out a couple of ribbon cables and slap the new charging/headphone board in. I've had to do it twice now, on a pair of Nexus 7 2012's I got for my daughters. Of course, there's a good chance the replacement boards are getting the same problem...

Comment Re:DMCA in 3..2..1 (Score 1) 140

Because talking about making software that emulates "ancient" hardware is exactly the same as reimplementing, as closely as possible, an entire portion of a game which is still being sold. Not to mention redistributing said reimplementation.

Fail troll is fail.

Comment Re:How About (Score 1) 224

Autonmous features are already finding in their way into high end models, as we speak. Here's a self driving Mercedes. They're also advertising features such as automatic stopping of the vehicle if some obstruction appears in the road. Many mid to high end brands also advertise self-parking features, which would envolve many of the same "smarts" as needed for the car to drive itself. I'm no sage, I don't know how long it's going to take for autonomous cars to be mainstream. But given that these features are already appearing in high-end vehicles, it's only a matter of time before your crummy Ford Fiesta can do the same thing. And it's only a relatively small step from there to fully autonomous vehicles.

I would agree, however, that the legislature is going to drag their feet about legalizing these sorts of autonomous cars. I honestly don't know if my daughters are going to need to learn to drive or not, but a part of me can't help but feel like they probably wont. We may not be experiencing the technological singularity, but you've got to admit that the pace of technological development is moving faster and faster. It's folly to predict exactly what the future holds. That being said, I have little doubt that whatever forms the new technology takes, the desire for the modern security state to retain, or gain, control over unprecedented aspects of human existence will not be easily stopped.

Comment Re:How About (Score 1) 224

If your kids never learn to drive its likely either because they live in a dense urban area with good public transit or are too rich to drive themselves.

Well I can assure you neither of those are true, but if Google and Tesla are to be believed self driving cars are much nearer to reality than not.

These automatic driving features are already being rolled out by premium brands like Mercedes or BMW. I saw a commercial last night about a Mercedes that could stop itself if necessary. That's not to mention the self-parking features being added to the high-end models. Some of those features probably even find their way to the mid-range brands like Buick.

The self-driving car isn't going to be a "totalistic" phenomena, we're going to see more and more autonomous features added into "regular" cars, until at some point they become more autonomous than not. Perhaps you can press a button to take manual control, but the autonomous car revolution is upon us and cannot be stopped.

Comment Re:I dub all unswitchable hardware: disposable (Score 1) 362

Much better than their bank account getting siphoned.

Unless, of course, it's OEM's doing the siphoning. Surely they don't want cyber-criminals to get an edge on a protection racket they could themselves get evolved in. Let's charge premiums for CPU clock speed, maximum install-able RAM, etc. The possibilities are endless, and if the existing tablet/phone manufacturers are any indication, PC makers are lagging behind the extreme monetizing techniques available to a modern day PC maker.

Comment Re:I dub all unswitchable hardware: disposable (Score 3, Insightful) 362

Freedom is, in all aspects, "pining for the fjords." With regards to the manufactures of gadgets, it isn't in their interest to allow even the slightest bit of freedom. You can't install your own OS on the device you paid for, you can't install software that wasn't blessed by the prevailing curator of the local app store. We're moving towards a society in which you (as a consumer) don't own anything, it's leased or rented or provided "gratis", so long as you remain in accordance with whatever contractual terms they wish to impose. And before the Desktop centric crowd chimes in with "I own my box!", sure, you do now. But the current business practice is to retain ownership of everything and dole out access with as many restrictions as possible. It isn't that big of a leap to presume that sometime in the future you'll only be renting your motherboard, and may even have to pay extra to enable more memory access or "Premium CPU interconnects". Hell, you might be already! Have you read through the entirety of the terms of use provided with every component present in your machine? Do you really think Intel has your best interest at heart? These corporate scumbags can stuff end user agreements with whatever they want, knowing full well that practically no one is either going to read it, or have the financial means to fight it out in court.

Once the BIOS is locked down, why wouldn't manufacturers require extra payments for increased CPU throughput or maximum available RAM? Sure, your new mobo comes with slots for 64 GB, but it's only licensed for 16GB, any more requires an extra payment. These components are getting so sophisticated that bits and pieces of what used to be considered standard functionality, parts which were once hardwired, will be doled out as premium add-ons and DLC-like upgrades. There's nothing stopping them, it's only a matter of time before each and every aspect of the computing environment is held ransom by one company or another.

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