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Comment Re:beacon of freedom (Score 4, Informative) 266

It is really telling that the ATF gave over 2500 guns to Mexican drug cartels, and no one from the ATF, DOJ, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the IRS targeted political opponents during an election year, and no one from the IRS, DOT, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that Obama campaign donors at Solyndra got $500,000,000 of tax payer money, promptly went bankrupt, and no one from the DOE is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the Fed prints $75,000,000,000 a month, totaling over $4,000,000,000,000 in the last 5 years, and no one from the fed is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the president himself breaks the PPACA on a daily basis by announcing parts he will be temporarily or permanently not enforcing, and he's not sitting in jail.

Wow, that's a fun list. I count 3... 4? outright lies, 4 completely made up scandals, 1 thing taken completely out of context, several words that don't mean what you think they mean, and a complete lack of understanding as to how civics works.

It's always fun to debunk these kinds of lists, because I always learn something new, usually something that makes me proud of what our country is doing.

The only sad thing is that it takes me hours and the people posting them will either blindly ad hominem them ("YOU LINKED DAILYKOS THAT MEANS YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD~!~!"), call me a "liberal commy fagg 'MERICA hater", or ignore me and go right back to posting about how Obama was raised by Karl Marx on the Socialist Moonbase on the dark side of Mars or something. Or go back to quoting from the sites those guys run. Same difference, really.

Anyway, lets go!

1. Fast and Furious was made up. The entire thing was based on one right wing ATF source, who was discovered to be lying. It has been debunked so often that even the actual GOP doesn't mention it, only ultra-far right idiots in the Tea Party talk about it nowadays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/irs-scandal-democratic-acorn_n_3785717.html

2. Ditto for the IRS scandal, which was also made up. Darrel Issa asked the investigator to ignore the fact that the IRS was looking at all groups claiming to be charities, as they are REQUIRED TO DO BY LAW, and merely provide him talking points on Republican ones. The real scandal? The IRS failed to notice 10 out of 11 of the Koch brothers fake charities were fake charities. You'll note that Issa doesn't even bother talking about this one anymore, he's too busy trying to use Benghazi to kneecap President Hilary Clinton before her 2016 victory.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/26/1219172/-Here-s-how-Darrell-Issa-manufactured-the-IRS-scandal

3. Solyndra's loan was one of Bush's projects, not Obama's, and there's a HUGE difference between George Kaiser (a billionaire who raised a whopping 50-100k for Obama) and the Kaiser Family Foundation (a charity he started). There's a whole boatload more of made up crap about Solyndra, it's a very transparent manufactured scandal to try and drive us away from Solar and Wind technologies -- because oil will never run out or anything. I'll just leave this link as an exercise to the reader:
http://ourfuture.org/20120926/the-phony-solyndra-solar-scandal

4. Literally not true. The "Fed prints $75,000,000,000" is such a common meme that there are so many Tea Party sites shatting it out that it's hard to discover it's source. Took a while, but I found it - The fed is buying back a bunch of T-Bonds and Mortgage Bonds at the rate of 75 billion a month as part of the stimulus package, but that's not "printing money." The Feds have a FAQ entry up on it here, for those who don't roll their eyes at the idea of believing what "the man" tells you.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/money_12853.htm

5. Yes, since the law is currently suffering intentional sabotage from the GOP, parts of it are working sub-optimally. So various agencies -- not "the president himself," what, do you think he's running around like Dr. Claw dictating things? -- have elected not to enforce the law until the situation improves. This isn't illegal or even wrong. Or do you really want to be the one that needs to let Bush know he's in deep doo doo for telling the EPA not to enforce any environmental laws and regulations?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-massive-republican-ca_b_4311424.html

So there we go. 5 non scandals -- either outright made up bullshit (1, 2, 3) or a complete and possibly intentional misstating of the situation (4, 5).

Comment It wasn't to punish someone who wouldn't endorse (Score 2, Informative) 266

It wasn't to punish someone who wouldn't endorse him. That's just a flashpoint scandal, nothing big. I half suspect it to be one that's being sent out intentionally to exhaust the media's attention before the real scandal starts getting out.

Basically he screwed over some Democratic Judge, and the Dems in his area announced they would be very critical of a Republican Judge that was coming up for reconfirmation in retaliation, so he pulled the same screwjob on that Republican Judge to prevent her from being questioned by the Dems. The next day he pulled the bridgegate crap in the home district of the head Democrat.

Rachel Maddow has done all the work and has an interview with said head Dem.

Or you could turn to Fox News, where somehow it was Obama's fault because Benghazi.

Comment Re:Finally... (Score 3, Insightful) 207

They also own their version of Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water and Kimba, the White Lion.

Just a reminder that Disney doesn't just shamelessly steal from American folklore and then try to lock it up forever; they are quite happy to steal from other cultures too.

Keep this in mind in a few years when Disney tries to find a way to loophole their way into retaining ownership of the original Steamboat Willie -- which, if I'm understanding this ruling, Disney can no longer keep perpetually copyrighted through bribing congress.

Comment Re:Enough (Score 0) 224

I appreciate what Snowden is saying, but perhaps fewer narcissistic platitudes and more documents on the front pages? Snowden isn't Jesus, the more he toots "It's not about me", the more it becomes about him

It IS all about him. Him and his agent, Greenwald.

Snowden doesn't give two squirts of piss about what he found, merely that it got him the attention he felt he deserved. In addition, there were only so many cases of Greenwald pulling the "The Goverment could (possibly in my deranged mind) wiretap all phonecalls! Now, without any evidence at all, lets talk about this newly established fact that the Government is somehow tapping all phone calls, everywhere."

Follow that up with Greenwald acting like an AOL troll circa 1990 to anyone who calls him out on his bullshit (seriously, watch his twitter feed, it's like watching an 8 year old playing Journalist) and his "newspaper," The Guardian editing articles without retractions when they realize just how full of shit he is, and, well...

In a few years we'll all realize Greenwald and Snowden are mostly full of shit, for the time being, they make interesting sock puppets for the InfoWar style conspiracy nuts amongst us.

Comment Re:Kunta Kinta Speaks His Thougts and the World + (Score 2) 211

Because he spent 10 seasons of TNG wearing a more advanced (and less stylish) Google Glass.

Dude, this is Slashdot. You're going to get crucified for that imprecision.

7 seasons of TNG + 4 movies.
Generally accepted episode count: 178

Real fans get the precision down to the number of lines of dialogue, percentage of total screentime, or number of minutes (out to two decimal places), you insensitive clod!

Comment Re:Oh god (Score 4, Insightful) 279

Lets not forget a major part of this panic is due to old manufacturing companies starting to realize that if we can print something for 5 cents, then why would we pay $5 for it?

While we're not at that point yet, we certainly will be in 5 years. In 10-15 years, we'll be able to print iPods. Once that happens... why buy an iPod, when you can download a crowd-engineered alternative that's better and cheaper?

I expect some form of faux outrage to ramp up and 3D printing to be banned or seriously restricted soon. It's too disruptive for us us mere plebeians to be allowed to have.

Comment Re:What stops people from redistribution? (Score 2) 97

Does Viz release these shows in DRM-free downloadable formats? I'd imagine not. So even that one falls under the convenience category.

Only very rarely is media released in DRM-free downloadable formats. Baen Ebooks, Tor/Forge, and Louis CK's shows are the most popular examples I know of, but it is very rare. I can think of no broadcasted or cable television show that allows it.

I was actually speaking of the comics, not the cartoons. The great unforgivable sin was that Viz wanted something like $0.25 a chapter and had a 2 week delay (which has since been lowered to same day) release lag. The "pro-piracy" arguments were hilarious, and stupid.

Or as I said before -- blubbering, entitled Manchildren. Especially when you consider the company they're defending, NOEZ, has made a fortune ripping off Japanese and US IP for years now.

Anyway, DRM is no excuse. If a company wishes to sell you something with some restrictions, well, that's their right. It might be considered wrong, but oh well. That's where we're at as a culture right now -- casual theft has led to the point where companies have to put at least a token effort into protecting their goods.

It does not mean people have the right to steal it just to spite them.

Comment Re:What stops people from redistribution? (Score 0) 97

The honour system. Bittorrent users would never pirate music from independent artists, they only go after labels' output where the economics don't favour the artist or the consumer.

Stop laughing.

You laugh, but to be fair, when things are readily available digitally, piracy does drop off quite a bit.

Yes, there's always going to be cuntrags that bitch -- the whining blubbering mass of entitled manchildren that cry every time Viz shuts down another Naruto / One Piece / Bleach piracy site being the example that immediately comes to mind -- but for the most part, people pirate not because they don't want to pay, it's because they want convenience.

Relevant Oatmeal link.

Comment Re:There is no standard. (Score 3, Interesting) 166

A major problem with Pandora is you never hear, in theory, anything you dislike -- but also never hear anything NEW, you MIGHT like, either.

I remember about a year, maybe two, ago there was discussion about Google and Bing and the like "censoring" your search results -- tailoring them to news sources and (this is the big one) ideologies that it thought you were a part of, due to their data mining.

This created a minor bubble, a lesser kind of the bubble you see Fox News (or god forbid, Infowars) followers stuck in. This is a disaster in the making when dealing with news, but it's also pretty darned bad when talking about entertainment.

For example, I use Pandora for stand up comedy. I have a station for each comedian, and the new shuffle thing at least mixes things up. But I never hear comedians other than the X number of stations I have +/- a few more, give or take a rare playing of some odd or new comedian.

Contrast this with playing a comedy radio station, an actual radio station, one where the music is all set by a DJ or a "impartial" randomization routine. Will I hear stuff I dislike? Probably. Will I hear new stuff I wouldn't have heard on Pandora? Absolutely.

I don't know how to fix that particular problem. Maybe Pandora should allow for an option where for an hour a day, or at random, it goes into "Pandora Power Hour" where it loosens up the algorithms and intentionally makes you listen to things you might not have known you liked? Not sure.

Comment Re:Proud? (Score 1) 1233

Hey, America,
Are you proud of yourself yet? Proud of what you've become to yourself, your citizens and to the rest of the world? I can't imagine that this is what any of our founding fathers envisioned when they risked everything in order to found this country. And now look what you've made of it.

Ashamed,
A Disappointed Citizen

Yes.

Proud but still concerned,
A citizen that hasn't been nuked or given ebola from iron age religious psychopaths... yet.

Comment Re:Huh. (Score 0) 99

once Winamp self destructed

Just curious, how exactly did that happen? I'm using Winamp Lite, which still looks and works just like the 2.x series of Winamp, even though it is the latest version. You have to scroll down a little on the Winamp download page to find it, but there it is. For me this is still the perfect interface, clean and simple.

Winamp Lite is an afterthought. Originally you had no choice but to stick with the increasingly "AOL-afied" Winamp releases they put out. They got really quite bad at the low point, I don't know if it ever recovered or not.

Heck I didn't even know about Winamp Lite until just now, heh.

Comment Re:Huh. (Score 1) 99

Foobar2000 alternative for Linux would be deadbeef.

Simply incredible. They take a bad name and make it even worse.

It's probably a reference to DEADBEEF, the coding term. To quote Wikipedia:

"0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is frequently used to indicate a software crash or deadlock in embedded systems. DEADBEEF was originally used to mark newly allocated areas of memory that had not yet been initialized -- when scanning a memory dump, it is easy to see the DEADBEEF. It is used by IBM RS/6000 systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga as a magic debug value. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, it marks freed kernel memory. On OpenVMS running on Alpha processors, DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T. The DEC Alpha SRM console has a background process that traps memory errors, identified by PS as "BeefEater waiting on 0xdeadbeef".[16]"

Basically it's one of those words you can write in HEX and has come to mean "This software has crashed in a way that we know is absolutely NOT hardware related."

Comment Huh. (Score 3, Insightful) 99

Am I the only one who stuck with Foobar2000 back in the day, once Winamp self destructed?

I mean I have the rather... shoddy... Google Play Music on my Android Tablet, but on the PC, Foobar2000 does everything I thought I needed. Is there a compelling reason to try Clementine / Amarok?

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