There was also "coke" (as in the colloquial term in many places for any soda)

Yeah, your little parenthetical doesn't mean what you think it means.

The use of the term "coke" to mean "soda" is a uniquely southern thing, and is almost certainly the locals adopting the term "coke" to mean "soda", rather than the Coca Cola company coopting the term (the explanation I've heard is that Coca Cola ran an ad campaign along the lines of "just ask for a Coke", and, well, people did... 'course, I can't find evidence for this, so it may be apocryphal).

The reason there is a deficit is because the budget is out of whack. The term 'deficit' in this context refers to the budget deficit. That's something that is basically arbitrary.

Arbitrary? What? You're making no fucking sense, buddy.

If the US government spends more than it takes in, there's a deficit. There's nothing "arbitrary" about it. That's why I used that term in the first place, ffs. ie, to reflect the fact that there is *nothing extra* to give to people, since the US is already spending more than it takes in in total income (including tax receipts).

If we decide to spend 0 next year, we will have a budget surplus for that year. We didn't half our tax revenue per year from '08 to '10, we more than doubled our spending per year. The sooner you realize this, and why there isn't anything "extra", the better.

Yeah, no shit sherlock. And who was the pioneer of this sort of "budgeting"? Why... the right-wing's favourite son, Ronald Reagan!

As an aside, why harp on the period from '08 to '10? It's not as if the US was running a surplus prior to that. In fact, in the last, oh, 20 years or so (and probably longer), the US has only come close to running a surplus once, back during those heady days in the 90s when a blowjob could get a president impeached.

Interestingly, during that same period, it was, once again, the Republicans responsible for the biggest deficits... but, as usual, the fucking hypocrites believe deficits matter until they don't.

So what the hell was I using in 1996?

Free Software.

Yes, Free Software != Open Source.

What, have you been living under a rock for the past 14 years? How you miss the whole OSS/FOSS/FLOSS bullshit over the last decade and a half, exactly?

12 years ago, seven people in a room coined the term "open source", in an attempt to rebrand the much older "Free Software" movement

Huh?

To say the "open source" movement was an attempt to rebrand "free software" is to completely misunderstand history. The movement to create the OSS brand name was all about broadening the tent to include licenses and models beyond the narrow vision held by RMS.

See, prior to OSS, "Free Software" meant the GPL. That's it, that's all. As such, anything under that banner was, quite understandably, considered dangerous by commercial companies building closed-source applications (cue flamewar about the viral nature of the GPL).

OSS was an attempt to broaden that view, including the BSD and MIT licenses, among many others, and to open people's eyes to more than just the GPL orthodoxy. And it worked. We now have a wide variety of licenses to choose from... the aforementioned BSD and MIT licenses, the Perl license, ASF, MPL, CDDL, etc, etc, not to mention the good ol' GPL. All of these fall under the OSS banner, but only one of them is "Free Software" (tm).

Once upon a time it would have been unheard of to have fines for swearing on TV yet they are common place today.

What the fuck fantasy world are you living in? The Radio Act of 1927 specifically stated that programming aired by licensed broadcasters could not include "obscene, indecent, or profane language". Broadcast of such material could result in the broadcaster's license not being renewed. The Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, continued this tradition, stating:

SEC. 303. Except as otherwise provided in this Act, the Commission from time to time, as public convenience, interest, or necessity requires, shall- ...

(m) Have authority to suspend the license of any operator for a period not exceeding two years upon proof sufficient to satisfy the Commission that the licensee ... (4) has transmitted superfluous radio communications or signals or radio communications containing profane or obscene words or language

Thus further empowering the FCC to actively revoke the license of those violating decency standards.

In 1978, Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation explicitly empowered the FCC to prohibit the broadcast of material deemed obscene during hours when children might be among the audience.

Finally, in 2005, that fine Republican Mr. George Bush signed into law the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 which further stiffened the penalties levied by the FCC who violate decency standards.

In short, the FCC has *always* been empowered to punish those who broadcast "obscene" material over public airwaves. This tradition is nearly 80 years old, and the current powers wielded by the FCC are hardly anything new, nor were they granted by any one party or political affiliation.

Anything extra should be given back to the people who payed in.

There *isn't anything extra*, dumbass. What part of "deficit" don't you understand?

Don't want to raise taxes? Okay, start by cutting military and entitlements.

Wait, you're telling me the right-wingers don't want that? Oh, okay, then raise taxes.

Wait, they don't want that either?

Oh, I see. They're a bunch of fucking hypocrites. Gotcha.

But... but... didn't you know? The only barrier to affluence in Africa is the tragic dearth of blenders and powersaws! Every day, you hear it in the villages and in the countryside, the yearning for a Black and Decker...

The number one obstacle to IPV6 deployment is an inability to make sense of the addressing scheme.

Are you fucking kidding me? *That* is the "number of obstacle"? Not the lack of protocol backward compatibility (unavoidable, unfortunately)? Or the chicken-and-egg problem of IPv6 content-versus-clients? Or the broken routers that will send out router advertisements when they don't have valid IPv6 addresses? Or the required hardware upgrades that ISPs would be forced to roll out?

No, it's the *addressing scheme*... something that no normal end user would ever see (what users see IPv4 addresses now?).

Really.

In fact alcohol is not a drug.

Honestly, just out of sheer curiosity... are you trolling, or do you really believe this? If you believe it, uhh... why?

I assume this was announced somewhere, and not just on the submitter's blog (where there are, oddly, no links to any sources of any kind)?

Also bullshit. Quote:

It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine.

Meanwhile, fucking *sports drinks*, which are meant to hydrate you, have sodium in them.

Seriously, do you just accept every populist myth you hear as fact without any critical thinking whatsoever?

Well that's easy: I don't tolerate pseudo-scientific bullshit.

The idea that drinking water is a miracle cure for lethargy, headaches, etc, let alone asthma and respiratory ailments, is bunk, unsupported by evidence. And, as a rational, evidence-based thinker, I attack such bogus claims, because I feel anti-science garbage should be debunked before people start running around drinking water instead of using their inhalers.

I also believe it's necessary to attack irrational thinking. In this case, that would be how I would characterize your insistence that your one anecdote, based on entirely subjective observations, is somehow equivalent to solid evidence. And the fact that you posed such arguments in a discussion about the placebo effect was too hilarious *not* to point out.

The real problem with government regulation is it can screw you in the face. Take Canada for example where the CRTC has decided that UBB is just fine, oh and we get to charge more. And you can only use 60gb/mo even if you're on another ISP. The SS Fail Train has set sail for the bottom of the Atlantic.

And you honestly believe things would be *better* if the CRTC didn't exist at all??

LOLFR... wow. Just... wow.

Regulation prevents oil spills? Regulation prevents big bank misdeeds? Regulation of food keeps us from getting tainted food that never needs to be recalled?

Uhhh... yes, yes, and fuck yes.

Talk about epic logic fail. You look at a bunch of incidents, and conclude that *all* government regulation has failed. But it doesn't occur to you that far *worse* would've happened if regulation wasn't in place.

Hell, one need only look at the US before and after the Clean Air Act. Last I checked, I haven't seen any fucking rivers bursting into flames. Have you?

What industry has been regulated and competition increased? Name an industry that you have problems with that isn't regulated. Why is it the industries that people continuously complain about are the one's that are the most regulated? Is that just a coincidence?

1. ISPs are a great example. Here in Canada, there are a number of DSL providers that wouldn't exist if regulations weren't in place to force the local telco to lease out their lines.

2. Dumbass, the industries that aren't regulated are the ones that *don't need regulation in the first place*.

3. This is the converse of 2. Industries that *are* regulated are the most likely to try and work around those regulations in order to stifle competition or take advantage of consumers.

But, relative to the squalor and frequent starvation of a completely agrarian society, they were much better off.

And therefore everything was hunky fucking dory?

No.

They were relatively better off, yes. But they were still buying patent medicines that didn't work, suffering in unsafe workplaces, and generally being fucked by businesses.

Of course, that doesn't stop the populist revisionism from claiming that a handful improved their lot at the expense of others.

Uh, who claimed that?

The simple fact is that a few got rich, everyone else got a little better off, and the serfs still got gangraped by the robber barons. They just got to work in a factory while it was happening, instead of subsisting on a farm. Government regulation combined with organized labour allowed the serfs to fight back.

Debit's pretty handy, and it's the same money anyway (if you're like me and pay off your credit card right away).

Unless you're in a location you trust, debit is a really *really* bad idea. If a machine has been tampered with, a thief could gain access to your account. And guess what? If you lose your cash, *the bank won't help you*.

Conversely, fraudulent transactions on a CC are trivially reversed. Given the choice, particularly when traveling, I'd use a CC over a debit card any day of the week.