If you're always nice, friendly, sterile, and PC, people won't take you seriously. The landscape is non-threatening, and we all learn to smile and nod and pretend to play along and then go do our own stupid shit just the same.

When someone comes up and rams you in the ass for your shit, you learn different. Not faster--different. Life is about learning to manipulate people. People will beat the -shit- out of you if you go fingering their screaming, crying 13 year old daughter in the park--in order to not get the shit beat out of you, don't do that. If people just went, "Maybe you shouldn't do that," just a friendly suggestion, how much of this do you think would go on? Hint: We arrest folks for doing this sometimes.

The situation needs to become uncomfortable sometimes. Unpleasant conversations are easy to deal with. Constant ranting and screaming can create stress and interference; but it's not very effective. When you -really- fuck up, maybe you -need- your ass kicked; it's not appropriate all the time, but a few choice words and some raising of voice -will- get the point across PDQ.

Why would you limit the use of a language?

How many people would you describe as ebullient? How many folks would you describe as cock-sucking assholes that need to extract themselves from civilized society and go hurl themselves and their immature fucking bullshit off a god damn cliff?

Not everybody has a dev environment for everything.

Not everything works because it's been tested. Every time we release something out of software in-house dev, it goes through a month of dev testing. Then... it breaks 15 minutes after it's released, and takes 3 hours to un-break.

Ubuntu inherits Debian policy. Anything--supported or not--is not updated in any way that breaks things. You might not be able to get security patches for stuff in Universe or Multiverse in a timely manner without rolling and submitting it yourself; but they won't go releasing a package that no longer does X when X worked before. The idea is that, if your configuration works, it will continue to work *exactly* the way you have it without modification no matter which version of the package you have across the entire lifecycle of a stable release--if it doesn't, that's a bug and they need to undo that breakage. Extending is fine, breaking is *not* acceptable.

RedHat on the other hand released RHEL 6.4 and removed crmsh, the configuration system for Pacemaker, to be replaced with PCS. This wasn't documented in the release notes, either. Suddenly things that configure high-availability fail-over on RHEL 6 don't work. Running the same tools/scripts/whatnot breaks. This is still RHEL 6 stable, and under Debian policy that's not supposed to happen. RedHat doesn't have such a policy, so it happens.

That means you're persistently at risk of reaching a situation where your patching priority demands increased resources: I can continue to patch Ubuntu while my dev team comfortably works on readying our stuff for the next LTS or the next 9 month release, usually; but one day RHEL has patches and I either don't upgrade as my company's security policy dictates OR we find resources (meaning, sometimes, hire more people) to step up the porting process.

With RHEL, the risk is that we may need more manpower (labor cost--salaries) to support the same security policy; and that we may still not be able to keep in step as quickly as with a Debian-style update policy (i.e. there may be greater lag time as we rewrite scripts and configurations and do more dev testing before releasing patches). On top of that, we're faced with the risk of more frequent large roll-outs--things that worked in dev might not work in production, and now we're rolling out a patch that breaks production along with a bunch of patches to production to un-break it, and hoping that it all works in production.

Yes, I blame RHEL for this.

Breaks one day because snapshots are a "Technology preview" and destroys all your disk images when RedHat releases a new update to RHEL7 production stable feed.

My stance on drugs is constantly evolving. Currently it stands:

If it's viciously addictive, it should be regulated; the more physically and socially toxic (you CAN'T go to work without shooting heroine if you're DYING FROM WITHDRAWAL) and the more addictive, the higher the penalties should be. For dealing the penalties should be a hell of a lot higher--you sell methamphetamine to minors, we bring back crucifixion. For possession and use, lower penalties--for addiction cases, I want to get people off the drugs. Possession and use are difficult because leaving them open creates problems, but attempting to address them puts people who made mistakes and now are seeking help in the line of fire--and those who repent deserve help, not punishment; they are no longer a danger to society (i.e. by exemplifying and encouraging the consumption of dangerous substances) and deserve to not be treated as one.

If it's not addictive, or just not very--if the risk is very low--then the danger to society is very low and the damage done by prohibition is extremely high. We have two options: Accept the potential risk (maybe we find out some day marijuana is like... really, worse than Heroine) and leave open the possibility to discover great benefits in the future; or reject the risks and take away any potential benefits. I can tell you straight out marijuana is anxiolytic--sure I've never used it, but THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE USE IT FOR so you know... I'm about 100% certain that's the primary positive benefit. By banning it, we're saying the risk to society outweighs the harm done by prohibition enforcement plus the loss of an anxiolytic option--is that really true? If not, then it shouldn't be banned.

Disclosure: I'm basically always on Piracetam, Aniracetam, L-Theanine, Alpha-GPC, Noopept, and SAM-e, all currently legal. I also have Oxiracetam and Pramiracetam for occasional use (also legal); and I do often take standardized antioxidants marketed as "green tea extract" standardized to 98% polyphenols, with 50% of the total mass being EGCg.

The doctors had me on Methylphenedate and Risperdal, which had vicious side effects and were terrible and relatively toxic; they suggested a mixture of mainly dexamphetamine (Adderall--78.2% dex), which is also too toxic to my tastes (but people who snort cocaine insist that dex isn't bad for you and tell me it's the best substance ever invented...). I'm on zero prescription drugs.

I've actually gotten better results out of the drugs I've picked out for myself, and can safely adjust them at will--the drug interactions are good, and doses of 80 times the standard dosage are minimally risky, and the side effects are things like headache (because of choline depletion--hence Alpha-GPC, fixes that), insomnia (I have that anyway, and Melatonin 1mg time release fixes that), and an upset stomach (eating at McDonalds does that too, and it doesn't happen to me). This works better for me, and if we just brazenly banned all kinds of shit without evaluating if it's dangerous then I wouldn't have that option.

Now, Dexamphetamine is another potential treatment route; but it's dangerous--I actually believe that, you can dispute it but let's keep context clear--and I have no problem with it being scheduled. I can get it with prescription. Cocaine I can't get, even if the doctors determine that cocaine may be an effective option to treat some condition I have--I understand that too, but if that ever happens I don't think I'd be able to argue that banning cocaine is a bad thing. I'd argue that the lack of research into medical use and access to prescription under a doctor's professional judgment is ... inconvenient, and that if there's such a body of knowledge suggesting it should be scheduled for prescription then that needs to be fixed. But I mean, hell, dangerous substances, I don't want that stuff floating around out there. Look at how that works with cigarettes.

You can be an uberlibertarian if you want and go raving that we should make meth legal regardless, that's fine, but I disagree. You can go talking about how MDMA is illegal and it shouldn't be because it's not dangerous enough to warrant scheduling as a controlled substance--I like that argument, I might disagree on the details but I *support* that argument and if that can be shown scientifically that there isn't a real basis for us believing MDMA is that dangerous then we *should* unban it. That's my opinion.

I'm far too logical for humans, I think. Most people who understand the above argument turn white and get sick.

OIG explained to us that the imaged human is victimized and subjected to psychological trauma the instant any person looks at the image. The victim is victimized again whenever someone sees the image, so people need to not look.

I think they just don't like the idea that people who have spent time looking at child pornography need to be subject to psychological evaluation; and that those of us who have an adaptive stress reaction are impossible to discern from sociopaths (i.e. people who are plotting to destroy you because it's fun). To put this into perspective: most people, when you expose them to bestiality and scat and child porn and other gross shit, after repeat exposure they're a nervous wreck with PTSD--hence the psychological evaluation, Class A amnesics, etc. Then there's folks like me who have our absolute breakdown right away and start *screaming*, and then taper down--and what you're left with is someone who's just not bothered by it, which really scares the shit out of people.

The worst ones aren't the ones that get used to it. The worst are the ones that recognize a sexual context and adapt to meet social pressure--and that's, unfortunately, fairly normal. The PTSD folks get is from exposure creating a subconscious feeling that this is what they need to be to be accepted into society, while their mind violently rejects the images they're being fed. Without the rejection, you'd get ... well ... people who are off-put, and then able to handle it, and then turned on by sex with animals and children. It's the same as reprogramming a dude to be bisexual, really (reprogramming someone to be gay/straight is hard--you have to add a revulsion to one mode of sexual attraction, which usually brings all kinds of other damage and really only creates repression).

Yes, I've learned far too much about how humans work.

You people are retarded.

*Money* is the demographic, you idiots! MONEY! Don't you understand the meaning of the word RICH?!

Stock market up!

Movies bring in more money!

Has anyone considered counting out the patronage of movies instead of the box office revenue? $2 tickets in 1980 become $20 tickets in 2008. Do you fucking monkeys know what inflation is?

How was that poll conducted, as in what question was actually asked?

There's a huge difference between:

"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor phones to catch terrorists?"

To which most people would say "Yes, monitor their (the terrorist's) phones."

And:

"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor everyone's phone and permanently store the data in case it's needed to catch terrorists?"

To which most people would say "Hell no, get a warrant!"

As far as the claims and promises being made as reported in TFS/TFA, too late. Too many officials have obviously lied over and over. NSA, FBI, Benghazi, IRS, F&F, etc. There is no trust, nor any logical reason for trust, given their track record on honesty and truthfulness. If they said "water is wet" I'd have to see the results of multiple scientific studies by multiple independent and prestigious international sources. And I'd still have doubts given who we're talking about.

Strat

The US is the first and only nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That's the part you're missing. That everyone is born a sovereign person with natural rights, and that the government only has certain limited powers, set out as an exclusive list called the Constitution, that the people temporarily loan the government to carry out the will of the people, and can be withdrawn from the government if it should fail to obey the will of the people. It does not restrict the people, it restricts the government.

Many, many Americans feel the same way including myself. As I've stated in another post above, the US has become a de-facto police state and hegemonic crony-capitalist oligarchy. The two political parties are evil tweedledum & tweedledummer, and both are hellbent on stealing even more power and wealth while making serfs under constant and total surveillance out of the citizens to ensure their power remains unchallenged.

You know, we Americans (the people) are a pretty good lot and have historically done a lot of good and helped a lot of people and nations with our blood & treasure before these bastards seized control. We, the American people, could really use help instead of hate in trying to halt and reverse this trend by the government.

Help us wake other people in the US up. They're spying on you, too, don't forget. Put pressure on your governments and other groups to put pressure on the US government. The system the US is building is a global threat to everyone on the planet. It's a data collection and analysis WMD.

I mean, you don't really think they'll stop with subjugating only US citizens under their jackboots, do you?

Strat