I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown
While living in Norway
I felt the darkness of the black metal bands
But being such fawn of a man
I didn't burn down any old churches
Just slept way too much, just slept

My mind rejects the frequency
It's static craziness to me
Is it a solar fever?

The TV man is too loud
Our plane is sleeping on a cloud
You turn the dial, I'll try and smile
We've eaten plastic weather
This family sticks together
We will escape from the south to the west side

My mind rejects the frequency
It's just verbosity to me

I spent the winter with my nose buried in a book
While trying to restructure my character
Because it had become vile to its creator
And through many dreadful nights
I lay praying to a saint that nobody has heard of
And waiting for some high times to come again

My mind rejects the frequency
It's static craziness to me
Is it a solar fever?

The TV man is too loud
Our plane is sleeping on a cloud
You turn the dial, I'll try and smile
We've eaten plastic weather
This family sticks together
We will escape from the south to the west side

My mind rejects the frequency
It's just verbosity to me

Dirty old shadow, stay away
Don't play your games with me
I am older now, I see the way you operate
If you don't hurt me then you die

My mind rejects the frequency
It's static craziness to me
Is it a solar fever?

The TV man is too loud
Our plane is sleeping on a cloud
You turn the dial, I'll try and smile
We've eaten plastic weather
This family sticks together
We will escape from the south to the west side

My mind rejects the frequency
It's just verbosity to me

So we went from big mainframe servers built to run under lots of load and be super redundant. To moving to PCs because processing power and memory was getting cheaper, and it allowed you to do hobby projects and start small businesses without all the mainframe costs.

Now we are going from very powerful personal computers that can store lots of data (although backing it up is rather tricky/expensive to do well). To going back to trying to put everything on a mainframe/server again, but this time it uses the the internet instead of dial up connections, lans, etc.

That's fine, if they can make backing stuff up cheaper and more reliable via the new offerings...awesome. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of "The Cloud" being anything more than masking the client/server relationship.

The cloud to me makes it sounds more like a branding name for a service than the terminology you should use to describe all servers with internet access that allow you to store and access data. Sounds like something you'd use to describe it to your grandmother or kid. Makes people feel warm and safe like their data can never be lost......and that's a lie.

>> ^probie:

Can we drop the origin stories and the "with great power comes great responsibility"-words-of-wisdom-from-the-relatives?

Usually I would agree but in the case of Superman, the coming of age story is the only interesting thing you can do with him. He's an alien orphan with enough power to do whatever he wants. Once you've told the story of how he came to terms with all that, he's just a giant unstoppable boyscout with all the powers; maybe the most boring character in all of comics.

I might like to see a reimagining of Superman. Dial back the powers. Give him something to struggle with besides green rocks and wedgies. He'd probably still be boring as hell, to be honest.

>> ^Xaielao:

>> ^PostalBlowfish:
at relatively equal sizes, i'm tempted to think this girl saved the dog more than the cat.

QFT
The cat looks to be pretty fat so maybe not. But my cat (easily as big as that dog) would beat the shit out of that dog for even trying anything. Cats are the most successful predator (besides us) in the world. They have evolved into killing machines. I've seen a cat take down a doberman, a police dog at that even.


I think you need to dial back with the drugs...but if a dog wants to kill a cat, which is rarely the case, the cat's dead pretty darn fast.

@KnivesOut the healthcare industry was already highly regulated before Obamacare. While you might be inclined to think the industry was doing poorly despite all the regulation, I'd argue the industry was doing poorly because of so much regulation.

Remember, big businesses that are in bed with government usually lobby for regulation that will protect their interests and discourage competition. It's no different in the healthcare industry.

If we want to benefit the patient, the best route is to dial back all these regulations that guarantee profits for big businesses with the help of government and unleash the market forces that will give patients more choices, choices that will compete with each other pushing prices down, and making healthcare more affordable.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Yeah, atkins sucks. And so does dial-up internet and the spice girls.
Anything else that died out a few years ago that he wants to rail against?


He's talking about low carb high protein diets though really and they have definitely not died out.

Yeah, atkins sucks. And so does dial-up internet and the spice girls.

Anything else that died out a few years ago that he wants to rail against?

I am aware. Did you notice I responded to some of your points in it like accusing me of not watching the right wing hitjob video?

The rest I didn't bother responding to. But after second thought, I'll respond to the question of whether Obama is extreme to the left or not. And this is a really easy one...

Name a single thing Obama has done that's honestly extreme to the left. An actual policy. I'm not talking a moderate-left policy. Raising taxes on the top income earners from 35-38% wouldn't be an extreme left idea. It's moving the dial a notch or two to the left. If he proposed raising it to 50%, that would be a hard left move.

See, I don't really care if *some* of Obama's appointments are far to the left. I care about policies proposed or enacted.

Not *some*, *most*. Obama governs mostly to the center-left, except for his recent forays into religious freedoms, abortion, and gay marriage. He lets his minions do his dirty work for him.

Yet another thing I get irritated about - characterizing someone you don't like as a political caricature to the extreme side of that political direction. Don't like George W. Bush? Paint him as a Nazi because he's more to the right than you. Don't like Obama? Paint him as a godless communist because he's to the left of you. Of course the extremes in the parties complain their own guys aren't conservative/liberal enough. This way, nobody is happy, and everyone complains about how crappy our gov't is!

I agree, this happens all the time. It is the lens through which everyone seems to understand politics. I just don't think anyone really knows what makes Obama tick, and certainly not what he plans to do in his second term, when he is no long accountable. He is not a traditional democrat, certainly. I think this film may provide some insight:



>> ^heropsycho:

I am aware. Did you notice I responded to some of your points in it like accusing me of not watching the right wing hitjob video?

The rest I didn't bother responding to. But after second thought, I'll respond to the question of whether Obama is extreme to the left or not. And this is a really easy one...

Name a single thing Obama has done that's honestly extreme to the left. An actual policy. I'm not talking a moderate-left policy. Raising taxes on the top income earners from 35-38% wouldn't be an extreme left idea. It's moving the dial a notch or two to the left. If he proposed raising it to 50%, that would be a hard left move.

See, I don't really care if *some* of Obama's appointments are far to the left. I care about policies proposed or enacted.

Yet another thing I get irritated about - characterizing someone you don't like as a political caricature to the extreme side of that political direction. Don't like George W. Bush? Paint him as a Nazi because he's more to the right than you. Don't like Obama? Paint him as a godless communist because he's to the left of you. Of course the extremes in the parties complain their own guys aren't conservative/liberal enough. This way, nobody is happy, and everyone complains about how crappy our gov't is!

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^heropsycho:
For the record, I AM NOT thin-skinned about Obama. I get pissed off when people criticize Romney for firing people when he worked at Bain, when that was his FREAKING JOB! If he didn't do that, and Bain was unsuccessful, then the left would have attacked him for being a crappy businessman like George W. Bush was with a baseball team. You can't have it both ways.
Or that his dog was tied to the top of the roof on a family vacation...
Or he, along with friends, picked on someone they thought was gay decades ago in prep school, ignoring the fact everybody did stupid things in high school. It has no bearing on them decades later.
It's totally ridiculous, unproductive, divisive, and doesn't do anybody any good whatsoever. But most importantly, it detracts from honest debate about issues that actually matter.
I don't have any problems with people criticizing Obama for real issues. Him being impolite?! I watched your idiotic right-wing bent hit job video. That's impolite for a leader?! They slammed Obama for making comments where he respectfully disagreed with the Supreme Court. What should he have said instead? Did he scream at them? You know, like the dude who screamed "YOU LIED!"? NO! Him being impolite wasn't the issue. Conservatives are really just upset that he voiced his disagreement with their view, and it's spun to accuse him of being rude and disrespectful. It's ridiculous. He took Eric Cantor to task in a political discussion. Did he scream at him? Cuss at him? NO!
Here's the difference:
If you want to criticize Obama for perhaps overstepping his bounds and the ideal of separation of powers when he criticized the Supreme Court decision? Fine, I disagree, but that's an honest debate. I wouldn't be chewing you out for that.
I watched the video. I didn't see a single instance of him being overly impolite as a leader. If that's the case, every single damn president we ever had is an asshole. And where was your outrage then?!
I'm tired of this shit from both sides. I get pissed off at partisan hackery and absurd distortions of the truth. You, sir, are doing that with this drivel about Obama. I don't care if you dislike him as a President. I'm not a big fan, either. But if you're gonna trope this idiotic crap out, expect to get reamed for it by reasonable people.
>> ^shinyblurry:
>> ^messenger:
Yeah, I'm gonna vote Romney because he has promised not to put his feet on the coffee table. WTF? This is your criteria for a good President? Until he walks with people, he's a bad President? Get off it.>> ^shinyblurry:
I'd like him to be more polite {video}


Why is everyone so thin skinned about Obama? That's my question. I was being somewhat facetious, although I think the video, while humorous, shows a definite pattern of behavior. In any case, I'm not voting for Romney. Although I share some of his views on social issues, that isn't enough to get me past our theological differences, which are great. My prediction is that Romney will actually be far worse for this country, spiritually, than Obama. That is the reason I won't vote for anyone who doesn't worship God in spirit and in truth.


You responded to the wrong post. You can find the one where I replied to you here:
http://videosift.com/video/What-More-Do-We-Wan
t-This-Man-To-Do-For-Us?loadcomm=1#comment-1458730

Heh, my 33.6k+ dial-up modems go that fast on these crappy copper phone lines!

I wonder how many times she dialed '007'.

@Porksandwich all good points. There is corruption and a lot of collusion between government and corporations. Can we consider the possibility that this collusion happens mostly because the role of government is not well defined, because the economy is a grey area, because businesses covet the power politicians have?

I don't see churches fighting over privileges with politicians, not since a clear separation of church and state was established.

I don't see big media networks fighting over censorship rights with politicians, because freedom of speech mostly outlaws censorship by the government.

Do you see where I'm getting at?

The businesses that hold a monopoly, most of the time, hold it because of regulation. If you remove the regulation, you remove the obstacles for competition. The business might still hold the monopoly even for a long while, maybe decades, but any dissatisfaction by consumers is an opportunity for competitors to step in, slowly pushing the monopoly to be more efficient or risk being toppled.

If we dial back regulation, that doesn't mean there won't be any regulation, that the industry will only answer to itself. Regulation will come from consumers, clients, advertisers, consumer groups, unions, shareholders, and competitors. Didn't GoDaddy pay dearly for supporting SOPA? That's a great example of society punishing a business for an unpopular decision.

Besides, we can't consider it unfair for a business to establish a monopoly or a cartel, if we're ok with workers forming a union. That's a double standard because, in essence, they're basically the same thing. I don't judge either to be good or bad, fair or unfair, it's all part of the market and the right for people to freely associate.

You are absolutely right when you say people are held to more standards than just making money, but who establishes those standards? Are there laws dictating that we shouldn't be dicks, that we should never take advantage of others or "negatively impact people"? Those aren't laws, it's social pressure and your reputation that ****regulate**** you to act as a better person.

Let society and people hold businesses to better standards, not laws and politicians.

@renatojj

Politicians don't have their hands all over businesses, it's the opposite. Businesses have their hands in the strings that direct the politicians. Which means politicians are not serving society, but serving businesses. There are many examples of things happening that you know are wrong and can see are wrong, but nothing ever happens...why? Because businesses are either making money on them or mitigating money loss by it happening.

Look at nuclear power regulations, they have been loosened and the inspectors are actually limited in what they can inspect so much so that they don't actually see more than 5 or 10% of the workings of a nuclear plant. How can they say something is safe if they see less than 10% of it and those 10% don't even allow them to do tests they used to do?

Oil company regulation, why did the BP oil spill happen? It was because they are not held to standards damn near every other country on the planet holds them to. And when you see more into it, many times the oil inspection agents were going to work for the oil company when they retired. And yet they rarely busted their balls on questionable things and got caught with their pants down many times with not catching violations.....so they probably weren't hired for their inside knowledge on how to best keep the existing equipment up to standards....since they aren't being held to them.


And as for the last post you made...you can't just drop regulation on all of these things. There's countless reasons for it but I'll try to list a few.

1) They basically hold a monopoly in many industries or a small number of very large companies that end up basically being a monopoly, so there would be no counter balance of a free market because the market has never been free to begin with. If it were truly free there'd be 100/1000/10000/100k/1mil businesses in these industries all competing on either features or price because they should all be about as reliable as one another...since we always have to picture the "perfect" free market. I'll bet you can name a couple people who have shit internet service pretty easy or pay a lot for very little.

2) You are putting the policing of industries in the industry hands if you dial back regulation. They already can not regulate themselves. How many companies supported SOPA and now how many more support CISPA? They do what's best for them and they do it cooperatively not independently. That's why you have groups formed of these companies putting bills forward that are basically passed nearly word for word if edited at all by congress critters.

3) We hear all the time about businesses only responsibility is to make money. We don't even hold a person to that standard, an individual has more responsibilities than that...earning a living is probably in the top ten but it's not your sole major responsibility as a member of society. Number 1 could arguably be "obey the law" or "don't be a dick". Business number 1 should probably be don't negatively impact people as your business model....this could be not polluting, keeping a safe work environment, not overworking people, making underhanded deals in the name of profit, making deals you know you will back out of or have no intention to honor, etc. Yes shit happens, but you shouldn't make your business model based on making shit happen to profit. Banks and financial institutes arguably did this with bad mortgages and false rating of these mortgages when selling them.

@messenger

It's not just bribing politicians, but businesses openly courting people for employment after their term of service or the people regulating them. It makes it more profitable to be lenient and not enforce regulations or laws on companies when you'll be making 3x your salary when you go to work for them after kissing their ass for a decade or two. Both the bribes and the business tie ins with Haliburton made the early days of the current war seem pretty shady when you look specifically at Dick Cheney. But it happens with advisors to people in office as well, it's something that really should be stopped because government should be about public service and not service with the intention of landing a sweet gig at some company you helped make a few billion dollars for awhile a public servant.

You can't stop it entirely, but there should definitely be some lawful punishments put in place to make it have to cost the companies exorbitant amounts to court people to court them with the severe punishments placed on people who stray too far from the path. Like prison terms or fines to the tune of percentages of their life savings and 25% of a company's value if they are caught. Unfortunately, the people who would put forth these laws are the same people who would be directly affected by them....because they are all business owners anymore...it costs too much money to get into office and rich people are the only people who tend to have the wealth/power to pull it off.

So......regulations on companies it the best you can hope for, make it so politicians can't offer them anything worth the huge donations they make to these people because regulations would make the attempts worthless, unless of course it was deregulation. Which they've already done and continue to do, to the detriment of all. Profits are up for all the big companies sometimes higher than pre-crash, and yet they employ less people than they did 5 years ago. How are they pulling THAT off....they are cutting corners or doing something shady somewhere to keep earning like that despite being less capable of producing like they did prior when a lot more people had disposable income.

I agree with quite a bit of what you said, and I should have been more clear. Democrats for the most part do not acknowledge that Affirmative Action is not improving racial tensions. I haven't seen any credible reports that demonstrate it is helping. But they generally insist it is.

And it is a fact that the US military capability is significantly reduced when funding is cut by significant amounts. That may be an acceptable outcome for you, and if so, we can agree to disagree about differing opinions. I'm talking about the Democrats who often say to do it, and then pretend it won't have an impact on military capability. Cutting defense funding for example would have very likely precluded the US from taking Bin Laden out because it took a lot of resources that likely wouldn't have been available. Good chance we wouldn't have had the intelligence, the Seals personnel available to pull it off, basing rights necessary, etc. etc. That stuff gets conveniently forgotten. I'm fine with a disagreement about if more of an isolationist policy would be beneficial for the US, that kind of thing. But some liberals pretend they can have it both ways. We can have just as robust and capable military/intelligence unit with significantly less funding if it's cut too much.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. But I do agree with you - the definition of a conservative is narrowing to absurd proportions, and they're broadening the definitions of liberal, socialist, and communist. Obamacare isn't socialism, or communism. It's a few ticks to the left of what we currently have.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^heropsycho:
The only thing that proves is the Democratic party is more splintered, and the GOP is more disciplined. There are plenty of facts the Democrats flat out reject. One issue for example I'm against the Democrats on is Affirmative Action. I think it was a necessary instrument to force racial integration in the beginning, but now it's doing more harm than good. Affirmative Action doesn't seem to be doing a much good, and the cost is having whites constantly assuming a minority only got the job because of a quota, even when it's not true. Yes, there's still racism in the workplace and hiring, but Affirmative Action isn't the way to combat that any longer.
I think most in the Democratic Party are against cutting social safety net spending in the long run even though it is necessary. The cuts in military that would be necessary to prevent having to do that would result in a military that both the Democrats and Republicans would find unacceptable whenever the crap hits the fan. The Democratic Party does also seem to gloss over how bad social programs get gamed by those who don't truly need it.
Both sides are guilty of choosing the facts that suit them.
But, I will agree it's significantly worse on the GOP side. That's why I feel like they're pushing me to vote Democrat. You can call me a lot of things, but it's disingenuous to label me a liberal or conservative. But it seems that the definition of conservative is narrowing as it's pushed farther to the extreme right, and what is labelled liberal is ever expanding.
Obamacare as a perfect example - it's deemed to be an extremely liberal/Socialist policy, and I for the life of me can't see how. It's a very mild liberal reform. It's not the gov't option, or single payer. It's a few clicks to the left on the dial from where we were. Raising the top income tax bracket rate a few percentage points makes this country socialist? Please.
>> ^NetRunner:
At least you recognize there's some asymmetry, but "both sides" aren't guilty of the same thing.
It's sorta like saying punching someone in a bar, and committing murder are the same thing. Technically they are a breach of the same moral edict (don't harm people), but the difference of intensity is so large it puts them into qualitatively different criminal categories.
For example, can you name anything that's the left's equivalent to global warming denial?
Keep in mind, it has to truly be equivalent -- it has to be a belief contrary to an overwhelming majority of experts, and has to be believed (or denied) by virtually everyone who calls themself a liberal. Furthermore, it needs to be a core belief of the liberal movement. It needs to be an issue where saying the (heretical) truth about an issue could get you drummed out of the Democratic party and the broader political movement.
I can't name any issue like that. Can you?
>> ^heropsycho:
I'll agree it's more so on the right, but both sides are guilty of this.
>> ^NetRunner:
It's this kind of behavior from the right that really has me worried. It's one thing for people to be skeptical about information from a particular source, but what we're seeing from the right today is a blanket rejection of all information that comes from outside their own partisan network of sources.



Your two examples of "facts" liberals reject are actually opinions.
This is a statement of fact: "Hiring quotas are illegal in the U.S."
This is a statement of opinion: "I think it was a necessary instrument to force racial integration in the beginning, but now it's doing more harm than good."
And of course, some liberals agree with you. Possibly even several Democrats with seats in Congress.
My point is, conservatives frequently deny verifiable factual information, which is different from spin. Everyone "spins" for sure, but that's minimizing and rationalizing facts that seem to contradict a larger political argument. Conservatives are fond of simply denying the facts themselves.
Conservatives spinning global warming would sound like "Global warming won't be so bad, think of the boom in agriculture when you can grow bananas in Ohio!" Liberals denying the facts on Affirmative action would sound like "Affirmative action doesn't negatively affect any white people, and anyone who says otherwise is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy to reinstate slavery!"
And to your point about cohesiveness, some liberal somewhere saying something like that doesn't mean that liberals and conservatives should be considered equally guilty. Most liberals don't feel that way, whereas the cohesiveness of the conservatives means it's hard for me to find one who doesn't think global warming is some sort of hoax perpetrated for liberal political gain.
A big frustration for me as a self-proclaimed liberal is that I'm already a moderate in the middle. I'm not the left pole in hardly any political debate. And yet there are a ton of people (more in media than around here) who self-consciously try to position themselves "in the middle" by staking out positions to the right of me, and to the left of the Republicans. But doing that doesn't land you in the middle, it lands you way out on the right...because these days "liberal" just means "not a conservative", not that you're some sort of real left-wing ideologue.

>> ^heropsycho:

The only thing that proves is the Democratic party is more splintered, and the GOP is more disciplined. There are plenty of facts the Democrats flat out reject. One issue for example I'm against the Democrats on is Affirmative Action. I think it was a necessary instrument to force racial integration in the beginning, but now it's doing more harm than good. Affirmative Action doesn't seem to be doing a much good, and the cost is having whites constantly assuming a minority only got the job because of a quota, even when it's not true. Yes, there's still racism in the workplace and hiring, but Affirmative Action isn't the way to combat that any longer.
I think most in the Democratic Party are against cutting social safety net spending in the long run even though it is necessary. The cuts in military that would be necessary to prevent having to do that would result in a military that both the Democrats and Republicans would find unacceptable whenever the crap hits the fan. The Democratic Party does also seem to gloss over how bad social programs get gamed by those who don't truly need it.
Both sides are guilty of choosing the facts that suit them.
But, I will agree it's significantly worse on the GOP side. That's why I feel like they're pushing me to vote Democrat. You can call me a lot of things, but it's disingenuous to label me a liberal or conservative. But it seems that the definition of conservative is narrowing as it's pushed farther to the extreme right, and what is labelled liberal is ever expanding.
Obamacare as a perfect example - it's deemed to be an extremely liberal/Socialist policy, and I for the life of me can't see how. It's a very mild liberal reform. It's not the gov't option, or single payer. It's a few clicks to the left on the dial from where we were. Raising the top income tax bracket rate a few percentage points makes this country socialist? Please.
>> ^NetRunner:
At least you recognize there's some asymmetry, but "both sides" aren't guilty of the same thing.
It's sorta like saying punching someone in a bar, and committing murder are the same thing. Technically they are a breach of the same moral edict (don't harm people), but the difference of intensity is so large it puts them into qualitatively different criminal categories.
For example, can you name anything that's the left's equivalent to global warming denial?
Keep in mind, it has to truly be equivalent -- it has to be a belief contrary to an overwhelming majority of experts, and has to be believed (or denied) by virtually everyone who calls themself a liberal. Furthermore, it needs to be a core belief of the liberal movement. It needs to be an issue where saying the (heretical) truth about an issue could get you drummed out of the Democratic party and the broader political movement.
I can't name any issue like that. Can you?
>> ^heropsycho:
I'll agree it's more so on the right, but both sides are guilty of this.
>> ^NetRunner:
It's this kind of behavior from the right that really has me worried. It's one thing for people to be skeptical about information from a particular source, but what we're seeing from the right today is a blanket rejection of all information that comes from outside their own partisan network of sources.




Your two examples of "facts" liberals reject are actually opinions.

This is a statement of fact: "Hiring quotas are illegal in the U.S."

This is a statement of opinion: "I think it was a necessary instrument to force racial integration in the beginning, but now it's doing more harm than good."

And of course, some liberals agree with you. Possibly even several Democrats with seats in Congress.

My point is, conservatives frequently deny verifiable factual information, which is different from spin. Everyone "spins" for sure, but that's minimizing and rationalizing facts that seem to contradict a larger political argument. Conservatives are fond of simply denying the facts themselves.

Conservatives spinning global warming would sound like "Global warming won't be so bad, think of the boom in agriculture when you can grow bananas in Ohio!" Liberals denying the facts on Affirmative action would sound like "Affirmative action doesn't negatively affect any white people, and anyone who says otherwise is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy to reinstate slavery!"

And to your point about cohesiveness, some liberal somewhere saying something like that doesn't mean that liberals and conservatives should be considered equally guilty. Most liberals don't feel that way, whereas the cohesiveness of the conservatives means it's hard for me to find one who doesn't think global warming is some sort of hoax perpetrated for liberal political gain.

A big frustration for me as a self-proclaimed liberal is that I'm already a moderate in the middle. I'm not the left pole in hardly any political debate. And yet there are a ton of people (more in media than around here) who self-consciously try to position themselves "in the middle" by staking out positions to the right of me, and to the left of the Republicans. But doing that doesn't land you in the middle, it lands you way out on the right...because these days "liberal" just means "not a conservative", not that you're some sort of real left-wing ideologue.