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Le 2012-01-25 04:57, Invisible a écrit :
>
> Also: WTF is this "tea party" I keep hearing about?
>
In the late 1700s, the British colonies in America were getting fed up
of the King of England raising taxes without letting them have a voice
in Parliament, so they decided to rebel against the King and declare
their independence.
One of the first incident of the American revolution was the "Boston Tea
Party" where tea growers decided to punish the king by dumping all the
tea bound for England into the harbor. There! Neener! Neener! No you
can't have tea. Not yours!
Flash forward 240 years.
Groups of people angry about the rising taxes on the working class and
the runaway government deficit decided to form a protest movement called
"Taxed Enough Already" or T.E.A. for short. Thus were formed the modern
day Tea Parties.
Nevermind the fact that taxes on the working class had been going down
for a few years, that these people were mysteriously very silent while
the previous president was spending money he didn't have playing war
games all over the world and that these people - who were for the most
part very angry at having an uppity negro in the White House - were
being lied to by millionaires and talk show hosts who were trying to get
the government to ease restrictions on their investments.
--
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/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:50:20 +0000, Stephen wrote:
> On 24/01/2012 7:32 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:03:01 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> On 24/01/2012 4:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>>> I saw a bit of it last year in NM. I did not go back to that hotel.
>>>> I've news for you - the hotel wasn't hte problem.;)
>>>
>>> No, most likely the clientele.
>>
>> Ah, point. :) (Though it's not uncommon in hotels in more liberal
>> parts of the country as well - I'm pretty sure it was in the Marriot on
>> Times Square in NYC as well)
>>
>>
> No sense of class. Aim for the LCD (no pun intended).
LOL
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:03:26 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>>>> It seems that that probably doesn't have a lot to do with reality.
>>>> There were a couple of Star Wars games that came out as well, yet the
>>>> Empire is still a work of fiction.
>>>
>>> Well, sure. But I suspect before all this happened, most people had
>>> never even *heard* of Iraq.
>>
>> Except for everyone who remembers the first Iraq war (back in the 90s),
>> or everyone who heard of Saddam Hussein, or everyone who took the
>> slightest interest in where oil in the US came from.
>
> Seriously? You get oil from Iraq? The entire country appears to be a
> barren desert wilderness; where is the complex infrastructure necessary
> for oil extraction?
I really wonder sometimes if you're just trying to wind people up with
statements like this, or trying to see if you can invoke an 'extreme
facepalm' incident.
>> When's the last time you looked at a map, young'un?
>
> Of the Middle East? Never.
Maybe that's part of the reason why you have little sense of how the
world actually is. Just a thought.
> I'm the guy who thought that Brazil was in Europe, remember? Geography
> was never my strong point. (Or history, actually.)
That's correctable, but you have to correct it. Both of these things are
quite important.
>>>> Do you read slashdot? The Register?
>>>
>>> Nope, never. Why would I?
>>
>> Because you're in technology and keeping up on technology trends is
>> important to furthering a career in technology
>
> Really? In what sense?
If you don't know what technology is out there, how do you expect to know
when a proposed solution is good or not?
Seriously, that would help your job prospects a lot. Not knowing what
trends are taking place in IT is kinda like not being aware of the
development of the automobile when you are a driver for hire of a hansom
cab. (Yes, I'm going to make you look that up)
>> and those are two places
>> where LOTS of news about technology are posted or linked from?
>
> Well, that's news to me.
<boggle>
>>>> Actually, not YouTube, but Netflix; it's streaming has been claimed
>>>> to take more bandwidth than illegal downloads.
>>>
>>> Maybe in the US. In Britain, it seems to be YouTube and iPlayer that
>>> everyone was whining about.
>>
>> iPlayer I could see. YouTube? I haven't heard that, but I could see
>> that it does take up a fair bit of bandwidth. There was a report
>> yesterday that they've exceeded an hour of video uploaded *per second*
>> of actual video runtime.
>
> An hour of *uploaded* video per second of video runtime? Wow.
Yes.
> PS. What is Netflix? And does it only operate in America?
It's a streaming movie service, and if you'd been reading Slashdot or The
Register, you'd know they've just started operating in Europe as well. :)
Jim
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:25:33 -0500, Francois Labreque wrote:
> They currently
> only operate in the USA and Canada.
Not any more:
http://www.itworld.com/software/215983/netflix-streaming-europe
Jim
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:57:25 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>> But yeah, lot of idiots claiming this is the worst president we ever
>> had, and a lot legitimate complaints about him, but he managed in a few
>> months what Bush and Co. couldn't do in a decade, along with a fair
>> long list of other things, none of which would have happened with one
>> of the idiots calling him "the worst" in office instead.
>
> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
> which one to believe.
It's subjective.
You could probably learn a lot by reading his Wikipedia entry.
Jim
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
> which one to believe.
I think that the major problem is that he promised to do a lot of things
to make Americans' lives better, but in the end he didn't. Instead of
standing firm and pushing his original agenda no matter what, seemingly
he started making compromises and caving in. (Sure, the president cannot
pass laws, but in the US the president, AFAIK, has quite a lot of influence
which he can use to influence law making.)
Most prominently, he promised to bring the health care system to the
same level as the western European ones, but in the end he failed.
I haven't really followed that lately, but I get the impression that he
simply gave up or something. Also, he promised to close Guantanamo, but
he didn't. On the contrary, during his term even more egregious laws were
passed than during Bush's.
But that's not all. Apparently big companies have had a big influence
on his policies. For example, he has appointed several members of the
RIAA to high governmental positions, and he is a proponent of ridiculously
harsh and disproportionate penalties for minor copyright infractions (such
as fining people 110000 dollars for each illegally downloaded song).
There's a hypothesis that he was a big corporation puppet all along
(just like Reagan was), and that his initial "let's make America better"
policies were all just an act to get elected. Now that his term is coming
to an end, he isn't even pretending anymore. We'll probably never know if
that was the case.
--
- Warp
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:53:36 -0500, Warp wrote:
> I think that the major problem is that he promised to do a lot of
> things
> to make Americans' lives better, but in the end he didn't.
Anyone who runs for president of the US makes promises they're not going
to even come close to being able to keep - because they promise things
the president doesn't have control over.
Jim
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On 1/25/2012 3:03 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>>> It seems that that probably doesn't have a lot to do with reality.
>>>> There were a couple of Star Wars games that came out as well, yet the
>>>> Empire is still a work of fiction.
>>>
>>> Well, sure. But I suspect before all this happened, most people had
>>> never even *heard* of Iraq.
>>
>> Except for everyone who remembers the first Iraq war (back in the 90s),
>> or everyone who heard of Saddam Hussein, or everyone who took the
>> slightest interest in where oil in the US came from.
>
> Seriously? You get oil from Iraq? The entire country appears to be a
> barren desert wilderness; where is the complex infrastructure necessary
> for oil extraction?
>
Umm. Actually, we probably don't. Two reasons -
1. We wouldn't know anyway, since our own trade agreements *require*
that any oil we get has to be bought from the global market (including
what is pumped in the US, then sold to that market, before being bought
back from it, which is one reason, beyond the strange idea that
imaginary jobs, for a new pipeline, which will just ship the stuff to
the coast, to be loaded on a ship, to be sent to Opec, with no other
projects *at all*, will, "benefit the US", and solve a problem of 32
million jobs not existing).
2. I certainly haven't heard anything to indicate, at all, that any sort
of real agreements where ever made to acquire any of their oil. And, you
would think, if such an agreement existed, Bush would have been
trumpeting it, during the period in which he was still in charge, and
supposedly working with Iraq on such things.
Yeah, love to see some numbers on how much "oil" we get from Iraq... lol
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:03 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Umm. Actually, we probably don't.
Actually, we do:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
Jim
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On 25/01/2012 11:18 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:03 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Umm. Actually, we probably don't.
>
> Actually, we do:
>
> http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
>
Interesting, thanks.
--
Regards
Stephen
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