Magnetic media


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place



  •  The only difficult part is magnetizing the damn things.



  • @bstorer said:

     The only difficult part is magnetizing the damn things.


    Maybe, with a REALLY big Tesla coil … ?



  •  In their defense, it seems possible that "magnetic reporting media" is specific legacy jargon that really means, "any method of submitting a given report" - kind of like calling things 'footage' or saying you went to a 'film' even when celluloid had nothing to do with the creation process.

    Of course, it's also entirely possible that they're just jackasses.



  • @PeriSoft said:

    Of course, it's also entirely possible that they're just jackasses.
    It is South Carolina we're talking about.



  •  TRWTF is that it took until 2010 for them to stop accepting magnetic tapes and cartridges.  At this break-neck pace, Earth will be enslaved under the moist, brutal tentacles of Glo'R'X VIII of the Squid Nebula before they stop accepting CD-ROM.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

     TRWTF is that it took until 2010 for them to stop accepting magnetic tapes and cartridges.  At this break-neck pace, Earth will be enslaved under the moist, brutal tentacles of Glo'R'X VIII of the Squid Nebula before they stop accepting CD-ROM.

    The state may well have had thousands of companies submitting magtapes and cartridges. This was probably a legal mandate for companies with more than, say, 100 employees. It takes a while for them to convert to something more modern.

    And I, for one, welcome our new squidly overlords.



  •  @morbiuswilters said:

     TRWTF is that it took until 2010 for them to stop accepting magnetic tapes and cartridges.  At this break-neck pace, Earth will be enslaved under the moist, brutal tentacles of Glo'R'X VIII of the Squid Nebula before they stop accepting CD-ROM.

    Hey, give them some credit.  By government standards, this part is fucking cutting-edge:

    The Department of Revenue will accept data secured with a password or zip files but they must be pre-approved....

    Once approved, mail the secured data and the password for the zip file and the key in two separate packages. Include Form WH-1612 in both packages. Label the packages similar to the sample label below. The secured data or the zip file should be Vol 1 of 2 and the password or the key to the zip file should be Vol 2 of 2. Both packages should be mailed separately to the address listed below.

     



  • Maybe they really mean one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_drive

    A pretty bizarre format to accept, tho.



  • @bstorer said:

     @morbiuswilters said:

     TRWTF is that it took until 2010 for them to stop accepting magnetic tapes and cartridges.  At this break-neck pace, Earth will be enslaved under the moist, brutal tentacles of Glo'R'X VIII of the Squid Nebula before they stop accepting CD-ROM.

    Hey, give them some credit.  By government standards, this part is fucking cutting-edge:

    The Department of Revenue will accept data secured with a password or zip files but they must be pre-approved....

    Once approved, mail the secured data and the password for the zip file and the key in two separate packages. Include Form WH-1612 in both packages. Label the packages similar to the sample label below. The secured data or the zip file should be Vol 1 of 2 and the password or the key to the zip file should be Vol 2 of 2. Both packages should be mailed separately to the address listed below.

    Can't zip file passwords be cracked in like 10 seconds?  Maybe that's good by state government standards.  "Nobody will ever have 10 seconds to waste stealing South Carolina tax returns!"  Of course, they could also just seal it in a transparent package like the ones you get electronics in from Best Buy.  After a minute the thief would just be like: "Goddamn, does somebody have some bolt cutters or something?" [wrestles with package some more, slicing his palm wide open on the razor-sharp edge of plastic, bleeding profusely] "Shit!  Fuck this, I'm robbing a liquor store!"

     

    Of course, robbing a liquor store is exactly what the South Carolina Department of Revenue wanted him to do.  That liquor store has been behind on its taxes for years.  And if the owner takes a bullet to the gut, all the better.  You don't fuck around with the SCDR.

     

    Meanwhlie, revenue agents swooped in on the discarded package of tax documents.  The whole thing was a sting, to get a sample of the thief's DNA.  Captain Broadstache of the SCDR had recruited the thief to give his agents an inside look of the seedy underworld of tax dodgers, but had long suspected that this thief was actually a double agent working undercover for the North Caronlina Department of Fish and Wildlife.  This DNA sample would tie him to the scenes of a series of brutal, Satanic murders; one of the worst strings of ritualistic Satanic murders Broadstache had investigated in his 20 years as chief of the South Carolina Department of Revenue's Homicide Squad (HomSqua to those in-the-know).  At every one of the scenes, the walls were covered in complex, Satanic symbols and nonsensical strings of digits like "616" and "66666666", writ in human blood.  However, DNA testing revealed the blood was not from any of the victims and actually all belonged to the same person.  What's more, the DNA was a perfect match of Broadstache's son, although he was clearly not the murderer seeing as he had died as a child in the 80s.  He did, however, have a twin brother who vanished mysteriously.  Was Broadstache's mysteriously-vanished twin son the murderer?

     

    He'd know in a little bit; Broadstache's trap was set.

     

    Except, the thief knew about the trap and had cleverly replaced his DNA with the DNA of Broadstache's dead twin son (not the mysteriously-vanished son, who is still vanished under mysterious circumstances) just to foil the plot.  It was going to be a hot night...



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    It was going to be a hot night...
     

    I want to see this in Borders by July.




  • @PeriSoft said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    It was going to be a hot night...
     

    I want to see this in Borders by July.


    You are my new favorite.  pstorer will step down to #2 to make way for you.  BTK shifts down to #3 to make way for pstorer.  To make way for BTK, dhromed will be returned to the general harem, although his service and prior rank will be recognized with the "Neglige of Shame".



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Can't zip file passwords be cracked in like 10 seconds?  Maybe that's good by state government standards.  "Nobody will ever have 10 seconds to waste stealing South Carolina tax returns!"  Of course, they could also just seal it in a transparent package like the ones you get electronics in from Best Buy.  After a minute the thief would just be like: "Goddamn, does somebody have some bolt cutters or something?" [wrestles with package some more, slicing his palm wide open on the razor-sharp edge of plastic, bleeding profusely] "Shit!  Fuck this, I'm robbing a liquor store!"

     

    Of course, robbing a liquor store is exactly what the South Carolina Department of Revenue wanted him to do.  That liquor store has been behind on its taxes for years.  And if the owner takes a bullet to the gut, all the better.  You don't fuck around with the SCDR.

     

    Meanwhlie, revenue agents swooped in on the discarded package of tax documents.  The whole thing was a sting, to get a sample of the thief's DNA.  Captain Broadstache of the SCDR had recruited the thief to give his agents an inside look of the seedy underworld of tax dodgers, but had long suspected that this thief was actually a double agent working undercover for the North Caronlina Department of Fish and Wildlife.  This DNA sample would tie him to the scenes of a series of brutal, Satanic murders; one of the worst strings of ritualistic Satanic murders Broadstache had investigated in his 20 years as chief of the South Carolina Department of Revenue's Homicide Squad (HomSqua to those in-the-know).  At every one of the scenes, the walls were covered in complex, Satanic symbols and nonsensical strings of digits like "616" and "66666666", writ in human blood.  However, DNA testing revealed the blood was not from any of the victims and actually all belonged to the same person.  What's more, the DNA was a perfect match of Broadstache's son, although he was clearly not the murderer seeing as he had died as a child in the 80s.  He did, however, have a twin brother who vanished mysteriously.  Was Broadstache's mysteriously-vanished twin son the murderer?

     

    He'd know in a little bit; Broadstache's trap was set.

     

    Except, the thief knew about the trap and had cleverly replaced his DNA with the DNA of Broadstache's dead twin son (not the mysteriously-vanished son, who is still vanished under mysterious circumstances) just to foil the plot.  It was going to be a hot night...

     

    His carefully-constructed charade would collapse for the lack of a Package Shark Pro (and the bonus pair of Power Scissors).  This bungling thief and his inability to open that damned package of tax data had put into motion a series of events that could end him.  He knew of the thief's mistake, and what's more he knew about the thief's "clever" scheme to foil Broadstache.  But that scheme could never be allowed to come to fruition, lest it lead Broadstache to his dead brother, which is to say himself.

    It had started as most things do, with a disagreement between brothers over who was the more fitting leader of the Decepticons.  His brother, ever the servant of the status quo, naturally favored Megatron.  He knew better, though, and saw that Starscream was the more cunning and capable of the two.  The argument had boiled over into a feud one day on the train to Bern, Switzerland.  Their mother had brought them to Europe for the summer, ostensibly for a vacation, but in truth they had been sent away by Jim Broadstache to remove them all from harm's way until the W-2 Strangler was brought to justice.  Ten minutes after crossing the Swiss border and less than an hour after snacktime (a delightful snickerdoodle that he could likely still have tasted, had he been partaking of his favorite passtime: belching the works of Shakespeare (he was particularly fond of the witches' prophecies from MacBeth)), his brother, apropos of nothing, declared Starscream a coward.  He had retorted with disdain, accusing his brother of not understanding the subtle distinction between cowardice and strategic retreat.

    The argument continued as any other on the subject, except that it did not stop.  Neither boy realized it, but they eventually found themselves in virgin territory, having gone beyond the typical end stage where they slapped at each other and called names (some favorites being "poop-eater", "butt brains", and "dog-fucking donkey cunt").  At this point they would typically have been quelled by their mother, but at the moment she was snoring drunkenly, with half a fifth of tequilla still dangling precipitously from her hand.  She had taken up drinking some years ago, but had never really put all her focus into it until now, having been distracted by such things as fucking the mailman, and feigning illness when her husband displayed amorous intentions.  As she dozed in her seat mumbling sexual innuendo about mail slots, the rest of the train car were focused on the two identical boys staring each other down in the aisle.

    In truth, neither boy had any clue where to go next with this argument; typically one expects the other party to have some experience in the next step, so that one may follow along, learning along the way.  His brother had looked into his own family's past for his strategy, adopting the unsteady posture and slurred speech of his mother when she hurled drunken invectives at their father.  He, however, opted for the calm cruelty of their Sunday school teacher, condemning him to Hell and threatening him with sodomy.  Before either could do any more, the conductor broke them up, but not before something changed.  His brother's eyes had been filled with a new and terrifying rage, a thing far beyond anything he had seen before.  And to think, he had been the target of that rage!  It was unfathomable that anyone could hate him so!  He gave himself a quick appraisal, confirming his own perfection to himself once again.  How could his own twin hate his flawless form?

    He knew what he had to do: murder his brother and switch places with him.  When they believed him dead, the whole world would make a matyr of him, and years later he would reveal his true self to the world, perhaps on one of the many holidays they would create to venerate him.  But, being the son of one the foremost homicide detective of all the world's revenue investigators, he was no fool.  He knew his fingerprints would give him away as clearly as the smell of the mailman's hot sex upon her always gave away his mother.  The DNA was a perfect match, but he must swap fingerprints with his brother.  But how?  Fortunately for him, his family had just arrived in Bern, where lived just the man to help him.

    In the 1940s, Doctor Henrik von Below had been one of the foremost young surgeons in all of Germany.  He was an old man now; a man burdened with 40 years of cold remorse.  He had never really been a hardline Nazi, but their Final Solution had afforded him the opportunity to sate his enormous curiosity.  His bizarre experiments on Jews had given him more insight into the human condition than any man before or since.  He knew how to remove the flesh from a man's hand, the bones held together only with cartilege, and send him away the next day in otherwise perfect health.  He could cut the fear directly from a man's brain, leaving him otherwise unharmed.  On more than one occasion he had replaced a woman's independence with a second vagina.  He had even performed a few successful soul transplants, turning ordinary German citizens into lowly Jews.

    But his surgeries were not all successes, and for this he felt a terrible guilt.  Even more so because of some his successes.  He had been a pioneer in turning them into mindless soldiers which were taken from his lab straight to the eastern front where they were sent, wave after wave, at the Russian lines to be gunned down while real German soldiers hid in their foxholes and played a curious variation of pinochle they had devised. Von Below was unable to close his eyes at night without seeing those shuffling monsters, gold stars still affixed to their clothes, lumbering toward him for retribution.  He often awoke screaming in apology to Moses, who haunted his dreams, pointing his fleshless finger at von Below in accusation.

    So it was that when the young boy entered his home, thinking it a sweets shop (he and his brother thought every house in Switzerland to be either a sweets shop or a Jew bank full of Nazi gold, this information having come from The Great American Guide to Europe), Henrik von Below saw an opportunity to make amends.  Having amputated so many, he immediately recognized the boy's Jew nose.  Unbeknownst to anyone but their mother (and now Herr Doktor), the twins were half Jewish, from their mailman's side of the family.  The doctor welcomed the boy in, luring him into the den with the offer of some unleavened bread and an excellent interest rate.  He offered his services to the boy, who really had no particular desire to have hands of bone (you might think this a desirable offer to a young boy, it is important to recall that in the 80s skeletons were considered lame because Skeletor was such a douche), or to replace his mother's independence with yet another vagina (though, due to the variety of STDs she had contracted in her first (and at the time, only) vagina, his mother might have found use of another one, free of cuntrot).  What he really needed, he explained, was a foolproof method of killing his brother and taking his place, because Starscream is totally rad.  The doctor liked this proposal even more, because it combined his greatest need -- to assuage his guilt by helping Jews -- with his greatest skill -- the mutilation and murder of Jews.

    A year later, back in South Carolina,  the boy's brother died in his place, thanks to an expertly performed fingerprint transplant and some poisoned Nutter Butter bars.  The boy himself disappeared a year later, and had lurked in the darkest corners of society ever since, slowly putting into action his master plan.  But all this was in danger now, because the blasted thief had unwittingly used his brother's DNA.  And worst of all, the thief had failed in his primary goal of switching out those tax documents, thereby endangering his entire operation.  This will not do, he thought.  He reached into his desk and pulled out his service revolver.  He checked himself in the mirror and strode out of his office, pausing only to smack his secretary's ass on the way out.  John Stroadbache, Director of the North Carolina Department of Fish and Wildlife would have to take matters into his own hands now (although, to be fair, part of the matters would be taken into the fingerprints, which weren't actually his at all).  He stepped out of the government building into the muggy evening.  It was going to be a hot night indeed...



  •  You guys need jobs.



  • @blakeyrat said:

     You guys need jobs.

    Your sentence is missing a word.  Probably "blow," but "hand" would suffice.  It's not really my thing, but "foot" would probably be okay, too.

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    You guys need jobs.
    Got one, thanks.



  •  Lunch hour, bitch.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You guys I need a jobs where my value is so intangible that nobody notices if I spend all day writing fanfic on an Internet forum.
     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @bstorer said:

     @morbiuswilters said:

     TRWTF is that it took until 2010 for them to stop accepting magnetic tapes and cartridges.  At this break-neck pace, Earth will be enslaved under the moist, brutal tentacles of Glo'R'X VIII of the Squid Nebula before they stop accepting CD-ROM.

    Hey, give them some credit.  By government standards, this part is fucking cutting-edge:

    The Department of Revenue will accept data secured with a password or zip files but they must be pre-approved....

    Once approved, mail the secured data and the password for the zip file and the key in two separate packages. Include Form WH-1612 in both packages. Label the packages similar to the sample label below. The secured data or the zip file should be Vol 1 of 2 and the password or the key to the zip file should be Vol 2 of 2. Both packages should be mailed separately to the address listed below.

    Can't zip file passwords be cracked in like 10 seconds?  Maybe that's good by state government standards.  "Nobody will ever have 10 seconds to waste stealing South Carolina tax returns!"  Of course, they could also just seal it in a transparent package like the ones you get electronics in from Best Buy.  After a minute the thief would just be like: "Goddamn, does somebody have some bolt cutters or something?" [wrestles with package some more, slicing his palm wide open on the razor-sharp edge of plastic, bleeding profusely] "Shit!  Fuck this, I'm robbing a liquor store!"

     

    Of course, robbing a liquor store is exactly what the South Carolina Department of Revenue wanted him to do.  That liquor store has been behind on its taxes for years.  And if the owner takes a bullet to the gut, all the better.  You don't fuck around with the SCDR.

     

    Meanwhlie, revenue agents swooped in on the discarded package of tax documents.  The whole thing was a sting, to get a sample of the thief's DNA.  Captain Broadstache of the SCDR had recruited the thief to give his agents an inside look of the seedy underworld of tax dodgers, but had long suspected that this thief was actually a double agent working undercover for the North Caronlina Department of Fish and Wildlife.  This DNA sample would tie him to the scenes of a series of brutal, Satanic murders; one of the worst strings of ritualistic Satanic murders Broadstache had investigated in his 20 years as chief of the South Carolina Department of Revenue's Homicide Squad (HomSqua to those in-the-know).  At every one of the scenes, the walls were covered in complex, Satanic symbols and nonsensical strings of digits like "616" and "66666666", writ in human blood.  However, DNA testing revealed the blood was not from any of the victims and actually all belonged to the same person.  What's more, the DNA was a perfect match of Broadstache's son, although he was clearly not the murderer seeing as he had died as a child in the 80s.  He did, however, have a twin brother who vanished mysteriously.  Was Broadstache's mysteriously-vanished twin son the murderer?

     

    He'd know in a little bit; Broadstache's trap was set.

     

    Except, the thief knew about the trap and had cleverly replaced his DNA with the DNA of Broadstache's dead twin son (not the mysteriously-vanished son, who is still vanished under mysterious circumstances) just to foil the plot.  It was going to be a hot night...

     

     

    Not exactly a rant, but very enjoyable nonetheless. Thanks.



  • @PeriSoft said:

    Of course, it's also entirely possible that they're just jackasses.

     

     No, they're "the government" so it is impossible that they're "just jackasses". They are also rapscallions, extortionists, liars, and self-absorbed lackeys of higher powers.



  • @SQLDave said:

    rapscallions

     

    Ne'er-do-wells! Hoodlums! Ruffians! What's the matter with kids governments these days?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    dhromed will be returned to the general harem, although his service and prior rank will be recognized with the "Neglige of Shame".
     

    I shall wear it with pride, for it was truly a momentous phase in my life.



  • @SQLDave said:

    @PeriSoft said:

    Of course, it's also entirely possible that they're just jackasses.

     

     No, they're "the government" so it is impossible that they're "just jackasses". They are also rapscallions, extortionists, liars, and self-absorbed lackeys of higher powers.

    So. As I see that everyone bashes the government, it's a wonderful new occasion to gather a little more hatred/adversity/argument/despise/buffonnery/pick your synonym : You guys are unfair : on our democratic countries, government is evil only when people keep on putting the same liars/jackasses/extortionnists/and so on, in the place of power : let's just not elect them and they're gone. Politicians have not stolen power from the people's hands everywhere on this world : look at Bolivia for instance...

    @PJH's signature said:

    Abstinence makes the Church grow fondlers.

    - unknown
    Pornography makes the Internet grow impotents.

    - known (me)



  • They must be using magnetic resonance microscopy to read those disks instead of the way too inaccurate optical drives. TRWTF is that you can't take a picture of the cd on a wooden table and then send in that picture using a standard 3½-inch floppy disk.



  •  They never said CD-ROM discs are magnetic media. It looks perfectly fine to me.

     It's like when you say this:

    From this moment, diesel powered vehicles such as motorbikes, cars and trucks are no longer allowed on this alley. Bikes are the only means of transportation accepted.

    This doesn't mean bikes are diesel powered.  



  • @mariushm said:

    "From this moment, diesel powered motorbikes, cars and trucks as diesel powered vehicles are no longer allowed on this alley. Bikes are the only acceptable diesel powered vehicle accepted."

     

    FTFY



  • @toshir0 said:

    So. As I see that everyone bashes the government, it's a wonderful new occasion to gather a little more hatred/adversity/argument/despise/buffonnery/pick your synonym : You guys are unfair : on our democratic countries, government is evil only when people keep on putting the same liars/jackasses/extortionnists/and so on, in the place of power : let's just not elect them and they're gone. Politicians have not stolen power from the people's hands everywhere on this world : look at Bolivia for instance...

    The Nazi Party was democratically elected.  In the United States, the Federal government protected the institutions of slavery and segregation for 200 years, all through democratic means.  The mostly-democratic government of Britain built the world's largest empire, killing and enslaving millions.  And, Jesus, that's just the tip of the iceburg.

     

    Democracy, without clear restraints on the power of government and guaranteed protections of the rights of man, easily becomes tyranny of the majority.  Either you know this and are being disingenuous, or you are an idiot.  Maybe both.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Democracy, without clear restraints on the power of government and guaranteed protections of the rights of man, easily becomes tyranny of the majority.
    I'm entirely ok with that, I've read Plato too, but I didn't talk about democracy in itself, I just meant that the government should be our shield against the real tyrants, who discretly stole the power in many of our market-driven countries, and use it to keep on their monstrous and world-wrecking style-of-life. My english vocabular is too poor to express these ideas here without restraining my thoughts, but I still hope I'll now be clearly stated as the "Official TDWTD bolchevik Untermensch". I thank you very much.



  • @toshir0 said:

    ...I just meant that the government should be our shield against the real tyrants, who discretly stole the power in many of our market-driven countries, and use it to keep on their monstrous and world-wrecking style-of-life.

    I also heard they put flouride in the water to control our thoughts.  And they did 9/11 to make the Jew richer.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    My english vocabular is too poor to express these ideas here without restraining my thoughts...

    It's not just your vocabulary that is poor.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    ...but I still hope I'll now be clearly stated as the "Official TDWTD bolchevik Untermensch".

    Because everybody knows: when you want freedom, peace, prosperity and democracy, you look to the Communists.  The fact that it's been a dismal, soul-crushing, mass-murdering failure every single time some asshole has tried it shouldn't discourage you.  Hey, it was probably a Jewish/Imperialist/Capitalist plot that kept it from working, right?  Keep fucking that chicken, dude.



  • @toshir0 said:

    ...the real tyrants, who discretly stole the power in many of our market-driven countries, and use it to keep on their monstrous and world-wrecking style-of-life
     

     I love how those who are supposedly running these secret cabals are powerful & smart enough to actually do so, but stupid enough to not avoid detection by conspiracy theorists. Look, if there really is such a group, or groups, what chance do we have? In the immortal words of Slartibartfast, "I think the chances of us finding out what's really going on are so remote that the only real answer is to say 'Hang the sense of it' and just keep yourself occupied."

     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    The fact that it's been a dismal, soul-crushing, mass-murdering failure every single time some asshole has tried it
    Check your sources before talking nonsense, boy. You seem very less at ease out of your programming playground : learn history from serious authors. Also : try to remember who needs you to believe that all collective solutions have failed...

    Grow up a bit, Mr Wise Guy... humbleness is a harder path than your everlasting pride and despise : but you'll maybe understand too late...

     



  •  @SQLDave said:

    these secret cabals
    I'm no conspirationnist : I didn't say anything is secret in fact. Who needs to hide when everyone is watching somewhere else ?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @mariushm said:

    They never said CD-ROM discs are magnetic media.
    Um, if you're talking about the PDF, that's exactly what they said.



  • @toshir0 said:

    learn history from serious authors.

    In other words: liars or idiots.  You sound like one of those retards who thinks the Holocaust was made up.  Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, they insist the "real scholars" or "real historians" are the handful of nutjobs who deny the Holocaust.  Meanwhile, you don't even need to look very far to see how badly Communism has failed.  Soviet Union: economic failure, collapsed under own weight.  China: economic failure, slowly enacted market reforms.  North Korea: failed police state where the people would starve to death without US aid.  Cuba: third world shithole, corrupted Fredo Corleone.  Vietnam: economic failure, slowly enacted market reforms.

     

    Millions died under Communist regimes, whether due to internal "purges", aggressive wars against neighbors or just plain starvation or primitive living conditions brought on by a failed economic system.  Meanwhile, if we broaden that to look at all statist regimes, the picture is even worse.  Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany were all statist abominations that killed millions.  And, fundamentally, there's not much difference between Communism and Fascism.  The propaganda each uses emphasizes slightly different things, but both put the welfare of the state above the welfare of the individual, and the results have been horrid.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    but you'll maybe understand too late...

    Right, because the revolution is just around the corner, eh?  And, hey, anybody who doesn't see the brilliance of your retarded little theories can just be re-educated.  The problem isn't the sheer stupidity of Communism, nor the violence and oppression required to keep the state stumbling from one failed 5 year plan to the next; oh no.  The problem is that people just don't understand how smart you are for figuring it all out.  Clearly, they must have been brainwashed (maybe by the Jews!).  Survivors of Soviet prison camps?  Brainwashed!  If only the Stasi had had a few more months with them, they would have seen the error of their ways and learned to love the state!



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @toshir0 said:

    learn history from serious authors.

    In other words: liars or idiots.  You sound like one of those retards who thinks the Holocaust was made up.  Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, they insist the "real scholars" or "real historians" are the handful of nutjobs who deny the Holocaust.  Meanwhile, you don't even need to look very far to see how badly Communism has failed.  Soviet Union: economic failure, collapsed under own weight.  China: economic failure, slowly enacted market reforms.  North Korea: failed police state where the people would starve to death without US aid.  Cuba: third world shithole, corrupted Fredo Corleone.  Vietnam: economic failure, slowly enacted market reforms.

     

    Millions died under Communist regimes, whether due to internal "purges", aggressive wars against neighbors or just plain starvation or primitive living conditions brought on by a failed economic system.  Meanwhile, if we broaden that to look at all statist regimes, the picture is even worse.  Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany were all statist abominations that killed millions.  And, fundamentally, there's not much difference between Communism and Fascism.  The propaganda each uses emphasizes slightly different things, but both put the welfare of the state above the welfare of the individual, and the results have been horrid.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    but you'll maybe
    understand too late...

    Right, because the revolution is just around the corner, eh?  And, hey, anybody who doesn't see the brilliance of your retarded little theories can just be re-educated.  The problem isn't the sheer stupidity of Communism, nor the violence and oppression required to keep the state stumbling from one failed 5 year plan to the next; oh no.  The problem is that people just don't understand how smart you are for figuring it all out.  Clearly, they must have been brainwashed (maybe by the Jews!).  Survivors of Soviet prison camps?  Brainwashed!  If only the Stasi had had a few more months with them, they would have seen the error of their ways and learned to love the state!

    Er. You're sending those straw men tumbling like nine-pins, but I don't read any of that in what Toshir0 wrote. He appears to be writing in praise of democracy, and bemoaning the fact that many people who attain any form of power misuse it to perpetuate their position. Doesn't seem terribly controversial to me. I don't see that it's necessary to posit any kind of conspiracy theory to have "tyrants, who discretly stole the power in many of our market-driven countries, and use it to keep on their monstrous and world-wrecking style-of-life" unless you read that overly literally and substitute 'secretly' for 'discretely'. 'Monstrous and world-wrecking' strikes me as a touch hyperbolic, but not a bad description of the lifestyle of, for example, the type of people who attend the WEF meetings at Davos.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    You sound like one of those retards who thinks the Holocaust was made up. [...] the handful of nutjobs who deny the Holocaust [...]
    Calm down : I'm no anti-semit, I don't believe that *jews secretly control the world* or any conspirationnism involving underground plots of free-masons, illuminati, whatever... I don't understand what makes you think I've said or thought such stupidities. @morbiuswilters said:
    Meanwhile, you don't even need to look very far to see how badly Communism has failed
    For this point and all the subsequent talking about communism : I don't care. I don't like communism more than capitalism, because it leads to the same mistake : productivism. A neverending growth in a limited world is just illogic to me. It has catastrophic social and environnemental consequences. That's why I totally agree with your analysis on the former (or actual) communist countries.

     @morbiuswilters said:

    Right, because the revolution is just around the corner, eh?
    Revolution is just an illusion, a blood bath leading to new inequalities. Where did you read that I wanted that ? No idea.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    the brilliance of your retarded little theories
    You seem very affected, I'm sorry to have caused you such sadness. By the way... what theories ? Saying that the State could or should not be our ennemy but represent the common good... ? And you thought it was... *toshir0's little theory* ? Come on, you're overestimating me, you know : it's as old as philosophy itself.



  • @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    You're sending those straw men tumbling like nine-pins,
     

    Ah, nine-pins...

    I was supposed to go bowling tonight with a small group of friends, but alas, all but one guy and myself were unable to make it. So between the two of us, we cancelled bowling, and went for a bite in a small, cosy restaurant.

    My dinner companion had a "mixed grill" consisting of what looked like two types of meat, but it apparently tasted very nice. I had lamb; prepared in a most agreeable fashion. It was absolutely delicious and I left the establishment in higher spirits than with which I had entered.



  • @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    ...but I don't read any of that in what Toshir0 wrote. He appears to be writing in praise of democracy, and bemoaning the fact that many people who attain any form of power misuse it to perpetuate their position. Doesn't seem terribly controversial to me.

    He's clearly defending Communism.  Although, he will probably reply with some pseudo-intellectual bullshit along the lines of "oh noes, Communism is evil, but it's a perversion of fundamental Marxian/collectivist principles" or "real Communism hasn't been tried" or one of the other mind-numbing lies told by hard Leftists to protect the cognitive dissonance they've so carefully cultivated.  Maybe he will have the balls to openly admit he's a CCCP-loving pinko, though.  If so, I have the tiniest shred more respect for him.

     

    @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    I don't see that it's necessary to posit any kind of conspiracy theory to have "tyrants, who discretly stole the power in many of our market-driven countries, and use it to keep on their monstrous and world-wrecking style-of-life"...

    That's the real straw man.  Modern, capitalist tyrants?  Gonna need some examples and supporting evidence.  At best, he'll bring up some instances of evil men who became wealthy and did evil things.  I may or may not be familiar with his specific examples, but regardless, they are the quintessential "bad apples", they should be punished for breaking the laws by the criminal justice system.  To use them as evidence of the unsuitability of capitalism is disingenuous and the very straw man you are talking about.  To further use them as proof of the superiority of Communism, especially given the large sum of evidence against Communism, is depressingly stupid.

     

    That's his absolute best hope of coming out of this looking only moderately stupid.  At worst, he's one of those wackos who thinks George W. Bush is "just like Hitler" and figures everyone else should suffer from his delusions, too.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    He's clearly defending Communism.  Although, he will probably reply with some pseudo-intellectual bullshit along the lines of "oh noes, Communism is evil, but it's a perversion of fundamental Marxian/collectivist principles" or "real Communism hasn't been tried" or one of the other mind-numbing lies told by hard Leftists to protect the cognitive dissonance they've so carefully cultivated.
    Read the above posts before posting yourself, morbius... you're clearly off topic. Keep on fighting the crash test dummy you kick for two days... but, you know, it's just not me...

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Modern, capitalist tyrants?  Gonna need some examples and supporting evidence.
    When I see that a huge part of the planet's ressources are spoiled by a very few over-wealthy people, thus maintaining litteraly millions of people in poverty and slavery, I think it's social injustice. Do you think that Nestlé's CEO deserves to earn 10000 times the salary of the men actually making his society's value ? I don't. I don't think of several "great evil men"that would be the "bad apples" you're talking about. It's the form of that society that has flaws so destructive. 

    @morbiuswilters said:

    At worst, he's one of those wackos who thinks George W. Bush is "just like Hitler"
    No. Hitler was a mass murderer even more guilty than Bush, because the first was a clear psycho, where the second just acted for personal profit (fanatic <> thief). But the last was clearly evil to me too, yes, if you ask.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @toshir0 said:

    When I see that a huge part of the planet's ressources are spoiled by a very few over-wealthy people, thus maintaining litteraly millions of people in poverty and slavery, I think it's social injustice.
    When I see that someone blames prosperity for oppressing others into poverty, I think it's ignorance. The main causes of third world poverty are governments that don't respect things like the rule of law and private property. Sadly, most western democracies are working towards those third world standards.

    @toshir0 said:

    Do you think that Nestlé's CEO deserves to earn 10000 times the salary of the men actually making his society's value ? I don't.
    I'm not sure who these men who actually "make society's value". I don't really care what some CEO makes. I suppose if I were a shareholder (and I may be, through my minuscule ownership of a mutual fund) and said CEO were making bad decisions, I might want him paid less or even fired. But envy is ugly, and I try not to engage in it.

    @toshir0 said:

    Bush...just acted for personal profit
    This makes no sense. I can understand (even though I disagree) how you might think Bush evil. That's just being a wrong-headed idealist with odd priorities. But personal profit?



  • @boomzilla said:

    This makes no sense. I can understand (even though I disagree) how you might think Bush evil. That's just being a wrong-headed idealist with odd priorities. But personal profit?
     

    What do you constantly see politicians and other rich people doing?  Playing golf.  What does golf have in it?  Sand traps.  Where do you think all that sand comes from?  Iraq.  That's the real conspiracy that they don't want you to know about!   Not to mention that Bush's family conveniently happens to own a sand distribution company that I just read about on a page I just created on wikipedia. And we'll all be in trouble once they delve too greedily and too deep into the sand, and release the Giant Sand Worms, that the terrorists have actually been keeping people from releasing for millenia.  But of course, big Evil Bush, who is only in the sand business for the money, doesn't want you to know that the terrorists are really the good guys.  Why else would we have a worldwide war on terror? This is the only explanation that makes any sense.



  • Fuck you toshiro.  I want to know the next chapter in the book, but you would rather talk about communism.



  • @toshir0 said:

    When I see that a huge part of the planet's ressources are spoiled
     

    The planet's resources are better right now than they have been at any other time since the 17th century. Most environmentalists do not have any conception of history, don't listen to them.

    @toshir0 said:

    thus maintaining litteraly millions of people in poverty and slavery,

    Fewer people are in poverty currently than at any other time in history. Slavery is so low now that it might as well no longer exist, even in the crappiest of the world's craphole nations.

    Again, you're being completely ignorant of history. Is it a bad thing that millions are in poverty? Yes. Is it a good thing that fewer millions are in poverty than at any other point in history? Hell yes. And the percentage of people in poverty has gone down while the population has skyrocketed-- we're doing a pretty damned good job, collectively, of running the planet, buddy.

    @toshir0 said:

    Do you think that Nestlé's CEO deserves to earn 10000 times the salary of the men actually making his society's value ?

    Some schools of economic thought would reply that the fact he is earning 10,000 times the salary of the assembly line workers, by definition, means he deserves to earn that amount.

    Why did you pick a European country, BTW? I would have assumed your delusion would be based firmly on hating the US... most people like you are.

    @toshir0 said:

    It's the form of that society that has flaws so destructive. 

    Ok, so outline a better one. SUPER CHALLENGE MODE: compensate for the fact that human behavior has evolved over 3+ million years, and your society ain't going to change it.

    Look, the commies were wrong (even before they all descended into dictatorships) because the entire theory requires human beings to act in a way entirely contrary to how human beings act. If Marx or Lenin thought they could change millions of years of learned behavior in less than a thousand years, they was being extremely naive at best.



  •  @boomzilla said:

    When I see that someone blames prosperity for oppressing others into poverty, I think it's ignorance
    I didn't blame prosperity. I blame captation of propsperity by a tiny minority of people.

    @boomzilla said:

    The main causes of third world poverty are governments that don't respect things like the rule of law and private property
    Not very sad to read this : I'm really used to it. Yes, it's really their fault. Morbius will soon send troopers there don't worry. They'll all be punished not buying enough MacDonald's burgers. Stupid poor people.

    @boomzilla said:

    shareholders
    ...are all thieves. Only actual work earns money.

    @boomzilla said:

    if CEO were making bad decisions
    Like : giving those stupid nigerians mine workers radiation proof equipment : it's a misuse od our precious money and will ruin our benefits... clearly this type of CEO should be fired. You're so true.



  • @toshir0 said:

    @boomzilla said:

    shareholders
    ...are all thieves. Only actual work earns money.

     

    As much as I seriously don't want to stroll into this minefield - my small company has shareholders, who invested money they earned, in order to help start it. I don't consider them thieves.

    If I sell a share in my company, whether it's public or private, I'm exchanging potential future earnings for capital I can use immediately. In many cases, both the investors and the company end up with more money than if no investment had occurred. It's possible for one or the other, or both, to end up with less money, of course, but none of those options is a foregone conclusion. Your assertion is a drastic oversimplification.



  • @toshir0 said:

    I blame captation of propsperity by a tiny minority of people.
     

     

    This is totally going to blow your tiny little mind.   In, for example, a gas of particles, the minority of particles carry the majority of energy.  That is, you have a small number of particles that are very hot.  This is why things cool as they evaporate (hot particles are more likley to escape).  The reason this happens is because a RANDOM number is being exchanged with each interaction.  That's the only thing this effect depends on.

    This means, if you have an economy where people randomly exchange random amounts of money, i.e., a perfectly "fair" economy where no one is favored by buyers.  Guess what?  You end up with rich people, poor people, and middle class people.  

    You can't fix this--in the case of a gas you'd be violating entropy increasing by trying to "fairly" distribute energy.  You'd be violating similar mathematical theorems trying to do this in an economy.  It's mathematically impossible to not have rich people.

    Or is thermodynamics Evil, too?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @toshir0 said:

     @boomzilla said:
    When I see that someone blames prosperity for oppressing others into poverty, I think it's ignorance
    I didn't blame prosperity. I blame captation of propsperity by a tiny minority of people.
    I'm not sure what you mean by "captation."  But it seems clear to me that you have a zero sum view of prosperity.

     @toshir0 said:

    @boomzilla said:
    The main causes of third world poverty are governments that don't respect things like the rule of law and private property
    Not very sad to read this : I'm really used to it. Yes, it's really their fault...They'll all be punished not buying enough MacDonald's burgers. Stupid poor people.
    I blame the small number of people who run the government in a particular country.  If the people chose that sort of government (e.g., possibly Venezuela) then they deserve their share of the blame, at least in the sense that they had a hand in the form of government (not trying to get into a debate about the legitimacy of the democracy in Venezuela, but <i>someone</i> voted for Chavez), whether or not they understood what they were doing.  I can't imagine what MacDonald's has to do with any of this.

     @toshir0 said:

    @boomzilla said:
    shareholders
    ...are all thieves. Only actual work earns money.
    Maybe in a hunter-gatherer society.  In a modern economy, where non-human capital is important, this is trivially untrue.

    @toshir0 said:

    @boomzilla said:
    if CEO were making bad decisions
    Like : giving those stupid nigerians mine workers radiation proof equipment : it's a misuse od our precious money and will ruin our benefits... clearly this type of CEO should be fired. You're so true.
    Well, if that's how you'd like to run a company.  I prefer my companies (and discussions!) without straw men.  Nevertheless, many things, like pollution control and conservation of natural resources are essentially luxury items, or at least get treated that way.  When you're struggling to eat, you're not worried that the meat in the pot is endangered.  Radiation suits (or whatever) cost money.  So do catalytic converters.  If a society is prosperous enough, it will be willing and able to pay for these things. If not, then you get something like China today, or Pittsburgh a century ago.

     

     



  • @toshir0 said:

    When I see that a huge part of the planet's ressources are spoiled by a very few over-wealthy people, thus maintaining litteraly millions of people in poverty and slavery...

    This is nonsense.  You really need to educate yourself, because you're coming off like a 15 year-old jerkoff.  Wealth is something that is created by man.  Wealth-creation is not zero-sum; one person having more does not mean other people must have less.  This is very, very basic economics; the kind of thing a child should need explained to them, not an adult.  How about trying to actually learn something instead of spouting nonsense?  You're engaging in the weakest form of jealousy-based, emotionally-driven anti-intellectualism, and you should be ashamed of your pathetic ignorance.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    Do you think that Nestlé's CEO deserves to earn 10000 times the salary of the men actually making his society's value ?

    Yet again, you show your ignorance.  Value is a human concept, based on subjective, individual decisions, both rational and emotional.  Clearly, somebody feels a CEO deserves his salary, that he provides enough value to justify it.  If those people are making a poor judgment, either because the CEO sucks or his pay is far more than other CEOs in the same industry, then that company will face increased pressure from competitors.  Bad decisions are a part of any human endeavor.  Progress requires process, process requires organization, organization requires hierarchy, hierarchy requires leaders, leaders are fallible men.

     

    You whine like a little bitch about competition, seeing it as a waste of resources compared to cooperation.  However, competition is the mechanism that provides alternatives for bad decisions.  The resources "wasted" on competition are dwarfed by the resources wasted through years of bad decisions made unilaterally under a state of monopoly.  Competition is the selective force which increases efficiency through an iterative process of "punishing" bad decisions and rewarding good ones.  Because the end-consumers of products are the ultimate decision makers, the organizations competing to serve them are able to respond much more effectively to the needs and wants of consumers.  Monopolist systems, whether under capitalism or statism, are unresponsive to consumer needs and wants, are slow to adapt and are massively inefficient due to the lack of any kind of effective pressure to reform; power becomes centralized and entrenched, seeking only to further itself by whatever means necessary.  Of course, corporations try to do the same thing, but often fail because a free market makes it nearly impossible for them to consolidate power without being efficient and responsive to consumer needs, lest competitors pop up.  So, often corporations turn to the government to buy protection, lobbying for complex regulations which favor them and lock out smaller competitors.  Big Government's best friend has always been Big Business, and vice-versa.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    No. Hitler was a mass murderer even more guilty than Bush, because the first was a clear psycho, where the second just acted for personal profit (fanatic <> thief). But the last was clearly evil to me too, yes, if you ask.

    Goddammit, I write the above well-reasoned and simple-minded explanation of market economics for you, then you turn around and prove you're a goddamn retard.  Thanks for wasting my time, shit-for-brains.



  • @toshir0 said:

    I didn't blame prosperity. I blame captation of propsperity by a tiny minority of people.

    Prosperity is created through trade.  It is a product of man.  Yes, some people steal (like politicians) but most wealth is created by those who hold it.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    Not very sad to read this : I'm really used to it. Yes, it's really their fault. Morbius will soon send troopers there don't worry. They'll all be punished not buying enough MacDonald's burgers. Stupid poor people.

    Actually, you're close to being correct.  Many poor people are poor because they aren't creating anything of value or engaging in mutually beneficial trade.  The reason for this almost always comes back to a lack of stable government that establishes a basic framework for trade to occur within.  If those countries had McDonald's, that would be actual economic activity which would create wealth.  Seriously, though, I'm fairly certain you're either a prepubescent little shit with Down's Syndrome or just a troll.  If it's the latter, bravo for a hauntingly accurate portrayal of a mentally-challenged person.  You deserve an Oscar.

     

    @toshir0 said:

    ...are all thieves. Only actual work earns money.

    Bullshit.  The hilarious thing is that under the labor theory of value, you'd be a thief as well.  The direction of capital is one of the most important aspects of a successful economy.  The Soviet Union had to do it, too, so I suppose every administrator or bureaucrat in the Soviet system was actually a traitor who should be shot?  (Actually, they were responsible for the continued existence of Communism and the poverty it brought, so they probably were traitors in need of a good shooting.)  By your reasoning, nobody should plan anything, because planning doesn't actually create end-products.  It's this sort of reductionist bullshit that causes you pinko retards to end up standing in line for hours just to get toilet paper (at best) and to end up slaughtering a quarter of your population in a series of ever-escalating counter-revolutions (at worst).

     

    @toshir0 said:

    Like : giving those stupid nigerians mine workers radiation proof equipment : it's a misuse od our precious money and will ruin our benefits... clearly this type of CEO should be fired. You're so true.

    Straw man.  (Also, what the fuck is with your punctuation?  And why the fuck am I bothering explaining basic concepts to a barely-literate piece of shit who doesn't know what a colon is for?)  You jump from "value in a market system is determined by subjective valuations" to "clearly they want to kill black people".  You know, you might have future as a liberal in America.  Regardless, I don't think you're going to find many people in America who think exploiting or harming third-worlders for profit is morally-defensible behavior.  Most overseas investment and development is greatly beneficial, but sometimes someone either fucks up or acts evilly in the pursuit of money.  We have established systems or civil and criminal justice for dealing with both, and though they are far from perfect, they've done the job well for hundreds of years; better than anything else that has been invented.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Look, the commies were wrong (even before they all descended into dictatorships) because the entire theory requires human beings to act in a way entirely contrary to how human beings act. If Marx or Lenin thought they could change millions of years of learned behavior in less than a thousand years, they was being extremely naive at best.

    The problem goes deeper than that.  Can you imagine what humanity would look like if we were adapted to Communism?  No individuality, no self.  It's horribly depressing.  We'd have a single "lead human" who would rule entirely by biologically-driven diktat.  It's an evolutionary dead-end; a couple of bad decisions from the lead human (or a couple of mutations in drones) would result in mass extinction.  Building from the bottom-up requires competition to refine whatever is being built; whether it's genes, scientific theory or an economy.

     

    Anyway, the guy's clearly off his rocker.  Or a troll.


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