Sunday 31 August, 2008

Signature Quotes - Politics

Found some interesting quotes on politics, government and western bureaucracy.
Some of them are courtsey P.J. O'Rourke, while the others are randomly picked up from sites on the net.
And with elections for the students' council just around the corner, It makes it all the more (ir)relevant.
Enjoy...

"The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it." -- P.J. O'Rourke - A Parliament of Whores
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"Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy"
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"A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them."
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"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
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"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it"
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"The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you."
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"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."
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"Well the planet I've got a chance to visit is Earth, and Earth's principal features are chaos and war. I think I'd be a fool to spend years here and never have a look."
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"When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people."
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"A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians." -- from All the Trouble in the World
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"If government were a product, selling it would be illegal."
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"Schneider has made a career of telling the public that the climate is going to change drastically any time now, and indeed every spring and fall he's been right."
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"The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge pinata -- a papier-mache donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budge and other goodies. The American voter is blindfoled and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard."

Thursday 21 August, 2008

Annoying phone service SPAM

Theres a great deal of buzz going on around the importance of customer privacy and preventing spam calls to the extent that its a crime to do so, if the customer has expressly enforced it.

All this doesnt bother me, I just get occasional spam SMSes on my vodafone postpaid account. But then today, I happened to be in a meet for a couple of hours. And I was out of reach for the most part.
So when I finally get free and reconnect, I get 4 messages sayin I have a voicemail from +919764616724 . Again, wouldnt bother me, except that there were FOUR of them from the same number. So I dial up to receive the all important message, and after going through half a minute of typing in the mobile number and the security code, I am greeted with a recording that plays the crappiest bollywood song I have ever heard.

Yeah... I know. I had already stored the number as a spam so I can recognize it whenever I get such a crappy call. But now, the smart asses at vodafone decide to change the source number for every such ad-call. But recently I had noticed that they rotate between some standard numbers, so you can still store them as spam. But in the voicemail system, you just get a message indicating the number of the caller. So now, I get a spam calls rite in the middle of my all important meet, and while chilling out after the hectic work, I end up payin Re1 / min hearing the spam recordings that chose to be so strategically timed.

There are times when, after something annoying, you sit back and think: 'how did that happen'.