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That sort of democracy can quickly turn into chaos and then anarchy.

You might think that yet Switzerland has a democratic system which is the closest I have seen to the "everyone votes on everything" idea and yet is an incredibly stable country. I think part of the reason for this is that people get to decide things at the local level which makes for strong communities since they have a sense of control. Certainly you don't seem to get the usual sense of powerlessness caused by the politicians listening to rich special interest groups and trampling all over society in their hurry to get that money.

True, the fact that local things get decided locally is one of the things that make the system work (each of its 26 cantons (states) has its own constitution, its own executive, its own parliament, its own courts and its own law).

Probably another particularity which makes the things work is something that the americans would probably consider crazy - cooperation and not competition in politics. Seems to me as a country that evolved on the idea that a stable community will offer better chances for everybody be happy than "the pursuit of happiness on individual basis". Weird, eh?

That sort of democracy can quickly turn into chaos and then anarchy.

You might think that yet Switzerland has a democratic system which is the closest I have seen to the "everyone votes on everything" idea and yet is an incredibly stable country. I think part of the reason for this is that people get to decide things at the local level which makes for strong communities since they have a sense of control. Certainly you don't seem to get the usual sense of powerlessness caused by the politicians listening to rich special interest groups and trampling all over society in their hurry to get that money.

True, the fact that local things get decided locally is one of the things that make the system work (each of its 26 cantons (states) has its own constitution, its own executive, its own parliament, its own courts and its own law).

Probably another particularity which makes the things work is something that the americans would probably consider crazy - cooperation and not competition in politics. Seems to me as a country that evolved on the idea that a stable community will offer better chances for everybody be happy than "the pursuit of happiness on individual basis". Weird, eh?

Apparently you missed this and this and this and this and this and and and and

Whether DNA evidence should be allowed in courts isn't just a scientific question, and if it were not it would not invalidate DNA science. There are many issues involved, here's a good link. http://www.llrx.com/features/dnareliability.htm

Saying voodoo is true or false is subjective. Voodoo objectively exists, it's real on many levels, from the rituals to the concepts etc.

What matters is what the GP said, how these things affect our lives. If you are scared to death of voodoo you indeed might want to ban dolls. If you are the victim of erroneous DNA identification you might well curse the scientists and not want it in courts. Saying one or the other is true or false is meaningless navel gazing.

1873 invention. The patent has long since expired, but "Dewey Decimal System" is an active trademark, registered in 1963. source

GP is moaning about a pedantic point of grammar.

This crap will never change as long as we have fools on both sides of politics that readily believe the only one party has been corrupted by money, special interest and the protection of elite, old money families. Neither party has a monopoly on the corruption of power.

I tell you what our president has done. He has reduced America to third world status.

Anyone who's spent time in third-world nations knows the falsehood of this ignorant commentary. Let's objectively criticize people for what they really have done - as Bush, Reid and Pelosi have no shortage of legitimate criticisms. Our President (and his Congressional counterparts) has exclusively represented the powerful special interests that put him in office in a manner no different than Clinton, Lyndon Johnson (Halliburton's Man, who's wife was a major shareholder of Halliburton until her recent death), FDR, Harry Truman, Nixon, and numerous others. Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find any President who didn't represent elites.

Regarding broadband and the U.S. Federal Government, the Ag bill passed by Congress ~2002/2003 set aside record funds for rural broadband. Senator Harkin (D) of our state was instrumental in its passage, and also instrumental in having the actual rules written to exclusively benefit the incumbent fat-cat monopoly local telcos. Competitors to these tired old local monopolies were written out in the details. This wasn't BushHitlerCo, this was Democrats in Congress along with a Republican administration.

Having worked for a competitor to the incumbents, covering 10 counties, we found funds dried up while tired old ILECs got tens of millions only to sit on the money. Worse yet, permissions for formerly illegal cross-subsidies were enacted, allowing monopolies like Iowa Telecom to apply $3.50 charges to every phone line and dump it into their broadband entity, driving competition out of the market. They kicked competition off of the copper, subsidized from their monopoly business and used monopoly subsidized operations and infrastructure to lower the cost of their broadband business and killed off any real threat. Both Democrats and Republicans were implicit in this gift to their fat-cat buddies.

the Bush administration put Michael Powell in charge of the FCC, the digital robber barons were basically set free to do whatever they liked.

Except the Clinton FCC already set the pace for special deals with incumbents and as mentioned, numerous persons of both parties made sure only their fat cat buddies would get new slush funds.

Read up on the infamous Representative from Bell South, Billy Tauzin, and his efforts with powerful Democratic Senator Dingell to further reinforce monopoly power in broadband. Tauzin was a Republican and Dingell a Democrat. Both are bought and paid for by the incumbents.

As long as we have fools who believe one side is good and the other evil, we'll have a government exclusively representing fat-cat special interests while us fools get screwed. Get your head out of the sand if you don't like being screwed.

"These treaties will become effective at a time when technological innovations present us with great opportunities for the global distribution of copyrighted works," Clinton said upon signing the DMCA into law. "These same technologies, however, make it possible to pirate copyrighted works on a global scale with a single keystroke. The WIPO treaties set clear and firm standards - obligating signatory countries to provide 'adequate legal protection' and 'effective legal remedies' against circumvention of certain technologies that copyright owners use to protect their works, and against violation of the integrity of copyright management information. This Act implements those standards, carefully balancing the interests of both copyright owners and users."
http://www.llrx.com/features/dcma.htm

CLINTON!!! You evil bastard. Trying to prevent massive pirating of copyrighted media. How dare you!

"You'd think the self-professed "smart people"* who vote for "smart candidates"** would realize this. But they don't, because they're nothing more than sheep being led to slaughter."
Its better than being a "Red Neck", who votes repulican because they hate fags.

"* who are actually just stupid liberals who have less intelligence than a mildly retarded squirrel"
So they're smarter than the president? (Read it a few more times, you'll get the joke eventualy.)

"Al Gore (flunked out)"
Last time I checked, changing majors didn't equal flunking out.

There you go pussy*.

* Pussies post anonymously.

That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway? Sure some of it is obvious. Quite frankly some of it isn't.

It's worse that that, really. The Law says that porn is at least partly determined by whether the "average person" considers it porn. Sure, there's a long list of things that are explicitly listed, but the gray area is little more than "huh, does this look like porn to you?"

A slight shift in community standards -- or an overzealous cop -- and pretty much every diaper ad becomes kiddy porn.

Sure, in the USA you can get this sort of information on even private companies by going to the relevant State's website for the Division of Corporations, not the SEC, unless the corporation happens to be using an assumed name, in which case it is not possible to search the assumed names database via the website, but the information can still be obtained by emailing or faxing your enquiry to the D.C. instead.

Getting a Grip on the 'CSI Effect'

While accountability and honesty is expected of police and investigators, I think the real problem comes in when juries expect a Hollywood based CSI budget for equipment, staffing and training. By that I mean DNA testing for everything, enough investigators that they only have to work one or two cases at once and that everyone is a PhD in several areas. More than that, I'd be scared to death if my fate basically hinged on some know-it-all juror's ability to recall the mating habits of a fly from CSI season 1 rather than a juror who was paying attention during the proceedings.

according to the article the only draw back to AbiWord is that it currently does not feature a grammar checker, though a plug-in is in the works.

-insert lame jokes with really poor grammar here-

But seriously folks... Is a grammar checker really that important a feature? I find that in Word, I turn it off because it drives me crazy. For one thing it is often out and out wrong. It will suggest corrections where none should exist, and falter on the more finessed rules of grammar such as singular references to indefinite pronouns or the subjunctive. Try typing "here be dragons" into Word and you'll see what I mean. If you're a pirate, Word is next to useless for noting up treasure maps, and that's just one of its many grammatical flaws for average users.

To me, these rules are the things that make English interesting and enjoyable. Products like the Word grammar checker just make people lazy and reduce the need to actually know the rules. Instead of making a computer do it we should take the time to learn the subtle details of our language. If you don't know the rules, not only will you struggle to express yourself but you will miss the details in other people's words. In this sense it's all a bit cyclic - the more our word processors fix our spelling and grammar for us, the more we devolve into a community of people with the linguistic skills of George Bush, totally dependent on pressing 'F7' to help us construct our sentences.

Or to forget the learned discussion and just quote the damn Simpsons like I was going to in the first place:

Lisa: Almost done. Just lay still.
Linguo: Lie still.
Lisa: I knew that. Just testing.
Linguo: Sentence fragment.
Lisa: 'Sentence fragment' is also a sentence fragment.
Linguo: Must conserve battery power... *switches himself off*

One such piece of software is a cult-hit, Zoot. See reviews here and here. Find out more at the Yahoo Group for it, which also happens to have excellent lists of other excellent but often underappreciated PIM software.

Also consider web-based task managers like Yahoo Calendar. The advantage is that they are easily accessible from anywhere and there's no need for backups. Yahoo task management also syncs with a lot of other stuff, I think.

A story from LLRX.com from a couple years back says, amoung other things, On the positive side, this strength of protection offered by trusted systems could have the beneficial effect of encouraging authors to make all of their work available electronically. This would, at least, increase the availability of content, if pricing is reasonable. In this new universe, however, libraries would have to completely rethink their existence.

It -is- afterall an expression of the company of which comercials to air, and when.... Like perhaps overall the comercials, are funny, or political, or downright serious

>Who's the bigger idiot: The one who is placed in a position of making decisions for a corporation, or the one who has posted over 1600 slashdot comments?

I don't know, why don't you tell me?

Try llrx They've been online for years. Sabrina Pacifici knows her stuff!