Slashdot Mirror

I really think you are mistaken. The only thing that they do equally bad but differently is talking off-the-cuff. Bush is bad because of his Alzhiemer's-onset-like speech impediments; Kerry is bad because he rambles too much. Of course, Bush has the benefit of a campaign mastermind (Karl Rove) coaching him to keep his sentences short and simple. Kerry still has to learn this. If he can really start talking in a more soundbyte-able manner, they'll be back to even on this front.

But based on all the evidence I've seen on Bush's record (White House and otherwise) and Kerry's (Senate and otherwise), Kerry is clearly a leader. Bush is a figurehead who can follow directions, with maybe a little volition involved.

Do you honestly feel that an athiest is some kind of wild-man who runs around in a totally sociopathic way?

Yes they are, they are!

Granted, that wasn't a legislative item, but it's one of his accomplishments in his career as a Senator.

(sorry about the semi-subscription Salon link -- just sit through the commercial; I promise it'll be worth it).

Mulholland Dr's plot is really, really simple, though it might not seem like it at first.

Spoilers abound:
The film is divided into three parts, all clearly separated: the quick part in the beginning, pre-credits (with the head falling towards the bed - apparently post-suicide), the middle section (which is a dying dream/hallucination - a fantasy constructed out of bits of reality), and the third section after the box is opened (which is a flashback to the real events leading up to that suicide). Once you understand that this is how the parts fit together, the film becomes pretty clear, though thankfully not completely transparent. Obvious questions remain, like who or what is the 'monster' in the alleyway and what do they represent, does the cowboy represent her father or someone in a similar role, who are the scary old people, etc. But the core of the story is completely clear and makes perfect sense.

A very detailed breakdown can be found at Salon.

When I'm watching a movie or a TV show, I really don't WANT to HAVE to analyse what I'm watching to derive its meaning. It's called "entertainment" and I'm watching it because-GASP-I want to be ENTERTAINED. If I want to think, I'll pick up a book.

I find this viewpoint very bizarre. Are you saying that only books are artistic enough to require thinking? Regardless, you are really selling cinema and television short - plenty of great art is made in both mediums, and it can enrich your life in specific ways art like books can't.

And if you aren't able to be entertained by a beautiful, funny, scary, sexy, well-acted film like Mulholland Drive without completely "understanding it" - well, maybe you need to reexamine what you are looking for in films, and why you have this need to fully understand something to enjoy it.

> I don't recall any stories about Picasso sneaking into museums
> with a paintbrush to touch up his old work

Picasso actually painted over a previous painting to create his "Rue de Montmartre". the previous painting had a theme similar to his "Le Moulin de la Galette" painting. Salon has more details here:

> On Sept. 14, the show "A Hidden Picasso" opens for a two-
> month exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao, in Bilbao, Spain.
> There on display (thanks to digital technology) will be a full-
> color version of a painting that Picasso made in 1900, and
> discarded. He then reused the canvas, painting atop it the
> famous "Rue de Montmartre."

No word if any of the paintings contained a CG Jabba the Hutt.

Many day jobs pay more than $45,000 a year which is what some of the most successful musicians are paid. That's what happens when there are only 4 music publishers in the world.

Your views of what M$ actually does for people are similarly detached from reality.

People who screw people never do anything good for anyone. That's what DRM is all about.

The fact that you consider the New Republic left-of-center speaks volumes about your politics. Most Democrats (rank-and-filers, not idiot DNC consultants) can't stand TNR's foreign policy.

Conservatives: please do not take the New Republic as representative of left-of-center views. It is not.

For your left wing fix, consider Counterpunch. For something moderate, take a look at The Nation or the columnists for Salon.

PS Any slashdot story that includes the word "Bush" (notwithstanding those discussing plantlife) is flamebait and should probably go on flamebait central.

Anyone remember the furor when it looked like Richard Stallman's office and the Free Software Foundation would be in the new Gates building at MIT?

Hmm, let's see. In the past 225 years, America has managed to enslave, impoverish, and oppress one race, yet still have time to commit genocide on another. Oh yeah, our track record is way better than China's when it comes to basic human rights. But wait, we're a kinder, gentler America now, aren't we?

Sorry for the broken links:

http://www.poe-news.com/stories.php?poeurlid=32085 http://archive.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/02 /23/mcjobs/ http://www.shortnews.com/shownews.cfm?id=37255 http://www.canuckflack.com/archives/000084.html http://www.bradcarson.com/pressreleases/archives/0 00416.php

Are we to equate a worker on an assembly line to the punk messsing up my order at McDonalds? Saying fast food workers are part of the manufacturing sector is a clever way to say that America is gaining manufacturing jobs. Too bad it's like Enron filing debits to collectors as assets.

Actually, go read David Brin's excellent essay "Star Wars despots vs. Star Trek populists". Really quite an interesting take on the two. Also available are follow-up comments.

True. But they do pay dearly for the priviledge. And only a small number of songs actually make it to radio play. See this Salon article

Instead they could get one million listeners for free, using P2P channels.

It does not make sense....

This is your answer.

It's not a black and white issue about feeding the artists, or the artists want to make a living, or anything like that. The simple fact is that with a major label deal, a band still doesn't make any more money than they did before, and in many cases they wind up hugely in debt.

Very very few bands make any real money with the majors. If you actually care about the musicians, then supporting the RIAA members is supporting a system that preys upon the musicians as much as it preys upon the fans.

Simple fact is, if you *really* want to support the musicians, you're better off supporting musicians who aren't RIAA-affiliated, because those guys actually have a chance of getting the money you paid for their record.

Oh wait, you can't buy their records. Thanks to the major labels' predatory practices. I forgot about that. I guess you'll have to fileshare instead and find another way to give the band your money.

It's a very new technology from the company everyone loves to hate, but the new Information Rights Management (IRM) capability in Office 2003 looks like a potential solution to this problem.

I work on the principle that a user, if motivated enough, will get a copy of the file off site. USB key, CD-R, email, laptop, take out hard drive, print out a hex dump of file then fax and OCR it, carrier pigeon ... they'll find a way.

With IRM, my understanding (untested at this time) is that you can flag certain document types so that they have to be verified against the rights management server, which would be a box on your internal network.

So - good for you - you've snuck the file off-site. So when you go to open it up, the file (only openable using Office 2003) recognises that it has to be verified against the central rights server - and if that can't be contacted, then you don't get to open it up. This means that the data on your CD-Rs / USB keys / whatever are no use when off-site. It's the document itself that becomes protected, rather than stopping users from taking advantage of any number of methods to get a file off-site.

Of course, perhaps the technology doesn't work that way in practice, but it's on my to-do list of technologies to evaluate for precisely this purpose.

Aegilops

Not one statement made by SBVFT has been shown to be false.

They all have been shown to be false. You have a doctor claiming to have treated Kerry's wounds whose name appears nowhere on the records. You have someone claiming the opposite of what he claimed after the war. And more. Snopes did a fine job summarizing the lies; you can find the evidence plenty of other places too. Also, that was quite subtle how you shifted from claiming there's no link between the swift boats and bush to claiming that the swift boat ads are true. Where do you stand exactly?

He said he denounces these ads and all other soft-money issue ads.

No; he did not specifically denounce the SBVFT ads for being false; he simply said that all such ads are bad for the process. In other words, he evaded the real issue.

There is absolutely no connection between SBVFT and the GOP, the White House or the Bush campaign

Hmm, repeating your assertions won't make them true -- I cited, with links to evidence, three separate connections apart from Ginsburg, which you never refuted or even addressed.

What "missing year?"

That would be 1972. Read the article instead of re-asserting falsities.

Find me one statement that anybody in the administration or the campaign has made to that effect.

Watch the Republican Convention again; I'm sure you videotaped the whole thing. That's practically all these people could talk about, what a strong leader Bush will be compared to that french-looking wimp Kerry. Or you can start with Cheney's assertion that without Bush at the helm after November, terrorists will attack us. All of this horseshit is what I'm talking about; quit pretending Bush is such a strong leader. He's not. He's just simple-minded.

Finally, you quoted the Cheney quote yourself. How do you read it, other than to say that the danger is if we make the wrong choice (in november, i.e. voting for Kerry), the danger is that we'll get hit again? I mean, that is what he's saying, isn't it? And I don't even read the daily Kos! Just what bizarre interpretation do you have for that quote? (Something you read in the Free Republic perhaps?)

Also the president explicitly did NOT denounce the ad; instead, he attacked all 527 campaign ads (changing the subject), and quite pointedly refrained from attacking the swift boat ad in particular. He simply said they were all "bad for the system."

Most importantly, the Bush connection is not just Ben Ginsburg but also Kenneth Cordier, Merrie Spaeth, and, less directly, Karl Rove. And everyone in DC knows this crap has Karl Rove's M.O. all over it.

Finally, you keep claiming that Bush "denied, debunked, and dismissed" these claims in 2000, yet NOBODY has stepped forward to tell anyone what Bush was actually doing during his missing year. That's because he spent the year partying.

Which really wouldn't bother me so much if he and Cheney were not painting him as some kind of freaking war hero just because he strutted around in a flight suit pretending we had won Iraq! All the while supporting the aspersions cast on Kerry's war record. By the way, Cheney's comment that voting for Kerry will lead to terrorism in the US tells us all we need to know about whether the Bush Administration is willing to capitalize politically on the Swift Boat Veteran lies.

Such as what? Kerry has three purple hearts, as well as a Bronze Star and a Silver Star. He did two full tours of duty. I don't know anything about Bush 41's awards, if any, but Bob Dole has admitted that his injuries were self-inflicted. In any case, do you even know what a purple heart is? Have you met any vets decorated with the purple heart? This is not an award you compete for, or a recognition that you apply for; this is not a merit badge in the boy scouts. It is given to recognize the recipient was wounded in battle. Questioning the circumstances of someone's purple heart is ridiculous; the person never applied for it and never asked for it. The real problem the Swift Boat people and their ilk have with Kerry is not about his bravery under fire; it is about his bravery after he returned home, when he had the courage to publicly denounce the war itself. Some soldiers took that personally, which is too bad, but looking at things over 30 years later, we should be able to see pretty clearly that his beef was with the government that got us into the war, not with the soldiers who fought in it ("bravely" or not).

The problem is that Kerry has become almost monomaniacal in hyping his Vietnam experience. OK, a year ago it was good to remind us you served honorably under fire. That counts for something in my book, but what has he done recently?!

Ummm, in case you didn't notice, Kerry was not hyping his Vietnam experience much at all until the Swift Boat Veterans came along and started attacking him on it! I personally agree that what happened 30 years ago is a poor basis on which to choose a president -- especially since his opponent has sent over 1,000 American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq with no end in sight. That should be the real issue in 2004, and it is the Republicans who have diverted the issue to what happened during Vietnam. In which case, Bush's sorry record of dodging service -- while never showing the kind of courage Kerry showed both during and after his service in the war -- becomes a legitimate issue to discuss in the campaign. Sorry, Bush, but while you were bragging every day about how much you drank the night before, Kerry was actually taking fire in Vietnam, and later taking fire in front of the US Congress for opposing US involvement in that war. I much prefer a leader who has thought seriously about these issues from either side than one who was just getting wasted the whole time.

I don't particularly like how Kerry is running either -- I wish he would come out more clearly against Bush's policies in Iraq, on terrorism, on the economy, etc. He should be saying what everyone studying the issue honestly has seen -- that Bush's war in Iraq has been a disaster in terms of the war on terrorism. Unfortunately, he's letting Bush get away with murder in terms of pretending the two wars are one and the same. I want to vote for Kerry, I really do, but I think you're right -- I will be on the list of people voting "against Bush" instead, and that is the Kerry campaign's fault. But I don't think you can pin the Vietnam distraction on him.

Such as what? Kerry has three purple hearts, as well as a Bronze Star and a Silver Star. He did two full tours of duty. I don't know anything about Bush 41's awards, if any, but Bob Dole has admitted that his injuries were self-inflicted. In any case, do you even know what a purple heart is? Have you met any vets decorated with the purple heart? This is not an award you compete for, or a recognition that you apply for; this is not a merit badge in the boy scouts. It is given to recognize the recipient was wounded in battle. Questioning the circumstances of someone's purple heart is ridiculous; the person never applied for it and never asked for it. The real problem the Swift Boat people and their ilk have with Kerry is not about his bravery under fire; it is about his bravery after he returned home, when he had the courage to publicly denounce the war itself. Some soldiers took that personally, which is too bad, but looking at things over 30 years later, we should be able to see pretty clearly that his beef was with the government that got us into the war, not with the soldiers who fought in it ("bravely" or not).

The problem is that Kerry has become almost monomaniacal in hyping his Vietnam experience. OK, a year ago it was good to remind us you served honorably under fire. That counts for something in my book, but what has he done recently?!

Ummm, in case you didn't notice, Kerry was not hyping his Vietnam experience much at all until the Swift Boat Veterans came along and started attacking him on it! I personally agree that what happened 30 years ago is a poor basis on which to choose a president -- especially since his opponent has sent over 1,000 American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq with no end in sight. That should be the real issue in 2004, and it is the Republicans who have diverted the issue to what happened during Vietnam. In which case, Bush's sorry record of dodging service -- while never showing the kind of courage Kerry showed both during and after his service in the war -- becomes a legitimate issue to discuss in the campaign. Sorry, Bush, but while you were bragging every day about how much you drank the night before, Kerry was actually taking fire in Vietnam, and later taking fire in front of the US Congress for opposing US involvement in that war. I much prefer a leader who has thought seriously about these issues from either side than one who was just getting wasted the whole time.

I don't particularly like how Kerry is running either -- I wish he would come out more clearly against Bush's policies in Iraq, on terrorism, on the economy, etc. He should be saying what everyone studying the issue honestly has seen -- that Bush's war in Iraq has been a disaster in terms of the war on terrorism. Unfortunately, he's letting Bush get away with murder in terms of pretending the two wars are one and the same. I want to vote for Kerry, I really do, but I think you're right -- I will be on the list of people voting "against Bush" instead, and that is the Kerry campaign's fault. But I don't think you can pin the Vietnam distraction on him.

Wikipedia has an excellent explanation, especially in detailing the targets. The article here is now subscription only, but you can get the jist of it from what is given. Obviously you could google for "Steven Hatfill", who at least was suspected as being part of the leak (I have no idea if he is still under suspicion, but obviously the government figured it was from one of their labs if they were looking at him). A good (early) article about why it looks like military anthrax samples were used is here.

But honestly, you probably should have just briefly looked into this yourself. Obviously most of this is common knowledge to quite a few people, and has been for some time (I learned that it was almost definitely US military in origin probably well more than six months ago).

• Marc Andreessen made 100s of millions of dollars shortly after graduating from UIUC. Today's graduates of the same university face moving back in with their parents. "Fuck that, I got mine!"
• Brian Behlendorf decided he'd rather go to India to recruit software engineers than help out the graduating classes of 2001-2004 here in the US.
• Robert Malda stood idly by and said NOTHING while his company offshored its flagship product.

Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to?

What's wrong with FoxNews?

I have no idea who you are referring to when you say the other networks have reporters working for the Kerry campaign. In OutFoxed, they show footage of Fox News political reporter, Carl Cameron, interviewing Bush during the 2004 campaign. Before the interview, he preps Bush by telling him what questions he's going to ask him. Then he kisses his ass with all this stuff about how his wife is working on Bush's campaign, etc. No ethical news operation would allow such a drastic conflict of interest to exist. Please back up your assertion about the other networks' reporters working for the Kerry campaign.

...comparing him to Hitler...

This is one of those myths that has been busted time and time again, but thick-headed conservatives nonetheless spew the lies and thus perpetuate them.

To make the myth more concrete, conservatives believe MoveOn.org, a 527 group clearly connected in some way with the Democratic party (yes, this is itself wrong, but talk to your Congressman about Campaign Finance Reform if you want something to be done about it) ran an ad comparing Bush to Hitler. Here's what really happened--here's the background the soundbite-obsessed Fox News anchors can't dig into because they aren't real journalists.

MoveOn.org ran a content called Bush in 30 Seconds. It was a content that allows ANYONE to submit an ad to MoveOn.org, and the ads would be showcased on the website while voting took place. The ad with the most votes would be aired by MoveOn.org.

Two of the OVER 1,500 ads compared Bush to Hitler. You can see these two ads here and here.

Now, in case we are forgetting, let me remind you of the correct interpretation of the first amendment--in order for there to be freedom of speech, there has to be freedom of speech even for ideas you don't like . Sure, most people absolutely hate even the mention of Hitler, but by censoring those people who use his image or make comparisons to him, we violate the first amendment right in all cases. There are some legal exceptions (the famous "fighting words" case among others).

That said, I am just reminding you that even these two amateur filmmakers did nothing wrong within the law, which sometimes isn't clear to people who don't truly respect constitutional rights.

The bottom line, however, is that MoveOn.org never aired these ads because people never voted them to the top. So, although you can fault these two amateur filmmakers for this film, you can't fault the democratic party, "democrats" at large, or even MoveOn.org. It would be like faulting Salon.com (or "the liberal media") if on one of their Forums I posted a message that said Bush reminds me of Hitler.

Plus, I find this somewhat ridiculous because one could easily turn this around. Conservative "figureheads" have made the same kinds of comparisons in the past. Look no further than Rush Limbaugh who, at least once, used the term "feminazis" to describe feminists, and called abortion "the modern-day holocaust." This is from his published book in 1992. I am positive that most moral theorists and philosophers would find serious problems with that equivalence claim, regardless of their standpoint on abortion. Contrast this to the two ads posted on MoveOn.org, and you find one very important distinction. The ads on MoveOn.org focus on Hitler's power in using propaganda, his military force abroad and his rhetoric saying that he is driven by God. These particular aspects of Hitler's character could be argued to be found in George W. Bush. However, the comparison is unfair because it seeks emotional manipulation and deception, in that whenever someone thinks of Hitler, one thinks immediately of the holocaust and pure evil (thus, the mental connection, whatever the intention, becomes "Bush is this evil murderous leader"). But you have to admit that Limbaugh's comparison is much worse, because he effectively says that feminists are evil, murderous people, conducting their own holocaust. A clear distinction.

But, I won't fault him for that. After all, he is just one person, one viewpoint. It's his right of speech. And that means I can't say, "because Rush Limbaugh said it, it is mainstream conservati

Doesn't that seem logical? Isn't that corroborating evidence for the whole tragic arc of the last two years?

Kerry supported giving the President the authority to initiate the war in Iraq. That's not the same as launching the war. When Bush and his campaign say that Kerry "voted to go to war," they are lying.

And yes, Kerry may have to deal with the aftermath of Iraq in the same sticky, deliberate way that Bush will. There's no easy way out; that's why they call it a quagmire. But re-electing Bush gives him four more years to invade more countries unnecessarily. When I read the transcript of John Kerry speaking to the Senate in 1971, I can't help but feel that this man is more to be trusted with our troops than a man who spent the early '70s "boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before."

Don't be so sure just yet... Senator Graham just released a book that details a very specific occurrence dealing with the Saudi ties. Salon has a cover story today about it.

I call bullshit on the liberal media. That's just a catch-all used by conservatives to ignore anything and everything in the media they don't agree with. Like global warming, caused by green house gases, that was suppose to be some liberal idea. Well now even the Bush administration has stated that human action from driving automobiles to running power plants helped cause global warming.

Now, Salon for example is liberal, but I don't think they are hiding that fact. Most of the media is relatively conservative.

On a side note:
I think most people confuse a free society with a liberal society. If you live in a free society there will be things that offend you. Just because they offend you doesn't mean they are liberal or conservative. They just don't align with your beliefs. That's the beauty of democracy.

If you must know, the claims of the "swift boat veterans for pulling stuff out of their asses" claims have been challenged. And guess what? They're about as accurate as bush's grammar. Check out Spinsanity.org and read a little. You'll see the ties between the Republican party and the "Swift" veterans are more than coincidental. Legal aid, financial aid, you name it. As for their claims, most of them were in Vietnam at the same time, not on the same boat.

Anyway, it's all moot, as while Kerry was getting shot at, Bush was in the US doing cocaine, boasting of his drinking and pissing on cars and abusing police officers. Of course, I wait for your response outlining how those are actions befitting the future President of the USA.

Kerry actually went to Vietnam. Bush chickened out, and behaved like a complete ass. Now, Republicans are trying to diminish his achievements (and the achievements of every individual who's ever earned a purple heart - not very Military-Friendly, is it?). Even McCain said the tactic was ridiculously underhanded. It's funny, seeing as Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al haven't served a day in combat, yet they'll quickly pour all their collective efforts into trying to refute or somehow diminish Kerry's record. It's pathetic.

Here's an idea - why doesn't the Bush campaign focus on actual issues? The War on Terror? Oh, wait - it's fucked. America is more at danger now than on 9/10, has many fewer friends, and lots more enemies. How about the economy? Shit. That nice pre-Bush surplus turned into a massive, humongous defecit, which us and our kids (and most likely their kids) will be bailing out for years to come. Jobs? Nope. Millions upon millions of jobs have been lost under Bush.

This is what it boils down to - Bush has screwed up the US, and a good part of the world, and the only way he can get public support is to attack Kerry's war record, as it's an emotive subject and (even though completely devoid of politics) is something Bush can use to leverage support from military-friendly Americans. If you think that's how a political party should act, you really should read a book or two.

If you get modded down, it's more due to you spouting bullshit than having a controversial view ;)

If you must know, the claims of the "swift boat veterans for pulling stuff out of their asses" claims have been challenged. And guess what? They're about as accurate as bush's grammar. Check out Spinsanity.org and read a little. You'll see the ties between the Republican party and the "Swift" veterans are more than coincidental. Legal aid, financial aid, you name it. As for their claims, most of them were in Vietnam at the same time, not on the same boat.

Anyway, it's all moot, as while Kerry was getting shot at, Bush was in the US doing cocaine, boasting of his drinking and pissing on cars and abusing police officers. Of course, I wait for your response outlining how those are actions befitting the future President of the USA.

Kerry actually went to Vietnam. Bush chickened out, and behaved like a complete ass. Now, Republicans are trying to diminish his achievements (and the achievements of every individual who's ever earned a purple heart - not very Military-Friendly, is it?). Even McCain said the tactic was ridiculously underhanded. It's funny, seeing as Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al haven't served a day in combat, yet they'll quickly pour all their collective efforts into trying to refute or somehow diminish Kerry's record. It's pathetic.

Here's an idea - why doesn't the Bush campaign focus on actual issues? The War on Terror? Oh, wait - it's fucked. America is more at danger now than on 9/10, has many fewer friends, and lots more enemies. How about the economy? Shit. That nice pre-Bush surplus turned into a massive, humongous defecit, which us and our kids (and most likely their kids) will be bailing out for years to come. Jobs? Nope. Millions upon millions of jobs have been lost under Bush.

This is what it boils down to - Bush has screwed up the US, and a good part of the world, and the only way he can get public support is to attack Kerry's war record, as it's an emotive subject and (even though completely devoid of politics) is something Bush can use to leverage support from military-friendly Americans. If you think that's how a political party should act, you really should read a book or two.

If you get modded down, it's more due to you spouting bullshit than having a controversial view ;)

The French finally extradited Einhorn 2 years ago.

Just FYI-- I agree with your point otherwise.

I don't think you're going to find any single source that's never been accused of bias. There's just too many viewpoints out there-- and any source that tries to go straight down the middle of the road, like CNN, tends to be pretty dry.

So, my solution: Read a lot. I mean, a lot, and, by exposure to many viewpoints, you'll be better off when it comes time to form your own opinions.

If you're asking about specifics, I try to take in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Drudge Report, Slate, Salon, Al-Jazeera, the International Herald-Tribune, and the Guardian. Of course, all of the above have their strengths and weaknesses.

If you don't want to spend the time on all of those, though, I recommend Slate. It leans slightly left, but has good analysis from both sides of the aisle.

Read, read, read. Don't assume you're getting the whole story from a single source.

So, you think we should feel sorry for him or what?
What does "having powerful relatives" have to do with avoiding being sent to Vietnam, the same as Clinton did? The fact is, they both avoided being sent...
As to having at least done something... Did they see him do any National Guard service? Good lord, no.

Apparently the Help page of the MSN Music site contained instructions on how to circumvent the block on playing their songs on an IPOD.

To transfer MSN-downloaded music to an iPod, you need to first create a CD with the music, and then you need to import that CD into iTunes. This process will convert the music into a format that can play on the iPod.

You can read about it here http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/09/03/ms_mu sic_store/

Actually, that is one of the things being studied by the chumy cooperative of Bechtel and SAIC known as the Yucca Mtn project. How do you make warning signs that last 10,000 years...

I must forgo my mod points for this thread to respond to your post.

disenfranchised because they share the same name as people who were previously convicted of crimes in other US states,

All the people who were purged from the rolls for felony convictions were notified of the fact, well before the election, by a letter to their registered mailing address, which gave the procedure to correct any error and the necessary contact information to make it convenient.

Are you claiming that a disproportionate number of people who have names that might be mistaken for a felon's are Democrats? Or are you REALLY upset because the preponderance of felons who are registered to vote, illegally or otherwise, are registered as Democrats?

I see a number of problems here. Allow me to elucidate:

1. All the people who were purged from the rolls for felony convictions were notified of the fact
   Doubtful. From an article on Salon.com:

   most counties appear to have used the [central voter] file as a resource to purge names from their voter rolls, with some counties making little -- or no -- effort at all to alert the "purged" voters.

   Never mind the rational argument questioning where these "registered addresses" would have come from, and positing the likelihood that they may no longer be correct. Never mind that some of these "felons" were booked in the future, making it extremely unlikely any of the data is correct, let alone true. And never mind that the list was kept secret, requiring a court order to be made public, thus further reducing the probability that those on it would have found out in time to try to fix their status.

2. Are you claiming that a disproportionate number of people who have names that might be mistaken for a felon's are Democrats?
   I didn't coin the phrase, but in some circles it's known as Voting While Black , a disenfranchisable offence in far too many places in the US.

   How could Florida's Republican rulers know how these people would vote? I put the question to David Bositis, America's top expert on voting demographics. Once he stopped laughing, he said the way Florida used the lists from a private firm was, 'an obvious technique to discriminate against black voters'. In a darker mood, Bositis, of Washington's Center for Political and Economic Studies, said the sad truth of American justice is that 46 per cent of those convicted of felony are African-American. In Florida, a record number of black folk, over 80 per cent of those registered to vote, packed the polling booths on November 7. Behind the curtains, nine out of 10 black people voted Gore.

   Mark Mauer of the Sentencing Project, Washington, pointed out that the 'white' half of the purge list would be peopled overwhelmingly by the poor, also solid Democratic voters.

3. Or are you REALLY upset because the preponderance of felons who are registered to vote, illegally or otherwise, are registered as Democrats?
   Felons or not, the facts are that the vast majority of those who simply 'disappeared' from the Florida voting rosters were those who historically have voted for the Democratic candidate. Given that Bush's lead was reportedly only some 570, and that those wrongfully denied the right to vote likely numbered in the thousands (given a total voter purge list of 94,000 names, the size of which only came clear thanks to

• Apple's DRM is already cracked. MS's isn't.
• More importantly, Apple isn't trying to implement uncrackable hardware DRM.

The way computers work prohibits _any DRM method_ from ever working.

You may be thinking of the lengthy article written by Greg Palast for Salon.com.

Another version of the same article is available, no reg required, at the Nation

Karl Rove. Or rather, the anonymous armies of volunteers he commands.

Attacking Bush is against the interests of America's enemies.

They better damn well be doing searches on everyone. Especially moraless pot smoking democratic teenagers.

What's wrong with pot? Not everybody can afford cocaine!

I'm certain this has been posted on slashdot at some time in the past, but it's worth reading. (At least in my opinion)

It is an article written by someone in tech support.

You either have to subscribe or watch an ad. Sorry.

• Nearly everything those veterans have said about Kerry is, according to both the U.S. Navy and the folks who were there at the time, a lie.
• Those veterans lied about themselves.
• Bush's friends financed it and his advisors both appeared in the commercials and provided legal advice to the group.
• The Swift Boat book is co-authored by Jerome Corsi who has said anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic things on a right-wing Website.

That's another myth George would like you to believe. See Galactic gasbag, "Beneath all the pseudo-mythic Joseph Campbell hogwash, the roots of George Lucas' empire lie not in The Odyssey but in classic and pulp 20th century sci- fi."

For those who, like me, hadn't heard of this guy, a quick Googling turned this, this book page and this interview up. Also, an author profile.

Look, I've got nothing against old people and Ted Kennedy, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with searching them. Random searches will only work if they are, well, random. As soon as you define a criterion, you define a loophole. That's OK if the criteria are actually relevant: This guy is carrying three bricks of C4; let's not let him on the plane. It's a disaster when the criteria are in fact orthogonal to the behavior you fear: This guy is Middle Eastern -- he must be stopped. This woman is WASP -- she must be OK.

Why else do you think "Al-Qaida said to recruit in Latin America"? Getting recruits who don't "fit the mold" would be a coup, especially if we fall victim to a profiling mentality.

good thing they're not having any problems selling tickets anyways, eh?"

"according to Army sources, as many as one in six protesters at the Chicago '68 protests were really undercover military intelligence agents. There were local police and FBI agents planted throughout the antiwar movement, often urging their cohorts to ever more daring feats of resistance. Richard Nixon's White House relished riots, knowing they only helped the Republicans. On a larger scale, the FBI's COINTELPRO program used its agents to provoke violence in antiwar and civil rights groups throughout the late '60s and early '70s."

Those figures seem a little low, especially if you consider the Bush family together. But even Bush himself is worth more than that since one deal got him some $13 million. But the Bush family is likely worth a whole lot more. Perhaps it's not as much as the Kerry's (estimated assets of $1 billion), but if you consider the Bush family ties to the Carlyle Group and the many other business relationships from which they benefitted, then their combined wealth would be much more comparable than a paltry $6mill.
And Cheney is definitely on the high end of that range that you stated, especially if you include his continued stock holdings and options in Halliburton.

Ok, so at what point can I gracefully bow out of an argument, admit I was wrong, and still maintain my dignity? It seems like the facts you've presented are against me here, and the ones I'm looking for either don't exist or have made themselves very hard to find. I'm still in favor of civil disobedience, but I have to admit that forcibly silencing the opposition isn't the right way to go about things. I guess I should've known that I wasn't really right; after all, I was supporting the black-hats, and if westerns have taught me anything, it's that the black-hats are the bad guys. Is there a right way to go about civil disobedience at this point in time? It seems that lawful assembly for protest is difficult, as a group must apply for a permit to lawfully assemble, and often these permits are denied.http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/ 08/11/rnc_protest/index_np.html With the electoral system all but broken (as demonstrated in the last election) and possibly about to be broken more (Diebold voting machines... don't get me started) I'm afraid that the chances of voting unfavorable candidates out of office are slim. What is the right way to voice dissent and be heard?

Except that, hmmm, would we forgive, say, Hienrich Himmler if he picked killing the Fuhrer over killing his own offspring?

I'm not sure where I originally read this analogy--some of David Brin's readers pointed out that Vader-Himmler is a better analogy than Vader-Hitler. Of course, most fans take the Vader's actual attainment of (a deathbed) redemption as an article of faith, though rather than admit that Lucas duped them into that sort of absurd moral reasoning they'll leap to defend Vader with poorly contrived arguments, rather than sticking with Occam's Razor and the sort of rules we apply to normal people. (See Brin's Salon article

Oh, and harbor, gentle reader, no doubts regarding my undying, albeit ambivalent, affection for the original trilogy. :-)

And I do believe redemption is possible for even some of the gravest sins--there's still hope for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, even if George Lucas is too far gone...

I suppose this is a concept that is hardly difficult for a thinking person to unearth, but as no one above my threshold has yet commented upon it, I'll take the soapbox.

This sort of hacktivism is nothing more then the digital analogue of a violent protest. While I most certainly do not agree with the platform and politics of the GOP, I believe that it is these hackers that pose a greater danger to my 'free speech.' While the Republicans have paid to host a web site and run a server in order to communicate their vision to the world, this wonderful group of people has decided not to fight back with cogent argumentation and stunning logic, but rather with a wildly underwhelming attempt to flood the server.

This sort of free campaign fodder offered to the Republicans can only harm Kerry's cause (though he is no prize pig himself...). Just wait for the War on Terrorism to go electronic: I can't wait for a digital reprisal of Ari Fleisher's 2001 declaration that "People have to watch what they say and watch what they do."

It's time people began to think. I honestly believe that a logical policy analysis reveals the truth. Left to themselves, people reading campaign literature from either side should be able to discern the better candidate. Even card-carrying GOP members that plan to vote a straight ticket deserve to learn what their party stands for and believes.

Now flip the coin. Suppose it were Republicans DDOS'ing progressive web sites such as Salon.com, Kuro5hin, or (heaven forbid) Slashdot. Shouldn't we all have the right to publish in peace? Attack my logic and my political views if you'd like. I'm not here to argue today, but it seems to me that this is obviously a "bad idea."

Yesterday, a wonderful article was published in Salon regarding planned protests of the GOP convention. Article summary: "If militants violently disrupt the GOP convention, it could be Chicago 1968 redux -- and Christmas in August for the Bush campaign." There is nothing like a free victory in a battle not fought.

We recognize the right to free speech, but I personally believe in the right of anyone to be heard. By my personal moral code, the correct way to respond to a man shouting wildly on the street is not to toss a brick his way, but rather to engage in conversation.

So please, think. It might work.

Read Cory Doctorow's excellent sci-fi short story "0wnz0red". ( Salon ad-clickthrough required ).