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Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.

Hmm, looks like some material here to post for new articles on Wikiquote! :-)

Thanks, but I did read the same wiki page you did before posting: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin. And since I didn't put quotes around the statement, I will NOT be accused of incorrectly quoting when all I was doing was paraphrasing. Also, I'm aware that the attribution to Franklin is an oversimplification. Now that that's out of the way, you have failed to change my opinion that the quote is relevant. Were you trying to make some SPECIFIC point about the words you highlighted or do you want to play the guessing game? Since the rest of your post comes along as pontification, I'm surprised you leave your actual point so vague.

Frankly, I don't think government should always be to blame everytime a tragedy occurs. As to the point of blurred out images, the better safe than sorry argument seems overkill. And yes, there is a COST to being "better safe". Not everyone thinks, as you do, that the cost should be paid every time with our ESSENTIAL liberties. Have you listened to the news lately about how our attorney general doesn't think habeus corpus is explicitly implied in the constitution? Well, technically, neither are free speech, press, religion or assembly. Don't be fooled into thinking that some liberties are less essential than others -- you won't have any left to give away after a while.

When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.

If you have an apple and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, we both still only have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, we each now have two ideas.

Your quote is innacurate. See:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

A second issue is that law demands us to sacrifice freedom for security. "I give up my freedom to kill people so that they don't kill me" (i.e. murder is illegal) seems to be an essential commandment in every society. Rephrasing it to "essential" fixes this issue.

Actually, Franklin didn't say it. And the guy who most likely did say it, Richard Jackson, said it thus:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Makers of viruses, worms, and spyware are evil. Microsoft is merely careless in enabling this by choosing lax security settings for older versions of the Windows OS out of the box. Robert J. Hanlon warned us in Murphy's Law book two to "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Nah, the quote you're thinking of is probably Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it..

Who is even dumb enough to make their purchases based on spam mail.

Apparently, plenty. It only takes a few suckers to justify the time and effort to set up a spam campaign. I'd like to think that some day everyone will be aware enough that pump-and-dumps, nigeria scams, and the myriad other flavors of spam simply won't work any more because nobody will fall for them. Unfortunately, I do not believe that is a likely outcome.

I prefer Eddie Izzard's ideas:
"Yes, I like my coffee hot and strong ... Like I like my women: hot and strong ... with a spoon in them."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard

Well, anything I can get served to me in the Hot Chicks Room

The only lesson history has taught us is that man has not yet learned anything from history.

Because it's not an overused /. cliché yet I knew someone wasn't going to get it.

You the business are not in the business of making potential hires excited; your job is to make the best company you can, the best products, the happiest employees, the most loyal customers, etc.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Was it deliberate humor to use chickens on a multiprocessor system?

There's a famous quote from Seymour Cray, If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?

K.I.T.T.: "There's nothing worse than a smart-ass automobile."

Listen to him he knows what he is talking about!

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. --Bill Gates (1991)

WMD wasn't a buzzword yet. At least, not like it is now.

If you're gonna profit from the karma, you really ought to give credit...

"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." -- Gandhi

Suing a well-respected charitable organization would be a very bad move for a company as large as Starbucks. Oxfam isn't PETA or Greenpeace -- their goal is aid and development, not advocacy. They screwed up, Starbucks (and others) corrected them, and they now need to put the whole mess behind them.

The best PR move Starbucks could do would be to continue what they're doing now, and pledge some money to help the farmers out until a permanent solution is reached. It would be a drop in the bucket for a company the size of Starbucks, and would be great to boost their public image.

full hardware drivers

This will never happen until Microsoft's monopoly diminishes to the point where it's no longer feasible to provide individual drivers for each of the main operating systems since they can't count on selling enough units solely with Windows drivers, and the vendors must fully implement standards supported by the most popular OSes, and/or a common driver framework is implemented (if there's a market, there's most certainly a way (hint: there's no market until Windows marketshare diminishes substantially)). Until that glorious day of level playingfield bliss, the best you can do is check for Linux compatibility when you buy hardware even if you have only a vague inkling that you might someday install Linux, and if you intend to install Linux, buy a Linux system instead of a Windows one. Or at least one that doesn't come up as a Windows sale. Stand up and be counted. Yes, I'm a hypocrite because it wasn't easy 3 years ago (and it's likely not an immediatley simple task, although it seems much better nowadays at least with a No OS option).

pay $50 for a CD that gives you everything in the way of proprietary drivers and codecs ready to go for all your hardware and multimedia as opposed to spending hours and hours and hours downloading just bits and pieces of the solutions from all over the place and fighting to get them working?

I couldn't agree more. I'd give my right arm for a fully-licensed, fully-supported QuickTime, WindowsMedia, Real, MPEG, CSS, and other format CD. I don't know why someone doesn't do this!

That said, your portrayal of hunting down codecs isn't accurate for Ubuntu at all. Most of the software you're looking for is available in the Metaverse--if not the Universe--repository, which is only a few short clicks away (it's included by default, but not enabled). The few remaining, legally questionable codecs (namely libcss and win32codecs) are readily documented and generally require only one more repository, so it's not like "spending hours and hours and hours downloading just bits and pieces of the solutions from all over the place to get them working," it's more like searching the Ubuntu community wiki for the locations of the repositories (it's even in the FAQ!) and spending a few minutes adding the repository in. Rather, the quote reminds me of the peanut butter and jelly in a squeeze bottle comedy routine: Regarding assembling a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the apparent necessity of combining the peanut butter and jelly in a squeeze bottle, Regan remarks 'Some guy going, "You know I could go for a sandwich, but uh, I'm not gonna open TWO jars! I can't be opening and closing all kinds of jars... cleaning, who KNOWS how many knives!?!"'

All of that said, if any Linux vendors are listening, PLEASE put the proprietary codecs in the pay-for versions of your software!!!!, if not the free ones

He only said that ONCE, for crying out loud! Why does everybody make such a fuss?

Sorry, Henry Ford already has prior art on that concept...

Meh, too much trouble. Wikiquote FTW.

Perhaps consider the intentions of the framers. Thomas Jefferson said that "a little revolution now and then is a good thing", and the "shot heard 'round the world" was in defense of a private cache of arms about to be confiscated by the British.

Jefferson, at least, saw revolution as another check against the government and weapons as a way to enable the citizenry to do this.

The unintellectual capacity for this thread has been breached. I'm appalled at the amount of people here who wish to flush *their* constitutional rights down the toilet. It's a right of the people. Who is the government (which derives its power from the people) to take it away, and why are people welcoming it? As I'm sure it has been mentioned in one of 900 or so posts before mine, "Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY." - Benjamin Franklin.

Also if not already mentioned, "Isn't it funny that those who preach nonviolence are the same ones who 'don't trust themselves' with a gun? Well, if they can't handle it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't. " -- Cancer Omega, 1997 From attrition.org/technical/firearms/index.html which reflects most of my opinions on gun control.

- scire

I believe that Eddie Izzard asked it best, "Cake or Death"?

"Cake or death?" That's a pretty easy question. Everybody - anyone could answer that. "Cake or death?" "Uhh, cake please." "Very well! Give him cake!" "Oh, thanks very much. It's very nice!"

"You! Cake or death?" "Uh, cake for me, too, please!" "Very well! Give him cake, too!" (We're gonna run out of cake at this rate.)

"You! Cake or death?" "Uh, death, please. No, cake! Cake! Cake, sorry. Sorry ..." "You said death first, ah-ha, ah-ha, death first!" "Well, I meant cake!" "Oh, all right. You're lucky I'm Church of England!"

"Cake or death?" "Uh, cake please." "Well, we're out of cake! We only had three bits and we didn't expect such a rush! So what'll it be?" "What, so my choice is 'or death?' Well, then I'll have the chicken, please."

I've seen it in quotation sites as well, but you're quite right, there's no cited source (even in the Wikiquote entry).

The GandhiCon entry is really weird. Granted that I'm not familiar with the subculture, but .. it does seem very suspect indeed.

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference.

"Colour is a very important part of fruit marketing," she says. "If fruit doesn't look good, consumers are far less likely to buy it, no matter how good it might taste..."

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Ben Franklin?

As it was said in Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, "It is better to die standing, than to live on our knees".

That's a good quote. It's too bad so much in Star Trek is borrowed from other sources, sometimes with little attribution, that people are misled as to the origin of it. I remember cringing when I saw the beginning of Kill Bill I where the quote "revenge is a dish best served cold" is claimed as a Klingon proverb. Chekov of TOS would probably have pointed out that it is a Russian proverb, which is how I originally heard it, although it appears that quote is more ubiquitous and therefore its origin somewhat anomalous.

In this case it's one of those quotes that many people have agreed with and repeated, some of them famous. I think that it does echo feelings people have expressed even into antiquity; I know that there are some speeches which both Tacitus and Julius Caesar attribute to Rome's enemies which seem to be in that spirit. Our own Patrick Henry declared "give me liberty or give me death!"

It is a thing that is easier said than done. In a nation born of revolution such a spirit must continually be kept alive, and people do seem often to agree with such statements here. But it is not a thing they have been asked to actually do yet, and therefore not necessarily something they will do. Nevertheless there are enough who will that will merit the saying. I think that Thomas Jefferson was right in believing that it was necessary for people to be ready to die for such beliefs. Not because they must, or even because they will, but because being that serious about liberty and that adamant about keeping it is the only thing that will allow it to be kept alive, and allow it to grow so that ultimately all must fall under its sway. If we are willing to equivocate, to cower, to acquiesce, then tyranny will win and the natural tendency of those in power to seek its increase will continue unchecked in the absence of opposition. If we will not fight to keep our freedom we become unworthy of it in a sense and will certainly lose it. All humans *deserve* freedom and are granted it at birth; they only lose what they allow to be taken away, but when they do it is not so easily regained.

In any case, bravo on that sentiment. It was given with the best of intentions, and I fully agree with it.

"You ever notice how people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?" - Bill Hicks

"A bit of a blowhard?" Let's review some of the things he's said on his show over the years:

• "It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period." (16 June 2004)
• "Finally, the ACLU -- we talked about this yesterday and I -- and, you know, I have to pick on the ACLU because they're the most dangerous organization in the United States of America right now. There's by far. There's nobody even close to that. They're, like, second next to Al Qaeda." (2 June 2004)
• "I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group." (17 June 2004) The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly
• "I've been to Africa three times. All right? You can't bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can't bring it into fundamental Islam" (6 May 2002)
• "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." (8 November 2005)

(Quotes courtesy Wikiquote)

Maybe his views don't coincide perfectly with those of the "hard right", but he does seem to be living in a fantasy world largely shaped by his (mis)interpretation of Christianity. And don't forget how he seems to wish for harm to come to EVERYONE who disagrees with him.

While you might initially feel that taking the action you describe would somehow satisfy your personal sense of "justice," (I have definitely felt similar urges in the past) I think you'd benefit from some reflection upon the words of a man who has seen what violence does and does not achieve:

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - Martin Luther King

The sabre-rattling is over. That boom you just heard was the first salvo being fired. Oh, "it was just a test", he'll say, but we know better. Linux, in all of it's different flavors, has left the hacker realm and poses a real threat.

Gandhi said: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

I say "bring it on, bucko."

I'm not worried about global warming. By the time our governments truly accept its consequences for everything living or dead, we will already be playing with sticks and stones...

Ok, I lied, I'm worried about global warming.

HA HA HA
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattribu tions

If they make other choices, they have all of the compliance and intellectual property issues that are associated with that.

Dear Microsoft,

How will my baby mulching machine be able to legally interoperate with your software?

This is very important to me and my colleagues, and I would appreciate it if you would address our concerns.

That's not a Ben Franklin quote, though its many variations are often (mis)attributed to him.

In times when it's difficult for either major side to gain a clear majority, there are plenty of reasons for both major sides prefer an ambiguous loss rather than risk letting the other side have a close but definitive victory. For example, an ambiguous outcome makes it easier to determine the actual result in the courts, and having the right lawyers, or simply throwing more money at the problem, could be preferable to relying on unpredictable voters.

In a quote that's frequently repeated on Slashdot, Robert J. Hanlon once stated: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Given some of the stories that have emerged about voting machines in use now and in the past, I personally have trouble believing that malice is not involved.

My main question is: Do you believe that the current situation with e-voting in the USA can be adequately explained by incompetence among politicians and partisan election officials, and corporations to understand problems with the technology? Furthermore, if corruption is involved, and if people in certain positions are influencing the decisions to use unreliable voting systems, how serious-an-effect do you think this interference will have on efforts to make voting systems more reliable?

The author is vaguely correct, so it sounds good and very comforting.

The most compelling reason why users will switch is because Linux/BSD desktop will have an application that this guy needs.

At the end of the article the writer claims he'll set up a linux file server. Which is what this guy needs and MS won't give you one when you purchase a desktop from them. (please don't split hairs with me on this one. XP is not a file server.)

As all linux users know, it will install easily, he'll figure out the way things work in the distro of his choice and it will be all good. Because it's linux, he'll start adding things to it and pretty soon it'll be doing other things really well. Meanwhile MS will be tightening the handcuffs on his new vista machine. And pretty soon Linux will be doing even more and the desktop will be even better.

Right now, Linux is working it's way through the enterprise pretty anonymously and media people get to say bad things about it because they can and most enterprises don't want the specter of IP litigation. The usefulness of Linux and the Vista handcuffs will drive many more users to it, the litigation bombs will drop and there will be too many people too invested in it to -not- go to battle.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

Linux is somewhere between ingoring and laughing.

I don't claim to have the answers to your questions. What I do claim is the opinion that the philosophy of life espoused by Jesus in the Gospels is the most appealing philosophy of life I have encountered in my 28 years, that this current state of existence we enjoy is only a shadow of "real" existence (read up on theories concerning "The Holographic Universe" for some scientific context), and that we are here in this current state to learn how to love.

That the philosophy of Jesus has been distorted, twisted, and flat-out ignored by others who merely label themselves "Christians" (eg how can you truly obey the command to "turn the other cheek" while participating in a military organization that requires you to kill?) is a tragedy more or less unmatched in recorded human history. I readily admit and accept that the name of Christ has been abused by some of the most repulsive and frightening people to walk this Earth. Perhaps it is such an inviting target for deceivers because of its proven and considerable power to affect people?

The Bible outside the Gospels is worth reading for context, but I don't base my core beliefs on those texts. The Gospels themselves are enough for me to live on. If I had to "speak for God" I'd say that it cares less about what "holy" book we bury our noses in and what building we spend our time in over the weekend and more about how we treat all of our fellow humans.

If you want a more modern crystallization of what I believe, the closest I have found is this Bill Hicks bit:

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. It goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride ..." And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. Jesus murdered; Martin Luther King murdered; Malcolm X murdered; Gandhi murdered; John Lennon murdered; Reagan ... wounded. But it doesn't matter because: It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love.

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you've been great."

"They that would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither." -- Benjamin Franklin

That is my absolute favorite quote that Franklin never said. OTOH, my sig is his :-)

Heh, I made a Frank the Bunny pumpkin this year, based on this design that I made, carved in one of those fake, carvable pumpkins that lasts from year to year. I put it out front, put a candle in it, and got some great pictures. Unfortunately, Frank had other ideas -- he apparently looked at my house and said, Burn It To The Ground.

An hour later, I just happened to pass by the front door when it burst into flames, scorching the front of my house with a 2-3 foot high fireball. Apparently those things are highly flammable, and you're only supposed to use light bulbs no more than 5 watts in them. That's what I get for not reading the directions. At least I was able to get the fire put out, and thus it didn't expose my kiddie-pr0n dungeon.

"The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."
- ABC News interview, August 16, 2006

In the future, try http://en.wikiquote.org/

Another member of Ethan Allen's team added "Give me Vista, or give me death". When Microsoft asked on what authority they could make such demands, Allen replied "In the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress". Off the record, he also retorted "Come out, you son of an XP hack, or I'll smoke you out!"

(in case you don't get it)

Zapp Brannigan: You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down.

Bender: A grim day for robot-kind. Ah, but we can always build more killbots.

thanks

Taken from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(attorn ey)

Sweet, sweet justice.

Actually, there's a good chance it wasn't Ben Franklin. here for a bit more information. Still, it's definitely a thought-provoking quote, whoever really said it first.