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*yawn* Because paper records are sooper seekrit secure?

http://www.healthdatamanagemen...
http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_25...
http://www.hartfordbusiness.co...
http://www.fiercehealthcare.co...

There is no such thing as a military which has the ability to protect everyone on a block except Steve Jones who refuses to pay - it either protects the block or it does not.

The last tyme I can recall the US was invaded was the Battle of New Orleans. When I was in the Army I was stationed in one of the units that fought in the battle, the song The Battle of New Orleans" written by Johnny Horton was about my unit. Yes the territory of Hawai'i was attacked, the Roosevelt admin allowed it, however it was not invaded by Japan but by the US.

I don't see anything unconstitutional about bailing out banks

What part of the Constitution of the USA gives the federal government the power to bailout banks? You can't because it doesn't and the Constitution set limits on what government can do, if something's not in the Constitution the federal government can not do it. Heck the 10th Amendment - Powers of the States and Peoples, spells that out "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

One of the Founding Fathers even warned against banks, Thomas Jefferson, he said "that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."

How, exactly, is it outside of the government's power to provide loans to banks so that they don't collapse and destroy the economy?

See above. The Constitution only created a government of limited power. And where's the prove the economy would have collapsed if the banks had not been bailed out? Never mind, you'll just say some economists said it and I'll reply others said otherwise.

These bailouts are not free cash handouts, despite what the media wants you to think.

They weren't? So a bunch of bank executives who created the problem for the banks didn't end up with millions of dollars? And banks who were well run and didn't need bailouts weren't penalized?

Fslcon

RAM counts in some jurisdictions and not in others. (I was under the impression it didn't count in the USA, but I haven't checked and I don't even live there.)

However, I disagree that the problem is merely the absurdity of such restrictions bringing the rationality of the entire copyright system into question. The danger of them being enforced most definitely is a problem (even if they haven't, so far, been enforced).

A fact well understood (and used), particularly by Bush and previous US regimes, is that, if there are so many laws that it is impossible to survive without violating any, the executive has total and absolute control over the populace and their liberty via selective enforcement*.

To elaborate, if accidently humming a tune to yourself (or, in transient-medium-copyright-violation jurisdictions, possibly, just storing a song in your own memory) is a criminal offence then the goverment will use it if they cannot get a person who they don't like (e.g.: a whistleblower) banged up for something else. Now, of course, it is unlikely they would ever use such a clearly stupid law. They will first try to convict under a more borderline stupid, but nonetheless, obscure law. Due to the astronomical number of laws in the world, a significant proportion of convictions in all jurisdictions are under laws that have never been used before to convict someone (and probably never will be again). The victims of such laws are nearly always convicted for reasons other than their breach of the given law.

[* If you don't think the entire legal and law enforcement system is based around selective enforcement, you're living in a dream world. Do you think the U.S. president is as likely to be convicted of an offence as a typical US citizen? Actually he probably cannot even be convicted because of presidential immunity and the (very ironic) signing statements (which he claims allow him to secretly ignore any laws he signs, even though Congress has now passed a law saying that he has to tell them if he is going to ignore any laws, which he apparnetly decided to ignore).]

Yeah, but gravity is only a theory. It isn't a fact

P.S. Note to mods. No, this isn't flamebaiting or trolling. Having a supposed scientist claim that astrology could fit under the definition of a theory reminds me of the morons who keep using the phrase re: evolution: but it's only a theory, not a fact, when in fact evolution is a fact but the theory of evolution, that which describes the process, is not a fact. Just like gravity is a fact but the Theory of Gravity is not. The Theory only attempts to describe the fact (gravity)

Apparently, you haven't heard of the movement to teach Intelligent Design in public schools alongside Evolution.

Allow me to explain.

Alan Cox; Richard Stallman; Bruce Perens; Wichert Akkerman; Miguel DeIcaza.

What do you see in this list of names? Are there any African-Americans on it? Absolutely not, none of those names sound like one a self-respecting black person would have! No Maurice, no Luther, no Lil' Kim. There are many other lists such as this, you can see one here. Flip through each page, do you see anything other than white faces? Of course you don't, because Open Source and its adherents are ardent racists and they absolutely forbid access to the sacred 'kernel' by any person of color.

Lets look at another list, this time a compendium of the companies using Linux. Are there any black owned companies on that list? Nooooooo. How about these companies? They all have something to do with Open Source software, any of them owned by an African-American? No again. Here is an extensive collection of photographs from a LUG (Linux User Gathering) meeting, more can be viewed at that link. What is odd about these pictures, and every other photograph I have ever seen of a LUG meeting, is that there is not one single black person to be seen, and probably none for miles.

More racist overtones can be found by examining the language of Open Source. They often refer to 'white hat' hackers. These 'white hats' scurry about the Internet doing good, but illegal, acts for their fellow man. In stark contrast we find the 'black hat' hackers. They destroy the good works of others by breaking into systems, stealing data, and generally causing havoc. These two terms reflect the mindset of most Linux developers. White means good, black means bad. Anywhere there is black, there is uncontrollable destruction and lawlessness. Looking further we see black lists that inform other users of 'bad' hardware, Samba, an obvious play on the much hated Little Black Sambo book, Mandrake, which I won't explain except to say that the French are notorious racists. This type is linguistic discrimination is widespread throughout the Open Source culture, lampooned by many of its more popular sites.

It is also a fact that all Unix 'distros' contain a plethora of racist commands with not so hidden symbolism.

It can hardly be coincidence that the prime operating system of choice of the 'open source supremacists' - Linux, features commands which are poorly disguised racist acronyms. For example: 'awk' (All White Klan) , 'sed' (shoot nEgroes dead), 'ln' (lynch negroes), 'rpm' (raical purity mandatory), 'bash' (bring a slave home), 'ps' (persecute sambo), 'mount' (murder or unseat nubians today), 'fsck' (favored supreme Christian klan). I could go on and on about the latent racist symbolism in Linux, but I fear it would take weeks to enumerate every incidence.

Is there a single unix command out there that does not have some hidden racist connotation ? Suffice it to say that the racism pervades Linux like a particularly bad smell. Can you imagine the effect of running such a racist operating system on the impressionable mind ? I don't have to remind you that transmitting subliminal messages is banned in the USA, and yet here we have an operating system that appears to be one enormous submliminal ad for the Klan!

One of the few selling points of Open Source software is that it is available in many different languages. Browsing through the list I see that absolutely none are offered in Swahili, nor Ebonics. Obviously this is done to prevent black people from having access to the kernel. If it weren't for the fact that racism is so blatantly evil I would be impressed by the efforts these Open Sourcers have invested in keeping their little hobby lilly white. It even appears that they hate the Japanese, as some of these self proclaimed hackers defaced a web site with anti-Japanese slogans. Hell, these people even go all the way to Africa (South Africa mind you, better known as White Africa) and the pictures prove that they don't even get close to a black person.

Of course, presenting overwhelming evidence such as this is a bit unfair without some attempt to determine why these Open Sourcers are so racist. Much of the evidence I have collected indicates that their views are so deeply held that they are seldom questioned by the new recruits. This, coupled with the robot-like groupthink that dominates the culture allows the racist mindset to continue to permeate the ranks. Indeed, the Open Source version of a Klan rally, OSDN (known to the world as Open Source Developer's Network, known to insiders as Open Source Denies Negroes) nearly stands up and shouts its racist views on its demographics page. It doesn't mention the black man one single time. Obviously, anyone involved with Open Source doesn't need to be told that the demographic is entirely white, it is a given.

I have a sneaking suspicion as to why their beliefs are so closely held: they are all terrible athletes.

Really. Much like the tragedy at Columbine High School, where two geeks went on a rampage to get back at 'jocks', these adult geeks still bear the emotional scars inflicted upon them due to their lack of athletic ability during their teen years. As African-Americans are well known for their athletic skills, they are an obvious target for the Open Source geeks. As we all know, sports builds character, thus it follows that the lack of sports destroys character. These geeks, locked away in their rooms, munching on stale pizza and Fritos, engage in no character building activities. Further, they interact only with computers and never develop the level of social skill that allows normal people to handle relationships with persons of color.

Contrasted with the closed source, non-geeky software house Microsoft, Open Source has a long, long way to go.

Join me in my next article where I will lay bare the rampant anti-semitism in the Open Source community.