Exactly. I think it was Mark Twain who said "never let your schooling interfere with your education".
Colleges, like the whole education system, just serves to grant you a certificate like they certify parts of machinery to be used in the capitalist mechanism.
Education isn't wanted there: Indeed, it is dangerous, because it can lead to questioning your government and corporate masters.
IANAL, too (can't we drop that? Unless one says IAAL, being IANAL would be implicit, wouldn't it? Otherwise, everyone also'd need to disclaim IANA[any combination of one or more letters, followed by any number of digits, the latter to differentiate occupations being abbreviated to the same]).
You can think much, but that doesn't make it true. I don't know how it is in the US, but over here TOS are considered [amendmends to] contracts which are given because it would be unreasonable to expect them to negotiate with every single user when there are potentially millions: You can, of course, ask for negotiations, but as with any contract, they can decide to negotiate or to tell you "take it or leave it". It doesn't matter whether the contract terms are determined unilaterally or bilaterally, it always is necessary that both parties agree to the change of terms. Also:
1. What they call it doesn't matter. E.g. Stalin called the Soviet Union democratic, but that doesn't make it so. I can go about and call a table a "chair", but this just creates a "dialect" of the English language, it doesn't magically make every table transform into a chair.
2. As said above, it's their choice to negotiate the contract or to tell you to "take it or leave it". This doesn't make it less of a contract. They just decided that it's too much work to negotiate with every single user, so they make a blanket contract to which they can agree or not, because negotiating with individual users would cost more than they'd bring in.
3. Whether you pay or not is immaterial. One can very well chose to forego direct payment to get more users and thus ad revenue. Also, everyone attempts to cover their asses by claiming that they don't promise to deliver anything. If they could get away with it, your car maker would claim that, too. That doesn't make it stand above the law, even though they would like that.
4. As above, it would be impractical to identify every single party of the agreement. However, by providing the TOS, they are considered to be agreed to by the service provider (otherwise, they shouldn't put them up) and you signing up constitutes agreement on your part, making it a contract agreed upon by both sides. Therefore, you are party to the agreement - and they would never dare to argue to the contrary, because that'd mean that they are bound by the terms, but you are not.
You can modify a contract, of course (which is why licenses like the GPL or the CC have a clause saying that the license is perpetual), but the modification still needs to be notified to the other party, or it doesn't gain validity. Otherwise, you got an analogon of the secret laws totalitarian governments are so fond of. Of course, you can put an "escape clause" into a contract (like, in your example, removing the permission to smoke), but this still doesn't become valid until the other party is notified of it.
Also, contracts and licenses don't differ in the one being unilateral and the other bilateral, both can appear in each form. Again, I don't know how it works in Anglo-Saxon law, but where I live, licenses are considered a specific kind of contract, where contracts in general govern some kind of exchange, where licenses specificially are a grant of permission to use specific property.
Also, It's not reasonable in the least to update a license without informing the licensee. You can't have them smoke in your house, then suddenly decide they may not and sue them for stinking up your living room without ever having told them that they may not smoke anymore. If they were allowed to smoke before, there's a reasonable expectation that they are still allowed unless noted otherwise.
This whining about how the world goes down the drain neglects that the world always was like this.
The US school system has always been aiming not for learning but for not learning to make the people more controllable for the feudal, sorry, capitalistic, elite.
The US always relied on imports: The physical work first done by Africans, now by Latin Americans (unless outsourced to China), the intellectual work first done by continental Europeans, now slowly taken over by the Chinese and Indians.
The US always relied on the make-believe of being "the land of the free" where it was no better than medieval Europe. Not everyone can be above average, no matter how hard they work. It's just that as one gets older, some gain the insight that it is so instead of keeping their eyes closed.
Well, as seen from the other side of the Atlantic, you've only got a choice between far right wing and very far right wing, so it doesn't really matter.
Not that we have it any better: Every system where you have only two big parties is just as bad as a one party system. It's only advantage is that the people are kept docile because, after all, you could vote for the other ones, can't you? And if you don't like them, you can just vote for... the first again.
Thus, they will become the same (that is, far right): It's just like you've got two royal families instead of one which always feud each other for the throne, but neither having more interest in the people than they'd have if they were the only one, except to make sure that they stay in power (which you have to ensure in an one party system, too).
Of course, there is a simple solution to that dilemma, but it is "unamerican".
Jail would be overkill. Not voting should just be an infraction, not a crime, i.e. most countries where voting is compulsory just charge a fine of $50 or something but don't throw you into prison.
Here in Germany, we vote on sundays. You can lodge a postal vote here, too, but religious scruples would be looked upon as ridiculous, because the elections are held in church buildings (though in public schools and other public buildings, too), thus you can just go to church and make your vote before or after service.
Indeed, I think that voting on a weekday is a very efficient and reliable way to reduce the numbers of the people voting.
Another important example besides gold would be aluminium, where melting it out of the ore requires, if I remember correctly, about twenty times the energy used for recycling.
There are a lot of things which would be worth being done, even on the restriction that you want to be paid for it: They don't care about that is worth to be done, but about what they are made believe to be done: Recycling requires an up-front investment, thus will not be done by our beloved "think of the next quarter only and open your golden parachute" CEOs.
Also, it should be noted that e.g. scrapyards usually get paid twice: first, by the one wanting to get rid of his scrap, secondly, when the metal industry comes for raw materials (recycling scrap is much cheaper than using ore). Thus, they ain't gonna pay you money for your electronics: it would set a bad precedent.
Though in practice, it can be seen as a kind of subvention, very similar how farmers are paid in the US to grow corn - however, what is called "waste" today are the ressources of tomorrow, something which cannot be said about Monsanto corn.
Still, I must concede that maybe it would be a better idea to let them get the idea of recycling themselves when they run out of raw materials: Someday, recycling will be cheaper than mining and refining new ore, like the tar sands of Canada are slowly becoming a viable alternative to the usual oil fields due to rising prices.
Overall, this is just a case of the tragedy of the commons: corporations are only interested in privatizing profits while communalizing expenses, i.e. they want government to pay for the recycling while they reap the benefits - otherwise, they will not allow it to be done. This is exceedingly damaging to society as a whole, only benefitting a handful of investors (who, however, will someday have to learn that you can't eat money).
It's more like: one is free. The other you have taken all your life and the pharma corporation paid a lot of money for the doctor to prescribe it, for the health insurance corporation to reject payment if you ever were to use any other drug and for advertising in the media.
And even in the third world it is the latter drug which is used, because the pharma corporation wants to make money, thus forces out alternatives used there, too, and pirates only copy the latter drug because it makes them more money while the pharma corporation patents the former one so you can't use it anywhere on the world.
Because where would we be going if anything were free, making people healthy instead of pumping money into pharma corporations by keeping people ill so they need the drugs?
I didn't claim that people didn't cheat on elections. I just pointed out that it becomes easier when paper ballots are abolished.
If I understand you correctly then no, I didn't watch BSG because I don't watch TV. But I've got some hunch that BSG is modeled on the US, thus this may happen in the US, but not as easily elsewhere (provided the same amount of watchfulness and engagement in democracy - which in the US is sorely lacking, because they believe that because it is called a democracy, they don't need to take part in it).
While you are right that one can fake paper elections, too, and even if we accept one could swap a whole ballot box (though I don't see how that would be possible, but that may be because our voting procedure is a bit different), with voting on paper, we have paper instead of a handful of electrons. "Proper procedure" won't help you any with that. It can only make one electronic election system more secure than another, but never become as secure as paper is. It simply is more difficult to produce the ballots, mark them, get a box, put them in and swap the boxes than it is to enter some command at the computer. The former always needs more conspirators than the latter.
With respect to the US, the US election system is extremely over-engineered, making it extremely insecure - what with transporting all the ballot boxes to a central location and counting them there by machines. Here in Germany, we count them by hand directly where the votes were cast, and you can watch them counting (if you don't do that, it's your own problem). Your reference to "anonymity" is ridiculous, by the way, because one may watch the counting, which is something different from looking over someone's shoulder when making a cross: If you don't draw the small square, your boss can't check on that (and if he fired you for not seeing it, you'd get social security and your boss would get a lawsuit; also, he's going to have to check on many employees, so how is he going to know whom he has to fire? Making them write their names on it?). Also, it is discouraged to use any other pen than the one provided, so you can't write in another color, either (and there are also guidelines as to which ballots are valid and which aren't).
The point is, I really don't understand how you can believe that electronic voting can be at least as secure as paper voting. That e-voting takes shorter time just makes you feel safe, but doesn't prevent anything. When paper votes are tabulated, you can watch it. When electronic votes are tabulated, there's a divorce between the act of voting and the act of counting by the medium being electrons instead of paper: A computer can arbitrarily change the data contained in it. Paper cannot. It is the oversight by the voters that matters, not the speed with which the result is found. With paper, the process simply is more thorough and distributed. Doing the same with electronic votes thus doesn't help it getting even as secure as paper unless you did it wrong with paper in the first place (like the USians do).
Btw I was refering to Article 20 (4) of the German Grundgesetz, which says that if someone tries to abolish the Rechtstaat of the constitution and there is no other way to stop it (and if I can't vote, how am I supposed to stop it?), the people may resort to violence to prevent the rise of a new Hitler. I'd start by demolishing the voting machines, then.
As I am not playing WoW, and thus don't patch it, I have no double standard. Thus, let me say: As I use Linux, I won't use this program, so I won't subsidize Microsofts bandwith. So the question whether I'd have a problem with subsidizing Microsofts bandwidth doesn't make any sense in the first place. But if I were using it, I doubt I'd have a problem with that - I'd have bigger ones. After all, I'd be using Microsoft software.
Just wanting to steer against any perceptions of the unsuspecting reader that the/.-community might be homogeneous in any way. Oh, wait...
Well, ext3 is backwards compatible to the file system ext2, so one just could use ext3 where it is supported and drop back to ext2 on the systems where it is not.
Whether it is better or worse than NTFS I cannot say, though, because back in my time there was only an ext2 driver but no NTFS driver for Windows and thus I now use Linux only.
I stopped reading your post after I read your subject because if you really believe that paper ballots are less secure than computer voting, you have got something very wrong - or maybe I have, because I can't think of any way to falsify all ballots at once if you're using paper, but this is trivially simple if you're using computers.
With electronic voting, you can't even verify whether it was counted correctly (you can neither have a look at it while it is counted, nor can you make a recount without accounting for the possibility that all the numbers changed) - the only check you have are the exit polls, and they can be doctored, too, or - easier - will be denounced by the winner as incorrect even when they have a good track record. With paper ballots, however, everyone can come and watch over the counting (at least it's that way here - could be that it's illegal to do that where you are).
I could write more, but I think this suffices to see that voting machines will always be less secure than paper ballots. So, I'll keep my paper ballots, thank you very much. And if I see a voting machine in my district, I'll make use of Article 20 (4).
And I'd say that the best argument for democracy is a five minute conversation with the average official.
People are people. Between the people on the street and the people in the government the only difference is that the latter both lust for power and have the cunning to get it, making them much more dangerous than the average voter.
Oh, but protesting crowds are obviously "enemy combattants", so international law doesn't apply to them. Thus they should thank Homeland Security on their knees for going so soft on them.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. If you talk of things you don't know anything about, you fill that void by what you yourself are. Thus, it is you who is the fascist.
It is the conservatives (who never conserve but only destroy in the name of a past who never was) who make such laws. It is the conservatives who tell you that anything bad is due to the liberals, communists, terrorists or whatever scapegoat is modern.
You are aware that the price of your cheap, email-only connection will be what you currently pay, while the more expensive one - the one able of anything you can do now - will cost significantly more? And that, due to the nearly competition-free nature of the US communications market, the relation between price and service already is the worst in the developed world?
For prices will definitely not go down: Whenever something gets cheaper, they'll use that to get more profit, not pass it on to the consumer - unless there is some competition who can deliver the same cheaper, so they have to eat into their profit margins to compete. But competition is exactly what your anti-net-neutrality stance prevents:
You are aware that not only the end user will be charged extra, but also the content provider? Of course, Google, Amazon etc will bitch and moan, but they can pay. But we won't ever again see start-ups like Google, You-Tube etc, because they cannot afford the extra cost.
Even if you just have a blog: if you're on an independent server, you're going to have to pay your ISP for basic internet access and access to the blog server for twice the current price total and then you have to pay the blog server some obscene amount of money because they have to pay the ISP, too, because otherwise nobody can read your blog. Of course, the ISP offers those blog services cheaper, so you're going there: you still pay more than you pay now, and the independent services will die out (because nobody reads them, because for reading them you have to pay extra).
The idea being, that the ISP provides the content themselves, and if you want other's content, they want to be paid for the "losses" they experience by you not getting the content from the ISP. Thus, by differential pricing, the ISP establishes himself as a monopoly in providing information, leveraging it's monopoly (or duopoly, if you're lucky) in communications infrastructure into the market of content creation - the very same thing Microsoft was sentenced for.
Therefore, it is not the GP who wants to play Big Brother, but you by rejecting net neutrality: because if you have net neutrality, you can choose among content providers. But if you haven't, it is the ISP who is ultimately in control of what you see and what you can't see. Because even if you pay for their top-of-the-line service, you won't get everything: If e.g. Google refuses to pay, it is very doubtful whether you'd receive Google even with the most expensive service.
I'd put that differently: The GPL attempts to get the maximum freedom possible for everyone instead of just for one party. Other licenses (BSD or proprietary, for example) maximize freedom for some parties to the very end of the scale at the cost of freedom of others.
In effect, proprietary licenses fall victim to the delusion that what is good for oneself is the best possible action, while BSD etc fall victim to the delusion that what is good for the other is the best possible action. Neither one realizes that the other party is going to lose freedom - and they don't even start thinking of end users.
It's usually at least 90% (at least in the official figures), that I can give you, but all totalitarian states I've seen numbers about, it was never exactly 100%. The idea is, after all, to get the people vote for you by any force necessary, not to fake the results - unless you've only got an approval rating about 30%, where you need fake votes just to stay in power.
Hitler demonstrated very well how you can stay in power while still adhering to the letter of the constitution. It's called colloquially the "Ermächtigungsgesetz", the USian translation being "PATRIOT act". Of course, it may be somewhat difficult for Bush to stay president - but that isn't needed, because the (economic and political) power elites have learned from the Hitler experience and thus try to keep stricter control over their puppet: If Bush is replaced, it doesn't matter. Even a democratic president will be corrupted by the power granted by "anti-terrorism" laws (especially as the US is one of the few "democratic" countries where you have only the choice between two far right wing parties).
The other branches of government in the US are also already severely weakened: what with illegal wiretaps, circumvening the courts; replacing classical conservative US attorneys with neoconservative ones because the old ones weren't aggressive enough; the executive claiming under the doctrine of unitary executive powers which were reserved for the other branches; hindering investigation by the courts by claiming state secrets; the list goes on and on, but the point is clear: no branch of government will save you.
Indeed, the military very much loathed Hitler, but still didn't do anything: do you really think that the military (as a whole) will be anything different? Then just think about how they knew from the start what a crap idea it was to send the soldiers into Iraq to their deaths, but yet they didn't do anything. Of course, in many dictatorships the reign is cut short by military putsch, so appeasement may be needed. Hitler did that by killing the leaders of the SA to alleviate the military's fear of being replaced by Hitlers private army.
In the Weimar Republic, every party had its milita wing which ran around and hit each other and the people. Of course, I don't think the German people had as much guns as the US people - but the same was valid, at least initially, for the party militas: If both sides have guns, it doesn't mean that you win but that you die. Not only that, but it is to note that they didn't use the military within the country: For that, there were Police and SA. Therefore, there isn't a problem with the military not wanting to shoot their countrymen, because they aren't asked to in the first place.
Also, an insurgency only helps against occupying forces. But if the government is domestic, it is easy to paint the insurgency as communistic or terroristic (isn't it funny how every totalitarian government uses the very same scapegoats?). Thus, they don't need to make up a threat, but they can point to a live one.
Also, the slide into a totalitarian state is often subtle in that people are able to close their eyes to the truth until the totalitarian structures became so far entrenched that even a civil war or revolution can only hope to replace one totalitarian system with another. You may not be there yet - but unless you step in now instead of waiting until it becomes unbearable (and unchangeable), it won't be stopped.
The most efficient way to discredit the opposition is by ignoring it. Because, if he isn't in prison, he can't possibly tell the truth about the government being after him, can he? Of course, in practice the reason is more likely to be that they haven't the resources to do so. Thus, enforcement is only random, starting with "high-risk" situations. But it is this randomness which has the most chilling effect: Otherwise, you could tell that they ignored you, but if it is random, you don't know whether they didn't see you or whether they just get you later.
But no matter whether it is intentional or accidential: That something is only enforced on some and not all doesn't mean that the rest isn't coming sometime later. The fact that you can still buy illegal drugs doesn't mean that there isn't a systematic persecution or detainment of those who use or sell drugs, only that the persecution is inefficient.
Also, one has to remember that it is business and not government controlling the US. And business doesn't care at all which political affilation their puppet belongs to, so why should they attempt to stop people from venting their anger?
Surely one could obtain them, but would it be legal to use them? One would have to ask a lawyer about that, but I think that if you can't prove that you bought it from Monsanto (and thus bound by their license) they'll say you've probably stolen them from some farmer - and stealing is a criminal matter, not a civil one: The farmer needs to press civil charges if he wants to be reimbursed for the damage, but you can be thrown into prison for theft in any case.
But that's all moot as soon as crops with terminator genes are used large-scale.
Even better: Instead of copyright, we use creator's right (or author's right, if you're french). Creator's right is a concept of continental Europe and a superset of copyright law. It puts more emphasis on the actual author and not on the distributors1. This means: You can't sign over all your rights. The distributor only gets a license.
Of course, due to homogenization of copyright law2, it's still a pretty crap law, but at least it prevents the worst exploitation of the artists and doesn't give record companies an interest in long terms - indeed, record companies would want short terms, because otherwise the families of the artist would have them pay through the nose, because creator's right is inheritible in many jurisdictions (a bad idea, of course).
Naturally, the companies just love to word their contracts so that they get everything and the artist nothing - after all, the specific difference in law is just an historic accident, but people, who make up the companies, are the same everywhere. But it would be a first step.
1 That's why it's called creator's right instead of copyright: it's about those doing the creation, not those doing the copying.
2 Which, of course, can only happen by having the longest term everywhere instead the shortest term everywhere.
And he doesn't even admit the disparity could also be reduced by shortening other's copyright term? Or just taking it as it is?
That's just like the government claims we need more surveillance because others have it (which often is not the case) and we need less rights to be fair to others not having those - but never crying for things like better social security, even if other countries have it.
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Exactly. I think it was Mark Twain who said "never let your schooling interfere with your education".
Colleges, like the whole education system, just serves to grant you a certificate like they certify parts of machinery to be used in the capitalist mechanism.
Education isn't wanted there: Indeed, it is dangerous, because it can lead to questioning your government and corporate masters.
IANAL, too (can't we drop that? Unless one says IAAL, being IANAL would be implicit, wouldn't it? Otherwise, everyone also'd need to disclaim IANA[any combination of one or more letters, followed by any number of digits, the latter to differentiate occupations being abbreviated to the same]).
You can think much, but that doesn't make it true. I don't know how it is in the US, but over here TOS are considered [amendmends to] contracts which are given because it would be unreasonable to expect them to negotiate with every single user when there are potentially millions: You can, of course, ask for negotiations, but as with any contract, they can decide to negotiate or to tell you "take it or leave it". It doesn't matter whether the contract terms are determined unilaterally or bilaterally, it always is necessary that both parties agree to the change of terms. Also:
1. What they call it doesn't matter. E.g. Stalin called the Soviet Union democratic, but that doesn't make it so. I can go about and call a table a "chair", but this just creates a "dialect" of the English language, it doesn't magically make every table transform into a chair.
2. As said above, it's their choice to negotiate the contract or to tell you to "take it or leave it". This doesn't make it less of a contract. They just decided that it's too much work to negotiate with every single user, so they make a blanket contract to which they can agree or not, because negotiating with individual users would cost more than they'd bring in.
3. Whether you pay or not is immaterial. One can very well chose to forego direct payment to get more users and thus ad revenue. Also, everyone attempts to cover their asses by claiming that they don't promise to deliver anything. If they could get away with it, your car maker would claim that, too. That doesn't make it stand above the law, even though they would like that.
4. As above, it would be impractical to identify every single party of the agreement. However, by providing the TOS, they are considered to be agreed to by the service provider (otherwise, they shouldn't put them up) and you signing up constitutes agreement on your part, making it a contract agreed upon by both sides. Therefore, you are party to the agreement - and they would never dare to argue to the contrary, because that'd mean that they are bound by the terms, but you are not.
You can modify a contract, of course (which is why licenses like the GPL or the CC have a clause saying that the license is perpetual), but the modification still needs to be notified to the other party, or it doesn't gain validity. Otherwise, you got an analogon of the secret laws totalitarian governments are so fond of. Of course, you can put an "escape clause" into a contract (like, in your example, removing the permission to smoke), but this still doesn't become valid until the other party is notified of it.
Also, contracts and licenses don't differ in the one being unilateral and the other bilateral, both can appear in each form. Again, I don't know how it works in Anglo-Saxon law, but where I live, licenses are considered a specific kind of contract, where contracts in general govern some kind of exchange, where licenses specificially are a grant of permission to use specific property.
Also, It's not reasonable in the least to update a license without informing the licensee. You can't have them smoke in your house, then suddenly decide they may not and sue them for stinking up your living room without ever having told them that they may not smoke anymore. If they were allowed to smoke before, there's a reasonable expectation that they are still allowed unless noted otherwise.
This whining about how the world goes down the drain neglects that the world always was like this.
The US school system has always been aiming not for learning but for not learning to make the people more controllable for the feudal, sorry, capitalistic, elite.
The US always relied on imports: The physical work first done by Africans, now by Latin Americans (unless outsourced to China), the intellectual work first done by continental Europeans, now slowly taken over by the Chinese and Indians.
The US always relied on the make-believe of being "the land of the free" where it was no better than medieval Europe. Not everyone can be above average, no matter how hard they work. It's just that as one gets older, some gain the insight that it is so instead of keeping their eyes closed.
Well, as seen from the other side of the Atlantic, you've only got a choice between far right wing and very far right wing, so it doesn't really matter.
Not that we have it any better: Every system where you have only two big parties is just as bad as a one party system. It's only advantage is that the people are kept docile because, after all, you could vote for the other ones, can't you? And if you don't like them, you can just vote for... the first again.
Thus, they will become the same (that is, far right): It's just like you've got two royal families instead of one which always feud each other for the throne, but neither having more interest in the people than they'd have if they were the only one, except to make sure that they stay in power (which you have to ensure in an one party system, too).
Of course, there is a simple solution to that dilemma, but it is "unamerican".
Jail would be overkill. Not voting should just be an infraction, not a crime, i.e. most countries where voting is compulsory just charge a fine of $50 or something but don't throw you into prison.
Here in Germany, we vote on sundays. You can lodge a postal vote here, too, but religious scruples would be looked upon as ridiculous, because the elections are held in church buildings (though in public schools and other public buildings, too), thus you can just go to church and make your vote before or after service.
Indeed, I think that voting on a weekday is a very efficient and reliable way to reduce the numbers of the people voting.
Another important example besides gold would be aluminium, where melting it out of the ore requires, if I remember correctly, about twenty times the energy used for recycling.
There are a lot of things which would be worth being done, even on the restriction that you want to be paid for it: They don't care about that is worth to be done, but about what they are made believe to be done: Recycling requires an up-front investment, thus will not be done by our beloved "think of the next quarter only and open your golden parachute" CEOs.
Also, it should be noted that e.g. scrapyards usually get paid twice: first, by the one wanting to get rid of his scrap, secondly, when the metal industry comes for raw materials (recycling scrap is much cheaper than using ore). Thus, they ain't gonna pay you money for your electronics: it would set a bad precedent.
Though in practice, it can be seen as a kind of subvention, very similar how farmers are paid in the US to grow corn - however, what is called "waste" today are the ressources of tomorrow, something which cannot be said about Monsanto corn.
Still, I must concede that maybe it would be a better idea to let them get the idea of recycling themselves when they run out of raw materials: Someday, recycling will be cheaper than mining and refining new ore, like the tar sands of Canada are slowly becoming a viable alternative to the usual oil fields due to rising prices.
Overall, this is just a case of the tragedy of the commons: corporations are only interested in privatizing profits while communalizing expenses, i.e. they want government to pay for the recycling while they reap the benefits - otherwise, they will not allow it to be done. This is exceedingly damaging to society as a whole, only benefitting a handful of investors (who, however, will someday have to learn that you can't eat money).
It's more like: one is free. The other you have taken all your life and the pharma corporation paid a lot of money for the doctor to prescribe it, for the health insurance corporation to reject payment if you ever were to use any other drug and for advertising in the media.
And even in the third world it is the latter drug which is used, because the pharma corporation wants to make money, thus forces out alternatives used there, too, and pirates only copy the latter drug because it makes them more money while the pharma corporation patents the former one so you can't use it anywhere on the world.
Because where would we be going if anything were free, making people healthy instead of pumping money into pharma corporations by keeping people ill so they need the drugs?
Windows, doesn't throw exceptions. It BSODs.
OK, that was way unfair of me. Nowadays Windows doesn't BSODs anymore, it just reboots. That's sooo much better.
I didn't claim that people didn't cheat on elections. I just pointed out that it becomes easier when paper ballots are abolished.
If I understand you correctly then no, I didn't watch BSG because I don't watch TV. But I've got some hunch that BSG is modeled on the US, thus this may happen in the US, but not as easily elsewhere (provided the same amount of watchfulness and engagement in democracy - which in the US is sorely lacking, because they believe that because it is called a democracy, they don't need to take part in it).
While you are right that one can fake paper elections, too, and even if we accept one could swap a whole ballot box (though I don't see how that would be possible, but that may be because our voting procedure is a bit different), with voting on paper, we have paper instead of a handful of electrons. "Proper procedure" won't help you any with that. It can only make one electronic election system more secure than another, but never become as secure as paper is. It simply is more difficult to produce the ballots, mark them, get a box, put them in and swap the boxes than it is to enter some command at the computer. The former always needs more conspirators than the latter.
With respect to the US, the US election system is extremely over-engineered, making it extremely insecure - what with transporting all the ballot boxes to a central location and counting them there by machines. Here in Germany, we count them by hand directly where the votes were cast, and you can watch them counting (if you don't do that, it's your own problem). Your reference to "anonymity" is ridiculous, by the way, because one may watch the counting, which is something different from looking over someone's shoulder when making a cross: If you don't draw the small square, your boss can't check on that (and if he fired you for not seeing it, you'd get social security and your boss would get a lawsuit; also, he's going to have to check on many employees, so how is he going to know whom he has to fire? Making them write their names on it?). Also, it is discouraged to use any other pen than the one provided, so you can't write in another color, either (and there are also guidelines as to which ballots are valid and which aren't).
The point is, I really don't understand how you can believe that electronic voting can be at least as secure as paper voting. That e-voting takes shorter time just makes you feel safe, but doesn't prevent anything. When paper votes are tabulated, you can watch it. When electronic votes are tabulated, there's a divorce between the act of voting and the act of counting by the medium being electrons instead of paper: A computer can arbitrarily change the data contained in it. Paper cannot. It is the oversight by the voters that matters, not the speed with which the result is found. With paper, the process simply is more thorough and distributed. Doing the same with electronic votes thus doesn't help it getting even as secure as paper unless you did it wrong with paper in the first place (like the USians do).
Btw I was refering to Article 20 (4) of the German Grundgesetz, which says that if someone tries to abolish the Rechtstaat of the constitution and there is no other way to stop it (and if I can't vote, how am I supposed to stop it?), the people may resort to violence to prevent the rise of a new Hitler. I'd start by demolishing the voting machines, then.
As I am not playing WoW, and thus don't patch it, I have no double standard. Thus, let me say: As I use Linux, I won't use this program, so I won't subsidize Microsofts bandwith. So the question whether I'd have a problem with subsidizing Microsofts bandwidth doesn't make any sense in the first place. But if I were using it, I doubt I'd have a problem with that - I'd have bigger ones. After all, I'd be using Microsoft software.
/.-community might be homogeneous in any way. Oh, wait...
Just wanting to steer against any perceptions of the unsuspecting reader that the
Well, ext3 is backwards compatible to the file system ext2, so one just could use ext3 where it is supported and drop back to ext2 on the systems where it is not.
Whether it is better or worse than NTFS I cannot say, though, because back in my time there was only an ext2 driver but no NTFS driver for Windows and thus I now use Linux only.
I stopped reading your post after I read your subject because if you really believe that paper ballots are less secure than computer voting, you have got something very wrong - or maybe I have, because I can't think of any way to falsify all ballots at once if you're using paper, but this is trivially simple if you're using computers.
With electronic voting, you can't even verify whether it was counted correctly (you can neither have a look at it while it is counted, nor can you make a recount without accounting for the possibility that all the numbers changed) - the only check you have are the exit polls, and they can be doctored, too, or - easier - will be denounced by the winner as incorrect even when they have a good track record. With paper ballots, however, everyone can come and watch over the counting (at least it's that way here - could be that it's illegal to do that where you are).
I could write more, but I think this suffices to see that voting machines will always be less secure than paper ballots. So, I'll keep my paper ballots, thank you very much. And if I see a voting machine in my district, I'll make use of Article 20 (4).
And I'd say that the best argument for democracy is a five minute conversation with the average official.
People are people. Between the people on the street and the people in the government the only difference is that the latter both lust for power and have the cunning to get it, making them much more dangerous than the average voter.
Oh, but protesting crowds are obviously "enemy combattants", so international law doesn't apply to them. Thus they should thank Homeland Security on their knees for going so soft on them.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. If you talk of things you don't know anything about, you fill that void by what you yourself are. Thus, it is you who is the fascist.
It is the conservatives (who never conserve but only destroy in the name of a past who never was) who make such laws. It is the conservatives who tell you that anything bad is due to the liberals, communists, terrorists or whatever scapegoat is modern.
You are aware that the price of your cheap, email-only connection will be what you currently pay, while the more expensive one - the one able of anything you can do now - will cost significantly more? And that, due to the nearly competition-free nature of the US communications market, the relation between price and service already is the worst in the developed world?
For prices will definitely not go down: Whenever something gets cheaper, they'll use that to get more profit, not pass it on to the consumer - unless there is some competition who can deliver the same cheaper, so they have to eat into their profit margins to compete. But competition is exactly what your anti-net-neutrality stance prevents:
You are aware that not only the end user will be charged extra, but also the content provider? Of course, Google, Amazon etc will bitch and moan, but they can pay. But we won't ever again see start-ups like Google, You-Tube etc, because they cannot afford the extra cost.
Even if you just have a blog: if you're on an independent server, you're going to have to pay your ISP for basic internet access and access to the blog server for twice the current price total and then you have to pay the blog server some obscene amount of money because they have to pay the ISP, too, because otherwise nobody can read your blog. Of course, the ISP offers those blog services cheaper, so you're going there: you still pay more than you pay now, and the independent services will die out (because nobody reads them, because for reading them you have to pay extra).
The idea being, that the ISP provides the content themselves, and if you want other's content, they want to be paid for the "losses" they experience by you not getting the content from the ISP. Thus, by differential pricing, the ISP establishes himself as a monopoly in providing information, leveraging it's monopoly (or duopoly, if you're lucky) in communications infrastructure into the market of content creation - the very same thing Microsoft was sentenced for.
Therefore, it is not the GP who wants to play Big Brother, but you by rejecting net neutrality: because if you have net neutrality, you can choose among content providers. But if you haven't, it is the ISP who is ultimately in control of what you see and what you can't see. Because even if you pay for their top-of-the-line service, you won't get everything: If e.g. Google refuses to pay, it is very doubtful whether you'd receive Google even with the most expensive service.
I'd put that differently: The GPL attempts to get the maximum freedom possible for everyone instead of just for one party. Other licenses (BSD or proprietary, for example) maximize freedom for some parties to the very end of the scale at the cost of freedom of others.
In effect, proprietary licenses fall victim to the delusion that what is good for oneself is the best possible action, while BSD etc fall victim to the delusion that what is good for the other is the best possible action. Neither one realizes that the other party is going to lose freedom - and they don't even start thinking of end users.
It's usually at least 90% (at least in the official figures), that I can give you, but all totalitarian states I've seen numbers about, it was never exactly 100%. The idea is, after all, to get the people vote for you by any force necessary, not to fake the results - unless you've only got an approval rating about 30%, where you need fake votes just to stay in power.
I'll be Godwin'd, but anyway:
Hitler demonstrated very well how you can stay in power while still adhering to the letter of the constitution. It's called colloquially the "Ermächtigungsgesetz", the USian translation being "PATRIOT act". Of course, it may be somewhat difficult for Bush to stay president - but that isn't needed, because the (economic and political) power elites have learned from the Hitler experience and thus try to keep stricter control over their puppet: If Bush is replaced, it doesn't matter. Even a democratic president will be corrupted by the power granted by "anti-terrorism" laws (especially as the US is one of the few "democratic" countries where you have only the choice between two far right wing parties).
The other branches of government in the US are also already severely weakened: what with illegal wiretaps, circumvening the courts; replacing classical conservative US attorneys with neoconservative ones because the old ones weren't aggressive enough; the executive claiming under the doctrine of unitary executive powers which were reserved for the other branches; hindering investigation by the courts by claiming state secrets; the list goes on and on, but the point is clear: no branch of government will save you.
Indeed, the military very much loathed Hitler, but still didn't do anything: do you really think that the military (as a whole) will be anything different? Then just think about how they knew from the start what a crap idea it was to send the soldiers into Iraq to their deaths, but yet they didn't do anything. Of course, in many dictatorships the reign is cut short by military putsch, so appeasement may be needed. Hitler did that by killing the leaders of the SA to alleviate the military's fear of being replaced by Hitlers private army.
In the Weimar Republic, every party had its milita wing which ran around and hit each other and the people. Of course, I don't think the German people had as much guns as the US people - but the same was valid, at least initially, for the party militas: If both sides have guns, it doesn't mean that you win but that you die. Not only that, but it is to note that they didn't use the military within the country: For that, there were Police and SA. Therefore, there isn't a problem with the military not wanting to shoot their countrymen, because they aren't asked to in the first place.
Also, an insurgency only helps against occupying forces. But if the government is domestic, it is easy to paint the insurgency as communistic or terroristic (isn't it funny how every totalitarian government uses the very same scapegoats?). Thus, they don't need to make up a threat, but they can point to a live one.
Also, the slide into a totalitarian state is often subtle in that people are able to close their eyes to the truth until the totalitarian structures became so far entrenched that even a civil war or revolution can only hope to replace one totalitarian system with another. You may not be there yet - but unless you step in now instead of waiting until it becomes unbearable (and unchangeable), it won't be stopped.
The most efficient way to discredit the opposition is by ignoring it. Because, if he isn't in prison, he can't possibly tell the truth about the government being after him, can he? Of course, in practice the reason is more likely to be that they haven't the resources to do so. Thus, enforcement is only random, starting with "high-risk" situations. But it is this randomness which has the most chilling effect: Otherwise, you could tell that they ignored you, but if it is random, you don't know whether they didn't see you or whether they just get you later.
But no matter whether it is intentional or accidential: That something is only enforced on some and not all doesn't mean that the rest isn't coming sometime later. The fact that you can still buy illegal drugs doesn't mean that there isn't a systematic persecution or detainment of those who use or sell drugs, only that the persecution is inefficient.
Also, one has to remember that it is business and not government controlling the US. And business doesn't care at all which political affilation their puppet belongs to, so why should they attempt to stop people from venting their anger?
Surely one could obtain them, but would it be legal to use them? One would have to ask a lawyer about that, but I think that if you can't prove that you bought it from Monsanto (and thus bound by their license) they'll say you've probably stolen them from some farmer - and stealing is a criminal matter, not a civil one: The farmer needs to press civil charges if he wants to be reimbursed for the damage, but you can be thrown into prison for theft in any case.
But that's all moot as soon as crops with terminator genes are used large-scale.
Even better: Instead of copyright, we use creator's right (or author's right, if you're french). Creator's right is a concept of continental Europe and a superset of copyright law. It puts more emphasis on the actual author and not on the distributors1. This means: You can't sign over all your rights. The distributor only gets a license.
Of course, due to homogenization of copyright law2, it's still a pretty crap law, but at least it prevents the worst exploitation of the artists and doesn't give record companies an interest in long terms - indeed, record companies would want short terms, because otherwise the families of the artist would have them pay through the nose, because creator's right is inheritible in many jurisdictions (a bad idea, of course).
Naturally, the companies just love to word their contracts so that they get everything and the artist nothing - after all, the specific difference in law is just an historic accident, but people, who make up the companies, are the same everywhere. But it would be a first step.
1 That's why it's called creator's right instead of copyright: it's about those doing the creation, not those doing the copying.
2 Which, of course, can only happen by having the longest term everywhere instead the shortest term everywhere.
And he doesn't even admit the disparity could also be reduced by shortening other's copyright term? Or just taking it as it is?
That's just like the government claims we need more surveillance because others have it (which often is not the case) and we need less rights to be fair to others not having those - but never crying for things like better social security, even if other countries have it.