Please show me the tax bill for "everything it sells" for one of the Bermuda Incorporated "US" corporations. Explain to me why it is that, until the stuff about Halliburton being on that list came out, Bush was stating that going offshore to avoid taxes was "unacceptable".
Web based petitions etc. are simply the electronic equivalent to all the paper postcard astroturf campaigns run by all sides of the political spectrum (I've seen 20/20 Vision, a liberal group, doing this, and I've seen anti-abortion and otherwise very right leaning groups do this as well). If they're going to ignore all the web form letters, they better start ignoring the paper form letters too.
(I had other things to attend to, so the latter section was abbreviated).
So again, you might make the case that there is no constitutional justification for federal affirmative action laws, but then the same argument should be applied to the fact that there is no constitutional justification for federal drug laws. On the other hand, if drug laws are ok because "they're for our own good" or whatever, then I would think that an appropriately scoped affirmative action law falls under the same justification--it seems to me that "equal protection" should actually mean equal, not equal as long as you have the money to ensure it.
As I said before, it seems that conservatives want to have it both ways; a limited federal government, except when they don't want a limited federal government. That is ridiculous. It's in the same vein as criticizing liberals for their "tax & spend ways" when in fact it's much more irresponsible to "not tax & spend" the way the current administration is going. If I were to try the same fiscal policies (cut income, increase spending) in my personal life, I'd be broke, and possibly in jail. I'm all for cutting taxes, but you have to be willing to cut spending to accomplish that.
And don't even get me started on cutting taxes for corporations that have moved offshore so they don't have to pay taxes anyway (like divisions of Halliburton and many many others).
This has gone waaay offtopic at this point; attempting to drag it back on topic, I find it amazing that the federal government has encouraged courts to deny demonstration permits (a LOCAL issue in NYC, not a federal one) and still claims to be "pro states rights" and claims that the war was to "protect our freedoms" when in fact our freedoms are more restricted in the current circumstances than they have been in a very long time. Peaceful protesters being rounded up and jailed in Washington DC, regular pronouncements that those who oppose the administration's policies are traitors,fast track passage of PATRIOT, the cajones to even think that PATRIOT II might fly, trying to remove the sunset provisions on PATRIOT.... And more to the point, the fact that the majority of the populace is either going along with these things or keeping themselves ignorant of them leads me to believe that Prof. Felton is being excessively optimistic when he thinks that the people will care about censorship, whether via DMCA or otherwise, if it doesn't affect them personally.
Either the states are free of encumberment by federal restrictions or they're not. You seem to argue both ways, depending on whether it fits your beliefs. So does the Supreme Court. In both cases, it's not a matter of constitutionality so much as a matter of personal/political bias that is driving the judgement call.
Let's take a couple of those issues: First I will agree that quotas, per se, are not the right answer. However, to pretend that if all laws regarding race are stricken from the books we would suddenly become a race-neutral equal opportunity society is extremely naive at best, and extremely cynical at worst. The fact is that in most transactions there are opportunities to make judgements based on personal criteria, and it is quite easy (as demonstrated in the texas case about jury selection) to inject unconstitutional unequal bias into transactions unless there are laws specifically created to prevent and disallow such bias being used, and putting in place methods to measure and determine whether or not that bias is occurring. If today we struck all such laws from the books, there would of course no longer be any "Jim Crow" laws, but I am absolutely certain that there would be plenty of equivalently biased "policies and procedures", even if such policies and procedures were hidden because they would be an embarassment. The really sticky problem is how to craft a law that goes far enough without going too far; obviously the supreme court believes that quotas go too far, and I agree. I do not believe that most affirmative action implementations SINCE that was made clear go too far. I have done hiring under EEOC rules, and it was made clear to me that my first job was to come up with an objective measure of each candidate's fitness for the job, and THEN from the pool of candidates fit for the job, I would be using race and gender as two of a handful of other deciding factors to pick from among that pool. If I were to pick a non-minority from that final round pool, I'd have to justify why, but I was not forbidden from doing so. This is still not a perfect solution, but it seems to me better than the alternative which allows any personal bias to shut out those who are different, be it outright racism/sexism or the more subtle problems of "I don't like those kind of people 'cos I never had to know one of 'em like a person."
As for drug laws, I hardly see Congress as being in a position to make laws about drugs. If they had to amend the constitution the first time to ban alcohol, then how exactly is it they've banned all these other substances that are quite analogous in their usage and behavior without one?
I say bah. I grew up in the '70's, I'm a pretty typical smart geek, and guess what? I was exposed to the same lead from pollution (or worse) than the kids today are.
I've done lots of rebates, though by no means not the most of anyone I know (hi Chad). I've only ever had one case where a rebate was refused and I knew I had sent in the info, and when I took the time to call and bitch, they honored the rebate anyway. I have had other cases where I screwed up and forgot to send the UPC (and ended up throwing it away), but that was clearly my fault.
In the 70's when you could get rebates on cereal tops and such, my mom did rebates all the time. We never ran into trouble with it then that I know of either. I'd say most reputable companies are going to keep pretty close tabs on things, and will work with you if 1) something went wrong that wasn't your fault and 2) you take the time to actually push them on the topic.
I don't have them, but have some coworkers who do. There were a couple of guys complaining that until the mac matched, it didn't work. Perhaps it's a regional requirement--I'm in the Chicagoland area, and they live out in the 'burbs.
My understanding is that this is a problem for anyone using SBC on any platform: you are expected to set up a direct link and nevermore change anything, and if you do it breaks. The way around this is to get a NAT firewall that allows you to tell it to set the internet side mac address to whatever you had on your original machine. I forget the exact term, but with most that support it it's like a "clone interface" button or some such on the web management app.
Get a D-Link or Linksys home NAT firewall unit, download current firmware, and follow the manual's instructions to get this to work.
You clearly don't actually listen to NPR. Often as not the quotes and more importantly the very common cases of actually talking to a representative of the AEI et.al. in person, are being given full coverage of their side. Sometimes the reporter has an agenda that's clear, but it doesn't get expressed as "this person I'm talking to is clearly a moron" in the same way as, say Bill O'Reilly's screeds. Each side airs their perspective and they part at worst as disagreeing individuals who treat each other with respect. And in many cases NPR appears to be taking the side supported by AEI.
But of course you'd actually have to listen to the station to learn that, and that might interrupt your convenient "liberal media bias" myths that you can use to excuse the BS that O'Reilly and his ilk pull.
Because they're citing the same survey because it's easier? Because media is big business, and that drives as much or more of their agenda as the theoretical "liberal bias" they have? (Funny how NPR, one of the most frequently cited "liberal mouthpieces" regularly is citing and interviewing representatives from conservative and libertarian think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, giving such views quite good exposure and coverage).
Conservative judges are pro-states rights? Bah. That's why the enforcement of federal drug laws against the state legalized marijuana clubs for medical marijuana have all been thrown out, right? (that's sarcasm). Conservatives such as Bush and the conservative judiciary etc are all in favor of states rights when it suits them, and turn the concept on its head when it doesn't. Some of the most amazing judicial brain twisters have come from the Supreme Court (Scalia for example) trying to justify how a given restriction on the states doesn't really violate the idea of state's rights. I'm all for "strict construction" in constitutional interpretation, except that the idea seems to be used more frequently as a proxy for "states rights to allow discrimination". I've followed a lot of S.C. decisions and dissents and it's amazing how the politics of a situation seem to turn directly analogous situations into diametric opposites in the view of the members of the court (and that applies to both sides of the political aisle, so don't let me give you the idea that I think only conservatives do this--but only conservatives use "strict construction" as their excuse).
BTW I never asked you to stop calling people "uninformed appeasers of totalitarianism" (though that label could quite easily be applied to people who want to let PATRIOT stand too). Mud is fine; advocating censorship (self or otherwise) is not, and that was the issue I was talking about.
It is still a duplicate; it's posted word for word in two places within 24 hours of each other. Perhaps the editor doing the slashback should have included all the subtopics in his summary; perhaps he should have realized it would be of greater interest to the apple folks, perhaps he should have actually DISCUSSED WHAT TO DO WITH THE OTHER EDITORS. Clearly they don't communicate.
You think he's listening to the people? I think he's listening to his corporate buddies. Just the other day I heard the Homeland Security representative of corporate interests (a valid role to have in the department, let me say) stating that the administration was uneasy about the idea of putting restrictions on companies, even in the name of protecting them from terrorism (I forget the exact situation, but it had to do with security requirements to be put on natural gas companies or some such; obviously there are exceptions in exceptional cases like the airlines). Funny how there was a RUSH on the part of the administration to get PATRIOT enacted--I don't recall anyone wasting breath worrying about the restrictions on the people. (And yes, I acknowledge that Congress is also culpable in that debacle, but without an eager administration I can't see it being shoved through with almost no debate, etc).
Now, if using terrorism as an excuse to restrict the rights of the people isn't directly comparable to when Hitler did the same thing with the beer hall putsch, I don't know what is.
The reason 70% of the people polled support him is because you can poll people in ways to make them support just about anything; it's all in how you ask the questions. Claiming that polls (which Bush says he doesn't listen to anyway, right?) show that he's listening to the people is silly; the people are listening to him (and following him like sheep for the most part), not the other way around.
Why aren't editors required to read the rest of slashdot? Or discuss among themselves before deciding to tuck an obvious "apple" story off in Slashback? Bitching about editors is, of course, offtopic, but GEEZUS XRIST people!
I think along with lobbying for repeal of DMCA et. al. we ought to be lobbying for "truth in legislation" laws that force every given piece of legislation to be single topic. It can allow for broad topics with complex subparts, but every subpart must have language demonstrating its connection to the main topic (I spose that gives a loophole of sorts, but let's see). For those who'd argue that this removes a means of "getting things done" I have to say, too bad. If you can't get things done with clear, honest legislation, then you shouldn't be doing them, eh?
If average voters view censorship of technologists in the same way they view other forms of censorship, we'll be in much better
shape.
Given the prevalence of the "if you don't support the war you should shut up and stop supporting terrorism", I'm not sure I agree that the average voter really cares one whit about any censorship that doesn't directly and immediately impact them.
Given how many developers use Solaris, and some apparent confusion over who pays (the developer? Or the distributor?), you don't see that as expensive to distribute? It's an entangling license that incurs costs and liabilities easier done without by using Gnome. I didn't say that it wasn't Qt's right to license it however they want, btw, just don't be surprised when people don't adopt it.
KDE unfortunately relies on Qt, which, if you want to resell or redistribute in the normal ways starts becoming expensive to distribute as a corporate entity. Personally I prefer KDE, but I understand why Sun and HP don't adopt it.
Slashdot Mirror
Please show me the tax bill for "everything it sells" for one of the Bermuda Incorporated "US" corporations. Explain to me why it is that, until the stuff about Halliburton being on that list came out, Bush was stating that going offshore to avoid taxes was "unacceptable".
Unless they incorporate in Bermuda like divisions of Halliburton et. al.
Wish I could do that.
Web based petitions etc. are simply the electronic equivalent to all the paper postcard astroturf campaigns run by all sides of the political spectrum (I've seen 20/20 Vision, a liberal group, doing this, and I've seen anti-abortion and otherwise very right leaning groups do this as well). If they're going to ignore all the web form letters, they better start ignoring the paper form letters too.
Obviously someone who's contracted to DARPA
So again, you might make the case that there is no constitutional justification for federal affirmative action laws, but then the same argument should be applied to the fact that there is no constitutional justification for federal drug laws. On the other hand, if drug laws are ok because "they're for our own good" or whatever, then I would think that an appropriately scoped affirmative action law falls under the same justification--it seems to me that "equal protection" should actually mean equal, not equal as long as you have the money to ensure it.
As I said before, it seems that conservatives want to have it both ways; a limited federal government, except when they don't want a limited federal government. That is ridiculous. It's in the same vein as criticizing liberals for their "tax & spend ways" when in fact it's much more irresponsible to "not tax & spend" the way the current administration is going. If I were to try the same fiscal policies (cut income, increase spending) in my personal life, I'd be broke, and possibly in jail. I'm all for cutting taxes, but you have to be willing to cut spending to accomplish that.
And don't even get me started on cutting taxes for corporations that have moved offshore so they don't have to pay taxes anyway (like divisions of Halliburton and many many others).
This has gone waaay offtopic at this point; attempting to drag it back on topic, I find it amazing that the federal government has encouraged courts to deny demonstration permits (a LOCAL issue in NYC, not a federal one) and still claims to be "pro states rights" and claims that the war was to "protect our freedoms" when in fact our freedoms are more restricted in the current circumstances than they have been in a very long time. Peaceful protesters being rounded up and jailed in Washington DC, regular pronouncements that those who oppose the administration's policies are traitors,fast track passage of PATRIOT, the cajones to even think that PATRIOT II might fly, trying to remove the sunset provisions on PATRIOT.... And more to the point, the fact that the majority of the populace is either going along with these things or keeping themselves ignorant of them leads me to believe that Prof. Felton is being excessively optimistic when he thinks that the people will care about censorship, whether via DMCA or otherwise, if it doesn't affect them personally.
Let's take a couple of those issues: First I will agree that quotas, per se, are not the right answer. However, to pretend that if all laws regarding race are stricken from the books we would suddenly become a race-neutral equal opportunity society is extremely naive at best, and extremely cynical at worst. The fact is that in most transactions there are opportunities to make judgements based on personal criteria, and it is quite easy (as demonstrated in the texas case about jury selection) to inject unconstitutional unequal bias into transactions unless there are laws specifically created to prevent and disallow such bias being used, and putting in place methods to measure and determine whether or not that bias is occurring. If today we struck all such laws from the books, there would of course no longer be any "Jim Crow" laws, but I am absolutely certain that there would be plenty of equivalently biased "policies and procedures", even if such policies and procedures were hidden because they would be an embarassment. The really sticky problem is how to craft a law that goes far enough without going too far; obviously the supreme court believes that quotas go too far, and I agree. I do not believe that most affirmative action implementations SINCE that was made clear go too far. I have done hiring under EEOC rules, and it was made clear to me that my first job was to come up with an objective measure of each candidate's fitness for the job, and THEN from the pool of candidates fit for the job, I would be using race and gender as two of a handful of other deciding factors to pick from among that pool. If I were to pick a non-minority from that final round pool, I'd have to justify why, but I was not forbidden from doing so. This is still not a perfect solution, but it seems to me better than the alternative which allows any personal bias to shut out those who are different, be it outright racism/sexism or the more subtle problems of "I don't like those kind of people 'cos I never had to know one of 'em like a person."
As for drug laws, I hardly see Congress as being in a position to make laws about drugs. If they had to amend the constitution the first time to ban alcohol, then how exactly is it they've banned all these other substances that are quite analogous in their usage and behavior without one?
I say bah. I grew up in the '70's, I'm a pretty typical smart geek, and guess what? I was exposed to the same lead from pollution (or worse) than the kids today are.
In the 70's when you could get rebates on cereal tops and such, my mom did rebates all the time. We never ran into trouble with it then that I know of either. I'd say most reputable companies are going to keep pretty close tabs on things, and will work with you if 1) something went wrong that wasn't your fault and 2) you take the time to actually push them on the topic.
I don't have them, but have some coworkers who do. There were a couple of guys complaining that until the mac matched, it didn't work. Perhaps it's a regional requirement--I'm in the Chicagoland area, and they live out in the 'burbs.
Get a D-Link or Linksys home NAT firewall unit, download current firmware, and follow the manual's instructions to get this to work.
But of course you'd actually have to listen to the station to learn that, and that might interrupt your convenient "liberal media bias" myths that you can use to excuse the BS that O'Reilly and his ilk pull.
Conservative judges are pro-states rights? Bah. That's why the enforcement of federal drug laws against the state legalized marijuana clubs for medical marijuana have all been thrown out, right? (that's sarcasm). Conservatives such as Bush and the conservative judiciary etc are all in favor of states rights when it suits them, and turn the concept on its head when it doesn't. Some of the most amazing judicial brain twisters have come from the Supreme Court (Scalia for example) trying to justify how a given restriction on the states doesn't really violate the idea of state's rights. I'm all for "strict construction" in constitutional interpretation, except that the idea seems to be used more frequently as a proxy for "states rights to allow discrimination". I've followed a lot of S.C. decisions and dissents and it's amazing how the politics of a situation seem to turn directly analogous situations into diametric opposites in the view of the members of the court (and that applies to both sides of the political aisle, so don't let me give you the idea that I think only conservatives do this--but only conservatives use "strict construction" as their excuse).
Sorry, got my history confused for a moment, not the putsch, but the reichstag fire.
BTW I never asked you to stop calling people "uninformed appeasers of totalitarianism" (though that label could quite easily be applied to people who want to let PATRIOT stand too). Mud is fine; advocating censorship (self or otherwise) is not, and that was the issue I was talking about.
It is still a duplicate; it's posted word for word in two places within 24 hours of each other. Perhaps the editor doing the slashback should have included all the subtopics in his summary; perhaps he should have realized it would be of greater interest to the apple folks, perhaps he should have actually DISCUSSED WHAT TO DO WITH THE OTHER EDITORS. Clearly they don't communicate.
Now, if using terrorism as an excuse to restrict the rights of the people isn't directly comparable to when Hitler did the same thing with the beer hall putsch, I don't know what is.
The reason 70% of the people polled support him is because you can poll people in ways to make them support just about anything; it's all in how you ask the questions. Claiming that polls (which Bush says he doesn't listen to anyway, right?) show that he's listening to the people is silly; the people are listening to him (and following him like sheep for the most part), not the other way around.
I can definitely relate to Woodie's dilemma....
That must be why they cite and interview folks from the American Enterprise Institute so often, right?
Why aren't editors required to read the rest of slashdot? Or discuss among themselves before deciding to tuck an obvious "apple" story off in Slashback? Bitching about editors is, of course, offtopic, but GEEZUS XRIST people!
This is a duplicate
True enough. We're also already paying such fees on CD-Rs I believe, and blank cassettes etc in the US as well as the UK.
I think along with lobbying for repeal of DMCA et. al. we ought to be lobbying for "truth in legislation" laws that force every given piece of legislation to be single topic. It can allow for broad topics with complex subparts, but every subpart must have language demonstrating its connection to the main topic (I spose that gives a loophole of sorts, but let's see). For those who'd argue that this removes a means of "getting things done" I have to say, too bad. If you can't get things done with clear, honest legislation, then you shouldn't be doing them, eh?
Given the prevalence of the "if you don't support the war you should shut up and stop supporting terrorism", I'm not sure I agree that the average voter really cares one whit about any censorship that doesn't directly and immediately impact them.
Given how many developers use Solaris, and some apparent confusion over who pays (the developer? Or the distributor?), you don't see that as expensive to distribute? It's an entangling license that incurs costs and liabilities easier done without by using Gnome. I didn't say that it wasn't Qt's right to license it however they want, btw, just don't be surprised when people don't adopt it.
KDE unfortunately relies on Qt, which, if you want to resell or redistribute in the normal ways starts becoming expensive to distribute as a corporate entity. Personally I prefer KDE, but I understand why Sun and HP don't adopt it.