That's why I said "if you want to be a dick". It likely wouldn't get him his service back, but would probably pay for the things you listed as well as any setup costs for new service and/or other fees he may he may have been charged by RR as a result (like fees for early termination of his service contract, for example. I'm not really familiar with RR). Mostly, though, it would be really annoying to everyone he listed in the suit, and , for me at least, that would be a satisfying retribution even if I lost. People who make a lot of money really hate being bothered for such pidly amounts.:-)
Perhaps if you had read the article you would have realized that it was a Real-Time Systems Programming (software, not hardware) Class (they probably need a cable for each student, or at minimum one for each DreamCast).
Oh, and the word you're looking for is "hardwired", not "hardcoded". Hardwiring means soldering, which is an inappropriate requirement in a software class. Hardcoding means programming the firmware, which is what they need the cable for!
And apparently the EFF and Wired think the guy is legit, which you would also know had you bothered to read the article!
I have filed complaints with the BBB in CA several times, for free, and have achieved excellent results. In CA the BBB cuts off or denies approval if there are 3 unresolved complaints on record. I'm sorry the Texas BBB sucks ass.
It's because of lawyers that we have shit like this happeningI agree, which is why I hate them. But, it is only through lawyers that the situation will be remedied. That's the way the system works.
Did you bother to read the post I was replying to? I was suggesting remedies to his particular situation, which was quite different than the one detailed in the article, and really linked only by the DMCA. In the particular situation I was responding to small claims would be a very realistic remedy, and assuming small claims works the same where he lives as it does where I do, far preferable to a "real" court as an average citizen has a better chance of prevailing.
In the broader sense, yes it is just a cable, and it could certainly be made if one could acquire the Sega serial connector, and that would certainly be the best solution from a purely utilitarian viewpoint. However, it also avoids an excellent opportunity to contest a bad law which is as yet untested in court, and which will continue to be used to repress legitimate research and learning until successfuly contested.
First order of business is to file complaints with as many government agencies as possible. Basically, make yourself a huge pain in the ass. File complaints with the FTC against UPS and US Customs, as they are clearly obstructing your 5th Amendment right to Due Process by refusing to provide information necessary to appeal the decision. While you are not being accused of a crime directly, you are certainly being deprived of property (and perhaps liberty, depending on the legal definition) without the opportunity to contest that decision (due process). Be sure to file a complaint against UPS with your local BBB alo, as well as any other agency with any power to regulate trade and business practices. Like I said, make yourself as bigg of a pain in the ass as you can. The squeeky wheel gets the grease.
Next, talk to a Lawyer about forcing UPS to provide that information, and perhaps persuing other avenues of compensation for their negligence. Also, discuss the possibility of bringing suit against US Customs contesting their misapplication of the DMCA. Obviously, you want to start by talking to folks with deeper pockets than your own who might take an interest in the matter, such as the EFF and your schools legal department. (I did see the EFF mentioned, but not UMNs stance. UMN is probably more likely to get directly involved than the EFF, since this directly effects the quality of education they are able to offer their students and the research they are able to do.)
As much as I hate them, that's exactly what Lawyers are for. Most of the time you don't even have to have one, just the threat of talking to one is usually enough to get their attention and try to work things out with you.
Also, filing a complaint with your states Better Business Bureu is surprisingly effective, and can usually be done online.
If you really want to be a dick, sue them in small claims court naming the President, CEO, and local sysadmin as defendents. In CA lawyers aren't allowed in small claims court, and if you don't show up you automatically lose.
It's probably a little late now to do any of these, but worth filing away for future consideration.
I was using it to test motherboards. I averaged about 4 or 5 a day, 5 or 6 days a week, for 8 months, and I don't even know how many the night shift guy did. Do you have any idea how much pr0n that is? Not to mention that since I was "testing" I had to have easy access to everything, so it was just laying there on the bench next to the monitor fully exposed to whatever might come flying it's way! I don't think it gets much more perilous than that for a video card!!!
Of the 3 that I started with, the Digital-Logic was the only one that survived. It was also the only one that never had any compatability problems (and yes, it works in Linux (SuSE 6.3 and Mandrake 7.0, which were unfortunately not part of the official tests), as do ELO touchscreens, though you have to hunt down the drivers).
Digital-Logic AG makes the most reliable PC-104 video card I've ever used. I never tried to use it for gaming, but it certainly held up to a lot of other abuse:)
Too bad they seem to be/.ed, I'd like to see what else they have.
No, you shouldn't allow kids to do what they want, because what they want is to play games. Playing games is great for play time, and if you only have educational games available to them than it may be beneficial for them to apply what they have learned in a situation that is more interesting to them. That is an important part of learning, but it's even more important to recognize that educational games do not supply an education, they merely supliment an education gained elsewhere.
I agree that the quality of most "educational" software leaves a lot to be desired, but there are some inherent limitations in the medium that need to be recognized. The hand movements made while writing out and solving an equation by hand reinforce the memory of what is learned during that process. Computers are useless to a Tactile-Kinesthetic learner, which accounts for a fair amount of the population. Visual learners will benefit most, and Audio learners may or may not benefit, depending on the situation. Moving a mouse and typing on a keyboard are not helpful in any way to a T/K (neither does lecture, incedentally, which is why most T/Ks become mechanics and carpenters, despite the fact that they may have genius-level IQs). Solving an equation on paper by hand, however, will benefit ALL types of learners, and doing it on a black/white board provides more benefit than doing it on paper (large muscle memory is faster and stronger than small muscle memory). BTW, most people are a combination of 2 learning styles, with 1 somewhat favored. I'm one of the lucky few who's even across all 3.
There is a great deal of research which backs up what I've just presented, and when analyzed against that research the idea of using computers for education is not just ludicrous, but actively harmful to the learning process.
But, you understand the Transitive Property, and you understand Addition and Multiplication well enough to know that 50 + 50 should be closer to 100 than 2500, and if you got 2500 you would likely suspect that you made a mistake and do it over. Too many of the kids I tutored as a college level math tutor didn't, and the fact that they had to use a calculator to multiply by 10s is probably a large part of the problem.
Calculators are excellent tools if you already know math. If you don't, they're just traps waiting to be sprung.
Perhaps you've heard of it. It's an old school CS term meaning "Garbage In, Garbage Out". How do you know that the output is garbage if you don't have an idea of what to expect?
That's the problem with letting kids use calculators. They don't learn that 50 + 50 = 100, and thus they don't expect 48 + 57 to be close to 100. They learn that they can enter 50 + 50 in a calculator and copy the answer it gives them onto their answer sheet. What if they make a mistake? What if they accidentally enter 50 * 50? The unfortunate truth is that they copy down whatever answer the calculator gives them, because they've been taught to trust it. I don't know about you, but I certainly hope that the guy who designed the bridge I drive over ever day doesn't trust his calculator.
50 + 50 is a silly example, of course. In the real world they'd be dealing with something more like 12653.259 * 453.785. I know that 12199.474 is wrong, because I understand the Multiplication operation well enough to expect an answer in the neighborhood of 6000000, and I suspect you probably do as well. The problem is, half the kids I tutored as a college level math tutor didn't. These were kids that got 'A's in math all through high school and were smart enough to be taking Integral Calculus and Calc-based Physics. I certainly won't deny those are difficult classes, but these kids weren't failing because they didn't understand Integrals or Newtons Laws. They were failing because they didn't understand basic math. They were so dependent on their calculators that they had no idea what sort of answer to expect, even when doing something as simple as converting kilometers to meters, and so they were getting wrong answers on tests and it never occured to them to double check because they did it on a calculator and calculators are always right.
We aren't talking about What Ifs here, this is really happening. It's well documented that the US is falling behind in math and science. Sure, we have the some of the best scientists in the world, but our schools are producing less and less of them every year. Math is the language of science, and our kids don't even understand the basics.
I used to tutor college level math, and I lost count of the students I tutored who said "I got A's in math up to now, why is this so hard?" as they're pulling out their calculator to multiply by 10s. I used to wonder why until I found out that my little brother (he'll be 12 next month) is allowed to use a calculator on tests.
People wonder why US schools are falling behind in math and science, but the answer is simple: we don't make our kids learn it. We gloss over the topic and then hand them a machine that will do it for them before they've even devoloped the skill to do it themselves. If you don't understand Multiplication, how can you possibly understand the Distributive Property?
"If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?"
I'll bet almost every mother in the world has said something like that at least once in an attempt to get their kids to think critically. Kids don't develope the ability to think critically until around puberty, and there are very good reasons for that. Small children are excellent mimics; that's how they learn the basic skills they need to survive. In order to be good mimics they need to believe that the things they see and hear are important, useful, and correct, and thus their brains are developed in such a way that they do just that. Only after learning the skills they need do they develope the ability to question what they know, which generally leads right into good old teenage rebellion as they explore alternatives to what they've been taught.
It isn't a matter of simply telling kids not to believe everything they see. I think we all know how effective the phrase "Do as I say, not as I do" isn't, and that's essentially the same as what you're suggesting.
I suspect that, at least in the Linux case, any performance hit could be made up for by killing the GUI when/before starting the game, thus giving the game access to resources it wouldn't have under Windows. Not really sure how much of a difference it would really make, though.
It doesn't surprise me at all, not that I'm that fortunate. My friends wife is a total gaming geek. StarCraft, Diablo, UT (which she's especially good at), even "table-top" RPGs (they're going to DunDraCon for their romantic Valentines weekend). Lucky bastard.
What is interesting, though, is how the "DM's Girlfriend" dynamic changes when she becomes the DM's wife. He never really fell into that trap, though not for lack of trying on her part. He used to say "Crap, I'm in the dog house again. Oh well.", but now he just laughs. It's funny how your perspective changes when breaking up involves lawyers.
My wife is a bit more typical. Wearing the Chicks Dig Unix shirt I got her is about as close as she gets to any of my geekly habits. She is OS agnostic, though, which is handy since we only have one computer. As long as she can check her email, she's happy.
I think she would really like Counter-Strike, but she refuses to try it.
I've actually been thinking about something like this far a couple of years now (basically, since I first tried Linux and heard about Beowulf clusters).
My vision is of a client/server network built out of workstations. Take a Beowulf cluster, build it on top of a distributed filesystem, and make each node usable locally. Obviously, you'd want local processes to have priority on local resources, and you'd want a lot of redundancy in your storage, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. Of course, I don't have the knowledge to do it myself (yet), so I could easily be missing something important.
Would it be useful? That's another question. I can certainly envision an environment where it could be. Maybe an engineer or artist or researcher would find it useful to tap into the receptionists spare CPU cycles to give their own apps a little boost. It could probably reduce computing costs for companies doing computationally intensive stuff.
Anyway, the concept is interesting to me, but I personally wouldn't trust MS to do it right. For something like this to be truely useful, I think it would have to be more flexible than MS is inclined to allow.
Additionally, our wireless connections mean no busy signals, no missed calls, and no tying up your regular phone lines. (emphasis mine)
The network is, in fact, entirely wireless according to the information they provide. You can find a slightly more technical description here.
I have to agree with the parent, this is not DSL. DSL is based on copper wire. If there is even an inch of fiber between you and the CO, you can't get DSL. DirectTV's "DSL" is similarly misleading. These are certainly broadband technologies, and they're definately cool, but they are not DSL.
These companies are inapropriately using the term DSL for marketing purposes, likely because DSL and DSL providors enjoy a much more favorable reputation than other consumer broadband options, and totally ignoring the fact that DSL is a very specific technology. It's unfortunate, perhaps, but the fact is that everyone who's going to be interested in this has heard of DSL, whereas calling it MMDS, for example, would lead to some headscratching and a lot of questions asked of "knowledgable friends" at cocktail parties.
I don't see this happening as mass produced hardware, mostly because of the DMCA. Any company that puts this sort of thing out would be liable for contributory infringement. I could, however, see it happening as an open source hardware project. Maybe you could go to a web site hosted somewhere safe by someone who has no desire to visit the US and download the schematics, board layout, and firmware and build the thing yourself. There are companies out there that will make prototype PCBs relatively cheap, and components can also be found without too much difficulty. Probably there would be folks who would offer prebuilt kits or something, but they'd have to be careful.
Well, that may be all well and good from a purely technical (or counting reported bugs) standpoint.
It isn't, though. Even the counting method used in the article is flawed. As mentioned in several other posts, package bugs are often listed for each distro that uses that package, so a single bug could easily be counted multiple times (and, in fact, this is the case since the article is based on the Linux aggregate, which simply counts the number of bugs reported on all Linux lists and adds them tegether).
Even at the most basic level, the article is FUD. The fact that this article was published without the editors checking even basic facts (like, for example, the fact that NTBugTraq is not hosted by SecurityFocus) certainly casts WinInformant in a bad light, and I will definately take any information I get through them in the future with a large grain of salt.
...it weren't for Panasonics crappy support. They are absolutely the worst of any company I have ever dealt with. I finally discovered their secret, though. After many hours on the phone with their Tech Support (actually, many hours on hold with sporadic contact with alleged Support Techs) I finally got ahold of someone who knew something, and was informed that Panasonic only supports Canadians.
OK, he didn't actually say that, but if you're looking for Panasonic drivers that actually work you have to go to their Canadian site.
I'm writing this while listening to Rancid, of which all the anarchists listen too
LOL! I'm still clinging to my Op. Ivy, but I have to respect Rancid for carrying the torch.
My own introduction to Anarchy started with a friend forcing me to listen to his older brothers' Dead Kennedy's and Clash tapes (somewhat against my will. I was firmly entrenched in my Metallica/Iron Maiden ways, and while DK appealed to me, the Clash took somewhat longer to accept), and solidified when I found a copy of the Communist Manifesto in the very small "Social Science Library" at my high school (two chest high bookshelves in a little used hallway). I read it and thought "Wow! That's so Cool!". I then proceded to study history (particularly of Communist revolutions), politics, and political science and thought "Wow, that would be pretty cool if it were actually possible." Now, I just shake my head whenever I hear someone espousing anarchy, and hope they'll follow the same path I did and discover better ways to get what they want.
I used to believe all of that, but the more I studied politics and political science, the more i realized that our political system has not, in fact, failed. The true genius of the Founding Fathers makes itself evident again and again. Sure, there are temporary setbacks such as the DMCA/SSSCA and USA/PATRIOT, but things always seem to get worked out in the end, usually without any bloodshed.
The fact is, we've been in a constant state of mostly non-violent revolution since the Civil War, and by-and-large they have been successful. Emancipation, Equal Rights, Labor Reform, and Sufferage have probably been the most obviously successful, but there are plenty more where they came from.
Oh, and I believe the quote you're looking for is "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" (Asimov). Think about that.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and the word you're looking for is "hardwired", not "hardcoded". Hardwiring means soldering, which is an inappropriate requirement in a software class. Hardcoding means programming the firmware, which is what they need the cable for!
And apparently the EFF and Wired think the guy is legit, which you would also know had you bothered to read the article!
In the broader sense, yes it is just a cable, and it could certainly be made if one could acquire the Sega serial connector, and that would certainly be the best solution from a purely utilitarian viewpoint. However, it also avoids an excellent opportunity to contest a bad law which is as yet untested in court, and which will continue to be used to repress legitimate research and learning until successfuly contested.
Next, talk to a Lawyer about forcing UPS to provide that information, and perhaps persuing other avenues of compensation for their negligence. Also, discuss the possibility of bringing suit against US Customs contesting their misapplication of the DMCA. Obviously, you want to start by talking to folks with deeper pockets than your own who might take an interest in the matter, such as the EFF and your schools legal department. (I did see the EFF mentioned, but not UMNs stance. UMN is probably more likely to get directly involved than the EFF, since this directly effects the quality of education they are able to offer their students and the research they are able to do.)
Anyway, that's what I would do.
Also, filing a complaint with your states Better Business Bureu is surprisingly effective, and can usually be done online.
If you really want to be a dick, sue them in small claims court naming the President, CEO, and local sysadmin as defendents. In CA lawyers aren't allowed in small claims court, and if you don't show up you automatically lose.
It's probably a little late now to do any of these, but worth filing away for future consideration.
The day I married my beautiful redhead was one of the happiest days of my life. In fact it was so great I married her again the next summer!
I was using it to test motherboards. I averaged about 4 or 5 a day, 5 or 6 days a week, for 8 months, and I don't even know how many the night shift guy did. Do you have any idea how much pr0n that is? Not to mention that since I was "testing" I had to have easy access to everything, so it was just laying there on the bench next to the monitor fully exposed to whatever might come flying it's way! I don't think it gets much more perilous than that for a video card!!!
Of the 3 that I started with, the Digital-Logic was the only one that survived. It was also the only one that never had any compatability problems (and yes, it works in Linux (SuSE 6.3 and Mandrake 7.0, which were unfortunately not part of the official tests), as do ELO touchscreens, though you have to hunt down the drivers).
Too bad they seem to be /.ed, I'd like to see what else they have.
I agree that the quality of most "educational" software leaves a lot to be desired, but there are some inherent limitations in the medium that need to be recognized. The hand movements made while writing out and solving an equation by hand reinforce the memory of what is learned during that process. Computers are useless to a Tactile-Kinesthetic learner, which accounts for a fair amount of the population. Visual learners will benefit most, and Audio learners may or may not benefit, depending on the situation. Moving a mouse and typing on a keyboard are not helpful in any way to a T/K (neither does lecture, incedentally, which is why most T/Ks become mechanics and carpenters, despite the fact that they may have genius-level IQs). Solving an equation on paper by hand, however, will benefit ALL types of learners, and doing it on a black/white board provides more benefit than doing it on paper (large muscle memory is faster and stronger than small muscle memory). BTW, most people are a combination of 2 learning styles, with 1 somewhat favored. I'm one of the lucky few who's even across all 3.
There is a great deal of research which backs up what I've just presented, and when analyzed against that research the idea of using computers for education is not just ludicrous, but actively harmful to the learning process.
Calculators are excellent tools if you already know math. If you don't, they're just traps waiting to be sprung.
Perhaps you've heard of it. It's an old school CS term meaning "Garbage In, Garbage Out". How do you know that the output is garbage if you don't have an idea of what to expect?
That's the problem with letting kids use calculators. They don't learn that 50 + 50 = 100, and thus they don't expect 48 + 57 to be close to 100. They learn that they can enter 50 + 50 in a calculator and copy the answer it gives them onto their answer sheet. What if they make a mistake? What if they accidentally enter 50 * 50? The unfortunate truth is that they copy down whatever answer the calculator gives them, because they've been taught to trust it. I don't know about you, but I certainly hope that the guy who designed the bridge I drive over ever day doesn't trust his calculator.
50 + 50 is a silly example, of course. In the real world they'd be dealing with something more like 12653.259 * 453.785. I know that 12199.474 is wrong, because I understand the Multiplication operation well enough to expect an answer in the neighborhood of 6000000, and I suspect you probably do as well. The problem is, half the kids I tutored as a college level math tutor didn't. These were kids that got 'A's in math all through high school and were smart enough to be taking Integral Calculus and Calc-based Physics. I certainly won't deny those are difficult classes, but these kids weren't failing because they didn't understand Integrals or Newtons Laws. They were failing because they didn't understand basic math. They were so dependent on their calculators that they had no idea what sort of answer to expect, even when doing something as simple as converting kilometers to meters, and so they were getting wrong answers on tests and it never occured to them to double check because they did it on a calculator and calculators are always right.
We aren't talking about What Ifs here, this is really happening. It's well documented that the US is falling behind in math and science. Sure, we have the some of the best scientists in the world, but our schools are producing less and less of them every year. Math is the language of science, and our kids don't even understand the basics.
I used to tutor college level math, and I lost count of the students I tutored who said "I got A's in math up to now, why is this so hard?" as they're pulling out their calculator to multiply by 10s. I used to wonder why until I found out that my little brother (he'll be 12 next month) is allowed to use a calculator on tests.
People wonder why US schools are falling behind in math and science, but the answer is simple: we don't make our kids learn it. We gloss over the topic and then hand them a machine that will do it for them before they've even devoloped the skill to do it themselves. If you don't understand Multiplication, how can you possibly understand the Distributive Property?
"If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?"
I'll bet almost every mother in the world has said something like that at least once in an attempt to get their kids to think critically. Kids don't develope the ability to think critically until around puberty, and there are very good reasons for that. Small children are excellent mimics; that's how they learn the basic skills they need to survive. In order to be good mimics they need to believe that the things they see and hear are important, useful, and correct, and thus their brains are developed in such a way that they do just that. Only after learning the skills they need do they develope the ability to question what they know, which generally leads right into good old teenage rebellion as they explore alternatives to what they've been taught.
It isn't a matter of simply telling kids not to believe everything they see. I think we all know how effective the phrase "Do as I say, not as I do" isn't, and that's essentially the same as what you're suggesting.
What is interesting, though, is how the "DM's Girlfriend" dynamic changes when she becomes the DM's wife. He never really fell into that trap, though not for lack of trying on her part. He used to say "Crap, I'm in the dog house again. Oh well.", but now he just laughs. It's funny how your perspective changes when breaking up involves lawyers.
My wife is a bit more typical. Wearing the Chicks Dig Unix shirt I got her is about as close as she gets to any of my geekly habits. She is OS agnostic, though, which is handy since we only have one computer. As long as she can check her email, she's happy.
I think she would really like Counter-Strike, but she refuses to try it.
My vision is of a client/server network built out of workstations. Take a Beowulf cluster, build it on top of a distributed filesystem, and make each node usable locally. Obviously, you'd want local processes to have priority on local resources, and you'd want a lot of redundancy in your storage, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. Of course, I don't have the knowledge to do it myself (yet), so I could easily be missing something important.
Would it be useful? That's another question. I can certainly envision an environment where it could be. Maybe an engineer or artist or researcher would find it useful to tap into the receptionists spare CPU cycles to give their own apps a little boost. It could probably reduce computing costs for companies doing computationally intensive stuff.
Anyway, the concept is interesting to me, but I personally wouldn't trust MS to do it right. For something like this to be truely useful, I think it would have to be more flexible than MS is inclined to allow.
Additionally, our wireless connections mean no busy signals, no missed calls, and no tying up your regular phone lines. (emphasis mine)
The network is, in fact, entirely wireless according to the information they provide. You can find a slightly more technical description here.
I have to agree with the parent, this is not DSL. DSL is based on copper wire. If there is even an inch of fiber between you and the CO, you can't get DSL. DirectTV's "DSL" is similarly misleading. These are certainly broadband technologies, and they're definately cool, but they are not DSL.
These companies are inapropriately using the term DSL for marketing purposes, likely because DSL and DSL providors enjoy a much more favorable reputation than other consumer broadband options, and totally ignoring the fact that DSL is a very specific technology. It's unfortunate, perhaps, but the fact is that everyone who's going to be interested in this has heard of DSL, whereas calling it MMDS, for example, would lead to some headscratching and a lot of questions asked of "knowledgable friends" at cocktail parties.
It isn't, though. Even the counting method used in the article is flawed. As mentioned in several other posts, package bugs are often listed for each distro that uses that package, so a single bug could easily be counted multiple times (and, in fact, this is the case since the article is based on the Linux aggregate, which simply counts the number of bugs reported on all Linux lists and adds them tegether).
Even at the most basic level, the article is FUD. The fact that this article was published without the editors checking even basic facts (like, for example, the fact that NTBugTraq is not hosted by SecurityFocus) certainly casts WinInformant in a bad light, and I will definately take any information I get through them in the future with a large grain of salt.
OK, he didn't actually say that, but if you're looking for Panasonic drivers that actually work you have to go to their Canadian site.
LOL! I'm still clinging to my Op. Ivy, but I have to respect Rancid for carrying the torch.
My own introduction to Anarchy started with a friend forcing me to listen to his older brothers' Dead Kennedy's and Clash tapes (somewhat against my will. I was firmly entrenched in my Metallica/Iron Maiden ways, and while DK appealed to me, the Clash took somewhat longer to accept), and solidified when I found a copy of the Communist Manifesto in the very small "Social Science Library" at my high school (two chest high bookshelves in a little used hallway). I read it and thought "Wow! That's so Cool!". I then proceded to study history (particularly of Communist revolutions), politics, and political science and thought "Wow, that would be pretty cool if it were actually possible." Now, I just shake my head whenever I hear someone espousing anarchy, and hope they'll follow the same path I did and discover better ways to get what they want.
I used to believe all of that, but the more I studied politics and political science, the more i realized that our political system has not, in fact, failed. The true genius of the Founding Fathers makes itself evident again and again. Sure, there are temporary setbacks such as the DMCA/SSSCA and USA/PATRIOT, but things always seem to get worked out in the end, usually without any bloodshed.
The fact is, we've been in a constant state of mostly non-violent revolution since the Civil War, and by-and-large they have been successful. Emancipation, Equal Rights, Labor Reform, and Sufferage have probably been the most obviously successful, but there are plenty more where they came from.
Oh, and I believe the quote you're looking for is "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" (Asimov). Think about that.