Has there been a single good thing to come out of software patents? It seems like every single day there is a story posted about a patent that has clear prior art or is trivial and doesn't innovate or invent anything. The US needs to stop software patents if they want to let technology innovate.
You have to also see it from the side of everyone else who isn't Iran. You have an unstable country, a country where protesters are routinely shot. A president that many disagree with both his policies and question if he was really elected. And who in the world would trust a leader who says these quotes...
They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet.
Basically, he denies that the holocaust happened. And attacks those who have tolerance of religion or the lack of.
Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism? You should know that this slogan, this goal, can certainly be achieved.
Basically, not only does he think Israel doesn't have the right to exist, but apparently neither does America.
In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. [...] In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.
And he not only denies gay rights, but denies that there were even homosexuals in Iran. Even America didn't deny the fact there were black people who were being oppressed. Some might have said that they weren't being oppressed but no one would be as stupid as to say that there is no such thing as black people.
So in light of a politically unstable region, a leader who has made stupid and dangerous comments, how can we say letting them have nuclear power/weapons is a good thing? If Iran wants nuclear power, how about they let the developed nations build and supervise the infrastructure until Iran becomes stable?
Except for the fact that Israel is accountable to the free world. If Israel does something to make the rest of the world mad, they suffer for it. They took some heat for some of their attacks on Gaza. Really, Israel using nuclear weapons will be much more justified than the Soviet Union or the US having or using them. Israel has been attacked over and over again, is a small country and has very few allies in that region of the world.
There are a lot of artists who remix. Weird Al basically remixes all his songs. He takes the melody of popular songs and parodies the lyrics. Even popular artists like Rihanna who took an obscure song Dragostea din tei (AKA: The Numa Numa song) and added it into the song Live Your Life.
Just about every artist remixes to some degree, and remixing is also artistic, it takes skills and can make someone really successful.
However, his royalties may. Sooner or later we will have to consider, as a culture, what to do if established authors, and promising young authors, decide to abandon writing because too many freeloaders reduce author profits below subsistence. I'm not talking about the **AAs, I'm talking about individual authors who may have contracts with reputable publishing houses that do not insist on exploitive relationships. And what about the psychological deterrent to creativity? JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in desperation on welfare. Might she have done so if she believed her work would be distributed freely without any compensation to her?
The writers need to adapt. Back in the 1800s, hugely successful authors like Charles Dickens used serials to captivate audiences. Each person needed to buy each issue of the magazine to continue reading the story, and later it would be published in a book if it was a success. Today, that is relatively rare in traditional publishing, though it does still happen with manga.
Perhaps established writers can do what Stephen King did when he distributed an e-book, he would release a new part after certain sales were met. Or perhaps they can sell chapters to put on various profitable blogs. Perhaps they can release things in blogs themselves.
For every story about an author not making enough money on a book, there are ten more examples to counteract it. The creator of XKCD survives only on XKCD merchandise. And XKCD is marketed exclusively to open source culture. The comic itself isn't updated daily, and theres no ads on the page. Sounds like a recipe for failure right? No, because people liked it, it survived. Surely then the tale of Homestar Runner would be one that ends in failure as they are all hard-to-do Flash animations with lots of bandwidth, yet the creators still make a living, still make new cartoons and recently released several video games based on it. All this while no ads on the page. There are many other sites that make a living for the author, User Friendly, CTRL+ALT+DEL, MegaTokyo, and Penny Arcade and more all make a living for their authors.
Do we want promising youths to avoid careers in writing because online distribution has hurt profitability? Would J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Norman Mailer have enriched our lives if they needed other jobs? And Robert Heinlein said that many of his stories were written "to buy groceries".
Promising youths are not going to avoid careers in writing because now publishing is free. Look at teenage blogs sometime and you will see more poetry than in an English class, stories, etc. If they write something and the community likes it, the community will sustain it.
Without some requirement to pay for books, would enough people do so?
There is always going to be a market for physical books. Now, 10 years from now, 100 years from now. Its not going anywhere. And those are physical things and can't be duplicated for free.
Since a large part of the US's trade brings our nation income from royalties on Hollywood movies, is it possible we need to make sure what we produce has value in the world market to improve our balance of trade and thereby reduce inflation and unemployment? Of course the answer is yes-- so maybe the question we should be asking is how to puncture the evil media conglomerates (like the **AAs) to make sure the wealth from our nation's creative minds does not unduly concentrate wealth and power.
You are just like the RIAA. You see a -possible- reduction in sales, ignore history and ignore people who don't fit your definition and make a flawed conclusion. A) Before there was any copyright people wrote B) Today, people can release content for free, without ads and still make a living C) E-Books and online publishing increase the amount of writers because it costs no money to get them published and you keep your rights.
There are a lot of code writers. A lot of bloggers. A lot of people who may remix music. Yeah, there aren't many people painting paintings here, but theres a lot of people with pretty good Photoshop skills. Yeah, Stephanie Meyer might not have a Slashdot account, but I guarantee you that the average/.er ends up writing as much as she does in blogs, comments, etc. Yeah, we might not have many people from bands, but we do have remixers, those who do parodies and a pretty high percentage of music fans.
And guess what? A successful author caters to their fans, a successful band will do the same. Guess what? While you in IT might not want to admit it, those are your end users and you should take their advice because they end up using the systems. Yeah, there is the occasional stupid suggestion (what if we stayed with the exact same software and never upgraded because I don't like using the newer version of our e-mail account and browser) but occasionally you realize that something you, as a geek, thought was a good idea that the masses don't like and a good developer fixes that.
You want an ultra-portable. Those have been around ever since laptops started being common. Most people who have netbooks wanted a cheap laptop, or a cheap ultra-portable. The only reason why netbooks started overtaking ultra-portables in sales was because of the price. No one wants to pay $1,000 for a laptop, but lots of people would pay $350 for one and that is what started netbook growth. I imagine by the end of 2010 netbooks will have faded into the background with ultra-portable systems like they have been for years and cheap laptops will grow because that is what the masses want. Cheap.
I hate to have to tell you this, but a Green party member from California is going to be pushing the goals of both the Green party and California. That gives California, or any state for that matter that gets this extra representative, over-representation in the Senat.
But generally, whenever a member of congress makes an earmark in a bill, they get called out for it by various watchdog groups. Now, because we have state representation, it usually doesn't have any consequences. This of course, as you can imagine, is a bad thing. If a green congressman is pushing the agenda of California too much, the party may decide to vote them out or voters may vote for a different party. If a Californian congressman is pushing the agenda of California, the problem is it affects the rest of the 49 states, but we can't vote them out of office.
Furthermore, the purpose of the Senate is to represent the States in the federal government, not the people. That is why it is structured the way it is, and why each state has equal representation. The House of Representatives is where the people are represented, so if you were to do this anywhere it would have to be there.
Fair enough, I mostly just chose the senate because it had a nice round number of members thats easy to do figuring in your head with.
However, you are still getting off track with the whole argument, because the system is designed such that it does not care who is from what party, there was in fact no concept of political parties when it was created.
Yes, but again, this isn't the 1800s, we have political parties. Political parties are the defining lines that 99% of Americans vote on. Unless they are super-pissed off at a candidate, most republicans are going to vote for the republican candidate, most democrats the democrat candidate.
Furthermore, political parties are a good thing because its a lot easier to do comparisons between political parties than individual candidates. It also increases consistency making it a lot easier for people to vote for the people who will represent their ideas, not the candidate's ideas.
The Green movement seems pretty strong in this country, and people who agree with this viewpoint are seeing their wishes fulfilled, or at least fought for constantly in congress.
Seems strong, until you compare it with Europe. You also have to realize that its very much a hit or miss, for example democrats. They might be for decreasing carbon output, but they completely fail at being nonviolent.
Same with the small government crowd, they have never stayed quiet even though the truth is they have no real direct representation either.
Yeah, but where were the small government crowd when the PATRIOT act was passed? The DMCA? Etc. Yeah, some candidates say that they are pro small government, but the reality is a lot of big government bills get passed with few, if any, no votes. Similarly, its very hard to determine who is pro small government, look at two vastly different republicans: John McCain and Ron Paul. John McCain favors a much larger government than Ron Paul does yet both are in the same party.
They don't need to. Know why? Because while a Representative may be a member of a given party, he represents a DISTRICT, a small set of people.
Which defeats the tyranny of the majority how? You seem to constantly say that our system helps defeat the tyranny of the majority. Yet it doesn't. One or two people in a small group of people is always crushed by the majority no matter what. People with the same ideas don't necessarily all live in the exact same location. If 2 out of 100 people is for a certain ideology they are looked at as a small minority in these small groups, but when put against the entire whole of the US that is about 2 million people and that is hardly a small number.
Assuming we are acting rationally for a second, how do we get truth and know what truth is? We get truth via personal experience, reason and science. Personal experience must be considered unreliable because it cannot be proven and if personal experience was a source of reliable truth then one could argue for the existence of god or gods via personal experience, which I'm sure all atheists would reject. Reason is also a method of getting truth but requires outside information which can only be gotten through science or personal experience. As personal experience is not able to be proven, science is the only source where we can find information to apply reason to.
And, if there was a higher power, or they believed that there could be a higher power, one could argue that any sort of higher power made it a god (look at various mythologies where gods were basically just really powerful humans with flaws) And the belief that there could be a higher power would make them not be atheists but rather be agnostic which is not a religion.
Ok, if god does not exist there is no one to judge human actions beyond humanity. If god does not exist one must look to reason as the sole source of truth. Using reason we can come to the conclusion of evolution. If we use evolution we can see that the only task of an organism is to create more organisms to benefit the species. Logically producing more organisms would help the species because it helps increase genetic diversity, and allows the species to continue if one of the species dies. Logically, hurting others of the species does not help the species because it is en expense of energy and ends in either the destruction, or reduction in efficiency of that species. Helping others of the species can help lead that member of the species to continue on, and reproduce helping again add genetic diversity and to continue the species. Helping others can also help remove threats to the species as a whole, such as viruses, bacteria, war, etc.
Atheism states that there is no higher power in the world. That there is no god, gods or any higher form of life. And such gods cannot exist based on a few arguments.
As such, its a natural conclusion based on scientific evidence that if there was no god, gods or higher forms of life other than man, that the existence of man is to benefit the species of man. To carry on the normal functions of life, to help others of the same species, to then die. Those are the logical conclusions.
You are ignoring all of the most pressing issues for your pet issues. Inter-state equality is far, far more important to the well being of the country than deciding whether we want to be green, communist, socialist, libertarian, foregn influenced, or have lots of taxes.
No, no its not. The concept of a strong state government and a weak federal government is long, long, long, long, long, long, lost. Name me one thing that state governments have power over that the federal government doesn't mess with? There isn't anything. All the powers "reserved to the states" have been messed with by the federal government to the point where it doesn't really matter what the state says.
Your idea might have worked before the civil war, before the new deal. But this isn't 1840 any more. The civil war basically proved that the US was United States, not individual states united.
What you are ignoring is the fact that it is even less fair for California to determine Alaska's position in the government, and if you break the current structure away from regional delegate determination that is exactly what happens, and you have invited tyranny of the majority.
If you break the current structure away from regional delegation you don't have that because its what -everyone- in the US wants. How the hell is our current system -not- tyranny of the majority? There are people with beliefs that have no representation at all in government. Proportional representation would solve that allowing each person a voice. How is it not tyranny of the majority when there are millions without a single voice of their opinions?
That is simply bullshit. The TSA is a part of the Executive branch, and you'd have to be stupid to argue that doesn't affect the people on a daily basis. Why do you think the President is apointing a new "czar" for it? Sure, congress gets confirmation rights, but that's the only influence they have over the process. DoD, FCC, FDA, FAA, and hundreds of other government agencies are all part of the exective branch under the control of the president, and they all have a massive impact on our lives.
Yeah, the only influence congress has over the process is saying whether he can really appoint him. Thats not a big influence at all...
In other words, all three branches work in conjunction, and all three branches have equal effect on our lives. However, the branch with the most direct effect is the Executive branch, not the Legislative or Judicial branches, because it actually carries out the will of the people (congress).
But currently congress isn't the will of the people due to the lack of proportional representation. And many people will follow the law without having to be forced to by the executive or judicial branches.
That is nonsense, the vote already allows for third parties. You are completely ignoring the fact that parties come and go, and even national parties change and are not permanent. If you lock in percentages of the vote for each party, you have permanently set the relevance of that party. Because this change would require a constitutional amendment, you would never see the Green party, for example, get more than 3 representatives even if they should eventually come to represent 20% of the population.
You must have misunderstood what I was trying to say. What I meant was there would be 200 senators, 100 would be elected like today, 100 would be elected via a national poll. Each percentage point would give one senator of this. This would be repeated with each election of senators allowing it to always change and for everyone to have a vote.
See how that works? Also note that just one of the farming districts has as much voice in the HoR as the entire state of Wyoming, and the three farming districts in Missouri have more clout than two states combined in the HoR. Their
Atheism is a religion. Atheism has everything in common with other religions. Set beliefs, morality, purpose in life, etc. Agnosticism is not a religion because it has no definite beliefs, morality or purpose. Atheism does.
Except they like to use OS X. Just like how I have Ubuntu installed for when I'm at home or just browsing, and Windows installed for work. Myself, I can't stand using Windows any more than I need to, but the program I could never get to run correctly on WINE and it runs too slowly on VirtualBox to be useful.
It does not take any third parties to mitigate those, all it takes is decreasing the size of the mobs and increasing the influence of the minorities.
Which is what third parties do. Ok, lets say we have 5% of people who want a government as the green party wants it, we have 5% who want a pure free market, total civil rights libertarian government. We have 5% of people who want a communist government, 5% who want a socialist government. 20% who want a government that is centered on outside affairs and 60% who want a government that taxes heavily but gives lots of benefits. Is it fair that in that situation 40% of the population has -zero- representation in congress because the 60% got their representative and the rest got none. A fair way of doing it would be proportional representation.
Our current method is archaic and needs to be reformed. Badly. Why? Because we used to have a tiny federal government, and a large, but not too big state government. Before the civil war, each state or each region could easily find laws that would benefit them. Anything that benefited agriculture would benefit the south while anything benefiting industry would benefit the north with few exceptions. Today, that isn't the case. There are high-tech companies in Kansas, industry is booming in the south, the northern US has a lot of agriculture, and even inside states there is division. Take for example Missouri, on both the east and west sides of the state are large metropolitan areas (St. Louis and Kansas City) but in the center of the state there isn't much of anything (and anyone who has ever driven in the midwest can testify to that) only farm land. So what might be good for Kansas City and St. Louis might be terrible for those living in the middle of the state and vice versa.
What we need to structure our voting systems like is to allow for reforms to allow for national elections of 100 more senators, each one would be chosen from votes allowing third parties. For example, there might be 40 republicans, 40 democrats, 5 libertarians, 3 green party members, 2 members of the constitution party, and the rest members of smaller parties. This way, -everyone- gets their voice out. Not just the majority in each state.
While it is true that reforming the election of a single president would be hard, the ability for congress to have the voice of all the people, and not just the majority is essential in making change happen.
The second thing we do is split our government into three branches of equal power. One branch is directly elected (congress), another is partially directly elected (Executive/President), and the third is not elected at all but appointed (Judicial). Each has specific duties and powers designed to balance against abuses by the other two.
And really, they aren't equal in the amount that it affects the individual person. Congress has the power to change the lives of most people by making things illegal or legal. The president really only has the power to affect the masses when it comes to A) War B) Executive Orders and C) signing legislation. The other part of the executive branch (police) really need to be elected by the masses due to the -many- abuses of power they commit on a daily basis. And other than the supreme court striking down or upholding laws, it generally doesn't affect the masses. It can certainly affect individuals, but not the masses.
...And a republic can only work when there are many third-parties to choose from and allow your voice to be heard. A democrat isn't going to speak for all democrats and a republican isn't going to speak for all republicans. That is why an electoral system allowing and encouraging third parties is so important. For example, many democrats aren't really "democrats" at all, but would fit under either a libertarian democrat, green party, or centrist. Similarly many republicans may be more libertarians than republicans, or lean more towards interventionism.
The ability for there to be third parties also lets voters more accurately decide who they want without needing to be fully informed. With our current two party system, both Ron Paul (more of a libertarian than anything else) appears on the same party as John McCain (more of an interventionist)
It was the highest turnout in 40 years. And honestly, its better to have a low turnout of well-informed voters than a high turnout of cable-news watching voters who vote only on who the person on TV says to.
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Has there been a single good thing to come out of software patents? It seems like every single day there is a story posted about a patent that has clear prior art or is trivial and doesn't innovate or invent anything. The US needs to stop software patents if they want to let technology innovate.
They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet.
Basically, he denies that the holocaust happened. And attacks those who have tolerance of religion or the lack of.
Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism? You should know that this slogan, this goal, can certainly be achieved.
Basically, not only does he think Israel doesn't have the right to exist, but apparently neither does America.
In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. [...] In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.
And he not only denies gay rights, but denies that there were even homosexuals in Iran. Even America didn't deny the fact there were black people who were being oppressed. Some might have said that they weren't being oppressed but no one would be as stupid as to say that there is no such thing as black people.
So in light of a politically unstable region, a leader who has made stupid and dangerous comments, how can we say letting them have nuclear power/weapons is a good thing? If Iran wants nuclear power, how about they let the developed nations build and supervise the infrastructure until Iran becomes stable?
Except for the fact that Israel is accountable to the free world. If Israel does something to make the rest of the world mad, they suffer for it. They took some heat for some of their attacks on Gaza. Really, Israel using nuclear weapons will be much more justified than the Soviet Union or the US having or using them. Israel has been attacked over and over again, is a small country and has very few allies in that region of the world.
There are a lot of artists who remix. Weird Al basically remixes all his songs. He takes the melody of popular songs and parodies the lyrics. Even popular artists like Rihanna who took an obscure song Dragostea din tei (AKA: The Numa Numa song) and added it into the song Live Your Life.
Just about every artist remixes to some degree, and remixing is also artistic, it takes skills and can make someone really successful.
However, his royalties may. Sooner or later we will have to consider, as a culture, what to do if established authors, and promising young authors, decide to abandon writing because too many freeloaders reduce author profits below subsistence. I'm not talking about the **AAs, I'm talking about individual authors who may have contracts with reputable publishing houses that do not insist on exploitive relationships. And what about the psychological deterrent to creativity? JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in desperation on welfare. Might she have done so if she believed her work would be distributed freely without any compensation to her?
The writers need to adapt. Back in the 1800s, hugely successful authors like Charles Dickens used serials to captivate audiences. Each person needed to buy each issue of the magazine to continue reading the story, and later it would be published in a book if it was a success. Today, that is relatively rare in traditional publishing, though it does still happen with manga.
Perhaps established writers can do what Stephen King did when he distributed an e-book, he would release a new part after certain sales were met. Or perhaps they can sell chapters to put on various profitable blogs. Perhaps they can release things in blogs themselves.
For every story about an author not making enough money on a book, there are ten more examples to counteract it. The creator of XKCD survives only on XKCD merchandise. And XKCD is marketed exclusively to open source culture. The comic itself isn't updated daily, and theres no ads on the page. Sounds like a recipe for failure right? No, because people liked it, it survived. Surely then the tale of Homestar Runner would be one that ends in failure as they are all hard-to-do Flash animations with lots of bandwidth, yet the creators still make a living, still make new cartoons and recently released several video games based on it. All this while no ads on the page. There are many other sites that make a living for the author, User Friendly, CTRL+ALT+DEL, MegaTokyo, and Penny Arcade and more all make a living for their authors.
Do we want promising youths to avoid careers in writing because online distribution has hurt profitability? Would J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Norman Mailer have enriched our lives if they needed other jobs? And Robert Heinlein said that many of his stories were written "to buy groceries".
Promising youths are not going to avoid careers in writing because now publishing is free. Look at teenage blogs sometime and you will see more poetry than in an English class, stories, etc. If they write something and the community likes it, the community will sustain it.
Without some requirement to pay for books, would enough people do so?
There is always going to be a market for physical books. Now, 10 years from now, 100 years from now. Its not going anywhere. And those are physical things and can't be duplicated for free.
Since a large part of the US's trade brings our nation income from royalties on Hollywood movies, is it possible we need to make sure what we produce has value in the world market to improve our balance of trade and thereby reduce inflation and unemployment? Of course the answer is yes-- so maybe the question we should be asking is how to puncture the evil media conglomerates (like the **AAs) to make sure the wealth from our nation's creative minds does not unduly concentrate wealth and power.
You are just like the RIAA. You see a -possible- reduction in sales, ignore history and ignore people who don't fit your definition and make a flawed conclusion. A) Before there was any copyright people wrote B) Today, people can release content for free, without ads and still make a living C) E-Books and online publishing increase the amount of writers because it costs no money to get them published and you keep your rights.
There are a lot of code writers. A lot of bloggers. A lot of people who may remix music. Yeah, there aren't many people painting paintings here, but theres a lot of people with pretty good Photoshop skills. Yeah, Stephanie Meyer might not have a Slashdot account, but I guarantee you that the average /.er ends up writing as much as she does in blogs, comments, etc. Yeah, we might not have many people from bands, but we do have remixers, those who do parodies and a pretty high percentage of music fans.
And guess what? A successful author caters to their fans, a successful band will do the same. Guess what? While you in IT might not want to admit it, those are your end users and you should take their advice because they end up using the systems. Yeah, there is the occasional stupid suggestion (what if we stayed with the exact same software and never upgraded because I don't like using the newer version of our e-mail account and browser) but occasionally you realize that something you, as a geek, thought was a good idea that the masses don't like and a good developer fixes that.
You want an ultra-portable. Those have been around ever since laptops started being common. Most people who have netbooks wanted a cheap laptop, or a cheap ultra-portable. The only reason why netbooks started overtaking ultra-portables in sales was because of the price. No one wants to pay $1,000 for a laptop, but lots of people would pay $350 for one and that is what started netbook growth. I imagine by the end of 2010 netbooks will have faded into the background with ultra-portable systems like they have been for years and cheap laptops will grow because that is what the masses want. Cheap.
I hate to have to tell you this, but a Green party member from California is going to be pushing the goals of both the Green party and California. That gives California, or any state for that matter that gets this extra representative, over-representation in the Senat.
But generally, whenever a member of congress makes an earmark in a bill, they get called out for it by various watchdog groups. Now, because we have state representation, it usually doesn't have any consequences. This of course, as you can imagine, is a bad thing. If a green congressman is pushing the agenda of California too much, the party may decide to vote them out or voters may vote for a different party. If a Californian congressman is pushing the agenda of California, the problem is it affects the rest of the 49 states, but we can't vote them out of office.
Furthermore, the purpose of the Senate is to represent the States in the federal government, not the people. That is why it is structured the way it is, and why each state has equal representation. The House of Representatives is where the people are represented, so if you were to do this anywhere it would have to be there.
Fair enough, I mostly just chose the senate because it had a nice round number of members thats easy to do figuring in your head with.
However, you are still getting off track with the whole argument, because the system is designed such that it does not care who is from what party, there was in fact no concept of political parties when it was created.
Yes, but again, this isn't the 1800s, we have political parties. Political parties are the defining lines that 99% of Americans vote on. Unless they are super-pissed off at a candidate, most republicans are going to vote for the republican candidate, most democrats the democrat candidate.
Furthermore, political parties are a good thing because its a lot easier to do comparisons between political parties than individual candidates. It also increases consistency making it a lot easier for people to vote for the people who will represent their ideas, not the candidate's ideas.
The Green movement seems pretty strong in this country, and people who agree with this viewpoint are seeing their wishes fulfilled, or at least fought for constantly in congress.
Seems strong, until you compare it with Europe. You also have to realize that its very much a hit or miss, for example democrats. They might be for decreasing carbon output, but they completely fail at being nonviolent.
Same with the small government crowd, they have never stayed quiet even though the truth is they have no real direct representation either.
Yeah, but where were the small government crowd when the PATRIOT act was passed? The DMCA? Etc. Yeah, some candidates say that they are pro small government, but the reality is a lot of big government bills get passed with few, if any, no votes. Similarly, its very hard to determine who is pro small government, look at two vastly different republicans: John McCain and Ron Paul. John McCain favors a much larger government than Ron Paul does yet both are in the same party.
They don't need to. Know why? Because while a Representative may be a member of a given party, he represents a DISTRICT, a small set of people.
Which defeats the tyranny of the majority how? You seem to constantly say that our system helps defeat the tyranny of the majority. Yet it doesn't. One or two people in a small group of people is always crushed by the majority no matter what. People with the same ideas don't necessarily all live in the exact same location. If 2 out of 100 people is for a certain ideology they are looked at as a small minority in these small groups, but when put against the entire whole of the US that is about 2 million people and that is hardly a small number.
Assuming we are acting rationally for a second, how do we get truth and know what truth is? We get truth via personal experience, reason and science. Personal experience must be considered unreliable because it cannot be proven and if personal experience was a source of reliable truth then one could argue for the existence of god or gods via personal experience, which I'm sure all atheists would reject. Reason is also a method of getting truth but requires outside information which can only be gotten through science or personal experience. As personal experience is not able to be proven, science is the only source where we can find information to apply reason to.
And, if there was a higher power, or they believed that there could be a higher power, one could argue that any sort of higher power made it a god (look at various mythologies where gods were basically just really powerful humans with flaws) And the belief that there could be a higher power would make them not be atheists but rather be agnostic which is not a religion.
Ok, if god does not exist there is no one to judge human actions beyond humanity. If god does not exist one must look to reason as the sole source of truth. Using reason we can come to the conclusion of evolution. If we use evolution we can see that the only task of an organism is to create more organisms to benefit the species. Logically producing more organisms would help the species because it helps increase genetic diversity, and allows the species to continue if one of the species dies. Logically, hurting others of the species does not help the species because it is en expense of energy and ends in either the destruction, or reduction in efficiency of that species. Helping others of the species can help lead that member of the species to continue on, and reproduce helping again add genetic diversity and to continue the species. Helping others can also help remove threats to the species as a whole, such as viruses, bacteria, war, etc.
An easier way of stating it would be that laws are meant to protect people's human rights. I don't see how not being offended is a right of any sort.
Atheism states that there is no higher power in the world. That there is no god, gods or any higher form of life. And such gods cannot exist based on a few arguments.
As such, its a natural conclusion based on scientific evidence that if there was no god, gods or higher forms of life other than man, that the existence of man is to benefit the species of man. To carry on the normal functions of life, to help others of the same species, to then die. Those are the logical conclusions.
You are ignoring all of the most pressing issues for your pet issues. Inter-state equality is far, far more important to the well being of the country than deciding whether we want to be green, communist, socialist, libertarian, foregn influenced, or have lots of taxes.
No, no its not. The concept of a strong state government and a weak federal government is long, long, long, long, long, long, lost. Name me one thing that state governments have power over that the federal government doesn't mess with? There isn't anything. All the powers "reserved to the states" have been messed with by the federal government to the point where it doesn't really matter what the state says.
Your idea might have worked before the civil war, before the new deal. But this isn't 1840 any more. The civil war basically proved that the US was United States, not individual states united.
What you are ignoring is the fact that it is even less fair for California to determine Alaska's position in the government, and if you break the current structure away from regional delegate determination that is exactly what happens, and you have invited tyranny of the majority.
If you break the current structure away from regional delegation you don't have that because its what -everyone- in the US wants. How the hell is our current system -not- tyranny of the majority? There are people with beliefs that have no representation at all in government. Proportional representation would solve that allowing each person a voice. How is it not tyranny of the majority when there are millions without a single voice of their opinions?
That is simply bullshit. The TSA is a part of the Executive branch, and you'd have to be stupid to argue that doesn't affect the people on a daily basis. Why do you think the President is apointing a new "czar" for it? Sure, congress gets confirmation rights, but that's the only influence they have over the process. DoD, FCC, FDA, FAA, and hundreds of other government agencies are all part of the exective branch under the control of the president, and they all have a massive impact on our lives.
Yeah, the only influence congress has over the process is saying whether he can really appoint him. Thats not a big influence at all...
In other words, all three branches work in conjunction, and all three branches have equal effect on our lives. However, the branch with the most direct effect is the Executive branch, not the Legislative or Judicial branches, because it actually carries out the will of the people (congress).
But currently congress isn't the will of the people due to the lack of proportional representation. And many people will follow the law without having to be forced to by the executive or judicial branches.
That is nonsense, the vote already allows for third parties. You are completely ignoring the fact that parties come and go, and even national parties change and are not permanent. If you lock in percentages of the vote for each party, you have permanently set the relevance of that party. Because this change would require a constitutional amendment, you would never see the Green party, for example, get more than 3 representatives even if they should eventually come to represent 20% of the population.
You must have misunderstood what I was trying to say. What I meant was there would be 200 senators, 100 would be elected like today, 100 would be elected via a national poll. Each percentage point would give one senator of this. This would be repeated with each election of senators allowing it to always change and for everyone to have a vote.
See how that works? Also note that just one of the farming districts has as much voice in the HoR as the entire state of Wyoming, and the three farming districts in Missouri have more clout than two states combined in the HoR. Their
By your logic I don't need a decent CPU or RAM because Windows XP will run on 64 MB of memory and a 233 MHZ x86 CPU.
Things that run decently and don't have minute-long lag is a need.
Atheism is a religion. Atheism has everything in common with other religions. Set beliefs, morality, purpose in life, etc. Agnosticism is not a religion because it has no definite beliefs, morality or purpose. Atheism does.
VirtualBox is slow at doing 3D acceleration. Therefore, AutoCAD runs pretty slow when working with lots of 3D objects.
Not only that, but games run slow too.
Who was the idiot who modded this troll?
Except they like to use OS X. Just like how I have Ubuntu installed for when I'm at home or just browsing, and Windows installed for work. Myself, I can't stand using Windows any more than I need to, but the program I could never get to run correctly on WINE and it runs too slowly on VirtualBox to be useful.
But why wouldn't the drivers for Vista bootcamp work?
Because some people have applications that need Windows to run for work, school, home, etc. that don't run nicely in VirtualBox.
Um, I was under the impression that it was trivial to install Windows 7 on a Mac even without official boot camp support (per http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/15/using-boot-camp-to-install-windows-7-on-your-mac-the-complete-walkthrough/) whats the difference between the tutorial and what you would do normally?
It does not take any third parties to mitigate those, all it takes is decreasing the size of the mobs and increasing the influence of the minorities.
Which is what third parties do. Ok, lets say we have 5% of people who want a government as the green party wants it, we have 5% who want a pure free market, total civil rights libertarian government. We have 5% of people who want a communist government, 5% who want a socialist government. 20% who want a government that is centered on outside affairs and 60% who want a government that taxes heavily but gives lots of benefits. Is it fair that in that situation 40% of the population has -zero- representation in congress because the 60% got their representative and the rest got none. A fair way of doing it would be proportional representation.
Our current method is archaic and needs to be reformed. Badly. Why? Because we used to have a tiny federal government, and a large, but not too big state government. Before the civil war, each state or each region could easily find laws that would benefit them. Anything that benefited agriculture would benefit the south while anything benefiting industry would benefit the north with few exceptions. Today, that isn't the case. There are high-tech companies in Kansas, industry is booming in the south, the northern US has a lot of agriculture, and even inside states there is division. Take for example Missouri, on both the east and west sides of the state are large metropolitan areas (St. Louis and Kansas City) but in the center of the state there isn't much of anything (and anyone who has ever driven in the midwest can testify to that) only farm land. So what might be good for Kansas City and St. Louis might be terrible for those living in the middle of the state and vice versa.
What we need to structure our voting systems like is to allow for reforms to allow for national elections of 100 more senators, each one would be chosen from votes allowing third parties. For example, there might be 40 republicans, 40 democrats, 5 libertarians, 3 green party members, 2 members of the constitution party, and the rest members of smaller parties. This way, -everyone- gets their voice out. Not just the majority in each state.
While it is true that reforming the election of a single president would be hard, the ability for congress to have the voice of all the people, and not just the majority is essential in making change happen.
The second thing we do is split our government into three branches of equal power. One branch is directly elected (congress), another is partially directly elected (Executive/President), and the third is not elected at all but appointed (Judicial). Each has specific duties and powers designed to balance against abuses by the other two.
And really, they aren't equal in the amount that it affects the individual person. Congress has the power to change the lives of most people by making things illegal or legal. The president really only has the power to affect the masses when it comes to A) War B) Executive Orders and C) signing legislation. The other part of the executive branch (police) really need to be elected by the masses due to the -many- abuses of power they commit on a daily basis. And other than the supreme court striking down or upholding laws, it generally doesn't affect the masses. It can certainly affect individuals, but not the masses.
If they vote for simply what the TV says, are they really representing themselves?
...And a republic can only work when there are many third-parties to choose from and allow your voice to be heard. A democrat isn't going to speak for all democrats and a republican isn't going to speak for all republicans. That is why an electoral system allowing and encouraging third parties is so important. For example, many democrats aren't really "democrats" at all, but would fit under either a libertarian democrat, green party, or centrist. Similarly many republicans may be more libertarians than republicans, or lean more towards interventionism.
The ability for there to be third parties also lets voters more accurately decide who they want without needing to be fully informed. With our current two party system, both Ron Paul (more of a libertarian than anything else) appears on the same party as John McCain (more of an interventionist)
It was the highest turnout in 40 years. And honestly, its better to have a low turnout of well-informed voters than a high turnout of cable-news watching voters who vote only on who the person on TV says to.