It's just a huge pain in the butt. I have to rewire my home theater system to switch between DVD player (which I bought before learning about the DeCSS fiasco...I'm boycotting, but I still watch the DVDs I already own) and VCR, because I can't route my DVD player through my VCR without the picture quality dropping like a rock on Jupiter.
The morality that says weed is not as bad as crack and heroin? Or the morality that says all drugs are universally and equally bad, including that aspirin, you naughty boy!
Funny you bring that up...that's exactly what's being taught through Zero Tolerance policies. Being in possession of any pill, whether it's aspirin, PCP, or hemophilia medicine, is grounds for expulsion in many schools across the country.
They KNOW it becuase if bum wanted to, they wouldn't be living there!
Right! Those lazy bums should get up right now and all get jobs!
Too bad there aren't any jobs for people without a college education and who don't bathe frequently (they're living on the street--it's not like they can just take a shower every morning). The $384.69 in my checking account can't do that much.
Starting with Carter, the Democratic party has been infiltrated by Republicans.
It didn't start with Carter. The Dixiecrats were Republicans-in-Democrat-clothing long before then. It basically came down to: in the South, you couldn't get elected if you were a Republican. There was too much of a stigma attached, going back to the fact that Lincoln was a Republican (never mind the fact that the parties had swapped places with the Dems going left and the Repubs right). But issues-wise, the South had more of a tendency towards the right. So there were a bunch of candidates from the South who were technically Deomcrats but were actually on the right.
The Republicans have a similar sort of leftists-who-call-themselves-Republicans (I forget what they're usually called), but they've traditionally had much less power or authority than the Democrat equivalent.
I'm voting for Nader. I'm not just saying I would vote for Nader, I actually am.
It's pretty simple. California looks to be basically a lock for Gore. And also, due to time zones, California is among the last states to be counted. By the time Cali rolls around, the election should be pretty much decided unless it's really close all the way down to the wire.
As far as Bush accidentally winning because I voted for Nader, it's just one vote. In terms of actually electing the President,it's a drop in the bucket. And even if Bush wins, it won't be the end of the world. I'm not so naive as to think that Bush's election would suddenly trigger World War Three and another Great Depression.
And to those hardline Demos who say "it's the Supreme Court, stupid" (a favorite phrase use to discourae liberals from voting third-party), I say: there's a lot of ifs and mights in there. Some justices have said that they might want to retire from the bench soon, but that's not exactly a pledge--if it looks like doing so might skew the court too far against their views, they may not do it (believe it or not, these guys are politically savvy). There's no guarantee that the court will have to look at a decent challenge to current abortion law (the case has to have some merit before they accept it, not just controversy). And anyway, America has survived bad Supreme Courts before.
Finally, while my vote counts for little in terms of electing the President, it will go a lot farther towards possibly getting federal matching funds for the Green Party next election. That, or even getting close to it, would be a big wake-up call to the big two parties. Remember how the Republicans and Democrats suddenly started talking about reducing the deficit--one of Perot's big issues--as soon as it looked like he was getting enough votes to possibly cause an upset?
As for the other guys:
McReynolds - This guy would be my second choice. I agree with a lot of his points, but not all. That "reverse income tax" for the poor sounds good in theory but it just won't fly. I don't think untempered Socialism really works.
Browne - No. I have a lot of respect for the guy, if that counts for anything, and I pretty much agree with him on civil liberties. But I have too many problems with the libertarian philosophy in general. I can't get behind unchecked corporate power, or the "social-darwinist" approach to social programs.
Hagelin - Before he was the Reform Party II's nominee, he was the Natural Law Party's--a party based on the idea that the world's ills can be solved through Transcendental Meditation. He's called a "physicist"...but he got that position at an unaccredited university run by his guru. New Age crystal-gazing is not physics...or politics, for that matter.
Peace and Freedom Party - Hell, I don't even know the name of their candidate. This party hasn't had any new ideas since the '70s. They're everything the Greens are stereotyped as...only for real! One of the issues in their platform is the complete elimination of currency. No joke. While they're on the left, I still wouldn't vote for them.
There's a sizeable liberal audience at Slashdot, it just isn't as loud as the libertarians. For example, we don't usually use every YRO story as an opportunity to bring up gun control, no matter how offtopic it is. --- Zardoz has spoken!
you are right that it is not illegal for someone to being socialist in the US. I believe that if a group of socialists within the US decided to form a group that would pool their assets, income, etc. that they could do that, i'm sure some people do but i can't think of a good example.
The Cheese Board in Berkeley, CA is a good example of a successful cooperative.
as far as i care if someone can't provide food, shelter, etc for themselves. and can't convince others to help them out then sure, let em starve.
You need to have money to make money. If you don't have a place to live, you don't have a mailing address. Which means a lot of doors are closed already.
people don't have some inherent right to what you call the essentials of life.
Whatever happened to "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?
That being said, look at the differences between their parties' platforms. IN THEORY the republicans want to distribute the power allowing the states to have more control and the federal government less. This distribution of power seems much more along the lines of what geeks would ask for. Just as OS is all about giving choices in programs, letting states set the laws would give people more of a choice (granted noone really wants to move) and more space to experiment with different approaches. Also, things like school vouchers foster competition for money, just like the OS programs keeping companies on their toes.
This is a complete oversimplification. While comparing government to the software industry may make some nice sound bites, the two operate so completely differently that it can't go very far beyond the surface.
Even more important for a president, I think Bush would do a better job with foreign policy than Gore. I simply think Bush has the balls to do the right thing with the military to avoid the complete screwups of Clinton. I would even propose that something in the liberal mindset makes them poor commanders-in-chief. I wouldn't be alone in making that proposition, either.
This may be your opinion, but it doesn't really explain why geeks shouldn't want a liberal President. Being technically adept does not necessarily mean you consider all liberals to be pansies.
I completely blame Clinton for many things icluding the price of oil and the current slowdown of the US economy (and it is a slowdown...).
Greedy members of OPEC are completely innocent? The rush of overzealous and underinformed do-it-yourself investors had no long-term impacts? All that money that venture capitalists threw at ultimately unviable dot-coms wasn't wasted?
That's a lot of blame to put on one guy, especially one guy whose job doesn't include drawing up the budget (that's Congress' job).
The economy is far too complex to put the blame for its failings on any one person. No matter who that person is.
Apparently, the Republican party has taken to spamming newsgroups as a form of canvassing for votes. I've seen RepubliSpam all over, in newsgroups like netscape.public.mozilla.general and alt.comic.sluggy-freelance. It's become really annoying.
It's like everybody on those committees that had to deal with anti-spam bills took one look at the subject of the legislation and thought, "Wow, that's really shady! Why aren't we doing that?"
Oh, and just to extend that a bit...
Difference between Republican + Green
|-----------------------------------------------|
Difference between Democrat + Green
|-------------------------------------------|
Difference between Green + Libertarian
|------------------------------------------------- -----------------|
And finally:
Difference between Natural Law platform and any sort of grip on reality
|--------------------------------------|
Thank you.
--- Zardoz has spoken!
The rich already send their kids to private school. Hell, I forget the statistic, but an absurd number of public school teachers send their kids to private school. I think it's the ultimate in classism to insist the poor can only go to the school that the Government dictates (no matter how bad), and the rich can send their kids to any school they want.
But stuff like school vouchers won't change this. The rich will still send their kids to private schools, but with school vouchers they get a nifty rebate...which comes out of money that would otherwise have gone to public schools. So the public schools--which are already running on shoestring budgets in many communities, especially large cities--have even less money for day-to-day operations. This leads to two possible outcomes:
The government has to bail out the public schools with public funds (i.e. tax money), or
The public school system is gutted and removed.
Since most groups who advocate school vouchers are also in favor of reducing taxes, (1) isn't an option...it defeats the purpose of vouchers anyway. So I can only come to the conclusion that these groups want (2)...the complete abolishment of public education.
This of course leads to the inability of poor children to get any education at all. Which leads to them being unable to get higher paying jobs, which prevents them from getting out of poverty, which prevents their children from getting an education...ad nauseum.
If you don't mind the idea of having Gore as your president, then by all means vote for Nader.
I know it isn't what you intended, but your comment has actually encouraged me to vote for Nader.
Most people who would vote for Nader are liberal, or at least left-leaning. If Bush and Gore were the only two candidates (I mean, nobody else was running, period), these people would be more likely to vote for the left-of-center Gore than the right-of-center Bush.
So, yes. I would prefer Nader, but I wouldn't mind Gore. At least, not as much as I would mind Bush.
Caffeine is not a more dangerous drug than pot, even when assuming well-above average of consumption of the former.
It absolutely is. It's addictive, causes heart trouble, and even kills more brain cells than pot. I don't have a link to this, but I just read an article about the "study" that "proved" that pot killed brain cells. It turns out that they used tissue in a petri dish and had to bathe them in many thousands of times as much THC as a normal person would smoke in order to have any neuron damage. At a much lower level of caffeine, much more neuron damage was observed. This is the study which is quoted by anti-marijuana activists, and they never tell you the whole story.
Just for the record, marijuana is fairly damaging to the lungs (more so than cigarettes--especially if smoked from a pipe or joint rather than a bong, which filters out some impurities). But this is because of impurities in the smoke itself...you get about the same effect if you breath an equivalent amount of smoke from a barbecue. However, THC itself, the active ingredient, is pretty safe on its own.
McDonald's pays shitty wages for shitty work because it is an entry-level job, not meant to make you rich, but meant to give a pimply-faced teenager a taste of the working world, hopefully to motivate them to bigger and better things. I worked at McDonald's as a teen, and never saw it as a career path, but as a plain old job.
I haven't seen a pimply-faced teen working at McDonald's in a long time. I only see foreign workers. For a lot of these people, McDonald's is a career, because they can't get other jobs with their poor English skills.
I've tried to communicate with these people, for example if they screwed up my order. It doesn't work. They are taught "When you hear "Quarter Pounder with Cheese", hit this button". They don't actually understand the words, they just connect sounds to finger motions.
These people aren't biding their time, waiting for their webpage hobby to attract venture capital.
Joust, Defender, Tetris, and Super Dodge Ball are some of the most entertaining games ever made. None of them required nifty raphics. --- Zardoz has spoken!
They've always regarded the customer as little more than a sheep to be sheared, a fool to be parted with our money. Ditto the bands who actually produce the content they resell.
This reminds me of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where one planet's culture realized that middlemen are useless, and shipped them into space.
I say we should do the same thing to our middlemen. And to avoid the eventual fate of that planet, we should make sure that out telephones are always kept sanitary.
The court relied on the fact that this Court in Diamond Multimedia had held (in the context of the AHRA s serial copying and royalty provisions) that digital audio recording device did not include computer hard-drives.
A friend of mine has a music sampler, and guess what it uses to store samples long-term? A SCSI hard drive! So taking full advantage of this piece of equipment is technically against the law.
(Technically, it doesn't have a hard drive built in but only a SCSI connector. However, if it does not have a hard drive attached it can only store samples until it's turned off. The next time you want to use the same samples, you have to play back the original CDs and find the samples again...a pain in the butt if you're doing any real mixing, and unacceptable if you want to do anything live.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's just a huge pain in the butt. I have to rewire my home theater system to switch between DVD player (which I bought before learning about the DeCSS fiasco...I'm boycotting, but I still watch the DVDs I already own) and VCR, because I can't route my DVD player through my VCR without the picture quality dropping like a rock on Jupiter.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Funny you bring that up...that's exactly what's being taught through Zero Tolerance policies. Being in possession of any pill, whether it's aspirin, PCP, or hemophilia medicine, is grounds for expulsion in many schools across the country.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Right! Those lazy bums should get up right now and all get jobs!
Too bad there aren't any jobs for people without a college education and who don't bathe frequently (they're living on the street--it's not like they can just take a shower every morning). The $384.69 in my checking account can't do that much.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
It didn't start with Carter. The Dixiecrats were Republicans-in-Democrat-clothing long before then. It basically came down to: in the South, you couldn't get elected if you were a Republican. There was too much of a stigma attached, going back to the fact that Lincoln was a Republican (never mind the fact that the parties had swapped places with the Dems going left and the Repubs right). But issues-wise, the South had more of a tendency towards the right. So there were a bunch of candidates from the South who were technically Deomcrats but were actually on the right.
The Republicans have a similar sort of leftists-who-call-themselves-Republicans (I forget what they're usually called), but they've traditionally had much less power or authority than the Democrat equivalent.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
I'm voting for Nader. I'm not just saying I would vote for Nader, I actually am.
It's pretty simple. California looks to be basically a lock for Gore. And also, due to time zones, California is among the last states to be counted. By the time Cali rolls around, the election should be pretty much decided unless it's really close all the way down to the wire.
As far as Bush accidentally winning because I voted for Nader, it's just one vote. In terms of actually electing the President,it's a drop in the bucket. And even if Bush wins, it won't be the end of the world. I'm not so naive as to think that Bush's election would suddenly trigger World War Three and another Great Depression.
And to those hardline Demos who say "it's the Supreme Court, stupid" (a favorite phrase use to discourae liberals from voting third-party), I say: there's a lot of ifs and mights in there. Some justices have said that they might want to retire from the bench soon, but that's not exactly a pledge--if it looks like doing so might skew the court too far against their views, they may not do it (believe it or not, these guys are politically savvy). There's no guarantee that the court will have to look at a decent challenge to current abortion law (the case has to have some merit before they accept it, not just controversy). And anyway, America has survived bad Supreme Courts before.
Finally, while my vote counts for little in terms of electing the President, it will go a lot farther towards possibly getting federal matching funds for the Green Party next election. That, or even getting close to it, would be a big wake-up call to the big two parties. Remember how the Republicans and Democrats suddenly started talking about reducing the deficit--one of Perot's big issues--as soon as it looked like he was getting enough votes to possibly cause an upset?
As for the other guys:
McReynolds - This guy would be my second choice. I agree with a lot of his points, but not all. That "reverse income tax" for the poor sounds good in theory but it just won't fly. I don't think untempered Socialism really works.
Browne - No. I have a lot of respect for the guy, if that counts for anything, and I pretty much agree with him on civil liberties. But I have too many problems with the libertarian philosophy in general. I can't get behind unchecked corporate power, or the "social-darwinist" approach to social programs.
Buchanan - Fascist anti-semitic sociopath. Next...
Hagelin - Before he was the Reform Party II's nominee, he was the Natural Law Party's--a party based on the idea that the world's ills can be solved through Transcendental Meditation. He's called a "physicist"...but he got that position at an unaccredited university run by his guru. New Age crystal-gazing is not physics...or politics, for that matter.
Peace and Freedom Party - Hell, I don't even know the name of their candidate. This party hasn't had any new ideas since the '70s. They're everything the Greens are stereotyped as...only for real! One of the issues in their platform is the complete elimination of currency. No joke. While they're on the left, I still wouldn't vote for them.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
There's a sizeable liberal audience at Slashdot, it just isn't as loud as the libertarians. For example, we don't usually use every YRO story as an opportunity to bring up gun control, no matter how offtopic it is.
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Zardoz has spoken!
The Cheese Board in Berkeley, CA is a good example of a successful cooperative.
You need to have money to make money. If you don't have a place to live, you don't have a mailing address. Which means a lot of doors are closed already.
Whatever happened to "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?
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Zardoz has spoken!
Yes, "If you don't agree with me, you're scum." This sort of thing is so conducive to rational discussion.
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Zardoz has spoken!
This is a complete oversimplification. While comparing government to the software industry may make some nice sound bites, the two operate so completely differently that it can't go very far beyond the surface.
This may be your opinion, but it doesn't really explain why geeks shouldn't want a liberal President. Being technically adept does not necessarily mean you consider all liberals to be pansies.
Greedy members of OPEC are completely innocent? The rush of overzealous and underinformed do-it-yourself investors had no long-term impacts? All that money that venture capitalists threw at ultimately unviable dot-coms wasn't wasted?
That's a lot of blame to put on one guy, especially one guy whose job doesn't include drawing up the budget (that's Congress' job).
The economy is far too complex to put the blame for its failings on any one person. No matter who that person is.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Actually, technically, at this point it's considered an "embryo", not a "fetus".
Just wanted to clear up some terminology that seems to be confusing people.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Apparently, the Republican party has taken to spamming newsgroups as a form of canvassing for votes. I've seen RepubliSpam all over, in newsgroups like netscape.public.mozilla.general and alt.comic.sluggy-freelance. It's become really annoying.
It's like everybody on those committees that had to deal with anti-spam bills took one look at the subject of the legislation and thought, "Wow, that's really shady! Why aren't we doing that?"
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oh, and just to extend that a bit... Difference between Republican + Green |-----------------------------------------------| Difference between Democrat + Green |-------------------------------------------| Difference between Green + Libertarian |------------------------------------------------- -----------------|
And finally:
Difference between Natural Law platform and any sort of grip on reality
|--------------------------------------|
Thank you.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
But stuff like school vouchers won't change this. The rich will still send their kids to private schools, but with school vouchers they get a nifty rebate...which comes out of money that would otherwise have gone to public schools. So the public schools--which are already running on shoestring budgets in many communities, especially large cities--have even less money for day-to-day operations. This leads to two possible outcomes:
Since most groups who advocate school vouchers are also in favor of reducing taxes, (1) isn't an option...it defeats the purpose of vouchers anyway. So I can only come to the conclusion that these groups want (2)...the complete abolishment of public education.
This of course leads to the inability of poor children to get any education at all. Which leads to them being unable to get higher paying jobs, which prevents them from getting out of poverty, which prevents their children from getting an education...ad nauseum.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
I know it isn't what you intended, but your comment has actually encouraged me to vote for Nader.
Most people who would vote for Nader are liberal, or at least left-leaning. If Bush and Gore were the only two candidates (I mean, nobody else was running, period), these people would be more likely to vote for the left-of-center Gore than the right-of-center Bush.
So, yes. I would prefer Nader, but I wouldn't mind Gore. At least, not as much as I would mind Bush.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Just for the record, marijuana is fairly damaging to the lungs (more so than cigarettes--especially if smoked from a pipe or joint rather than a bong, which filters out some impurities). But this is because of impurities in the smoke itself...you get about the same effect if you breath an equivalent amount of smoke from a barbecue. However, THC itself, the active ingredient, is pretty safe on its own.
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Zardoz has spoken!
I haven't seen a pimply-faced teen working at McDonald's in a long time. I only see foreign workers. For a lot of these people, McDonald's is a career, because they can't get other jobs with their poor English skills.
I've tried to communicate with these people, for example if they screwed up my order. It doesn't work. They are taught "When you hear "Quarter Pounder with Cheese", hit this button". They don't actually understand the words, they just connect sounds to finger motions.
These people aren't biding their time, waiting for their webpage hobby to attract venture capital.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Joust, Defender, Tetris, and Super Dodge Ball are some of the most entertaining games ever made. None of them required nifty raphics.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Yes, but "reflection" is derived from "reflect", not "reflex" (which is a related but separate concept).
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Zardoz has spoken!
This reminds me of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where one planet's culture realized that middlemen are useless, and shipped them into space.
I say we should do the same thing to our middlemen. And to avoid the eventual fate of that planet, we should make sure that out telephones are always kept sanitary.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Considering what he thought of mandatory "self-censorship" parental advisory labels, I don't wonder at all.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Yeah, but "reflect" is spelled with a "ct" and "crucifix" is spelled with an "x".
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Zardoz has spoken!
If the tech is impossible, there's no way the guy could possibly get any royalties off of it. Let the man have his vanity patent.
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Zardoz has spoken!
...Survival Research Labs!
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Zardoz has spoken!
A friend of mine has a music sampler, and guess what it uses to store samples long-term? A SCSI hard drive! So taking full advantage of this piece of equipment is technically against the law.
(Technically, it doesn't have a hard drive built in but only a SCSI connector. However, if it does not have a hard drive attached it can only store samples until it's turned off. The next time you want to use the same samples, you have to play back the original CDs and find the samples again...a pain in the butt if you're doing any real mixing, and unacceptable if you want to do anything live.)
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Zardoz has spoken!
They were sponsored by RSA, but they were DES keys. Not RSA.
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Zardoz has spoken!