Yep. We learn that "never hold the press conference until after peer review and acceptance of publication".
Well, in all likelihood, we really didn't learn -that-.:-)
Every now and then I take a crack at P=NP, and sometimes, I feel like I've really got a good proof - a program idea, that, when implemented, could FACTOR fairly quickly. I'll be practicing my "move over Al Gore, here's what the Nobel Prize is really about" speech as I'm typing my breakthrough in, and there will be some implementation detail that, is just a detail, except that it blows my whole vision and I'm back to square one. And the thing is, when that happens, I never felt like I've wasted my time, because, even though the thing I made did not accomplish its goal, I still made something that satisfied a curiosity, and was able to see the outcome, and learn something, and in a space that I know that not a lot of people are in. It's not like fixing a database bug, that a million other programmers have fixed... it's a different land, about the roots of things, and that's really, very interesting in and of itself.
Usually they don't so much modify as build or rebuild them.
It really depends... see, the thing is, the performance of a car is objective, and audio quality is really subjective. I find myself nostalgic over vinyl now, but I remember when CD's first came out, and I thought they sounded great.
But, to get back to cars. I have a friend that's a car moder, and he calls it "the fever". Car mods start cheap and then gradually escalate into, well, as much money as you want to spend, someone will sell you something that will definitely improve the performance of your car.
Car modders usually go for a few quick tricks first that are cheap. Changing the muffler and the air filter / intake is a cheap way to pick up a measurable increase in horsepower, and that can be done for cheap. Next up on the plate is a supercharger or even a turbo charger. And I think you could probably chip some engines too to get more power by disabling environmental controls. Those things can be done for under $1000. Notice the jump in magnitude in money spent. Along the way, you'll want to swap out the stock car seats, because they weigh too much, and then get in some racing seats. Those weigh less and are said to be more comfortable. Less weight = more acceleration for car. With that extra Go, you probably want more reliable Stop, and then you'll probably think about Brembo or some other high end brakes... they don't necessarily make you stop "quicker", as, the tire patch dictates that, but, they do make able to stop more often as they are more resistant to fade. By now we've plopped about 10k into the car, if not more, and the only thing noticable from the street, really, is the brakes. Anyway, from there, you can think about good tires. And, thus, we've added another couple of grand into the mix.
From there, the fever becomes all out. You'll start tearing apart the engine, going for more power... I have no idea how it works... but I have read the end game will have people getting 500, 600, 700 or more horsepower out of an engine...GM, I believe, to show off its Ecotech 2 liter, managed to somehow jack it up to 900hp for short lived and self destructive run.... and, then, of course, with all of that power comes the rest of the car. Stock transmissions and steering, etc, simply isn't designed to handle all of that extra power, so, that will all get swapped out. I think somewhere along the way the suspension has to go to... don't need your big fancy engine to wheel hop you into a broken rear axle now.
Seriously, electronics modders have absolutely nothing on car modders. I used to tune my PC a bit - overclock, get the best ram, find the right chips, motherboards, etc, but that's chump change to a die hard car modder. Car modders are the real deal. Anyone that sits there working a PC or a piece of audio equipment and claiming to be "tuning" it, really, almost insults the word "tune".
Just go to your local track, and look at what people do to their cars. Its amazing.
This sort of thing is science when it works at its best. Someone throws something out there, and another scientist checks it, and bam, we learn something.
They're like car modders -- they don't really care how fast the car goes, they care how much bling they can pile on that they can PRETEND makes it go faster.
Woah... car modders of the serious sort do care about speed. Everything they do, the good ones, is about shedding weight and adding horsepower and torque and stopping power. superchargers can make a car go faster and brembo brakes can make them stop quickly more often (that is, you can slam on the brakes repeatedly and still be able to stop).
The problem is, what's a lie? Everyone has their own definition of what constitutes a lie and what is the truth, what is an assertive or aggressive argument of one's position, versus what's a twisting of them. Some people don't see "shading" or "spinning" the truth as a lie. Some people do.
Bottom line is, people can't even agree on what "truth" is, by itself, and all of a sudden we're supposed to have a commission that just settles things? All truth is ultimately political.
Such a person could easily exist in today's world - it's unlikely in the U.S., but there are many well-developed countries in the world for which all of that could be true.
And why is this unlikely in the USA? Please, go there. I'm in a pissy mood.
A simple test to see if people actually know the rules of the constitution would go a long way to ensuring that people stop getting elected on unconstitutional principles
Ah, constitution shredding goes a long way in both political parties, my violating-the-commerce-clause-to-enact-democrat-social-initiatives friend!
Please, let's have a test to see who really understands the constitution. I'd gladly give up a standing military and the defense of marriage act to see social security, medicare, the voting and civil rights acts all declared unconstititional, becuase, really, they are. Let's have -this- debate!
What I would like is for someone to say "The White House will no longer rewrite scientific reports made by agencies. If we believe something should not be 'promoted', we will move it to an appendix instead of removing it entirely."
That's crazy talk. The only thing about science that is apolitical is a repeatable result of a given experimental condition. Everything else, from conclusions, interpretations, recommended course of action is political, and can certainly be edited by the White House, no matter who is elected.
For all I know, you have correctly described the AC (since I can't claim to read his/her mind), but there IS more to that perception. It's that Microsoft has an effective, well-financed marketing department with lots of advertisements and
I like Linux because its traditionally lacked the hype of MS, so the existence of zealotry in Linux detracts from it. More programmers, less hype. Is that such a bad thing? Just because MS does it, does it mean we do?
I do know, however, that, in the US, depending on where one is, one might get the impression that we all love president Bush.
Um, where exactly would that be? I would count myself as one of the mad 30%'ers, but, I wouldn't say that I love the guy. He needs to win the war, quickly, for me to say that, and he needed to not have the stupid gay marriage amendment. I mean, I really don't care for fags myself, but, the constitution makes no provision granting the federal government the right to regulate marriage. Or, to put it another way... if I have a natural right to own a ton of guns and a v8 car, then someone else has the right to live in same sex marriages. freedom, baby. to each his own.
Your examples (beyond fire arms) don't seem to have anything to do with Authoritarianism. Are you sure you know what the word means? I might agree with you that the right and left are equally guilty but stuff like taxes and state rights vs federalism have nothing to do with it. Obviously a govt can have extreme taxes without being authoritarian.
Wikipedia : Authoritarianism describes a form of social control characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization, often maintaining and enforcing control through the use of oppressive measures. Authoritarian regimes are strongly hierarchical.
Taxes and states rights have everything to do with authoritarianism. You can't have obedience to a state if people are free to form their own institutions with their own power, and certainly not arm them. On that score, the Bush administration has promoted the rights of people to support two sorts of institutions - corporate and religious, and, by his excellent support of the individual right to keep and bear arms, allows for those groups to be armed. No true authoritarian would allow that.
I would agree that that injection of the religous right into the federal government, on issues of gay rights, and abortion, does give one some pause in terms of purely freedom. However, it should be noted that the original coalition of evangelicals and libertarians the form the Republican Party would have, had it achieved its original goals, allowed for states to determine their own stances on all of those issues. What happened, though, was Karl Rove. He really was the one that argued, successfully at the time, that Republicans, instead of deconstructing government, should sieze the reins of power and twist the horse to their own course. What happened, really, is what laid the groundwork of the disaster of 1990s. Once Bush took the plunge on keeping a bigger government around, he basically split the Party in half as to what to do with it.
One would think that the war made all of this worse - but the war actually held the party together despite this schism through 2004 and into 2005. It was only when the gov't had to make decisions on some big issues that Bush got hosed on. He really should have stuck to his guns on social security privatization, which, would have ultimately been a good way to save this system, but, really, the whole spendfest post Katrina and the immigration bill hurt him significantly, and then, finally, he -didn't- win the war quickly.
Now that there are signs of some success in Iraq, and, Bush is actually vetoing Democratic bills again, he's slowly recapturing the old coalition - but its not going to be the same again, and both libertarians and evangelicals are going to be a lot more circumspect before pledging unlimited loyalty to each other and the party.
The regular rules go out the window when it comes to monopolies.
I thought Microsoft wasn't a monopoly, you know, a dying company battered by the Linux onslaught, truth justice and brotherhood, the CAUSE, and all of that stuff. Steve Ballmer consortes with Baezlebubb, while Linus Torvalds is god's incarnation on earth.
Why are you people always so helpless? One man can't do it alone? Hell one man can do a lot. No wonder Europeans need socialism so much - all of your men are completely disempowered. "We can't do anything..."
All of your breed of iconoclasts must have been killed off in the wars, or came to the USA.
That's because Linux isn't just an operating system, IT'S A CAUSE... yet another independent thing that was nifty and kinda cool before a bunch of halfwitted politicos aped it and turned it into something else.
And they wonder why people question the sanity of the 24% club
24%? Hah. Bush's approval rating is back up to 35%, thanks to a timely veto of that godaweful socialized health care in disguise bill. Once Dems send up a massive tax increase, and he vetos that, he'll be back up over 40%, if not over 50%. And, if trends in Iraq continue, and, he can actually claim some semblance of victory out of that f---fest, then he'll go down in history fairly positively, and, if he actually can back up that claim of victory with American access to mountains of petrol, then he goes down as one of the Greatest-Presidents-Ever.
The so-called conservatives in Washington have been shaking hands with half of the libertarian ideal while virtually ignoring the "liberty" portion
Virtually ignoring? Aren't we a bit excessive hear? Bush throws a couple of a muslims in prison, and listens to people that call muslims, and yeah, while on some level its wrong, its hardly "virtually ignorning". The vast majority of people have gained freedom under Bush through deregulation, tax reductions, and a reaffirmation of a right to keep and bear arms. Were Bush never to have signed onto USA PATRIOT or wiretaps, he would have been one of the most freedom affirming presidents in modern history.
Everything you write is just a rationalization of your authoritarianism. Basically, you have this vision of society as perfect, you can't see how anyone else could disagree with your values, but recognize there are those that do, and you want the jackbooted thugs of the federal government to impose their views on everyone else.
Plain and simple.
If you were really interested in freedom, you would support those who would curtail federal power significantly. Anything else, is just more b.s.
With your 'examples' one could consider the government laws making murder illegal to be authoritarian. Me thinks you think too highly of the 'free market'.
It will be short lived. People are running out and buying XP to replace Vista, and many are not happy about it. Am I glad I bought my last PC just before Vista came out.
So why not admit to it? Why istead say that tehy are ballanced and fair? And saying that tend to means to me you have never ever seen any any other broadcasing in the world.
I really don't care what it says to you, because you are just a left wing religious fanatic.
FoxNews is fair and balanced because on the whole, the country is right leaning, whereas, the rest of the media is a bunch of left wing shills like yourself. And yes, I listen to NPR and the BBC. The BBC is admittedly leftist, by its own owners. After all, the Bebe by its own admission has no problem airing stories that are anti-christian, but refrains from airing anti-islam stories. What a bunch of buffoons!
and ignoring the clear majority will in favor of universal health care, large-scale restructuring of energy use, and the end of corporate domination of our politics.
All of which, are issues, that you want to solve in authoritarian ways. You want to have a big government socialized medicine, federal mandates to control what and how we use energy, and then, to top it all off, you want to undermine the power of free enterprise and private investment. So, other than, trying to regulate everything from food to lights, just exactly how is the left wing not authoritarian?
whereas the base for authoritarianism in the US is only at the 30% of hard-core Bushies - now leaning towards Rudy - plus a few percent of the Hillary supporters.
I really don't think you can honestly categorize the hard core Bushie supporter as someone who is authoritarian, when, Bush's hallmark has been tax cuts, environmental deregulation, and a solid endorsement of the individual right to keep and bear arms. By contrast, ALL of Hillary's supporters demand higher taxes on everyone but themselves, a strong federal commitment, loss of sovereignty (and hence freedom), to combat various environmental issues, federal regulation of guns and increased federal powers on any number of issues.
Really, if anyone is authoritarian in the United States, it is the American left wing. We right wingers are just a bunch of rednecks that would just as soon not have a federal government at all.
I would be willing to bet that over the counter sales of Vista, that is, upgrades and personal new system builders, exceeded that for those of any Linux by a fairly wide margin. Everyone cheers that Vista sales went down a bit, but honestly, I'd love to sell a few million units of just about anything.
Those companies that sell Linux's, such as Novell, are chump change compared to the Vista juggernaught. Novell did 21 million dollars of Linux for the 3rd quarter. Microsoft will blow through that in a couple of days of Vista sales... even excluding OEMS. Really, because Linux is open source, there's really no point to selling it at all.
One wonders, too, just how well Linux would survive an economic downturn. With mixed economic signs coming out of the west, one has to imagine that previously generous developers will descend on each other like wolves, when time comes to make mortgage payments.
You could very well replace the name "Russia" in the article with "United States" and I don't think it would surprise most here. I guess the pro-kremlin bloggers would then be Fox News?
A couple of things.
Russia is not so simple. First, Putin is enormously popular in Russia. He has put food in the belly of the Russian people, their standards of living are higher, and so on. In the mind of the average Russian, over there, someone supporting the likes of a pure democracy movement are the crooks and cronies from the Yeltsin era. Those crooks and cronies, in turn, are the very former communist leaders that they rebelled against to begin with!
Secondly, yes, there is Fox News and they tend to feature columnists that are sympathetic to the right wing of American politics. Guess what, that's half the country dude. The only reason Republicans are in trouble now, well, there are a lot, is because of the skyrocketing cost of energy and the growing realization that the Republicans in Washington aren't so Republican after all. If you think the likes of Hannity give Bush a blank check, you'd be dead wrong. Hannity -routinely- condemns Bush on immigration and was one of the key players to stop the Bush immigration reform bill dead in its tracks. Similarly, just wait until Bush flip flops on the ridiculous law of the sea treaty or tries to enact some sort of a carbon tax. He'd be dead meat.
Finally, the key difference between the USA and other places around the world that the left is so fond of comparing us too, is that, the left wing is allowed to spout its own opinions. If MoveOn was in Russia or China, they most certainly not exist. But then, neither would the NRA.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. We learn that "never hold the press conference until after peer review and acceptance of publication".
:-)
Well, in all likelihood, we really didn't learn -that-.
Every now and then I take a crack at P=NP, and sometimes, I feel like I've really got a good proof - a program idea, that, when implemented, could FACTOR fairly quickly. I'll be practicing my "move over Al Gore, here's what the Nobel Prize is really about" speech as I'm typing my breakthrough in, and there will be some implementation detail that, is just a detail, except that it blows my whole vision and I'm back to square one. And the thing is, when that happens, I never felt like I've wasted my time, because, even though the thing I made did not accomplish its goal, I still made something that satisfied a curiosity, and was able to see the outcome, and learn something, and in a space that I know that not a lot of people are in. It's not like fixing a database bug, that a million other programmers have fixed... it's a different land, about the roots of things, and that's really, very interesting in and of itself.
Usually they don't so much modify as build or rebuild them.
... I have no idea how it works... but I have read the end game will have people getting 500, 600, 700 or more horsepower out of an engine...GM, I believe, to show off its Ecotech 2 liter, managed to somehow jack it up to 900hp for short lived and self destructive run.... and, then, of course, with all of that power comes the rest of the car. Stock transmissions and steering, etc, simply isn't designed to handle all of that extra power, so, that will all get swapped out. I think somewhere along the way the suspension has to go to... don't need your big fancy engine to wheel hop you into a broken rear axle now.
It really depends... see, the thing is, the performance of a car is objective, and audio quality is really subjective. I find myself nostalgic over vinyl now, but I remember when CD's first came out, and I thought they sounded great.
But, to get back to cars. I have a friend that's a car moder, and he calls it "the fever". Car mods start cheap and then gradually escalate into, well, as much money as you want to spend, someone will sell you something that will definitely improve the performance of your car.
Car modders usually go for a few quick tricks first that are cheap. Changing the muffler and the air filter / intake is a cheap way to pick up a measurable increase in horsepower, and that can be done for cheap. Next up on the plate is a supercharger or even a turbo charger. And I think you could probably chip some engines too to get more power by disabling environmental controls. Those things can be done for under $1000. Notice the jump in magnitude in money spent. Along the way, you'll want to swap out the stock car seats, because they weigh too much, and then get in some racing seats. Those weigh less and are said to be more comfortable. Less weight = more acceleration for car. With that extra Go, you probably want more reliable Stop, and then you'll probably think about Brembo or some other high end brakes... they don't necessarily make you stop "quicker", as, the tire patch dictates that, but, they do make able to stop more often as they are more resistant to fade. By now we've plopped about 10k into the car, if not more, and the only thing noticable from the street, really, is the brakes. Anyway, from there, you can think about good tires. And, thus, we've added another couple of grand into the mix.
From there, the fever becomes all out. You'll start tearing apart the engine, going for more power
Seriously, electronics modders have absolutely nothing on car modders. I used to tune my PC a bit - overclock, get the best ram, find the right chips, motherboards, etc, but that's chump change to a die hard car modder. Car modders are the real deal. Anyone that sits there working a PC or a piece of audio equipment and claiming to be "tuning" it, really, almost insults the word "tune".
Just go to your local track, and look at what people do to their cars. Its amazing.
This sort of thing is science when it works at its best. Someone throws something out there, and another scientist checks it, and bam, we learn something.
They're like car modders -- they don't really care how fast the car goes, they care how much bling they can pile on that they can PRETEND makes it go faster.
Woah... car modders of the serious sort do care about speed. Everything they do, the good ones, is about shedding weight and adding horsepower and torque and stopping power. superchargers can make a car go faster and brembo brakes can make them stop quickly more often (that is, you can slam on the brakes repeatedly and still be able to stop).
What does lying have to do with it?!
The problem is, what's a lie? Everyone has their own definition of what constitutes a lie and what is the truth, what is an assertive or aggressive argument of one's position, versus what's a twisting of them. Some people don't see "shading" or "spinning" the truth as a lie. Some people do.
Bottom line is, people can't even agree on what "truth" is, by itself, and all of a sudden we're supposed to have a commission that just settles things? All truth is ultimately political.
Such a person could easily exist in today's world - it's unlikely in the U.S., but there are many well-developed countries in the world for which all of that could be true.
And why is this unlikely in the USA? Please, go there. I'm in a pissy mood.
A simple test to see if people actually know the rules of the constitution would go a long way to ensuring that people stop getting elected on unconstitutional principles
Ah, constitution shredding goes a long way in both political parties, my violating-the-commerce-clause-to-enact-democrat-social-initiatives friend!
Please, let's have a test to see who really understands the constitution. I'd gladly give up a standing military and the defense of marriage act to see social security, medicare, the voting and civil rights acts all declared unconstititional, becuase, really, they are. Let's have -this- debate!
What I would like is for someone to say "The White House will no longer rewrite scientific reports made by agencies. If we believe something should not be 'promoted', we will move it to an appendix instead of removing it entirely."
That's crazy talk. The only thing about science that is apolitical is a repeatable result of a given experimental condition. Everything else, from conclusions, interpretations, recommended course of action is political, and can certainly be edited by the White House, no matter who is elected.
What, do you think scientists don't lie?
For all I know, you have correctly described the AC (since I can't claim to read his/her mind), but there IS more to that perception. It's that Microsoft has an effective, well-financed marketing department with lots of advertisements and
I like Linux because its traditionally lacked the hype of MS, so the existence of zealotry in Linux detracts from it. More programmers, less hype. Is that such a bad thing? Just because MS does it, does it mean we do?
I do know, however, that, in the US, depending on where one is, one might get the impression that we all love president Bush.
Um, where exactly would that be? I would count myself as one of the mad 30%'ers, but, I wouldn't say that I love the guy. He needs to win the war, quickly, for me to say that, and he needed to not have the stupid gay marriage amendment. I mean, I really don't care for fags myself, but, the constitution makes no provision granting the federal government the right to regulate marriage. Or, to put it another way... if I have a natural right to own a ton of guns and a v8 car, then someone else has the right to live in same sex marriages. freedom, baby. to each his own.
Your examples (beyond fire arms) don't seem to have anything to do with Authoritarianism. Are you sure you know what the word means? I might agree with you that the right and left are equally guilty but stuff like taxes and state rights vs federalism have nothing to do with it. Obviously a govt can have extreme taxes without being authoritarian.
Wikipedia : Authoritarianism describes a form of social control characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization, often maintaining and enforcing control through the use of oppressive measures. Authoritarian regimes are strongly hierarchical.
Taxes and states rights have everything to do with authoritarianism. You can't have obedience to a state if people are free to form their own institutions with their own power, and certainly not arm them. On that score, the Bush administration has promoted the rights of people to support two sorts of institutions - corporate and religious, and, by his excellent support of the individual right to keep and bear arms, allows for those groups to be armed. No true authoritarian would allow that.
I would agree that that injection of the religous right into the federal government, on issues of gay rights, and abortion, does give one some pause in terms of purely freedom. However, it should be noted that the original coalition of evangelicals and libertarians the form the Republican Party would have, had it achieved its original goals, allowed for states to determine their own stances on all of those issues. What happened, though, was Karl Rove. He really was the one that argued, successfully at the time, that Republicans, instead of deconstructing government, should sieze the reins of power and twist the horse to their own course. What happened, really, is what laid the groundwork of the disaster of 1990s. Once Bush took the plunge on keeping a bigger government around, he basically split the Party in half as to what to do with it.
One would think that the war made all of this worse - but the war actually held the party together despite this schism through 2004 and into 2005. It was only when the gov't had to make decisions on some big issues that Bush got hosed on. He really should have stuck to his guns on social security privatization, which, would have ultimately been a good way to save this system, but, really, the whole spendfest post Katrina and the immigration bill hurt him significantly, and then, finally, he -didn't- win the war quickly.
Now that there are signs of some success in Iraq, and, Bush is actually vetoing Democratic bills again, he's slowly recapturing the old coalition - but its not going to be the same again, and both libertarians and evangelicals are going to be a lot more circumspect before pledging unlimited loyalty to each other and the party.
The regular rules go out the window when it comes to monopolies.
I thought Microsoft wasn't a monopoly, you know, a dying company battered by the Linux onslaught, truth justice and brotherhood, the CAUSE, and all of that stuff. Steve Ballmer consortes with Baezlebubb, while Linus Torvalds is god's incarnation on earth.
ordinary citizen stood not a chance against them.
Why are you people always so helpless? One man can't do it alone? Hell one man can do a lot. No wonder Europeans need socialism so much - all of your men are completely disempowered. "We can't do anything..."
All of your breed of iconoclasts must have been killed off in the wars, or came to the USA.
I love 'paid Microsoft shill' comments
That's because Linux isn't just an operating system, IT'S A CAUSE... yet another independent thing that was nifty and kinda cool before a bunch of halfwitted politicos aped it and turned it into something else.
And they wonder why people question the sanity of the 24% club
24%? Hah. Bush's approval rating is back up to 35%, thanks to a timely veto of that godaweful socialized health care in disguise bill. Once Dems send up a massive tax increase, and he vetos that, he'll be back up over 40%, if not over 50%. And, if trends in Iraq continue, and, he can actually claim some semblance of victory out of that f---fest, then he'll go down in history fairly positively, and, if he actually can back up that claim of victory with American access to mountains of petrol, then he goes down as one of the Greatest-Presidents-Ever.
The so-called conservatives in Washington have been shaking hands with half of the libertarian ideal while virtually ignoring the "liberty" portion
Virtually ignoring? Aren't we a bit excessive hear? Bush throws a couple of a muslims in prison, and listens to people that call muslims, and yeah, while on some level its wrong, its hardly "virtually ignorning". The vast majority of people have gained freedom under Bush through deregulation, tax reductions, and a reaffirmation of a right to keep and bear arms. Were Bush never to have signed onto USA PATRIOT or wiretaps, he would have been one of the most freedom affirming presidents in modern history.
Everything you write is just a rationalization of your authoritarianism. Basically, you have this vision of society as perfect, you can't see how anyone else could disagree with your values, but recognize there are those that do, and you want the jackbooted thugs of the federal government to impose their views on everyone else.
Plain and simple.
If you were really interested in freedom, you would support those who would curtail federal power significantly. Anything else, is just more b.s.
With your 'examples' one could consider the government laws making murder illegal to be authoritarian. Me thinks you think too highly of the 'free market'.
Spoken like a true religious fanatic.
It will be short lived. People are running out and buying XP to replace Vista, and many are not happy about it. Am I glad I bought my last PC just before Vista came out.
No, its because X-Box is kicking ass.
I got a next troll for you, linux will die when the developers discover girls.
no, it would get more crazy, because every vi nut will find himself married to a girl who extolls the virtues of emacs.
So why not admit to it? Why istead say that tehy are ballanced and fair? And saying that tend to means to me you have never ever seen any any other broadcasing in the world.
I really don't care what it says to you, because you are just a left wing religious fanatic.
FoxNews is fair and balanced because on the whole, the country is right leaning, whereas, the rest of the media is a bunch of left wing shills like yourself. And yes, I listen to NPR and the BBC. The BBC is admittedly leftist, by its own owners. After all, the Bebe by its own admission has no problem airing stories that are anti-christian, but refrains from airing anti-islam stories. What a bunch of buffoons!
and ignoring the clear majority will in favor of universal health care, large-scale restructuring of energy use, and the end of corporate domination of our politics.
All of which, are issues, that you want to solve in authoritarian ways. You want to have a big government socialized medicine, federal mandates to control what and how we use energy, and then, to top it all off, you want to undermine the power of free enterprise and private investment. So, other than, trying to regulate everything from food to lights, just exactly how is the left wing not authoritarian?
whereas the base for authoritarianism in the US is only at the 30% of hard-core Bushies - now leaning towards Rudy - plus a few percent of the Hillary supporters.
I really don't think you can honestly categorize the hard core Bushie supporter as someone who is authoritarian, when, Bush's hallmark has been tax cuts, environmental deregulation, and a solid endorsement of the individual right to keep and bear arms. By contrast, ALL of Hillary's supporters demand higher taxes on everyone but themselves, a strong federal commitment, loss of sovereignty (and hence freedom), to combat various environmental issues, federal regulation of guns and increased federal powers on any number of issues.
Really, if anyone is authoritarian in the United States, it is the American left wing. We right wingers are just a bunch of rednecks that would just as soon not have a federal government at all.
I would be willing to bet that over the counter sales of Vista, that is, upgrades and personal new system builders, exceeded that for those of any Linux by a fairly wide margin. Everyone cheers that Vista sales went down a bit, but honestly, I'd love to sell a few million units of just about anything.
Those companies that sell Linux's, such as Novell, are chump change compared to the Vista juggernaught. Novell did 21 million dollars of Linux for the 3rd quarter. Microsoft will blow through that in a couple of days of Vista sales... even excluding OEMS. Really, because Linux is open source, there's really no point to selling it at all.
One wonders, too, just how well Linux would survive an economic downturn. With mixed economic signs coming out of the west, one has to imagine that previously generous developers will descend on each other like wolves, when time comes to make mortgage payments.
You could very well replace the name "Russia" in the article with "United States" and I don't think it would surprise most here. I guess the pro-kremlin bloggers would then be Fox News?
A couple of things.
Russia is not so simple. First, Putin is enormously popular in Russia. He has put food in the belly of the Russian people, their standards of living are higher, and so on. In the mind of the average Russian, over there, someone supporting the likes of a pure democracy movement are the crooks and cronies from the Yeltsin era. Those crooks and cronies, in turn, are the very former communist leaders that they rebelled against to begin with!
Secondly, yes, there is Fox News and they tend to feature columnists that are sympathetic to the right wing of American politics. Guess what, that's half the country dude. The only reason Republicans are in trouble now, well, there are a lot, is because of the skyrocketing cost of energy and the growing realization that the Republicans in Washington aren't so Republican after all. If you think the likes of Hannity give Bush a blank check, you'd be dead wrong. Hannity -routinely- condemns Bush on immigration and was one of the key players to stop the Bush immigration reform bill dead in its tracks. Similarly, just wait until Bush flip flops on the ridiculous law of the sea treaty or tries to enact some sort of a carbon tax. He'd be dead meat.
Finally, the key difference between the USA and other places around the world that the left is so fond of comparing us too, is that, the left wing is allowed to spout its own opinions. If MoveOn was in Russia or China, they most certainly not exist. But then, neither would the NRA.