I've had enough of this arms race. I think we need to start executing some of these people. If ya get caught writing a virus, you should be whacked. If you are not a US citizen, then you should be on your way to Gitmo, to get whacked.
Generally speaking, art and politics don't mix, and, if it does, the result is usually propaganda. If, as some have posted, they had Wolverine ripping up Scooter Libby, that would really be propaganda. But unlike supposed "real" artists, Marvel seems to have struck a thought provoking balance.
This Marvel work has many interpretations. It could be about the war on terror, but it could also be about gun control, with superheros as an allegorical reference to guns.. registration, ya know.
Those of us who are already against all the Homeland Security crap and USA PATRIOT have something to root for, but also, those who are genuinely in favor have a format with which they can explore for themselves the consequences of what they believe in, and can, in their own minds, decide if they really do deserve liberty still, after trading it for security.
I worked at a DOT BURSTER in 2000, in big wide open space in the burbs, and they had free pizza every Fridays, everyone could wear jeans, I could roll in more or less whenever I wanted, and we all had potentially millions of dollars in soon to be worthless stock options. When hired they asked me if I wanted Linux, or Windows, or both. All of our servers were named after Transformers.
Now, I have a little cubicle, a company issued notebook running Windows XP, and no stock options. All of our servers are named based on an established IBM numbering system. I get to work from home a bit more but that's only because I commute 4 hours a day.
Sure, this gig pays more, but the work environment is not nearly the same. There's no heady optimism about the future, and that, really, when you think about it, the collapse of the dot net boom and worse, the later ruling about expensing stock options, and then the war, this decade has been utterly depressing.
Here's why MS won't say which patent it is. We as Joe Shmoes have no money, but there are plenty of people that are plenty pissed off at MS that do, and for them, a long patent lawsuit would be a nice hobby.
So, let's Microsoft publicizes their 200 patents. A well heeled enemy finds that Microsoft's claim is weak on just ONE of them, and puts up some dope (aka, one of us), to challenge that claim. A feature is added to Linux, the dope (aka, one of us), puts up our web site, calling Microsoft on and saying the claim is BS, and then saying, jeez, this is your "strongest" patent (a lie), but one that basically tells Wall Street that Microsoft's patent portfolio is questionable, and so is the company. Therefor, Microsoft must sue.
The case goes on to trial, at which point, the future of Microsoft hangs in the balance of the sentiments of a judge. Now, under normal circumstances, Microsoft being a business, one would expect that they would get a fairer hearing in a court system packed with plenty of Reagan / Bush ^ 2 appointees. But, there's a lot of reasons that this doesn't happen.
1. Culture : Microsoft has a corporate culture of overriding arrogance, not the sort of downright evil midwestern or southern old boys network sensibilities of the GOP. In short, Microsoft is a monopoly that buys all of Al Gore's books, its just a total aberration and the people are just plain goofy, a culture clash with the right is inevitable, even if the commercial interests are the same.
2. It's More Profitable to Destroy Microsoft. Microsoft has won. They've saturated the market and are like a utility - no growth. Why not smash that company, and in the wake of one falling mighty empire, there's plenty of room for growth in rising competitors. I can't make much money off of MS stock, but I can make plenty of money out of rising profits in 5 or 6 nimble competitors arising out of the wreckage. You could quitely unload your MS stock, put it into say a few smaller players like, um, Novell or Red Hat, and make a mountain of money.
In short, Microsoft really is in a situation where, yes, they have everything to lose, and nothing to gain. And really, exactly which MS customer will remain an MS customer once Microsoft sues them for using a patent infringing product? Every data center on the planet will be switching to Linux as they retire old systems.
Version 12, wow.... I remember Slack in Dr. Dobbs.
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Slackware 12.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Back then, they touted Linux as having 50,000 users!
This guy has no credibility whatsover. He goes out and blows out a big stink, doesn't get his advertising hits, and then blames it all on the mysterious and evil forces of dark capitalism in order to cover his ass. I'm playing my violin!
Once again, Bush the GREAT shows exactly how to chart a course for fairness, justice and truth. I think it was obvious to everyone that Scooter was the target of a Whitewater-esque witch hunt that had more to do with trying to pay back the Clinton investigations than it did any real crime, and I think the commute was fair. I used to think that history might only place Bush in the top ten of America's greatest presidents, perhaps behind Roosevelt in the last century, but now, I'm not sure that Bush might even be slighted by that.
Could it be that George W. Bush should be in the top 5 of America's greatest presidents?
Dude, the stuff you just wrote is sadly typical of the blatherings of modern day americans who, it seems, have been completely misinformed as to the ideals held by those founders of this great nation.
That's a good point, and believe it or not, when I'm not trumpeting Wilsonian Foreign Policy, I've got my head firmly in the isolationist camp. There's a big part of me that wants to withdraw completely from NATO and all the other world wide institutions we are in, tell the UN to stuff it, build electric cars and leave the middle east to eat their oil,
However, the one thing is, Jefferson was a bomb thrower of a revolutionary type, and he tended to do the exact opposite of what he preached. For example, the Louisiana Purchase comes to mind. Jefferson the idealist would NEVER do the sort of executive power he wielded, but Jefferson was not afraid to toss away his ideology when he saw an opportunity, and so, without congressional approval, and really, without even following the Constitution, he went and bought a ton of land.
Why are our values "better" than the values of other people on this planet? Who the fuck made us "the boss"? It's people like you, with your "values", that got us attacked in the first place, and it's people like you, with your "values", that have America nearly universally hated on the planet.
You are probably too stoned to notice, but America has the highest immigration rate into the country, so, obviously people don't hate us that much if they all want to live here. You can ignore the facts all you want, but, America has a better culture because every conceivable physical measure indicates that our nation is the best. The highest GDP of any nation in the world, the highest economic growth of any industrialized nation, on average, and the highest ability for a person who gets rich to retain their wealth. On top of all of that, America also has among the highest degrees of political and cultural freedom. All of that means, in the middle east, they have tribal societies where men completely dominate their women, don't really do anything to earn a living, and blame it all on everyone else. I know if America had a reserve of oil like Saudi Arabia, the country would find more ways to put people to work around that oil than the Islamist regimes ever had.
Now, this isn't to say that somehow the American people are intrinsically better that this superiority can continue indefinitely. Indeed, our superiority is a combination of how much we work, educate ourselves, and organize ourselves politically, and those lessons can and should be exported.
Who cares if they've been attacking other nations?
Oh, I get it. Mr. Freedom here only gives a shit about himself. Sorry, but when you are the greatest nation in the world, you have a duty to spread your knowledge around the world and advance the state of human affairs. All the great empires have done this, going backwards through history - the British and French, then into dark ages we have the Ottomans and other Islamic empires, before that, the Romans, the Greeks and Persians, and on the other side of the globe, the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Japanese, and India. And, as a practical matter, the USA trades so much with so many nations, that, when ANY nation on the planet is attacked, the USA suffers economically from it to some degree.
Look at all those planes they're attacking our guys with (let alone anyone else)
I would say that is proof of just smart these people can be. I know a guy in Iraq whose buddy was killed because the local al qaeda militia they were fighting had a few Phds that knew how to get and make Tungsten fleschettes and mount them with IEDs - goes right through most armor and cuts people in half. That sucks. The fact of the matter is that Islamic world is gaining all the technology but without the benefit of western bitter experiences of the renaissance to temper their religious fanaticism. If you think Jerry Falwell is bad, you should read some of the materials that they are producing.
For around 1200 of those 1500 years, I might add, Islamic nations blew us westerners away technologically. Let's see if we can rattle off a few firsts, let's see first really big use of gunnery, combined arms, legendary Damascus steel (oh yeah, if you think the Japanese were good sword makers, you should see the Arabs at their height), algebra, the number 0, maps, navigation. When the remnants of Ghenghis Khans hoards finally made it to Europe, it was largely the long running battles with the Islamic people that saved Europe from being overrun altogether. There was no way a feudal French state could fight off a threat like that, but, a massive and well financed Islamic army could and did.
It was really only the western arrival at the scientific method at the same time a calculus emerged to exploit that put westerners on top. And again, our lead is always fleeting. If they start educating themselves, and we stop, we'll wind up in the dark ages that they are in, and they'll trample us.
Or buys a radio station, or two... seriously, there's enough local stations out there that Apple could pick up a few, then, use their radio network to leverage iTunes. Sure, Universal might bail, but, within a few years, top Universal Artists would wind up on the bottom of the hit parade. In the very least, Apple could sponsor up and coming talent out there with better deals, like more money for the artist, or at least, more creative control. I'd be willing to bet that more acts would sign with Apple who has the market of the future, versus Universal, who has a bunch of CD stores on their way to going belly up.
What Apple has done is create the Windows of Music. You either play on that platform, or die.
Let's assume for one moment that what you are saying is correct (although I don't believe for one moment that it is), then since these are independent applications, then it's very easy to disable or uninstall them if you don't like them phoning home.
Of course its is true. Strong networking is one of the greatest reasons to use Linux. I've not tried Vista yet, but my Suse Linux 10 blows even Windows Server 2003 out of the water for how it handles lots of applications with lots of connections. And please, don't even get me started about contrasting the horror of Winsock with the elegance of Linux sockets.
So, pray tell, how would you do this in Windows where the "phoning home" is being done by a stealth application that's running as part of the intrinsic underlying OS.
Most of these requests are from Services that can be turned off. Others are from applications that you don't have to use. You don't -have to use Media Player-. And, in the worst case, if you have a decent firewall, it will ask you if some application is allowed to use the internet.
All I am saying is that there is a cultural predisposition in Linux to trust that things talk to the internet are doing so for legitimate reasons, but, that this totally flipped in Windows. Getting icons for albums, synching up the time, is a pretty benign business for any operating system, and honestly, sending bug reports to a server for analysis are all good things, but, because it is Microsoft, it is difficult for some people to accept that that is the way they are.
My feeling though is, probably 99% of that MS traffic is actually benign and beneficial in some way, becuase, the developers that think it up are geeks after all. IT's just the guys that do the Windows Vista Registration and Validation that spoiled the party for everyone else. Basically, Microsoft has sort of shot themselves in the foot with using the internet as an enforcement mechanism, as now consumers will never quite trust the rest of their internet activities.
Linux provides Microsoft with a competitive reason to further intertwine its entire Windows software stack into a set of offerings targetted directly to different users. I imagine, in the future, there will be Windows : Developer Edition, that comes with some sort of Vista Pro and Visual Studio, or Windows : Home Edition, the comes with some sort of integration with XBox 360 integration and a slew of built in game subscriptions.
These moves would shut out or down Windows ISVs, but would provide a bit more revenue growth for Microsoft. Were someone to cry anti-trust foul, Microsoft could, and has, pointed to Linux as a real competitor. This isn't unlikely. When Linux couldn't even run with many kinds of mice and had little hardware graphics acceleration, Microsoft claimed they were a competitor during the Netscape trial.
It's the Dunkin Donuts defense, and it works. The backstory is that Dunkin Donuts drove Amy Joy out of business, but argued that it wasn't a monopoly because you could still buy donuts from Entemanns and other local bakeries. Microsoft is doing the same thing.
And, the other thing, too, is that the consumer OS space really doesn't have much room for MS. Consumers generally don't go to the store to buy operating systems, all the MS money is in preloads. So, if consumers do switch to Linux, MS has already collected its first payment. Then, as most consumers do, they switch back to Windows, by going to the store and buying a copy of something like Vista. In other words, the more frequently a user switches back and forth between Windows and Linux, the more likely they will make Microsoft even more money.
So they don't want to support Linux, but they don't want to quite kill it off either.
In fact, I'd bet there's MORE applications on Linux that send your private information back to some web server somewhere, just because Linux sockets are easier to write for than their Windows cousins and so Linux has and will always have a lead over networking for developers. A quick look bears this out.. there's my SUSE Yast, KDevelop's help system, the tank game, the time, KTorrent, the music client, and more..
The irony is thus: to keep into GPL culture, all the personal creativity and ingenuity that I apply is not something that is considered valuable, but under Windows, it is. Sounds to me like Linux people here are just trying to take a few shots at MS, which is always a good thing to do, but without thinking it through.
The end game of any open information system is going to be an end to the right to privacy. First it will be open source, then, open financials, and then open everything.
So, you might charaterize things less harshly as follows : Linux tries to let you keep your personal information private but all of your work product is public, and Windows keeps all of your work product private but your personal information is public. I guess if you wanted a system where you could develop in closed source, and not have an evil empire attached to it, you'd probably have to resurrect OS/2 or BeOS. But then, if everyone switched to those, then, whatever institution owned would by default become the evil empire and we'd all miss Microsoft in the same way people miss IBM.
You are utterly ignorant when you post about in-family marriages. 95% of the time the wife is a 13 year old girl marrying a 40 year old man. You go ahead and call that consentual and please, please, tell me that values women. Of course, liberals have turned the role model for women into holocaust fitness prostitutes, so I guess, maybe, that is a value to you.
Sticking our noses into other peoples businesses is what made this country number one. The fact of the matter is that our values are BETTER than the values of other people on this planet and you can only watch them screw each other up so much before you have to step in.
In any case, we need to adjust the values of Islamic people, and Bush's vision of using 9/11 as a pretext to clean house in the middle east was exactly the correct strategic call. Invading the middle east by the USA is LONG OVERDUE. Unfortunately, the brilliant strategy was matched by lousy tactics, and so now we're in the mess. At least we are still killing tons of islamists, and that's always a good thing.
Islamist nations have been attacking non-Islamist nations continuously for the last 1500 years, since the religion was founded. For as much as everyone bitches about the Crusades, few people seem willing to note that the Islamists were attacking France 300 years BEFORE that, and that, Palestine, etc, were all part of the Byzantine Empire, thus, considered Christian lands, not Islamist. They attack and attack and attack and they will not stop attacking, ever. You can't cast Islamist aggression in the same mold as petty European power politics, becuase it isn't.
Islamists are a much more powerful enemy than the Nazis or the Soviets ever were, simply because they are the product of a culture that has survived for 1500 years of continual aggressive war against the rest of the world. And this 1500 year Islamic war against the world has come to us, pure and simple, and if you can't see that, you are just a fool. 9/11 was not our fault any more than the Battle of Tours or the Siege of Vienna was the fault of France or Austria respectively.
I disagree with the author because he's got a stupid premise - that people can only live 50 - 100 years. There's no law of physics that says we can't tinker with our genes until we can live for 0,000 years, at which point, intersteller flight becomes trivial, if boring.
Campaigns for public offices ARE NOT private parties. Even you should know that.
They most certainly are.
Only because the government lies to people and demonizes drugs they don't approve of. As for your "80%", I seriously doubt this, can you provide a link to any studies that support this? There's a big difference between making it illegal for someone to kill or harm another, which violate their rights, and making it illegal to to do whateer a person wants in the privacy of their own home while they aren't harming anyone else.
The government doesn't demonize it... rather, the government responds to the wishes of the people who have seen first hand what happens to most people who use drugs. Sure, in their teens and early 20s, it seems like they are doing ok, but, by the time they hit 30, its pretty obvious that they are falling behind the pack. I know lots of people who started out, seemingly very bright, got into drugs, and in one way or another completely screwed up their lives. It's just a waste, and the worst part is, the people that are using drugs continue to live in this bubble believing that they are only hurting themselves.
What, you don't believe a citizen should be able to speak their mind to the president? You can. Send him a letter or drop him an email. Showing up at a function wearing clothes touting the opposite candidate is really a form of an assault. You are trying to disrupt someone else's gathering. The Nazis used to do this is Germany, during their rise to power. They would send brownshirts to other people's campaign meetings - particularly the socialists and communists, and the presence was really designed to intimidate. Sometimes they'd get into fights with the other party, but a lot of times their presence would just serve to intimidate. Sure, you might feel that it is funny that you can show up at a Bush rally waving around your Kerry shirt, but, how would you feel if I me and ten other guys dressed up in black suits and showed up at one of your political action meetings, and just followed one person around.
You just aren't thinking your position through, and, that begs the question: "Are you on drugs?"
The ultimate question, though, is, what evidence are we missing about the universe now? In a less serious note, on our own little earth, the original paper containers that contained the seeds of life dropped off by the Vorlons a few billion years ago have long since vanished, along with the biodegradable remains of the probes periodically sent to manage our supposedly accidental evolution!
The whole problem, in my mind, with the Roswell "conspiracy", is the part that has a flight of P-51 Mustangs shooting down a spacecraft capable of travelling at intersteller speeds. As good as the P-51 was back in its day, it would be almost miraculous for one of these planes to shoot down a modern jet aircraft such as the F-22 or the EF-2000. Obviously, the technology required for manned interstellar space flight is easily 50 - 100 years beyond what we have now, and so, the claim seems utterly foolish. In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades?
It's certainly an issue for the other 20%. Do believe anything the government does that a majority of people approve of "is not really an issue"?
Anything else isn't democracy. What you are really arguing for is your own oligarchy against the wishes of the vast majority of people that are fed up with their sons, daughters, husbands and wives, fucking up their lives with drugs. While I do not agree with the present approach to the war on drugs, I think it is obvious to anyone who has seen what drugs really do to people that some drugs should be illegal.
The inability to buy whatever you want to injest is a restriction on your freedom and your liberty.
Not if the rest of society has to bear the cost of what you injest. In the case of trans-fats, its pretty clear that they cause an increased risk of heart attacks, in which case, you either die and thus leave a bunch of people to be supported by the state, or, you live and a bunch of other people have their premiums used to pay your giant medical bill.
On a different track, to stop you from "expressing yourself however you want", you cannot marry your immediate family, you cannot marry someone of the same sex (except for one state, and those marriages aren't acknowledged if you move away from that state), you cannot walk onto any street shooting a gun (whether or not people are around). Hell, you are not even able to walk into a crowded theater and yell "FIRE!"
Marrying into your immediate family is generally a sort of rape in cultures where it is practiced and it certainly devalues women, so that isn't a form of expression, its a kind of an assault. Same sex marriage doesn't effect me, because I'm straight, so the issue is not THAT important to me. However, I do have some friends that are gay and to support their cause I withheld donations to the Republican Party in the last election, and you'll notice that they lost. Shooting a gun in public places is also a form of assault, as guys walking around shooting guns off tend to intimidate people, and yes, it is banned, and yelling FIRE in a crowded theater is also a form of assault, not expression, as the intent is clearly to provoke a reaction that can cause people to hurt themselves.
really could go on and on, but I think I'll move on to some other stuff you have said, now that I've totally torn apart one part of your argument.
No, you've only demonstrated that you don't know the difference between expression and assault.
The moment you decide you don't care what they are doing (and actually stop paying attention), you might as well leave America
My point is that there is a huge difference between keeping an eye on things and obsessing over them, and younger people tend towards the latter.
Let me ask you a question. Is it OK for me to go breaking into people's houses, so long as I don't break into yours? That is what you are saying about government.. "Whatever they do is OK, so long as it doesn't impact YOUR life."
The government isn't breaking into anyone's houses that I really don't want broken into. And that's really the point. You try to invent a tyranny where none really exists, in order to inflate your own sense of self worth. Most of your complaints about supposed government oppression are petty and insult the very real oppressive places around the world. It's like everyone that calls Bush or Clinton a Nazi or a Commie, has no real clue as to what the Nazis and Commies were really all about. I've MET people that fought at Stalingrad. They were veterans of the Great Patriotic War, as they call it, got fed up with Stalin's bullshit, and came to America. They told me what hardship really was, what tyranny really was, and none of your charges against our present government actually measure up to that.
If I've ever seen someone that needed a clue, buddy, it's you You prey upon people's lack of historical knowledge in order to cash in. I am here to say that yes, I am involved, and I have determined that the greatest threat to the country is the scores of petty demagogues like you, on either the left or the right.
I'm sorry, but your whole statement is absurd. First off, Exxon Mobil represents about 300,000 people that work for them, and MILLIONS of people who own there stock. Thus, the rights of those millions of people trumped the rights of a handful of digital hooligans, and Democracy worked, again.
Besides, what do you mean, only in America? Those people would be dead if they were in China. And, anywhere in the middle east, their families probably would have been stoned to death too.
Slashdot Mirror
That sorta makes the OS pointless, me thinks. Besides, there is a lot to be said for having a really thin and light framework for a tiny EXE.
I've had enough of this arms race. I think we need to start executing some of these people. If ya get caught writing a virus, you should be whacked. If you are not a US citizen, then you should be on your way to Gitmo, to get whacked.
I've just had enough. No mercy.
Generally speaking, art and politics don't mix, and, if it does, the result is usually propaganda. If, as some have posted, they had Wolverine ripping up Scooter Libby, that would really be propaganda. But unlike supposed "real" artists, Marvel seems to have struck a thought provoking balance.
This Marvel work has many interpretations. It could be about the war on terror, but it could also be about gun control, with superheros as an allegorical reference to guns.. registration, ya know.
Those of us who are already against all the Homeland Security crap and USA PATRIOT have something to root for, but also, those who are genuinely in favor have a format with which they can explore for themselves the consequences of what they believe in, and can, in their own minds, decide if they really do deserve liberty still, after trading it for security.
I worked at a DOT BURSTER in 2000, in big wide open space in the burbs, and they had free pizza every Fridays, everyone could wear jeans, I could roll in more or less whenever I wanted, and we all had potentially millions of dollars in soon to be worthless stock options. When hired they asked me if I wanted Linux, or Windows, or both. All of our servers were named after Transformers.
Now, I have a little cubicle, a company issued notebook running Windows XP, and no stock options. All of our servers are named based on an established IBM numbering system. I get to work from home a bit more but that's only because I commute 4 hours a day.
Sure, this gig pays more, but the work environment is not nearly the same. There's no heady optimism about the future, and that, really, when you think about it, the collapse of the dot net boom and worse, the later ruling about expensing stock options, and then the war, this decade has been utterly depressing.
Here's why MS won't say which patent it is. We as Joe Shmoes have no money, but there are plenty of people that are plenty pissed off at MS that do, and for them, a long patent lawsuit would be a nice hobby.
So, let's Microsoft publicizes their 200 patents. A well heeled enemy finds that Microsoft's claim is weak on just ONE of them, and puts up some dope (aka, one of us), to challenge that claim. A feature is added to Linux, the dope (aka, one of us), puts up our web site, calling Microsoft on and saying the claim is BS, and then saying, jeez, this is your "strongest" patent (a lie), but one that basically tells Wall Street that Microsoft's patent portfolio is questionable, and so is the company. Therefor, Microsoft must sue.
The case goes on to trial, at which point, the future of Microsoft hangs in the balance of the sentiments of a judge. Now, under normal circumstances, Microsoft being a business, one would expect that they would get a fairer hearing in a court system packed with plenty of Reagan / Bush ^ 2 appointees. But, there's a lot of reasons that this doesn't happen.
1. Culture : Microsoft has a corporate culture of overriding arrogance, not the sort of downright evil midwestern or southern old boys network sensibilities of the GOP. In short, Microsoft is a monopoly that buys all of Al Gore's books, its just a total aberration and the people are just plain goofy, a culture clash with the right is inevitable, even if the commercial interests are the same.
2. It's More Profitable to Destroy Microsoft. Microsoft has won. They've saturated the market and are like a utility - no growth. Why not smash that company, and in the wake of one falling mighty empire, there's plenty of room for growth in rising competitors. I can't make much money off of MS stock, but I can make plenty of money out of rising profits in 5 or 6 nimble competitors arising out of the wreckage. You could quitely unload your MS stock, put it into say a few smaller players like, um, Novell or Red Hat, and make a mountain of money.
In short, Microsoft really is in a situation where, yes, they have everything to lose, and nothing to gain. And really, exactly which MS customer will remain an MS customer once Microsoft sues them for using a patent infringing product? Every data center on the planet will be switching to Linux as they retire old systems.
Back then, they touted Linux as having 50,000 users!
This guy has no credibility whatsover. He goes out and blows out a big stink, doesn't get his advertising hits, and then blames it all on the mysterious and evil forces of dark capitalism in order to cover his ass. I'm playing my violin!
Well, it all really hinges on how much oil we eventually get out of Iraq.
Once again, Bush the GREAT shows exactly how to chart a course for fairness, justice and truth. I think it was obvious to everyone that Scooter was the target of a Whitewater-esque witch hunt that had more to do with trying to pay back the Clinton investigations than it did any real crime, and I think the commute was fair. I used to think that history might only place Bush in the top ten of America's greatest presidents, perhaps behind Roosevelt in the last century, but now, I'm not sure that Bush might even be slighted by that.
Could it be that George W. Bush should be in the top 5 of America's greatest presidents?
THREE CHEERS FOR BUSH THE GREAT!
Dude, the stuff you just wrote is sadly typical of the blatherings of modern day americans who, it seems, have been completely misinformed as to the ideals held by those founders of this great nation.
That's a good point, and believe it or not, when I'm not trumpeting Wilsonian Foreign Policy, I've got my head firmly in the isolationist camp. There's a big part of me that wants to withdraw completely from NATO and all the other world wide institutions we are in, tell the UN to stuff it, build electric cars and leave the middle east to eat their oil,
However, the one thing is, Jefferson was a bomb thrower of a revolutionary type, and he tended to do the exact opposite of what he preached. For example, the Louisiana Purchase comes to mind. Jefferson the idealist would NEVER do the sort of executive power he wielded, but Jefferson was not afraid to toss away his ideology when he saw an opportunity, and so, without congressional approval, and really, without even following the Constitution, he went and bought a ton of land.
Why are our values "better" than the values of other people on this planet? Who the fuck made us "the boss"? It's people like you, with your "values", that got us attacked in the first place, and it's people like you, with your "values", that have America nearly universally hated on the planet.
You are probably too stoned to notice, but America has the highest immigration rate into the country, so, obviously people don't hate us that much if they all want to live here. You can ignore the facts all you want, but, America has a better culture because every conceivable physical measure indicates that our nation is the best. The highest GDP of any nation in the world, the highest economic growth of any industrialized nation, on average, and the highest ability for a person who gets rich to retain their wealth. On top of all of that, America also has among the highest degrees of political and cultural freedom. All of that means, in the middle east, they have tribal societies where men completely dominate their women, don't really do anything to earn a living, and blame it all on everyone else. I know if America had a reserve of oil like Saudi Arabia, the country would find more ways to put people to work around that oil than the Islamist regimes ever had.
Now, this isn't to say that somehow the American people are intrinsically better that this superiority can continue indefinitely. Indeed, our superiority is a combination of how much we work, educate ourselves, and organize ourselves politically, and those lessons can and should be exported.
Who cares if they've been attacking other nations?
Oh, I get it. Mr. Freedom here only gives a shit about himself. Sorry, but when you are the greatest nation in the world, you have a duty to spread your knowledge around the world and advance the state of human affairs. All the great empires have done this, going backwards through history - the British and French, then into dark ages we have the Ottomans and other Islamic empires, before that, the Romans, the Greeks and Persians, and on the other side of the globe, the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Japanese, and India. And, as a practical matter, the USA trades so much with so many nations, that, when ANY nation on the planet is attacked, the USA suffers economically from it to some degree.
Look at all those planes they're attacking our guys with (let alone anyone else)
I would say that is proof of just smart these people can be. I know a guy in Iraq whose buddy was killed because the local al qaeda militia they were fighting had a few Phds that knew how to get and make Tungsten fleschettes and mount them with IEDs - goes right through most armor and cuts people in half. That sucks. The fact of the matter is that Islamic world is gaining all the technology but without the benefit of western bitter experiences of the renaissance to temper their religious fanaticism. If you think Jerry Falwell is bad, you should read some of the materials that they are producing.
For around 1200 of those 1500 years, I might add, Islamic nations blew us westerners away technologically. Let's see if we can rattle off a few firsts, let's see first really big use of gunnery, combined arms, legendary Damascus steel (oh yeah, if you think the Japanese were good sword makers, you should see the Arabs at their height), algebra, the number 0, maps, navigation. When the remnants of Ghenghis Khans hoards finally made it to Europe, it was largely the long running battles with the Islamic people that saved Europe from being overrun altogether. There was no way a feudal French state could fight off a threat like that, but, a massive and well financed Islamic army could and did.
It was really only the western arrival at the scientific method at the same time a calculus emerged to exploit that put westerners on top. And again, our lead is always fleeting. If they start educating themselves, and we stop, we'll wind up in the dark ages that they are in, and they'll trample us.
Or buys a radio station, or two... seriously, there's enough local stations out there that Apple could pick up a few, then, use their radio network to leverage iTunes. Sure, Universal might bail, but, within a few years, top Universal Artists would wind up on the bottom of the hit parade. In the very least, Apple could sponsor up and coming talent out there with better deals, like more money for the artist, or at least, more creative control. I'd be willing to bet that more acts would sign with Apple who has the market of the future, versus Universal, who has a bunch of CD stores on their way to going belly up.
What Apple has done is create the Windows of Music. You either play on that platform, or die.
Let's assume for one moment that what you are saying is correct (although I don't believe for one moment that it is), then since these are independent applications, then it's very easy to disable or uninstall them if you don't like them phoning home.
Of course its is true. Strong networking is one of the greatest reasons to use Linux. I've not tried Vista yet, but my Suse Linux 10 blows even Windows Server 2003 out of the water for how it handles lots of applications with lots of connections. And please, don't even get me started about contrasting the horror of Winsock with the elegance of Linux sockets.
So, pray tell, how would you do this in Windows where the "phoning home" is being done by a stealth application that's running as part of the intrinsic underlying OS.
Most of these requests are from Services that can be turned off. Others are from applications that you don't have to use. You don't -have to use Media Player-. And, in the worst case, if you have a decent firewall, it will ask you if some application is allowed to use the internet.
All I am saying is that there is a cultural predisposition in Linux to trust that things talk to the internet are doing so for legitimate reasons, but, that this totally flipped in Windows. Getting icons for albums, synching up the time, is a pretty benign business for any operating system, and honestly, sending bug reports to a server for analysis are all good things, but, because it is Microsoft, it is difficult for some people to accept that that is the way they are.
My feeling though is, probably 99% of that MS traffic is actually benign and beneficial in some way, becuase, the developers that think it up are geeks after all. IT's just the guys that do the Windows Vista Registration and Validation that spoiled the party for everyone else. Basically, Microsoft has sort of shot themselves in the foot with using the internet as an enforcement mechanism, as now consumers will never quite trust the rest of their internet activities.
Linux provides Microsoft with a competitive reason to further intertwine its entire Windows software stack into a set of offerings targetted directly to different users. I imagine, in the future, there will be Windows : Developer Edition, that comes with some sort of Vista Pro and Visual Studio, or Windows : Home Edition, the comes with some sort of integration with XBox 360 integration and a slew of built in game subscriptions.
These moves would shut out or down Windows ISVs, but would provide a bit more revenue growth for Microsoft. Were someone to cry anti-trust foul, Microsoft could, and has, pointed to Linux as a real competitor. This isn't unlikely. When Linux couldn't even run with many kinds of mice and had little hardware graphics acceleration, Microsoft claimed they were a competitor during the Netscape trial.
It's the Dunkin Donuts defense, and it works. The backstory is that Dunkin Donuts drove Amy Joy out of business, but argued that it wasn't a monopoly because you could still buy donuts from Entemanns and other local bakeries. Microsoft is doing the same thing.
And, the other thing, too, is that the consumer OS space really doesn't have much room for MS. Consumers generally don't go to the store to buy operating systems, all the MS money is in preloads. So, if consumers do switch to Linux, MS has already collected its first payment. Then, as most consumers do, they switch back to Windows, by going to the store and buying a copy of something like Vista. In other words, the more frequently a user switches back and forth between Windows and Linux, the more likely they will make Microsoft even more money.
So they don't want to support Linux, but they don't want to quite kill it off either.
In fact, I'd bet there's MORE applications on Linux that send your private information back to some web server somewhere, just because Linux sockets are easier to write for than their Windows cousins and so Linux has and will always have a lead over networking for developers. A quick look bears this out.. there's my SUSE Yast, KDevelop's help system, the tank game, the time, KTorrent, the music client, and more..
The irony is thus: to keep into GPL culture, all the personal creativity and ingenuity that I apply is not something that is considered valuable, but under Windows, it is. Sounds to me like Linux people here are just trying to take a few shots at MS, which is always a good thing to do, but without thinking it through.
The end game of any open information system is going to be an end to the right to privacy. First it will be open source, then, open financials, and then open everything.
So, you might charaterize things less harshly as follows : Linux tries to let you keep your personal information private but all of your work product is public, and Windows keeps all of your work product private but your personal information is public. I guess if you wanted a system where you could develop in closed source, and not have an evil empire attached to it, you'd probably have to resurrect OS/2 or BeOS. But then, if everyone switched to those, then, whatever institution owned would by default become the evil empire and we'd all miss Microsoft in the same way people miss IBM.
You are utterly ignorant when you post about in-family marriages. 95% of the time the wife is a 13 year old girl marrying a 40 year old man. You go ahead and call that consentual and please, please, tell me that values women. Of course, liberals have turned the role model for women into holocaust fitness prostitutes, so I guess, maybe, that is a value to you.
Sticking our noses into other peoples businesses is what made this country number one. The fact of the matter is that our values are BETTER than the values of other people on this planet and you can only watch them screw each other up so much before you have to step in.
In any case, we need to adjust the values of Islamic people, and Bush's vision of using 9/11 as a pretext to clean house in the middle east was exactly the correct strategic call. Invading the middle east by the USA is LONG OVERDUE. Unfortunately, the brilliant strategy was matched by lousy tactics, and so now we're in the mess. At least we are still killing tons of islamists, and that's always a good thing.
Islamist nations have been attacking non-Islamist nations continuously for the last 1500 years, since the religion was founded. For as much as everyone bitches about the Crusades, few people seem willing to note that the Islamists were attacking France 300 years BEFORE that, and that, Palestine, etc, were all part of the Byzantine Empire, thus, considered Christian lands, not Islamist. They attack and attack and attack and they will not stop attacking, ever. You can't cast Islamist aggression in the same mold as petty European power politics, becuase it isn't.
Islamists are a much more powerful enemy than the Nazis or the Soviets ever were, simply because they are the product of a culture that has survived for 1500 years of continual aggressive war against the rest of the world. And this 1500 year Islamic war against the world has come to us, pure and simple, and if you can't see that, you are just a fool. 9/11 was not our fault any more than the Battle of Tours or the Siege of Vienna was the fault of France or Austria respectively.
I disagree with the author because he's got a stupid premise - that people can only live 50 - 100 years. There's no law of physics that says we can't tinker with our genes until we can live for 0,000 years, at which point, intersteller flight becomes trivial, if boring.
Campaigns for public offices ARE NOT private parties. Even you should know that.
They most certainly are.
Only because the government lies to people and demonizes drugs they don't approve of. As for your "80%", I seriously doubt this, can you provide a link to any studies that support this?
There's a big difference between making it illegal for someone to kill or harm another, which violate their rights, and making it illegal to to do whateer a person wants in the privacy of their own home while they aren't harming anyone else.
The government doesn't demonize it... rather, the government responds to the wishes of the people who have seen first hand what happens to most people who use drugs. Sure, in their teens and early 20s, it seems like they are doing ok, but, by the time they hit 30, its pretty obvious that they are falling behind the pack. I know lots of people who started out, seemingly very bright, got into drugs, and in one way or another completely screwed up their lives. It's just a waste, and the worst part is, the people that are using drugs continue to live in this bubble believing that they are only hurting themselves.
What, you don't believe a citizen should be able to speak their mind to the president?
You can. Send him a letter or drop him an email. Showing up at a function wearing clothes touting the opposite candidate is really a form of an assault. You are trying to disrupt someone else's gathering. The Nazis used to do this is Germany, during their rise to power. They would send brownshirts to other people's campaign meetings - particularly the socialists and communists, and the presence was really designed to intimidate. Sometimes they'd get into fights with the other party, but a lot of times their presence would just serve to intimidate. Sure, you might feel that it is funny that you can show up at a Bush rally waving around your Kerry shirt, but, how would you feel if I me and ten other guys dressed up in black suits and showed up at one of your political action meetings, and just followed one person around.
You just aren't thinking your position through, and, that begs the question: "Are you on drugs?"
The ultimate question, though, is, what evidence are we missing about the universe now? In a less serious note, on our own little earth, the original paper containers that contained the seeds of life dropped off by the Vorlons a few billion years ago have long since vanished, along with the biodegradable remains of the probes periodically sent to manage our supposedly accidental evolution!
The whole problem, in my mind, with the Roswell "conspiracy", is the part that has a flight of P-51 Mustangs shooting down a spacecraft capable of travelling at intersteller speeds. As good as the P-51 was back in its day, it would be almost miraculous for one of these planes to shoot down a modern jet aircraft such as the F-22 or the EF-2000. Obviously, the technology required for manned interstellar space flight is easily 50 - 100 years beyond what we have now, and so, the claim seems utterly foolish. In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades?
It's certainly an issue for the other 20%. Do believe anything the government does that a majority of people approve of "is not really an issue"?
Anything else isn't democracy. What you are really arguing for is your own oligarchy against the wishes of the vast majority of people that are fed up with their sons, daughters, husbands and wives, fucking up their lives with drugs. While I do not agree with the present approach to the war on drugs, I think it is obvious to anyone who has seen what drugs really do to people that some drugs should be illegal.
The inability to buy whatever you want to injest is a restriction on your freedom and your liberty.
Not if the rest of society has to bear the cost of what you injest. In the case of trans-fats, its pretty clear that they cause an increased risk of heart attacks, in which case, you either die and thus leave a bunch of people to be supported by the state, or, you live and a bunch of other people have their premiums used to pay your giant medical bill.
On a different track, to stop you from "expressing yourself however you want", you cannot marry your immediate family, you cannot marry someone of the same sex (except for one state, and those marriages aren't acknowledged if you move away from that state), you cannot walk onto any street shooting a gun (whether or not people are around). Hell, you are not even able to walk into a crowded theater and yell "FIRE!"
Marrying into your immediate family is generally a sort of rape in cultures where it is practiced and it certainly devalues women, so that isn't a form of expression, its a kind of an assault. Same sex marriage doesn't effect me, because I'm straight, so the issue is not THAT important to me. However, I do have some friends that are gay and to support their cause I withheld donations to the Republican Party in the last election, and you'll notice that they lost. Shooting a gun in public places is also a form of assault, as guys walking around shooting guns off tend to intimidate people, and yes, it is banned, and yelling FIRE in a crowded theater is also a form of assault, not expression, as the intent is clearly to provoke a reaction that can cause people to hurt themselves.
really could go on and on, but I think I'll move on to some other stuff you have said, now that I've totally torn apart one part of your argument.
No, you've only demonstrated that you don't know the difference between expression and assault.
The moment you decide you don't care what they are doing (and actually stop paying attention), you might as well leave America
My point is that there is a huge difference between keeping an eye on things and obsessing over them, and younger people tend towards the latter.
Let me ask you a question. Is it OK for me to go breaking into people's houses, so long as I don't break into yours? That is what you are saying about government.. "Whatever they do is OK, so long as it doesn't impact YOUR life."
The government isn't breaking into anyone's houses that I really don't want broken into. And that's really the point. You try to invent a tyranny where none really exists, in order to inflate your own sense of self worth. Most of your complaints about supposed government oppression are petty and insult the very real oppressive places around the world. It's like everyone that calls Bush or Clinton a Nazi or a Commie, has no real clue as to what the Nazis and Commies were really all about. I've MET people that fought at Stalingrad. They were veterans of the Great Patriotic War, as they call it, got fed up with Stalin's bullshit, and came to America. They told me what hardship really was, what tyranny really was, and none of your charges against our present government actually measure up to that.
If I've ever seen someone that needed a clue, buddy, it's you
You prey upon people's lack of historical knowledge in order to cash in. I am here to say that yes, I am involved, and I have determined that the greatest threat to the country is the scores of petty demagogues like you, on either the left or the right.
The millions of us who own Exxon stock applaud the actions of the company and its performance.
I'm sorry, but your whole statement is absurd. First off, Exxon Mobil represents about 300,000 people that work for them, and MILLIONS of people who own there stock. Thus, the rights of those millions of people trumped the rights of a handful of digital hooligans, and Democracy worked, again.
Besides, what do you mean, only in America? Those people would be dead if they were in China. And, anywhere in the middle east, their families probably would have been stoned to death too.
Look, here's my picture of Mohammed:
O O
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Try that in some other part of the world.