Some individuals, such as you, may be deterred by the punishments of others. Most aren't. This isn't opinion, but historic fact.
The Soviet Union is the most extreme example in recent history. Their philosophy was the same as that of other nations based on deterence: if the punishment is harsh enough people will be detered from committing the crime. It didn't work, they kept instituting increasingly harsh punishments and crimes continued to be committed. Many people simply do not believe that they will be caught. Talk to people in prison and you will find that they generally break into two categories: those who say they are innocent, and those who say they didn't think they'd get caught. If you don't think you are going to get caught, it doesn't really matter what the punishment is. Its related to the success of the lottery: logically people know that their chances of winning are virtually non-existant. Less logically, people assume that *they* are the special one who is the exception to the rule.
Arond 230 BC, the Ch'in dynasty in China also followed the deterence approach, and it directly lead to their downfall. In the army the penalty for being late was death, and the penalty for mutany was death. A group of conscripts wound up late one day and decided that they might was well mutany since it came to the same thing in the end. England ran into the same problem when they decided to "git tuff" on crime back around 1500 and they made punishments incredibly harsh in hopes of deterring criminals. That's where we got the phrase "as well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb", since the punishment for both was the same.
Obvously some people, a rather small minority it appears, are motivated by reason on these subjects. I don't play the lottory and I think that the fear of punishment is a factor in my own decision not to commit crimes. But I recognize that I'm not the norm here. Most people just don't think that way, as evidenced by the millions who play lotteries, and the millions in prison.
Well, I'll disagree with you here. While its true that Gentoo and LFS aren't truly wacking on the bare metal, they do force more thought and awareness of what's going on than Mandrake or Redhat. Honestly, both Mandrake and Redhat are about as easy to install as Windows (I'm speaking about my personal experience installing all three here, YMMV).
Personally I learned a lot about my system when I installed Gentoo. My next step is probably going to be along the lines you suggested, but if I'd tried that before Gentoo I would have hit a brick wall. There isn't an active LUG in Amarillo, so I don't have any people I can turn to for help, which means smaller steps like Gentoo are necessary for my learning.
I doubt that the government is the origin of the desire to tax VoIP. Think carefully now, what industry with billions to buy politicians with would *really* like high taxes on VoIP? The telephone companies maybe? Gee.....
This is simply the telephone companies seeing a new and competing technology arising and then doing its best to strangle that new technology. The government is, in this case, nothing more or less than the hired thug of the phone company. Watch carefully as various congresspeople who have, in a completely unrelated event, recieved large "contributions" from the phone companies manage to sneak in various provisions so that the VoIP tax actually exceeds the tax paid on normal phone service.
Money is not speach, and corporations are not people. But until the bulk of Americans agree with that obvious truth we will continue to see corporate "people" using huge wads of cash to "speak" to politicians and buy special taxes to kill competition (as well as special tax breaks for themselves). Which is why some people are so shrill about insisting that money is speah.
Mitnick's fame is something I can't comprehend. I don't see why we're showering him with honors and treating him like someone who has valuable input, or is worthy of praise
Mitnick was just another computer thug, as you say there's nothing impressive there. The only reason for Mitnick's fame is not what he did, but what was done *to* him.
After his arrest he was held, without charges, for over two years. It was the first of the anti-American arrest practices that Mr. Bush and the misnamed USA PATRIOT act have made much more common. The fact that he was held, without charges, without evidence, without a trial, without *anything* resembling due process, was such an affront to the very concepts that the US judicial system is theoretically based on that his case gathered massive attention. The fact that Mitnick, personally, was a lowlife thug and a pimple on the ass of hacking is irrelivant. His mistreatment was the important part.
Well, considering that Win95 didn't support sound cards without a third party driver, I can't really say that Linux is being outperformed by Win95... If the sound card manufactureres supplied drivers for Linux this would be a non-issue. The fact that Linux hackers have been dilligently reverse engineering the (often deliberately) obscure requirements of sound card hardware and that Linux is able to run many sound cards without any third party support is good.
His "point" that Win95 could handle the sound out of the box prooves nothing except that the hardware manufacturer gave MS the full specs, and apparently hasn't given the Linux development folks diddily. If we got full specs from the hardware people there wouldn't be problems like this. *MY* sound card came with Linux drivers so it had no problems at all. Every OS has a supported hardware list (even Windows), and if you leave that list you are taking the risk that your hardware won't work with your OS, I checked the list and bought a card that I knew would work, thus no problem. Same went for my video card, I purchased based on performance, price, and compatibility.
Don't misunderstand, Linux needs work in the usability and ease of installation department, but hardware incompatibility is no longer a really significant problem. As other people pointed out, it does seem as if the author of the article was deliberately seeking out distros that didn't have easy setups, and have difficulties with obscure hardware. Both Mandrake and Redhat are rather astonishingly easy to set up, and will automatically detect and use well over 90% of hardware.
I will argue that the positive changes happened dispite the WTO/IMF, not because of them. Given that the WTO/IMF routinely pressure governments to mandate lower wages and fewer benefits, I can't see how they are responsible for higher wages and better benefits unless you believe that they are engaging in some form of reverse psychology...
Additionally, all of your arguments fail to address the central fact that the WTO/IMF are organizations rooted completley in secrecy. If, as you claim, they are noble paragons of virtue working tirelessly to improve the lot of the third world, than why are their meetings completely closed? No live coverage. No transcripts released. No voting records shown. This means that we have a secretive group of individuals deciding the economic lives of people (which, as you correctly observe are frequently matters of life and death) without any accountability, or transparency. So if they ruin the lives of millions of people we have no record that can show us who is to blame. Which members should be replaced. Etc.
Trade is good, and free trade definately raises standards of living, of course. But powerful organizations which pressure governments to remove worker protections, remove people's right to unionize, remove environmental protections, etc, are not necessary to free trade. You seem blinded by their claims and unwilling to delve into their dubious accomplishments.
Direct elections of the president are hardly "mob rule". Any more than, say, direct elections for Senators are (which, you may recall was a hotly contested change some time back).
Also, for all the respect I have for our founders, we must remember that at the time they wrote the constitution, and their own other writings, the entire idea of a democratic government was considered dangerous and unworkable. For some time our form of government was called "The Great American Experiment". I'd say it succeeded, actually. The Electoral College is a left over from a time when people simply didn't trust the democratic process, these days are not those days.
Additionally, the principle protection from "mob rule" is the Constitution and its ammendments, which forbids congress and "the mob" from making certain laws. The Constitution can be changed but only with a supermajority. In theory this keeps the majority from oppressing the minority (which is what "mob rule" means). This is why I'm not too worried that the "Homosexuals are Second Class Citizens" ammendment will pass. I just don't think the Taliban wannabes here in America can muster the supermajority necessary to put their hysterics into the Constitution. Thus, you will notice, "mob rule" is neatly avoided. No wise unelected protectors needed, the system itself is designed to prevent certain problems.
So, in summary: the Electoral College is an anti-democratic institution left over from a time when our founders gave in to their aristocratic fears rather than properly trusting the system they designed to work. I respect the founders, but I'm not in worshipful admiration of them, they were human, and some of their ideas weren't good idea. What I *really* want is nationally mandated Instant Runoff Voting, which would allow for third parties to stand a chance of being elected, open more elections to challengers, etc.
I said you were playing word games because you were attempting to define what we now call "file sharing" as "sharing". Your hypothetical system would, indeed, be sharing. But you know damn well that isn't what people mean when they say "file sharing", they mean "file copying". Which is what I was addressing, which is why I said that "file sharing", in the sense that the word is actually used, not in a hypothetical sense, is stealing.
The system you propose is interesting, and would doubtless result in the destruction of the RIAA as well. Its only flaw is that while perfectly legal it wouldn't actually generate much money for the musicians. Its a nifty idea, and might be quite useful in the noble cause of crushing the RIAA, driving them before us, and hearing the lamentations of their lawyers. In the long run though we'll still have to figure out a way to pay the musicians.
If sharing were a violation, all libraries would be guilty. The violation is in copying.
You're playing wordgames. "Sharing" on a P2P network *is* copying. The fact that its called "file sharing" does not make it sharing, its still copying.
I download from P2P networks betimes. I'm not pretending to be some paragon of virtue, I'm just not going to be hypocritical and pretend that it isn't copyright violation, and therefore theft. I was one of the users of Fairtunes until it colapsed because while I have a pretty callous attitude towards stealing from the RIAA, I don't want to steal from the actual artists. Today, since fairtunes is no more and I haven't found a replacement I buy merchendise (which gets the musician more money than CD sales).
When a corporation steals millions from the American people, I think someone should be doing time for it.
Naah, jail is either a place to isolate the truly dangerous, or its a punishment because its a hellhole. I'd rather not put people into hellholes, even the Enron execs.
The most appropriate punishment for corporate crime is simple: first, pass laws that make convicted corporate criminals give *all* the money back. Then add penalties equal to 75% of their total net worth after they gave back the stolen money. Then forbid them from owning stock or bonds or having anything to do with the stock market, or ever serving on any board, as any executive position, etc. The idea being that they've that they've proven they can't be trusted to be involved in business, so we simply forbid them from being involved in business except as mailroom clerks or something similarly powerless. No need for jail, and I'll bet that my proposed penalties have a lot more "deterant" value ^_^
Prison sentences for non-violent crimes seem like a bad idea from every angle I look at them. Prison sentences for stealing a single copy of the new Madonna song sound incredibly stupid.
"Sharing" music on a P2P network is stealing, yes, but under what odd twisting of logic can it be worse than shoplifting the CD?
We are seeing the music industry going steadily more insane every day, and when something with that much money goes mad life gets interesting. Piracy isn't right, but it is inevitable during the transition between the RIAA and whatever distribution/compensation model we invent to replace it. Draconian laws with punishments as inappropriate as this one wants are definately not the solution to theft of music.
I find it especially ironic that the same congress that can't seem to punish the aristocrats who steal millions from their employees wants to send people to jail for up to ten years for stealing a little music...
True, but I've often heard diplomacy described as the art of saying, "Nice doggie"..while searching for a stick. I think Rumsfeld may have had a similar thought as he smiled at Saddam.
Nice description. I hadn't heard that one before, and I'm going to have to remember it.
However, in the case of Rumsfeld and Saddam, it doesn't describe what happened. Following the handshake the US government gave Saddam quite a bit of money, instructions for making various biological and chemical weapons (along with samples of the weapons for "defensive research"), etc. Not quite a stick, really...
It isn't pleasant to realize that "our" government has a history of supporting evil, but it is true. Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Iraq, Iran, Kuait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sai Pan, the list goes on. All places where there was clearly a wrong, anti-democratic side, and for whatever reason "our" government decided that they should side with the dictators, with the villians, not against them. I'm sure that the various presidents and congresspeople believed there were good reasons for supporting the forces of evil. But the trend is impossible to avoid, when faced with a choice of supporting dictatorship or democracy "our" government almost always sides with dictatorship. I think we can do better than that. If America is to be (as I think it should) a model of freedom, democracy, and justice, than it can't keep supporting the opposite of that.
Of course not. Do you have any guarantee that trying a different policy is somehow going to make the world end? We know that the current policy isn't working well, I'd suggest that trying an alternate policy for a few years would be a good experiment to let us compare the results.
I'll bet that my proposed "oppose dictatorships, support democracy" policy will result in fewer problems and be more effective than the current "support dictatorships, oppose democracy" policy. How's about we try my idea and get some data to make a valid comparison? Unless you have an ulterior motive for supporting the current, failing, policy and don't want to see a more effective policy in place, that is...
Its like the current non-debate on the subject of sex education. The local Taliban wannabes claim that real sex education is a horrible thing that will result in "declining morals" (whatever that means), and increased teen pregnancy rates. I say that real sex ed works quite well in Holland, reducing teen pregancy significantly and also resulting in teens having sex later than they do in the US. A valid experiment, taking one state and enforcing the wannabe Taliban's "abstiance only" model of sex ed and letting another state try real sex education would allow us to make a valid comparison and see who's right. They seem to have an objection to finding the facts, and I believe its because they know the facts will not back them up. The quesiton is, do you fall into their category?
but my counter-point is look at how many people voted for Clinton the SECOND time.
??? You've lost me here. How does Clinton's second term have anything to do with Rumsfeld's chumming up to Saddam?
If you voted third party then you do have the right to get upset, especially since your vote amounts to nothing in our f&%*ed up system.
Its offtopic, but I'll agree wholeheartedly with you here. The Electoral College is a bad idea, but it would be tolerable if the EC votes of each state were split, the "winner takes all" concept essentially throws my vote right out the window unless I vote with the majority of the people in my state. A split EC vote would solve this problem quite nicely. Let the Republican votes in California and New York count, let the Democrat votes in Texas count, and let the third party votes everywhere count.
Hardly the terms I'd accept for my representation in a world government: a congressman I may or may not have voted for myself might possibly object to a president I may or may not have voted for's appointment to a world government that doesn't let us see its meetings. You think that is a satisfactory way to represent yourself in a world government you never had any say in the creation of?
More to the point, we haven't had any public debate over the formation of the WTO/IMF as a world government. And finally, let us not forget the most important fact: all WTO meetings are secret. There are no cameras broadcasting live on C-SPAN, the minutes are not even published after the fact. We are not allowed to know what goes on inside an organization that determines our economic future. This doesn't worry you?
Freedom dies behind closed doors, and tyrants love secrecy.
You seem to misunderstand me. I'm not opposed to free trade. Its a good idea. But free trade doesn't mean that MegaCorp X gets to do whatever it wants to. A nation which displeases the WTO/IMF group suffers great economic harm, and laws that protect worker rights, enforce environmental regulation, allow unions, etc displease the WTO/IMF. Free trade is a boon to all, but a race to the bottom benefits only the aristocracy. The WTO mandates a race to the bottom.
The WTO is hardly the singular entity causing harm, but they are at the forefront. Most worryingly they are a secret organization. Their meetings are closed. Freedom dies behind closed doors, and the doors of the WTO/IMF have never been open. The treaties they push and enforce benefit only the aristocracy. Look at Chapter 11 of NAFTA for an example. The sovrignity of the USA is severly compromised by Chapter 11, which specifies that if any corporation in a NAFTA member state believes its profits to be reduced by a law passed by a NAFTA member state it can request a closed, secret, hearing of two people appointed by NAFTA and one appointed by itself to decide how much money the member nation must pay for the loss of profits, including imagined future profits. This has already had the effect of repealing a Californian law prohibiting a cancer causing fuel additive; it seems that the Canadian corporation manufacturing that additive thought its profits might be harmed by laws designed to improve the health of Californians. Enter Chapter 11, exit health protection. Behind closed doors, and in secret.
We are indeed in the middle of a new economic change. One brought about by technology (as all economic changes were historically). But the WTO/IMF and the aristocracy they serve are the ones opposing the change, not me. Industrial Automation is coming, and with it we will see a change even bigger than the old Industrial Revolution. Along with the technological change we will see a change in the very structure of our economy, as we did during the Industrial Revolution. Modern capitalism did not exist until the Industrial Revolution, and I rather doubt it will exist in its current form after the next big change. That is what the aristocracy fears, they know they're on top now, and they can look back historically and see how poorly the *old* aristocracy faired after modern capitalism came into being. They fear what will replace today's economy, and they fight its coming tooth and nail.
All economic change results in short term harm, its unavoidable. But unlike during the Industrial Revolution, today we have the ability to predict that harm, to try and make the change as painless as possible. The WTO/IMF and their ilk have no interest in either bringing about the change, nor in making the change less painful. They serve the aristocracy, and the aristocracy doesn't give a damn.
Case in point: Pakistan. If Pakistan were to become a democracy today, we would have an Islamist radical nuclear power on our hands.
Right. Its so much better to have Pakistan as a dictatorship where atomic physicists try to get nukes to terrorist outfits. Also, I can't help but notice that the "let's support dictators" idea didn't work out very well in Iran, did it? Now they're a "radical Islamist government with nuclear power". It seems that the plan you support doesn't work. The sane thing to do would be to abandon it for a different plan. I would suggest that a plan of supporting democracies (as opposed to trying to squash democracies) would be a possible alternative. You argue that it might cause problems, but we already know that your plan doesn't work. There's a word for trying the same thing and expecting different results.
In any event, you are trying to hide from the issue I mentioned: Uzbekistan. The government there is about where Saddam's regime was back when the Regan and Bush I governments were supporting Saddam. It is a historically demonstrable *fact* that giving money to dictators does not buy them off for long, and that eventually we wind up fighting the dictators the government supported. Uzbekistan is the next Iraq, and its quite apparent that the Bush II government is either a) composed to total morons, or b) has reasons for wanting an enemy or three around. War makes an excellent tail to wag the dog, doesn't it? Worse, history also prooves that regardless of how cozy the Bush government gets with its torturing dictatorial friends, there will always be people like you to try and pretend that its all ok. Donald Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand at a time when we *knew* that he was a mass murderer, and somehow this doesn't seem to bother you?
2 - Do you know another company that had the resources to pull off the task Halliburton is doing? In sheer magnitude of the job, the list of posibilities was TINY.
I wasn't talking about Halliburton getting to rip us off for the rebuilding, I was talking about Halliburton's pre-war involvement in Iraq. As I said in my post, in the late 1990's Halliburton was doing quite a bit of business with Iraq. This is what you were calling "shady dealings" when France and Russia did it. The argument about Halliburton getting cost plus no bid contracts from the US government is an entirely different argument (and one that crosses party lines, I should mention that Clinton also gave huge contracts to Halliburton). I can't see why it was necessary to give one company the responsibility for everything. It would be quite simple to divide the rebuilding into smaller chunks (either geographically or by job) and use smaller companies.
I overreacted to your post, sorry. I'm certainly not going to pretend that France is some pure nation of goodness. I just don't like it when people try and make the actions of the Bush government out to be from pure motives. I think its pretty clear that the Iraq mess was easily forseeable (as I mentioned, supporting dictators has a history of being a bad idea), and that the current Bush government is wasting resources that would be better spent hunting down Al Quida on a sideshow for oil. More to the point, you were trying to pretend that the US support for Saddam was a 1960's issue, and you know durn well it isn't.
I'm going to completely avoid getting into a discussion of Israel. Even more than the Iraq war, Israel is a topic where people seem utterly incapiable of discussion without foaming at the mouth (he said, wiping his Iraq war foam from his mouth). Its like gun control, there *is* a middle ground that would probably satisfy arond 90% of the people, but the nutbags on both sides won't let anyone talk about it. Worse, the nutbags have remarkably effective meme plagues working to polarize the non-nutbag population.
WTO needs to be smarter, this isn't a winning issue for them.
The WTO doesn't need to be smarter, the WTO needs to be eradicated. If this issue generates animosity against the WTO then I'm going to do all I can to associate the WTO with forcing "our communities" to accept gambling. I'm just sorry that the WTO isn't trying to open borders to kiddie snuff porn or something worse.
Don't misunderstand, I'm hardly and isolationist, and I'm in favor of international trade. But the WTO isn't really about trade. Look at the *results* of what the WTO does instead of what it *claims* it wants. Less worker protection, lower environmental standards, less local control, and worse pay for everyone. That's the WTO's legacy. What really scares me is that the WTO and the IMF between them seem to be becoming a defacto world government with their power to overturn national laws, enforce standards, etc. What worries me the most about this is that the WTO and IMF are quite anti-democratic. Did you vote for your WTO/IMF representative? Are you even allowed to see the minutes of the WTO/IMF meetings? The answer to both of these questions is no, and that scares me. Power without accountability is alwyas bad.
For all who are making the pot/kettle claim - don't be absurd. France and Russia wanted Iraq the way it was because they had shady ties. Anything the US did or didn't do in the 60's is irrelevant today, 40 years later. I wasn't alive, and none of the policy makers of today had power then. And Saddam was the lesser of 2 evils back then anyway. Its easy to fault people when you have 20/20 hindsight - its harder to predict the future.
See, I wanted to stay out of this thread, I really did. Then you said that and here I am.
Taking your points in order here: Yup, France and Russia had financial interests in Iraq. So did the US. You might have heard of a little company called Halliburton? Some fella named Dick Cheney was in charge while Halliburton made money out of Iraq. In the '60s? Hardly, this was around 1998 or so.. Hmmm, isn't he the Vice President these days? Wanna tell me about the horrible shady deals of France and Russia again?
Contrary to your odd belief that US support for Hussain ended 40 years ago, I would recommend that you look at recent history. During the Regan and Bush I governments the US gave quite a bit of foreign aid to Saddam's vile regime. The policy makers who did this are, in fact, the same crowd who are in power right now.
As for historic hindsight and future prediction, I'll make a prediction: Supporting dictatorships leads to problems. We've seen this time and again. The US supports dictatorship X and then a few decades later we have to fight dictatorship X. Today the Bush government is busy proping up the evil government in Uzbekistan, they're about as bad as Saddam was. Who will we be fighting in 15 years or so? Hint: Its the evil torturing bastards that the Bush government is showering with money today!
Am I glad that Saddam isn't the dictator of Iraq? Of course. Would I be gladder if the US government showed any signs of the simple intelligence required to notice that supporting dictatorships isn't a good policy? Yup. Wouldn't it be better if the US maybe supported democracies instead of dictatorships? You wanna explain to me why you are defending the Bush government when you know that in 15 years or so we're going to have to fight the war in Uzbekistan they're busy starting for us?
Also, more on topic, I think you're on the right track here. Simply admitting that he made a mistake is not enough. He may not be able to get his money back but if he truly does wish that he hadn't done business with SCO he could at least terminate his license with them. Suing SCO for fraud or extortion might be nice, but probably too expensive. With MS backing them SCO can afford a *lot* more lawyers than a lowly webhost can.
OTOH, if everyone who got one of SCO's "pay us or we sue you" letters sued them for extortion it'd force SCO to hemorage a lot of money on the legal defense. Kind of like a DOS of legal filings. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but doesn't threatening lawsuits on false grounds count as extortion? Since they've sent letters to people outside Utah, can't we get the RICO act in on this?
See, that was true for me until I got Alpha Centauri for Linux, and started using WineX. Now I can play several games on my Linux partition and my work is starting to suffer for it....
I still have to reboot for some games (Homeworld 2, StarTopia, Dungeon Keeper, etc) but I can play several others (StarCraft, WC3, etc) without having to reboot, its kind of a classic good news, bad news situation:)
RTF is clearly not completely standard, and in my experience most often looks like hell (our co-op office used to make us submit resumes in it).
I'll agree with that. I've had RTF files open fine in KWord, but fail in OO.org, open fine in MS Word, but fail in everything else, fail in Word and open in everything else, etc. You'd bloody think things might work well universally...
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The Soviet Union is the most extreme example in recent history. Their philosophy was the same as that of other nations based on deterence: if the punishment is harsh enough people will be detered from committing the crime. It didn't work, they kept instituting increasingly harsh punishments and crimes continued to be committed. Many people simply do not believe that they will be caught. Talk to people in prison and you will find that they generally break into two categories: those who say they are innocent, and those who say they didn't think they'd get caught. If you don't think you are going to get caught, it doesn't really matter what the punishment is. Its related to the success of the lottery: logically people know that their chances of winning are virtually non-existant. Less logically, people assume that *they* are the special one who is the exception to the rule.
Arond 230 BC, the Ch'in dynasty in China also followed the deterence approach, and it directly lead to their downfall. In the army the penalty for being late was death, and the penalty for mutany was death. A group of conscripts wound up late one day and decided that they might was well mutany since it came to the same thing in the end. England ran into the same problem when they decided to "git tuff" on crime back around 1500 and they made punishments incredibly harsh in hopes of deterring criminals. That's where we got the phrase "as well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb", since the punishment for both was the same.
Obvously some people, a rather small minority it appears, are motivated by reason on these subjects. I don't play the lottory and I think that the fear of punishment is a factor in my own decision not to commit crimes. But I recognize that I'm not the norm here. Most people just don't think that way, as evidenced by the millions who play lotteries, and the millions in prison.
Personally I learned a lot about my system when I installed Gentoo. My next step is probably going to be along the lines you suggested, but if I'd tried that before Gentoo I would have hit a brick wall. There isn't an active LUG in Amarillo, so I don't have any people I can turn to for help, which means smaller steps like Gentoo are necessary for my learning.
This is simply the telephone companies seeing a new and competing technology arising and then doing its best to strangle that new technology. The government is, in this case, nothing more or less than the hired thug of the phone company. Watch carefully as various congresspeople who have, in a completely unrelated event, recieved large "contributions" from the phone companies manage to sneak in various provisions so that the VoIP tax actually exceeds the tax paid on normal phone service.
Money is not speach, and corporations are not people. But until the bulk of Americans agree with that obvious truth we will continue to see corporate "people" using huge wads of cash to "speak" to politicians and buy special taxes to kill competition (as well as special tax breaks for themselves). Which is why some people are so shrill about insisting that money is speah.
After his arrest he was held, without charges, for over two years. It was the first of the anti-American arrest practices that Mr. Bush and the misnamed USA PATRIOT act have made much more common. The fact that he was held, without charges, without evidence, without a trial, without *anything* resembling due process, was such an affront to the very concepts that the US judicial system is theoretically based on that his case gathered massive attention. The fact that Mitnick, personally, was a lowlife thug and a pimple on the ass of hacking is irrelivant. His mistreatment was the important part.
His "point" that Win95 could handle the sound out of the box prooves nothing except that the hardware manufacturer gave MS the full specs, and apparently hasn't given the Linux development folks diddily. If we got full specs from the hardware people there wouldn't be problems like this. *MY* sound card came with Linux drivers so it had no problems at all. Every OS has a supported hardware list (even Windows), and if you leave that list you are taking the risk that your hardware won't work with your OS, I checked the list and bought a card that I knew would work, thus no problem. Same went for my video card, I purchased based on performance, price, and compatibility.
Don't misunderstand, Linux needs work in the usability and ease of installation department, but hardware incompatibility is no longer a really significant problem. As other people pointed out, it does seem as if the author of the article was deliberately seeking out distros that didn't have easy setups, and have difficulties with obscure hardware. Both Mandrake and Redhat are rather astonishingly easy to set up, and will automatically detect and use well over 90% of hardware.
Additionally, all of your arguments fail to address the central fact that the WTO/IMF are organizations rooted completley in secrecy. If, as you claim, they are noble paragons of virtue working tirelessly to improve the lot of the third world, than why are their meetings completely closed? No live coverage. No transcripts released. No voting records shown. This means that we have a secretive group of individuals deciding the economic lives of people (which, as you correctly observe are frequently matters of life and death) without any accountability, or transparency. So if they ruin the lives of millions of people we have no record that can show us who is to blame. Which members should be replaced. Etc.
Trade is good, and free trade definately raises standards of living, of course. But powerful organizations which pressure governments to remove worker protections, remove people's right to unionize, remove environmental protections, etc, are not necessary to free trade. You seem blinded by their claims and unwilling to delve into their dubious accomplishments.
Also, for all the respect I have for our founders, we must remember that at the time they wrote the constitution, and their own other writings, the entire idea of a democratic government was considered dangerous and unworkable. For some time our form of government was called "The Great American Experiment". I'd say it succeeded, actually. The Electoral College is a left over from a time when people simply didn't trust the democratic process, these days are not those days.
Additionally, the principle protection from "mob rule" is the Constitution and its ammendments, which forbids congress and "the mob" from making certain laws. The Constitution can be changed but only with a supermajority. In theory this keeps the majority from oppressing the minority (which is what "mob rule" means). This is why I'm not too worried that the "Homosexuals are Second Class Citizens" ammendment will pass. I just don't think the Taliban wannabes here in America can muster the supermajority necessary to put their hysterics into the Constitution. Thus, you will notice, "mob rule" is neatly avoided. No wise unelected protectors needed, the system itself is designed to prevent certain problems.
So, in summary: the Electoral College is an anti-democratic institution left over from a time when our founders gave in to their aristocratic fears rather than properly trusting the system they designed to work. I respect the founders, but I'm not in worshipful admiration of them, they were human, and some of their ideas weren't good idea. What I *really* want is nationally mandated Instant Runoff Voting, which would allow for third parties to stand a chance of being elected, open more elections to challengers, etc.
The system you propose is interesting, and would doubtless result in the destruction of the RIAA as well. Its only flaw is that while perfectly legal it wouldn't actually generate much money for the musicians. Its a nifty idea, and might be quite useful in the noble cause of crushing the RIAA, driving them before us, and hearing the lamentations of their lawyers. In the long run though we'll still have to figure out a way to pay the musicians.
I download from P2P networks betimes. I'm not pretending to be some paragon of virtue, I'm just not going to be hypocritical and pretend that it isn't copyright violation, and therefore theft. I was one of the users of Fairtunes until it colapsed because while I have a pretty callous attitude towards stealing from the RIAA, I don't want to steal from the actual artists. Today, since fairtunes is no more and I haven't found a replacement I buy merchendise (which gets the musician more money than CD sales).
The most appropriate punishment for corporate crime is simple: first, pass laws that make convicted corporate criminals give *all* the money back. Then add penalties equal to 75% of their total net worth after they gave back the stolen money. Then forbid them from owning stock or bonds or having anything to do with the stock market, or ever serving on any board, as any executive position, etc. The idea being that they've that they've proven they can't be trusted to be involved in business, so we simply forbid them from being involved in business except as mailroom clerks or something similarly powerless. No need for jail, and I'll bet that my proposed penalties have a lot more "deterant" value ^_^
"Sharing" music on a P2P network is stealing, yes, but under what odd twisting of logic can it be worse than shoplifting the CD?
We are seeing the music industry going steadily more insane every day, and when something with that much money goes mad life gets interesting. Piracy isn't right, but it is inevitable during the transition between the RIAA and whatever distribution/compensation model we invent to replace it. Draconian laws with punishments as inappropriate as this one wants are definately not the solution to theft of music.
I find it especially ironic that the same congress that can't seem to punish the aristocrats who steal millions from their employees wants to send people to jail for up to ten years for stealing a little music...
However, in the case of Rumsfeld and Saddam, it doesn't describe what happened. Following the handshake the US government gave Saddam quite a bit of money, instructions for making various biological and chemical weapons (along with samples of the weapons for "defensive research"), etc. Not quite a stick, really...
It isn't pleasant to realize that "our" government has a history of supporting evil, but it is true. Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Iraq, Iran, Kuait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sai Pan, the list goes on. All places where there was clearly a wrong, anti-democratic side, and for whatever reason "our" government decided that they should side with the dictators, with the villians, not against them. I'm sure that the various presidents and congresspeople believed there were good reasons for supporting the forces of evil. But the trend is impossible to avoid, when faced with a choice of supporting dictatorship or democracy "our" government almost always sides with dictatorship. I think we can do better than that. If America is to be (as I think it should) a model of freedom, democracy, and justice, than it can't keep supporting the opposite of that.
I'll bet that my proposed "oppose dictatorships, support democracy" policy will result in fewer problems and be more effective than the current "support dictatorships, oppose democracy" policy. How's about we try my idea and get some data to make a valid comparison? Unless you have an ulterior motive for supporting the current, failing, policy and don't want to see a more effective policy in place, that is...
Its like the current non-debate on the subject of sex education. The local Taliban wannabes claim that real sex education is a horrible thing that will result in "declining morals" (whatever that means), and increased teen pregnancy rates. I say that real sex ed works quite well in Holland, reducing teen pregancy significantly and also resulting in teens having sex later than they do in the US. A valid experiment, taking one state and enforcing the wannabe Taliban's "abstiance only" model of sex ed and letting another state try real sex education would allow us to make a valid comparison and see who's right. They seem to have an objection to finding the facts, and I believe its because they know the facts will not back them up. The quesiton is, do you fall into their category?
Its offtopic, but I'll agree wholeheartedly with you here. The Electoral College is a bad idea, but it would be tolerable if the EC votes of each state were split, the "winner takes all" concept essentially throws my vote right out the window unless I vote with the majority of the people in my state. A split EC vote would solve this problem quite nicely. Let the Republican votes in California and New York count, let the Democrat votes in Texas count, and let the third party votes everywhere count.
More to the point, we haven't had any public debate over the formation of the WTO/IMF as a world government. And finally, let us not forget the most important fact: all WTO meetings are secret. There are no cameras broadcasting live on C-SPAN, the minutes are not even published after the fact. We are not allowed to know what goes on inside an organization that determines our economic future. This doesn't worry you?
Freedom dies behind closed doors, and tyrants love secrecy.
The WTO is hardly the singular entity causing harm, but they are at the forefront. Most worryingly they are a secret organization. Their meetings are closed. Freedom dies behind closed doors, and the doors of the WTO/IMF have never been open. The treaties they push and enforce benefit only the aristocracy. Look at Chapter 11 of NAFTA for an example. The sovrignity of the USA is severly compromised by Chapter 11, which specifies that if any corporation in a NAFTA member state believes its profits to be reduced by a law passed by a NAFTA member state it can request a closed, secret, hearing of two people appointed by NAFTA and one appointed by itself to decide how much money the member nation must pay for the loss of profits, including imagined future profits. This has already had the effect of repealing a Californian law prohibiting a cancer causing fuel additive; it seems that the Canadian corporation manufacturing that additive thought its profits might be harmed by laws designed to improve the health of Californians. Enter Chapter 11, exit health protection. Behind closed doors, and in secret.
We are indeed in the middle of a new economic change. One brought about by technology (as all economic changes were historically). But the WTO/IMF and the aristocracy they serve are the ones opposing the change, not me. Industrial Automation is coming, and with it we will see a change even bigger than the old Industrial Revolution. Along with the technological change we will see a change in the very structure of our economy, as we did during the Industrial Revolution. Modern capitalism did not exist until the Industrial Revolution, and I rather doubt it will exist in its current form after the next big change. That is what the aristocracy fears, they know they're on top now, and they can look back historically and see how poorly the *old* aristocracy faired after modern capitalism came into being. They fear what will replace today's economy, and they fight its coming tooth and nail.
All economic change results in short term harm, its unavoidable. But unlike during the Industrial Revolution, today we have the ability to predict that harm, to try and make the change as painless as possible. The WTO/IMF and their ilk have no interest in either bringing about the change, nor in making the change less painful. They serve the aristocracy, and the aristocracy doesn't give a damn.
In any event, you are trying to hide from the issue I mentioned: Uzbekistan. The government there is about where Saddam's regime was back when the Regan and Bush I governments were supporting Saddam. It is a historically demonstrable *fact* that giving money to dictators does not buy them off for long, and that eventually we wind up fighting the dictators the government supported. Uzbekistan is the next Iraq, and its quite apparent that the Bush II government is either a) composed to total morons, or b) has reasons for wanting an enemy or three around. War makes an excellent tail to wag the dog, doesn't it? Worse, history also prooves that regardless of how cozy the Bush government gets with its torturing dictatorial friends, there will always be people like you to try and pretend that its all ok. Donald Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand at a time when we *knew* that he was a mass murderer, and somehow this doesn't seem to bother you?
I overreacted to your post, sorry. I'm certainly not going to pretend that France is some pure nation of goodness. I just don't like it when people try and make the actions of the Bush government out to be from pure motives. I think its pretty clear that the Iraq mess was easily forseeable (as I mentioned, supporting dictators has a history of being a bad idea), and that the current Bush government is wasting resources that would be better spent hunting down Al Quida on a sideshow for oil. More to the point, you were trying to pretend that the US support for Saddam was a 1960's issue, and you know durn well it isn't.
I'm going to completely avoid getting into a discussion of Israel. Even more than the Iraq war, Israel is a topic where people seem utterly incapiable of discussion without foaming at the mouth (he said, wiping his Iraq war foam from his mouth). Its like gun control, there *is* a middle ground that would probably satisfy arond 90% of the people, but the nutbags on both sides won't let anyone talk about it. Worse, the nutbags have remarkably effective meme plagues working to polarize the non-nutbag population.
Don't misunderstand, I'm hardly and isolationist, and I'm in favor of international trade. But the WTO isn't really about trade. Look at the *results* of what the WTO does instead of what it *claims* it wants. Less worker protection, lower environmental standards, less local control, and worse pay for everyone. That's the WTO's legacy. What really scares me is that the WTO and the IMF between them seem to be becoming a defacto world government with their power to overturn national laws, enforce standards, etc. What worries me the most about this is that the WTO and IMF are quite anti-democratic. Did you vote for your WTO/IMF representative? Are you even allowed to see the minutes of the WTO/IMF meetings? The answer to both of these questions is no, and that scares me. Power without accountability is alwyas bad.
Taking your points in order here: Yup, France and Russia had financial interests in Iraq. So did the US. You might have heard of a little company called Halliburton? Some fella named Dick Cheney was in charge while Halliburton made money out of Iraq. In the '60s? Hardly, this was around 1998 or so.. Hmmm, isn't he the Vice President these days? Wanna tell me about the horrible shady deals of France and Russia again?
Contrary to your odd belief that US support for Hussain ended 40 years ago, I would recommend that you look at recent history. During the Regan and Bush I governments the US gave quite a bit of foreign aid to Saddam's vile regime. The policy makers who did this are, in fact, the same crowd who are in power right now.
As for historic hindsight and future prediction, I'll make a prediction: Supporting dictatorships leads to problems. We've seen this time and again. The US supports dictatorship X and then a few decades later we have to fight dictatorship X. Today the Bush government is busy proping up the evil government in Uzbekistan, they're about as bad as Saddam was. Who will we be fighting in 15 years or so? Hint: Its the evil torturing bastards that the Bush government is showering with money today!
Am I glad that Saddam isn't the dictator of Iraq? Of course. Would I be gladder if the US government showed any signs of the simple intelligence required to notice that supporting dictatorships isn't a good policy? Yup. Wouldn't it be better if the US maybe supported democracies instead of dictatorships? You wanna explain to me why you are defending the Bush government when you know that in 15 years or so we're going to have to fight the war in Uzbekistan they're busy starting for us?
Also, more on topic, I think you're on the right track here. Simply admitting that he made a mistake is not enough. He may not be able to get his money back but if he truly does wish that he hadn't done business with SCO he could at least terminate his license with them. Suing SCO for fraud or extortion might be nice, but probably too expensive. With MS backing them SCO can afford a *lot* more lawyers than a lowly webhost can.
OTOH, if everyone who got one of SCO's "pay us or we sue you" letters sued them for extortion it'd force SCO to hemorage a lot of money on the legal defense. Kind of like a DOS of legal filings. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but doesn't threatening lawsuits on false grounds count as extortion? Since they've sent letters to people outside Utah, can't we get the RICO act in on this?
I still have to reboot for some games (Homeworld 2, StarTopia, Dungeon Keeper, etc) but I can play several others (StarCraft, WC3, etc) without having to reboot, its kind of a classic good news, bad news situation :)