Nah, I'll just go back to buying used Cd's, copying and returning them. The music labels under the RIAA haven't gotten a cent from me since 1997; I didn't start downloading music until 2000.
I don't mind paying the $2-4 per cd that it costs to do this; I simply refuse to give any money to the record labels.
Rather than parsing the fine points of case law, we should be asking what kind of mentality makes this acceptable, legal or not.
Oh, that's easy enough. Public schools have become "prison prep" schools. The idea is to get the students accustomed to the way their life is going to be once they graduate. It's very important to have complicit prisoners.
SOME believe that 2+2=5, and we must NOT SAY that the fivers are wrong, because their god hates to be contradicted.
Actually, 2+2 = 7, because the holy trinity must be included with every expression. Likewise, 2*7 = 42, 108/9 = 4, and the volume of a sphere is 12r^3 (because the ancient Greeks were right: pi = 3).
I don't follow any organized religion, but even I have to admit that Intelligent Design is just as valid as Abiogenesis as a theory as to how life began. We really have no way of knowing at the present.
Intelligent Design vs. Evolution is silly. There's no point in even trying to talk to someone who thinks it isn't. If there weren't any evidence of evolution, then the argument for one or the other would have as much practicality as the argument of determinism vs. free will. But we do have evidence of evolution, so ID has to back off once life starts.
These Texans aren't arguing Intelligent Design vs. Evolution; they're arguing Creationism (either modified or straight-up, the article doesn't specify) vs. Evolution. Creationism is demonstrably bunk, and any idiot who believes it after he sees evidence to the contrary should probably be taken out back and shot, to ensure the continued advancement of the human race.
I think the complexity can only aid corruption: crooks can hide behind complex rules and when they're in power they can make up even more complex rules which won't get challenged by the populace because no-one can understand the existing ones anyway.
Yep, that's the idea. Never even mind the slight of hand they pull in some states, where poor voting districts that are full of people who may not be interested in maintaining the status quo have their polling places reassigned at the last minute without notice, or the registration lists may be swapped, or just plain fudged.
Then there's the "moral turpitude" laws some southern states have - should you be convicted of a crime that suggests moral turpitude (like receiving stolen property), you lose your right to vote in that state.
In short, it damn near takes an Act of God to get a minority party into a high office - it's been done before, but it's rare.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
When was Obama ever the underdog? I knew from the moment he announced candidacy that he'd be the next president. There was simply no way the Republicans were going to pull another win, and not really any chance for a third party victory, and I took it as a given that, failing some devastating revelation of impropriety in his past, Obama would beat out Clinton.
The only thing that surprised me about the last election was that the Dems couldn't pull off a supermajority in Congress.
Or perhaps a "States Rights" party that puts domestic decisions back in the State's hands.
You mean, like the Libertarians?
The main reason I support these guys is their desire for less government, and for more strict adherence to the Constitution, which gets the federal government rolled back up into Washington and lets the states get on with running their respective territories.
I'm less thrilled with the hard right neo-liberal party members, but a centered (or left-wing, as it's known in the U.S.) Lib has definitely got my vote - I'd even volunteer to join the campaign. I'm pretty sure a candidate that focused primarily on promising less government for everyone would draw in a fair share of voters from all corners.
Ultimately, what we really need is more media attention on the minor parties in this country (Green, Libertarian, Constitutional, Labor), along with more local candidates from these parties. It would help people understand that unless they're wealthy corporate board members or on welfare, the Republicans or Democrats (respectively) aren't really what they want.
Labor and Green will pull from the working class and communal Democrats (respectively), Libertarian and Constitutional will pull from the neolib and fundamentalist Republicans (respectively), and we may actually get a working six-party system going.
I think that many of the individuals who call for a third party would be unhappy no matter who that third party was, as many of the calls that I see for a third party seem to be "I want a politician who totally agrees with me on every issue".
Nope. I just want the double-sided one-party system we have here broken up. That, and a smaller and less powerful federal government. I don't much care beyond that - if a third party candidate wants to dissolve aspects of the federal government, for whatever reason, he's got my vote. That's real change. We can worry about what's "better" and how to get there later.
An example we're not hearing anyone talk about: roughly 10% of the world wide container fleet is now idle, in mothballs (390+ vessels or 9% a month ago [jctrans.net]). The crews for those ships (including the captains, navigators, and other specialists) are finding other ways to make a living. When the economy does turn around, it is going to take more than a year to get all those ships operational again. The problem is worse for the more specialized freighters: the automobile carriers, the grain ships, etc.
To me, this is good news. This country has all the resources it needs to be self-sufficient (except for oil, but we're supposed to be getting off that - right?). Actually, I don't think 10% is enough - 30-40% would be better, for starters. But just the ones that ship in and out of the U.S. - the rest of the world needs to trade.
Free global trade is excellent for the wealthy, great for foreign dictators and China, but bad for everyone else. If there were international labor standards that had to be upheld for the condition of free trade, I might take a different angle on it.
Re:If you didn't vote libertarian, you ASKED FOR T
on
Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Bank failures, market failures, depressions, recessions, all happen independent of regulation but the effects are made much *much* worse when there is nothing there to keep the market from deciding to shit it's collective pants.
I'd like to point out that the boom/bust cycles only really started after the Federal Reserve was created. Prior to that the only real influence on the economy was a major war, and I think we're done with those from a global perspective (just incessant minor conflicts, most of them started by us). It's a major Libertarian platform point for the abolition of the Fed.
Now, I'm not one to say that a completely free market is the way to go; I think it's a bit of twisted thinking that a society that runs on pure greed will function at all properly - but the Libs do have some good ideas, and giving them a run at the helm for a little while would definitely make for some changes for the better.
Also, trying to arrest an economic downturn just draws out the whole thing far longer than it needs to go. Better to let failing businesses fail: propping them up just allows them to continue failing for a longer period of time. It's very similar to the idea of pulling off a band-aid slowly as opposed to just ripping it off - it might hurt more, but it's over sooner. Also, it leaves a reminder for other companies not to screw up so badly, as opposed to leaving them thinking "Oh, it's OK if we completely and abjectly fail: the taxpayers will bail us out".
No, no: you've got it all wrong. A Free Market will prevent/fix all of that...somehow.
Yeah, I don't much buy into that either. I support a free market at the small business level, but would just as soon see all corporate charters revoked and incorporation made illegal.
However, as a fair compromise, I'd support small private corps and co-ops. But none of this public shares nonsense.
Yeah, I know...keep dreaming, right?
Re:If you didn't vote libertarian, you ASKED FOR T
on
Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yep. States first, then their federal reps. Congress has always had more power, anyway. That's where we want our alternate-party candidates. A federal legislature that consisted of more-or-less equal parts Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, and Independent would do a lot better at representing the public interest.
I really don't get the "write in your own candidate" thing you guys have. If someone wanted to stand for office in an area, wouldn't they just register to do so, and so be on the voting slip?
Nope. Ballot access laws are determined by the individual state, and most of them are skewed against allowing minority runners on the ballot. If you aren't a member of a major party (I think it's 3% of the national vote in the previous election to qualify), then you're looking at needing 3-5% of the electorate to sign a petition. Also, it's expensive to get on the ballot - usually between $8-10k. You can check out a few of the worst ballot access laws here.
I don't know about that. You see, unlike undeveloped nations, the U.S. citizens are the primary source of income for the large corporations that are causing the problem (or are at least a large part of cause).
If unemployment rises too much and wages drop too low, I'd think people would stop paying for things (simply because they couldn't afford it), at which point these companies would begin showing a loss every quarter, causing investors to lose faith, resulting in a market crash. A market crash would prevent the kind of multi-company long distance infrastructure that we depend on to get the goods to the people.
Most crash predictors conclude that racial tensions in the inner cities will lead to rioting, and most seem to think that suburbanites will travel to the cities looking for resources (because they're dumb, I guess), which is akin to throwing gasoline on the fire. While this will make life unpleasant for the majority of the population, the majority of the nation is sparsely populated rural land, and should be able to take a market crash in stride.
All-in-all, I think there will be very little shift in the top tier power structure in this country. I can always hope, but people are just too stupid. They respond to comfort with complacency and inaction, and they'll respond to a lack of comfort with violence and ignorance. I think that would only invite a further lock-down of the populace, and the government would complete its descent into fascism that it began in the early part of the last century.
I have little idea if any of this the most likely outcome, or what will happen next. I only know what I read, and what I can project from the facts and figures and graphs. I do know that it's in my best interest to leave the city and acquire some arable land as soon as possible. I'm not looking forward to the idea of being a farmer, but it's better than being a victim.
I would certainly classify 10% loss as a large percentage of inefficiency; in most companies I've worked with, the minimum acceptable efficiency seems to be 93-95% - granted, I'm not talking power generation and transmission in those cases.
That is, you can build a large power plant at a cost much cheaper per unit of capacity than a corresponding number of small plants.
Absolutely. But we're talking initial outlaying of funds here, not maintenance, upkeep, or fueling. More to the point, with generators every few blocks in a city; one or two for every town in the country, the costs are completely removed from private business and placed onto the citizens and/or local government (meaning, again, the citizens). We should be paying for our own power generation directly, rather than paying a large authorized monopoly to charge us for the maintenance and inefficiency of an unnecessary power structure.
Such a cellular power structure is impervious to large scale failure, and with interconnects, it would become fairly difficult to cause even local power failure.
No doubt the costs would be greater, but they'd be diffused across the entire population, and the energy itself would be cheaper, since there's no need for profit. Most importantly, I would think that the security and stability of such a system would be more than worth the additional cost.
This is also a vulnerability of the Internet, with its centralized DNS name servers. I wish I was knowledgeable enough to come up with a solution to that one.
Wouldn't the easiest get-around for DNS be to stop using domain names, and instead refer to everything by its IP address? I know it's not pretty to look at, but it's no worse than remembering a telephone number.
I'd like to point out that I fully agree with the grandparent, and yet also fully support gun ownership. Anything short of a lethal virus, chemical weapon, or fissionable material is fit for use by the average citizen, as far as I'm concerned.
I never understood the move to ban guns, myself. It doesn't make people safer, only less safe. People with no respect for the law or the rights of others are going to get their hands on guns anyway, so why disarm the general public and leave them to the mercy of the criminals?
Nevermind that with world-wide shift towards more authoritarian government, the last thing I want is an unarmed populace.
What we need is a modern religion, that accepts its place as mainly a moral + philosophical system
Buddhism, Taoism, Humanism (OK, that last one is more of a philosophy).
For more western-style religion, there's Unitarian Universalism, which focuses on moral and spiritual growth and neatly sidesteps all the dogma in order to include tenants found in all monotheistic faiths. It relegates the holy texts to their proper place (as [biased] early historical texts and sources of allegorical stories).
Throw in thinking creationism is a science and that makes them laughable.
I don't know, I'd be pretty impressed with a scientist that could describe mathematically how the universe was created in 7 days. Even more so if he could reproduce the results in a lab.
I apologize for going way off topic here, but I want to address your root cause assumptions. You apparently think that our current economic state is a result of a couple administration's worth of bad policy makers, but in fact this is something the country as a whole has been working towards since WWII.
After the second great war, this country was pretty much the only industrialized nation to survive unscathed, this much is true - and it led to artificially increasing wages, because we pretty much had a world-wide monopoly on production. This in turn led to a couple of very prosperous decades for the U.S. - the 50's and 60's. During the 70's, however, things began to turn around:
In late 1970/early 1971, domestic oil production peaked and began to decline, while demand continued to increase.
The other nations involved in WWII had recovered, and were able to produce high-quality goods at lower prices.
The need for lower costs to compete caused U.S. companies to seek workers elsewhere - preferably in pre-industrial fascist states that were able to prevent the workers from organizing and demanding better treatment.
This in turn led to a decline of production work in the U.S., and ever since then we've been moving from an industrial economy to a service economy, with lower real wages and very little in valuable exports.
Since the 1970's, our economy has been undergoing a massive shift in the way we do business at home; rather than saving to buy, Americans now buy on credit. Our nation, by maintaining an enormous, advanced military since WWII, coupled with a decline in real wages (and therefore taxable income), has been deficit spending the entire time (actually, the U.S. has been in the red since 1830).
What you see as recent events are simply the ongoing crisis coming to a head. To borrow an apt metaphor, the U.S. sits on a house of credit cards, and there's no way go but down from this perch.
Robotics and space travel are very neat, I agree - but they aren't going to help us. There are only two ways out of this - quickly reverting back to a production economy , or declining into a pre-industrial nation and trying to make our way back from there (Obama, at least, seems to understand this; whether he can do anything about it remains to be seen).
I applaud the idea of low-cost energy, and in fact there seems to be a lot of people around the world that think free energy is currently possible, but as long as there's a profit to be made from inefficient, high cost energy, there will be no change. Thankfully, with worldwide oil production now peaking (if not already in decline), oil is going to become very expensive very soon, and will become very scarce thereafter - many of us may actually live to see the end of oil. This will drive the business world into alternative energies, but even then there'll be food shortages (it takes 10 calories of oil to get 1 calorie of food to your grocer).
And I completely disagree with expansion as a solution to anything. What we need is population reduction, and I'm so very happy that this is now happening in the U.S. (population growth is now at 95% the rate of replenishment). Once we can get the population down to the point where there's not enough people to go around, then we can begin building robotic factories.
If there is something that you really don't want to do, and have already firmly decided not to do, and you still go ahead and do it anyway, that would prove you possess free will.
How does that prove anything? I see this behavior in addicts all the time. I wouldn't call that free will.
Media is biased in so many ways, not strictly on "liberal" (a term I use loosely) or "conservative" (another meaningless label). For instance, when is the last time you've seen a reporter say:
"Listen you dumb shits, stop buying things you can't afford, get out of debt. No, you don't need that new flatscreen HDTV. Shop less, consume less, and save more."
Of course you never hear that, even with the profanity edited out. Because sponsors would have a fit and the network would lose revenue. There's no way the producers would allow that. Just like you'll never hear:
"We're headed for another Great Depression. Could be worse than the last one."
For the same reasons.
Well, ok, there's at least one guy saying these things on the air, but nobody likes him much; they tend to cut him short.
You'll also never hear anything that's anti-government in a bi-partisan way: about how 85% (or more) of the legislation that gets passed these days is inherently unconstitutional; about the insane 4th amendment violations across the nation; about how the "War on Drugs" is causing more problems than it (supposedly) solves; about what we did to make terrorists hate us in the first place.
And you'll certainly never hear anything about crazy IP laws going into effect or the RIAA cases (unless they win in court), because the media isn't about to serve up anti-media stories.
All commercial media has a pro-establishment, status quo bias, because that's who's in charge. The majority of our politicians, Republican or Democrat (I prefer the term "Republocrat"), are pretty much the same - they're all right-wing fascists when you take into account the full political spectrum that's available. Any "liberal" or "conservative" bias you may attach to it is meaningless compared to the bias that actually exists.
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Nah, I'll just go back to buying used Cd's, copying and returning them. The music labels under the RIAA haven't gotten a cent from me since 1997; I didn't start downloading music until 2000.
I don't mind paying the $2-4 per cd that it costs to do this; I simply refuse to give any money to the record labels.
Rather than parsing the fine points of case law, we should be asking what kind of mentality makes this acceptable, legal or not.
Oh, that's easy enough. Public schools have become "prison prep" schools. The idea is to get the students accustomed to the way their life is going to be once they graduate. It's very important to have complicit prisoners.
SOME believe that 2+2=5, and we must NOT SAY that the fivers are wrong, because their god hates to be contradicted.
Actually, 2+2 = 7, because the holy trinity must be included with every expression. Likewise, 2*7 = 42, 108/9 = 4, and the volume of a sphere is 12r^3 (because the ancient Greeks were right: pi = 3).
Fundamentalists accept the Bible as literal truth
I know - scary, isn't it?
I don't follow any organized religion, but even I have to admit that Intelligent Design is just as valid as Abiogenesis as a theory as to how life began. We really have no way of knowing at the present.
Intelligent Design vs. Evolution is silly. There's no point in even trying to talk to someone who thinks it isn't. If there weren't any evidence of evolution, then the argument for one or the other would have as much practicality as the argument of determinism vs. free will. But we do have evidence of evolution, so ID has to back off once life starts.
These Texans aren't arguing Intelligent Design vs. Evolution; they're arguing Creationism (either modified or straight-up, the article doesn't specify) vs. Evolution. Creationism is demonstrably bunk, and any idiot who believes it after he sees evidence to the contrary should probably be taken out back and shot, to ensure the continued advancement of the human race.
Yikes. I'm so glad I don't know people like that. I'm not sure if I could - in all good conscience - let them live.
I think the complexity can only aid corruption: crooks can hide behind complex rules and when they're in power they can make up even more complex rules which won't get challenged by the populace because no-one can understand the existing ones anyway.
Yep, that's the idea. Never even mind the slight of hand they pull in some states, where poor voting districts that are full of people who may not be interested in maintaining the status quo have their polling places reassigned at the last minute without notice, or the registration lists may be swapped, or just plain fudged.
Then there's the "moral turpitude" laws some southern states have - should you be convicted of a crime that suggests moral turpitude (like receiving stolen property), you lose your right to vote in that state.
In short, it damn near takes an Act of God to get a minority party into a high office - it's been done before, but it's rare.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
How did I miss that before? That's a riot :)
When was Obama ever the underdog? I knew from the moment he announced candidacy that he'd be the next president. There was simply no way the Republicans were going to pull another win, and not really any chance for a third party victory, and I took it as a given that, failing some devastating revelation of impropriety in his past, Obama would beat out Clinton.
The only thing that surprised me about the last election was that the Dems couldn't pull off a supermajority in Congress.
I think schwit1's idea was no more PACs or donation bundling, which makes perfect sense.
Now, can anyone think of a way to get congress to actually do something about that?
Or perhaps a "States Rights" party that puts domestic decisions back in the State's hands.
You mean, like the Libertarians?
The main reason I support these guys is their desire for less government, and for more strict adherence to the Constitution, which gets the federal government rolled back up into Washington and lets the states get on with running their respective territories.
I'm less thrilled with the hard right neo-liberal party members, but a centered (or left-wing, as it's known in the U.S.) Lib has definitely got my vote - I'd even volunteer to join the campaign. I'm pretty sure a candidate that focused primarily on promising less government for everyone would draw in a fair share of voters from all corners.
Ultimately, what we really need is more media attention on the minor parties in this country (Green, Libertarian, Constitutional, Labor), along with more local candidates from these parties. It would help people understand that unless they're wealthy corporate board members or on welfare, the Republicans or Democrats (respectively) aren't really what they want.
Labor and Green will pull from the working class and communal Democrats (respectively), Libertarian and Constitutional will pull from the neolib and fundamentalist Republicans (respectively), and we may actually get a working six-party system going.
Hey, I can dream, can't I?
I think that many of the individuals who call for a third party would be unhappy no matter who that third party was, as many of the calls that I see for a third party seem to be "I want a politician who totally agrees with me on every issue".
Nope. I just want the double-sided one-party system we have here broken up. That, and a smaller and less powerful federal government. I don't much care beyond that - if a third party candidate wants to dissolve aspects of the federal government, for whatever reason, he's got my vote. That's real change. We can worry about what's "better" and how to get there later.
An example we're not hearing anyone talk about: roughly 10% of the world wide container fleet is now idle, in mothballs (390+ vessels or 9% a month ago [jctrans.net]). The crews for those ships (including the captains, navigators, and other specialists) are finding other ways to make a living. When the economy does turn around, it is going to take more than a year to get all those ships operational again. The problem is worse for the more specialized freighters: the automobile carriers, the grain ships, etc.
To me, this is good news. This country has all the resources it needs to be self-sufficient (except for oil, but we're supposed to be getting off that - right?). Actually, I don't think 10% is enough - 30-40% would be better, for starters. But just the ones that ship in and out of the U.S. - the rest of the world needs to trade.
Free global trade is excellent for the wealthy, great for foreign dictators and China, but bad for everyone else. If there were international labor standards that had to be upheld for the condition of free trade, I might take a different angle on it.
Bank failures, market failures, depressions, recessions, all happen independent of regulation but the effects are made much *much* worse when there is nothing there to keep the market from deciding to shit it's collective pants.
I'd like to point out that the boom/bust cycles only really started after the Federal Reserve was created. Prior to that the only real influence on the economy was a major war, and I think we're done with those from a global perspective (just incessant minor conflicts, most of them started by us). It's a major Libertarian platform point for the abolition of the Fed.
Now, I'm not one to say that a completely free market is the way to go; I think it's a bit of twisted thinking that a society that runs on pure greed will function at all properly - but the Libs do have some good ideas, and giving them a run at the helm for a little while would definitely make for some changes for the better.
Also, trying to arrest an economic downturn just draws out the whole thing far longer than it needs to go. Better to let failing businesses fail: propping them up just allows them to continue failing for a longer period of time. It's very similar to the idea of pulling off a band-aid slowly as opposed to just ripping it off - it might hurt more, but it's over sooner. Also, it leaves a reminder for other companies not to screw up so badly, as opposed to leaving them thinking "Oh, it's OK if we completely and abjectly fail: the taxpayers will bail us out".
No, no: you've got it all wrong. A Free Market will prevent/fix all of that...somehow.
Yeah, I don't much buy into that either. I support a free market at the small business level, but would just as soon see all corporate charters revoked and incorporation made illegal.
However, as a fair compromise, I'd support small private corps and co-ops. But none of this public shares nonsense.
Yeah, I know...keep dreaming, right?
Yep. States first, then their federal reps. Congress has always had more power, anyway. That's where we want our alternate-party candidates. A federal legislature that consisted of more-or-less equal parts Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, and Independent would do a lot better at representing the public interest.
I really don't get the "write in your own candidate" thing you guys have. If someone wanted to stand for office in an area, wouldn't they just register to do so, and so be on the voting slip?
Nope. Ballot access laws are determined by the individual state, and most of them are skewed against allowing minority runners on the ballot. If you aren't a member of a major party (I think it's 3% of the national vote in the previous election to qualify), then you're looking at needing 3-5% of the electorate to sign a petition. Also, it's expensive to get on the ballot - usually between $8-10k. You can check out a few of the worst ballot access laws here.
I don't know about that. You see, unlike undeveloped nations, the U.S. citizens are the primary source of income for the large corporations that are causing the problem (or are at least a large part of cause).
If unemployment rises too much and wages drop too low, I'd think people would stop paying for things (simply because they couldn't afford it), at which point these companies would begin showing a loss every quarter, causing investors to lose faith, resulting in a market crash. A market crash would prevent the kind of multi-company long distance infrastructure that we depend on to get the goods to the people.
Most crash predictors conclude that racial tensions in the inner cities will lead to rioting, and most seem to think that suburbanites will travel to the cities looking for resources (because they're dumb, I guess), which is akin to throwing gasoline on the fire. While this will make life unpleasant for the majority of the population, the majority of the nation is sparsely populated rural land, and should be able to take a market crash in stride.
All-in-all, I think there will be very little shift in the top tier power structure in this country. I can always hope, but people are just too stupid. They respond to comfort with complacency and inaction, and they'll respond to a lack of comfort with violence and ignorance. I think that would only invite a further lock-down of the populace, and the government would complete its descent into fascism that it began in the early part of the last century.
I have little idea if any of this the most likely outcome, or what will happen next. I only know what I read, and what I can project from the facts and figures and graphs. I do know that it's in my best interest to leave the city and acquire some arable land as soon as possible. I'm not looking forward to the idea of being a farmer, but it's better than being a victim.
I would certainly classify 10% loss as a large percentage of inefficiency; in most companies I've worked with, the minimum acceptable efficiency seems to be 93-95% - granted, I'm not talking power generation and transmission in those cases.
That is, you can build a large power plant at a cost much cheaper per unit of capacity than a corresponding number of small plants.
Absolutely. But we're talking initial outlaying of funds here, not maintenance, upkeep, or fueling. More to the point, with generators every few blocks in a city; one or two for every town in the country, the costs are completely removed from private business and placed onto the citizens and/or local government (meaning, again, the citizens). We should be paying for our own power generation directly, rather than paying a large authorized monopoly to charge us for the maintenance and inefficiency of an unnecessary power structure.
Such a cellular power structure is impervious to large scale failure, and with interconnects, it would become fairly difficult to cause even local power failure.
No doubt the costs would be greater, but they'd be diffused across the entire population, and the energy itself would be cheaper, since there's no need for profit. Most importantly, I would think that the security and stability of such a system would be more than worth the additional cost.
This is also a vulnerability of the Internet, with its centralized DNS name servers. I wish I was knowledgeable enough to come up with a solution to that one.
Wouldn't the easiest get-around for DNS be to stop using domain names, and instead refer to everything by its IP address? I know it's not pretty to look at, but it's no worse than remembering a telephone number.
I'll answer that.
I'd like to point out that I fully agree with the grandparent, and yet also fully support gun ownership. Anything short of a lethal virus, chemical weapon, or fissionable material is fit for use by the average citizen, as far as I'm concerned.
I never understood the move to ban guns, myself. It doesn't make people safer, only less safe. People with no respect for the law or the rights of others are going to get their hands on guns anyway, so why disarm the general public and leave them to the mercy of the criminals?
Nevermind that with world-wide shift towards more authoritarian government, the last thing I want is an unarmed populace.
What we need is a modern religion, that accepts its place as mainly a moral + philosophical system
Buddhism, Taoism, Humanism (OK, that last one is more of a philosophy).
For more western-style religion, there's Unitarian Universalism, which focuses on moral and spiritual growth and neatly sidesteps all the dogma in order to include tenants found in all monotheistic faiths. It relegates the holy texts to their proper place (as [biased] early historical texts and sources of allegorical stories).
Throw in thinking creationism is a science and that makes them laughable.
I don't know, I'd be pretty impressed with a scientist that could describe mathematically how the universe was created in 7 days. Even more so if he could reproduce the results in a lab.
I apologize for going way off topic here, but I want to address your root cause assumptions. You apparently think that our current economic state is a result of a couple administration's worth of bad policy makers, but in fact this is something the country as a whole has been working towards since WWII.
After the second great war, this country was pretty much the only industrialized nation to survive unscathed, this much is true - and it led to artificially increasing wages, because we pretty much had a world-wide monopoly on production. This in turn led to a couple of very prosperous decades for the U.S. - the 50's and 60's. During the 70's, however, things began to turn around:
Since the 1970's, our economy has been undergoing a massive shift in the way we do business at home; rather than saving to buy, Americans now buy on credit. Our nation, by maintaining an enormous, advanced military since WWII, coupled with a decline in real wages (and therefore taxable income), has been deficit spending the entire time (actually, the U.S. has been in the red since 1830).
What you see as recent events are simply the ongoing crisis coming to a head. To borrow an apt metaphor, the U.S. sits on a house of credit cards, and there's no way go but down from this perch.
Robotics and space travel are very neat, I agree - but they aren't going to help us. There are only two ways out of this - quickly reverting back to a production economy , or declining into a pre-industrial nation and trying to make our way back from there (Obama, at least, seems to understand this; whether he can do anything about it remains to be seen).
I applaud the idea of low-cost energy, and in fact there seems to be a lot of people around the world that think free energy is currently possible, but as long as there's a profit to be made from inefficient, high cost energy, there will be no change. Thankfully, with worldwide oil production now peaking (if not already in decline), oil is going to become very expensive very soon, and will become very scarce thereafter - many of us may actually live to see the end of oil. This will drive the business world into alternative energies, but even then there'll be food shortages (it takes 10 calories of oil to get 1 calorie of food to your grocer).
And I completely disagree with expansion as a solution to anything. What we need is population reduction, and I'm so very happy that this is now happening in the U.S. (population growth is now at 95% the rate of replenishment). Once we can get the population down to the point where there's not enough people to go around, then we can begin building robotic factories.
If there is something that you really don't want to do, and have already firmly decided not to do, and you still go ahead and do it anyway, that would prove you possess free will.
How does that prove anything? I see this behavior in addicts all the time. I wouldn't call that free will.
Media is biased in so many ways, not strictly on "liberal" (a term I use loosely) or "conservative" (another meaningless label). For instance, when is the last time you've seen a reporter say:
"Listen you dumb shits, stop buying things you can't afford, get out of debt. No, you don't need that new flatscreen HDTV. Shop less, consume less, and save more."
Of course you never hear that, even with the profanity edited out. Because sponsors would have a fit and the network would lose revenue. There's no way the producers would allow that. Just like you'll never hear:
"We're headed for another Great Depression. Could be worse than the last one."
For the same reasons.
Well, ok, there's at least one guy saying these things on the air, but nobody likes him much; they tend to cut him short.
You'll also never hear anything that's anti-government in a bi-partisan way: about how 85% (or more) of the legislation that gets passed these days is inherently unconstitutional; about the insane 4th amendment violations across the nation; about how the "War on Drugs" is causing more problems than it (supposedly) solves; about what we did to make terrorists hate us in the first place.
And you'll certainly never hear anything about crazy IP laws going into effect or the RIAA cases (unless they win in court), because the media isn't about to serve up anti-media stories.
All commercial media has a pro-establishment, status quo bias, because that's who's in charge. The majority of our politicians, Republican or Democrat (I prefer the term "Republocrat"), are pretty much the same - they're all right-wing fascists when you take into account the full political spectrum that's available. Any "liberal" or "conservative" bias you may attach to it is meaningless compared to the bias that actually exists.