> Question to net neutrality supporters--does this teach you yet that government control of the internet is very, very bad?
No, most of the loudest voices are communists like freepress.net and can't wait until the government puts its boot on our necks. That is their purpose. Remember, lying is second nature for em after a century of losing a race for dogcatcher if voters suspect their actual intentions.
Michigan is trying to license journalists RIGHT NOW.
The Won's FTC is trying to sink government hooks into journalism RIGHT NOW.
It took the SCOTUS to explain to the FEC that the 1st Amendment says what it says. Congress instantly sprung into action to find a way around it proving they still can't grasp the phrase "Congress shall make no law..."
> No, because Google can still keep logs of your searches if you use SSL.
That isn't the big problem, it is that your ISP begins to just log everything. They are a lot closer to your local law enforcement and generally wouldn't involve crossing national borders to pry the logs open. If you are in Europe and went to https://www.google.com/ they have to start up an international kerfluffle and Google either caves or fights, either action is page one news and bad PR for everyone.
> There is no alternative platform, despite what others may say about Android, it's immature > and their app store(s) are a wild west nightmare. It really is Apple's way or the highway...."
Thousands of apps already in the Android store but for too many koolaid drinkers this kind of thinking still persists. No, the Android world will never be as neat and tidy as Steve's closed hell. Freedom is messy, either suck it up and deal with that reality or put yer damned chains on and stop bitching when they bind. In the end you have to make a decision. If Freedom worth the price or isn't it? Because it isn't free and Steve's fascist dictatorship is oh so shiny and the trains all run on time.
Stop developing for the App Store and it either dies or changes to attract developers back, just that simple. Even if he looked stupid doing the monkey dance, Balmer was right that it is all about "Developers, Develops, Developers!" However if the developers are supine and just sit and take whatever Jobs dishes out and yells "Thank you Sir, May I have another!" you really can't get upset about being abused.
> They don't want people using apps and games on their platform that you didn't buy from the app store, hence no Flash or Java on the i-devices.
Ding! We have a winner!
Exactly correct, follow the MONEY.
The idea is everyone saw what Nintendo did all those years ago when they raised the middle finger to the SCOTUS and locked their platform. Every console since has been ever more locked. Then cell phones were all locked (gotta keep people away from seeing how insecure the mobile network is after all... and $1 for a ringtone was sweet) and no serious objections were raised from either regulators or customers. So the PC makers (and especially OS vendors like Microsoft & Apple) started feeling like chumps for allowing just anyone to sell apps for 'their' computers without having to give up a taste to the manufacturer. So that is about to change. The iPhone was after all just a phone and all previous phones were closed. But the iPad sold well enough to convince Apple (and probably Microsoft, Dell, etc) that customers are stupid enough to put the chains on.
Now we find out if they are right or not. Choose wisely folks.
> Honestly, I think this will force most people to turn Javascript off if nothing else.
Which just might be the point. Turn JS off and the browsing experience is degraded to the point of unusability on most of the current net. So now the choice is Flash delivered via the plugin or Flash delivered via this JS thing which will be REALLY slow and make i* products look underpowered when compared to competing products viewing the same content. Game, Set and Match. Flash is now going to run on Apple products, His Steveness's only remaining choice is does he want it to run well or not.
> Same thing happened to me back at Fedora 5, and 10 disagreed with some of my hardware.
I have similar problems that will prevent me from putting F13 on either of the machines I use.
My desktop box is stuck on F11. Linux (upstream) has had a broken driver for my Highpoint RAID card for years. (Years as in the newest OS I know of that has a working driver was RHEL4) I managed to get the free driver at Highpoint's site to build on F11's original kernel with a little patching but later ones break new things I haven't had time to troubleshoot. So F12 was out and while I'll boot a copy of F13 in rescue mode and check, odds are F13 is out.
Or there is the Thinkpad I'm typing this on. F12 went on and I have everything working. Oh hell yea! Spanking new lappy and everything is working! Of course I had to stop taking kernel updates for it when a kernel update broke undock support. It is RH bugzilla #573135 and still in NEW state over seventy days in so don't bet the rent money on it getting fixed in the F13 cycle.... maybe F14, or maybe I get stuck with F12 for years like my desktop box.
Which, if anyone at Fedora is listening, SUCKS BALLS on a system with a use by date shorter than a microwavable burrito.:)
> Also, I'm hopeful regarding your vilification of the ultra-right manifesto Mein Kampf
Product of government schools.... shocking ignorance. National Socialism differed from International Socialism only in tactics, not goals. Hitler's Nazis wanted to spread the Truth of Socialism under the treads of his Panzers driven by Aryan Supermen while Stalin wanted to spread it by sponsoring 5th columns and revolutionary movements around the world... all directed by the Soviets. Hell, Stalin probably even killed more Jews. He certainly scored a higher general body count, second only to Mao. In the end Hitler's evil was undercut by his insanity and stupidity.
> hopeful that your team is at least beginning to move to the left of your Louisiana compatriot David Duke.
I'm tired of your team's rewrite of history to make the Republicans (remember Lincoln?) the racists. David Duke was a Republican in the same sense NY Mayor Bloomberg was. Neither could win as a Democrat so flew false colors. Difference is here in LA our Republican party wasn't having any of that. They put out stickers exhorting Republican voters to "Vote for the crook." (Duke's opponent was Edwin edwards, currently serving a long sentence in a Federal Prison.) Somehow the facts have been distorted into a mirror universe sort of parody of reality. There is exactly one former Klansman serving in the United States Senate. Have a taste of the fellow, just remember he is one of yours:
"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
-- America's All-Time Longest-Serving Senator, Democrat Robert Byrd
Remember Jim Crow, the racists with firehoses in the old B&W newsreels, those guys? Lifelong Democrats all. Or the smear commonly thrown at Tricky Dick Nixon and his 'Southern Strategy"? That would be when the Dixicrats (former and later Democrat George Wallace) were running and sucking up all the political oxygen? So riddle me this, if you are a Souther racist Democrat do you vote for the hated Republican or Wallace? Nixon was many things but political naif wasn't one of them.
> That's exactly the mentality that fuels these kinds of ideological squabbles in government.
Sorry if you object to me struggling to preserve Western Civ against the Progressives.
But it is just a reality that we are divided into two unreconcilable camps and that hopes for a peaceful resolution aren't good. In fact I'd say we haven't been so philosophically divided since the late 1850s. Hope we can find a more peaceful solution than that era but I wouldn't bet the rent money.
The problem is we have two totally different theories of what the relationship between the government and the governed should be. On the one side is the American philosophy. The Founders, Declaration of Independence, Federalist, Constitution, limited and divided republican (small r) government. On the other side the Progressives (Current name but it changes every generation as enough voters figure out they are really the same as the now reviled previous name) who pretty much believe in the opposite of all that, their primary documenents are Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto, Mao's Little Red Book and Mein Kampf.
So brave and wise AC, explain how there can be compromise between such divergent worldviews? One must triumph over the other before the current situation where each side grabs the levers of power briefly and yanks them for a few years just degenerates into chaos.
> I'd like someone to point me to the list of actual inaccuracies in there?
You will grow old and feeble waiting. Progressives don't operate in the fact based world, they FEEL. And in this case all they needed to learn was their team lost the votes to know the result has to be a horror of Jesus freakery so why bother to read any of the primary documents and report on them? This is part of a pattern where they 'KNOW' (read feel) the AZ immigration law is racist without needing to read it. And the Constitition only says what they need it to say if they don't actually read it.
These tactics worked a lot better for them when they controlled the "Commanding Heights of the Culture", back when _Newsweek_ wasn't the poster child for a failing legacy media. Which is why they feel the Internet must be brought under government control because, with no facts to back it, they just 'know' evil reactionary forces are working to control it.
When we figured out where the Progressives were trying to take us. Really, if the hundred plus million mass graves of the 20th Century didn't clue you in that progressive/fascist/socialist/marxist/maoist ideas kill then I probably can't help you.
> How is this different from the state of Texas taxing every tax paying Texan to educate all > children with a one sided, politically (and factually) incorrect/motivated curriculum and > the United States spending their (collective) money to educate their children with a > curriculum they (collectively) choose?
Allow me to translate what you wrote from NewSpeak to English:
How is this different from Texas using their citizens tax dollars to switch from one politically correct (and factually incorrect) motivated curriculum to one that is also politically motivated, yet politically incorrect (while more factually correct) and the United States spending every Citizens tax dollars to enforce a curriculum chosen by Bill Ayers and other politically correct educrats.
> The problem here is that decisions are being made by a group of people with an agenda to pass that completely goes against our countries constitution.
Wow. Just wow. And this folks is what Orwell was on about with NewSpeak. The TX board begins to reverse decades of political cleansing of textbooks and demanding a return to a study of the actual Founders and the Founding Documents they produced such as our Constitution and you call it an 'agenda' that goes against the Constitution.
Your Progressive team made education a political football early in the 20th Century when you started the whole push toward the virtual government monopoly on primary and secondary education. Your team has almost totally rewritten our history and turned our founding principles on their heads. It takes a lot of moxie to then bitch and whine when you finally lose power and get to watch My team reverse course. To paraphase the POTUS, "We won."
> (5) Joseph McCarthy's crusade via the H.U.A.C. is generally acknowledged as a bad thing, even by > the most right-wing people. But it's also correct to acknowledge that it was reactionary, and > didn't originate from one man's mental instability.
Anyone who even passes this one on without correcting it loses all right to speak about 20th Century history.
1. McCarthy had exactly zero involvement with the HUAC. Think for a few milliseconds. --HOUSE-- UnAmerican Affairs Committee. --SENATOR-- Joseph McCarthy. Right.
2. While the Progressives won the first round, mostly because Sen. McCarthy totally failed to realize just how far the rabbit hole went, History has vindicated pretty much every accusation he made. The records were ordered kept under Senate seal for fifty years but that has expired and the truth is out there. I'd recommend _Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies_ by M. Stanton Evans. Lots of primary sources, photocopies of formerly classified documents, etc. Or if you want a fun lighter read of the same material you could just grab Ann Coulter's _Treason_, which is probably more available in brick & morter stores.
> The last time I mentioned these, some people complained that the Lemote is not actually available anywhere, so here are two places:
I can guess the.nl site isn't where I should look so try the.com. Lets see, UK only keyboard, Shipped from Europe and paid in Euros (more fees) and at prices higher than a lot of higher spec hardware without those problems. And you get to buy it from a tiny site that can't even spring for an SSL cert. I know I'm eager to put my credit card in that. Sounds like 'not available' for all intents and purposes.
> Apple should lose their rights to process credit cards...
It wouldn't stop with them, they all do it. Even brick and morter stores like Walmart. I returned an item purchased months earlier and all they did was scan the barcode at the bottom of the receipt and the item's UPC code and that was it, the refund went back onto the same card used to make the purchase. So that means the mothership in Bentonville has a database that can cross the transaction ID on that receipt back to the payment information and they keep it for months if not forever.
Aren't you quivering in anticipation for what will be possible when every single pack of M&Ms has an RFID embedded into it?
> What I find so disappointing about Jobs is not anything about him really. It's that the > public doesn't value freedom enough to tell him where to stick his proprietary lockdown schemes.
Why does it surprise you? We elected an administration where the major intellectual fault line is between the Marxists and Maoists. And it is a pretty safe bet that Apple customers voted 90% in favor. Why are you surprised they place little value on freedom? Apple and Obama are but symptoms of a bigger problem when it comes to teaching the values required to be a people worthy of receiving the blessings of liberty. When someone offers a simple solution to a problem that boils down to ceding control to an elite group of 'better' people to make the decisions the correct response is "hell no."
> It doesn't help that net neutrality as a concept has just started to come to public attention > around the same time that Democrats are trying to re-introduce the "fairness doctrine" to wield > against their supposed foes, conservatives in "talk radio."
We aren't confusing anything. We know 'network neutrality' as currently proposed comes straight from Free Press. It is evil enough, but it is just part of the almost endless series of interlocking NGOs that make up the Progressive conspiracy. It ties directly into Media Matters, Soros and the whole sick bunch of socialists, marxists and maoists clustered around President Obama. Start with the FCC Chair. Go ahead, Google him a bit. Goes back to Harvard Law Review with Obama. Just read this clown's bio on Wikipedia (yea, I know about overly trusting Wikipedia) and it reads like a typical scion of old money who went communist in college and lives an elite life of idle makework drifing from one boardroom to another keeping the right people sliding further along on the long march through the institutions. Or take the FCC "Diversity Czar", Mark Lloyd, another marxist piece of Unamerican filth.
We would have to be insane to let these barbarians[1] anywhere something as wonderful as the Internet, they are already close enough as is. Yes the government monopoly telco and cable 'companies' are bad, but giving the government (any government, this one is just the worst in a generation) something so important to screw up is daft.
[1] In a way all socialists are barbarians in that they seek to control or destroy things they could never create themselves.
> Think back to how the phone networks were handled before various regulations were placed on it. > You couldn't even own your own phone!!
No, it was totally regulated even then. AT&T was a government granted monopoly with regulation at both the State and Federal level. AT&T had just achieved regulatory capture.
Yes, monopolies are bad. But so will government control of the Internet. We get screwed either way. Since I don't like getting screwed why don't we try something different? How about the Free Market? It is the one solution that works every time it is tried.
Break up the monopolies one last time, this time doing it right. The last mile is the natural monopoly so admit that and let it remain a government regulated utility. But forbid the monopoly from offering ANYTHING on the pipe, instead force them to sell access at the same rates to anyone who wants in.
Maybe I'm just an idiot and missing something obvious but something about this story has bothered me for days. This bird is a bent pipe design and the transceiver is still fully functional, right? It is (re)transmitting on the same frequencies as AMC11, otherwise we wouldn't have a problem. Sounds simple enough, turn off AMC11's outputs, redirect the uplink for a few days and just let G15 transmit until it moves far enough away for ground stations to pick out the two signals. Ok, ground stations would probably need to twiddle their dish almost daily during the transit but it should work and sure beats the alternative.
> Name the last nomination that wasn't a Party Regular for either party.
Anthony Kennedy. And who the hell knows what Harriet Meirs would have done. Don't forget Sandra O'Conner, Reagan's great mistake. It was only with Bush 43 that the Repubs stopped appointing unknowns.
> "Abortion" and most can guess closely what the outcome will be, regardless of the specific facts or points in question.
Actually most of our team would be quite happy if the SCOTUS would simply nullify Roe v Wade and toss the issue back to the States. Most scholars now concede it was a bad decision but it is Holy Writ for the feminists so it will remain a political football. It is actually quite simple, 10th Amendment. All our side wants is Justices with basic English comprehension skills, your team is looking for philosopher kings to rule over us.
> Most people don't initially know a lot about her...
I ain't most people. I read up on her when she made the short list. I wrote the white dude off as a show of diversity and concentrated on Woods and Kagan. Woods has a paper trail and with the current 59-41 split was a risk. Kagan is a Harriet Meirs gambit and was the way to bet. If I had to bet she will go through with 33-36 Repubs against because Dems won't object to a cypher unlike when it was our team that scuttled Meirs.
> You're also using that word Progressive as a pejorative again without seeming to understand that there is nothing > Progressive about a number of the stances on the issues that Obama and Kagan hold.
Name ONE non-progressive position Obama has actually ACTED on. He talks a good moderate but that is just defensive coloring.
> Obama is a centrist, just as Bush was a centrist, just as Clinton was a centrist, and so on and so on.
No he isn't. Or he isn't unless you use the MSM scale with Chairman Mao on the Left and FDR on the Right and anything to the right of Him is only howling madness. Neither was Clinton initially, it was only after getting a wakeup call in Nov '94 that he suddenly became the 3rd way centrist he ran as in 92. As for Bush.... darned if I ever could figure out exactly what his "Compassionate Conservative" BS[1] was all about. He was neither fish nor foul except for insisting on killin' terrorists after 9/11. Had that not happened I suspect your team would be a lot happier with how his Presidency worked out and I'd be a lot less.
> I'd like to see your obviously impressive resume since you are so keen to disregard the success, > academic or otherwise, of others whom you disagree with...
Well first I'm not a nominee to the SCOTUS. Seriously, go look into her, she was on the Law Review with Obama, tenured professor (unlike Obama who was only a lecturer) and yet as someone else (think a writer at dailybeast) noted this morning, he had just spent the morning reading everything Kagan had ever written. EVERYTHING. In one morning. Shades of Obama. How do these people rise so far in a publish or perish academic environment without writing anything of note?
But again, none of that matters. If one knows what Obama is there is no need to wonder how Kagan will rule on the court.
>..as if because Obama nominates her she is going to assume every single position that you personally disagree with..
Pretty much. We don't have to know anything about her other than Obama has worked with long enough (Harvard Law Review and U of Chicago) that HE trusts her. Since we know Pres. Obama is a straight ticket 'Progressive' it is a safe bet he isn't about to nominate someone who isn't Party Regular. Apparently saying something so self evident gets modded Troll these days. Oh well, got Karma to burn.
Amazing how fast she has risen with such a thin resume..... sorta like her patron in the White House. Almost makes ya think that around the time of Nixon/Reagan the Progressives figured out the American people would never elect an out of the closet Progressive/Socialist and started grooming a new breed who would leave no paper trail but would be quietly promoted into positions where they could be quickly jammed into high offices before anyone figured out what they really were.
> Identify constitutionality of every new law - that's for the Courts to do
No it isn't. The Constitution isn't the E Plub Neista, for Chiefs and Sons of Chiefs... i..e something out of a bad Star Trek episode. It is for everyone. And the SCOTUS wasn't intended to be the only and final authority on the matter either.
> and it's a Ron Paulian thing, I'm not a fan of him or his politics, anti-semites rub me the wrong way.
Not just that, he gives off more than a whiff of Klansman which ensures he remains a fringe player in the Republican Party. Now if he switched to D he could join former Grand Klegle and current Senator Byrd (D-WV).....
But you don't have to be a Ronulan to believe in the Constitution and that most of what the current Feral Government is doing is so far outside the limits that were laid down that any Founding Father that came back today would be grabbing his 'sporting goods' in a few milliseconds.
> Reject emissions trading: I don't have a dog in that fight
You dom you just don't realize it. Obama is on videotape admitting his notions of carbon trading would "cause electricity rates to skyrocket." In reality ALL energy would skyrocket. Not much in our economy runs without energy so everything skyrockets.
> Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality: - umm, no, Jesus, the Constitution says nothing about a space program or GPS, would those be done away with?
You might get maintaining the GPS constelation in as an aid to navigation/transportation. Long precedent for lighthouses for example. But no, NASA would be toast if the Constitution came back into favor. Not that it matters anymore, it is just a jobs program now and not much of one at that. It isn't like we have any plans to do anything anymore.
> Limit annual growth in federal spending: - sure, but what happens in case of war, natural disaster? Tough luck? That would have made WW2 untenable.
We change the law again if we have a real war. But we are running up a bigger deficit as percentage of budget and percentage of GDP in peacetime than we did in past wars. See death of NASA above, eventually the welfare state sucks everything into its event horizion.
> Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010: Too specific
You need to be specific if you want to be hold a politician to anything. A promise to "Reform the heathcare bill" would be so open to interpretation that any politician could claim to meet it. But a promise to vote in favor of a total repeal is binary, either he does or he doesn't vote in favor of a repeal bill. But our battle cry is normally Repeal and Replace, because conservatives realize the current system has problems, our complaint is the current bill solved few of the problems and brings in a lot of new ones.
> Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy: - drill baby drill and no development of alternative energy sources, cause its not in the Constitution!
That is ok, most of what we need Congress to pass in an energy bill is more getting the Hell out of the way instead of trying to micromanage energy policy. And cutting the scope of government is certainly in keeping with the Constitution.
> Reduce Earmarks: That'll wreck the rural states, where the conservatives are from, good work guys.
You don't understand how earmarks work. They don't tend to change the total allocations, they just direct portions to a specific project in a specific Congressional District, typically to something that gets the Congressman's name on the entrance. Look at this weekend's festivities in Utah where one of Sen Bennett's defenses was his skill at bringing home pork. It disgusted the delegates and hurt his standing. We are smart enough to have realized that pork isn't a free lunch.
> Yes, she might have a secret agenda but it's more likely she's just not very biased about stuff.
Are really that naive or are you just a shill? President Obama is the most overtly Progressive (read Social Democratic for you Euro readers out there) politician to make POTUS since Wilson and FDR. If he nominated her she is known to be Party Regular. And he does personally know the lady. That means forget anything she has said publicly while serving in lower positions and/or trying to get nominated to positions of authority. It would be safe to bet the rent money that within a year of getting appointed to the SCOTUS none will doubt she holds the following views.
The Constitution is a 'living' document that means whatever the Party needs it to mean today.
The 1st Amendment says Porn is protected speech but political ads aren't. Religious speech can and must be suppressed wherever and whenever it occurs outside an officially designated church.
The 2nd Amendment protects the government's Right to possess weapons but says nothing about thee or me.
The 4th Amendment doesn't apply when a Party member occupies the White House.
The 9th and 10th Amendments are a historical curiosity that say zero about the modern government's power to do whatever the Hell the Party wants.
Roe v Wade is Holy Writ. Even as most scholars now admit it was a terrible ruling and the poster child for legislating from the bench.
Enforcing our immigration laws is racist. I.e. Arizona is a bunch of racists who will need to be punished for copy/pasting Federal immigration laws (which aren't actually enforced) into State law. The idea being it is OK to have immigration laws on the books, but to actually enforce one is bad.
> there is a large fraction of the population who do not understand the scientific method
It might help your team if YOU actually understood science and it's limits.
> Fact is there are some things where there is an absolute truth for (climate change, drug effectiveness, best way to handle nuclear waste)
The FACT is none of the things you mention will ever attain the level of FACT. For example, there is no 'best' way to handle nuclear waste, they are all judgement calls involving a multitude of positive and negative factors. Cost, risk, benefits, etc. Launching it into the Sun for example would (assuming a suitable containment to make a failed launch safe) be the ultimate in safety but would be insanely expensive and eliminates the ability to reprocess it in the future as technology improves. Burying it is pretty safe but eco nut found plenty to object to with Yucca Mtn. Drug effectiveness never seems to be 100% settled and side effects turn up years and years after a new drug is approved. Medicine in general is still as much art as science. And Climate Change is almost entirely opinion. Nobody is dealing with that as facts to be measured, cost benefit analyzed, etc. One side says we are Doomed! unless we turn to Socialism and the other side is basically saying piss off hippie.
> some things that will always remain judgment calls (whether fetuses are alive, how to handle illegal immigration)
Reeally? There is a side arguing a fetus isn't alive? I always thought the argument was person/not person. I wonder why we don't just constrain the government's interest to Citizen/not Citizen. Since the US Constitution sets that line at birth we could then debate a more sensible question of whether in light of modern neonatal medicine whether we should revisit that line.
And I'm really perplexed by the other side of the illegal immigration argument. We all agree they are criminals, right? (Hint: the word illegal is the tell) We all agree that if we really wanted open borders Congress could just change the immigration laws and dismantle the border checkpoints. But for some reason (I actually DO know why) one side in this argument wants us to DoubleThink that it is good to have laws regulating immigration but to argue for enforcing them is racist. And that we are supposed to believe that this doesn't contribute to the general lack of respect for law and order.
Slashdot Mirror
> Question to net neutrality supporters--does this teach you yet that government control of the internet is very, very bad?
No, most of the loudest voices are communists like freepress.net and can't wait until the government puts its boot on our necks. That is their purpose. Remember, lying is second nature for em after a century of losing a race for dogcatcher if voters suspect their actual intentions.
Michigan is trying to license journalists RIGHT NOW.
The Won's FTC is trying to sink government hooks into journalism RIGHT NOW.
It took the SCOTUS to explain to the FEC that the 1st Amendment says what it says. Congress instantly sprung into action to find a way around it proving they still can't grasp the phrase "Congress shall make no law..."
> No, because Google can still keep logs of your searches if you use SSL.
That isn't the big problem, it is that your ISP begins to just log everything. They are a lot closer to your local law enforcement and generally wouldn't involve crossing national borders to pry the logs open. If you are in Europe and went to https://www.google.com/ they have to start up an international kerfluffle and Google either caves or fights, either action is page one news and bad PR for everyone.
This is the root of the problem:
> There is no alternative platform, despite what others may say about Android, it's immature
> and their app store(s) are a wild west nightmare. It really is Apple's way or the highway...."
Thousands of apps already in the Android store but for too many koolaid drinkers this kind of thinking still persists. No, the Android world will never be as neat and tidy as Steve's closed hell. Freedom is messy, either suck it up and deal with that reality or put yer damned chains on and stop bitching when they bind. In the end you have to make a decision. If Freedom worth the price or isn't it? Because it isn't free and Steve's fascist dictatorship is oh so shiny and the trains all run on time.
Stop developing for the App Store and it either dies or changes to attract developers back, just that simple. Even if he looked stupid doing the monkey dance, Balmer was right that it is all about "Developers, Develops, Developers!" However if the developers are supine and just sit and take whatever Jobs dishes out and yells "Thank you Sir, May I have another!" you really can't get upset about being abused.
> They don't want people using apps and games on their platform that you didn't buy from the app store, hence no Flash or Java on the i-devices.
Ding! We have a winner!
Exactly correct, follow the MONEY.
The idea is everyone saw what Nintendo did all those years ago when they raised the middle finger to the SCOTUS and locked their platform. Every console since has been ever more locked. Then cell phones were all locked (gotta keep people away from seeing how insecure the mobile network is after all... and $1 for a ringtone was sweet) and no serious objections were raised from either regulators or customers. So the PC makers (and especially OS vendors like Microsoft & Apple) started feeling like chumps for allowing just anyone to sell apps for 'their' computers without having to give up a taste to the manufacturer. So that is about to change. The iPhone was after all just a phone and all previous phones were closed. But the iPad sold well enough to convince Apple (and probably Microsoft, Dell, etc) that customers are stupid enough to put the chains on.
Now we find out if they are right or not. Choose wisely folks.
> Honestly, I think this will force most people to turn Javascript off if nothing else.
Which just might be the point. Turn JS off and the browsing experience is degraded to the point of unusability on most of the current net. So now the choice is Flash delivered via the plugin or Flash delivered via this JS thing which will be REALLY slow and make i* products look underpowered when compared to competing products viewing the same content. Game, Set and Match. Flash is now going to run on Apple products, His Steveness's only remaining choice is does he want it to run well or not.
> Same thing happened to me back at Fedora 5, and 10 disagreed with some of my hardware.
I have similar problems that will prevent me from putting F13 on either of the machines I use.
My desktop box is stuck on F11. Linux (upstream) has had a broken driver for my Highpoint RAID card for years. (Years as in the newest OS I know of that has a working driver was RHEL4) I managed to get the free driver at Highpoint's site to build on F11's original kernel with a little patching but later ones break new things I haven't had time to troubleshoot. So F12 was out and while I'll boot a copy of F13 in rescue mode and check, odds are F13 is out.
Or there is the Thinkpad I'm typing this on. F12 went on and I have everything working. Oh hell yea! Spanking new lappy and everything is working! Of course I had to stop taking kernel updates for it when a kernel update broke undock support. It is RH bugzilla #573135 and still in NEW state over seventy days in so don't bet the rent money on it getting fixed in the F13 cycle.... maybe F14, or maybe I get stuck with F12 for years like my desktop box.
Which, if anyone at Fedora is listening, SUCKS BALLS on a system with a use by date shorter than a microwavable burrito. :)
> Also, I'm hopeful regarding your vilification of the ultra-right manifesto Mein Kampf
Product of government schools.... shocking ignorance. National Socialism differed from International Socialism only in tactics, not goals. Hitler's Nazis wanted to spread the Truth of Socialism under the treads of his Panzers driven by Aryan Supermen while Stalin wanted to spread it by sponsoring 5th columns and revolutionary movements around the world... all directed by the Soviets. Hell, Stalin probably even killed more Jews. He certainly scored a higher general body count, second only to Mao. In the end Hitler's evil was undercut by his insanity and stupidity.
> hopeful that your team is at least beginning to move to the left of your Louisiana compatriot David Duke.
I'm tired of your team's rewrite of history to make the Republicans (remember Lincoln?) the racists. David Duke was a Republican in the same sense NY Mayor Bloomberg was. Neither could win as a Democrat so flew false colors. Difference is here in LA our Republican party wasn't having any of that. They put out stickers exhorting Republican voters to "Vote for the crook." (Duke's opponent was Edwin edwards, currently serving a long sentence in a Federal Prison.) Somehow the facts have been distorted into a mirror universe sort of parody of reality. There is exactly one former Klansman serving in the United States Senate. Have a taste of the fellow, just remember he is one of yours:
"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side...
Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the
dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become
degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from
the wilds."
-- America's All-Time Longest-Serving Senator, Democrat Robert Byrd
Remember Jim Crow, the racists with firehoses in the old B&W newsreels, those guys? Lifelong Democrats all. Or the smear commonly thrown at Tricky Dick Nixon and his 'Southern Strategy"? That would be when the Dixicrats (former and later Democrat George Wallace) were running and sucking up all the political oxygen? So riddle me this, if you are a Souther racist Democrat do you vote for the hated Republican or Wallace? Nixon was many things but political naif wasn't one of them.
> "Your team," "My team."
> That's exactly the mentality that fuels these kinds of ideological squabbles in government.
Sorry if you object to me struggling to preserve Western Civ against the Progressives.
But it is just a reality that we are divided into two unreconcilable camps and that hopes for a peaceful resolution aren't good. In fact I'd say we haven't been so philosophically divided since the late 1850s. Hope we can find a more peaceful solution than that era but I wouldn't bet the rent money.
The problem is we have two totally different theories of what the relationship between the government and the governed should be. On the one side is the American philosophy. The Founders, Declaration of Independence, Federalist, Constitution, limited and divided republican (small r) government. On the other side the Progressives (Current name but it changes every generation as enough voters figure out they are really the same as the now reviled previous name) who pretty much believe in the opposite of all that, their primary documenents are Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto, Mao's Little Red Book and Mein Kampf.
So brave and wise AC, explain how there can be compromise between such divergent worldviews? One must triumph over the other before the current situation where each side grabs the levers of power briefly and yanks them for a few years just degenerates into chaos.
> I'd like someone to point me to the list of actual inaccuracies in there?
You will grow old and feeble waiting. Progressives don't operate in the fact based world, they FEEL. And in this case all they needed to learn was their team lost the votes to know the result has to be a horror of Jesus freakery so why bother to read any of the primary documents and report on them? This is part of a pattern where they 'KNOW' (read feel) the AZ immigration law is racist without needing to read it. And the Constitition only says what they need it to say if they don't actually read it.
These tactics worked a lot better for them when they controlled the "Commanding Heights of the Culture", back when _Newsweek_ wasn't the poster child for a failing legacy media. Which is why they feel the Internet must be brought under government control because, with no facts to back it, they just 'know' evil reactionary forces are working to control it.
> When did progress become a dirty word?
When we figured out where the Progressives were trying to take us. Really, if the hundred plus million mass graves of the 20th Century didn't clue you in that progressive/fascist/socialist/marxist/maoist ideas kill then I probably can't help you.
> How is this different from the state of Texas taxing every tax paying Texan to educate all
> children with a one sided, politically (and factually) incorrect/motivated curriculum and
> the United States spending their (collective) money to educate their children with a
> curriculum they (collectively) choose?
Allow me to translate what you wrote from NewSpeak to English:
How is this different from Texas using their citizens tax dollars to switch from one politically correct (and factually incorrect) motivated curriculum to one that is also politically motivated, yet politically incorrect (while more factually correct) and the United States spending every Citizens tax dollars to enforce a curriculum chosen by Bill Ayers and other politically correct educrats.
Stated this way, the answer becomes obvious.
> The problem here is that decisions are being made by a group of people with an agenda to pass that completely goes against our countries constitution.
Wow. Just wow. And this folks is what Orwell was on about with NewSpeak. The TX board begins to reverse decades of political cleansing of textbooks and demanding a return to a study of the actual Founders and the Founding Documents they produced such as our Constitution and you call it an 'agenda' that goes against the Constitution.
Your Progressive team made education a political football early in the 20th Century when you started the whole push toward the virtual government monopoly on primary and secondary education. Your team has almost totally rewritten our history and turned our founding principles on their heads. It takes a lot of moxie to then bitch and whine when you finally lose power and get to watch My team reverse course. To paraphase the POTUS, "We won."
> (5) Joseph McCarthy's crusade via the H.U.A.C. is generally acknowledged as a bad thing, even by
> the most right-wing people. But it's also correct to acknowledge that it was reactionary, and
> didn't originate from one man's mental instability.
Anyone who even passes this one on without correcting it loses all right to speak about 20th Century history.
1. McCarthy had exactly zero involvement with the HUAC. Think for a few milliseconds. --HOUSE-- UnAmerican Affairs Committee. --SENATOR-- Joseph McCarthy. Right.
2. While the Progressives won the first round, mostly because Sen. McCarthy totally failed to realize just how far the rabbit hole went, History has vindicated pretty much every accusation he made. The records were ordered kept under Senate seal for fifty years but that has expired and the truth is out there. I'd recommend _Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies_ by M. Stanton Evans. Lots of primary sources, photocopies of formerly classified documents, etc. Or if you want a fun lighter read of the same material you could just grab Ann Coulter's _Treason_, which is probably more available in brick & morter stores.
> The last time I mentioned these, some people complained that the Lemote is not actually available anywhere, so here are two places:
I can guess the .nl site isn't where I should look so try the .com. Lets see, UK only keyboard, Shipped from Europe and paid in Euros (more fees) and at prices higher than a lot of higher spec hardware without those problems. And you get to buy it from a tiny site that can't even spring for an SSL cert. I know I'm eager to put my credit card in that. Sounds like 'not available' for all intents and purposes.
> Apple should lose their rights to process credit cards...
It wouldn't stop with them, they all do it. Even brick and morter stores like Walmart. I returned an item purchased months earlier and all they did was scan the barcode at the bottom of the receipt and the item's UPC code and that was it, the refund went back onto the same card used to make the purchase. So that means the mothership in Bentonville has a database that can cross the transaction ID on that receipt back to the payment information and they keep it for months if not forever.
Aren't you quivering in anticipation for what will be possible when every single pack of M&Ms has an RFID embedded into it?
> What I find so disappointing about Jobs is not anything about him really. It's that the
> public doesn't value freedom enough to tell him where to stick his proprietary lockdown schemes.
Why does it surprise you? We elected an administration where the major intellectual fault line is between the Marxists and Maoists. And it is a pretty safe bet that Apple customers voted 90% in favor. Why are you surprised they place little value on freedom? Apple and Obama are but symptoms of a bigger problem when it comes to teaching the values required to be a people worthy of receiving the blessings of liberty. When someone offers a simple solution to a problem that boils down to ceding control to an elite group of 'better' people to make the decisions the correct response is "hell no."
> It doesn't help that net neutrality as a concept has just started to come to public attention
> around the same time that Democrats are trying to re-introduce the "fairness doctrine" to wield
> against their supposed foes, conservatives in "talk radio."
We aren't confusing anything. We know 'network neutrality' as currently proposed comes straight from Free Press. It is evil enough, but it is just part of the almost endless series of interlocking NGOs that make up the Progressive conspiracy. It ties directly into Media Matters, Soros and the whole sick bunch of socialists, marxists and maoists clustered around President Obama. Start with the FCC Chair. Go ahead, Google him a bit. Goes back to Harvard Law Review with Obama. Just read this clown's bio on Wikipedia (yea, I know about overly trusting Wikipedia) and it reads like a typical scion of old money who went communist in college and lives an elite life of idle makework drifing from one boardroom to another keeping the right people sliding further along on the long march through the institutions. Or take the FCC "Diversity Czar", Mark Lloyd, another marxist piece of Unamerican filth.
We would have to be insane to let these barbarians[1] anywhere something as wonderful as the Internet, they are already close enough as is. Yes the government monopoly telco and cable 'companies' are bad, but giving the government (any government, this one is just the worst in a generation) something so important to screw up is daft.
[1] In a way all socialists are barbarians in that they seek to control or destroy things they could never create themselves.
> Think back to how the phone networks were handled before various regulations were placed on it.
> You couldn't even own your own phone!!
No, it was totally regulated even then. AT&T was a government granted monopoly with regulation at both the State and Federal level. AT&T had just achieved regulatory capture.
Yes, monopolies are bad. But so will government control of the Internet. We get screwed either way. Since I don't like getting screwed why don't we try something different? How about the Free Market? It is the one solution that works every time it is tried.
Break up the monopolies one last time, this time doing it right. The last mile is the natural monopoly so admit that and let it remain a government regulated utility. But forbid the monopoly from offering ANYTHING on the pipe, instead force them to sell access at the same rates to anyone who wants in.
> ..its transmitters at full power..
Maybe I'm just an idiot and missing something obvious but something about this story has bothered me for days. This bird is a bent pipe design and the transceiver is still fully functional, right? It is (re)transmitting on the same frequencies as AMC11, otherwise we wouldn't have a problem. Sounds simple enough, turn off AMC11's outputs, redirect the uplink for a few days and just let G15 transmit until it moves far enough away for ground stations to pick out the two signals. Ok, ground stations would probably need to twiddle their dish almost daily during the transit but it should work and sure beats the alternative.
> Name the last nomination that wasn't a Party Regular for either party.
Anthony Kennedy. And who the hell knows what Harriet Meirs would have done. Don't forget Sandra O'Conner, Reagan's great mistake. It was only with Bush 43 that the Repubs stopped appointing unknowns.
> "Abortion" and most can guess closely what the outcome will be, regardless of the specific facts or points in question.
Actually most of our team would be quite happy if the SCOTUS would simply nullify Roe v Wade and toss the issue back to the States. Most scholars now concede it was a bad decision but it is Holy Writ for the feminists so it will remain a political football. It is actually quite simple, 10th Amendment. All our side wants is Justices with basic English comprehension skills, your team is looking for philosopher kings to rule over us.
> Most people don't initially know a lot about her...
I ain't most people. I read up on her when she made the short list. I wrote the white dude off as a show of diversity and concentrated on Woods and Kagan. Woods has a paper trail and with the current 59-41 split was a risk. Kagan is a Harriet Meirs gambit and was the way to bet. If I had to bet she will go through with 33-36 Repubs against because Dems won't object to a cypher unlike when it was our team that scuttled Meirs.
> You're also using that word Progressive as a pejorative again without seeming to understand that there is nothing
> Progressive about a number of the stances on the issues that Obama and Kagan hold.
Name ONE non-progressive position Obama has actually ACTED on. He talks a good moderate but that is just defensive coloring.
> Obama is a centrist, just as Bush was a centrist, just as Clinton was a centrist, and so on and so on.
No he isn't. Or he isn't unless you use the MSM scale with Chairman Mao on the Left and FDR on the Right and anything to the right of Him is only howling madness. Neither was Clinton initially, it was only after getting a wakeup call in Nov '94 that he suddenly became the 3rd way centrist he ran as in 92. As for Bush.... darned if I ever could figure out exactly what his "Compassionate Conservative" BS[1] was all about. He was neither fish nor foul except for insisting on killin' terrorists after 9/11. Had that not happened I suspect your team would be a lot happier with how his Presidency worked out and I'd be a lot less.
> I'd like to see your obviously impressive resume since you are so keen to disregard the success,
> academic or otherwise, of others whom you disagree with...
Well first I'm not a nominee to the SCOTUS. Seriously, go look into her, she was on the Law Review with Obama, tenured professor (unlike Obama who was only a lecturer) and yet as someone else (think a writer at dailybeast) noted this morning, he had just spent the morning reading everything Kagan had ever written. EVERYTHING. In one morning. Shades of Obama. How do these people rise so far in a publish or perish academic environment without writing anything of note?
But again, none of that matters. If one knows what Obama is there is no need to wonder how Kagan will rule on the court.
[1] BS because Conservatism IS compassionate.
> ..as if because Obama nominates her she is going to assume every single position that you personally disagree with..
Pretty much. We don't have to know anything about her other than Obama has worked with long enough (Harvard Law Review and U of Chicago) that HE trusts her. Since we know Pres. Obama is a straight ticket 'Progressive' it is a safe bet he isn't about to nominate someone who isn't Party Regular. Apparently saying something so self evident gets modded Troll these days. Oh well, got Karma to burn.
Amazing how fast she has risen with such a thin resume..... sorta like her patron in the White House. Almost makes ya think that around the time of Nixon/Reagan the Progressives figured out the American people would never elect an out of the closet Progressive/Socialist and started grooming a new breed who would leave no paper trail but would be quietly promoted into positions where they could be quickly jammed into high offices before anyone figured out what they really were.
> Identify constitutionality of every new law - that's for the Courts to do
No it isn't. The Constitution isn't the E Plub Neista, for Chiefs and Sons of Chiefs... i..e something out of a bad Star Trek episode. It is for everyone. And the SCOTUS wasn't intended to be the only and final authority on the matter either.
> and it's a Ron Paulian thing, I'm not a fan of him or his politics, anti-semites rub me the wrong way.
Not just that, he gives off more than a whiff of Klansman which ensures he remains a fringe player in the Republican Party. Now if he switched to D he could join former Grand Klegle and current Senator Byrd (D-WV).....
But you don't have to be a Ronulan to believe in the Constitution and that most of what the current Feral Government is doing is so far outside the limits that were laid down that any Founding Father that came back today would be grabbing his 'sporting goods' in a few milliseconds.
> Reject emissions trading: I don't have a dog in that fight
You dom you just don't realize it. Obama is on videotape admitting his notions of carbon trading would "cause electricity rates to skyrocket." In reality ALL energy would skyrocket. Not much in our economy runs without energy so everything skyrockets.
> Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality: - umm, no, Jesus, the Constitution says nothing about a space program or GPS, would those be done away with?
You might get maintaining the GPS constelation in as an aid to navigation/transportation. Long precedent for lighthouses for example. But no, NASA would be toast if the Constitution came back into favor. Not that it matters anymore, it is just a jobs program now and not much of one at that. It isn't like we have any plans to do anything anymore.
> Limit annual growth in federal spending: - sure, but what happens in case of war, natural disaster? Tough luck? That would have made WW2 untenable.
We change the law again if we have a real war. But we are running up a bigger deficit as percentage of budget and percentage of GDP in peacetime than we did in past wars. See death of NASA above, eventually the welfare state sucks everything into its event horizion.
> Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010: Too specific
You need to be specific if you want to be hold a politician to anything. A promise to "Reform the heathcare bill" would be so open to interpretation that any politician could claim to meet it. But a promise to vote in favor of a total repeal is binary, either he does or he doesn't vote in favor of a repeal bill. But our battle cry is normally Repeal and Replace, because conservatives realize the current system has problems, our complaint is the current bill solved few of the problems and brings in a lot of new ones.
> Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy: - drill baby drill and no development of alternative energy sources, cause its not in the Constitution!
That is ok, most of what we need Congress to pass in an energy bill is more getting the Hell out of the way instead of trying to micromanage energy policy. And cutting the scope of government is certainly in keeping with the Constitution.
> Reduce Earmarks: That'll wreck the rural states, where the conservatives are from, good work guys.
You don't understand how earmarks work. They don't tend to change the total allocations, they just direct portions to a specific project in a specific Congressional District, typically to something that gets the Congressman's name on the entrance. Look at this weekend's festivities in Utah where one of Sen Bennett's defenses was his skill at bringing home pork. It disgusted the delegates and hurt his standing. We are smart enough to have realized that pork isn't a free lunch.
> Yes, she might have a secret agenda but it's more likely she's just not very biased about stuff.
Are really that naive or are you just a shill? President Obama is the most overtly Progressive (read Social Democratic for you Euro readers out there) politician to make POTUS since Wilson and FDR. If he nominated her she is known to be Party Regular. And he does personally know the lady. That means forget anything she has said publicly while serving in lower positions and/or trying to get nominated to positions of authority. It would be safe to bet the rent money that within a year of getting appointed to the SCOTUS none will doubt she holds the following views.
The Constitution is a 'living' document that means whatever the Party needs it to mean today.
The 1st Amendment says Porn is protected speech but political ads aren't. Religious speech can and must be suppressed wherever and whenever it occurs outside an officially designated church.
The 2nd Amendment protects the government's Right to possess weapons but says nothing about thee or me.
The 4th Amendment doesn't apply when a Party member occupies the White House.
The 9th and 10th Amendments are a historical curiosity that say zero about the modern government's power to do whatever the Hell the Party wants.
Roe v Wade is Holy Writ. Even as most scholars now admit it was a terrible ruling and the poster child for legislating from the bench.
Enforcing our immigration laws is racist. I.e. Arizona is a bunch of racists who will need to be punished for copy/pasting Federal immigration laws (which aren't actually enforced) into State law. The idea being it is OK to have immigration laws on the books, but to actually enforce one is bad.
> there is a large fraction of the population who do not understand the scientific method
It might help your team if YOU actually understood science and it's limits.
> Fact is there are some things where there is an absolute truth for (climate change, drug effectiveness, best way to handle nuclear waste)
The FACT is none of the things you mention will ever attain the level of FACT. For example, there is no 'best' way to handle nuclear waste, they are all judgement calls involving a multitude of positive and negative factors. Cost, risk, benefits, etc. Launching it into the Sun for example would (assuming a suitable containment to make a failed launch safe) be the ultimate in safety but would be insanely expensive and eliminates the ability to reprocess it in the future as technology improves. Burying it is pretty safe but eco nut found plenty to object to with Yucca Mtn. Drug effectiveness never seems to be 100% settled and side effects turn up years and years after a new drug is approved. Medicine in general is still as much art as science. And Climate Change is almost entirely opinion. Nobody is dealing with that as facts to be measured, cost benefit analyzed, etc. One side says we are Doomed! unless we turn to Socialism and the other side is basically saying piss off hippie.
> some things that will always remain judgment calls (whether fetuses are alive, how to handle illegal immigration)
Reeally? There is a side arguing a fetus isn't alive? I always thought the argument was person/not person. I wonder why we don't just constrain the government's interest to Citizen/not Citizen. Since the US Constitution sets that line at birth we could then debate a more sensible question of whether in light of modern neonatal medicine whether we should revisit that line.
And I'm really perplexed by the other side of the illegal immigration argument. We all agree they are criminals, right? (Hint: the word illegal is the tell) We all agree that if we really wanted open borders Congress could just change the immigration laws and dismantle the border checkpoints. But for some reason (I actually DO know why) one side in this argument wants us to DoubleThink that it is good to have laws regulating immigration but to argue for enforcing them is racist. And that we are supposed to believe that this doesn't contribute to the general lack of respect for law and order.