Of course not. I'm saying "it's not broken if you turn it off" is not all that helpful. Whether it's useful or not, it doesn't get a free pass because you can turn it off, because you *might* have a real need for it.
Switch off javascript, or if there are some sites you want to keep it on for, allow it for certain domains. You can do this in Mozilla, Konqueror, and even IE, usually.
Yeah, and you can protect yourself from bad HTML by not visiting any web sites. I fail to see the usefulness in either solution.
You buy a product under whatever conditions it is sold under. That includes something that cripples itself in certain situations. That includes DVDs that only work in certain regions. These are not hidden facts about these products--they're fully known, and when you choose to buy them, you choose to accept the conditions applied to them.
If you didn't know about it, maybe you should have read up about your purchase before you made it, especially for an expensive product. As a consumer, it's your job to know what you're buying, and decide whether or not it's worth it to you.
We've got ourselves a free market here. You're free to buy, or abstain from buying. Choose wisely.
Under these conditions I really don't think consumers will reject content controlling devices.
So what's the problem with them? Seriously. If consumers aren't affected by the controls, then they're just serving their purpose--preventing piracy, or whatever they intend to prevent.
We have no entitlement to these products. Neither are we forced into buying them. We weigh the stipulations, costs, and advantages of buying a product, we decide if it's worth it, and we buy it. If consumers don't know, and never find out, that a product is crippled to them in some way, then it doesn't matter that it's crippled in that way, because they're still getting what they paid for. If it is a problem, then do your research beforehand, and just don't buy it!
The whole idea behind a free market is that we're free to make buying decisions. If you don't like a product, it isn't trampling your rights, and it isn't big brother in the private sector. It's a company that makes a product that you don't like, and you don't have to buy. So you don't buy it. Where's the problem?
The sense of entitlement around here that product should be made your way or else it's somehow unjust never made sense to me. Corporations can force nothing upon you. The worst they can do is make a worthless product.
I wouldn't even pretend to argue that I don't think this sort of patent is completely stupid, unwarranted, bad, dangerous, etc. However, I think if you're going after CMGI, and other companies who work within the law to do these kinds of things, you'll be fighting a losing battle.
CMGI, as a public company, is required to make money. As much of it as they possibly can. They're even liable if they don't do what they need to do to make money. You can't blame them for trying to do whatever they can, within the law, to make that money. These patents, sadly, are well within the law as it stands, and you can't expect them to listen when you say "Please, Mr. Big Company, give up gigantic profits and abandon your shareholders in order to stick to my principles and be nice!" They're not going to listen, and your boycott isn't going to make much a difference with all the visitors a site like AltaVista gets. And, like it or not, most visitors to Altavista probably don't give a crap about any sort of patents.
The battle to be fought here is not against companies who work within the law. The battle to be fought is with the USPTO, to get them to stop being morons. Reform of the USPTO, and reasonable judges who throw out moronic, obvious patents with prior art, is what's necessary here, not pleading some big company to do the "noble thing" and give up on a chance to make money. They don't do it because they're evil and enjoy stepping on the little guy and exerting power over the world. They do it because they need to make money, and they'll do whatever they need to do to make it. That's how they pay their employees and keep their shareholders happy.
Old and bad vision? That's why the Democrat who designed the ballot made it like it is, so the print could be bigger and people with bad eyesight could see the names of the candidates. The arrows pointing to the holes that needed to be punched were also rather large. This isn't a confusing ballot to anyone as long as you're paying attention while you vote. If you aren't paying attention while you vote, well, chances are you weren't paying attention to who the candidates are, either.
Of course they have a right to be heard, but they also have a responsibility to speak properly. You can't change the rules because your guy lost. You get one shot at a vote. Everyone can make mistakes. It happens. The law says you go with the count, you *don't* whine after the fact about a ballot you already approved and demand a recount because it happens to fall in your favor.
Revote? How about a recount? Ballots aren't destroyed. And if you didn't notice, votes are being recounted right now.
This is not machine error. This is, arguably, user error, or perhaps nothing at all. Nobody has any place to whine about it. If you don't vote how you intended, tough luck, and pay attention next time. We can't call a new election everytime someone says they might have checked the wrong box.
To a degree, although I honestly think Bush has a lot more executive experience simply because he holds the primary executive role in his state. While Gore has a lot of experience in the federal government, most of it is in the legislative branch. The VP doesn't do a whole lot...:)
I didn't intend to exclude Gore from my list, however, the topic of discussion just happened to be Bush. If you want to vote for Gore, do so over policies, not some kind of strange myth that Gore is more qualified to lead the country than Bush. That's all I'm saying...
This isn't redirection. This is simply stating the fact that Dick Cheney provides all the foreign policy experience to the Bush administration that you could ever hope to say isn't there because Bush hasn't had much national experience.
The job of the president is not to do everything hands on. The man is an executive, and his job is to assemble a team of people, not deal with the entire executive branch by himself. This is the way it works. So yes, this is democracy in action.
Bush might or might not be a genuis. It doesn't matter. You don't have to be a genius to be president, you just have to know how to hold an executive position. Bush does. Live with it.
We've made the point that it's not a two party system at that point.
You mean like some people did when Ross Perot got something like 15%-20% of the popular vote (at least I think it was something like that)? Third parties aren't something Nader invented, and they've gotten some support in the past, even if it wasn't enough to get elected. 5% isn't much of a statement, either... the truth is, most of America is perfectly content with the status quo.
And I don't think it makes sense to say Perot bought his 15%-20% of the vote. I've seen plenty of Nader this campaign season, so he's had no shortage of publicity, and ample chance to get his message out, just like Perot did. Most Americans aren't leftists, though...
How many DMCA, MPAA, DeCSS, censorware articles do you need to read...
In order to feel there is a persistent, fundamental problem with our government, rather than just some misguided legislation? More than one. If you want to go by article count, we most certainly have a serious issue on our hands, but I think you're forgetting that Slashdot rehashes the same stories repeatedly, and as such, article count isn't representative of problem count.
DMCA is poor legislation, misguided perhaps, but something that can easily be solved within the system if everyone here stopped whining about it to their groupthink-minded peers and instead whined about it to their congressmen. I wonder how many people are doing that around here...
MPAA is an organization, not any sort of legislation or what not, and has no direct tie-in to the government, so it provides no example to go on.
DeCSS is rather stupid as well, but it's simply, again, a case of a misguided judiciary, not an inherent evil within our governmental system. The solution is to do something about it within the system, not to whine about it and start with empty talk of revolution around here.
There is nothing inherently wrong with censorware, nor would I say there's anything wrong with having it on some (or all) public access terminals. Porn on a public terminal isn't a right. If you want unrestricted access to the Internet, it's still avaialable to you, you'll just have to find somewhere besides a library to get it. If you want to argue censorware doesn't always work properly, that's fine, but that's a different argument than saying it's a violation of our rights and a sign of an impending police state.
Was there anything else? My point is not that there aren't any issues that need to be addressed in American politics. Obviously there are... otherwise we could shut down the legislative branch completely since everything is just how we want it. The point is that none of the examples you mentioned are signs of an inherently flawed system, they're just problems that need to be and can be addressed within the system as it stands.
Alarmism will get us nowhere. If you honestly think the US is becoming a corporate controlled police state, formulate a nice good list of examples with concrete evidence to back this up, and go out into the real world and make it known.
Have campaigns always been so pre-fab and lifeless?
Maybe not, but I only really see this in the presidential campaigns anyway. Sure, that particular national race is getting a bit silly, with all the mindless propaganda flying around and the importance of catering to the media. But that's just the presidency! The truth is, his power is very limited, and the direction our government takes isn't necessarily contingent upon him. The same reasoning applies to another of your other points, I think... maybe the presidental race is getting kind of stupid, but that's not a sign of a problem with government itself.
Have large corporations always held this degree of control over politics and legislation?
Hard to say, I suppose, but I really think examples are necessary, even in this crowd. From my perspective, I fear it's too easy to infer corporate control over issues which weren't influenced in that way. With regards to IP, which seems to be the major concern here, there are, I believe, some issues to be dealt with, but that by no means suggests a major problem with government itself, just with some of the legislation that has passed. Perhaps a few letters to congresspeople that represent you could make it known that you disagree with these policies, but I think it's also important to understand that there difference of opinion with you on the issue does not mean for sure that they were bought.
Our government is steadily becoming less and less representative of the people. Fewer people vote each election, because they don't feel their vote makes a difference.
Are you sure this is why people don't vote? Another similar theory would be that most people feel that America is mostly headed in the right direction (there are polls to indicate this is the case, though I'm not sure how valid they are) politically, so they aren't too worried about things. Voter apathy, I would venture to say, increases in times of prosperity because when the economy is good, people don't feel they need to be bothered by politics. They'll just ride the good times, and get concerned when things start to go bad. It could be that people don't feel their vote makes a difference, and are disillusioned with an increasingly evil system, but it could also be the case that people think the system is just fine, and can run along without their help.
The problem is, the factions are not balancing each other anymore. There are serveral very large very powerful factions...
Could you name a few? I'm just curious, because I hear this an awful lot, but nobody really ever points to any examples of how corporations are trampling on our rights. The only example people seem to come up with is the DMCA and patents. If that's the case, lobby to get the DMCA changed, and the patent office reformed! Politicians might get money from companies, but they get votes from you. Take some time to get people pissed off, politicians still have to listen. This doesn't mean we need a radical socialization of corporate America.
But really, unless there's a pretty decent list of examples of a bought federal government, why does a law like the DMCA suggest that we need radical action to offset the "very large, very powerful" factions? All it suggests is that we either need to have a little talk with our current elected officials, and let them know that they aren't representing us properly when it comes to that single decision they made, or get a president in office who will respect the constitution and give us some more judges who will act accordingly. My biased opinion as to who that might be doesn't matter, but I'll give you a hint: I don't think it's Nader, because I honestly don't think he's too concerned about the constitution. Maybe I'm wrong... my apologies if this is so, feel free to correct me. I don't see how any of this is an indication of an oppressive or incorrect system, or an indication that Republicans and Democrats are inherently evil and we must have third party candidates at all costs.
My problem with this third party-ism I see here on Slashdot and a couple other nerd communities on the web is that people get so worked up about something that they decide they have to overhaul the system to fix any glitches it might show. This seems to be the reasoning behind a lot of people voting for Nader even when they don't agree with him. But I don't think the system is nearly as evil as most people around here seem to think. Are politics or politicians perfect or pure? Of course they aren't! But they've been working pretty darn well for a long time, as I'd venture to say that politically America has been very successful thus far. Thus, it seems politics can continue to do work as is if we continue to take reasonable (as opposed to radical) action about the things that matter to us.
It was specifically set up to resist the will of the populace for the sake of "stability".
I wholeheartedly disagree with this. I would say it was specifically set up to prevent spontaneous, perhaps overly emotional or radical, changes to the system that might not be beneficial to the system in the long run. The will of the people can draw change, but they can't, by design, make radical changes very quickly. You're right, it's for the sake of stability, but not for the sake of not allowing anything to ever get done. When things change slowly, they're a whole lot more likely to change in a reasonable fashion.
I guess my point here is that there isn't anything inherently wrong with American politics as is. People are screaming that we need more recognition for third parties because the Republicans and Democrats are going to destroy this country. From my perspective, third parties don't get high poll numbers, or a lot of press, because most people quite simply don't agree with their policies. When people do agree with their policies, they can get a fair amount of votes--Perot is a good example of this. There isn't necessarily a Republican and Democratic deadlock in the US. It just so happens that Republicans and Democrats tend to reflect the majority of the nation's views. If you disagree with them, that's great, and it's a good reason to vote for someone else, but it seems it's still important to accept the fact that most of America probably disagrees with you, and there's no conspiracy that goes along with that disagreement.
Point taken, though personally I feel he does have some ideas. Privitization of social security, tax cuts... they might not be revolutionary, but who can say they're not ideas?
What bothers me is this awful habit of demonizing all of those you disagree with. Ideally, politics should be about different people disagreeing with other people in a reasonable fashion about ideas. They shouldn't be about calling your opponent a moron and evil, making him look like a person bankrupt of positive personality traits. If you agree with a candidate's ideas, great! Vote for him! If you don't, just move along. You don't have to write him off as an evil individual, you don't have to portray him as the death of a nation--you just disagree with a usually perfectly valid position that just doesn't match yours.
So that's what I'm responding to. If people disagree with Bush's ideas, great. But that's never what gets talked about here. People just character assissinate like there's no tomorrow. I know, I know, the politicians do it too, but when engaging in political discussion, couldn't we rise above that for once?
Alas, that's rather idealistic. Political discussion never really can be isolated to issues. But a guy can dream, can't he?
Sure, but remember, such people probably don't expect to be revived anytime in the near future. They freeze their heads, then hope that by the time the technology exists to revive them at all, the technology will exist also to clone you a body to place your head on, and you're good to go.
But then, it seems kind of silly to me that someone thinks that by freezing themsleves without knowing how the whole process has to work, they'll freeze themselves "properly" in order to be revived. But hey, it's their money...:)
Clinton's energy policy is bad because Americans pay the lowest gas prices amongst all western nations?
No. Clinton's energy policy is bad because he's increased our dependence on foreign oil by cutting down domestic production, and oil prices have risen dramatically compared to what they were here.
Reno is bad because she shat all over Microsoft?
No, Reno is bad because she's had countless examples of very poorly handled situations (Elian Gonzales, various cults). Of course, we have to think of parents' rights and disregard the fact that it's illegal to break into someone's home without a warrant, right?
I absolutely do believe the conservatives have a different view of the constitution than their liberal opponents. That's just the way it has been... liberals see the constituion as a dynamic document, conservatives tend not to. I'm sorry if you'd rather buy into your own rhetoric about how evil conservatives are that you can fail to recognize that there's simply a fundamental difference between the viewpoint of liberals and the viewpoint of conservatives. I know, it's much more fun to demonize your oponents than it is to simply explain why you believe they're incorrect in their views.
I really could not care less about Bill Clinton's sex life. I do care about the Cheif Executive--that's right, the guy that's supposed to be enforcing laws--breaking laws. Purjury is purjury, even if you think that he wasn't under oath for a worthwhile cause. There is no excuse for disobeying the law, especially when your job is to enforce it. Throw all the rhetoric about how it's about sex back at me that you want.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll watch my karma drop for departing from/. groupthink.
I agree, Alan Greenspan is the man that made this economy what it is, plus all the evil corporations people like to speak about around here. Clinton is not responsible.
A free market would determine where the cheapest oil came from if Clinton hadn't practically shut down domestic production of it. But he has, and alas, domestic production of oil is pathetically low, and that's a serious problem.
The rest of your comments don't seem to lead anywhere, and many are unsupported facts, so I'm afraid I can't really comment on them. Alas, I'll watch my continue to watch my karma drop for not following the slashdot party line...
Bush and his oil-loving Texan friends, on the other hand, would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil...
I think we all love oil, considering the fact we use it every day. Unless you gave it up. You'd certainly be in the minority if you did.
And what makes you think Bush would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil? I was under the impression he's made it clear he would reduce restrictions on domestic oil production, and thus, reduce or dependence on foreign oil. I'm afraid I don't follow your logic...
Promises to make affordable alternatives to fossil fuels are great... Bush has made some too, not sure if you caught that. His position, though, is that while alternative sources are important, they're not here yet. While they're not here, we darn well better give ourselves what does work, like oil, or we'll continue to have problems in the middle east. We can't ignore a problem while we look for a different solution, if looking for a different solution has an indefinite timeframe connected to it.
God forbid the man have a Texas accent, and goodness me, you mean he sometimes fumbles up as he speaks? That certainly never happens to you, does it?
Intelligence can't be measured solely by one's ability to articulate those ideas. Eloquence of speech is not at all an indicator of intelligence of ideas. Let's understand that before we start calling Bush a moron. He's just not as eloquent a public speaker as some other politicians. But Politics really shouldn't be about image, they should be about ideas, don't you think?
Calling any of the candidates a "crank" or a "nut" is unnecessary and immature...
...unless the candidate's name is George W. Bush? Of course, those get moderated up, not down.
However, Nader's problem is that he wants to destroy corporations (read: the people who give us jobs, and thus a good economy) by means of the largest corporation in America: the Government. Is a bigger Government going to protect our freedoms more, you think, by destroying the companies we work for?
I'm not going to call any candidates cranks or nuts, but I wholeheartedly disagree with Nader's solution to a questionable problem. I don't hear a whole lot of that discussed here, though... people seem to support Nader because he's not one of the "evil" Republicrats. I know it's popular around here to believe neither Republicans nor Democrats can have good ideas, but I'd venture to say most people actually agree with the policies of either of these parties, and it isn't a matter of the populace being duped by purchased politicians.
I'm more concerned that GWB would nominate pro-corporate and/or anti free speech justices...
I'm sorry, this sort of rhetoric is really starting to bother me. There is no reason I've heard to think Mr. Bush is either anti-free speech or pro-corporate. You can complain about him being bought if you'd like, but remember that wouldn't put him in any different boat than Gore. There's simply no evidence that I've heard of to suggest the man is purchased, or that he has anything against the average Joe or free speech. Point me to a real, live source that can confirm such a statement...
As I see it, conservatives seem to have a whole lot more respect for the constitution than their liberal counterparts, in that they tend to be (in my experience) a little more towards the viewpoint that it isn't a living and breathing document (and it isn't!). As Bush is a conservative, and since except for rhetoric I haven't heard anything to suggest otherwise, I'm going to assume your free speech is safer with George Bush than it is with Al Gore.
I don't agree with Gore's plan to track usage at the ISP level but that in no way makes him a worse choice than Bush.
Why, exactly, is that? Gore is forcing an invasion of privacy on people with his plan, Bush is proposing no such thing, as I think he recognizes the the government isn't supposed to be doing parenting. Bush's only "forceful" suggestion is to put filters on public Internet access terminals, and last I checked, people don't have any sort of right to view porn in a Library.
... Bush is all for legislating morality. He said outright in the debate last night that he was all for government funding of faith-based programs. I wonder which faith he was talking about.
I would imagine he was talking about ALL faiths. That is to say, if the government is going to fund chess club, why shouldn't it fund any other club that asks for money? The government shouldn't be deciding who and who shouldn't be allowed to meet, their reason for doing so shouldn't matter at all. If you want to say it should matter, the government shouldn't be giving any programs money.
What does this have to do with legislating morality? Absolutely nothing. Nobody is being forced to attend such programs.
You are talking about voting for a man with a running mate who worked for an oil exploration and drilling company.
Oh dear goodness, no! Not somebody with experience in the private sector! Seriously, if you think oil companies are so evil, why do you use their product every day? If you really want to be anti-oil, you really can't turn around and drive to work with it.
Guess what Bush wants to do with his energy policy...
He wants to try and remove our dependence on foreign nations for our oil. During the last oil crisis, I've heard it said, we were importing about 30% of our oil. Now we import 60%. Is it any wonder we've got prices skyrocketing? We're at their mercy. We need to increase domestic production of oil, plain and simple, and that means removing some of the excessive restrictions we have on drilling oil.
Bush and his hardline veep candidate wouldn't be picking justices with the interests of free speech in mind. They would pick justices that could possibly overturn Roe v. Wade...
First of all, Roe v. Wade has nothing to do with free speech. It's considered a privacy issue, and I'd venture to say a rather silly one, but that's a debate for another time.
Secondly, how do you figure that Bush is against free speech? Which candidate mentioned that they were against censorship last night? I'll give you a hint--it wasn't Mr. Gore. The only quote I've heard that people try to use to suggest Bush is against free speech is his "There ought to be limits to freedom" deal. But who disagrees with that? I shouldn't be free to kill you. My guess is (and admittedly, I haven't seen this quote) that this is taken wildly out of context. That said, I think your free speech is at least just as safe under Bush, perhaps more so, since his opponent has already told us the Constitution is a document that ought to "change with America." As long as we can redefine the Constitution as it suits us, free speech is in big trouble... so if you think Al Gore is going to protect it, maybe you should look a little harder at what he's said about it.
Indeed, but your claim is that we can thank Ronald Reagan for a large portion of our national debt. This is quite simply false. We can thank a Democratic congress for passing budgets which resulted in such a large debt, and we can thank Ronald Reagan for signing it. Your original claim is still false, as the debt isn't Reagan's responsibility, he just accepted it.
Besides, don't you appreciate the fact that the Cold War is over?
Well, I've used Excel plenty of times, and last time I saved a document, I got a grand total of Zero message boxes telling me anything. It just saved. Unless I hadn't saved it before, then it gave me a dialog box so I could tell it where to save it. How pesky! Not sure what settings you're using, but clearly they're not default.
I currently run Win2k. To change my DNS server, I have to press 3 buttons. One to get to TCP/IP properties, one to confirm the change, and one to close my LAN properties again. Then the DNS servers are changed, no reboot necessary. Same if I change my IP address. Careful using blanket statements, contrary to popular opinion, MS has improved Win2k greatly over the previous incarnations of Windows. I've been running Win2k at least half a year, and it hasn't crashed yet.
If the feeling of "just do it already" takes over, too freaking bad! If you don't read a message and you hit a button when presented with an option, you're still responsible for the consequences. When's the last time you went into court after breaching a contract and said "But all that legalize, I didn't bother to read the contract before I signed it, why should I be bound to it?" If you want to mindlessly click buttons, go ahead, but if the computer then does something you don't want it to, it isn't anybody's fault but your own.
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Of course not. I'm saying "it's not broken if you turn it off" is not all that helpful. Whether it's useful or not, it doesn't get a free pass because you can turn it off, because you *might* have a real need for it.
Switch off javascript, or if there are some sites you want to keep it on for, allow it for certain domains. You can do this in Mozilla, Konqueror, and even IE, usually.
Yeah, and you can protect yourself from bad HTML by not visiting any web sites. I fail to see the usefulness in either solution.
You buy a product under whatever conditions it is sold under. That includes something that cripples itself in certain situations. That includes DVDs that only work in certain regions. These are not hidden facts about these products--they're fully known, and when you choose to buy them, you choose to accept the conditions applied to them.
If you didn't know about it, maybe you should have read up about your purchase before you made it, especially for an expensive product. As a consumer, it's your job to know what you're buying, and decide whether or not it's worth it to you.
We've got ourselves a free market here. You're free to buy, or abstain from buying. Choose wisely.
We have no entitlement to these products. Neither are we forced into buying them. We weigh the stipulations, costs, and advantages of buying a product, we decide if it's worth it, and we buy it. If consumers don't know, and never find out, that a product is crippled to them in some way, then it doesn't matter that it's crippled in that way, because they're still getting what they paid for. If it is a problem, then do your research beforehand, and just don't buy it!
The whole idea behind a free market is that we're free to make buying decisions. If you don't like a product, it isn't trampling your rights, and it isn't big brother in the private sector. It's a company that makes a product that you don't like, and you don't have to buy. So you don't buy it. Where's the problem?
The sense of entitlement around here that product should be made your way or else it's somehow unjust never made sense to me. Corporations can force nothing upon you. The worst they can do is make a worthless product.
I wouldn't even pretend to argue that I don't think this sort of patent is completely stupid, unwarranted, bad, dangerous, etc. However, I think if you're going after CMGI, and other companies who work within the law to do these kinds of things, you'll be fighting a losing battle.
CMGI, as a public company, is required to make money. As much of it as they possibly can. They're even liable if they don't do what they need to do to make money. You can't blame them for trying to do whatever they can, within the law, to make that money. These patents, sadly, are well within the law as it stands, and you can't expect them to listen when you say "Please, Mr. Big Company, give up gigantic profits and abandon your shareholders in order to stick to my principles and be nice!" They're not going to listen, and your boycott isn't going to make much a difference with all the visitors a site like AltaVista gets. And, like it or not, most visitors to Altavista probably don't give a crap about any sort of patents.
The battle to be fought here is not against companies who work within the law. The battle to be fought is with the USPTO, to get them to stop being morons. Reform of the USPTO, and reasonable judges who throw out moronic, obvious patents with prior art, is what's necessary here, not pleading some big company to do the "noble thing" and give up on a chance to make money. They don't do it because they're evil and enjoy stepping on the little guy and exerting power over the world. They do it because they need to make money, and they'll do whatever they need to do to make it. That's how they pay their employees and keep their shareholders happy.
Old and bad vision? That's why the Democrat who designed the ballot made it like it is, so the print could be bigger and people with bad eyesight could see the names of the candidates. The arrows pointing to the holes that needed to be punched were also rather large. This isn't a confusing ballot to anyone as long as you're paying attention while you vote. If you aren't paying attention while you vote, well, chances are you weren't paying attention to who the candidates are, either.
Of course they have a right to be heard, but they also have a responsibility to speak properly. You can't change the rules because your guy lost. You get one shot at a vote. Everyone can make mistakes. It happens. The law says you go with the count, you *don't* whine after the fact about a ballot you already approved and demand a recount because it happens to fall in your favor.
Revote? How about a recount? Ballots aren't destroyed. And if you didn't notice, votes are being recounted right now.
This is not machine error. This is, arguably, user error, or perhaps nothing at all. Nobody has any place to whine about it. If you don't vote how you intended, tough luck, and pay attention next time. We can't call a new election everytime someone says they might have checked the wrong box.
To a degree, although I honestly think Bush has a lot more executive experience simply because he holds the primary executive role in his state. While Gore has a lot of experience in the federal government, most of it is in the legislative branch. The VP doesn't do a whole lot... :)
I didn't intend to exclude Gore from my list, however, the topic of discussion just happened to be Bush. If you want to vote for Gore, do so over policies, not some kind of strange myth that Gore is more qualified to lead the country than Bush. That's all I'm saying...
This isn't redirection. This is simply stating the fact that Dick Cheney provides all the foreign policy experience to the Bush administration that you could ever hope to say isn't there because Bush hasn't had much national experience.
The job of the president is not to do everything hands on. The man is an executive, and his job is to assemble a team of people, not deal with the entire executive branch by himself. This is the way it works. So yes, this is democracy in action.
Bush might or might not be a genuis. It doesn't matter. You don't have to be a genius to be president, you just have to know how to hold an executive position. Bush does. Live with it.
And I don't think it makes sense to say Perot bought his 15%-20% of the vote. I've seen plenty of Nader this campaign season, so he's had no shortage of publicity, and ample chance to get his message out, just like Perot did. Most Americans aren't leftists, though...
DMCA is poor legislation, misguided perhaps, but something that can easily be solved within the system if everyone here stopped whining about it to their groupthink-minded peers and instead whined about it to their congressmen. I wonder how many people are doing that around here...
MPAA is an organization, not any sort of legislation or what not, and has no direct tie-in to the government, so it provides no example to go on.
DeCSS is rather stupid as well, but it's simply, again, a case of a misguided judiciary, not an inherent evil within our governmental system. The solution is to do something about it within the system, not to whine about it and start with empty talk of revolution around here.
There is nothing inherently wrong with censorware, nor would I say there's anything wrong with having it on some (or all) public access terminals. Porn on a public terminal isn't a right. If you want unrestricted access to the Internet, it's still avaialable to you, you'll just have to find somewhere besides a library to get it. If you want to argue censorware doesn't always work properly, that's fine, but that's a different argument than saying it's a violation of our rights and a sign of an impending police state.
Was there anything else? My point is not that there aren't any issues that need to be addressed in American politics. Obviously there are... otherwise we could shut down the legislative branch completely since everything is just how we want it. The point is that none of the examples you mentioned are signs of an inherently flawed system, they're just problems that need to be and can be addressed within the system as it stands.
Alarmism will get us nowhere. If you honestly think the US is becoming a corporate controlled police state, formulate a nice good list of examples with concrete evidence to back this up, and go out into the real world and make it known.
Hard to say, I suppose, but I really think examples are necessary, even in this crowd. From my perspective, I fear it's too easy to infer corporate control over issues which weren't influenced in that way. With regards to IP, which seems to be the major concern here, there are, I believe, some issues to be dealt with, but that by no means suggests a major problem with government itself, just with some of the legislation that has passed. Perhaps a few letters to congresspeople that represent you could make it known that you disagree with these policies, but I think it's also important to understand that there difference of opinion with you on the issue does not mean for sure that they were bought.
Are you sure this is why people don't vote? Another similar theory would be that most people feel that America is mostly headed in the right direction (there are polls to indicate this is the case, though I'm not sure how valid they are) politically, so they aren't too worried about things. Voter apathy, I would venture to say, increases in times of prosperity because when the economy is good, people don't feel they need to be bothered by politics. They'll just ride the good times, and get concerned when things start to go bad. It could be that people don't feel their vote makes a difference, and are disillusioned with an increasingly evil system, but it could also be the case that people think the system is just fine, and can run along without their help.
But really, unless there's a pretty decent list of examples of a bought federal government, why does a law like the DMCA suggest that we need radical action to offset the "very large, very powerful" factions? All it suggests is that we either need to have a little talk with our current elected officials, and let them know that they aren't representing us properly when it comes to that single decision they made, or get a president in office who will respect the constitution and give us some more judges who will act accordingly. My biased opinion as to who that might be doesn't matter, but I'll give you a hint: I don't think it's Nader, because I honestly don't think he's too concerned about the constitution. Maybe I'm wrong... my apologies if this is so, feel free to correct me. I don't see how any of this is an indication of an oppressive or incorrect system, or an indication that Republicans and Democrats are inherently evil and we must have third party candidates at all costs.
My problem with this third party-ism I see here on Slashdot and a couple other nerd communities on the web is that people get so worked up about something that they decide they have to overhaul the system to fix any glitches it might show. This seems to be the reasoning behind a lot of people voting for Nader even when they don't agree with him. But I don't think the system is nearly as evil as most people around here seem to think. Are politics or politicians perfect or pure? Of course they aren't! But they've been working pretty darn well for a long time, as I'd venture to say that politically America has been very successful thus far. Thus, it seems politics can continue to do work as is if we continue to take reasonable (as opposed to radical) action about the things that matter to us.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this. I would say it was specifically set up to prevent spontaneous, perhaps overly emotional or radical, changes to the system that might not be beneficial to the system in the long run. The will of the people can draw change, but they can't, by design, make radical changes very quickly. You're right, it's for the sake of stability, but not for the sake of not allowing anything to ever get done. When things change slowly, they're a whole lot more likely to change in a reasonable fashion.
I guess my point here is that there isn't anything inherently wrong with American politics as is. People are screaming that we need more recognition for third parties because the Republicans and Democrats are going to destroy this country. From my perspective, third parties don't get high poll numbers, or a lot of press, because most people quite simply don't agree with their policies. When people do agree with their policies, they can get a fair amount of votes--Perot is a good example of this. There isn't necessarily a Republican and Democratic deadlock in the US. It just so happens that Republicans and Democrats tend to reflect the majority of the nation's views. If you disagree with them, that's great, and it's a good reason to vote for someone else, but it seems it's still important to accept the fact that most of America probably disagrees with you, and there's no conspiracy that goes along with that disagreement.
Point taken, though personally I feel he does have some ideas. Privitization of social security, tax cuts... they might not be revolutionary, but who can say they're not ideas?
What bothers me is this awful habit of demonizing all of those you disagree with. Ideally, politics should be about different people disagreeing with other people in a reasonable fashion about ideas. They shouldn't be about calling your opponent a moron and evil, making him look like a person bankrupt of positive personality traits. If you agree with a candidate's ideas, great! Vote for him! If you don't, just move along. You don't have to write him off as an evil individual, you don't have to portray him as the death of a nation--you just disagree with a usually perfectly valid position that just doesn't match yours.
So that's what I'm responding to. If people disagree with Bush's ideas, great. But that's never what gets talked about here. People just character assissinate like there's no tomorrow. I know, I know, the politicians do it too, but when engaging in political discussion, couldn't we rise above that for once?
Alas, that's rather idealistic. Political discussion never really can be isolated to issues. But a guy can dream, can't he?
Sure, but remember, such people probably don't expect to be revived anytime in the near future. They freeze their heads, then hope that by the time the technology exists to revive them at all, the technology will exist also to clone you a body to place your head on, and you're good to go.
:)
But then, it seems kind of silly to me that someone thinks that by freezing themsleves without knowing how the whole process has to work, they'll freeze themselves "properly" in order to be revived. But hey, it's their money...
No, Reno is bad because she's had countless examples of very poorly handled situations (Elian Gonzales, various cults). Of course, we have to think of parents' rights and disregard the fact that it's illegal to break into someone's home without a warrant, right?
I absolutely do believe the conservatives have a different view of the constitution than their liberal opponents. That's just the way it has been... liberals see the constituion as a dynamic document, conservatives tend not to. I'm sorry if you'd rather buy into your own rhetoric about how evil conservatives are that you can fail to recognize that there's simply a fundamental difference between the viewpoint of liberals and the viewpoint of conservatives. I know, it's much more fun to demonize your oponents than it is to simply explain why you believe they're incorrect in their views.
I really could not care less about Bill Clinton's sex life. I do care about the Cheif Executive--that's right, the guy that's supposed to be enforcing laws--breaking laws. Purjury is purjury, even if you think that he wasn't under oath for a worthwhile cause. There is no excuse for disobeying the law, especially when your job is to enforce it. Throw all the rhetoric about how it's about sex back at me that you want.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll watch my karma drop for departing from
I agree, Alan Greenspan is the man that made this economy what it is, plus all the evil corporations people like to speak about around here. Clinton is not responsible.
A free market would determine where the cheapest oil came from if Clinton hadn't practically shut down domestic production of it. But he has, and alas, domestic production of oil is pathetically low, and that's a serious problem.
The rest of your comments don't seem to lead anywhere, and many are unsupported facts, so I'm afraid I can't really comment on them. Alas, I'll watch my continue to watch my karma drop for not following the slashdot party line...
And what makes you think Bush would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil? I was under the impression he's made it clear he would reduce restrictions on domestic oil production, and thus, reduce or dependence on foreign oil. I'm afraid I don't follow your logic...
Promises to make affordable alternatives to fossil fuels are great... Bush has made some too, not sure if you caught that. His position, though, is that while alternative sources are important, they're not here yet. While they're not here, we darn well better give ourselves what does work, like oil, or we'll continue to have problems in the middle east. We can't ignore a problem while we look for a different solution, if looking for a different solution has an indefinite timeframe connected to it.
God forbid the man have a Texas accent, and goodness me, you mean he sometimes fumbles up as he speaks? That certainly never happens to you, does it?
Intelligence can't be measured solely by one's ability to articulate those ideas. Eloquence of speech is not at all an indicator of intelligence of ideas. Let's understand that before we start calling Bush a moron. He's just not as eloquent a public speaker as some other politicians. But Politics really shouldn't be about image, they should be about ideas, don't you think?
However, Nader's problem is that he wants to destroy corporations (read: the people who give us jobs, and thus a good economy) by means of the largest corporation in America: the Government. Is a bigger Government going to protect our freedoms more, you think, by destroying the companies we work for?
I'm not going to call any candidates cranks or nuts, but I wholeheartedly disagree with Nader's solution to a questionable problem. I don't hear a whole lot of that discussed here, though... people seem to support Nader because he's not one of the "evil" Republicrats. I know it's popular around here to believe neither Republicans nor Democrats can have good ideas, but I'd venture to say most people actually agree with the policies of either of these parties, and it isn't a matter of the populace being duped by purchased politicians.
As I see it, conservatives seem to have a whole lot more respect for the constitution than their liberal counterparts, in that they tend to be (in my experience) a little more towards the viewpoint that it isn't a living and breathing document (and it isn't!). As Bush is a conservative, and since except for rhetoric I haven't heard anything to suggest otherwise, I'm going to assume your free speech is safer with George Bush than it is with Al Gore.
I would imagine he was talking about ALL faiths. That is to say, if the government is going to fund chess club, why shouldn't it fund any other club that asks for money? The government shouldn't be deciding who and who shouldn't be allowed to meet, their reason for doing so shouldn't matter at all. If you want to say it should matter, the government shouldn't be giving any programs money.
What does this have to do with legislating morality? Absolutely nothing. Nobody is being forced to attend such programs.
Oh dear goodness, no! Not somebody with experience in the private sector! Seriously, if you think oil companies are so evil, why do you use their product every day? If you really want to be anti-oil, you really can't turn around and drive to work with it.
He wants to try and remove our dependence on foreign nations for our oil. During the last oil crisis, I've heard it said, we were importing about 30% of our oil. Now we import 60%. Is it any wonder we've got prices skyrocketing? We're at their mercy. We need to increase domestic production of oil, plain and simple, and that means removing some of the excessive restrictions we have on drilling oil.
First of all, Roe v. Wade has nothing to do with free speech. It's considered a privacy issue, and I'd venture to say a rather silly one, but that's a debate for another time.
Secondly, how do you figure that Bush is against free speech? Which candidate mentioned that they were against censorship last night? I'll give you a hint--it wasn't Mr. Gore. The only quote I've heard that people try to use to suggest Bush is against free speech is his "There ought to be limits to freedom" deal. But who disagrees with that? I shouldn't be free to kill you. My guess is (and admittedly, I haven't seen this quote) that this is taken wildly out of context. That said, I think your free speech is at least just as safe under Bush, perhaps more so, since his opponent has already told us the Constitution is a document that ought to "change with America." As long as we can redefine the Constitution as it suits us, free speech is in big trouble... so if you think Al Gore is going to protect it, maybe you should look a little harder at what he's said about it.
My $0.02 on why you shouldn't vote for Al Gore.
Indeed, but your claim is that we can thank Ronald Reagan for a large portion of our national debt. This is quite simply false. We can thank a Democratic congress for passing budgets which resulted in such a large debt, and we can thank Ronald Reagan for signing it. Your original claim is still false, as the debt isn't Reagan's responsibility, he just accepted it.
Besides, don't you appreciate the fact that the Cold War is over?
Well, I've used Excel plenty of times, and last time I saved a document, I got a grand total of Zero message boxes telling me anything. It just saved. Unless I hadn't saved it before, then it gave me a dialog box so I could tell it where to save it. How pesky! Not sure what settings you're using, but clearly they're not default.
I currently run Win2k. To change my DNS server, I have to press 3 buttons. One to get to TCP/IP properties, one to confirm the change, and one to close my LAN properties again. Then the DNS servers are changed, no reboot necessary. Same if I change my IP address. Careful using blanket statements, contrary to popular opinion, MS has improved Win2k greatly over the previous incarnations of Windows. I've been running Win2k at least half a year, and it hasn't crashed yet.
If the feeling of "just do it already" takes over, too freaking bad! If you don't read a message and you hit a button when presented with an option, you're still responsible for the consequences. When's the last time you went into court after breaching a contract and said "But all that legalize, I didn't bother to read the contract before I signed it, why should I be bound to it?" If you want to mindlessly click buttons, go ahead, but if the computer then does something you don't want it to, it isn't anybody's fault but your own.