You're right about the benefits of a standard UI across the whole OS, and especially when that's introduced to a whole new user demographic that doesn't have old specialized skills to unlearn (or be tempted back into when developers make old-style apps for the new UI).
That's why the PC environment I want has all UI widgets standardized, across the OS, with no individual "application spaces" in which different UIs are available for the same operations, on the same kinds of data. Throwing out the "application" layer in the UI altogether, so the OS directly supports the operations on the data, the data can interoperate with other data in the same UI context. An OS that new functions plug into, like apps, but which functions present their own UIs only right where their relevant data is exposed in the OS UI.
So if you see something that looks familiar, it will be, both in its ways of consuming its content with your senses, and operating on the content with the UIs coming with the content.
I think that UIs could become vastly more intuitive if the applications disappeared entirely. The way that "OS applications", utilities used by multiple applications, are never noticed by users (until something goes wrong:). One step towards that model is "datacentric environment", which the Mac took way back in 1984, by focusing (though not exclusively) on "documents", rather than the apps that make/use them. The problem with documents, as handled in most UIs, is that they're a single datatype, which excludes other data from them. The Mac (and everything else) makes you use some kind of tool, or app, to use multiple datatypes. And you still find yourself opening apps all the time. But using multiple apps on a single document at once is extremely difficult, and usually is reduced to using the clipboard to work the doc, not even the apps themselves. And the clipboard is the crudest of tools. Whether that document is compound, of multiple datatypes, or just a single datatype, using multiple apps on it is complicated - in different ways, depending on the singularity/plurality of datatypes, which is another kind of complexity, making for even more complexity.
I'd like a UI that just gives me my data, with UI widgets brought along with it. In fact, I'd prefer not to even deal with the data directly, but rather just whole objects that have some end use to them. Like documents that are always compound, able to display any datatype that's supported by an app installed under the hood, each datatype appearing in a UI widget appropriate to its type. Opening the object doesn't open some other UI, just a UI on that object. Each appearance of data would have a UI for viewing it, with a way to expose a UI for changing it, and a UI for storing it, subject to permissions (separate for changing its "scratch" version and for permanently storing it, as well as for viewing it at all). All the UIs for viewing, changing and storing a given datatype would be available to the user wherever we saw that data (subject to permissions). Users would get default UI collections for whole objects, and for their contained objects (down to a single object of a single datatype), but would be able to compose UI "racks" from any of the widgets that can operate on that datatype.
I'd like to be able to view those objects in windows, but I'd like to be able to make "racks" of windows, snapping together windows of different views of different objects (and collections) that I use in single or related tasks. I'd like to save those "window racks" so I can just open one, and up pops the workspace I configured for all my relevant tasks together. And when I open new windows that are views of objects in a "parent" window, I'd like that relationship to be shown with lines connecting them. And then I'd like to be able to draw lines from one object to another, to specify that the target object is to be a reference (live updated values) to the source, or just a copy (not updated when changed independently). In fact I'd like to draw flowchart lines between data sources to data sinks, into objects that perform operations on them and supply results as sources to later sinks. And I want to do those interconnections across all objects, without being constrained within some excluded from others. Since the operations are available in any object of a type they work on, that should be a natural extension.
And of course I want all those connections and lookups to be as live across the network, including the Internet, as across the Desktop. And I want the Desktop itself to span as many displays as I can plug into as many machines as I've got on my network. If I want, I should be able to drag something from one display where it's running slow to another display that can run it faster, because its underlying machine has more available capacity. I'd like the OS to offer to load-level for me automatically.
Underneath it all I want all the storage in disks (or their persistent equivalent, if FlashROM or something else supplants i
The consequences of alienating people from our rights illustrates history, from the grand scale of nations to the personal ones. If you don't know what happens when someone tries to alienate you from your rights, you're living a fantasy life.
There is no current rebellion or invasion of the US that merits suspension of Habeas Corpus. As the Court decision we're discussing goes to great lengths to explain in detail, and as all such tests of Bush's Republican tyrannies have been failed for several years.
Of course you find the Republicans whatever to be more "realistic". Republicans' arbitrary attitude towards reality is perfectly compatible with yours. You're probably some kind of "libertarian", who thinks freedom is just another commodity to be bought and sold.
And who thinks that the US government control over Iraq, with our tortures, support of death squads, epic corruption, anarchic contractors and failure to make any political sense whatsoever is at all related to our short, effective occupation of Japan and Germany while building on our respect of those people's rights. Rights we protected, and helped them protect for themselves, rather than violate them more than the regime we replaced.
You people ran this country, and Iraq, into the ground, with total control of all the branches of government and a military at war. Of course you don't understand rights or even that they exist. All you understand is force. But you don't understand that force fails to govern. Fortunately for America, Obama is leading the Americans who care about what America is about to take back power from you tyrannical nihilists. Fortunately for you, we believe that you have the rights that you don't believe you have, and will protect them. Even though you don't deserve them, and have done whatever you could to trample them.
I just started to use a Mac a little, after leaving it mostly alone for about 5 years. It's not really as simple and intuitive as it once was. All kinds of special Mac knowledge about where to look for buried UI widges, modes that mean you can't always do what worked in some other mode, lots of "Desktop similes" rather than "Desktop metaphor" (eg. you can't deal with the Desktop widget as if it were the real thing, but only in some special virtual Mac way), and generally the exact same kinds of necessary expertise that gives Windows and Linux users "tunnel vision", a narrow skillset only within the apps and features they use.
Maybe it's Apple competing with Windows that's somehow gravitationally moved the Mac experience closer to the Windows one, even as Windows has sucked ever closer to Apple's innovations. But it used to be easy for a beginner (or just an "uninformed expert" like me) to "just do it" with a Mac, with a much shallower, barely noticeable learning curve.
What we need is a GUI revolution. The iPhone offers one, with its multitouch innovations. As does Nintendo's Wii, with its unconventional new controllers. The Mac, like everyone else, is still stuck in a transitional metaphor to an office/desktop physical environment that's now been totally replaced by its simulation on the Mac. That metaphor doesn't really help people use "documents" and "tools" from past experience with the real things, liberating us from them. It's now a trap that constrains us to only the small set of characteristics that both the real and the virtual versions share in common.
I hope Apple will spend the next year "streamlining" MacOS into something more simple and immediately usable, the way Apple has delivered in the past. Because usually Windows, Linux and everyone else follows and improves likewise. But if it doesn't, then I hope that inspires people to do something really new that's really simple, yet delivering the vast power of all our new devices. Because those people will inevitably be the ones to drag everyone else along into the new, simpler paradigm. And probably get rich along the way.
All rights are inalienable, or they're not rights, but merely privileges (however important). But as I said, rights are still retained, even when the government does not protect them, and even when the government suspends or violates them. If the rights weren't retained, they wouldn't be in suspension or violated - they wouldn't exist.
I also explained how the US government is bound to protect those rights, which sometimes means legitimate temporary infringement of them in the protection of some other rights, or of another person's. So the inalienable right to liberty can be infringed by imprisonment, when one's right to due process still proves them guilty of violating someone else's rights, like to ownership of their property (as in theft), or to their own liberty (as in kidnapping or slavery).
That is because we are not really dealing with abstractions, or some grand simultaneous equation to evaluate "how much liberty is in the US". We live in a dynamic world, where one person's actions affect another's state, and even "state actions" are actions of other people with a different legal status. That dynamic interaction makes for some complex activity, including the fallibility of some people when actually executing actions even under just law.
But the simple matter is that since the government is created by a Constitution solely to protect people's rights when it can, and without power to violate those rights when it need not, America's government cannot violate anyone's rights when America's government is in control. So foreigners are entitled to the same protections as are nationals. And Americans are entitled to America's government doing what it can to protect those rights while abroad - where indeed US embassies and consulates spend quite a lot of time protecting Americans' rights (though usually American corporate "persons", but under the same principle). And since America has a lot of influence even in foreign jurisdictions, America's government legitimately intercedes to protect those rights of foreigners, especially when its in the interests of Americans. And in fact America's government is empowered by the Constitution to intercede even against the will of foreign governments. But that intercession is an extreme rarity, and must be balanced against the protection of all Americans, starting with those at home.
The issues are the interaction between what's right, and what's possible. What's right doesn't change. As what's possible changes over time, different exercises are appropriate.
The Court just ruled that the US government must protect the rights of foreigners in US government custody. Their rights have persisted, despite the unjust violations of them. What lapsed, and what has started to return, was the government's protection of them. But even while it lapsed, it was wrong.
I know that if I were a foreigner in the US, I'd be inspired by that tenacity of justice, even when tested by temporary failures. Because I've been a foreigner abroad in the world. And I know history. I know that Americans have our rights protected more by our government, both at home and abroad, than practically any other government's nationals (except maybe the Vatican's, and the more privileged nationals of some countries). And I know that in most countries, once the government violates a right, it's gone forever - at least until the government is fundamentally changed.
America's violations of rights are the exception, not the rule, even for foreigners, at least while under control of America. That's far from perfect. But it's still at the top of the performance list of everywhere else. And I'm proud of that, which is why I fight to keep it that way, and to improve it.
Now your strawman is some claim of "a secret conspiracy to destroy America". I never said there was one. These people are all just wrong about what's right about America, and spend their quite public careers working against that. To destroy it. But you just tried to argue that since Kennedy voted to inaugurate Bush, somehow the 4 who either voted for both Bush or were installed by him, and voted for his un-Constitutional suspension of Habeas Corpus somehow aren't part of a solid bloc that votes for Bush's powers regardless of the Constitution.
Next you'll have a strawman about how I claim Coke and Pepsi share "a secret conspiracy to trade sugarwater for American's incomes". It's "just business", even if I don't have to like it.
I'm pretty hostile to people who lie about what I say to try and argue with me about something important. You're challenging me with illogical attacks that deserve no more attention. Goodbye.
Well, you're talking about what's strategically wrong with nationbuilding in Iraq, which is a totally different question.
I'm talking about fundamental rights, and how people create governments to protect them. I'd say that if Iraqis had thrown off Saddam's tyranny for themselves, without interference from some foreign agenda, but still with foreign backing, then Iraqis would have written a constitution to protect those rights that looks a lot like our own.
Like America's alliance with France in our own Revolution. If instead the French had just invaded, and kicked out the British with our Continental Army tagging along for show like Iraqis do ours today, then the French had occupied the colonies while directing the writing of our Constitution, we'd have gotten a French parliamentary monarchy. Or some other alien structure, just as Iraq doesn't even have a Congress or president, but some European parliament setup. More to the point, we'd never have made ourselves "Americans", just some new colony of France. Until of course we eventually kicked out the French, too. But unless we did it on our own, we wouldn't have the national identity that's necessary to stick to a national government out of fierce pride and patriotism. Just like the Iraqis are going through now, since we blew their chance at their own country after Saddam was torn down.
But Iraqis can still get freedom for themselves. Because those rights are universal. What varies is how well the people articulate those rights for themselves, and their method of protecting them. Americans have got a long lead on Iraqis, and we've still got a long way to go ourselves. Part of the demonstration is the way that we have set back Iraq's chances at freedom by at least a generation. A natural product of the travesty of freedom that has been the Bush regime, from its very installation against the will of the people in 2000.
Maybe once we kick Bush out ourselves, by the beginning of next year, we might set a better example for Iraqis. If we spend the next administration repairing all Bush destroyed here at home, maybe they'll join us in repairing their own country, inspired by what exercising freedom can get. But I wouldn't blame them for decades of tailspin. I'd blame us. Or, at least, I'd blame the Americans who voted for Bush twice, and even those who didn't vote for someone else after they saw what Bush would force on them when they stayed home.
But I am inspired to see the Court restoring parts of the Constitution, that it's a popular story among Americans, and that most of us seem to want it back. That's the proof that the Constitution is all that it says it is.
20% of your trusty moderators think defending the Constitution is "trolling". Probably because it points out that their heroes are the ones attacking the Constitution. When these people who hate America, and the way we protect our freedoms, hear the truth, they automatically counterattack. No matter how dishonest and cowardly is their method.
These are the people we must defend our Constitution from. They're the ones we're talking about when we say "all enemies, foreign and domestic".
Distinction without a difference. What's your point, that the 2 justices who didn't install Bush were installed by Bush?
There is obviously a bloc who votes for Bush's powers no matter what the Constitution says. Sure, Rehnquist and O'Connor are gone, replaced by two new ones who will obviously vote for Bush's powers - that's why he appointed them. The other two, Scalia and Thomas, are also obvious Bush voters, regardless of justice, in their entire careers.
The only point you can make that matters, that Kennedy voted to inaugurate Bush but against suspending Habeas Corpus, you've got backwards. I didn't say that all of the 5 who voted to inaugurate him also voted against Habeas Corpus. So even on that point, you're offering nothing but a straw man.
The point is that those 4 justices vote for tyrannical, un-Constitutional powers whenever they can. Kennedy flipflopping on specifics once in a while doesn't change that. And that is what I'm talking about, despite your attempts to drag the subject elsewhere.
But at least you agree that "only recently that we see Presidents appointing justices who are this ideologically rigid". But let's drop the euphamisms. The ideology is "Unitary Executive", and the "recently" is the last 40 years, during which Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush filled the Court with Unitary Executive judges. Even the (usually) exceptions, the "liberal wing", aren't "liberal", they're just less corporatist than the rest.
Fortunately for the US (and the world we dominate), eliminating Habeas Corpus was too explicitly contradictory to the Constitution for 5 of them. For the other 4, making the Constitution merely an arbitrary list of traditional American styles, rather than instructions for protecting universal human rights by a legitimate government of American people, is just the latest act in protecting the Unitary Executive of George Bush.
The Constitution doesn't give us rights. The government doesn't give us rights. We have rights, inalienable rights, that come from "the Creator", whatever that is. The creator is a mysterious, unspecified entity, but it is not the Constitution or the government.
We, the people, create a government to protect those rights. In the USA, we (our forefathers) wrote a Constitution that our representatives explicitly agreed to support and defend. That Constitution creates a government from nothing, that protects those rights.
Those rights are inalienable. Even when the government fails to protect them, we still have those rights. But unless they're protected, we might not have the freedom to exercise them. That is why we create that government, which has no other power or even existence other than as we create it under the Constitution.
Americans aren't magically different from any other people. All people have the same inalienable rights. But what Americans have that is different is an American government that protects those rights. Foreigners have their own governments. It's up to them to protect their rights with their governments. Often they do not. But though it is in America's interest to help everyone we can to protect their rights, it is not automatically America's government's obligation to do so, unless Americans so instruct it. Even when we do, America is obligated to merely help those people free themselves, so they are free to create their own governments to protect their own rights.
That is what is fundamentally wrong with the Iraq War. Wrong with any occupying American government abroad. It's what was right with the US conversion of Japan and Germany from their tyrannies after WWII: we worked for several years to free those people, who then created their own governments.
But though we're not obligated to free anyone but ourselves, though our government is not obligated to protect anyone's rights but our own, our government is never free to violate those rights. The US government has no powers to violate any rights, except temporarily, according to explicit due process, and only when necessary to protect the rights of other Americans - like when jailing criminals, even suspending their rights to vote, freely travel and associate, and even to express themselves.
Americans in foreign lands have reduced protection of our rights by our government, as a matter of practical fact, but not from any change in our rights themselves. Foreigners in foreign lands have foreign governments that factor into the US ability and obligation to protect their rights, which is minimal.
But no one under control of the US, in US territory (including soverign military territory like Guantanamo) can see their rights infringed in any way.
Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the people in the government break the law, violate the Constitution. The Constitution of course has the remedy: prosecution and jail time, even impeachment. The Constitution isn't just some theoretical philosophy, but the only instrument which creates legitimate government power. And its power does not differ in application to anyone on US soil (with the sole and irrelevant exception that a US president must have been born American).
There shouldn't have been any question that Habeas Corpus must apply to everyone in US custody. But of course the 4 dissenting "Justices" in this case also installed George Bush as president. These people are part of a blatantly, flagrantly anti-American conspiracy among themselves to destroy America and everything it stands for.
Everyone knows it. Lots of us say it. But only far too few of us have the courage and integrity to live it. And we, the Americans with a clear conscience, want to bring these evildoers to justice.
The Constitution. Dodging a bullet today that should never have been fired, that should have seen millions of Americans jumping to take the hit. The closeness of this call is just one 87 year old man away from making a total mockery of America as "the land of the free, the home of the brave."
Except that those antisemites aren't "leftists", and are probably rightwing trolls. When you're confronted with the evidence of their posts infesting rightwing sites, too, you just shunt into your programmed talking points, ignoring the facts.
Facts like how antisemitism has always been popular across the land, not just among "rich, White Northeastern Republicans". But hey, since that is exactly who you Republican lowlives have always fantasized about becoming, why shouldn't you lie about them being the antisemites, too? You're lying about the antisemites being mainly on "the left", so why not just plow ahead with some more lies about your fantasy master race?
It's fabulous how your "Libertarians", ashamed of being called "Republicans" anymore, are bringing your inability to see logic with you to the next shell Party for your scams. May you find a happy home there with all your friends. Whatever merit there is to the libertarian attitude, you'll soon discredit it as thoroughly as you showed "Conservatism" to be a scam for thieves doing the opposite of what you say.
Of course, you don't even know what a troll is, as my posts are designed to add something to the discussion other than predictable, probably angry, responses. Even when I flame someone, it's designed to add to the conversation by shutting them up - which few can predict will happen, as you are demonstrating here. But hey, if you're going to work in league with a bunch of troll moderators, who moderate me based on how I've whipped them in the past rather than the content of the post they're moderating, you're really at the vanguard of the cowardly thug movement. Bob Barr's Libertarian Party is your natural environment.
Which country would that be, Anonymous enemy Coward? Perhaps you mean the country carved out by the politicians who have destroyed the US every way they could, from the inside? Or are you posting from one of our foreign enemies, which any American SW developer would gladly smash when it threatens the USA?
I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.
What is the "cyber command" doing to protect the US from current serious attacks on major Federal government sites, including the attacks on sensitive Congressional sites reported this week?
Is there any traditional military precedent for tolerating these attacks to the extent we do? Is that hesitancy making us weaker, so our eventual delayed military (or "cyber-military") response will be compromised from winning the conflict to our satisfaction?
At what point do these attacks constitute acts of war, does that need to be declared by Congress, and how does the "cyber command" change its response at that point?
I think that's a great idea. Because those blogs will destroy the insurgent trolls, and backlash to ruin the McCain campaign even worse than its already crippled natural state.
Those astroturf marching orders will produce nothing but an invasion of trolls into those Progressive blogs. Which will be smashed to dust and mocked roundly, just like their Troll King, McCain.
Aren't you glad that the faker in 2000 who's got a new scam in 2008 didn't get all the power in 2000 that Bush got, and then showed everyone he's a fake in 2000, just like Bush did? OK, maybe you're not glad that Bush got those powers, but aren't you glad that McCain didn't lie his way into them the same way?
Does anyone think it's just a coincidence that both McCain and Bush have become wastefully spending warmongers, now that the 2000 election is over? Maybe you should think about how they're just spokesmodel puppets for a Republican Party that cannot be stopped from wasting American lives and money destroying our government that interferes with corporate rule.
No, not X.org. X.org was forked from XFree86 4 years ago. MIT last controlled even its own X implementation in 1988, but XFree86 wasn't written by MIT. That's not MIT code.
And even if it were, MIT would be just another member of the X community for going on a decade now. Open projects' code is a product of the community, by definition. These disagreements with that point are inherently invalid, though of course typically Slashdot.
You senile old dreamer, I learned to program in 1977, years before DOS. I was hacking DCL when you were still scared that "COMMAND.COM" was some kind of Soviet spyware. You might love McCain because he's got the same excuses as you for being an idiot. But don't go asking to get slapped around by someone who's still got all his own teeth. It makes it harder to convince the rest of the population to let you cranky old relics slide when you make public fools of yourself.
Just ring the nurse for your diaper change and stop bugging me.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right about the benefits of a standard UI across the whole OS, and especially when that's introduced to a whole new user demographic that doesn't have old specialized skills to unlearn (or be tempted back into when developers make old-style apps for the new UI).
That's why the PC environment I want has all UI widgets standardized, across the OS, with no individual "application spaces" in which different UIs are available for the same operations, on the same kinds of data. Throwing out the "application" layer in the UI altogether, so the OS directly supports the operations on the data, the data can interoperate with other data in the same UI context. An OS that new functions plug into, like apps, but which functions present their own UIs only right where their relevant data is exposed in the OS UI.
So if you see something that looks familiar, it will be, both in its ways of consuming its content with your senses, and operating on the content with the UIs coming with the content.
I've seen that kind of response to my kind of political explanations too often for it to be "UI failure".
And I've seen that kind of rabid defense of tyranny far too often to give its trolls any benefit of any doubt anymore.
I think that UIs could become vastly more intuitive if the applications disappeared entirely. The way that "OS applications", utilities used by multiple applications, are never noticed by users (until something goes wrong :). One step towards that model is "datacentric environment", which the Mac took way back in 1984, by focusing (though not exclusively) on "documents", rather than the apps that make/use them. The problem with documents, as handled in most UIs, is that they're a single datatype, which excludes other data from them. The Mac (and everything else) makes you use some kind of tool, or app, to use multiple datatypes. And you still find yourself opening apps all the time. But using multiple apps on a single document at once is extremely difficult, and usually is reduced to using the clipboard to work the doc, not even the apps themselves. And the clipboard is the crudest of tools. Whether that document is compound, of multiple datatypes, or just a single datatype, using multiple apps on it is complicated - in different ways, depending on the singularity/plurality of datatypes, which is another kind of complexity, making for even more complexity.
I'd like a UI that just gives me my data, with UI widgets brought along with it. In fact, I'd prefer not to even deal with the data directly, but rather just whole objects that have some end use to them. Like documents that are always compound, able to display any datatype that's supported by an app installed under the hood, each datatype appearing in a UI widget appropriate to its type. Opening the object doesn't open some other UI, just a UI on that object. Each appearance of data would have a UI for viewing it, with a way to expose a UI for changing it, and a UI for storing it, subject to permissions (separate for changing its "scratch" version and for permanently storing it, as well as for viewing it at all). All the UIs for viewing, changing and storing a given datatype would be available to the user wherever we saw that data (subject to permissions). Users would get default UI collections for whole objects, and for their contained objects (down to a single object of a single datatype), but would be able to compose UI "racks" from any of the widgets that can operate on that datatype.
I'd like to be able to view those objects in windows, but I'd like to be able to make "racks" of windows, snapping together windows of different views of different objects (and collections) that I use in single or related tasks. I'd like to save those "window racks" so I can just open one, and up pops the workspace I configured for all my relevant tasks together. And when I open new windows that are views of objects in a "parent" window, I'd like that relationship to be shown with lines connecting them. And then I'd like to be able to draw lines from one object to another, to specify that the target object is to be a reference (live updated values) to the source, or just a copy (not updated when changed independently). In fact I'd like to draw flowchart lines between data sources to data sinks, into objects that perform operations on them and supply results as sources to later sinks. And I want to do those interconnections across all objects, without being constrained within some excluded from others. Since the operations are available in any object of a type they work on, that should be a natural extension.
And of course I want all those connections and lookups to be as live across the network, including the Internet, as across the Desktop. And I want the Desktop itself to span as many displays as I can plug into as many machines as I've got on my network. If I want, I should be able to drag something from one display where it's running slow to another display that can run it faster, because its underlying machine has more available capacity. I'd like the OS to offer to load-level for me automatically.
Underneath it all I want all the storage in disks (or their persistent equivalent, if FlashROM or something else supplants i
The consequences of alienating people from our rights illustrates history, from the grand scale of nations to the personal ones. If you don't know what happens when someone tries to alienate you from your rights, you're living a fantasy life.
There is no current rebellion or invasion of the US that merits suspension of Habeas Corpus. As the Court decision we're discussing goes to great lengths to explain in detail, and as all such tests of Bush's Republican tyrannies have been failed for several years.
Of course you find the Republicans whatever to be more "realistic". Republicans' arbitrary attitude towards reality is perfectly compatible with yours. You're probably some kind of "libertarian", who thinks freedom is just another commodity to be bought and sold.
And who thinks that the US government control over Iraq, with our tortures, support of death squads, epic corruption, anarchic contractors and failure to make any political sense whatsoever is at all related to our short, effective occupation of Japan and Germany while building on our respect of those people's rights. Rights we protected, and helped them protect for themselves, rather than violate them more than the regime we replaced.
You people ran this country, and Iraq, into the ground, with total control of all the branches of government and a military at war. Of course you don't understand rights or even that they exist. All you understand is force. But you don't understand that force fails to govern. Fortunately for America, Obama is leading the Americans who care about what America is about to take back power from you tyrannical nihilists. Fortunately for you, we believe that you have the rights that you don't believe you have, and will protect them. Even though you don't deserve them, and have done whatever you could to trample them.
I just started to use a Mac a little, after leaving it mostly alone for about 5 years. It's not really as simple and intuitive as it once was. All kinds of special Mac knowledge about where to look for buried UI widges, modes that mean you can't always do what worked in some other mode, lots of "Desktop similes" rather than "Desktop metaphor" (eg. you can't deal with the Desktop widget as if it were the real thing, but only in some special virtual Mac way), and generally the exact same kinds of necessary expertise that gives Windows and Linux users "tunnel vision", a narrow skillset only within the apps and features they use.
Maybe it's Apple competing with Windows that's somehow gravitationally moved the Mac experience closer to the Windows one, even as Windows has sucked ever closer to Apple's innovations. But it used to be easy for a beginner (or just an "uninformed expert" like me) to "just do it" with a Mac, with a much shallower, barely noticeable learning curve.
What we need is a GUI revolution. The iPhone offers one, with its multitouch innovations. As does Nintendo's Wii, with its unconventional new controllers. The Mac, like everyone else, is still stuck in a transitional metaphor to an office/desktop physical environment that's now been totally replaced by its simulation on the Mac. That metaphor doesn't really help people use "documents" and "tools" from past experience with the real things, liberating us from them. It's now a trap that constrains us to only the small set of characteristics that both the real and the virtual versions share in common.
I hope Apple will spend the next year "streamlining" MacOS into something more simple and immediately usable, the way Apple has delivered in the past. Because usually Windows, Linux and everyone else follows and improves likewise. But if it doesn't, then I hope that inspires people to do something really new that's really simple, yet delivering the vast power of all our new devices. Because those people will inevitably be the ones to drag everyone else along into the new, simpler paradigm. And probably get rich along the way.
All rights are inalienable, or they're not rights, but merely privileges (however important). But as I said, rights are still retained, even when the government does not protect them, and even when the government suspends or violates them. If the rights weren't retained, they wouldn't be in suspension or violated - they wouldn't exist.
I also explained how the US government is bound to protect those rights, which sometimes means legitimate temporary infringement of them in the protection of some other rights, or of another person's. So the inalienable right to liberty can be infringed by imprisonment, when one's right to due process still proves them guilty of violating someone else's rights, like to ownership of their property (as in theft), or to their own liberty (as in kidnapping or slavery).
That is because we are not really dealing with abstractions, or some grand simultaneous equation to evaluate "how much liberty is in the US". We live in a dynamic world, where one person's actions affect another's state, and even "state actions" are actions of other people with a different legal status. That dynamic interaction makes for some complex activity, including the fallibility of some people when actually executing actions even under just law.
But the simple matter is that since the government is created by a Constitution solely to protect people's rights when it can, and without power to violate those rights when it need not, America's government cannot violate anyone's rights when America's government is in control. So foreigners are entitled to the same protections as are nationals. And Americans are entitled to America's government doing what it can to protect those rights while abroad - where indeed US embassies and consulates spend quite a lot of time protecting Americans' rights (though usually American corporate "persons", but under the same principle). And since America has a lot of influence even in foreign jurisdictions, America's government legitimately intercedes to protect those rights of foreigners, especially when its in the interests of Americans. And in fact America's government is empowered by the Constitution to intercede even against the will of foreign governments. But that intercession is an extreme rarity, and must be balanced against the protection of all Americans, starting with those at home.
The issues are the interaction between what's right, and what's possible. What's right doesn't change. As what's possible changes over time, different exercises are appropriate.
The Court just ruled that the US government must protect the rights of foreigners in US government custody. Their rights have persisted, despite the unjust violations of them. What lapsed, and what has started to return, was the government's protection of them. But even while it lapsed, it was wrong.
I know that if I were a foreigner in the US, I'd be inspired by that tenacity of justice, even when tested by temporary failures. Because I've been a foreigner abroad in the world. And I know history. I know that Americans have our rights protected more by our government, both at home and abroad, than practically any other government's nationals (except maybe the Vatican's, and the more privileged nationals of some countries). And I know that in most countries, once the government violates a right, it's gone forever - at least until the government is fundamentally changed.
America's violations of rights are the exception, not the rule, even for foreigners, at least while under control of America. That's far from perfect. But it's still at the top of the performance list of everywhere else. And I'm proud of that, which is why I fight to keep it that way, and to improve it.
Now your strawman is some claim of "a secret conspiracy to destroy America". I never said there was one. These people are all just wrong about what's right about America, and spend their quite public careers working against that. To destroy it. But you just tried to argue that since Kennedy voted to inaugurate Bush, somehow the 4 who either voted for both Bush or were installed by him, and voted for his un-Constitutional suspension of Habeas Corpus somehow aren't part of a solid bloc that votes for Bush's powers regardless of the Constitution.
Next you'll have a strawman about how I claim Coke and Pepsi share "a secret conspiracy to trade sugarwater for American's incomes". It's "just business", even if I don't have to like it.
I'm pretty hostile to people who lie about what I say to try and argue with me about something important. You're challenging me with illogical attacks that deserve no more attention. Goodbye.
Well, you're talking about what's strategically wrong with nationbuilding in Iraq, which is a totally different question.
I'm talking about fundamental rights, and how people create governments to protect them. I'd say that if Iraqis had thrown off Saddam's tyranny for themselves, without interference from some foreign agenda, but still with foreign backing, then Iraqis would have written a constitution to protect those rights that looks a lot like our own.
Like America's alliance with France in our own Revolution. If instead the French had just invaded, and kicked out the British with our Continental Army tagging along for show like Iraqis do ours today, then the French had occupied the colonies while directing the writing of our Constitution, we'd have gotten a French parliamentary monarchy. Or some other alien structure, just as Iraq doesn't even have a Congress or president, but some European parliament setup. More to the point, we'd never have made ourselves "Americans", just some new colony of France. Until of course we eventually kicked out the French, too. But unless we did it on our own, we wouldn't have the national identity that's necessary to stick to a national government out of fierce pride and patriotism. Just like the Iraqis are going through now, since we blew their chance at their own country after Saddam was torn down.
But Iraqis can still get freedom for themselves. Because those rights are universal. What varies is how well the people articulate those rights for themselves, and their method of protecting them. Americans have got a long lead on Iraqis, and we've still got a long way to go ourselves. Part of the demonstration is the way that we have set back Iraq's chances at freedom by at least a generation. A natural product of the travesty of freedom that has been the Bush regime, from its very installation against the will of the people in 2000.
Maybe once we kick Bush out ourselves, by the beginning of next year, we might set a better example for Iraqis. If we spend the next administration repairing all Bush destroyed here at home, maybe they'll join us in repairing their own country, inspired by what exercising freedom can get. But I wouldn't blame them for decades of tailspin. I'd blame us. Or, at least, I'd blame the Americans who voted for Bush twice, and even those who didn't vote for someone else after they saw what Bush would force on them when they stayed home.
But I am inspired to see the Court restoring parts of the Constitution, that it's a popular story among Americans, and that most of us seem to want it back. That's the proof that the Constitution is all that it says it is.
Moderation +3
60% Informative
20% Troll
20% Insightful
20% of your trusty moderators think defending the Constitution is "trolling". Probably because it points out that their heroes are the ones attacking the Constitution. When these people who hate America, and the way we protect our freedoms, hear the truth, they automatically counterattack. No matter how dishonest and cowardly is their method.
These are the people we must defend our Constitution from. They're the ones we're talking about when we say "all enemies, foreign and domestic".
Distinction without a difference. What's your point, that the 2 justices who didn't install Bush were installed by Bush?
There is obviously a bloc who votes for Bush's powers no matter what the Constitution says. Sure, Rehnquist and O'Connor are gone, replaced by two new ones who will obviously vote for Bush's powers - that's why he appointed them. The other two, Scalia and Thomas, are also obvious Bush voters, regardless of justice, in their entire careers.
The only point you can make that matters, that Kennedy voted to inaugurate Bush but against suspending Habeas Corpus, you've got backwards. I didn't say that all of the 5 who voted to inaugurate him also voted against Habeas Corpus. So even on that point, you're offering nothing but a straw man.
The point is that those 4 justices vote for tyrannical, un-Constitutional powers whenever they can. Kennedy flipflopping on specifics once in a while doesn't change that. And that is what I'm talking about, despite your attempts to drag the subject elsewhere.
But at least you agree that "only recently that we see Presidents appointing justices who are this ideologically rigid". But let's drop the euphamisms. The ideology is "Unitary Executive", and the "recently" is the last 40 years, during which Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush filled the Court with Unitary Executive judges. Even the (usually) exceptions, the "liberal wing", aren't "liberal", they're just less corporatist than the rest.
Fortunately for the US (and the world we dominate), eliminating Habeas Corpus was too explicitly contradictory to the Constitution for 5 of them. For the other 4, making the Constitution merely an arbitrary list of traditional American styles, rather than instructions for protecting universal human rights by a legitimate government of American people, is just the latest act in protecting the Unitary Executive of George Bush.
The Constitution doesn't give us rights. The government doesn't give us rights. We have rights, inalienable rights, that come from "the Creator", whatever that is. The creator is a mysterious, unspecified entity, but it is not the Constitution or the government.
We, the people, create a government to protect those rights. In the USA, we (our forefathers) wrote a Constitution that our representatives explicitly agreed to support and defend. That Constitution creates a government from nothing, that protects those rights.
Those rights are inalienable. Even when the government fails to protect them, we still have those rights. But unless they're protected, we might not have the freedom to exercise them. That is why we create that government, which has no other power or even existence other than as we create it under the Constitution.
Americans aren't magically different from any other people. All people have the same inalienable rights. But what Americans have that is different is an American government that protects those rights. Foreigners have their own governments. It's up to them to protect their rights with their governments. Often they do not. But though it is in America's interest to help everyone we can to protect their rights, it is not automatically America's government's obligation to do so, unless Americans so instruct it. Even when we do, America is obligated to merely help those people free themselves , so they are free to create their own governments to protect their own rights.
That is what is fundamentally wrong with the Iraq War. Wrong with any occupying American government abroad. It's what was right with the US conversion of Japan and Germany from their tyrannies after WWII: we worked for several years to free those people, who then created their own governments.
But though we're not obligated to free anyone but ourselves, though our government is not obligated to protect anyone's rights but our own, our government is never free to violate those rights. The US government has no powers to violate any rights, except temporarily, according to explicit due process, and only when necessary to protect the rights of other Americans - like when jailing criminals, even suspending their rights to vote, freely travel and associate, and even to express themselves.
Americans in foreign lands have reduced protection of our rights by our government, as a matter of practical fact, but not from any change in our rights themselves. Foreigners in foreign lands have foreign governments that factor into the US ability and obligation to protect their rights, which is minimal.
But no one under control of the US, in US territory (including soverign military territory like Guantanamo) can see their rights infringed in any way.
Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the people in the government break the law, violate the Constitution. The Constitution of course has the remedy: prosecution and jail time, even impeachment. The Constitution isn't just some theoretical philosophy, but the only instrument which creates legitimate government power. And its power does not differ in application to anyone on US soil (with the sole and irrelevant exception that a US president must have been born American).
There shouldn't have been any question that Habeas Corpus must apply to everyone in US custody. But of course the 4 dissenting "Justices" in this case also installed George Bush as president. These people are part of a blatantly, flagrantly anti-American conspiracy among themselves to destroy America and everything it stands for.
Everyone knows it. Lots of us say it. But only far too few of us have the courage and integrity to live it. And we, the Americans with a clear conscience, want to bring these evildoers to justice.
The Constitution. Dodging a bullet today that should never have been fired, that should have seen millions of Americans jumping to take the hit. The closeness of this call is just one 87 year old man away from making a total mockery of America as "the land of the free, the home of the brave."
"It's bad for you and everyone else, but it's good for us, and we've got monopolies to protect, so just shut up and get back to work (for us)."
Except that those antisemites aren't "leftists", and are probably rightwing trolls. When you're confronted with the evidence of their posts infesting rightwing sites, too, you just shunt into your programmed talking points, ignoring the facts.
Facts like how antisemitism has always been popular across the land, not just among "rich, White Northeastern Republicans". But hey, since that is exactly who you Republican lowlives have always fantasized about becoming, why shouldn't you lie about them being the antisemites, too? You're lying about the antisemites being mainly on "the left", so why not just plow ahead with some more lies about your fantasy master race?
It's fabulous how your "Libertarians", ashamed of being called "Republicans" anymore, are bringing your inability to see logic with you to the next shell Party for your scams. May you find a happy home there with all your friends. Whatever merit there is to the libertarian attitude, you'll soon discredit it as thoroughly as you showed "Conservatism" to be a scam for thieves doing the opposite of what you say.
Of course, you don't even know what a troll is, as my posts are designed to add something to the discussion other than predictable, probably angry, responses. Even when I flame someone, it's designed to add to the conversation by shutting them up - which few can predict will happen, as you are demonstrating here. But hey, if you're going to work in league with a bunch of troll moderators, who moderate me based on how I've whipped them in the past rather than the content of the post they're moderating, you're really at the vanguard of the cowardly thug movement. Bob Barr's Libertarian Party is your natural environment.
Have fun polluting it into toxic collapse.
No, it's a joke. But since the joke is on Republicans like you, I don't expect you to get it.
Which country would that be, Anonymous enemy Coward? Perhaps you mean the country carved out by the politicians who have destroyed the US every way they could, from the inside? Or are you posting from one of our foreign enemies, which any American SW developer would gladly smash when it threatens the USA?
Thank you :).
- Stephen Colbert
What is the "cyber command" doing to protect the US from current serious attacks on major Federal government sites, including the attacks on sensitive Congressional sites reported this week?
Is there any traditional military precedent for tolerating these attacks to the extent we do? Is that hesitancy making us weaker, so our eventual delayed military (or "cyber-military") response will be compromised from winning the conflict to our satisfaction?
At what point do these attacks constitute acts of war, does that need to be declared by Congress, and how does the "cyber command" change its response at that point?
I think that's a great idea. Because those blogs will destroy the insurgent trolls, and backlash to ruin the McCain campaign even worse than its already crippled natural state.
They're more likely trolls than the insane bigotry posted to McCain's website.
But it's perfectly clear that you are nothing but a McCain troll here on Slashdot.
Those astroturf marching orders will produce nothing but an invasion of trolls into those Progressive blogs. Which will be smashed to dust and mocked roundly, just like their Troll King, McCain.
Aren't you glad that the faker in 2000 who's got a new scam in 2008 didn't get all the power in 2000 that Bush got, and then showed everyone he's a fake in 2000, just like Bush did? OK, maybe you're not glad that Bush got those powers, but aren't you glad that McCain didn't lie his way into them the same way?
Does anyone think it's just a coincidence that both McCain and Bush have become wastefully spending warmongers, now that the 2000 election is over? Maybe you should think about how they're just spokesmodel puppets for a Republican Party that cannot be stopped from wasting American lives and money destroying our government that interferes with corporate rule.
No, not X.org. X.org was forked from XFree86 4 years ago. MIT last controlled even its own X implementation in 1988, but XFree86 wasn't written by MIT. That's not MIT code.
And even if it were, MIT would be just another member of the X community for going on a decade now. Open projects' code is a product of the community, by definition. These disagreements with that point are inherently invalid, though of course typically Slashdot.
McCain has personally admitted that he's computer illiterate (and that he hasn't seen a movie since 1952").
You senile old dreamer, I learned to program in 1977, years before DOS. I was hacking DCL when you were still scared that "COMMAND.COM" was some kind of Soviet spyware. You might love McCain because he's got the same excuses as you for being an idiot. But don't go asking to get slapped around by someone who's still got all his own teeth. It makes it harder to convince the rest of the population to let you cranky old relics slide when you make public fools of yourself.
Just ring the nurse for your diaper change and stop bugging me.