There is not even the slightest basis for a "right not to be offended" anywhere in the constitution
Why can Libertarians quote every part of the constitution except the Ninth Amendment? It's people like you that was exactly the fear of the founders: that the constution would be used as a weapon to argue that the people have no rights except what's granted in the constitution.
The concept of "community standards" are well-founded in law, and the consitution's preamble specifically speaks of "insuring domesic tranquility" and "promoting the general welfare". Obviously those phrases are open to interpretation, but clearly the founders did NOT intend a country where the government does nothing to enhance the common society.
I suspect, however, that you do not, based upon your mischaracterizations.
The bit about national parks is right on their web site. The bits about private nukes and fire departments they hide, but it's been stated numerous times by Libertarians. And why not? Explain to me why I should be "forced" to give up my nukes based on the second amendment, and why I should be forced to pay for fire service for YOUR house.
If it isn't laid out in the constitution or the amendments to the constitution, it is not a valid government function. There is no way around this. None whatsoever.
Well, no way around it except for that pesky Ninth Amendment that specifically says that everything not enumerated in the constitution is open for debate.
My mother knew more than any representative I am aware of when she died recently, and she was almost 90.
Surely you're not arguing that, based on your single sample, all 90 year olds are writing Perl scripts and are totally up-to-date on technology. I mean, come on.
So the Internet is a series of tubes, you can't say words on television that are common in every schoolyard, and the human body is a matter for shame. And those are the small problems. Worse, we've invaded a country under false pretenses, with no valid reason beyond those already exposed as nonsense, the bill of rights has been forsaken, and the congress and the senate have seen fit to make the entire judicial process one that the executive can control from start to finish.
Most of those aren't problems. One senator was wrong. You can't say words on PUBLIC television where public standards apply. The human body is a matter for PRIVACY, where public standards apply. We invaded a country based on a poor (but totally believable) information. Yes, the bill of rights has been forsaken to a great extent, and the Judicial process is corrupt to an extent. You're right about those, but apparently for the wrong reasons.
In the US, the problem is that the parties keep putting incompetent (and worse) people up for election. Consequently the American people, having no effective way of dealing with the two-party monopoly upon government seats of power, keeps voting these incompetents into congress and the senate.
Again, you're right but for the wrong reasons. We keep putting incomptents into congress because the alternate parties are such extreme idiots that we have no alternative. Say what you like about the Democrats and Republicans, but at least they're not worse than the alternative parties.
I'd tell you to vote libertarian, but most of you are just going to put another democrat or republican into office anyway. Literally, a crying shame.
There's an extremely high probability that you know nothing about the Libertarian party, except that they're for "less government and more rights.". I'm sympathetic with certain Libertarian views, but they're ideas are extreme and simplistic. They will never achieve power -- and *shouldn't*. Sorry, but I don't support a party that wants to sell off all national parks and all local parks. I don't support private ownership of nuclear bombs. I don't support totally private fire departments. Those are just STUPID ideas, but the Libertarians have a crazy obsession with everything being private.
What we need is a combination party that takes the best elements of both parties (privacy, non-religiousness, small government, low taxes, low spending, pro-commerce, welfare at the local level, not federal level, etc). Like the Libertarians, except with common sense.
Yeah, yeah, don't let that light sabre hit you on the ass on your way out...
Seriously, though, I'd love to see more (at one time, at least) gifted directors do this. I've been thinking lately that a lot of series/miniseries on TV I enjoy a lot more than the relatively limited "two hour experience". In a miniseries, they have the luxury of time to develop the characters, etc. Some examples: HBO Deadwood, the A&E "Hornblower" adaptations, hell, the TV series Lost is excellent, which is basically a serial in the guise of a network show.
Obviously there have been stories that worked well in two hours, but I find I really enjoy the expanded stories afforded by TV. TV and the movies have pretty much achieved parity when it comes to quality.
First step - paper trail, paper trail, paper trail !
I'm all in favor of the paper trail, I'm just astounded that there are people who think Diebold would 1) fix an election and risk bringing down the whole company, 2) find employees willing to make the code changes and risk jail, 3) find people willing install the changes and risk jail, 4) be able to do it on a large enough scale to make a difference, and 4) be able to keep the entire conspiracy totally silent.
The losing side will claim the winners stole the election.
There was time that I would've said this was too cynical, but reading the absolute nonsense from people who believe in this "conspiracy" makes me think that people really will believe anything to avoid the truth that the guy they didn't want actually won.
By your sig's logic you can give me credit for preventing an asteroid attack on the planet. My anti-asteroid device has been working perfectly -- no attacks yet! Credit where credit's due please.
Your analogy would make sense if Earth was currently going through a massive asteroid field causing world-wide damage, we had been hit with a huge one five years ago, and since putting up an anti-asteroid system over the United States, we had no further occurances despite knowing the asteroids had been consistently trying to hit us.
(And if you think they're not trying to hit us again with the massive amount of publicity they got last time, you are stunningly naive.)
Yes, that is the resounding sond of Booohs heard across the world.
No, the resounding sound is "YAAAAAWN". You do realize that the vast majority of people don't even know what regional encoding is, and the vast majority of the people who are left don't care, right?
Love it; "You must conform. If you don't, you are somehow mal-adjusted. "
No, it's more like, "If you can't function as a normal human, then you are maladjusted, by definition". Social interaction is a part of normal human behavior. You remind of the radical deaf people who get pissy when you refer to them as having a disability ("NO, We're just DIFFERENTLY ABLED!!!")
I have a pretty introverted personality, but I at least recognize that my social mechanisms aren't normal.
Look at all the scary shit out there; What sane person would subject themselves to that?
The "scary shit" is called "selective bias". You focus on what you want to focus on in order to believe that you're justified in your behavior. What, is the world supposed to be perfect before you think interaction with others is safe?
Sounds good for me, all I have to do is arrest all of the opponent's followers.
And exactly how are you goint to determine that? And exactly how are you going to make that happen without the opposition party making sure it doesn't happen? And exactly why do you think your supporters would be in favor of you arresting everyone who opposes you?
Let's live slightly in reality here.
If there was no crackdown, who would pay the taxes? Which power begets the other?
Most people pay taxes out of social responsibility, not fear of government reprisal. It's only Libertarians who believe that everyone doesn't want to pay any taxes at all.
Your post neatly summarizes (one of) the problems I have with Libertarians. You have absolutely ZERO sense of proportion. Everything is black or white. Either someone is innocent, or they're the worst criminal in the history of mankind. There is no middle ground.
Everyone who is old enough to read this post has broken many laws in their life, even if they were minor laws.
So what? Do you think the penalty for any minor law is death? Of course everyone breaks the law (i.e., speeding), and everyone tends to be guilty at one time or another. But guess what? I break very few other laws.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
And ah yes, the classic "oversimplifier" herself. This is such a stupid quote. The primary power the government has is TAXES not criminal crackdowns. Guess what? CRIMINALS CAN'T VOTE. They don't earn money. Criminals are useless to politicians! They want MONEY and POWER. Some want it for good, some for not-so-good, but MONEY is power, not a nation of criminals!
Once people stop calling the BMG rootkit the "Sony rootkit" then it'll stop being unwarranted.
You think it's just the rootkit that's the problem? I didn't even have that in mind when I wrote the post. The rootkit is just a symptom; Sony's problems run far deeper than that. Look at their MP3 player that doesn't play MP3s and requires you to go through that multi-hour "conversion process of pain". That's if it doesn't infamously crash along the way. This from the company that used to OWN the portable "walkman" music market. "Walkman" at one time was in danger of becoming a generic term! Not anymore.
Heck, I bought TWO pairs of Sony headphones in the past year or so. These supposedly "noise cancelling" headphones that didn't worth at all, and some more normal ones that lasted about six months before spontaneously breaking (the latter also had a ridiculously badly designed case that I won't go into).
Look at "memory sticks" -- more proprietary Sony garbage trying to monopolize the market and turn everyone in the industry into licensing slaves. That's the Sony of today -- create something to try and lock everyone in.
There is absolutely NOTHING I will buy from Sony anymore. I have a Sony monitor on my desk, for crissakes, but they're dead as far as I'm concerned.
"Bashing" implies excessive or unwarranted criticism. What criticism of Sony would you say is unwarranted these days? They're an empty shell of their former self.
Or maybe it has something to do with the U.S. becoming a police sate, and trying to police the world by enforcing U.S. laws that are not broken in the U.S., but in other counteries?::rolls eyes::
First of all, you don't know what a police state is.
Second of all, what part of "breaking the laws OF the USA IN the USA" don't you understand? He broke the law IN THE USA. That means that USA laws apply. Why would you think UK laws would apply?
Its another great example of the US deciding that its perfectly okay to have their laws apply to people from other countries
You have it exactly backwards. The guy is providing services to Americans that are illegal in America. What difference does it make where he's doing it from? Columbian drug runners are also regularly thrown in jail for selling services in the US.
What you're really saying is that you think UK laws should be forced upon the USA. Sorry, but that's not how it works. If the guy breaks US laws with US citizens, and he comes here, then he's going to get his ass picked up.
I don't considering suborbital trips to be space travel, so I'm glad they're talking about some of the real players trying to bring orbital travel to be affordable.
My great fear is that the marketing machines are overselling suborbital "roller coasters", and when that is an abject failure, we'll see less investment in real orbital trips. Orbital is at least an order of magnitude harder than suborbital (if not more), so it's possible that some investors could be spooked away.
Actually, part 2 would be using my enormous wealth to hire a fleet of black helicopters to take out anyone without a sense of humor. I'd go down in history as a world hero.
How do you exploit somebody without coercion? If Free Software somehow goes all Darth Vader and "alters the deal", people who disagree with the alteration will stop volunteering. [...] How do you get from "People freely choose to contribute effort to this project" to "COMMUNISM!"?
Communism is not based on coercion. It only ends up that way. But if you look at the theoretical goals of Communism, it's very close to the Free Software model.
(snicker) As opposed to being exploited by their corporate overlords? (see EA, intellectual property laws, NDA's, outsourcing, etc.)
You're not being exploited at all. You knowingly enter into a contract -- as equals -- with your employer. They give you money in exchange for work. In fact, considering employment laws, I could argue that the "corporate overlords" are exploited far more than employees.
I wonder why RMS is so opposed to economic acceptance...
Because he knows that's a road to failure. If people have to depend on free software for money, then the whole thing will eventually collapse, because there just won't be enough money to pay enough people to support a software industry based on free software.
Given that, he has to push a (pardon the use of the word) Communist model based on unpaid volunteers.
It will be interesting to see if in the future people will grow weary of their work being exploited for free, or will each successive generation of programmers continue to volunteer their time.
E. You shoot Stallman for the good of mankind, then you threaten to shoot Bill Gates until he gives you a wad of money and a means of escape. You use part of the money to buy the best defense team and get yourself transferred to Texas, where you can use the famous He needed killin' defense. You're declared innocent of any crime, and Bill is so impressed by your stunning ingenuity that he hires you at Microsoft for a fat paycheck. You ride the gravy train for the rest of your life.
Slashdot Mirror
There is not even the slightest basis for a "right not to be offended" anywhere in the constitution
Why can Libertarians quote every part of the constitution except the Ninth Amendment? It's people like you that was exactly the fear of the founders: that the constution would be used as a weapon to argue that the people have no rights except what's granted in the constitution.
The concept of "community standards" are well-founded in law, and the consitution's preamble specifically speaks of "insuring domesic tranquility" and "promoting the general welfare". Obviously those phrases are open to interpretation, but clearly the founders did NOT intend a country where the government does nothing to enhance the common society.
I suspect, however, that you do not, based upon your mischaracterizations.
The bit about national parks is right on their web site. The bits about private nukes and fire departments they hide, but it's been stated numerous times by Libertarians. And why not? Explain to me why I should be "forced" to give up my nukes based on the second amendment, and why I should be forced to pay for fire service for YOUR house.
If it isn't laid out in the constitution or the amendments to the constitution, it is not a valid government function. There is no way around this. None whatsoever.
Well, no way around it except for that pesky Ninth Amendment that specifically says that everything not enumerated in the constitution is open for debate.
My mother knew more than any representative I am aware of when she died recently, and she was almost 90.
Surely you're not arguing that, based on your single sample, all 90 year olds are writing Perl scripts and are totally up-to-date on technology. I mean, come on.
So the Internet is a series of tubes, you can't say words on television that are common in every schoolyard, and the human body is a matter for shame. And those are the small problems. Worse, we've invaded a country under false pretenses, with no valid reason beyond those already exposed as nonsense, the bill of rights has been forsaken, and the congress and the senate have seen fit to make the entire judicial process one that the executive can control from start to finish.
Most of those aren't problems. One senator was wrong. You can't say words on PUBLIC television where public standards apply. The human body is a matter for PRIVACY, where public standards apply. We invaded a country based on a poor (but totally believable) information. Yes, the bill of rights has been forsaken to a great extent, and the Judicial process is corrupt to an extent. You're right about those, but apparently for the wrong reasons.
In the US, the problem is that the parties keep putting incompetent (and worse) people up for election. Consequently the American people, having no effective way of dealing with the two-party monopoly upon government seats of power, keeps voting these incompetents into congress and the senate.
Again, you're right but for the wrong reasons. We keep putting incomptents into congress because the alternate parties are such extreme idiots that we have no alternative. Say what you like about the Democrats and Republicans, but at least they're not worse than the alternative parties.
I'd tell you to vote libertarian, but most of you are just going to put another democrat or republican into office anyway. Literally, a crying shame.
There's an extremely high probability that you know nothing about the Libertarian party, except that they're for "less government and more rights.". I'm sympathetic with certain Libertarian views, but they're ideas are extreme and simplistic. They will never achieve power -- and *shouldn't*. Sorry, but I don't support a party that wants to sell off all national parks and all local parks. I don't support private ownership of nuclear bombs. I don't support totally private fire departments. Those are just STUPID ideas, but the Libertarians have a crazy obsession with everything being private.
What we need is a combination party that takes the best elements of both parties (privacy, non-religiousness, small government, low taxes, low spending, pro-commerce, welfare at the local level, not federal level, etc). Like the Libertarians, except with common sense.
Test of whether Slashdot is working again...
I and millons of others do not agree with that statement.
I and millions of others DO agree with the statement. What's your point?
Yeah, yeah, don't let that light sabre hit you on the ass on your way out...
Seriously, though, I'd love to see more (at one time, at least) gifted directors do this. I've been thinking lately that a lot of series/miniseries on TV I enjoy a lot more than the relatively limited "two hour experience". In a miniseries, they have the luxury of time to develop the characters, etc. Some examples: HBO Deadwood, the A&E "Hornblower" adaptations, hell, the TV series Lost is excellent, which is basically a serial in the guise of a network show.
Obviously there have been stories that worked well in two hours, but I find I really enjoy the expanded stories afforded by TV. TV and the movies have pretty much achieved parity when it comes to quality.
First step - paper trail, paper trail, paper trail !
I'm all in favor of the paper trail, I'm just astounded that there are people who think Diebold would 1) fix an election and risk bringing down the whole company, 2) find employees willing to make the code changes and risk jail, 3) find people willing install the changes and risk jail, 4) be able to do it on a large enough scale to make a difference, and 4) be able to keep the entire conspiracy totally silent.
The losing side will claim the winners stole the election.
There was time that I would've said this was too cynical, but reading the absolute nonsense from people who believe in this "conspiracy" makes me think that people really will believe anything to avoid the truth that the guy they didn't want actually won.
By your sig's logic you can give me credit for preventing an asteroid attack on the planet. My anti-asteroid device has been working perfectly -- no attacks yet! Credit where credit's due please.
Your analogy would make sense if Earth was currently going through a massive asteroid field causing world-wide damage, we had been hit with a huge one five years ago, and since putting up an anti-asteroid system over the United States, we had no further occurances despite knowing the asteroids had been consistently trying to hit us.
(And if you think they're not trying to hit us again with the massive amount of publicity they got last time, you are stunningly naive.)
Yes, that is the resounding sond of Booohs heard across the world.
No, the resounding sound is "YAAAAAWN". You do realize that the vast majority of people don't even know what regional encoding is, and the vast majority of the people who are left don't care, right?
Love it; "You must conform. If you don't, you are somehow mal-adjusted. "
No, it's more like, "If you can't function as a normal human, then you are maladjusted, by definition". Social interaction is a part of normal human behavior. You remind of the radical deaf people who get pissy when you refer to them as having a disability ("NO, We're just DIFFERENTLY ABLED!!!")
I have a pretty introverted personality, but I at least recognize that my social mechanisms aren't normal.
Look at all the scary shit out there; What sane person would subject themselves to that?
The "scary shit" is called "selective bias". You focus on what you want to focus on in order to believe that you're justified in your behavior. What, is the world supposed to be perfect before you think interaction with others is safe?
Sounds good for me, all I have to do is arrest all of the opponent's followers.
And exactly how are you goint to determine that? And exactly how are you going to make that happen without the opposition party making sure it doesn't happen? And exactly why do you think your supporters would be in favor of you arresting everyone who opposes you?
Let's live slightly in reality here.
If there was no crackdown, who would pay the taxes? Which power begets the other?
Most people pay taxes out of social responsibility, not fear of government reprisal. It's only Libertarians who believe that everyone doesn't want to pay any taxes at all.
Your post neatly summarizes (one of) the problems I have with Libertarians. You have absolutely ZERO sense of proportion. Everything is black or white. Either someone is innocent, or they're the worst criminal in the history of mankind. There is no middle ground.
Everyone who is old enough to read this post has broken many laws in their life, even if they were minor laws.
So what? Do you think the penalty for any minor law is death? Of course everyone breaks the law (i.e., speeding), and everyone tends to be guilty at one time or another. But guess what? I break very few other laws.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
And ah yes, the classic "oversimplifier" herself. This is such a stupid quote. The primary power the government has is TAXES not criminal crackdowns. Guess what? CRIMINALS CAN'T VOTE. They don't earn money. Criminals are useless to politicians! They want MONEY and POWER. Some want it for good, some for not-so-good, but MONEY is power, not a nation of criminals!
Once people stop calling the BMG rootkit the "Sony rootkit" then it'll stop being unwarranted.
You think it's just the rootkit that's the problem? I didn't even have that in mind when I wrote the post. The rootkit is just a symptom; Sony's problems run far deeper than that. Look at their MP3 player that doesn't play MP3s and requires you to go through that multi-hour "conversion process of pain". That's if it doesn't infamously crash along the way. This from the company that used to OWN the portable "walkman" music market. "Walkman" at one time was in danger of becoming a generic term! Not anymore.
Heck, I bought TWO pairs of Sony headphones in the past year or so. These supposedly "noise cancelling" headphones that didn't worth at all, and some more normal ones that lasted about six months before spontaneously breaking (the latter also had a ridiculously badly designed case that I won't go into).
Look at "memory sticks" -- more proprietary Sony garbage trying to monopolize the market and turn everyone in the industry into licensing slaves. That's the Sony of today -- create something to try and lock everyone in.
There is absolutely NOTHING I will buy from Sony anymore. I have a Sony monitor on my desk, for crissakes, but they're dead as far as I'm concerned.
Why not stop the Sony bashing, please?
"Bashing" implies excessive or unwarranted criticism. What criticism of Sony would you say is unwarranted these days? They're an empty shell of their former self.
Or maybe it has something to do with the U.S. becoming a police sate, and trying to police the world by enforcing U.S. laws that are not broken in the U.S., but in other counteries? ::rolls eyes::
First of all, you don't know what a police state is.
Second of all, what part of "breaking the laws OF the USA IN the USA" don't you understand? He broke the law IN THE USA. That means that USA laws apply. Why would you think UK laws would apply?
Its another great example of the US deciding that its perfectly okay to have their laws apply to people from other countries
You have it exactly backwards. The guy is providing services to Americans that are illegal in America. What difference does it make where he's doing it from? Columbian drug runners are also regularly thrown in jail for selling services in the US.
What you're really saying is that you think UK laws should be forced upon the USA. Sorry, but that's not how it works. If the guy breaks US laws with US citizens, and he comes here, then he's going to get his ass picked up.
In the near future, the United States of America may be a country that non-Americans fear to travel to.
Yeah, because every non-American is running services TO AMERICANS that are illegal in AMERICA. ::rolls eyes:: None of your examples fit that criteria.
Guess what? If you sell cocaine in the USA that happens to be legal in your country, you'll be arrested as well.
Oops, I didn't mean to italicize that first sentence. That wasn't a quote.
I don't considering suborbital trips to be space travel, so I'm glad they're talking about some of the real players trying to bring orbital travel to be affordable.
My great fear is that the marketing machines are overselling suborbital "roller coasters", and when that is an abject failure, we'll see less investment in real orbital trips. Orbital is at least an order of magnitude harder than suborbital (if not more), so it's possible that some investors could be spooked away.
Apple is accused of copying someone's "look and feel"? Hmmm. Where have I heard that argument before? Oh, the thick, thick irony.
Actually, part 2 would be using my enormous wealth to hire a fleet of black helicopters to take out anyone without a sense of humor. I'd go down in history as a world hero.
How do you exploit somebody without coercion? If Free Software somehow goes all Darth Vader and "alters the deal", people who disagree with the alteration will stop volunteering. [...] How do you get from "People freely choose to contribute effort to this project" to "COMMUNISM!"?
Communism is not based on coercion. It only ends up that way. But if you look at the theoretical goals of Communism, it's very close to the Free Software model.
(snicker) As opposed to being exploited by their corporate overlords? (see EA, intellectual property laws, NDA's, outsourcing, etc.)
You're not being exploited at all. You knowingly enter into a contract -- as equals -- with your employer. They give you money in exchange for work. In fact, considering employment laws, I could argue that the "corporate overlords" are exploited far more than employees.
I wonder why RMS is so opposed to economic acceptance...
Because he knows that's a road to failure. If people have to depend on free software for money, then the whole thing will eventually collapse, because there just won't be enough money to pay enough people to support a software industry based on free software.
Given that, he has to push a (pardon the use of the word) Communist model based on unpaid volunteers.
It will be interesting to see if in the future people will grow weary of their work being exploited for free, or will each successive generation of programmers continue to volunteer their time.
E. You shoot Stallman for the good of mankind, then you threaten to shoot Bill Gates until he gives you a wad of money and a means of escape. You use part of the money to buy the best defense team and get yourself transferred to Texas, where you can use the famous He needed killin' defense. You're declared innocent of any crime, and Bill is so impressed by your stunning ingenuity that he hires you at Microsoft for a fat paycheck. You ride the gravy train for the rest of your life.