exactly, workers don't have a surplus because it isn't an interest bearing account. The fund has, and the government can either invest it or give it back, but it cannot do both.
If the money is given back, it becomes a personal investment in a personal account, but then it is no longer social security. Social security is a system in which you take care of old people today, and you get a promise that you will be given a roughly similar treatment when you're old. it is not an investment mechanism.
Please read carefully. I said there is surplus now. But the Bush Plan will eliminate it.
Mandarory refers to the sense that you will have to save that money in the same way you do now. That is all. Maybe I missed Bush point but I assume he doesn't want to allow people to use priveously SS money to buy a trip to Disney.
Now, you suggest that some people will be able to invest but won't have to. Let me see: I will have to chose between giving the money to SS to pay for current retirement benefits ( not mine) or invest it for my own benefit.
Besides, if the investing is done well, the return on investment will outpace the loss of surplus.
So you agree that this is a plan to get rid of Social Security? Why not say, social security is a bad idea, let me suggest that each person put his own money in the stock market and take care of his own retirement. Why all this fudge?
and BTW, what if you invested poorly, and in forty years a candidate came and promised to bail you out, and pad your dwindled pension with tax money, will you and all your generation refuse to vote for her in the name of personal accountability?
A third issue is retirement savings. Bush suggests privatizing in too ways: first let workers invest the SS surplus in the market instead of federal bonds, with the possibility of bigger payouts.
Attention Fudge!
Workers don't have a surplus to invest because their money is not an investment. The money workers pay is handed out to the retired of today. There is a surplus as long as workers today pay more than retirees draw. There is deficit when the oppsite happens. Bush wants to have you pay only a percentage of what you pay now to SS and keep the rest in a private mandatory investment account. In that case the SS surplus will disappear. Let us call first a spade a spade. This is not a plan to 'strenghen' social security but to replace it with something else.
is it good for you, maybe? but very likely future taxpayers will pay for your investment. If when you retire SS will be in deficit, as is likely, where will the extra money come? From the young workers of tommorow who will have to fork higher taxes so that you can play the stockmarket today.
I think this gives 'accoutnability' a whole new meaning.
The alternative would be for SS to stop paying to retirees, which is what The GOP wanted to do since SS was invented.
I went to the test at votematch and indeed was paired with my favorite candidate, Ralph Nader.
Not surprising since it is a rehearsal of partyline soundbites. Let us take an example.
do I support continue Foreign Aid to Russia, Israel, Others
I think present levels of US aid ( 0.3% of GDP) is ridiculously and shamefully low. countries half as rich contribute three times more. This shows the US to be a country of mean spirited misers.
but I also think that aid to Israel is excessively high for no good reason and that the 'aid package' to Russia was a catastrophe Gore should be held personaly resposible for.
So how should I answear ?
The problem with issues, is that they are just a nice name for soundbites. The Media is happy that the election is about discussing serious issues, but nobody bothers about the shallow level of the discussion.
Scientific research shows that the coming election is going to adversly affect your health, whichever way you vote. Pregnant women are at particularly high risk and should leave the US and stay eight years in Scandinavia.
Good heaven No! not in a pluralistic society, where different people have different ideas of right and wrong. The whole point of the constitution is to protect us from such pious laws.
The law is suppose to create a framework for living together. As for contract law, see my previous answear in this thread.
>Quotes like yours...
are the surest way to the dismanteling of the constitution, and civil war. What should the law posititon should be on homesexuality, abortion, etc.?
As for the spirit and the letter. Corporate America is bound by law to do just that, it is called fiduciary duty. A 'moral' CEO that forgoes revenues in the persuit of the spirit of the law is liable and can be sued by the shareholders.
I don't always like it, but the difference between morality and law is real and is a deep aspect of societies like ours, you can't just shout it away.
I can agree that our society has lost a great deal of respect for an idea of public commitment ( which is an aspect.ct of morality.) And that is a serious problem, but it is not something that tough laws can mend.
EULAs are currently ambiguous. There is not currently a standing rule that they don't count. Should we break our words based on the notion that maybe someday that rule will exist?
Again, your question is missing the point. I don't care whether you keep your word or not. This is between you and your God/conscience. The policy question is whether the State should force you to keep your word or not.
The argument for state enforcement of contracts/promises ( as opposed to the argument about what you ought to do) is not a moral argument but an economic one. The state enforces contracts because it reduces transaction costs for doing business in that state, spurring business activity and growth, not because it is right. But the state (we) descriminates between welcome and unwelcome business practices. e.g. Pyramide schemes contracts are not enforced because the State doesn't want to spur this kind of business activity. So the question remains, what kind of business practice enforcing 'click through' contracts would spur, and whether we want more or less of this kind of activity.
The argument for is that reducing legal costs for software producers will increase the availability low-cost software. The argument against is that it would increase the volume of low-quality controlled software (no liability clauses) and stifle competition ( anti reverse engineering clauses) and reduce the effective flow of information beyond what is necessary to protect producers( limitations on fair use).
A wise and publicly minded legislature could find ways to authorise these contracts under limitations that would address the concerns expressed above. Will such a miracle happen here these days?
Lot's of things are immoral and perfectly legal. And lots things are moral or morally neutral and illegal.
abiding by Contracts is not a question of morality. It is a question of law. If I contract to sell to you my kidney, I am not bound to follow through, why? Because the law says so. Some contracts are enforceable, some aren't. The readiness of the judicial system to enforce contracts make them binding. And this readiness is a) decided according to principles of public good. b) payed by tax money.
So we have all the right in the world to make the claim that a certain kind of contracts should not be enforced by the government because a) we are or at least should be the government, b) we believe it is not in the best public interest that such contracts be enforced. If people still want to make and keep such contracts because of their personal moral beliefs, that is of course fine.
So the question is not whether it is the right thing for you to abide by the contract you agreed to. The question is whether UCITA contracts are a particular kind of contract and whether this kind raise issues of public interest that favor or disfavor enforcement.
M$ might be worried, and linux is certainly with its serious advantages. But that is not a reason to be smug about it. M$ can dedicate huge amount of money to hurt linux, and as the coming election shows, you don't need to have substance to win if you have enough money.
If you don't vote because your vote doesn't matter that is fine. The American voting system and gerrymandered districts are designed to make your vote almost always meaningless. But only if you do other meaningful political activity. If you participated in the Seattle riots you really don't have to vote. But if voting is the only political action you contemplate ( except for reading this), your not voting means that the meaninglessness of your vote means nothing to you, so don't complain about the system, because you are the problem!
First I agree, but hipocrisy has its value. Gore will not lead on environmentalism, but he will be much more susceptible to green pressure than Bush. He will also enjoy using his Veto Power to prevent Congress from neutering environmental regulation and he will probably appoint competent people to the relevant federal agencies. That doesn't make Gore my buddy, but it does make him less destructive than Bush
Dick Cheney is indeed the most intelligent and the most balanced person in this race. He will be a very effective administrator. Unfortunatly that will be disastrous for everyone in the World who doesn't own a small oil company, and to the US in general.
Put simply, he is not a moron, he is the kind of evil genius that you usually only meet in literature. Cheney does not believe that politics and government has anything to do with morality, i.e. with difference between good and evil. Now, I am sure a lot of people share the cynical view that politics is about power and nothing else. But the moral pandering of politicians is part of this power game. Hypocrisy is underrated. A politicians that has committed himself to an idea of the public good is at least vulnerable to attacks on this ground. He is sometimes forced to follow upon this commitment even if deep inside he doesn't care (like Bush). It is even more so with a politician who actually cares but is too much a coward to do anything unless pushed by public opinion (like Gore). Cheney will simply work hard and smart to reward his friends at our expense.
I don't know of any particular view on technology, but there is no reason to believe technology is an exception to the Golden Rule( who has the gold makes the rules). He will not talk about censorship like Tipper and Lieberman, he will just find more efficient ways to get you to shut up if you get on his nerves.
In addition, his belief that power is the only value will isolate the united states further and raise the chances for future confrontations because it is at odds with the direction of globalization. Human rights, international fairness, environmental damage control are all parts of a global agenda that has increasingly affectet diplomacy. Cheney is the guy who voted against the US asking for the release of Nelson Mandela. He has cosistently maintained that genocide and other atrocities around the world are not our business ( except when we are the architects--as in Chille and now in Columbia). Cheney wants to go back to the good old days of the cold war. This is not in anybody's interest ( excluding amunition suppliers).
PS. if you put Cheney next to Gore and Bush on the table at www.billionairesforbushandgore.com you see immediately how well he fits.
So sooner or later the spreadsheet will be part
of the OS, because I won't buy a computer without it?
What if I am so rich that I have someone else
do the spreadsheet, does that person become part of the OS too?
The granularity of naming is a choice that has to do with the usage and audience of the description.
There is no such thing as true/perfect granularity, from the same reason there is no such thing as a true/perfect fishnet. It all depends on the kind of fish you're interested in.
The author is concerned only with the granularity of marketing computers. I fail to see why we should use Apple's market strategy--which always favored poor granularity ( like the Mac )-- for any other purpose except discuss apple's market strategy.
As usual, both the difference in philosophy and the practical near-identity between Bore and Gush shines in these campaign snippets.
Gush emphasizes intellectual property rights and money while Bore emphasizes balance between the interests of artists and the public.
Gush has basically answered the question. He'll do anything that is acceptable to the music industry, because its their property. Bore on the other, has also answered. Napster undermines the IP rights of artists and he will work to restore the balance. Suprise! This is basically the industry's pitch.
While Bore is commited to Big Bucks, Gush is commited to the Public Good. Too bad his idea
of the public good comes from Big Bucks' agitprop.
So what do you prefer, a foul-smelling dick or a soft-scented impotent?
No it is not crack proof. The link between you and the data about you is perhaps the strongest, but there is no reason to believe that spoofing technology cannot be developed to fool the tools that use it, and then what? You will have a few other 'yous' with a crack-proof link to the data.
SELECT name,ssn,address
FROM persons
INNER JOIN employment ON persons.id = employment.employeeID
INNER JOIN have_genes ON persons.id = have_genes.phenomeID
INNER JOIN genes ON genes.id = have_genes.geneID
WHERE termination = 'layed-off'
AND genes.contributesTo IS LIKE '*aggressiv*'
Simple...there are about 25 people in our group capable of learning how to administer an NT box in a reasonable amount of time, there are about 4 or 5 available who have a reasonable background in *nix. It was purely a business tradeoff.
This is exactly the place for some overarching rules in favor of open source. Change is always expensive in the short run. And it is understandable if businesses chose to stick with NT for these reasons. But the whole point of having a government is to be able to include in the decision making processes inputs that markets tend to neglect.
The government is a large enough contractor to actually set standards of interoperability. And had it chosen to base these on open source, it would have benefited immensly the IT infrastructure of thu US and eventually brought productivity gains to the whole economy. Yes, there would have been an initial price to pay-- hiring a new unix sysadmin, for example, in your case. But frankly I cannot see a lot of better uses of my tax dollars than improving the sagging IT infrastacture.
That said, I don't agree that all or even most government software projects should be open sourced. This is a ideological rallying cry with little merit. But government units should not be able to make purchasing decisions in favor of "cheap" products that do not follow a much more stringent set of requirements, including:
use of open source infrastrucure if one exists.
( os, database engine, servers, etc.)
use of open sourced, open protocol exchange formats.
agreement to open source any particular component upon request, maybe with a preset price, and keeping the source in escrew.
>The government, on the other hand, can generally >do whatever they want, without regard to >legality.
You are joking right ?
First, just as corporations are bound by laws the goevernment writes, the government is bound by market reality which is the sum of corporate actions. Who is stronger is not always easy to determine, but your take on the unlimited power of government looked funny even during the reign of Louis XIV, when it was fashionable, today it is a fossile: just say 'Alan Greenspan'.
In addition to that, governments are also constricted by electoral considerations and by their own past (constitution, laws). Corporations aren't.
Please remember that the constitution is an act of government, and its subject matter is government. You are so much in love with a document whose content you utterly despise.
Ok, I went to check that page and found only fudge. How exactly is a weaker government to reduce the power of corporation?
much of the power that corporations have today comes from laws that give power to the corps
Almost. The power of corporation is the power of capital. i.e. large accumulation of property.
This should be evident since accumulating capital is the very reason corporations are created in the first place.
The power to buy laws and corrupt politicians is the by product of the fact that corporations has much more money than individuals and that politicians ( like everyone else ) are ready to sell their work ( legislation) for a chunk of that money.
Vhat can we do about it? Let's see.
First, it is theoretically possible to scrap the government completely. That would hurt corporation because accumulated capital will become only as good as the ability to protect it by force. Corporations will then be forced to buy defence and police on the market, destroying value in the process. Plus, a huge amount of wealth will simply vanish as a direct response to the reduced level of predictability in human interaction (predictability being the value added by the rule of law ).
Some may find this exciting. But before you subscribe, you could take a vacation in nice places like Somalia, where you will be able to experience life without government firsthand. It probably fits best with how Hobbes described it: 'brutish, nasty and short'.
Most libertarians are not totally nuts, and they opt for a 'minimalist' government, i.e. property rights and nothing else. Can you see the contradiction? Property is the essence of corporate power. How can you decrease the power of corporations if you destroy all form of power except the power inherent in property?
Communism tried to solve the problem by substituting government as the engine of capital accumulation instead of corporations. You know the rest of that story.
Another solution (let's call it Romanticism, Luddism, etc.) is to limit capital accumulation. Let us all live as happy farmers on our tiny plot of land--no corporations, no government, no problem! Except that it would be impossible to sustain human life at all at present numbers, not to mention all the perks of our cozy consumer society, without a level of production that is completely dependent on huge capital accumulation. Some indeed would say it is a good thing ( those Luddites!), but maybe we want to get real here. After all, what's life without/. and 'Doom' ?
So what is left? In the modern pluralist state, the solution is supposed to be a negotiated balance between different holders of different form of power. We have huge corporations, we invest in them, but we also invest in governments and other organizations that keep them from slurping our life. If you must put a tiger in your engine, at least keep a tiger tamer in your back seat!
I suspect a lot of libertarian symphatizers start from the sense that we are way off that desired balance. Indeed, but how does libertarianism restore that balance? It doesn't. The pluralistic model is a very imperfect solution, and I am willing to look for alternatives, as long as they are not made of fudge.
I vote for Nader. Not because I think he has better answers than Brown. He doesn't. I vote for Nader because he has the best questions. And people with simple answers made of fudge scare the shit out of me.
OK , I learn something new every day.
Now can you explain what you mean by Approval?
BS, Your reading of the one principle of 'one man one vote' is as ideosyncretic as it goes. One may well say that voting for president and for senate also violates the constitution.
The only meaningful opposite of 'one man one vote' is 'some men have more votes than others' and that opposite is the only thing prohibited. Equals means the same for everyone, and so every voting method in which all voters follow the same algorithm and are counted by the same algorithm is within the scope of the principle. The constitution specifically allows states and congress to legislate the manner of elections. Can you quote any passage to the contrary?
That Gore outspent him in the campaign ( Bush spent twice as much as Gore). And he had the guts to issue this lie while accusing Gore of lack of credibility.
That moving people from Medicaid to HMOs will increase patient choice.
That his proposed tax cut is only a quarter of the projected surplus.
That he is in favor of hate crime legislation.
"every murder is a hate crime"! How lame can one be?
That he supports gun control. ( yeah right!
and Buchanan will be the next China ambassador )
That he would not try to overturn Roe vs. Wade. And that he would not try to block RU-486.
That he has a record of environmental regulation of industry.
That he has read a book! ( When ask about books he remember from his childhood, he actually mentioned a book written four years ago!)
The problem with the candidates is the opposite of their public image.
Bush is aware that most voters do not support most of his positions, so he fudges or lies outright on almost every issue. But he lies like an oiled used cars dealer. And most people find that acceptable.
The press is lazy with facts that are too complex to check, and also leary of pointing out lies that have anything to do with partisanship. That is one reason it focuses on the barely relevant most of the time. But more importantly, Bush is such a moron that most commentators were really scared that if God doesn't intervene immediately they will have no choice but to appear one-sided and biased. So they jumped on every occasion to harass Gore, just to keep their 'objective' image, and they hailed Bush for every success, such as not mispronouncing 'Putin'.
Call it Affirmative Action for Morons!
It seems that your answer to the question whether Bush is a liar depends of your definition of the word 'IS'.
Slashdot Mirror
exactly, workers don't have a surplus because it isn't an interest bearing account. The fund has, and the government can either invest it or give it back, but it cannot do both.
If the money is given back, it becomes a personal investment in a personal account, but then it is no longer social security. Social security is a system in which you take care of old people today, and you get a promise that you will be given a roughly similar treatment when you're old. it is not an investment mechanism.
sad and true
Mandarory refers to the sense that you will have to save that money in the same way you do now. That is all. Maybe I missed Bush point but I assume he doesn't want to allow people to use priveously SS money to buy a trip to Disney.
Now, you suggest that some people will be able to invest but won't have to. Let me see: I will have to chose between giving the money to SS to pay for current retirement benefits ( not mine) or invest it for my own benefit.
Besides, if the investing is done well, the return on investment will outpace the loss of surplus.
So you agree that this is a plan to get rid of Social Security? Why not say, social security is a bad idea, let me suggest that each person put his own money in the stock market and take care of his own retirement. Why all this fudge?
and BTW, what if you invested poorly, and in forty years a candidate came and promised to bail you out, and pad your dwindled pension with tax money, will you and all your generation refuse to vote for her in the name of personal accountability?
is it good for you, maybe? but very likely future taxpayers will pay for your investment. If when you retire SS will be in deficit, as is likely, where will the extra money come? From the young workers of tommorow who will have to fork higher taxes so that you can play the stockmarket today. I think this gives 'accoutnability' a whole new meaning.
The alternative would be for SS to stop paying to retirees, which is what The GOP wanted to do since SS was invented.
Not surprising since it is a rehearsal of partyline soundbites. Let us take an example.
do I support continue Foreign Aid to Russia, Israel, Others
I think present levels of US aid ( 0.3% of GDP) is ridiculously and shamefully low. countries half as rich contribute three times more. This shows the US to be a country of mean spirited misers.
but I also think that aid to Israel is excessively high for no good reason and that the 'aid package' to Russia was a catastrophe Gore should be held personaly resposible for.
So how should I answear ?
The problem with issues, is that they are just a nice name for soundbites. The Media is happy that the election is about discussing serious issues, but nobody bothers about the shallow level of the discussion.
Scientific research shows that the coming election is going to adversly affect your health, whichever way you vote. Pregnant women are at particularly high risk and should leave the US and stay eight years in Scandinavia.
The law is suppose to create a framework for living together. As for contract law, see my previous answear in this thread.
>Quotes like yours ...
are the surest way to the dismanteling of the constitution, and civil war. What should the law posititon should be on homesexuality, abortion, etc.?
As for the spirit and the letter. Corporate America is bound by law to do just that, it is called fiduciary duty. A 'moral' CEO that forgoes revenues in the persuit of the spirit of the law is liable and can be sued by the shareholders.
I don't always like it, but the difference between morality and law is real and is a deep aspect of societies like ours, you can't just shout it away.
I can agree that our society has lost a great deal of respect for an idea of public commitment ( which is an aspect.ct of morality.) And that is a serious problem, but it is not something that tough laws can mend.
Again, your question is missing the point. I don't care whether you keep your word or not. This is between you and your God/conscience. The policy question is whether the State should force you to keep your word or not.
The argument for state enforcement of contracts/promises ( as opposed to the argument about what you ought to do) is not a moral argument but an economic one. The state enforces contracts because it reduces transaction costs for doing business in that state, spurring business activity and growth, not because it is right. But the state (we) descriminates between welcome and unwelcome business practices. e.g. Pyramide schemes contracts are not enforced because the State doesn't want to spur this kind of business activity. So the question remains, what kind of business practice enforcing 'click through' contracts would spur, and whether we want more or less of this kind of activity.
The argument for is that reducing legal costs for software producers will increase the availability low-cost software. The argument against is that it would increase the volume of low-quality controlled software (no liability clauses) and stifle competition ( anti reverse engineering clauses) and reduce the effective flow of information beyond what is necessary to protect producers( limitations on fair use).
A wise and publicly minded legislature could find ways to authorise these contracts under limitations that would address the concerns expressed above. Will such a miracle happen here these days?
Lot's of things are immoral and perfectly legal. And lots things are moral or morally neutral and illegal.
abiding by Contracts is not a question of morality. It is a question of law. If I contract to sell to you my kidney, I am not bound to follow through, why? Because the law says so. Some contracts are enforceable, some aren't. The readiness of the judicial system to enforce contracts make them binding. And this readiness is a) decided according to principles of public good. b) payed by tax money.
So we have all the right in the world to make the claim that a certain kind of contracts should not be enforced by the government because a) we are or at least should be the government, b) we believe it is not in the best public interest that such contracts be enforced. If people still want to make and keep such contracts because of their personal moral beliefs, that is of course fine.
So the question is not whether it is the right thing for you to abide by the contract you agreed to. The question is whether UCITA contracts are a particular kind of contract and whether this kind raise issues of public interest that favor or disfavor enforcement.
M$ might be worried, and linux is certainly with its serious advantages. But that is not a reason to be smug about it. M$ can dedicate huge amount of money to hurt linux, and as the coming election shows, you don't need to have substance to win if you have enough money.
So how about some ideas for defense strategies?
If you don't vote because your vote doesn't matter that is fine. The American voting system and gerrymandered districts are designed to make your vote almost always meaningless. But only if you do other meaningful political activity. If you participated in the Seattle riots you really don't have to vote. But if voting is the only political action you contemplate ( except for reading this), your not voting means that the meaninglessness of your vote means nothing to you, so don't complain about the system, because you are the problem!
First I agree, but hipocrisy has its value. Gore will not lead on environmentalism, but he will be much more susceptible to green pressure than Bush. He will also enjoy using his Veto Power to prevent Congress from neutering environmental regulation and he will probably appoint competent people to the relevant federal agencies. That doesn't make Gore my buddy, but it does make him less destructive than Bush
Dick Cheney is indeed the most intelligent and the most balanced person in this race. He will be a very effective administrator. Unfortunatly that will be disastrous for everyone in the World who doesn't own a small oil company, and to the US in general.
Put simply, he is not a moron, he is the kind of evil genius that you usually only meet in literature. Cheney does not believe that politics and government has anything to do with morality, i.e. with difference between good and evil. Now, I am sure a lot of people share the cynical view that politics is about power and nothing else. But the moral pandering of politicians is part of this power game. Hypocrisy is underrated. A politicians that has committed himself to an idea of the public good is at least vulnerable to attacks on this ground. He is sometimes forced to follow upon this commitment even if deep inside he doesn't care (like Bush). It is even more so with a politician who actually cares but is too much a coward to do anything unless pushed by public opinion (like Gore). Cheney will simply work hard and smart to reward his friends at our expense.
I don't know of any particular view on technology, but there is no reason to believe technology is an exception to the Golden Rule( who has the gold makes the rules). He will not talk about censorship like Tipper and Lieberman, he will just find more efficient ways to get you to shut up if you get on his nerves.
In addition, his belief that power is the only value will isolate the united states further and raise the chances for future confrontations because it is at odds with the direction of globalization. Human rights, international fairness, environmental damage control are all parts of a global agenda that has increasingly affectet diplomacy. Cheney is the guy who voted against the US asking for the release of Nelson Mandela. He has cosistently maintained that genocide and other atrocities around the world are not our business ( except when we are the architects--as in Chille and now in Columbia). Cheney wants to go back to the good old days of the cold war. This is not in anybody's interest ( excluding amunition suppliers).
PS. if you put Cheney next to Gore and Bush on the table at www.billionairesforbushandgore.com you see immediately how well he fits.
What is utile/ity and what is productiv/ity?
So sooner or later the spreadsheet will be part
of the OS, because I won't buy a computer without it?
What if I am so rich that I have someone else
do the spreadsheet, does that person become part of the OS too?
The granularity of naming is a choice that has to do with the usage and audience of the description.
There is no such thing as true/perfect granularity, from the same reason there is no such thing as a true/perfect fishnet. It all depends on the kind of fish you're interested in.
The author is concerned only with the granularity of marketing computers. I fail to see why we should use Apple's market strategy--which always favored poor granularity ( like the Mac )-- for any other purpose except discuss apple's market strategy.
No I want the gov to take YOUR money!
As usual, both the difference in philosophy and the practical near-identity between Bore and Gush shines in these campaign snippets.
Gush emphasizes intellectual property rights and money while Bore emphasizes balance between the interests of artists and the public.
Gush has basically answered the question. He'll do anything that is acceptable to the music industry, because its their property. Bore on the other, has also answered. Napster undermines the IP rights of artists and he will work to restore the balance. Suprise! This is basically the industry's pitch.
While Bore is commited to Big Bucks, Gush is commited to the Public Good. Too bad his idea
of the public good comes from Big Bucks' agitprop.
So what do you prefer, a foul-smelling dick or a soft-scented impotent?
Vote Nader!
PS. The "music industry" is an oxymoron!
No it is not crack proof. The link between you and the data about you is perhaps the strongest, but there is no reason to believe that spoofing technology cannot be developed to fool the tools that use it, and then what? You will have a few other 'yous' with a crack-proof link to the data.
SELECT name,ssn,address
FROM persons
INNER JOIN employment ON persons.id = employment.employeeID
INNER JOIN have_genes ON persons.id = have_genes.phenomeID
INNER JOIN genes ON genes.id = have_genes.geneID
WHERE termination = 'layed-off'
AND genes.contributesTo IS LIKE '*aggressiv*'
Thanks, I am going to re-educate myself on the subject.
This is exactly the place for some overarching rules in favor of open source. Change is always expensive in the short run. And it is understandable if businesses chose to stick with NT for these reasons. But the whole point of having a government is to be able to include in the decision making processes inputs that markets tend to neglect.
The government is a large enough contractor to actually set standards of interoperability. And had it chosen to base these on open source, it would have benefited immensly the IT infrastructure of thu US and eventually brought productivity gains to the whole economy. Yes, there would have been an initial price to pay-- hiring a new unix sysadmin, for example, in your case. But frankly I cannot see a lot of better uses of my tax dollars than improving the sagging IT infrastacture.
That said, I don't agree that all or even most government software projects should be open sourced. This is a ideological rallying cry with little merit. But government units should not be able to make purchasing decisions in favor of "cheap" products that do not follow a much more stringent set of requirements, including:
use of open source infrastrucure if one exists.
( os, database engine, servers, etc.)
>The government, on the other hand, can generally >do whatever they want, without regard to >legality.
You are joking right ?
First, just as corporations are bound by laws the goevernment writes, the government is bound by market reality which is the sum of corporate actions. Who is stronger is not always easy to determine, but your take on the unlimited power of government looked funny even during the reign of Louis XIV, when it was fashionable, today it is a fossile: just say 'Alan Greenspan'.
In addition to that, governments are also constricted by electoral considerations and by their own past (constitution, laws). Corporations aren't.
Please remember that the constitution is an act of government, and its subject matter is government. You are so much in love with a document whose content you utterly despise.
Ok, I went to check that page and found only fudge. How exactly is a weaker government to reduce the power of corporation?
/. and 'Doom' ?
much of the power that corporations have today comes from laws that give power to the corps
Almost. The power of corporation is the power of capital. i.e. large accumulation of property.
This should be evident since accumulating capital is the very reason corporations are created in the first place.
The power to buy laws and corrupt politicians is the by product of the fact that corporations has much more money than individuals and that politicians ( like everyone else ) are ready to sell their work ( legislation) for a chunk of that money.
Vhat can we do about it? Let's see.
First, it is theoretically possible to scrap the government completely. That would hurt corporation because accumulated capital will become only as good as the ability to protect it by force. Corporations will then be forced to buy defence and police on the market, destroying value in the process. Plus, a huge amount of wealth will simply vanish as a direct response to the reduced level of predictability in human interaction (predictability being the value added by the rule of law ).
Some may find this exciting. But before you subscribe, you could take a vacation in nice places like Somalia, where you will be able to experience life without government firsthand. It probably fits best with how Hobbes described it: 'brutish, nasty and short'.
Most libertarians are not totally nuts, and they opt for a 'minimalist' government, i.e. property rights and nothing else. Can you see the contradiction? Property is the essence of corporate power. How can you decrease the power of corporations if you destroy all form of power except the power inherent in property?
Communism tried to solve the problem by substituting government as the engine of capital accumulation instead of corporations. You know the rest of that story.
Another solution (let's call it Romanticism, Luddism, etc.) is to limit capital accumulation. Let us all live as happy farmers on our tiny plot of land--no corporations, no government, no problem! Except that it would be impossible to sustain human life at all at present numbers, not to mention all the perks of our cozy consumer society, without a level of production that is completely dependent on huge capital accumulation. Some indeed would say it is a good thing ( those Luddites!), but maybe we want to get real here. After all, what's life without
So what is left? In the modern pluralist state, the solution is supposed to be a negotiated balance between different holders of different form of power. We have huge corporations, we invest in them, but we also invest in governments and other organizations that keep them from slurping our life. If you must put a tiger in your engine, at least keep a tiger tamer in your back seat!
I suspect a lot of libertarian symphatizers start from the sense that we are way off that desired balance. Indeed, but how does libertarianism restore that balance? It doesn't. The pluralistic model is a very imperfect solution, and I am willing to look for alternatives, as long as they are not made of fudge.
I vote for Nader. Not because I think he has better answers than Brown. He doesn't. I vote for Nader because he has the best questions. And people with simple answers made of fudge scare the shit out of me.
OK , I learn something new every day.
Now can you explain what you mean by Approval?
BS, Your reading of the one principle of 'one man one vote' is as ideosyncretic as it goes. One may well say that voting for president and for senate also violates the constitution.
The only meaningful opposite of 'one man one vote' is 'some men have more votes than others' and that opposite is the only thing prohibited. Equals means the same for everyone, and so every voting method in which all voters follow the same algorithm and are counted by the same algorithm is within the scope of the principle. The constitution specifically allows states and congress to legislate the manner of elections. Can you quote any passage to the contrary?
Let us add some more lies.
That Gore outspent him in the campaign ( Bush spent twice as much as Gore). And he had the guts to issue this lie while accusing Gore of lack of credibility.
That moving people from Medicaid to HMOs will increase patient choice.
That his proposed tax cut is only a quarter of the projected surplus.
That he is in favor of hate crime legislation.
"every murder is a hate crime"! How lame can one be?
That he supports gun control. ( yeah right!
and Buchanan will be the next China ambassador )
That he would not try to overturn Roe vs. Wade. And that he would not try to block RU-486.
That he has a record of environmental regulation of industry.
That he has read a book! ( When ask about books he remember from his childhood, he actually mentioned a book written four years ago!)
The problem with the candidates is the opposite of their public image.
Bush is aware that most voters do not support most of his positions, so he fudges or lies outright on almost every issue. But he lies like an oiled used cars dealer. And most people find that acceptable.
The press is lazy with facts that are too complex to check, and also leary of pointing out lies that have anything to do with partisanship. That is one reason it focuses on the barely relevant most of the time. But more importantly, Bush is such a moron that most commentators were really scared that if God doesn't intervene immediately they will have no choice but to appear one-sided and biased. So they jumped on every occasion to harass Gore, just to keep their 'objective' image, and they hailed Bush for every success, such as not mispronouncing 'Putin'.
Call it Affirmative Action for Morons!
It seems that your answer to the question whether Bush is a liar depends of your definition of the word 'IS'.
>No, shithead, they really have no chance.
First, let me thank your for your excessive politeness. I am humbled, you must be a really nice person.
On the other hand, learning to read might, perhaps, help you. 0.Where did I say they had a chance?