Perhaps the time you spend looking for others' delusion, I spend contemplating how I choose to interpret that which I take in?
Re:Porn isn't really benign
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You know, as a liberal, I find the idea that I'm supposedly so weak-willed that I can't look at Bad Things without being "changed" against my will really offensive, or that anyone should have the right to change what I have access to under the pretense of acting in my interests.
Guess what? I have a mind of my own, just as the women who decide to do pornography do. Some of them do it because of their financial or social circumstances, some do it by choice. Neither the producers nor the consumers of pornographic material are doing something inherently wrong in interacting with the porno industry. There may be instances of wrongdoing, but they do not mean that every piece of porno is somehow terrible.
I wasn't referring to legally purchased laptops, either.
I haven't read the story itself, as I've been unable to get to it all day (slashdotted), so I don't know about the stupidity of the thief. I was pointing out that were *I* to steal a computer, I'd wipe that baby clean immediately.
My other point was that what you described is essentially a virus, and that any system with a virus scanner installed would most likely detect it as such. Sure, it's fine and dandy for YOU to install, but what if someone cracked a machine and installed a piece of software like this? Think of all the machines and information they'd be able to collect. Think of the children.
A GPS solution wouldn't "assist in tracking" against a professional, either. Being professionals, they'd just rip it out, or put it out of commision.
And how would this work? If I buy a machine, the *first* thing I do is wipe the hard drives and install *nix; even a non-technical user probably installed antivirus software, and your callback scripts would almost certainly fall under their definitions of what constitutes malicious code.
Remember: given sufficient time and/or resources, hardware control implies complete software control.
Unfortunately, drivers of SUVs aren't required to take these safety courses and end up killing a fair amount of their own citizens in smaller vehicles and motorcycles.
I knew SUV's were large, but I didn't realize that they constituted soverign nations yet. I guess I'll stick to walking.
I'm certainly a "technically savvy" user - but I don't own a DVD drive or a CD-R drive. A device like this - external, as something I could hook up to either my television or my Linux boxen, would indeed be spiffy. I agree that the price is a little steep - I think $200 would put it square in line with what most users who don't yet have a DVD player (or a CD-R drive) would find useful.
Are all modchips necessarily used for cheating? From what I understand, the most spiffy thing about modding an XBox is that you can run Linux on such a system. If that's you reason for having such a system, how are you screwing over your fellow players?
Somebody needs to moderate the parent comment up. This article is not merely masturbation for some geek - these are fundamentally cooler tools than what we've had before. Why? Because they do what they do - port scanning, routing, etc. - in new and more flexible ways.
One of the problems with releasing a powerful tool is that you need to *train* people to use it. Even moreso than in meatspace, virtual tools like these require you to grok both the code and the environment in which the code runs. In this case, you need to understand how TCP/IP works, what the OSI layers are and how they interrelate, how existing implementations have been done, and how these tools are different.
It's really disappointing to see comments disparaging what is really impressive work - especially for reasons such as "this isn't new!" or "I don't get it!"
What is even more amusing is that even though I moderated your comment offtopic, and then noticed that you had realized it, my metamoderation results for that moderation came back as "Unfair".
w00, really.
"Event horizon" probably isn't the phrase you want here. I'm sure it makes you feel all fuzzy to say it, but you should look it up, first:
event horizon: The region, usually described as spherical, marking the outer boundary of a black hole, inside which the gravitational force is strong enough to prevent matter or radiation from escaping. [dictionary.com]
I know these new anti-pirating measures are nifty, but good god - let us *hope* they haven't found a way to keep all energy and matter from escaping from the clutches of the MPAA, lest we all be really screwed.
The job of the sysadmin is to stay on top of what is being revealed as vulnerable and then to act appropriately so as to mitigate risk. Updating packages automatically isn't doing that - what if the repository that apt is hitting has been compromised? What if the new version of package X has other issues that make it less than optimal?
One does not approach being secure by putting one's faith in some tool and hoping it solves everything. The only way to lock down a box is to be vigilant and aware, in my experience.
The problem isn't not having packages automatically updated, but rather that there are sysadmins who are militantly unaware of disclosed vulnerabilities in the software they run. Solve the latter and you don't need the (somewhat short-sighted) former.
I agree. There's *nothing* useful about a boat race. We don't live in a utilitarian world, though - and in America, if you gots it, you flaunts it.
I don't really know how one would criticize these people. It's a garish and selfish way to spend money...but it's their money to spend. As John Cleese once said, "If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'"
English is not a problem - I speak it quite fluently, along with German and Spanish. Friday mornings, on the other hand, aren't quite so easy to cope with.
I was responding to the original poster's claim that the fontconfig site had removed access to the MS Web Fonts on their server. The specific line was:
Hmm, the fontconfig page [fontconfig.org] has the withdrawn Microsoft web fonts [slashdot.org].
Obviously, this is an untrue statement.
The EULA permits it, so why not mirror it all over the place?
This is the point I was making - that according to the EULA, this is legal.
An easier way to configure printers, complete M$ Office interoperability
You mean aside from CUPS and Crossover Office?
CUPS has a number of front-ends to it that are *very* easy to use, and provides an easy, GUI-oriented way to deal with printers - as its freshmeat writeup says, "it has been developed to promote a standard printing solution for all UNIX vendors and users."
Crossover Office isn't Free (and I don't run it for precisely that reason), but if the only thing tieing you or your company to Windows is the need for complete Office support, it's the most promising option out there. General word processing is better served by AbiWord, in my opinion, but this is not a sticking point of any note anymore.
If so, there was *no* need for them to do so. The EULA that comes with the fonts specifically states,
"You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT; provided that each copy shall be a true and complete copy, including all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be distributed for profit either on a standalone basis or included as part of your own product."
Ah. I can't seem to dredge it up at the moment, but one of the XF86 devs said (within the last 3 months) that one of the *big* plans for the coming versions of XFree86 is to do away with the current configuration method, and move towards a level of autoconfiguration (say, default to VGA), and make the selection of a given chipset much less difficult.
I don't remember the Q3 demo being available only on Linux/Mac before being available on Win32, though - I have distinct memories of playing it at a friend's house on a Win98 mchine. What was iD's reasoning for such a release? Are there any old interviews kicking around where Carmack talks about it?
Thanks for the clarification, Ino. I thought iD was publicly traded - I obviously should have done more research. I'll slip my boot back into my mouth now.:)
As iD could do it, it would be interesting to see what the fallout would be if they *did* - even if only as a staggered release, such as putting out a Mac/Linux version of Doom III three months before the Windows version hits the shelves. My guess is that at least some people would be anxious enough to play that they'd give the Linux thing a shot.
The time may not be ripe, though - a few more supported 3D cards and some better spatial sound would be *really* nice, especially if any game company/product were being used to sell the virtues of the OS. The underlying idea, though, remains worthwhile, at least IMO.
In the socialist-utopian model, this might work, but that's simply not how real life works.
Stop using the big words. They don't make you sound intelligent, especially when you use them incorrectly.
A socialist model would be one where a central authority taxes its citizens according to income, redistributing that wealth in the form of social services and/or employment. Nor is such a scheme utopian - quite a few practical and effective governments in Europe are overtly socialist, and even the United States has socialist leanings. However, this has nothing to do with installing Linux to play a video game.
It would also not be ironic for a game company to charge for a product marketed to a community who "largely feels that it should be distributed for free" - irony is defined as "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs." It seems you did catch on, though, when you pointed out that such would be "stupidity".
What community are you talking about, anyways? I wasn't aware that there was a unified front of any sort claiming that entertainment software should be made available free of charge. The naivete seems to be yours, friend.
Providing a linux-only game would undoubtedly generate interest in the product. A company like ID probably can't afford to do it, but a small shop (similar to how Looking Glass was in its early days) could probably do so. Such a company's total operating costs would be less, and their shareholder responsibilities fewer.
Don't be so quick to dismiss a proactive idea just because it's never been done before.
Rather than breaking the law and killing something so that you could still continue to sell a product that at least *some* people don't want, perhaps you should find a better way of earning an income - something that doesn't depend on a resource that anybody could, given sufficient time, emulate as well or better (and for Free!) than you?
Perhaps someday, you'll truly find out what the "Real World" is, and you won't need to talk to others about it with such a condescending tone.
Everyone is different. Some people make perfectly valid lives for themselves whilst engaged in academia. Some are asses. The same is true for every line job, kitchen worker, CEO position, and mailrooom clerk post in the world.
Your circumstances do not dictate you. Your job doesn't make you. Your money? It's only useful if you think it is. You apparently do, but that's not a universal opinion. Nor is the only choice offered to go work an "Honest Job" or ascend into an ivory tower.
Perhaps it isn't that money is evil, but just that it isn't everything? Perhaps other people have things that *they* see as important to them in the same way you perceive your children?
O'Reilly makes a *very* important point about forcing governments to use Open Source software: it's morally reprehensible. Quoting from a letter sent to Tim, "If you feel you have to coerce people, it would be better to force them to increase their disclosure. Require officials to document their acquisition critieria, require companies to publish their licensing policies, insist on use of open file formats for publicly accessible documents. That is, increase the flow of information and the range of choices, rather than trying to decrease them. That's what Open Source is supposed to be about - increasing choices, right?"
Moreoever, your criticisms against Tim are as sophomoric as they are transparent:
1."O'Reilly seems to be promoting the agenda of Microsoft's Software Choice campaign. He's a business man; perhaps there's a reason we don't know about." His manner employment is irrelevant - attacking an argument that calls into question the "slippery slope" of using legislation to force a particular subset of software upon a goverment on the grounds that the author of the argument is a businessman is an ad homimen fallacy, not a substantial critique.
2. "Saying "People should be free to keep their papers private" as an argument against government FOI laws is just a stupid strawman, unworthy of further debate." Ok, agreed. Where does Tim say this? Where does this quote come from? The argument O'Reilly has against forcing the government of CA to use Open Source software is that "any victory for open source achieved through deprivation of the user's right to choose would indeed be a betrayal of the principles that free software and open source have stood for" - a point that is very different from some claim to a person's right to privacy.
3. "Governments play by different rules. They need to be fiscally responsible, transparent to the public, and promote the public commonwealth whenever possible." I argue that the public commonwealth is best promoted by protecting what O'Reilly calls "Freedom Zero": "the freedom to offer your work to the world on the terms that you choose, and for the recipients to accept or reject those terms." When you start to force *any* entity to use software, you're violating what I perceive to be one of the fundamental principles of the Free software movement.
4."Whatever his motives, his lame arguments are no reason to stop pushing for governments to use Free or Open Source software wherever possible." Pushing for governments to use Free/Open Source software is fine, but O'Reilly's "lame arguments" boil down to the simple notion that "This last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
Although I've come to expect the mentality of least resistance here at/., it's depressing to see an editor such as yourself bashing an article that endorses the ideological foundations for the Open Source movement. Spewing links to Microsoft FUD and drawing vague connections to ridiculous and oversimplified statements that no one would disagree with in an attempt to bolster such a weak argument might fool some of this community, but not all of us.
As Fight Club said, "sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken." Thanks for the proof, Michael.
There actually is something "new" about this. Quoting from the article:
"It's hard to type with fingers that must grip something at the same time. That's why the only portable one-hander you can buy at present, as far as I know, has a big, ugly, wrist strap . Another reason is that the fingers are never far from their relaxed positions. They don't have to curl tightly, which quickly becomes tiring. This keyboard is small enough to be mostly hidden by the hand so it's not so geeky. Since there's no strap, it can go in and out of a pocket quickly. When you actually get one in your hand you see it's great fun to type so casually and with so little effort."
I've used Twiddlers - they are nice, but everything John (the guy who makes this new one) has said is entirely true.
You know, the surrealist film movement that took place in the early part of the 20th century in France spent a good deal of time focusing on the idea of revolutionary failure. One of their premises was that in any power struggle situation, the weaker side (practically, not ideologically) would have its strongest arguments assimilated by their oppposition. The effect was one where the side with more might could lay claim (and thus control)to the most persuasive arguments levied against them.
Yes, the "wasted votes" point is tired - but who tired it out? Who robbed the claim "the votes of the citizens *doesn't matter*, and somebody other than the public pulls the strings in a public election" of its impact?
I'll vote for who I believe in when a man I believe in can be voted for.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the time you spend looking for others' delusion, I spend contemplating how I choose to interpret that which I take in?
You know, as a liberal, I find the idea that I'm supposedly so weak-willed that I can't look at Bad Things without being "changed" against my will really offensive, or that anyone should have the right to change what I have access to under the pretense of acting in my interests.
Guess what? I have a mind of my own, just as the women who decide to do pornography do. Some of them do it because of their financial or social circumstances, some do it by choice. Neither the producers nor the consumers of pornographic material are doing something inherently wrong in interacting with the porno industry. There may be instances of wrongdoing, but they do not mean that every piece of porno is somehow terrible.
I wasn't referring to legally purchased laptops, either.
I haven't read the story itself, as I've been unable to get to it all day (slashdotted), so I don't know about the stupidity of the thief. I was pointing out that were *I* to steal a computer, I'd wipe that baby clean immediately.
My other point was that what you described is essentially a virus, and that any system with a virus scanner installed would most likely detect it as such. Sure, it's fine and dandy for YOU to install, but what if someone cracked a machine and installed a piece of software like this? Think of all the machines and information they'd be able to collect. Think of the children.
A GPS solution wouldn't "assist in tracking" against a professional, either. Being professionals, they'd just rip it out, or put it out of commision.
Sorry to be less than clear.
And how would this work? If I buy a machine, the *first* thing I do is wipe the hard drives and install *nix; even a non-technical user probably installed antivirus software, and your callback scripts would almost certainly fall under their definitions of what constitutes malicious code.
Remember: given sufficient time and/or resources, hardware control implies complete software control.
Unfortunately, drivers of SUVs aren't required to take these safety courses and end up killing a fair amount of their own citizens in smaller vehicles and motorcycles.
I knew SUV's were large, but I didn't realize that they constituted soverign nations yet. I guess I'll stick to walking.
Not necessarily.
I'm certainly a "technically savvy" user - but I don't own a DVD drive or a CD-R drive. A device like this - external, as something I could hook up to either my television or my Linux boxen, would indeed be spiffy. I agree that the price is a little steep - I think $200 would put it square in line with what most users who don't yet have a DVD player (or a CD-R drive) would find useful.
Ino,
Are all modchips necessarily used for cheating? From what I understand, the most spiffy thing about modding an XBox is that you can run Linux on such a system. If that's you reason for having such a system, how are you screwing over your fellow players?
I'm going to burn some karma.
Somebody needs to moderate the parent comment up. This article is not merely masturbation for some geek - these are fundamentally cooler tools than what we've had before. Why? Because they do what they do - port scanning, routing, etc. - in new and more flexible ways.
One of the problems with releasing a powerful tool is that you need to *train* people to use it. Even moreso than in meatspace, virtual tools like these require you to grok both the code and the environment in which the code runs. In this case, you need to understand how TCP/IP works, what the OSI layers are and how they interrelate, how existing implementations have been done, and how these tools are different.
It's really disappointing to see comments disparaging what is really impressive work - especially for reasons such as "this isn't new!" or "I don't get it!"
*sigh*
What is even more amusing is that even though I moderated your comment offtopic, and then noticed that you had realized it, my metamoderation results for that moderation came back as "Unfair". w00, really.
"Event horizon" probably isn't the phrase you want here. I'm sure it makes you feel all fuzzy to say it, but you should look it up, first:
event horizon: The region, usually described as spherical, marking the outer boundary of a black hole, inside which the gravitational force is strong enough to prevent matter or radiation from escaping. [dictionary.com]
I know these new anti-pirating measures are nifty, but good god - let us *hope* they haven't found a way to keep all energy and matter from escaping from the clutches of the MPAA, lest we all be really screwed.
The job of the sysadmin is to stay on top of what is being revealed as vulnerable and then to act appropriately so as to mitigate risk. Updating packages automatically isn't doing that - what if the repository that apt is hitting has been compromised? What if the new version of package X has other issues that make it less than optimal?
One does not approach being secure by putting one's faith in some tool and hoping it solves everything. The only way to lock down a box is to be vigilant and aware, in my experience.
The problem isn't not having packages automatically updated, but rather that there are sysadmins who are militantly unaware of disclosed vulnerabilities in the software they run. Solve the latter and you don't need the (somewhat short-sighted) former.
I agree. There's *nothing* useful about a boat race. We don't live in a utilitarian world, though - and in America, if you gots it, you flaunts it.
I don't really know how one would criticize these people. It's a garish and selfish way to spend money...but it's their money to spend. As John Cleese once said, "If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'"
Back to the grindstone.
My, my.
:)
English is not a problem - I speak it quite fluently, along with German and Spanish. Friday mornings, on the other hand, aren't quite so easy to cope with.
Smack me with the cluestick. I deserve it.
I was responding to the original poster's claim that the fontconfig site had removed access to the MS Web Fonts on their server. The specific line was :
Hmm, the fontconfig page [fontconfig.org] has the withdrawn Microsoft web fonts [slashdot.org].
Obviously, this is an untrue statement.
The EULA permits it, so why not mirror it all over the place?
This is the point I was making - that according to the EULA, this is legal.
An easier way to configure printers, complete M$ Office interoperability
You mean aside from CUPS and Crossover Office?
CUPS has a number of front-ends to it that are *very* easy to use, and provides an easy, GUI-oriented way to deal with printers - as its freshmeat writeup says, "it has been developed to promote a standard printing solution for all UNIX vendors and users."
Crossover Office isn't Free (and I don't run it for precisely that reason), but if the only thing tieing you or your company to Windows is the need for complete Office support, it's the most promising option out there. General word processing is better served by AbiWord, in my opinion, but this is not a sticking point of any note anymore.
If they prevent anyone who doesn't actively try to see the information, they stop 98% of possible intrusions.
I'd love to see the evidence that proves that 98% of all intrusions are accidental.
Ah. I can't seem to dredge it up at the moment, but one of the XF86 devs said (within the last 3 months) that one of the *big* plans for the coming versions of XFree86 is to do away with the current configuration method, and move towards a level of autoconfiguration (say, default to VGA), and make the selection of a given chipset much less difficult.
I don't remember the Q3 demo being available only on Linux/Mac before being available on Win32, though - I have distinct memories of playing it at a friend's house on a Win98 mchine. What was iD's reasoning for such a release? Are there any old interviews kicking around where Carmack talks about it?
Thanks for the clarification, Ino. I thought iD was publicly traded - I obviously should have done more research. I'll slip my boot back into my mouth now. :)
As iD could do it, it would be interesting to see what the fallout would be if they *did* - even if only as a staggered release, such as putting out a Mac/Linux version of Doom III three months before the Windows version hits the shelves. My guess is that at least some people would be anxious enough to play that they'd give the Linux thing a shot.
The time may not be ripe, though - a few more supported 3D cards and some better spatial sound would be *really* nice, especially if any game company/product were being used to sell the virtues of the OS. The underlying idea, though, remains worthwhile, at least IMO.
In the socialist-utopian model, this might work, but that's simply not how real life works.
Stop using the big words. They don't make you sound intelligent, especially when you use them incorrectly.
A socialist model would be one where a central authority taxes its citizens according to income, redistributing that wealth in the form of social services and/or employment. Nor is such a scheme utopian - quite a few practical and effective governments in Europe are overtly socialist, and even the United States has socialist leanings. However, this has nothing to do with installing Linux to play a video game.
It would also not be ironic for a game company to charge for a product marketed to a community who "largely feels that it should be distributed for free" - irony is defined as "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs." It seems you did catch on, though, when you pointed out that such would be "stupidity".
What community are you talking about, anyways? I wasn't aware that there was a unified front of any sort claiming that entertainment software should be made available free of charge. The naivete seems to be yours, friend.
Providing a linux-only game would undoubtedly generate interest in the product. A company like ID probably can't afford to do it, but a small shop (similar to how Looking Glass was in its early days) could probably do so. Such a company's total operating costs would be less, and their shareholder responsibilities fewer.
Don't be so quick to dismiss a proactive idea just because it's never been done before.
Rather than breaking the law and killing something so that you could still continue to sell a product that at least *some* people don't want, perhaps you should find a better way of earning an income - something that doesn't depend on a resource that anybody could, given sufficient time, emulate as well or better (and for Free!) than you?
Perhaps someday, you'll truly find out what the "Real World" is, and you won't need to talk to others about it with such a condescending tone.
Everyone is different. Some people make perfectly valid lives for themselves whilst engaged in academia. Some are asses. The same is true for every line job, kitchen worker, CEO position, and mailrooom clerk post in the world.
Your circumstances do not dictate you. Your job doesn't make you. Your money? It's only useful if you think it is. You apparently do, but that's not a universal opinion. Nor is the only choice offered to go work an "Honest Job" or ascend into an ivory tower.
Perhaps it isn't that money is evil, but just that it isn't everything? Perhaps other people have things that *they* see as important to them in the same way you perceive your children?
Good god, Michael.
/., it's depressing to see an editor such as yourself bashing an article that endorses the ideological foundations for the Open Source movement. Spewing links to Microsoft FUD and drawing vague connections to ridiculous and oversimplified statements that no one would disagree with in an attempt to bolster such a weak argument might fool some of this community, but not all of us.
O'Reilly makes a *very* important point about forcing governments to use Open Source software: it's morally reprehensible. Quoting from a letter sent to Tim, "If you feel you have to coerce people, it would be better to force them to increase their disclosure. Require officials to document their acquisition critieria, require companies to publish their licensing policies, insist on use of open file formats for publicly accessible documents. That is, increase the flow of information and the range of choices, rather than trying to decrease them. That's what Open Source is supposed to be about - increasing choices, right?"
Moreoever, your criticisms against Tim are as sophomoric as they are transparent:
1."O'Reilly seems to be promoting the agenda of Microsoft's Software Choice campaign. He's a business man; perhaps there's a reason we don't know about." His manner employment is irrelevant - attacking an argument that calls into question the "slippery slope" of using legislation to force a particular subset of software upon a goverment on the grounds that the author of the argument is a businessman is an ad homimen fallacy, not a substantial critique.
2. "Saying "People should be free to keep their papers private" as an argument against government FOI laws is just a stupid strawman, unworthy of further debate." Ok, agreed. Where does Tim say this? Where does this quote come from? The argument O'Reilly has against forcing the government of CA to use Open Source software is that "any victory for open source achieved through deprivation of the user's right to choose would indeed be a betrayal of the principles that free software and open source have stood for" - a point that is very different from some claim to a person's right to privacy.
3. "Governments play by different rules. They need to be fiscally responsible, transparent to the public, and promote the public commonwealth whenever possible." I argue that the public commonwealth is best promoted by protecting what O'Reilly calls "Freedom Zero": "the freedom to offer your work to the world on the terms that you choose, and for the recipients to accept or reject those terms." When you start to force *any* entity to use software, you're violating what I perceive to be one of the fundamental principles of the Free software movement.
4."Whatever his motives, his lame arguments are no reason to stop pushing for governments to use Free or Open Source software wherever possible." Pushing for governments to use Free/Open Source software is fine, but O'Reilly's "lame arguments" boil down to the simple notion that "This last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
Although I've come to expect the mentality of least resistance here at
As Fight Club said, "sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken." Thanks for the proof, Michael.
There actually is something "new" about this. Quoting from the article:
"It's hard to type with fingers that must grip something at the same time. That's why the only portable one-hander you can buy at present, as far as I know, has a big, ugly, wrist strap . Another reason is that the fingers are never far from their relaxed positions. They don't have to curl tightly, which quickly becomes tiring. This keyboard is small enough to be mostly hidden by the hand so it's not so geeky. Since there's no strap, it can go in and out of a pocket quickly. When you actually get one in your hand you see it's great fun to type so casually and with so little effort."
I've used Twiddlers - they are nice, but everything John (the guy who makes this new one) has said is entirely true.
The wasted vote argument is tired.
You know, the surrealist film movement that took place in the early part of the 20th century in France spent a good deal of time focusing on the idea of revolutionary failure. One of their premises was that in any power struggle situation, the weaker side (practically, not ideologically) would have its strongest arguments assimilated by their oppposition. The effect was one where the side with more might could lay claim (and thus control)to the most persuasive arguments levied against them.
Yes, the "wasted votes" point is tired - but who tired it out? Who robbed the claim "the votes of the citizens *doesn't matter*, and somebody other than the public pulls the strings in a public election" of its impact?
I'll vote for who I believe in when a man I believe in can be voted for.