Woah.. here's a thought... say, for some reason you get cloned at birth and your clone grows up in say... Wisconsin, while you grow up in... uh.. Indiana. Now... say it's 20 years later, and you've had a daughter, and your clone had a son, and they end up going to the same college, falling in love, getting married, etc... now, this seems like quite a strange form of inbreeding... its almost incest, because their child would be getting your DNA from your side, and your DNA from your clone's side too...
Now, widen the scope a bit... all of a sudden, we've got a bunch of inbred descendents of test-tube clones with all manner of nasty recessive genes popping up...
Once again, I fail to see the great benefit in this. To hell with genetic engineering. Maybe it won't backfire this time, or next time, or even the time after that, but one of these days, all this irresponsible meddling is going to get us into a heap of trouble.
Agreed. And furthermore, why the hell do we need more people on this planet anyways? We're already dealing with staggering overpopulation in some areas, and coming up with one more way of making people seems somewhat counterproductive.
Besides, what possible benefit will this bring to the existing population of earth? Organs? Cheap labor? Sexual playthings? I think you're absolute right saying that we're not more clever than nature. I think AIDS is one of nature's solutions to the problem of overpopulation.... and nature will find a way to deal with this one too... Some people just don't seem to understand that 'progress' is not necessarily a positive thing...
I am pretty certain Microsoft will port.NET to Linux and other OSs
I think you're fooling yourself. We all know that.NET is going to be yet another way for MS to try to bind people to it's operating system. It used to be stuff like games and Office document formats, but as more and more popular games are ported to other platforms, and open-source office products start supporting MS Office formats, they've got to move to something more drastic. MS will never port.NET to anything except Windows for the exact reason that Halo won't be released on the PSX2... it's the hot new product, and if you want to use it, well... you'd better be using the MS product. It's the sad truth.
Consider, for a moment, a black hole... what does it look like? It's absolutely black. Were it of small enough mass, and far enough away from other stellar bodies, it wouldn't even have the destinctive characteristic of an accretion disc surrounding it. How, then, can we detect such a non-descript phenomenon from afar? That's right! INDIRECTLY. Because their very nature, we can't see a black hole directly because there isn't anything to see! Instead, we have to look for the lensing effect that a black hole's gravity will have on stars behind it. Instead, we have to look for accretion disks, we have to look for inexplicable deviances in the orbits of other stellar bodies.
You can't say "merely" more indirect evidence, because not only is indirect evidence sometimes a *VERY* good indicator of what is out there, but in this case, it's essentially all there is.
Agreed. Our pontificating poster has managed to cover up the real issue with his partisan rhetoric, and I think the real issue *IS* deregulation. It just seems like such a MASSIVE coincidence that almost a year to the day after we all deregulated power that suddenly there's "energy shortages" and such. Up here in Oregon, we're having them too, and power companies are "passing along rate hikes to the consumer" because they can't seem to make enough money. In fact, a local power provider is helping the public find "low-energy" alternatives to regular light-bulbs and so-forth, but we all know people do begin to take steps to reduce their power consumption, the power companies will start complaining that no-one is using enough power, and they're not making enough money, so there'll be a rate-hike anyways.
Don't blame Republicans or Democrats for this. Assigning blame, and pretending that one side is at fault, and that the other is a shining paragon of virtue is not only to miss the point entirely, but to expose your own biases and place yourself among that which is known as "uninformed rabble" who latch onto one dogma or another and slavishly belive everything they're told.
No doubt, man... I hope this goes the way of the DIVX DVD players...stuff like this really makes me want to cry. Having every bit of content you could possibly ever want under the control of someone who's looking out for their "intellectual property" (whatever that's supposed to mean anymore) should scare the living crap out of everyone (and rightly so). Now, I can understand that we live in a pseudo-capitalist society and that everyone is entitled to their profits, but limiting the freedom of the population in order to protect those profits is absolutely wrong, end of story.
The Register understands there is fierce opposition to the plan from Microsoft and its OEM customers.
Interesting... I agree with Microsoft for once... though for obviously different reasons...
Now... historically, music has been considered an art (whether much of it is, these days is subject to speculation, but that's another discussion), and historically, artists have been able to get away with quite a bit... but once we start enforcing what amounts to content control on music, we're essentially allowing BMG, or perhaps eventually the government, to decide what we're allowed to listen to.
Once we start letting our content be controlled, we ourselves become subject to control...what we can say, what we can write, paint, what we can discuss on Slashdot, who we can vote for, etc. Once the controllers have established a firm grip on all open communication, propogating the 'party line' becomes a simple task. 'Buy BMG, hate the Commie Chinese, vote Bush.' People beleive what they hear... and where are we going to hear a dissenting voice? Not in the papers, not in music, or magazines or TV. The more content control we give up, the more we're throwing away our own freedom.
Yes, I would have to say that this is as bad as it sounds. Microsoft is trying to take control of any and all information regarding its products, and thus we have one less source of unbiased information on them.
Microsoft is sure to, on their own website, downplay any bugs that do pop up in Microsoft software. It's called PR. Bugtraq was providing a way of cutting Microsoft's line of control, and they're taking steps to make sure that doesnt continue, because it isn't in their interest for the general public to have open access to information that might tarnish Microsoft's image. Microsoft needs to be in exclusive control of that information so that they can continue feeding to the public assurances that everything is alright, and not give them the real story.
Soon, we won't be able to say anything about Windows without explicit permission from Microsoft...
Welp, I gave 2.0.1 a try after 2.0 refused to work on this machine at all (crappy old Dell Optiplex GM+ 133, 64MB RAM that I get to use at work...), and am quite pleased to say that 2.0.1 is working pretty flawlessly. Konqueror is working just fine too (using it right now, actually). I was more than impressed with KDE2 back when I tried out the betas, and even moreso now. Definately one of the best window managers around. Now comes time to fiddle around with KOffice.
Incorrect - the software that runs on top of Windows is the best-quality software available.
You know... that is so absolutely true. I think everyone has to admit that Windows has a pretty good interface, or at least it's good, and familiar enough to enough people, that open projects such as GNOME and KDE borrow heavily from the look-and-feel of Windows.
However, I think you speak correctly when you say that it's really the other software that really keeps people using Windows. How many times have we heard "Oh I'd switch to Linux(BeOS, BSD, etc.) if it had a good office suite that was compatible with MS Office." or "I'd switch if it had Photoshop," or (and I KNOW we've all heard this one) "I'd switch, but everything else besides Windows isn't really that good for gaming!"
Everyone knows that Windows has a decent interface, and other OS's are reasonably duplicating it or even improving on it, but everyone also knows that Windows is unstable, insecure, and has all sorts of crazy stuff like the Registry to cause problems...and as long as the OS they're using is easy, and supports the software they're using, I don't think the average user cares which OS that might be.
The thing that I find most disturbing about this is the fact (and it's certainly not a new notion) of a big corporation pushing around a government branch and forcibly extracting money from them. Sure, Virgina City is a pretty large deal... but just think if Bill Gates and friends saw how much essentially free money they got in this case, and decided to apply it to the Federal Government... perhaps in retribution for any anti-MS rulings the courts lay down in the days to come... can you *IMAGINE* the amount of time/money/effort an audit of the Federal Govt.'s computers would cost?! Not to mention that if this ever happened, it'd undoubtably be your and my tax money that MS would be getting a hold of... I don't like that idea one bit...
In principle, it all *CAN* be faked. Whether or not it can in practice is another matter entirely. Depending on your metaphysical position (materialism, dualism, etc.) one can argue, with alot of logical backing that the operational definition of intelligence is either totally valid, or totally invalid.
The entire question of being and sentience is a metaphysical question at its very heart, one which Dennet, Descartes, and others have been quabbling over for centuries. Your views on "intelligence" and "sentience" will essentially come down to which broad metaphysical category your beleifs fall into (i.e. materialism, dualism, etc.).
Trying to dismiss metaphysics as being "irrelevant" is to essentially throw out the window these hundreds of years of logical proofs and discourses by some incredibly intelligent people.
I think you're trying to fight a battle that you haven't really done any research into.
I totally agree. I ran Bastille on a machine of mine some time ago, and aside from having some annoying little (and, as I later found out, documented) problem connecting to IRC servers with ircII, I didn't have any problems, and it explained to me alot of things that aren't well explained elsewhere. It's nice to have that kind of resource around.
Man, you hit the nail *RIGHT* on the head... that couldn't be more true.
Patenting inventions, something you create out of your own ingenuity is one thing... patenting something that is ALREADY THERE, i.e. a gene sequence, or a species, or the cure for cancer, is quite another. Attempting to patent some at-present non-existent gene sequence that your firm someday intends to put together is similarly idiotic. Unfortunately, idiocy seems to be encouraged by the Patent Office. With all the new technology being created, and all the new scientific discoveries being made, it's high time that our existing patent laws be reexamined and revised.
However, I don't think this book any any worse than say... Heretics of Dune or Chapterhouse: Dune, both of which, in my opinion, were Frank Herbert taking a great idea WAY too far. Alot of people can't even stand God Emperor of Dune, though I think that one had alot of philosophical merit, as well as being pretty interesting.
The most unfortunate thing about these new Dune books, is that as far as I can tell, they don't really reflect the thoughts or wishes of Frank Herbert. IF they were based on extensive notes and other documents left by Herbert after his death, I think not only would they contain more of that "spirit of Frank Herbert," but I'm sure that they would've been more interesting books all-around...
For example, look at the book The Silmarillion, which many, myself included feel to be among the best Tolkien reading there is... however it wasn't exactly written BY him... it was compiled by his son posthumously, based on notes, some written chapters, etc... If Chris Tolkien sat down and tried to write a Middle-Earth book on his own, or with the help of some other fantasy-hack, doubtless there would be some interesting material, but we all know it can't match the original... it's the same in the case of these new Dune books, I think.
Agreed... in this case, though, I'd have to sign with the plaintiff... Free Speech rights on school grounds is a shady issue as it is, and unless students are compelled to use the school's internet services, they *do* know that they, by using those resources, consent to a certain acceptable use policy, and should expect to be monitored...however, the court's decision to stick the school district with the plaintiff's legal fees seems like a slap in the face.
What I'd like to know is what the plaintiff's motive for requesting these documents in the first place is... Is it just curiosity? Is it for some sort of Parent/Teacher Association inquiry? Or is this guy intending to pore through the logs, find one or two instances of some miscreant browsing porn or visiting "ANARKY ROOLZ HOW 2 MAK BOMS" page, and point at these as evidence that the Inernet is, in the words of G.W. Bush, "corrupting the minds of children", and that the school district is somehow promoting this by offering Internet services. If this is indeed what this fellow intends to do, then we can only hope that if and when he takes it to court, he'll get shot to pieces by a judge and jury... and maybe he'll even have to pay the school districts legal fees....
I totally agree... stability means absolutely *NOTHING* if any one of 1000 exploits open up your entire operating system to remote control. Microsoft has enough problems keeping its operating systems secure *without* little "features" and "innovations" like this...
I can see it now:
Tech support person: Hello, Microsoft tech support.
User: Hi! Um... well I downloaded an email from the Internet with Outlook Explorer the other day and it had an "attachment" or something that ran but didn't seem to do much, but anyways ever since then, my mouse arrow starts doing stuff on my computer without me doing anything, and my hard-disk seems to be working alot.
Tech Support: Oh! That's Microsoft's built-in "remote administration" feature. That's so tech support people can check your computer for virii or pirated software. It's probably just your system administrator checking your computer.
User: So... this is normal?
Tech Support: Yeah, it's probably nothing to worry about!
User: Okay!
Maybe Microsoft will see the inherent security flaw in "user friendly" remote-administration, and take steps to make it more secure... then again...
I'm two years into university now, and as such, I haven't been in D.A.R.E. for a very, very long time. Perhaps it's changed since the days when I was there, but as I remember it, we spend alot of time practicing "assertive techniques," such as the following:
Insidious Druggie: Hey, wanna smoke some dope?
Assertive Kid: No! Let's go play some basketball instead!
Insidious Druggie: Hey that sounds like alot more fun than wasting my life doing drugs!
Assertive Kid: Cool!
As you can clearly see, at least back when I was in D.A.R.E., the situations kids were tought to react to absolutely unrealistic to begin with. In my experience, and opinoin, D.A.R.E. teaches kids to be snitches (i.e. report people who you think might be drug users/dealers to your parents, teachers, or the authorities), and teaches them a host of overexaggerated factoids meant to scare impressionable young minds into not using substances. Maybe it works on some people, but observation and common sense dictates that people who are going to use drugs are going to use them regardless of whether or not someone tells them not to. D.A.R.E., and indeed the whole "war on drugs" is a futile and senseless waste of taxpayer dollars.
I think this sort of mentality is pretty chilling, to tell the truth... now we're not even allowed to benchmark products and make the results known?
When Larry (Ellison) used a copy of SQL Server to run a TPC benchmark scenario and misrepresented SQL Server's capabilities on stage at OpenWorld, he violated Microsoft's licensing agreement," said SQL Server group product manager Steve Murchie.
Of course, it goes on to say that no benchmarking results can be published without permission, etc... Personally, this kind of thing makes me mad. If I make a fair benchmark that proves conclusively that product X performs worse than product Y, I should be able to publish those benchmarks without permission from the software's publisher, who obviously isn't going to want to publish benchmarks that aren't in their favor. It seems to be a conflict of interest between "corporate rights" and "consumer rights."
And I'm not just bashing MS here... the article the/. post links to states that this is a pretty common practice, even with Oracle...
I'm inclined to agree... unfortunately, I seriously doubt that this will provide a "heads-up" of sorts for the people in charge or implementing security features in Microsoft networks or software. My gut instinct tells me that a host of lawyers will hasten to assure the public that nothing is really wrong and it was just one insecure box, etc., and that MS HQ will just try to downplay the whole event.
A big possible downside to this, is that since a huge portion of the computer-using public uses Microsoft software, and since there's already a sort of "hacker/pirate witch hunt" going on in the media and in various world legislatures, this could only reaffirm their opinions, and help push through a string of very restrictive laws (like the one discussed here on Slashdot a few days back)... I guess we'll see...
Well, I'm no supporter of either candidate, but I'd rather see Gore in office than Bush, simply because of who he's going to put in the Supreme Court. I don't think either of them have said anything useful about pretty much any of the issues, and if I wasn't so apprehensive about Bush, I wouldn't vote at all. Unfortunately, voting for Nader or other third party candidates is basically helping Bush get into office, since third-party folks have 0 chance of winning, and thus Gore is the only alternative (*sigh*).
It's a sad state of affairs when we're voting *against* someone, instead of voting *for* someone. At least that's how I feel about my vote... It's not for Gore as much as it is against Bush. I wish McCain would've been able to stay in the race... he seemed alot more interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, widen the scope a bit... all of a sudden, we've got a bunch of inbred descendents of test-tube clones with all manner of nasty recessive genes popping up...
Once again, I fail to see the great benefit in this. To hell with genetic engineering. Maybe it won't backfire this time, or next time, or even the time after that, but one of these days, all this irresponsible meddling is going to get us into a heap of trouble.
Besides, what possible benefit will this bring to the existing population of earth? Organs? Cheap labor? Sexual playthings? I think you're absolute right saying that we're not more clever than nature. I think AIDS is one of nature's solutions to the problem of overpopulation.... and nature will find a way to deal with this one too... Some people just don't seem to understand that 'progress' is not necessarily a positive thing...
---
I think you're fooling yourself. We all know that .NET is going to be yet another way for MS to try to bind people to it's operating system. It used to be stuff like games and Office document formats, but as more and more popular games are ported to other platforms, and open-source office products start supporting MS Office formats, they've got to move to something more drastic. MS will never port .NET to anything except Windows for the exact reason that Halo won't be released on the PSX2... it's the hot new product, and if you want to use it, well... you'd better be using the MS product. It's the sad truth.
-----
Kinda funny how MS is criticizing someone because of lack of competition... ironic to say the least...
--
Consider, for a moment, a black hole... what does it look like? It's absolutely black. Were it of small enough mass, and far enough away from other stellar bodies, it wouldn't even have the destinctive characteristic of an accretion disc surrounding it. How, then, can we detect such a non-descript phenomenon from afar? That's right! INDIRECTLY. Because their very nature, we can't see a black hole directly because there isn't anything to see! Instead, we have to look for the lensing effect that a black hole's gravity will have on stars behind it. Instead, we have to look for accretion disks, we have to look for inexplicable deviances in the orbits of other stellar bodies.
You can't say "merely" more indirect evidence, because not only is indirect evidence sometimes a *VERY* good indicator of what is out there, but in this case, it's essentially all there is.
----
Agreed. Our pontificating poster has managed to cover up the real issue with his partisan rhetoric, and I think the real issue *IS* deregulation. It just seems like such a MASSIVE coincidence that almost a year to the day after we all deregulated power that suddenly there's "energy shortages" and such. Up here in Oregon, we're having them too, and power companies are "passing along rate hikes to the consumer" because they can't seem to make enough money. In fact, a local power provider is helping the public find "low-energy" alternatives to regular light-bulbs and so-forth, but we all know people do begin to take steps to reduce their power consumption, the power companies will start complaining that no-one is using enough power, and they're not making enough money, so there'll be a rate-hike anyways.
Don't blame Republicans or Democrats for this. Assigning blame, and pretending that one side is at fault, and that the other is a shining paragon of virtue is not only to miss the point entirely, but to expose your own biases and place yourself among that which is known as "uninformed rabble" who latch onto one dogma or another and slavishly belive everything they're told.
---
The Register understands there is fierce opposition to the plan from Microsoft and its OEM customers.
Interesting... I agree with Microsoft for once... though for obviously different reasons...
-----
Once we start letting our content be controlled, we ourselves become subject to control...what we can say, what we can write, paint, what we can discuss on Slashdot, who we can vote for, etc. Once the controllers have established a firm grip on all open communication, propogating the 'party line' becomes a simple task. 'Buy BMG, hate the Commie Chinese, vote Bush.' People beleive what they hear... and where are we going to hear a dissenting voice? Not in the papers, not in music, or magazines or TV. The more content control we give up, the more we're throwing away our own freedom.
-----
Yes, I would have to say that this is as bad as it sounds. Microsoft is trying to take control of any and all information regarding its products, and thus we have one less source of unbiased information on them.
Microsoft is sure to, on their own website, downplay any bugs that do pop up in Microsoft software. It's called PR. Bugtraq was providing a way of cutting Microsoft's line of control, and they're taking steps to make sure that doesnt continue, because it isn't in their interest for the general public to have open access to information that might tarnish Microsoft's image. Microsoft needs to be in exclusive control of that information so that they can continue feeding to the public assurances that everything is alright, and not give them the real story.
Soon, we won't be able to say anything about Windows without explicit permission from Microsoft...
----
Welp, I gave 2.0.1 a try after 2.0 refused to work on this machine at all (crappy old Dell Optiplex GM+ 133, 64MB RAM that I get to use at work...), and am quite pleased to say that 2.0.1 is working pretty flawlessly. Konqueror is working just fine too (using it right now, actually). I was more than impressed with KDE2 back when I tried out the betas, and even moreso now. Definately one of the best window managers around. Now comes time to fiddle around with KOffice.
-----
I'm sorry... I said Virgina City, I meant Virginia Beach..
You know... that is so absolutely true. I think everyone has to admit that Windows has a pretty good interface, or at least it's good, and familiar enough to enough people, that open projects such as GNOME and KDE borrow heavily from the look-and-feel of Windows.
However, I think you speak correctly when you say that it's really the other software that really keeps people using Windows. How many times have we heard "Oh I'd switch to Linux(BeOS, BSD, etc.) if it had a good office suite that was compatible with MS Office." or "I'd switch if it had Photoshop," or (and I KNOW we've all heard this one) "I'd switch, but everything else besides Windows isn't really that good for gaming!"
Everyone knows that Windows has a decent interface, and other OS's are reasonably duplicating it or even improving on it, but everyone also knows that Windows is unstable, insecure, and has all sorts of crazy stuff like the Registry to cause problems...and as long as the OS they're using is easy, and supports the software they're using, I don't think the average user cares which OS that might be.
-----
The thing that I find most disturbing about this is the fact (and it's certainly not a new notion) of a big corporation pushing around a government branch and forcibly extracting money from them. Sure, Virgina City is a pretty large deal... but just think if Bill Gates and friends saw how much essentially free money they got in this case, and decided to apply it to the Federal Government... perhaps in retribution for any anti-MS rulings the courts lay down in the days to come... can you *IMAGINE* the amount of time/money/effort an audit of the Federal Govt.'s computers would cost?! Not to mention that if this ever happened, it'd undoubtably be your and my tax money that MS would be getting a hold of... I don't like that idea one bit...
-------
In principle, it all *CAN* be faked. Whether or not it can in practice is another matter entirely. Depending on your metaphysical position (materialism, dualism, etc.) one can argue, with alot of logical backing that the operational definition of intelligence is either totally valid, or totally invalid.
-----
The entire question of being and sentience is a metaphysical question at its very heart, one which Dennet, Descartes, and others have been quabbling over for centuries. Your views on "intelligence" and "sentience" will essentially come down to which broad metaphysical category your beleifs fall into (i.e. materialism, dualism, etc.).
Trying to dismiss metaphysics as being "irrelevant" is to essentially throw out the window these hundreds of years of logical proofs and discourses by some incredibly intelligent people.
I think you're trying to fight a battle that you haven't really done any research into.
---------
----
Patenting inventions, something you create out of your own ingenuity is one thing... patenting something that is ALREADY THERE, i.e. a gene sequence, or a species, or the cure for cancer, is quite another. Attempting to patent some at-present non-existent gene sequence that your firm someday intends to put together is similarly idiotic. Unfortunately, idiocy seems to be encouraged by the Patent Office. With all the new technology being created, and all the new scientific discoveries being made, it's high time that our existing patent laws be reexamined and revised.
------
However, I don't think this book any any worse than say... Heretics of Dune or Chapterhouse: Dune, both of which, in my opinion, were Frank Herbert taking a great idea WAY too far. Alot of people can't even stand God Emperor of Dune, though I think that one had alot of philosophical merit, as well as being pretty interesting.
The most unfortunate thing about these new Dune books, is that as far as I can tell, they don't really reflect the thoughts or wishes of Frank Herbert. IF they were based on extensive notes and other documents left by Herbert after his death, I think not only would they contain more of that "spirit of Frank Herbert," but I'm sure that they would've been more interesting books all-around...
For example, look at the book The Silmarillion, which many, myself included feel to be among the best Tolkien reading there is... however it wasn't exactly written BY him... it was compiled by his son posthumously, based on notes, some written chapters, etc... If Chris Tolkien sat down and tried to write a Middle-Earth book on his own, or with the help of some other fantasy-hack, doubtless there would be some interesting material, but we all know it can't match the original... it's the same in the case of these new Dune books, I think.
----------
What I'd like to know is what the plaintiff's motive for requesting these documents in the first place is... Is it just curiosity? Is it for some sort of Parent/Teacher Association inquiry? Or is this guy intending to pore through the logs, find one or two instances of some miscreant browsing porn or visiting "ANARKY ROOLZ HOW 2 MAK BOMS" page, and point at these as evidence that the Inernet is, in the words of G.W. Bush, "corrupting the minds of children", and that the school district is somehow promoting this by offering Internet services. If this is indeed what this fellow intends to do, then we can only hope that if and when he takes it to court, he'll get shot to pieces by a judge and jury... and maybe he'll even have to pay the school districts legal fees....
---------
---------
Maybe Microsoft will see the inherent security flaw in "user friendly" remote-administration, and take steps to make it more secure... then again...
------------
As you can clearly see, at least back when I was in D.A.R.E., the situations kids were tought to react to absolutely unrealistic to begin with. In my experience, and opinoin, D.A.R.E. teaches kids to be snitches (i.e. report people who you think might be drug users/dealers to your parents, teachers, or the authorities), and teaches them a host of overexaggerated factoids meant to scare impressionable young minds into not using substances. Maybe it works on some people, but observation and common sense dictates that people who are going to use drugs are going to use them regardless of whether or not someone tells them not to. D.A.R.E., and indeed the whole "war on drugs" is a futile and senseless waste of taxpayer dollars.
---------------
------------
I'm inclined to agree... unfortunately, I seriously doubt that this will provide a "heads-up" of sorts for the people in charge or implementing security features in Microsoft networks or software. My gut instinct tells me that a host of lawyers will hasten to assure the public that nothing is really wrong and it was just one insecure box, etc., and that MS HQ will just try to downplay the whole event.
A big possible downside to this, is that since a huge portion of the computer-using public uses Microsoft software, and since there's already a sort of "hacker/pirate witch hunt" going on in the media and in various world legislatures, this could only reaffirm their opinions, and help push through a string of very restrictive laws (like the one discussed here on Slashdot a few days back)... I guess we'll see...
--------------
Well, I'm no supporter of either candidate, but I'd rather see Gore in office than Bush, simply because of who he's going to put in the Supreme Court. I don't think either of them have said anything useful about pretty much any of the issues, and if I wasn't so apprehensive about Bush, I wouldn't vote at all. Unfortunately, voting for Nader or other third party candidates is basically helping Bush get into office, since third-party folks have 0 chance of winning, and thus Gore is the only alternative (*sigh*).
It's a sad state of affairs when we're voting *against* someone, instead of voting *for* someone. At least that's how I feel about my vote... It's not for Gore as much as it is against Bush. I wish McCain would've been able to stay in the race... he seemed alot more interesting.