Maybe I'm just spouting Libertarian certainty, but most of the people I question do agree with the basics of Libertarianism. They want freedom from the income tax, they know there would be huge economic benefits. They agree that pot should be legal, they agree that the drug war has often gone too far and is accomplishing little, except supporting a massive industry based on leeching the people's rights away.
When it comes to following through on the consequences of living in a truely free society though, they are too weak.
For example, my mom is a public school teacher. I completely sold her on the Libertarian party. She was almost ready to vote for them, she agreed with it completely, in regard to the drug war, freedoms, property rights, income tax, etc.
Then I told her that there would be no public schools, since there is no reason for the government to be involved in a market in which there is demand, a method of collecting payment, and limited resources, one in which no monopoly exists. She balked at that of course.
People agree with Libertarianism until they have to sacrifice their government handouts. Then they become instant liberals. A culture that wants freedom, but is unwilling to make even the most trivial sacrifices for it, is doomed.
People only want to promote the free market as far as it benefits them. For example, I see a lot of people on here bashing the RIAA and MPAA for their protectionist practices, for trying to preserve their profits in the face of a cheaper alternative that a rational market will choose.
Then I see those same people bashing the HB-1 visas that would allow cheap labor to become available in their market. What ever happened to the sort of thinking that Patrick Henry had when he made his famous speech? Are people so shallow these days, that they couldn't even sacrifice the smallest comfort for freedom, when our forefathers were willing to give their lives for the same freedoms?
Anyway, I digress somewhat. I think most people are basically Libertarian, but only as far as it benefits them. As long as people elect politicians promising bigger handouts with no sacrifice, we are in a downward spiral.
In Virginia, where I live, our govenor was elected on the platform of "NO CAR TAX!". He didn't really talk about any other views, just that. Bad things are happening, and grassroots change is going to be hard with people so selfish and shallow.
The interaction mechanism was inspired by interface techniques refined in the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre of video games.
This is interesting. Often it seems the games are ahead of the "serious apps".
One of my friends in high school put together a level in Duke Nukem 3D that was based on our high school. It was pretty accurate. This was pre-columbine, so nobody was thrown in jail for it.
If these game companies just put a little extra effort into retrofitting their game engines for serious purposes, they might sell the same thing for hundreds of dollars a copy. Imagine something like a first person shooter combined with The Sims. You could design your whole house, to scale, and then walk through it.
Click a menu option and output a postscript file to send to the structural engineer and architect for tweaks and approval.
Whoever does this will probably make lots of money.
My views are mostly already in a party, the Libertarian party. The media, controlled and beholden to the two parties that are in power, forcibly prevented the Libertarians from getting air time during the last election. Invitations to publicly aired debates were cancelled with little notice. Nader got a few minutes of air time, I have a sneaking suspicion the Republicans had something to do with that, since Nader was convienent to them at the time.
Libertarians have a good chance of stealing votes from both Democrats and Republicans, so no party wants to mess with them unless they are desperate.
So what should I do? I already write my congresspeople, often. It seems to only have an effect on the state legislators, the federal level ones just send form letters back, if at all. Half the time the form letter acts like I wrote in supporting the bills instead of opposing them, since they barely bother to read them.
I call the congressional hotlines and make the staffers put my little tick marks down. I vote. I donate to Libertarians that have a chance of winning. I give to the EFF. I write these rants on Slashdot, I email my friends when shit goes down that the media ignores, I convince people to vote that are apethetic.
It's not helping much. I may do enough to compensate for maybe ten people that don't care, but it isn't enough. With something like 85% of people willing to bend over and take anything the government dishes out, to protect their fantasy world of complacency that existed pre 9/11, what can we do?
If all our nation stands for can be summed up in a few verses, a forced prayer to a cloth idol, or a religious slogan on the back of a coin, then what is there to be proud of?
The USA is supposed to stand for freedom, for opportunity. Those things are not compatible with brainwashing and indoctrination.
Lets swear off the practices of the people we have fought against in the past, and become the US we are claiming to be. Maybe then, children will seek out patriotic songs, and sing them with pride, rather than just playing along so they don't get into trouble.
Where is the seperation of power when you have only two political parties in power, and they often have the same views on important issues related to freedom?
The executive branch can start domestic police organizations under the guise of the department of the treasury, and then get those organizations funded through their friends in the legislative branch. Where is the seperation of power there? The executive has grossly overstepped their limits, with the support of congress under this two-party system. The only check and balance that has any effect at all is the courts.
For examples, you only need to look as far as the war on drugs. The DEA and legislative branch and going apeshit because a majority of people in a majority of states want marijuana legal, at least for medical use. They are actively working together to crush the will of the people, and even the will of the state governments.
There is no accountability, there is no check and no balance, just authoritarian policy making with no regard to the original limited powers the federal government was supposed to wield.
So I ask you, how can you consider the system of checks and balances to work, when there are really no recent examples of an adversarial relationship between the executive and the legislative, when the only disagreement between the branches comes on trivial issues that don't directly have an effect our real freedoms, when a government drunk on power has only one goal, to expand that power by any means necessary.
Without a set of morals based on something you have absolutely no basis to answer.
And your set of morals based on a belief of an imaginary friend that loves everyone is better?
Our laws are based on preservation of an orderly society, logic, and benefit to the ruling class.
It's similar to the bible, which was based on a set of rules that the ruling class thought would be most beneficial to them, and an orderly society, about 2000 years ago.
The superstition and invisible people and fire and brimstone were just thrown in to scare people into compliance. The bible is one of the largest and one of the oldest collection of FUD ever. You don't think people knew about the power of fear, uncertainty, and doubt 2000 years ago?
Re:Leftist Propaganda **SPOILERS**
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1
Not really. You can intend to murder someone all you want, as long as you never substantially act on it.
I had a couple law classes in college, so I'm no expert, but we had a lecture that related directly to this.
You can talk about killing someone, you can think all day about killing someone, and it's totally legal. Once you engage in a substantial action toward the end of killing someone, then it is attempted murder.
Man, you're full of shit anyway, there is no obligation to design things to prevent people from comitting crimes with them. Sure, it helps if we can come up with a technological solution rather than a legal one, but that's not always feasible.
The only problem with this law is that it's possibly overbroad, other than that, even as a Libertarian, I don't have a problem with it.
This appears to already be happening on HTTP, I don't know if it is a concerted effort, or just a bunch of kids trying to make affiliate click money, but a few years back when I still partook of the darkside software, searching for a crack or anything slightly warez related on the web would bring you most of the time to endless loops of fake links, popups, porno sites, etc.
I guess it's possible some of these were set up by the software companies themselves, as diversions to people who would crack their software.
(Nevermind that half the time I was looking for a crack because Safedisk made a legitimate game disk unplayable in some of my CDROMs)
Seriously though, Opera integrates search bar functionality right in the browser, and if you want to try a different search engine with the same query, just pull down the menu and pick another. Google is the default though.
Are you joking or what? Satellites act like repeaters, most of them are crossband, and you would have earphones and a receiver on the output frequency so you could hear yourself talk.
Speaking of airflow sensors, my car's been stalling randomly, so I took it in to a shop that had the hardware to read the computer. The airflow sensor is faulty, and Nissan wants $500 for the replacement. It looks like it doesn't matter who has the diagnostic hardware, the manufacturer always wins. I bet that part costs $10 to manufacture.
You have a few things backward, unless you have a sarcasm that is a little too subtle for me. UHF stands for ultra high frequency and runs from 300Mhz to 3Ghz. VHF is very high frequency and runs from 30Mhz to 300Mhz.
Lower frequencies tend to penetrate things more readily, like buildings and the like. Even VHF bounces off things that are good reflectors, like sheet metal. The reason you get ghosts is because of multipath. Multipath happens in VHF and above when you are getting the same signal from many different directions, such as when you are getting reflected signals from objects in addition to a line of sight signal. The reflected signals are very slightly out of phase with the main signal, and you get ghosts.
Someone correct me if I made a mistake, but I think all of the above is accurate.
Channel 1 was probably better served in the Ham band anyway, I'm sure no television station would want it with the sporadic E propagation messing up their signal on the fringes of their coverage area on regular intervals.
It will basically say "Anyone is free to use this in a way consistant with the GPL and copyright law, except United Linux member companies, they may not use it period."
Then lets see how far they get with their bullshit business-speak.
Slashdot Mirror
Without enough law to make and enforce contracts, there is no possibility but brigandism.
Don't confuse Libertarianism with anarchy. No one is proposing we eliminate the courts, or eliminate the enforcement of contract law.
Do you really want to stare at the screen for 3 months while your worker robots build a new base?
Maybe I'm just spouting Libertarian certainty, but most of the people I question do agree with the basics of Libertarianism. They want freedom from the income tax, they know there would be huge economic benefits. They agree that pot should be legal, they agree that the drug war has often gone too far and is accomplishing little, except supporting a massive industry based on leeching the people's rights away.
When it comes to following through on the consequences of living in a truely free society though, they are too weak.
For example, my mom is a public school teacher. I completely sold her on the Libertarian party. She was almost ready to vote for them, she agreed with it completely, in regard to the drug war, freedoms, property rights, income tax, etc.
Then I told her that there would be no public schools, since there is no reason for the government to be involved in a market in which there is demand, a method of collecting payment, and limited resources, one in which no monopoly exists. She balked at that of course.
People agree with Libertarianism until they have to sacrifice their government handouts. Then they become instant liberals. A culture that wants freedom, but is unwilling to make even the most trivial sacrifices for it, is doomed.
People only want to promote the free market as far as it benefits them. For example, I see a lot of people on here bashing the RIAA and MPAA for their protectionist practices, for trying to preserve their profits in the face of a cheaper alternative that a rational market will choose.
Then I see those same people bashing the HB-1 visas that would allow cheap labor to become available in their market. What ever happened to the sort of thinking that Patrick Henry had when he made his famous speech?
Are people so shallow these days, that they couldn't even sacrifice the smallest comfort for freedom, when our forefathers were willing to give their lives for the same freedoms?
Anyway, I digress somewhat. I think most people are basically Libertarian, but only as far as it benefits them. As long as people elect politicians promising bigger handouts with no sacrifice, we are in a downward spiral.
In Virginia, where I live, our govenor was elected on the platform of "NO CAR TAX!". He didn't really talk about any other views, just that. Bad things are happening, and grassroots change is going to be hard with people so selfish and shallow.
The interaction mechanism was inspired by interface techniques refined in the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre of video games.
This is interesting. Often it seems the games are ahead of the "serious apps".
One of my friends in high school put together a level in Duke Nukem 3D that was based on our high school. It was pretty accurate. This was pre-columbine, so nobody was thrown in jail for it.
If these game companies just put a little extra effort into retrofitting their game engines for serious purposes, they might sell the same thing for hundreds of dollars a copy. Imagine something like a first person shooter combined with The Sims. You could design your whole house, to scale, and then walk through it.
Click a menu option and output a postscript file to send to the structural engineer and architect for tweaks and approval.
Whoever does this will probably make lots of money.
My views are mostly already in a party, the Libertarian party. The media, controlled and beholden to the two parties that are in power, forcibly prevented the Libertarians from getting air time during the last election. Invitations to publicly aired debates were cancelled with little notice. Nader got a few minutes of air time, I have a sneaking suspicion the Republicans had something to do with that, since Nader was convienent to them at the time.
Libertarians have a good chance of stealing votes from both Democrats and Republicans, so no party wants to mess with them unless they are desperate.
So what should I do? I already write my congresspeople, often. It seems to only have an effect on the state legislators, the federal level ones just send form letters back, if at all. Half the time the form letter acts like I wrote in supporting the bills instead of opposing them, since they barely bother to read them.
I call the congressional hotlines and make the staffers put my little tick marks down. I vote. I donate to Libertarians that have a chance of winning. I give to the EFF. I write these rants on Slashdot, I email my friends when shit goes down that the media ignores, I convince people to vote that are apethetic.
It's not helping much. I may do enough to compensate for maybe ten people that don't care, but it isn't enough. With something like 85% of people willing to bend over and take anything the government dishes out, to protect their fantasy world of complacency that existed pre 9/11, what can we do?
Signed,
Frustrated.
Of course, insert < in the for statements where I forgot to escape them out of the HTML :)
Here are my benchmarks, if the lameness filter lets them by.
:; done
/usr/src/linux; make ; done
/tmp/testfile; done
Lower scores are better.
CPUGigstone:
bash$ time for (( x=1 ; x1000000 ; x++ )); do
NetworkGigstone:
time for (( x=1 ; x100 ; x++ )); do wget www.slashdot.org; done
DeveloperGigstone:
time for (( x=1 ; x10 ; x++ )); do cd
HardDiskGigstone:
time for (( x=1 ; x10 ; x++ )) do; dd if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/testfile bs=1G count=1; rm
All the benckmarks you will ever need.
If all our nation stands for can be summed up in a few verses, a forced prayer to a cloth idol, or a religious slogan on the back of a coin, then what is there to be proud of?
The USA is supposed to stand for freedom, for opportunity. Those things are not compatible with brainwashing and indoctrination.
Lets swear off the practices of the people we have fought against in the past, and become the US we are claiming to be. Maybe then, children will seek out patriotic songs, and sing them with pride, rather than just playing along so they don't get into trouble.
Where is the seperation of power when you have only two political parties in power, and they often have the same views on important issues related to freedom?
The executive branch can start domestic police organizations under the guise of the department of the treasury, and then get those organizations funded through their friends in the legislative branch. Where is the seperation of power there? The executive has grossly overstepped their limits, with the support of congress under this two-party system. The only check and balance that has any effect at all is the courts.
For examples, you only need to look as far as the war on drugs. The DEA and legislative branch and going apeshit because a majority of people in a majority of states want marijuana legal, at least for medical use. They are actively working together to crush the will of the people, and even the will of the state governments.
There is no accountability, there is no check and no balance, just authoritarian policy making with no regard to the original limited powers the federal government was supposed to wield.
So I ask you, how can you consider the system of checks and balances to work, when there are really no recent examples of an adversarial relationship between the executive and the legislative, when the only disagreement between the branches comes on trivial issues that don't directly have an effect our real freedoms, when a government drunk on power has only one goal, to expand that power by any means necessary.
Without a set of morals based on something you have absolutely no basis to answer.
And your set of morals based on a belief of an imaginary friend that loves everyone is better?
Our laws are based on preservation of an orderly society, logic, and benefit to the ruling class.
It's similar to the bible, which was based on a set of rules that the ruling class thought would be most beneficial to them, and an orderly society, about 2000 years ago.
The superstition and invisible people and fire and brimstone were just thrown in to scare people into compliance. The bible is one of the largest and one of the oldest collection of FUD ever. You don't think people knew about the power of fear, uncertainty, and doubt 2000 years ago?
A stupid, gullible, weak feable minded person
Dammit, you took the reply right out of my mouth.
Not really. You can intend to murder someone all you want, as long as you never substantially act on it.
I had a couple law classes in college, so I'm no expert, but we had a lecture that related directly to this.
You can talk about killing someone, you can think all day about killing someone, and it's totally legal. Once you engage in a substantial action toward the end of killing someone, then it is attempted murder.
Man, you're full of shit anyway, there is no obligation to design things to prevent people from comitting crimes with them. Sure, it helps if we can come up with a technological solution rather than a legal one, but that's not always feasible.
The only problem with this law is that it's possibly overbroad, other than that, even as a Libertarian, I don't have a problem with it.
That way it matches the women. Hey at least the brits are coordinated.
Need I break out browser market share statistics from 1996?
We need to fight every battle as if it is our last, things change too fast in the IT world to trust things like market share.
This appears to already be happening on HTTP, I don't know if it is a concerted effort, or just a bunch of kids trying to make affiliate click money, but a few years back when I still partook of the darkside software, searching for a crack or anything slightly warez related on the web would bring you most of the time to endless loops of fake links, popups, porno sites, etc.
I guess it's possible some of these were set up by the software companies themselves, as diversions to people who would crack their software.
(Nevermind that half the time I was looking for a crack because Safedisk made a legitimate game disk unplayable in some of my CDROMs)
I think they added some new buttons.
OOOO, shiny.
Seriously though, Opera integrates search bar functionality right in the browser, and if you want to try a different search engine with the same query, just pull down the menu and pick another. Google is the default though.
Are you joking or what? Satellites act like repeaters, most of them are crossband, and you would have earphones and a receiver on the output frequency so you could hear yourself talk.
They were talking about Windows 95 back in the late 80s and early 90s. They were originally expecting it out like 1992 IIRC.
Speaking of airflow sensors, my car's been stalling randomly, so I took it in to a shop that had the hardware to read the computer. The airflow sensor is faulty, and Nissan wants $500 for the replacement. It looks like it doesn't matter who has the diagnostic hardware, the manufacturer always wins. I bet that part costs $10 to manufacture.
You have a few things backward, unless you have a sarcasm that is a little too subtle for me. UHF stands for ultra high frequency and runs from 300Mhz to 3Ghz. VHF is very high frequency and runs from 30Mhz to 300Mhz.
Lower frequencies tend to penetrate things more readily, like buildings and the like. Even VHF bounces off things that are good reflectors, like sheet metal. The reason you get ghosts is because of multipath.
Multipath happens in VHF and above when you are getting the same signal from many different directions, such as when you are getting reflected signals from objects in addition to a line of sight signal. The reflected signals are very slightly out of phase with the main signal, and you get ghosts.
Someone correct me if I made a mistake, but I think all of the above is accurate.
Channel 1 was probably better served in the Ham band anyway, I'm sure no television station would want it with the sporadic E propagation messing up their signal on the fringes of their coverage area on regular intervals.
It's not a precursor, it's the second step, UHF AIR 69-88 or so were already taken for use with cell phones.
We don't use buzzwords to hide our intent like corporate types do.
Some of us use buzzwords to save time, or to sound smart, but never, ever, to hide our intent.
Then lets come up with a UL-Free GPL.
It will basically say "Anyone is free to use this in a way consistant with the GPL and copyright law, except United Linux member companies, they may not use it period."
Then lets see how far they get with their bullshit business-speak.