But it doesn't seem to suck much less being ruled by Bush.
It's been what, three months?
Conquering Iraq "should" have taken at least a year, by history's measure. How about you give the US a year's grace in Iraq, and see how well they're doing afterwards?
If you really think "rebuilding" something that we blew up in the first place is going to console these orphans I weep for you.
If you really, really think that the common folk of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or the Soviet Union were happy living as they were, then I should be the one weeping for you.
It's hard to argue that the efforts will go as well as they did in Germany or Japan, but America is at least attempting to create stable governments that will be better servants to the nations that we have so-recently conquered. Some of the orphans may hate us, but once we pull back and they stand on their own, the orphans of Saddam's and the Taliban's victims will probably outnumber the America-orphans.
Yes, the darn wars were painful for the target-nations. Yes, the rebuiding efforts are possibly corrupt. (I say enough with the insinuations--let the Left-wing fanatics find proof and impeach Bush; if nothing else, it'd be payback for impeacing Clinton for lying to a question he never should have been asked.)
However, the pain and suffering caused by America's actions will be less than the pain and suffering that would be caused if we hadn't acted.
As I understand it, Arafat's plan is to drive all the Jews into the sea, and shoot the ones that don't drown.
Not all of them. Just the "Zionists" in Israel and the United States, who invaded "his people's" land and took it away from them.
For exmaple, I don't think he has a real problem with the Jews living peacefully in South Africa. And I suspect that if Israel moved en-masse to, oh, Germany, he'd be just fine with them.
Until you are stopped by laws and courts that favor the "rights" of corporations over individuals.
(IANAL-RU?)
Even the most vile, despicable corporation is formed of people. MS could be a partnership or a sole prorpietorship, and it'd have pretty much the same standing in this part of the law.
Look how far the notion of copyright is being extended, to toner cartridges for instance. Market share does gives you the money and status to throw your weight around like that.
As bad as the tonor cartridge bit is, it really won't apply to file formats. MS doesn't own the copyright on the works that I write, and therefore they can't use the DMCA to keep me from accessing my own files. In fact, this kind of hacking is specifically allowed by the DMCA.
It's for reasons like this that even if you aren't interested or concerned about the politics of it, choosing software (or any product) that is more open is a small but important act of dissent. I don't mean to make this point to you personally or to encourage you to do something that you're already inclined to do anyway, I'm just saying that making this kind choice should not to be discouraged or underestimated, and that there are reasons to make it beyond whether or not readers for various formats are available yet.
I know. The politics and economics of OpenOffice are fairly appealing--but the program itself has a few showstoppers that annoy me more than the politics and economics motivate me.
But, in regards to the file formats, OOo (and others OSS works) need to make the open format effectively open, not just open in theory, or it's little better than.DOC
The fact that you could hire a programmer to do what you want to do, thus retaining the exercise of your free will, is important (or even that I could and you might benefit). It is much better than a world in which you are constrained in more and more of your daily activities by what is possible with mass-produced products that the marketplace has decided are the winners.
The problem with this argument, actually, is that the supposedly closed and enslaving proprietary formats are very frequently hacked open by those that want to use a different program.
Using MS Office doesn't give MS dominion over me--it just gives them market share. Inside of a week, I can switch over just about everything I do to Open Office if I want to--and I will, actually, just as soon as all my showstoppers are fixed. (Maybe earlier if I feel adventuerous.)
You're a complete twit, truth be told. That's gotta be at least *close* to the stupidest thing ever said. Congrats!
Twit? TWIT? I prefer zealot, if you must malign me. Or fool, naive, ignorant, arrogant, etc.
Compare Catholicism (saints, pope, modern-day miracles) to Baptism (no saints, no pope, almost-humanist view of God as hands-off) and you'll see what I mean.
You're probably confusing Arab/American Black culture with Islam.
People with no hope become irrational. You can't reason with them, you can't threaten them, you can't bargain with them.
I wouldn't call them irrational--heck, I cringe whenever I hear someone dismiss someone else a "irrational."
When you have nothing, doing anything that might advance your cause is rational.
Oddly enough, the best way to defeat terrorism is to solve the grievances of the terrorists. Why should the palestineans suffer because Europeans feel guilty about mistreating the Jews, for example? Creating a new palestinean state is the best way to end the Infantadia. An even better way would be a semi-secular, ethnicity-blind Israel.
As for Afghanistan and Iraq--the best way to console the orphans we create is to leave these countries far better off than when we got there. If we turn them from rebel enemies to full partners and close allies, we won't have Israel's problems, because the people we orphaned will have hope and a reason to play the game by our rules.
Terrorism isn't irrational--but expecting people to bagrain with you when they have nothing and you offer nothing is irrational.
Are people sending you OOo files by email but you don't have OOo installed?
No--because they know that I probably can't read them.
Maybe I don't want to use OOo. Maybe I'm microsoft. Maybe my users refuse to change. Maybe I'm mandated by my government to use for-sale software, or software made by my country. Maybe I'm just ornery.
These people are acting in a manner that is so close to that of the fundamentalist Muslim radicals they love to hate that it is simply amazing to me.
It shouldn't be. Islam and Christianity aren't all that different, truth be told. You can probably find more differences between Christian denominations than you can between Muslims and Christians.
The fundamentalist terrorists are worse than the devoted politicians we have in the USA and Israel because they don't even try to follow the rule of law. Their rhetoric isn't the bad part--it's their suicide bombing and terrorism.
It (again, _almost_) doesn't matter how open OOo is, if no one else can read the files! If I have to hire a programmer to write a reader, then I may as well just stay with MS office.
What I'd like to see to fix this problem, of course, is plug-ins for popular programs hosted on the openoffice.org website. They don't have to be fast--they just need to allow me to install them, and open OOo files in an appropriate office program (or display an error message telling me why I can't read them--"You can't read MathML files with your stinky proprietary program" would work.)
Giving away a bootleg absent persmission from the copyright holder is a technical violation of the U.S. Code. It's not a crime, but a minor infraction and a tort against the copyright holder. (You need to get to a rather large scale for criminal copyright behavior. I could make and give away two copies of everything I own and not be criminal.)
A good bootleg of a band that authorizes the trading and selling of bootlegs is exactly the sort of thing that belongs on ebay. Just got to remember to get permission first.
1% of these is 8,000 people--so, unless more people come out of the woodowork for this story than have ever commented on a story, ever, "99%" will be accurate.
IMO, the numbers should be looked at for fairness in per-dollar only. (That's the most capitalist way to do it.) Exemptions and deductions can be per-person. We should never, ever, ever, structure our tax system or our reports of said tax system as per-earner.
That if you can't afford the office suite you need now, you can't very well pay programmers to develop a new one so you can give it away in 2 to 3 years from now.
When push comes to shove, OoO can do just about any job that MS Office can do, as good or better. For any office application I've ever seen, OoO can perform it and have bloat left over.
Ok, so I lied. OoO is still lacking in making bookmarked PDFs and counting words. But most offices I know don't do either.
Knowledge of 'questionable' activities can lead to harassing follow-up searches and actions. Owning a hookah, for example. Is that a novelty tobacco device, or drug paraphernalia? Or, to hit a little closer to you and I, attending religious seminar that turned out to be further right than expected.
Yes, but why should we reward subterfuge?
To drift over to economics for a bit: Capitalism succeeds because it aligns the base interests of the individual with the higher interest of the people. Communism fails because the base interests of the individual are best served through crime.
Now, in a nation that prides itself on democracy and free speach, why should we have a judicial system that rewards the better liar, the more clandestine criminal, and the shy radical?
I think a better argument is that such as system just isn't feasable to carry through to its moral implementation. If the police can monitor us, then we must be able to monitor the police. While I would be fine living in a society like this (I'd have to adapt, but I am willing to adapt), the benefits of doing so do not seem likely to outweigh the costs.
Yes. But it's a law, not a moral code. Quoting the First Amendment doesn't win a debate about the morality of free speach--legality, yes; morality, no.
Now if you think that the Fourth Amendment is no longer relevant, you can always get it changed. All you have to do is write an amendment (perhaps worded "The government shall have the power to search everywhere and anywhere, so long as only criminals are inconvenienced. This supercedes and nullifies Amendment IV."). Then you just have to get both the House of Representatives and Senate to pass it by a supermajority, and then have the legislatures of a supermajority of states to pass it, probably by a supermajority. No problem, dude!
Actually, if I were going to amend the constitution, I'd toss in a clause giving Congress the explicit power to "provide for the safety, indivudually and collectively, of the people of the United States, from themselves, their government, and any foreign powers."
My "sure, go ahead and search" clause would have to be a delcarative than a power-granting clause: "Collarly to Amendment IV: the government may gather publicly avalible data, and conduct totally unobtrusive searches, in the pursuit of known felons and dangers to the people of the United States, with the explicit understanding that any evidence so seized may not be used save in the prosecution and diffusement of said felons and dangers."
Or I'd just move to a different country and start there; the politics would be easier.
As for bars, sorry, there really aren't many other ways of meeting people in this society.
I don't know about you, but I have yet to see a good relationship come from a couple that met in a bar.
#6 is good, but you need to abstract it to "social event." Sporting event, fireworks, etc--heck, even the SCA fills this gap.
What annoys me is that, when I was in college, there were all these attractive, intelligent women going into promising careers. Now that I'm in the working world, where are they???
Not hanging out in bars--probably more successful than you, and with a trophy husband. (j/k)
Being married--and raising children--is hard work.
Most recognized genuses have the luxury of working with little to no distraction. When you have a wife, financial trouble, and screaming children, it's rather hard to plumb the secrets of the universe.
I believe in the principle that one has a fundmantal right to freedom from having their personal information examined by the government without a justifiable cause that has undergone judicial review.
I don't think it's a fundamental right--I think it's just a then-recent abuse that was corrected.
If you don't think that a federal agency, snooping for terrorist activity, will start a file on you for completely legal but (by their definition) "anti-American" sentiments and activities then you are hopelessly naive.
Actually, as long as they don't interfere with my life, they can keep as many files on me as they want to.
Heck, it'll make writing my biography a lot easier. Just FOIA my FBI file.:)
Finally, with regards to "castrating" the government - don't make me laugh. Since P.A.T.R.I.O.T. was passed the government has hung itself like a freaking Clydesdale in terms of their right to invade our privacy. There is a simple way to balance the need for an effective federal executive with personal liberties which is sound legislation defining reasonable restraints and conditions with judicial review.
Ah, here's a good answer.
It doesn't matter what the executive can, technically, do. They shouldn't be allowed to do it without the proper check/balance.
Another good argument against expanding the powers of government intervnention is a poor cost/benfit ratio, even ignoring the privacy violations.
1: You're not a gov't office--or you'd know where I live.
2: If I have to toss you a key, that's disruptive.
3: I really don't have anything interesting at my house. A few vid games, two and a half novel drafts--that's about it.
So... ah... if you really feel the need to ruffle through a/.'ers house, you could just come over and knock. But I might start preaching to you when you come in.
This is tantamount to saying, if you don't have anything to hide, why do you have a problem with the police searching your house/car/person?
Assume that the police can do so without damaging anything of yours, disrupting your evening, or broadcasting your secrets to the neighborhood--essentially, doing so without having any impact on your life whatsoever, save for being caught if you're committing crimes.
Now, what's wrong with this? "I don't like being seen naked" is a piss-poor reason to castrate the government.
(Note that I'm all for better checks on corruption and gross incompetence in the government--but that's not what you made your bold statement about.)
Slashdot Mirror
But it doesn't seem to suck much less being ruled by Bush.
It's been what, three months?
Conquering Iraq "should" have taken at least a year, by history's measure. How about you give the US a year's grace in Iraq, and see how well they're doing afterwards?
If the IE shortcut gets deleted? "My internet is gone."
"I had to delete it, because it was causing problems. Here, let me show you your new internet browser."
If you really think "rebuilding" something that we blew up in the first place is going to console these orphans I weep for you.
If you really, really think that the common folk of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or the Soviet Union were happy living as they were, then I should be the one weeping for you.
It's hard to argue that the efforts will go as well as they did in Germany or Japan, but America is at least attempting to create stable governments that will be better servants to the nations that we have so-recently conquered. Some of the orphans may hate us, but once we pull back and they stand on their own, the orphans of Saddam's and the Taliban's victims will probably outnumber the America-orphans.
Yes, the darn wars were painful for the target-nations. Yes, the rebuiding efforts are possibly corrupt. (I say enough with the insinuations--let the Left-wing fanatics find proof and impeach Bush; if nothing else, it'd be payback for impeacing Clinton for lying to a question he never should have been asked.)
However, the pain and suffering caused by America's actions will be less than the pain and suffering that would be caused if we hadn't acted.
As I understand it, Arafat's plan is to drive all the Jews into the sea, and shoot the ones that don't drown.
Not all of them. Just the "Zionists" in Israel and the United States, who invaded "his people's" land and took it away from them.
For exmaple, I don't think he has a real problem with the Jews living peacefully in South Africa. And I suspect that if Israel moved en-masse to, oh, Germany, he'd be just fine with them.
Until you are stopped by laws and courts that favor the "rights" of corporations over individuals.
.DOC
(IANAL-RU?)
Even the most vile, despicable corporation is formed of people. MS could be a partnership or a sole prorpietorship, and it'd have pretty much the same standing in this part of the law.
Look how far the notion of copyright is being extended, to toner cartridges for instance. Market share does gives you the money and status to throw your weight around like that.
As bad as the tonor cartridge bit is, it really won't apply to file formats. MS doesn't own the copyright on the works that I write, and therefore they can't use the DMCA to keep me from accessing my own files. In fact, this kind of hacking is specifically allowed by the DMCA.
It's for reasons like this that even if you aren't interested or concerned about the politics of it, choosing software (or any product) that is more open is a small but important act of dissent. I don't mean to make this point to you personally or to encourage you to do something that you're already inclined to do anyway, I'm just saying that making this kind choice should not to be discouraged or underestimated, and that there are reasons to make it beyond whether or not readers for various formats are available yet.
I know. The politics and economics of OpenOffice are fairly appealing--but the program itself has a few showstoppers that annoy me more than the politics and economics motivate me.
But, in regards to the file formats, OOo (and others OSS works) need to make the open format effectively open, not just open in theory, or it's little better than
I'm sure the OOo programmers would rather spend their time on OOo, instead of writing OOo import filters for MS, Lotus, and Corel.
Which is why it won't happen. But SUN should pay someone to do it, if nothing else.
Lack of document interopability (getting a 70 MB program to open a few files isn't always viable) is a fair-sized hurdle for OOo.
Of course, exporting MHTML files would help, too.
The fact that you could hire a programmer to do what you want to do, thus retaining the exercise of your free will, is important (or even that I could and you might benefit). It is much better than a world in which you are constrained in more and more of your daily activities by what is possible with mass-produced products that the marketplace has decided are the winners.
The problem with this argument, actually, is that the supposedly closed and enslaving proprietary formats are very frequently hacked open by those that want to use a different program.
Using MS Office doesn't give MS dominion over me--it just gives them market share. Inside of a week, I can switch over just about everything I do to Open Office if I want to--and I will, actually, just as soon as all my showstoppers are fixed. (Maybe earlier if I feel adventuerous.)
You're a complete twit, truth be told.
That's gotta be at least *close* to the stupidest thing ever said. Congrats!
Twit? TWIT? I prefer zealot, if you must malign me. Or fool, naive, ignorant, arrogant, etc.
Compare Catholicism (saints, pope, modern-day miracles) to Baptism (no saints, no pope, almost-humanist view of God as hands-off) and you'll see what I mean.
You're probably confusing Arab/American Black culture with Islam.
People with no hope become irrational. You can't reason with them, you can't threaten them, you can't bargain with them.
I wouldn't call them irrational--heck, I cringe whenever I hear someone dismiss someone else a "irrational."
When you have nothing, doing anything that might advance your cause is rational.
Oddly enough, the best way to defeat terrorism is to solve the grievances of the terrorists. Why should the palestineans suffer because Europeans feel guilty about mistreating the Jews, for example? Creating a new palestinean state is the best way to end the Infantadia. An even better way would be a semi-secular, ethnicity-blind Israel.
As for Afghanistan and Iraq--the best way to console the orphans we create is to leave these countries far better off than when we got there. If we turn them from rebel enemies to full partners and close allies, we won't have Israel's problems, because the people we orphaned will have hope and a reason to play the game by our rules.
Terrorism isn't irrational--but expecting people to bagrain with you when they have nothing and you offer nothing is irrational.
Are people sending you OOo files by email but you don't have OOo installed?
No--because they know that I probably can't read them.
Maybe I don't want to use OOo. Maybe I'm microsoft. Maybe my users refuse to change. Maybe I'm mandated by my government to use for-sale software, or software made by my country. Maybe I'm just ornery.
These people are acting in a manner that is so close to that of the fundamentalist Muslim radicals they love to hate that it is simply amazing to me.
It shouldn't be. Islam and Christianity aren't all that different, truth be told. You can probably find more differences between Christian denominations than you can between Muslims and Christians.
The fundamentalist terrorists are worse than the devoted politicians we have in the USA and Israel because they don't even try to follow the rule of law. Their rhetoric isn't the bad part--it's their suicide bombing and terrorism.
You're missing the point
No, I'm making a different point.
It (again, _almost_) doesn't matter how open OOo is, if no one else can read the files! If I have to hire a programmer to write a reader, then I may as well just stay with MS office.
What I'd like to see to fix this problem, of course, is plug-ins for popular programs hosted on the openoffice.org website. They don't have to be fast--they just need to allow me to install them, and open OOo files in an appropriate office program (or display an error message telling me why I can't read them--"You can't read MathML files with your stinky proprietary program" would work.)
It's not proprietary AFAIK.
Name five other programs that can read and write it. Raw text-editing doesn't count.
OoO's docs are just zip'd XML, and definitly conform to the standard--but if nothing can read them, then they're almost as bad as DOC.
Giving away a bootleg is still illegal.
Not necessarily.
Giving away a bootleg absent persmission from the copyright holder is a technical violation of the U.S. Code. It's not a crime, but a minor infraction and a tort against the copyright holder. (You need to get to a rather large scale for criminal copyright behavior. I could make and give away two copies of everything I own and not be criminal.)
A good bootleg of a band that authorizes the trading and selling of bootlegs is exactly the sort of thing that belongs on ebay. Just got to remember to get permission first.
My rough guestimate of /. users is 800,000
1% of these is 8,000 people--so, unless more people come out of the woodowork for this story than have ever commented on a story, ever, "99%" will be accurate.
And the top 1% pays 25% of the taxes.
Per dollar, per earner, or per person?
IMO, the numbers should be looked at for fairness in per-dollar only. (That's the most capitalist way to do it.) Exemptions and deductions can be per-person. We should never, ever, ever, structure our tax system or our reports of said tax system as per-earner.
That if you can't afford the office suite you need now, you can't very well pay programmers to develop a new one so you can give it away in 2 to 3 years from now.
When push comes to shove, OoO can do just about any job that MS Office can do, as good or better. For any office application I've ever seen, OoO can perform it and have bloat left over.
Ok, so I lied. OoO is still lacking in making bookmarked PDFs and counting words. But most offices I know don't do either.
It is not theft as there is no tangible property involved.
No, it is theft. It's theft of services. Exactly as if you siphoned energy off the grid unmetered, or phreaked for phone calls.
It's debatable how morally wrong it is, but legally it is theft.
Knowledge of 'questionable' activities can lead to harassing follow-up searches and actions. Owning a hookah, for example. Is that a novelty tobacco device, or drug paraphernalia? Or, to hit a little closer to you and I, attending religious seminar that turned out to be further right than expected.
Yes, but why should we reward subterfuge?
To drift over to economics for a bit: Capitalism succeeds because it aligns the base interests of the individual with the higher interest of the people. Communism fails because the base interests of the individual are best served through crime.
Now, in a nation that prides itself on democracy and free speach, why should we have a judicial system that rewards the better liar, the more clandestine criminal, and the shy radical?
I think a better argument is that such as system just isn't feasable to carry through to its moral implementation. If the police can monitor us, then we must be able to monitor the police. While I would be fine living in a society like this (I'd have to adapt, but I am willing to adapt), the benefits of doing so do not seem likely to outweigh the costs.
This expressly forbids general searches.
Yes. But it's a law, not a moral code. Quoting the First Amendment doesn't win a debate about the morality of free speach--legality, yes; morality, no.
Now if you think that the Fourth Amendment is no longer relevant, you can always get it changed. All you have to do is write an amendment (perhaps worded "The government shall have the power to search everywhere and anywhere, so long as only criminals are inconvenienced. This supercedes and nullifies Amendment IV."). Then you just have to get both the House of Representatives and Senate to pass it by a supermajority, and then have the legislatures of a supermajority of states to pass it, probably by a supermajority. No problem, dude!
Actually, if I were going to amend the constitution, I'd toss in a clause giving Congress the explicit power to "provide for the safety, indivudually and collectively, of the people of the United States, from themselves, their government, and any foreign powers."
My "sure, go ahead and search" clause would have to be a delcarative than a power-granting clause: "Collarly to Amendment IV: the government may gather publicly avalible data, and conduct totally unobtrusive searches, in the pursuit of known felons and dangers to the people of the United States, with the explicit understanding that any evidence so seized may not be used save in the prosecution and diffusement of said felons and dangers."
Or I'd just move to a different country and start there; the politics would be easier.
As for bars, sorry, there really aren't many other ways of meeting people in this society.
I don't know about you, but I have yet to see a good relationship come from a couple that met in a bar.
#6 is good, but you need to abstract it to "social event." Sporting event, fireworks, etc--heck, even the SCA fills this gap.
What annoys me is that, when I was in college, there were all these attractive, intelligent women going into promising careers. Now that I'm in the working world, where are they???
Not hanging out in bars--probably more successful than you, and with a trophy husband. (j/k)
Being married--and raising children--is hard work.
Most recognized genuses have the luxury of working with little to no distraction. When you have a wife, financial trouble, and screaming children, it's rather hard to plumb the secrets of the universe.
This is no surprise to anyone.
I believe in the principle that one has a fundmantal right to freedom from having their personal information examined by the government without a justifiable cause that has undergone judicial review.
:)
I don't think it's a fundamental right--I think it's just a then-recent abuse that was corrected.
If you don't think that a federal agency, snooping for terrorist activity, will start a file on you for completely legal but (by their definition) "anti-American" sentiments and activities then you are hopelessly naive.
Actually, as long as they don't interfere with my life, they can keep as many files on me as they want to.
Heck, it'll make writing my biography a lot easier. Just FOIA my FBI file.
Finally, with regards to "castrating" the government - don't make me laugh. Since P.A.T.R.I.O.T. was passed the government has hung itself like a freaking Clydesdale in terms of their right to invade our privacy. There is a simple way to balance the need for an effective federal executive with personal liberties which is sound legislation defining reasonable restraints and conditions with judicial review.
Ah, here's a good answer.
It doesn't matter what the executive can, technically, do. They shouldn't be allowed to do it without the proper check/balance.
Another good argument against expanding the powers of government intervnention is a poor cost/benfit ratio, even ignoring the privacy violations.
1: You're not a gov't office--or you'd know where I live.
/.'ers house, you could just come over and knock. But I might start preaching to you when you come in.
2: If I have to toss you a key, that's disruptive.
3: I really don't have anything interesting at my house. A few vid games, two and a half novel drafts--that's about it.
So... ah... if you really feel the need to ruffle through a
This is tantamount to saying, if you don't have anything to hide, why do you have a problem with the police searching your house/car/person?
Assume that the police can do so without damaging anything of yours, disrupting your evening, or broadcasting your secrets to the neighborhood--essentially, doing so without having any impact on your life whatsoever, save for being caught if you're committing crimes.
Now, what's wrong with this? "I don't like being seen naked" is a piss-poor reason to castrate the government.
(Note that I'm all for better checks on corruption and gross incompetence in the government--but that's not what you made your bold statement about.)