Yes, it was. A religion has churches and a real following. "Jedi" has neither. If they did--have a real following and a somewhat formal organization (like what "wicca" has), then they'd be a real reigion. (They would still be surely made-up, like Scientology, but they'd be a legal religion.)
What scandals? You mean, being a failure, and rapidly becoming irrelevent?
Yep. The various Christian churches have been swamped in scandal recently--ever watch the news outside of/.?
But Christainity is not a "you must go to church or else" religion for a lot of people. Sure, church attendence is down; that doesn't mean that the people who don't go (like me) aren't Christian.
No, you're not. Look up the stats.
"An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof." Find me census data that lists religion. Add up all of the Christian denominations, and if they don't equal or exceed 51%, I'll conceed the point.
So, God's powers are limited? Interesing, for an all-powerful being.
Besides, Jesus clearly said that Christians would be able to drink poison, and be bitten by venomous snakes and not be harmed. No doctors are mentioned. Done either of those lately, or is Christianity really just total bullshit?
I have no doubt that, if necessary, I could do those things--they are, after all, within the range of scientific plausibility. But God doesn't solve man's problems for him; even South Park could tell you that much.
I have never been bitten by a snake, and neither have I ever been poisoned by anything except a few low-grade substances, like alcohol. Again, something non-miraculous that can be attributed to God.
So, suddenly we're not allowed to ask for Him to actually do anything, when previously he would divide seas, murder babies, order genocide and so on (subtle, He's not). That's *awfully* convenient. I'll have to remember that trick, when I invent my religion to fleece the gullible. You're clearly no better off than if you were not a Christian (and don't give me that "fires of hell" childishness).
Ok, then. I am better off than if I was not a Christian, because I have an offer of forgiveness, a calling to do good, and a measurement of what "good" is. Being as good as Jesus told us to be is difficult work, and it doens't get any immediate benefits. But in the long-term, it benefits me personally and us as a whole.
Yes, Christian churches have pointed the sword of war at many things, more than a few of which were regrettable. But things like that would have happened without Christianity, and probably not have been as long-term producitve.
No, you did. You said, "Got a problem with that?". I do. I'd rather not go back to the time when Christianity ruled, which is widely regards as "the dark ages". Just go back to not understanding maths and science, and trying to prove "creationism", believing in magic fairies, and let the educated, sensible get on with the actual thinking.
That's right, the world is so much better when an elitee, snobbish minority controlls the development of everything.
Christians ruled before the so-called "Dark Ages", and they "ruled" for several centuries afterwhich. In a lot of ways, we still rule; the Cold War probably wouldn't have been quite as important if the Communist agenda wasn't atheist as well. (The "Dark Ages" are a time not when Christianity ruled, but when political and economic progress slipped backwards because of the fall of the Roman Empire. Many forms of advancement still progressed (like farming), and the term favored by most scholars of history is "middle ages", not "dark ages.")
Go back to your Christian music, Christian books, Christian TV and all that other lame crap i.e. to your Christian ghetto (once the "Christian" prefix was implicit in everything. Not any more).
Who says it isn't? There's a minority that likes Christian-centered media, but most of us look at it askance, knowing that it's probably bad talent and faulty logic badmouthing our religion's name, all of which makes it more and more difficult for us to speak out in public.
One notable exception is the Christian Science Monitor. It's worth checking out, and last I checked (a few weeks ago) no bad science, creationist propaganda, or faulty logic at all.
Now that you've attacked my religion, what are you? An atheist? A neo-pagan? I'm genuinely curious, and would appreciate a response.
Until the mythical notion that patents somehow 'encourage' innovation rather than stifle it has been thoroughly debunked in the popular mind, and the notion of granting monopolies, which are antithetical to free markets and competition, is replaced with something less destructive to the marketplace of ideas and the deployment of technolgoies, we will continue to see numerous promising improvements like this buried and suppressed.
Wouldn't it be easier to just render "Buried" patents unenforceable? i.e., Gilette buys the patent, but the patent is worthless if they are not engaged in acts that a reasonable man would find to be conducive to getting the razor to market.
Until then, your optimism will, I'm afraid, be as off-base as the venom the person you responded to was.
Probably. But between the two of us, we come somewhere closer to the truth.;)
So? Christianity is made-up and mythical. So apparently all I have to do is gather enough dissaffected dorks into a "church", cream off 10% of their gross income, and I have to be taken seriously.
*sigh* I'll say it again, because you're obviously too lazy to read the rest of the posts.
If YOU found a church, on a lark, and you make it up, YOU are committing fraud. But your followers, who sincerely believe you, are not. Given enough time and social adjustment, your new religion could become as significant a social force as Christianity or Islam.
No, since Christianity has been effectively ghetto-ised, and is no longer significant culturally or intellectually, or even taken seriously any longer. Declaring your Christianity almost always gets odd reactions. That just can't be good for that faith as a cultural force.
Where the hell do you live? Outside of a few ghettos, Christians are still a majority in the USA. Every president has been (or can be effectively assumed to have been) a Christian. George W. Bush said "Atheists shouldn't be considered citizens" and he still got to be president.
Christians who declare their religion get strange looks, for the most part, because of the same reason that strange looks would be given to someone on/. who declares themselves a geek, or someone of our mutual species who says "I'm human!"
We are a majority, and we've been a majority for so long, and we've been shocked by so many recent scandals (in the past 50 years--recent memory culturally speaking) that we just don't have a good way to express the religion in public.
Next time you're seriously injured or sick, pray instead of relying on science. I dare you. Bet you don't trust Jesus *that* much!
Why the hell would I turn away from the benefits of the land that God has seen fit to place me in to live, and arrogantly demand that he intercede to miraculously cure me?
God is and has been for quite some time a creature of subtulty. Anyone who abandons medicine and only prays deserves to die. You let the doctors do what they will and they can, and you pray to supplement them, not replace them.
'sides which, I have only been seriously injured or sick a handful of times in my life--all times when I was too young to pray. Since maturing, I have not been seriously injured or sick, and I thank Jesus for that.
(Sorry about the religous rant but, man, you asked for it.)
Yet, I think most people would agree that, if I held such a belief, I would be pretty "ignorant". Ignorant = willing to make a monumental leap (call it faith, whatever) rather than believing something that seems to follow a more reasonable train of cause/effect.
That's mis-using the word. Ignorant means not knowing the facts. The word you're looking for is "unreasonable." You can call someone ignorant if they don't know that OJ Simpson was tried for murder; if they know about the trial and think that he's innocent, you can call him "unreasonable", not "ignorant."
For just about any avenue in life you take, following any creed, it will probably do you good to aknowledge the possibility that everything that we know is wrong. If nothing else, it will help you adapt when you are proven to be wrong. (It happens to everyone, even God.)
You're a Christian? Good on ya, cobber. But that doesn't necessarily validate everything you believe to be true.
Of course it doesn't. All it means is that I believe a few things, many of which are awfully unscientific. Then again, if we left everything to science, we'd probably still be stuck in a time of feudalism and war.
The real reason they won't release fuel cells isn't because of problems. The article itself says they last 10x longer than a regular Li. Duh. They won't release them because then noone will want the older batteries. Then they can't gouge the fuck out of us at the register (those things are damned expensive for all the longer they last in my DC3200).
That implies collusion in the market. Trust me--if a company could make a standard-form-size fuel cell, they'd sell them and blow the pants off of their competition. If a company could put them in their laptops with no problems, they'd do so and sell the pants off of their "twelve-hour laptop with no weight increase."
Edison invented a light bulb that will last 10x longer than even today's four and five year bulbs. You can go to the Smithsonian [smithsonian.org] and see it for yourself. But why won't GE and Sylvania, or even Philips, spit one out on the consumer market? Because then they couldn't rope us into buying the nasty bulbs that don't last very long at all. We buy more, they make more money. Simple as that.
Sheesh. If you're going to post a link, find a relevant page and then post that. Everyone who reads/. knows what the god damn Smithsonian is! (And I looked for Edison, and I didn't see anything about a "super long-life bulb" there.)
But let me take your statement as true--there are at least two alternate possibilties as to why it's not in the mass market. One: It's too god damn expensive / ineffecient. If the bulbs only put out a max of 10 watts, they're useless; if the bulbs cost $100 each, they're useless. Two: If you take a modern lightbulb, under-whatt it, and never turn it off, it'll last for a god damn long time.
And I'm sure the government has computers that far outdo anything that any PC or Server that's commercially available could do. When will we see that kind of power? When they decide that they don't have to charge $10G for a toilet seat to cover this stuff (aka none too soon).
I don't even know where to start picking that one apart....
The government no doubt has the most powerful computers in the world; it's even possible that they have black-project chip designs that far outpace anything heard about on/. (It's unlikely though--the government has, historicaly, gotten the best innovation through competition of private companies, and the public-known computational power of the US gov't is allready among the best in the world.)
As for the $10,000 toliet seat--that was the military paying for a seat on a battle-craft (not sure if it was naval or air force.) And I think it was a case of corruption / fraud, to boot.
The automobile industry is not in cahoots with the oil companies to keep back fuel-efficient cars. Intel and AMD are most ceratinly not in cahoots to keep real chip power down (if Moore's law suddenly stopped, sales would collapse. If Moore's law could be leapfrogged, they'd do it to beat the other.)
Fuel cell producers are not--I repeat, not--purposfully sabatoging their work for fiscal gain. Selling a new car to every family in America of a brand-new, patented design could make or break any car company. Once one goes to market, everyone else is going to have to pay catchup or try and leapfrog. (Hybrid cars are just a stopgap measure, because the converters to get hydrogen from gasoline are rediculously expensive.)
We live in a capitalist civilization. If there's a real good out there that can be built that will out do what the other guy is making in all measurements, it will be built. If fuel cells aren't sitting in our laptops yet, there are a dozen easy ways that someone with just a high school diplomay could figure out, aside from willfull obstruction, as to their not taking off in the market. Heck, read the rest of the posts on this article, and you'll find plenty.
It helps to remember that Judaism is an odd religion in which, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, there are a lot of what are called "secular Jews" who aren't the slightest bit believers in the religion, yet still want to be identified as members of the ethnicity, and use the terms and imagery of it for cultural reasons. Someone who had once been Christian and had become and atheist would be a lot less likely to use the term "God" in the way Einstein did.
Einstein's abuse of the term may be understandable, but that doesn't make it not abuse.
On a different note, I am of the opinion that "secular jews"--and every other secular ethnicity that refuses to share--should put aisde their "uniqueness" and learn to share with, shape, and fully participate in their current nationality.
I am a Christian American male of mostly Western European descent, with a bit of native for flavor. Nevertheless, I am very proud of my Black, Jewish, Oriental heritge--none of which is by blood, but rather culture.
I'll be blunt: people who believe in creationism are ignorant.
Not necessarilly. They're non-scientific, but they're not all automatically "ignorant."
Science simply cannot prove, by an measure, that the Universe was not created whole by one supreme force with the power to place every particle, wave, and plank in whatever postion the being desired. It can't prove that this wasn't what happend at the big bang, it can't prove that this didn't happen 7,000 years ago, and it can't prove that it didn't happen 150 years ago.
What science can do is dismiss it as "beyond the reach of science", and not waste the time of scientists fighting a religous disucssion.
FACT: We can observe evolution in action through the historical record and through watching living animals adapt generation after generation. It is a reasonable scientific asumption to think that we as humans fit this pattern, and that there was a leap somewhere between "not-human but humanlike smart animal" and "human." But until time travel is invented, it's impossible to scientifcally prove or disprove the sudden creation of man by God.
There has been no charismatic anybody expousing me to go to religion. My ideas are my own, and while they may be sophmoric, I think that they're a bit more than "infantile."
"God" is a very general term, used by all sorts of people to mean very different things. You may not like it, but language is a living thing and you and your religious group have very little influence over this.
Acutally, we do.
"God" is a proper name for the Allmighty. If you're referring to a divine being that isn't eqivalent to the Supreme Universal All (which is always capitalized, even in pronouns), the proper grammatical use is "a god" or "-some other name for god-"
Allah is a specific arabic name, which means "The God", but applies to a particular spirit that just happens to be the God of the Hebrews, Moses, and J.C.
If you want a word that applies only to your specific concept of God, then you need to make up your own. And even that doesn't guarantee that your new word won't be co-opted at some later point by people who feel it means something else.
Scientists are not in the business of redefining language; they're in the business of keeping it the same to ensure the continuance of knowledge.
Knowledge evolves when it is mis-used by poets and the uneducated (two unrelated groups--I consider myself a "poet" for this sense) because of feel, and when it is changed because it does not express something current.
Einstein should have used a different term, or created something else. "God" used personally allready means something, and if he didn't intend that meaning, he mis-used the word.
Well, I don't know if I'd call it "inexcusable". That's a bit strong. I suppose it might have been clearer if he had said "Mother nature does not play dice" rather than "God does not play dice"
Not really. "God does not play dice..." implies that God is seperate from what he's playing dice with.
I was going to post a follow-up post, but decide against it.
And at any rate... "God" means a distinct, sentient, powerful mind. Could be a group mind of souls. Could be Zeus. Could be Jesus, his poppa, and his momma. It doesn't mean "whatever someone chooses to worship."
A humanistic atheist doesn't use "God" to describe humanity--he just doesn't believe in God. The word has a general meaning, and that meaning (as opposed to the various permutations and interpretations that form religions) should be used without exception.
When Einstein used the word "God", he used it as a methaphor for existence
Then he mis-used it, and should be smacked for doing so.
"God," "Allah," "Bhrama" "Goddess" and a slew of other names are very specific. Mis-using them when one means "godlike" or "existance" is simply inexcusable from an intelligent person engaging in any sort of public dialogue.
The GPL does not "build on" copyright law - it's a license that I can agreed to or not. If I don't agree, copyright is the operative thing, if I do agree, the license if the operative thing!
The GPL, and every other copyleft license, builds upon and requires copyright law to work, and is limited by the scope of copyright law.
If I look at your program, and then I create something that I can defend in court as not being derivtiive, the GPL can't touch me unless I want it to.
IIRC (too lazy to look it up) I accept the GPL by following the GPL. If I were to purposefully not follow the GPL, someone wanting to "force" me to would have to take me to court, and convince the judge that my work was derivitive. (It's likely that we'll settle out of court, unless you or I are a zealot. MS stealing the HURD might be about the only case that couldn't ever settle.)
Hmm... let me put that in shorter terms. "If not for copyright law, the GPL wouldn't have any teeth at all."
Depends on what they did. I can believe that MS stole users. To me that implies that it used force or fraud to induce users to change word processors. As MS has used both techinques in other times and places, I don't see why it's improbable here. Whether or not it's a true accusation... I don't know.
AFAIK, MS got Wordperfect users to switch to Word by taking efforts to make it easy for them to switch--with the ideal being that it would be no hard to switch from Wordperfect to Word than it was to switch to Wordperfect's next version.
They also spent an ungodly sum trying to get Word to read WP's completely different file format, added in "help for wordperfect users", and generally worked about as hard as any Linux advocate.
Microsoft didn't bother trying to play catch-up with the most current WP release--they simply competed directly with it, and (AFAIK) focused on the legacy installs of WP. (Those are the people with money to spend on new software anyway, so it's not like trying to sell someone a copy of Staroffice just after they bought Office XP.)
OO et al (Abiword, KOffice, etc) would do well to take a page from Microsoft's book. Office isn't a monotlithic version, and OO et all have a real chance of targeting people who would are considering upgrades right now.
Sorry about the "theft" word. There isn't a common english word that means "taking efforts to woo the regular customers of someone else" that doesn't have negative connotations.
Buying a HP box would now be a bad choice for a student, as most schools including mine use word exclusively and students are expected to know how to use it.
Office still has "help for Wordperfect users." Students are better off with WP than they are with OO or SO, unless you think that a "MS Office help for cheap Sun communists" add-on is in the works...;)
People are used to using Office products as the 'standard', so why not give them an alternative that will operate approximately the same.
Word is MS's crown jewel, but Word got where it is today buy stealing users from WP.
Wordperfect is *still* used in the Legal Industry far more than MS office. When I worked at the NYS DEC a few years ago, I didn't have word on my shiney Dell PC--I had wordperfect, and so did everyone else in all of EnCon.
Though it's a mind-boggling hack, Wordperfect and MS Word can and do talk to each other. In fact, having the two of them duke it out might be just the thing that OO needs to get some real work done on it, and get to be a usable beast...
That may be, but billions of people really do believe in him, and THAT's the important part.
We could argue for a lifetime over who's religion is really True, but that'd waste time better spent on good works and living life; we'll find out who was right when we die.
Feel free to be a Jedi. But, just like the early Christians, early Muslims, and early neo-hippies, don't expect any social support until you're well established.
And the essence of the irony here is - you can't prove (legally) that any OTHER religion ISN'T made up or mythical.
Sure I can. I didn't make up my religion. Maybe soemone several hundred years ago did, but I didn't. And my druid/wiccan friedns didn't make up THEIR religion--maybe some hippie did, but they (my friends) didn't.
That's the difference. "Jedi" isn't a religion because no one goes to a Jedi place of worship every time they need spiritual advice.
Well, exactly. The census readers did say that the survey would affect what was going to get built...
I'd prefer it if, when a government gives money to places of worship, they give it to honest churches with dedicated people, and not the result of some childish prank.
Grassroots? Good question. Looks like Bush got more donors, but Gore got bigger donations--which could be Gore going for more rich folks, but it could be Gore getting the support of federations and community groups instead of individuals.
I think I'd like a system where everyone's pre-election "nod" to one canditate was equally important, not one where Bill Gates is worth more than me just because he has money to donate and I don't.
Besides, the only real effect of limiting the money the candidates themselves can spend on a campaign is to multiply the power of the (generally biased) media in determining the effects of the election -- the less you hear the candidate speak for himself, the more Dan's and Tom's and Peter's opinions of the candidate contribute to what you know about them.
In a country where the media bias pretty heavily to the Democratic party, this makes campaign finance `reform' nothing but a free ride for the left...
That would be a bad thing.
We could have regulated time for the campaign. I don't think it's an insufferable limitation of speech to limit the total media time each side's followers get to an equal ammount.
'course, any short-term Democratic slide would probably be kept short-term, and possibly suffer an immedate slide back as Republican dollars that used to go right to the party start going to invest in newspapers. Which would be a nice unintended benefit... imagine the US with a politcally neutral (or "equally biased") meda?;)
Because they're made-up, mythical, and there are no--repeat, NO--Jedi churches. If you want to start one, go ahead... but this census spoofing has been in so many news stories the Aussies would have to be illiterate to believe the "Jedi" were serious--hence, fraud.
There are religious organizations, gatherings, rituals, and publications for people who consider themselves druids or witches. Ancient or not, modern or not, accurate or not, they are real religions in a way that "Jedi" or "worshiper of Mystra" simply aren't.
I have to disagree with this. Your `right' to hear each candidate, like most of your rights, is dependent on your interest in going out and listening to them. It is certainly not of a level that would justify limiting a candidates right to free speech in order to make sure that you don't `hear him more than other candidates'.
Actually, I'd prefer to never hear from any candidate tat I don't seek out, so I could base my opinion on third party analysis and which major party has recently ticked me off.
But the candidates / their "friends" can and do buy media spots and mailings to influence the public. This isn't free speech--it's money in an election.
Ideally, I'd like to have formal and regulated system where each candidate gets an equal time to be heard. Let them say whatever they want, and let me ignore it or pay attention to it as I want--as opposed to the curent system of one-sided nagging by the side with the most money.
And if personal wealth makes such a big difference, why wasn't H. Ross Perot the president for the last eight years?
Because he was a screwball, and the two major parites both had more money to spend than he did. (Oh, and that little bit about dropping out of the race for three months in the heat probably effected it, too.)
If one rich guy wants to spend all his money on running for office, I say great--let's even out the wealth through the system. But when a bunch of rich guys throw their money together to drown out the little guy--well, that bugs me on a why-does-this-computer-take-so-long-to-boot level.
How is that you are supposed to "find" these individuals? Through an act of God. Promoting and expressing your views to people in a meaningful way almost necessarily requires the expenditure of money. To restrict people's ability to use their _own_ money to finance the spreading of political ideas (speech) is a clear violation an individual's fundamental property and free speech rights.
No, it isn't. Why should someone who's rich be "more equal" than I am when it comes to political office?
The government allready provides matching funds to anyone who can rally enough support. What "should" be done is to expand this, so that every candidate gets an equal share of funds. We could even set something up so that voters could note that "I'd like to hear more from this candidate", and some simple math (# of "yes' votes for each canidate = # of shares of the pot) could be used to divy up the election funds.
Let private citizens make donations to this pot as well, if they've got so much money to burn and want to "speak" by doing such.
We don't allow people to simply give money to people who promise to vote a certain way. We shouldn't allow people to simply give money to someone they want elected, either.
The politicians (and lawyers) in a our republic have made it their business to sacrifice people's rights to others in the form of welfare-state laws and other looting, don't you think that people will want to influence that process to avoid getting screwed by the government? The problem is not that people are trying to influence the way that politicians desecrate our individual liberties, but that the government is allowed to take the freedoms away in the first place! There is no moral way for a politician to sacrifice people's rights, no matter weather he accepts bribes or not. Campaign finance reform is just another slide down the slippery slope towards statism.
(did you mean "Satanism" or "stalinism?" I'll assume you meant "destruction of the American way of life" and respond accordingly.)
No one's rights are absolute, and various circumstances and events can cause what are normally given rights to be suspended or superceded by the rights of other people. You normally have the right to your posessions and capital, but if you use them for felonius actions you can lose the right to them. I normally have the right to go wherever I want, but your right to privacy in your own home negates this.
Let me take a stab at defining the two sides of hwo to look at government (I'll endeavor to choose terms that lack prejudice.) On one hand we have the pragmatists, that view government as simply a dollars-and-sense thing, that think in terms of individual rights, and that view equality as "equal abilty to move about unrestrained by government or uncompensated service."
On the other hand, we have the idealists, that view government as a thing that holds the trust of the people more than a fiscal entity; they think in terms of universal rights, and view equality as an "equal opportunity" thing.
Realistically, neither one of these sides is any better than the other when taken to the extreme. "Pragmatists" taken to the extreme are lazzie-faire capitalists, that wind up with monopolies and gross disproportions between the rich and the poor, and a general lack of real advancemnet in any sector of society.
"Idealists" taken to the extreme are communist, that wind up with totally corrupt societies where the only way to get ahead is to break the law, and have a general lack of any real advancement in nay sector of society.
The formula that has proven to work the best is a confrontational system between two sides that favor different ratios of "pragmatism" vs. "idealism." This lets us have a place where we look out for everyone, but we also let people tweak the system to get ahead. There might be a better system around, but we sure as heck haven't found one working anywhere in the world just yet.
The world is a lot more complex than you think it is, and it's hardly a manner of "sacraficing people's rights." The right of you to spend money on whomever you want to win office is tempered by my right to hear every candidate equally and make an informed vote. The right of you to keep your golden parachute is tempered by my right to have a descent chance to survive. The right of me to protest is tempered by your right to live in peace.
It's simply not a matter of sacraficing rights, and it never has been, in the whole of history in any situation you care to name. It's about choosing who's rights and what rights take priority in what circumstance. Currently we in the United States trust the government with that power, because it sure as hell works better than leaving it to indivudal citizens to battle out who's rights take priority in a world without the rule of law.
The dominant political parties are(n't) about freedom.
Well, yeah. I allready said that.
In the big scheme of things, what the Democrats and Republicans don't disagree on are either things that define Americans (following the 1st amendment, freedom of religion inside your home, generally being a superpower, etc.) or things that simply aren't issues (such as GPL'd software.)
Third parites take up issues on either one of these, either making themselves out to be cooks ("Let's be isolationist!") or raising an honest issue and then losing it inisde of four years. ("Let's reform the government!" followed closely by the "Contract with America.")
Say the issue is a grossly overbearing federal government.
Y'know, you just proved the words of my college English teacher. "Setting on the words to describe a problem is nine-tenths of the way to resolve that" or something. No one's in favor of a "grossly overbearing federal government." They just have different opinions of what that is.
The one party, say the Republicrats, will claim to be in favor of it, and the other will be mute. If, however, they get in, you will see, at best, a few small gestures made in the direction of reducing the size of the government (largely in precisely the areas that people in general *DON'T* want it reduced), and then something will come up and the plank is quietly buried.
If the parties acted like this--really, truly acted like this--then the reform party would have won ten years ago.
The two major political parties that we have are ruthlessly efficient in feeling the waters of what America wants, and then adjusting themselves towards that which has the most appeal; that's how they get to elect the president, and how they avoid the fall of their predicessors.
It's hard to say what is Republican and what is Democrat simply because they're so adaptable--Republicans are "right" and Democrats are "Left", and those terms go all the way back to the first inklings of democratic rule in France. The parties have switched a few places over the years, and (like I said earlier) we here in America have had at least one major party completely vanish because it couldn't adapt.
They generally don't ignore issues that people really care about--and they certainly don't take action that the majority of the populace doesn't want done unless they've got a damn good reason for it. If an issue is ignored, then chances are that the people who really care about that issue have no real idea how to play the game.
I don't care about the people, I care about myself and my friends and parents.
So do I. And I realize that the best way to keep YOUR friends and parents from clashing with MY friends and parents is to have a stable nation with a government strong enough to eliminate the need for "village justice."
Except that the person spying on you may also be working for a criminal organisation. It happened several times here in Canada and I'm sure it's still happening.
Of course it does. That's why there are checks on the system.
I want to limit people spying on me to people that I have a reasonable assumption will leave a paper trail about their spying that someone trusted by the community (that'd be "enough people's friends and families" for you) will be able to tell if they're corrupt or clean.
What I don't want is for every private citizen to be able to randomly spy on me. I want it to be a crime, so I know that if I'm being spied upon, either someone can be put to jail for it, or some judge / general somewhere thinks that I'm someone worth looking into.
Oh, and as a group, I trust both judges and generals. The pay's such in both professions that there are bound to be more fanatics than bad apples.
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That's not what you said at all.
/.?
Yes, it was. A religion has churches and a real following. "Jedi" has neither. If they did--have a real following and a somewhat formal organization (like what "wicca" has), then they'd be a real reigion. (They would still be surely made-up, like Scientology, but they'd be a legal religion.)
What scandals? You mean, being a failure, and rapidly becoming irrelevent?
Yep. The various Christian churches have been swamped in scandal recently--ever watch the news outside of
But Christainity is not a "you must go to church or else" religion for a lot of people. Sure, church attendence is down; that doesn't mean that the people who don't go (like me) aren't Christian.
No, you're not. Look up the stats.
"An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof." Find me census data that lists religion. Add up all of the Christian denominations, and if they don't equal or exceed 51%, I'll conceed the point.
So, God's powers are limited? Interesing, for an all-powerful being.
Besides, Jesus clearly said that Christians would be able to drink poison, and be bitten by venomous snakes and not be harmed. No doctors are mentioned. Done either of those lately, or is Christianity really just total bullshit?
I have no doubt that, if necessary, I could do those things--they are, after all, within the range of scientific plausibility. But God doesn't solve man's problems for him; even South Park could tell you that much.
I have never been bitten by a snake, and neither have I ever been poisoned by anything except a few low-grade substances, like alcohol. Again, something non-miraculous that can be attributed to God.
So, suddenly we're not allowed to ask for Him to actually do anything, when previously he would divide seas, murder babies, order genocide and so on (subtle, He's not). That's *awfully* convenient. I'll have to remember that trick, when I invent my religion to fleece the gullible. You're clearly no better off than if you were not a Christian (and don't give me that "fires of hell" childishness).
Ok, then. I am better off than if I was not a Christian, because I have an offer of forgiveness, a calling to do good, and a measurement of what "good" is. Being as good as Jesus told us to be is difficult work, and it doens't get any immediate benefits. But in the long-term, it benefits me personally and us as a whole.
Yes, Christian churches have pointed the sword of war at many things, more than a few of which were regrettable. But things like that would have happened without Christianity, and probably not have been as long-term producitve.
No, you did. You said, "Got a problem with that?". I do. I'd rather not go back to the time when Christianity ruled, which is widely regards as "the dark ages". Just go back to not understanding maths and science, and trying to prove "creationism", believing in magic fairies, and let the educated, sensible get on with the actual thinking.
That's right, the world is so much better when an elitee, snobbish minority controlls the development of everything.
Christians ruled before the so-called "Dark Ages", and they "ruled" for several centuries afterwhich. In a lot of ways, we still rule; the Cold War probably wouldn't have been quite as important if the Communist agenda wasn't atheist as well. (The "Dark Ages" are a time not when Christianity ruled, but when political and economic progress slipped backwards because of the fall of the Roman Empire. Many forms of advancement still progressed (like farming), and the term favored by most scholars of history is "middle ages", not "dark ages.")
Go back to your Christian music, Christian books, Christian TV and all that other lame crap i.e. to your Christian ghetto (once the "Christian" prefix was implicit in everything. Not any more).
Who says it isn't? There's a minority that likes Christian-centered media, but most of us look at it askance, knowing that it's probably bad talent and faulty logic badmouthing our religion's name, all of which makes it more and more difficult for us to speak out in public.
One notable exception is the Christian Science Monitor. It's worth checking out, and last I checked (a few weeks ago) no bad science, creationist propaganda, or faulty logic at all.
Now that you've attacked my religion, what are you? An atheist? A neo-pagan? I'm genuinely curious, and would appreciate a response.
Until the mythical notion that patents somehow 'encourage' innovation rather than stifle it has been thoroughly debunked in the popular mind, and the notion of granting monopolies, which are antithetical to free markets and competition, is replaced with something less destructive to the marketplace of ideas and the deployment of technolgoies, we will continue to see numerous promising improvements like this buried and suppressed.
;)
Wouldn't it be easier to just render "Buried" patents unenforceable? i.e., Gilette buys the patent, but the patent is worthless if they are not engaged in acts that a reasonable man would find to be conducive to getting the razor to market.
Until then, your optimism will, I'm afraid, be as off-base as the venom the person you responded to was.
Probably. But between the two of us, we come somewhere closer to the truth.
So? Christianity is made-up and mythical. So apparently all I have to do is gather enough dissaffected dorks into a "church", cream off 10% of their gross income, and I have to be taken seriously.
/. who declares themselves a geek, or someone of our mutual species who says "I'm human!"
*sigh* I'll say it again, because you're obviously too lazy to read the rest of the posts.
If YOU found a church, on a lark, and you make it up, YOU are committing fraud. But your followers, who sincerely believe you, are not. Given enough time and social adjustment, your new religion could become as significant a social force as Christianity or Islam.
No, since Christianity has been effectively ghetto-ised, and is no longer significant culturally or intellectually, or even taken seriously any longer. Declaring your Christianity almost always gets odd reactions. That just can't be good for that faith as a cultural force.
Where the hell do you live? Outside of a few ghettos, Christians are still a majority in the USA. Every president has been (or can be effectively assumed to have been) a Christian. George W. Bush said "Atheists shouldn't be considered citizens" and he still got to be president.
Christians who declare their religion get strange looks, for the most part, because of the same reason that strange looks would be given to someone on
We are a majority, and we've been a majority for so long, and we've been shocked by so many recent scandals (in the past 50 years--recent memory culturally speaking) that we just don't have a good way to express the religion in public.
Next time you're seriously injured or sick, pray instead of relying on science. I dare you. Bet you don't trust Jesus *that* much!
Why the hell would I turn away from the benefits of the land that God has seen fit to place me in to live, and arrogantly demand that he intercede to miraculously cure me?
God is and has been for quite some time a creature of subtulty. Anyone who abandons medicine and only prays deserves to die. You let the doctors do what they will and they can, and you pray to supplement them, not replace them.
'sides which, I have only been seriously injured or sick a handful of times in my life--all times when I was too young to pray. Since maturing, I have not been seriously injured or sick, and I thank Jesus for that.
(Sorry about the religous rant but, man, you asked for it.)
Yet, I think most people would agree that, if I held such a belief, I would be pretty "ignorant". Ignorant = willing to make a monumental leap (call it faith, whatever) rather than believing something that seems to follow a more reasonable train of cause/effect.
That's mis-using the word. Ignorant means not knowing the facts. The word you're looking for is "unreasonable." You can call someone ignorant if they don't know that OJ Simpson was tried for murder; if they know about the trial and think that he's innocent, you can call him "unreasonable", not "ignorant."
For just about any avenue in life you take, following any creed, it will probably do you good to aknowledge the possibility that everything that we know is wrong. If nothing else, it will help you adapt when you are proven to be wrong. (It happens to everyone, even God.)
You're a Christian? Good on ya, cobber. But that doesn't necessarily validate everything you believe to be true.
Of course it doesn't. All it means is that I believe a few things, many of which are awfully unscientific. Then again, if we left everything to science, we'd probably still be stuck in a time of feudalism and war.
The real reason they won't release fuel cells isn't because of problems. The article itself says they last 10x longer than a regular Li. Duh. They won't release them because then noone will want the older batteries. Then they can't gouge the fuck out of us at the register (those things are damned expensive for all the longer they last in my DC3200).
/. knows what the god damn Smithsonian is! (And I looked for Edison, and I didn't see anything about a "super long-life bulb" there.)
/. (It's unlikely though--the government has, historicaly, gotten the best innovation through competition of private companies, and the public-known computational power of the US gov't is allready among the best in the world.)
That implies collusion in the market. Trust me--if a company could make a standard-form-size fuel cell, they'd sell them and blow the pants off of their competition. If a company could put them in their laptops with no problems, they'd do so and sell the pants off of their "twelve-hour laptop with no weight increase."
Edison invented a light bulb that will last 10x longer than even today's four and five year bulbs. You can go to the Smithsonian [smithsonian.org] and see it for yourself. But why won't GE and Sylvania, or even Philips, spit one out on the consumer market? Because then they couldn't rope us into buying the nasty bulbs that don't last very long at all. We buy more, they make more money. Simple as that.
Sheesh. If you're going to post a link, find a relevant page and then post that. Everyone who reads
But let me take your statement as true--there are at least two alternate possibilties as to why it's not in the mass market. One: It's too god damn expensive / ineffecient. If the bulbs only put out a max of 10 watts, they're useless; if the bulbs cost $100 each, they're useless. Two: If you take a modern lightbulb, under-whatt it, and never turn it off, it'll last for a god damn long time.
And I'm sure the government has computers that far outdo anything that any PC or Server that's commercially available could do. When will we see that kind of power? When they decide that they don't have to charge $10G for a toilet seat to cover this stuff (aka none too soon).
I don't even know where to start picking that one apart....
The government no doubt has the most powerful computers in the world; it's even possible that they have black-project chip designs that far outpace anything heard about on
As for the $10,000 toliet seat--that was the military paying for a seat on a battle-craft (not sure if it was naval or air force.) And I think it was a case of corruption / fraud, to boot.
The automobile industry is not in cahoots with the oil companies to keep back fuel-efficient cars. Intel and AMD are most ceratinly not in cahoots to keep real chip power down (if Moore's law suddenly stopped, sales would collapse. If Moore's law could be leapfrogged, they'd do it to beat the other.)
Fuel cell producers are not--I repeat, not--purposfully sabatoging their work for fiscal gain. Selling a new car to every family in America of a brand-new, patented design could make or break any car company. Once one goes to market, everyone else is going to have to pay catchup or try and leapfrog. (Hybrid cars are just a stopgap measure, because the converters to get hydrogen from gasoline are rediculously expensive.)
We live in a capitalist civilization. If there's a real good out there that can be built that will out do what the other guy is making in all measurements, it will be built. If fuel cells aren't sitting in our laptops yet, there are a dozen easy ways that someone with just a high school diplomay could figure out, aside from willfull obstruction, as to their not taking off in the market. Heck, read the rest of the posts on this article, and you'll find plenty.
It helps to remember that Judaism is an odd religion in which, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, there are a lot of what are called "secular Jews" who aren't the slightest bit believers in the religion, yet still want to be identified as members of the ethnicity, and use the terms and imagery of it for cultural reasons. Someone who had once been Christian and had become and atheist would be a lot less likely to use the term "God" in the way Einstein did.
Einstein's abuse of the term may be understandable, but that doesn't make it not abuse.
On a different note, I am of the opinion that "secular jews"--and every other secular ethnicity that refuses to share--should put aisde their "uniqueness" and learn to share with, shape, and fully participate in their current nationality.
I am a Christian American male of mostly Western European descent, with a bit of native for flavor. Nevertheless, I am very proud of my Black, Jewish, Oriental heritge--none of which is by blood, but rather culture.
I'll be blunt: people who believe in creationism are ignorant.
Not necessarilly. They're non-scientific, but they're not all automatically "ignorant."
Science simply cannot prove, by an measure, that the Universe was not created whole by one supreme force with the power to place every particle, wave, and plank in whatever postion the being desired. It can't prove that this wasn't what happend at the big bang, it can't prove that this didn't happen 7,000 years ago, and it can't prove that it didn't happen 150 years ago.
What science can do is dismiss it as "beyond the reach of science", and not waste the time of scientists fighting a religous disucssion.
FACT: We can observe evolution in action through the historical record and through watching living animals adapt generation after generation. It is a reasonable scientific asumption to think that we as humans fit this pattern, and that there was a leap somewhere between "not-human but humanlike smart animal" and "human." But until time travel is invented, it's impossible to scientifcally prove or disprove the sudden creation of man by God.
There has been no charismatic anybody expousing me to go to religion. My ideas are my own, and while they may be sophmoric, I think that they're a bit more than "infantile."
"God" is a very general term, used by all sorts of people to mean very different things. You may not like it, but language is a living thing and you and your religious group have very little influence over this.
Acutally, we do.
"God" is a proper name for the Allmighty. If you're referring to a divine being that isn't eqivalent to the Supreme Universal All (which is always capitalized, even in pronouns), the proper grammatical use is "a god" or "-some other name for god-"
Allah is a specific arabic name, which means "The God", but applies to a particular spirit that just happens to be the God of the Hebrews, Moses, and J.C.
If you want a word that applies only to your specific concept of God, then you need to make up your own. And even that doesn't guarantee that your new word won't be co-opted at some later point by people who feel it means something else.
Scientists are not in the business of redefining language; they're in the business of keeping it the same to ensure the continuance of knowledge.
Knowledge evolves when it is mis-used by poets and the uneducated (two unrelated groups--I consider myself a "poet" for this sense) because of feel, and when it is changed because it does not express something current.
Einstein should have used a different term, or created something else. "God" used personally allready means something, and if he didn't intend that meaning, he mis-used the word.
Well, I don't know if I'd call it "inexcusable". That's a bit strong. I suppose it might have been clearer if he had said "Mother nature does not play dice" rather than "God does not play dice"
Not really. "God does not play dice..." implies that God is seperate from what he's playing dice with.
I was going to post a follow-up post, but decide against it.
And at any rate... "God" means a distinct, sentient, powerful mind. Could be a group mind of souls. Could be Zeus. Could be Jesus, his poppa, and his momma. It doesn't mean "whatever someone chooses to worship."
A humanistic atheist doesn't use "God" to describe humanity--he just doesn't believe in God. The word has a general meaning, and that meaning (as opposed to the various permutations and interpretations that form religions) should be used without exception.
When Einstein used the word "God", he used it as a methaphor for existence
Then he mis-used it, and should be smacked for doing so.
"God," "Allah," "Bhrama" "Goddess" and a slew of other names are very specific. Mis-using them when one means "godlike" or "existance" is simply inexcusable from an intelligent person engaging in any sort of public dialogue.
*sigh*
Actually, according to asa [mozillazine.org], Mozilla 1.1 has about 1000 less bugs than Mozilla 1.0.1, which is what NS7 is based on.
*blink, blink*
You mean Mozilla 1.1 wasn't based on Mozilla 1.0.1? WOW!
I wonder how they managed to replicate all those years of effort in just a few months. Man, that must be why 1.1 took so long to get released...
(writing this in Mozilla...)
One reason to use N7 instead of Mozilla:
"you want to have a built-in AIM client."
(okay, maybe it's not a good reason...)
The GPL does not "build on" copyright law - it's a license that I can agreed to or not. If I don't agree, copyright is the operative thing, if I do agree, the license if the operative thing!
The GPL, and every other copyleft license, builds upon and requires copyright law to work, and is limited by the scope of copyright law.
If I look at your program, and then I create something that I can defend in court as not being derivtiive, the GPL can't touch me unless I want it to.
IIRC (too lazy to look it up) I accept the GPL by following the GPL. If I were to purposefully not follow the GPL, someone wanting to "force" me to would have to take me to court, and convince the judge that my work was derivitive. (It's likely that we'll settle out of court, unless you or I are a zealot. MS stealing the HURD might be about the only case that couldn't ever settle.)
Hmm... let me put that in shorter terms. "If not for copyright law, the GPL wouldn't have any teeth at all."
Depends on what they did. I can believe that MS stole users. To me that implies that it used force or fraud to induce users to change word processors. As MS has used both techinques in other times and places, I don't see why it's improbable here. Whether or not it's a true accusation... I don't know.
AFAIK, MS got Wordperfect users to switch to Word by taking efforts to make it easy for them to switch--with the ideal being that it would be no hard to switch from Wordperfect to Word than it was to switch to Wordperfect's next version.
They also spent an ungodly sum trying to get Word to read WP's completely different file format, added in "help for wordperfect users", and generally worked about as hard as any Linux advocate.
Microsoft didn't bother trying to play catch-up with the most current WP release--they simply competed directly with it, and (AFAIK) focused on the legacy installs of WP. (Those are the people with money to spend on new software anyway, so it's not like trying to sell someone a copy of Staroffice just after they bought Office XP.)
OO et al (Abiword, KOffice, etc) would do well to take a page from Microsoft's book. Office isn't a monotlithic version, and OO et all have a real chance of targeting people who would are considering upgrades right now.
Sorry about the "theft" word. There isn't a common english word that means "taking efforts to woo the regular customers of someone else" that doesn't have negative connotations.
Buying a HP box would now be a bad choice for a student, as most schools including mine use word exclusively and students are expected to know how to use it.
;)
Office still has "help for Wordperfect users." Students are better off with WP than they are with OO or SO, unless you think that a "MS Office help for cheap Sun communists" add-on is in the works...
People are used to using Office products as the 'standard', so why not give them an alternative that will operate approximately the same.
Word is MS's crown jewel, but Word got where it is today buy stealing users from WP.
Wordperfect is *still* used in the Legal Industry far more than MS office. When I worked at the NYS DEC a few years ago, I didn't have word on my shiney Dell PC--I had wordperfect, and so did everyone else in all of EnCon.
Though it's a mind-boggling hack, Wordperfect and MS Word can and do talk to each other. In fact, having the two of them duke it out might be just the thing that OO needs to get some real work done on it, and get to be a usable beast...
Jesus Christ is a fictional charachter
That may be, but billions of people really do believe in him, and THAT's the important part.
We could argue for a lifetime over who's religion is really True, but that'd waste time better spent on good works and living life; we'll find out who was right when we die.
Feel free to be a Jedi. But, just like the early Christians, early Muslims, and early neo-hippies, don't expect any social support until you're well established.
And the essence of the irony here is - you can't prove (legally) that any OTHER religion ISN'T made up or mythical.
Sure I can. I didn't make up my religion. Maybe soemone several hundred years ago did, but I didn't. And my druid/wiccan friedns didn't make up THEIR religion--maybe some hippie did, but they (my friends) didn't.
That's the difference. "Jedi" isn't a religion because no one goes to a Jedi place of worship every time they need spiritual advice.
Well, exactly. The census readers did say that the survey would affect what was going to get built...
I'd prefer it if, when a government gives money to places of worship, they give it to honest churches with dedicated people, and not the result of some childish prank.
Which candidate had the grassroots support?
Grassroots? Good question. Looks like Bush got more donors, but Gore got bigger donations--which could be Gore going for more rich folks, but it could be Gore getting the support of federations and community groups instead of individuals.
I think I'd like a system where everyone's pre-election "nod" to one canditate was equally important, not one where Bill Gates is worth more than me just because he has money to donate and I don't.
Besides, the only real effect of limiting the money the candidates themselves can spend on a campaign is to multiply the power of the (generally biased) media in determining the effects of the election -- the less you hear the candidate speak for himself, the more Dan's and Tom's and Peter's opinions of the candidate contribute to what you know about them.
;)
In a country where the media bias pretty heavily to the Democratic party, this makes campaign finance `reform' nothing but a free ride for the left...
That would be a bad thing.
We could have regulated time for the campaign. I don't think it's an insufferable limitation of speech to limit the total media time each side's followers get to an equal ammount.
'course, any short-term Democratic slide would probably be kept short-term, and possibly suffer an immedate slide back as Republican dollars that used to go right to the party start going to invest in newspapers. Which would be a nice unintended benefit... imagine the US with a politcally neutral (or "equally biased") meda?
Why CAN'T someone be a Jedi?
Because they're made-up, mythical, and there are no--repeat, NO--Jedi churches. If you want to start one, go ahead... but this census spoofing has been in so many news stories the Aussies would have to be illiterate to believe the "Jedi" were serious--hence, fraud.
There are religious organizations, gatherings, rituals, and publications for people who consider themselves druids or witches. Ancient or not, modern or not, accurate or not, they are real religions in a way that "Jedi" or "worshiper of Mystra" simply aren't.
I have to disagree with this. Your `right' to hear each candidate, like most of your rights, is dependent on your interest in going out and listening to them. It is certainly not of a level that would justify limiting a candidates right to free speech in order to make sure that you don't `hear him more than other candidates'.
Actually, I'd prefer to never hear from any candidate tat I don't seek out, so I could base my opinion on third party analysis and which major party has recently ticked me off.
But the candidates / their "friends" can and do buy media spots and mailings to influence the public. This isn't free speech--it's money in an election.
Ideally, I'd like to have formal and regulated system where each candidate gets an equal time to be heard. Let them say whatever they want, and let me ignore it or pay attention to it as I want--as opposed to the curent system of one-sided nagging by the side with the most money.
And if personal wealth makes such a big difference, why wasn't H. Ross Perot the president for the last eight years?
Because he was a screwball, and the two major parites both had more money to spend than he did. (Oh, and that little bit about dropping out of the race for three months in the heat probably effected it, too.)
If one rich guy wants to spend all his money on running for office, I say great--let's even out the wealth through the system. But when a bunch of rich guys throw their money together to drown out the little guy--well, that bugs me on a why-does-this-computer-take-so-long-to-boot level.
How is that you are supposed to "find" these individuals? Through an act of God. Promoting and expressing your views to people in a meaningful way almost necessarily requires the expenditure of money. To restrict people's ability to use their _own_ money to finance the spreading of political ideas (speech) is a clear violation an individual's fundamental property and free speech rights.
No, it isn't. Why should someone who's rich be "more equal" than I am when it comes to political office?
The government allready provides matching funds to anyone who can rally enough support. What "should" be done is to expand this, so that every candidate gets an equal share of funds. We could even set something up so that voters could note that "I'd like to hear more from this candidate", and some simple math (# of "yes' votes for each canidate = # of shares of the pot) could be used to divy up the election funds.
Let private citizens make donations to this pot as well, if they've got so much money to burn and want to "speak" by doing such.
We don't allow people to simply give money to people who promise to vote a certain way. We shouldn't allow people to simply give money to someone they want elected, either.
The politicians (and lawyers) in a our republic have made it their business to sacrifice people's rights to others in the form of welfare-state laws and other looting, don't you think that people will want to influence that process to avoid getting screwed by the government? The problem is not that people are trying to influence the way that politicians desecrate our individual liberties, but that the government is allowed to take the freedoms away in the first place! There is no moral way for a politician to sacrifice people's rights, no matter weather he accepts bribes or not. Campaign finance reform is just another slide down the slippery slope towards statism.
(did you mean "Satanism" or "stalinism?" I'll assume you meant "destruction of the American way of life" and respond accordingly.)
No one's rights are absolute, and various circumstances and events can cause what are normally given rights to be suspended or superceded by the rights of other people. You normally have the right to your posessions and capital, but if you use them for felonius actions you can lose the right to them. I normally have the right to go wherever I want, but your right to privacy in your own home negates this.
Let me take a stab at defining the two sides of hwo to look at government (I'll endeavor to choose terms that lack prejudice.) On one hand we have the pragmatists, that view government as simply a dollars-and-sense thing, that think in terms of individual rights, and that view equality as "equal abilty to move about unrestrained by government or uncompensated service."
On the other hand, we have the idealists, that view government as a thing that holds the trust of the people more than a fiscal entity; they think in terms of universal rights, and view equality as an "equal opportunity" thing.
Realistically, neither one of these sides is any better than the other when taken to the extreme. "Pragmatists" taken to the extreme are lazzie-faire capitalists, that wind up with monopolies and gross disproportions between the rich and the poor, and a general lack of real advancemnet in any sector of society.
"Idealists" taken to the extreme are communist, that wind up with totally corrupt societies where the only way to get ahead is to break the law, and have a general lack of any real advancement in nay sector of society.
The formula that has proven to work the best is a confrontational system between two sides that favor different ratios of "pragmatism" vs. "idealism." This lets us have a place where we look out for everyone, but we also let people tweak the system to get ahead. There might be a better system around, but we sure as heck haven't found one working anywhere in the world just yet.
The world is a lot more complex than you think it is, and it's hardly a manner of "sacraficing people's rights." The right of you to spend money on whomever you want to win office is tempered by my right to hear every candidate equally and make an informed vote. The right of you to keep your golden parachute is tempered by my right to have a descent chance to survive. The right of me to protest is tempered by your right to live in peace.
It's simply not a matter of sacraficing rights, and it never has been, in the whole of history in any situation you care to name. It's about choosing who's rights and what rights take priority in what circumstance. Currently we in the United States trust the government with that power, because it sure as hell works better than leaving it to indivudal citizens to battle out who's rights take priority in a world without the rule of law.
The dominant political parties are(n't) about freedom.
Well, yeah. I allready said that.
In the big scheme of things, what the Democrats and Republicans don't disagree on are either things that define Americans (following the 1st amendment, freedom of religion inside your home, generally being a superpower, etc.) or things that simply aren't issues (such as GPL'd software.)
Third parites take up issues on either one of these, either making themselves out to be cooks ("Let's be isolationist!") or raising an honest issue and then losing it inisde of four years. ("Let's reform the government!" followed closely by the "Contract with America.")
Say the issue is a grossly overbearing federal government.
Y'know, you just proved the words of my college English teacher. "Setting on the words to describe a problem is nine-tenths of the way to resolve that" or something. No one's in favor of a "grossly overbearing federal government." They just have different opinions of what that is.
The one party, say the Republicrats, will claim to be in favor of it, and the other will be mute. If, however, they get in, you will see, at best, a few small gestures made in the direction of reducing the size of the government (largely in precisely the areas that people in general *DON'T* want it reduced), and then something will come up and the plank is quietly buried.
If the parties acted like this--really, truly acted like this--then the reform party would have won ten years ago.
The two major political parties that we have are ruthlessly efficient in feeling the waters of what America wants, and then adjusting themselves towards that which has the most appeal; that's how they get to elect the president, and how they avoid the fall of their predicessors.
It's hard to say what is Republican and what is Democrat simply because they're so adaptable--Republicans are "right" and Democrats are "Left", and those terms go all the way back to the first inklings of democratic rule in France. The parties have switched a few places over the years, and (like I said earlier) we here in America have had at least one major party completely vanish because it couldn't adapt.
They generally don't ignore issues that people really care about--and they certainly don't take action that the majority of the populace doesn't want done unless they've got a damn good reason for it. If an issue is ignored, then chances are that the people who really care about that issue have no real idea how to play the game.
I don't care about the people, I care about myself and my friends and parents.
So do I. And I realize that the best way to keep YOUR friends and parents from clashing with MY friends and parents is to have a stable nation with a government strong enough to eliminate the need for "village justice."
Except that the person spying on you may also be working for a criminal organisation. It happened several times here in Canada and I'm sure it's still happening.
Of course it does. That's why there are checks on the system.
I want to limit people spying on me to people that I have a reasonable assumption will leave a paper trail about their spying that someone trusted by the community (that'd be "enough people's friends and families" for you) will be able to tell if they're corrupt or clean.
What I don't want is for every private citizen to be able to randomly spy on me. I want it to be a crime, so I know that if I'm being spied upon, either someone can be put to jail for it, or some judge / general somewhere thinks that I'm someone worth looking into.
Oh, and as a group, I trust both judges and generals. The pay's such in both professions that there are bound to be more fanatics than bad apples.