"I'm a biologist. A coder, I put together the G's, the T's, the A's, the P's". (Its actually GTAC C, buddy, C, or GUAC if we are talking RNA).
Another gaff: Measurements show the oxygen all gone, but when they land, they are mysteriously able to breath (I also saw the same plot device on Amazon Women on the Moon, great flick, especially the part with the missing heart). See, the probes they sent, before they mysteriously failed, showed decreasing levels of O2. They scientists just assumed that Mars had no breathable atmosphere as opposed to looking a spectroscopy through a telescope, kinda like how we do it now.
The bug gaffe: there's these bugs right, and only instead of consuming oxygen, they make it. Well, you're kinda on the wrong end of the energy curve there. Where do they get all the energy to split CO2 into O2? I know, they have little fusion reactors in them!
The warbot gaffe: who's bright fucking idea was it to take a terminator warbot on the mission?
The interchangeability of parts gaffe: aforementioned warbot has a nuclear power cell the size of a soda can they, miracles of miracles, just happens to be compatible with a Russian lander from 50 years ago which has ran out of power. There are several other instances of similar parts compability (radios for example).
The artificial gravity gaffe: I guess it works kinda like it did in Armageddon. If we had a way of making artificial gravity, we could build O'Neil colonies and screw the earth and screw mars.
It has come to our attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted work titled the Star Wars Triology (the "Work") in the preparation of a work derived therefrom. My client has reserved all rights in the Work, first published in 1979, and have registered copyright therein. Your work entitled Lego Star Wars is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis. Example of therein is the use of the Death Star (tm) and the explosion of said Death Star in the movie Star Wars, published 1979, and your work, published in 2000.
As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for Lego Star Wars nor to make or distribute copies of same, we believe you have willfully infringed our client's rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $100,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.
My client demands that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies of same, that you deliver to me all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If we have not received an affirmative response from you by December 1st, 2000 indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, we shall take further action against you.
Very truly yours,
Sam Litigand, LLC.
Litigand and Partners.
(It doesn't mean that the votes were cast as intended, which (AFAIK) is a perfectly valid reason to challenge for a new election.
Well, you're so wrong its almost humorous. If a voter punches in two presidential candidates as his or her selection, the vote is invalid and is discarded. The ballots used were designed by a Democrat. The ballots had been sent out weeks before. There was ample time to review the ballot format, and procedures were in place to modify it if it had been requested. Election officers are in place at voting locations to assist people. If you screw up on your vote after all this, its your own damn fault for being stupid.
As for the numbers, 19,000 invalid ballots in one county, there were 15,000 last Presidential election with much lower turnout. Kind of interesting that the Democrats weren't alleging widespread voter fraud and Jesse Jackson wasn't asking for a Federal inquirery 4 years ago.
This is, quite simply, nothing more than the Democrats crying because it was so close and they don't like the results.
And no, I'm not a Republican, but the duplicitousness of the Gore and the Democrats is disgusting. It should tell you something that both Arkansas and Tennessee went for Bush.
For all the handwringing you get from Hollywood over liberal guilt and bandwagoning for the democrats, you sure do have a bunch of greedy bastards running the place, and Lucas is tops on the list.
For example, several Spanish galleons chockful of gold were recently found off the Florida coast by a treasure hunter. The US Government stepped in and said they can't salvage the ship. Governments and their heirs retain rights to warships unless they expressly give up those rights.
Well, Tim. It hurts my heart to see so many minorities put in jail by a unequal judicial system. As many of you know, I've admitted to using marijauna before, and true, I've voted for every major drug crime bill when I was, but that doesn't make my a hypocrit. Because I truly believe that we as a people need to send the right message to the lowly masses that drug use is bad. If we judge the war on drugs on that basis, then I think we have to assume that it is in fact an unqualified success. The most recent polls in fact, state that 53% of all Americans think drugs are bad.
2) Minority Religions...by Electric Angst
Well, Electric, I'm definately pro-special legislation to protect the special nature of these religions against persecution. I don't think many of you know that, while I was doing back breaking work on my dad's farm in Tennesse, I had a friend who was a bitch. I mean a witch. I mean a wiccan. She was also who I smoked pot with.
3) Why give a tax cut? by funkman
Why indeed? We need to have more taxes, especially on gasoline. As you know, I wrote in my book that the internal combustion engine is the single greatest threat to the world. Not only that, but people just aren't responsible with their money. Think of the great social programs we can enact with more tax money.
6) Encryption....by SquadBoy
Not many people know this, but when I'm hacking my Debian Kernal, I like to encrypt it. That way, Bill can't look at my porn.
The War on Drugs has been a consistently neglected topic in discussions surrounding this federal election. My question is, do you believe the War on Drugs has been an unqualified success, and if not, what would you change about it if elected president?
Now Tom, we all know that drugs are a very serious issue confronting our families today. Contrary to what my opponent says, I am not in the pocket of the big drug companies. I am not declaring war on grandma. I'm all for better healthcare and cheaper drugs. Thank you for your question.
2) Minority Religions...by Electric Angst
What will you do to protect the rights of atheists and those who hold minority faiths, such as Wicca, Santaria, Shinto, et al?
Santa what? My solution for atheists is to put a rifle in their hands and send them to Vietnam. As my papa's buddy Colin (you might know him from Desert Storm) used to say, there ain't no atheists in foxholes.
3) Why give a tax cut? by funkman
Well, Mr. Funk, I think its a crime that the average American citizen works an average of 87 days a year just to pay his taxes. So with that in mind, I'm proposing to cut the taxes off of the top 1% of the wage earners, because heck, they work the hardest. Why punish productivity?
4) electoral reform by carleton
Some people, especially those that favor '3-rd' party candidates, have called for the ending of the electoral college system to be replaced by a simple purely popular vote, or at least allowing for splitting the electoral votes by each state. The best recent example was the Bush-Clinton election. Clinton received 43% of the popular vote (but a sufficient majority of the electoral vote), whereas Perot got at least 10% of the popular vote but zero electoral votes. If memory serves, Vermont is the only state which does currently allow for its votes to be split; if someone wins 60% of the Vermont popular vote, they get 2 votes and the 40% candidate gets 1. This in contrast to California, where someone can get 51% of the popular vote, and therefore gets 53 (or whatever it is nowadays) electoral votes. What is your position on this issue?
I'm against it Larry. I'm not sure why, I just am.
8) Asteroid Defenses by Ethelred Unraed
I know when my asteroids flare up, its a serious situation. Unlike my candidate, I support further research into treatment of this painful malady.
When water evaporates, it just becomes water vapour, which will eventually become liquid again, etc. It doesn't generally have a chance of escaping a planet's gravity well.
Sure it does. Gas molecules collide with each other all the the time. Sometimes these collisions are energetic enough that the molecules are accelerated past escape velocity and they manage to escape the atmosphere.
I wonder if we'll soon be seeing lots of angry press-releases from Redmond, claiming that (insert your favourite open-source project here) has 'obviously' used code 'stolen' from Microsoft?
See, its not so simple for Microsoft to CLAIM that your favorite open source project has 'obviously' used code 'stolen' from Microsoft. Rather, they have to PROVE it. In Court. Where Exhibit A becomes Microsoft's source code, and Exhibit B becomes OSP Source code. IE, a matter of public record. I'm pretty sure Microsoft wants this one to quietly go away.
The Texas kind. Baseball and softball sized. In 1994, there was an incident I call the Mayfest massacre in Fort Worth. Mayfest is an open air fair they have every May (go figure) near the Trinity River. Well, one day in May, the weather turned ugly, and a REALLY BAD hailstorm hit. 4 people were critical injured by hailstones. Millions of dollars worth of damage to roofs and cars. My mother's Izuzu Rodeo looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. All the windows were knocked out and there were large dents on the roof and hood.
Flash forward to March of 2000 when the tornado hit downtown Fort Worth, and one of the people killed was actually killed by hailstones.
Needless to say, solar cells on rooftops wouldn't be the best idea here.
Ah, give me a fucking break. Carter killed funding to almost every alternative energy source as well, and this was AFTER the oil embargo crisis. It doesn't take a Republican to fuck things up, Demo's are just as good at it.
Claiming that the Republicans slowed down the technological development for at least 10 years is bullshit.
Traditionally, low voter turnout tends to benefit Republicans. Why? Because the Republican constituency tends to be very responsible about voting.
The Republican party is essentially composed of two primary segments, the religious right, and the fiscal conservatives. The Democrats, in comparison, are a hodgepodge of interest groups. The potential base for Democrats is larger, but its a lot harder to bring them together than it is for the Republicans. Typically, when they speak of low voter turnout, the mean young students, blacks and other minorities. People who, as a demographic, tend to vote democrat.
Red posing as a green writes: So what's wrong with this? You don't think there might be a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in for a century?
I think there is probably a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in, I just don't think that the better alternative is us abandoning technology and relegating ourselves to a life of agrarian poverty (mind you, without the use of pesticides or fertilizers...products of an industrial society) experienced by much of the third world, which is what the outcome would be if red/green knee jerk liberals such as yourself had the opportunity. Personally, I think electrical power is a great invention, so fuck you if you disagree. Thats why I'm a member of the NRA.
Red posing as a green writes: And I think zero population growth would be great
Zero population growth is great! With the help of HIV, pandemics of malaria (made possible by the banning of that bad, bad chemical DDT), cholera, dysentera, and antibiotic resistant tuberculosis, we may get to see zero pop g in our life time.
I went to a private school for 5 years (6th-10th grade) and public school the rest of the time.
Private schools have lots of things going for them that skews the debate unfairly.
1) In general, instruction is better at private school. Not because the teachers get paid more, because they don't (they actually make less than their public school counterparts on average), but because in general the kids are better behaved and this is more likely to attract teachers dedicated to teaching and not getting a paycheck and 3 months off a year.
2) Private schools are selective, public schools have to take you. When you are only taking applicants that score over the 80% on standardized tests, it makes you look a lot better than if you have to teach Joe Retard.
3) Private schools are smaller, and private school classrooms are smaller than public school counterparts. Its easy to be a demographic anamoly when your sample size is 200 individuals K-12 as opposed to 1400 individuals 10-12th grade.
4) Athletic programs aren't quite as important at private schools.
Any and all of these situations are correctible in the public school sector, but they won't be. The powers that be in school districts won't let them be.
How do otherwise smart people get sucked in by a creature like W? I don't understand it.
Simple. Fear of Gore. Its pretty much certain that Gore is a crook, and all it would've taken was Janet Reno appointing a special prosecutor like Freeh recommended. We've had to live with 8 years of Clinton and Gore pandering to fill up the DNC coffers. I don't want to have to live through 4 more years.
Of course, then we come to legacy. Clinton wanted comprehensive health care, and peace keeping missions to be his legacy. Noble enough. There's a very real fear that Gore wants his legacy to be the draconian elimination of pollution at the expense of a modern industrial society, and zero pop g to be his legacy.
Ironically, the money contributed mostly by big business is used to scum votes from the most impressionable Americans who are in no position to benefit from those business interests.
Thats not true at all! Every time you pop a top off that fresh brewed brewski, just say to yourself, "this bud's for you, and god bless America."
Seriously, as consumers, typically we benefit when businesses (even big business) also benefit. As stockholders (as most middle class people are these days) we also benefit when publicly owned companies benefit.
Get rid of 90% of the lawyers and 90% of our problems will disappear.
One wonders if Katz bothers to proof-read or validate his little essays. He reads like some freshman lit critical writing paper.
Although the term "Luddite" gets kicked around a lot, few people understand who the first Luddites really were.
Its pretty clear Katz isn't one of those people.
Contemporary Luddites are fighting technology to keep power rather than livelihood, though they have as much chance of succeeding as their predecessors did.
Please note, Katz's so called neo-Luddites aren't by any stretch of the imagination. The real Luddites are the people that break into scientific labs and release all the animals (even if the research is say something like a cure for a certain type of cancer), trample and pull out experimental plants, picket nuke power plants as being unsafe (compared to what? the smog generated by coal plants?) and physically try to thwart their construction (rather than by legislation, et al). Luddites don't work through legislation like Katz's so called Luddites, they work by terror and violence. They destroy other people's life works because of their own fear. There's very little difference between the Luddites, neo-Luddites, and the Inquisitors of the Catholic church. They want to bury your head in the sand, or bury you in the sand if you resist.
Apparently Katz considers anyone that disagrees with him as a Luddite. Don't like 5 year olds being able to get to p0rn unsupervised on the Internet: you are a Luddite! Information wants to be free. You're a corporation and want to maintain control, gasp, you are a Luddite.
Slashdot needs to get a grip and get rid of Katz. The only purpose he seem to has is to stir up the pot. Which isn't bad, they just need someone that doesn't have their head stuck up their ass.
Re:Free Software = Pompous Bores, discuss
on
Men of Zeal
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· Score: 1
Nice bit of rhetoric. Get a dig in at Microsoft while totally skirting the issue the previous poster brought up. He wasn't claiming Microsoft was more innovative than free software, just claiming that free software isn't innovative, and so far has only duplicated commercial apps and has shown very little innovation. But hey, ignore that, and dig Microsoft at your leisure.
A few points:
Just because you can freely copy something doesn't mean you should.
Just because you have to pay for something doesn't necessarily mean its bad.
From what I've been able to observe, the business model of free software revolves around service (ala Redhat and others), while the business model of conventional commercial software revolves around product. Linux has proven that commercial products don't necessarily produce a better product but its a little early in the game to predict and gloat over the demise of the commercial model. No matter what, altruism and geek innovation only carries things so far.
Some things you may actually have to pay for. Despite my anti-corporate tendencies and sympathies for the free software movement (even though I'm a techno-whore consultant), I think this insistence on ideological purity is a bit misguided.
Jonas Oberg writes:
If freedom is of the most importance -- and it should be at all times -- the choice is always quite clear.
This, quite simply, bullshit. At least in the context of his post/essay. He doesn't mean freedom, as in freedom of choice, he means freedom as $0.00 and no repurcussions to modify/change/stamp your name on it and claim it for your own. He's actually arguing about restricting your freedom. Every once in a while, a vendor makes a product (and they want to be compensated for that product, and glowing peer review doesn't pay corporation's payroll expenses) and every once in a while its a product you either need or want. This guy suggests the honorable ideological response, that is, not to use it at all (rather than pirating it), but its still not very bright. It reminds me of a guy I took a foreign relations class with that kept insisting we needed to "do something" about Tibet. Sanctions? China just trades with someone else. The French, British, Germans, Japanese haven no problem with it. Invade? More people die than are already dying. Dialogue? It's what we are doing now. Its really all we can do. The situation, as unsavorable as it is, is something you have to deal with. Kinda like sometimes having to buy commercial software because a comparable free product isn't available and you don't have the time/money to develop it yourself.
I mean, I'd love to have my food and housing and transportation provided to me for free, and I'd churn out the code I really want to churn out (world creation simulations and games, of course) but reality is I have to pay my food, and housing, and transportation costs, so I charge money to write code I don't want to write. If a company writes software as its primary product, is it so unreasonable for a company to expect to get compensated when you use that product? Does it really make sense for you not to use that product because its not free, its source code isn't available? Even if its useful? Even if no competing product is as good? Even if you need to?
There are lots of cases where free software is superior to commercial software. There are also lots of cases where the reverse is true. You should use the one thats best for you or the company you work for, and not be constrained by some idealogue's idea of purity for the cause.
Slashdot Mirror
Right! So the whiny Bush child should pack it in, then, eh?
Huh? At last count, Bush was leading in Florida. Maybe the whiny gore child should pack it in.
From Tom Sizemore's character:
"I'm a biologist. A coder, I put together the G's, the T's, the A's, the P's". (Its actually GTAC C, buddy, C, or GUAC if we are talking RNA).
Another gaff: Measurements show the oxygen all gone, but when they land, they are mysteriously able to breath (I also saw the same plot device on Amazon Women on the Moon, great flick, especially the part with the missing heart). See, the probes they sent, before they mysteriously failed, showed decreasing levels of O2. They scientists just assumed that Mars had no breathable atmosphere as opposed to looking a spectroscopy through a telescope, kinda like how we do it now.
The bug gaffe: there's these bugs right, and only instead of consuming oxygen, they make it. Well, you're kinda on the wrong end of the energy curve there. Where do they get all the energy to split CO2 into O2? I know, they have little fusion reactors in them!
The warbot gaffe: who's bright fucking idea was it to take a terminator warbot on the mission?
The interchangeability of parts gaffe: aforementioned warbot has a nuclear power cell the size of a soda can they, miracles of miracles, just happens to be compatible with a Russian lander from 50 years ago which has ran out of power. There are several other instances of similar parts compability (radios for example).
The artificial gravity gaffe: I guess it works kinda like it did in Armageddon. If we had a way of making artificial gravity, we could build O'Neil colonies and screw the earth and screw mars.
Dear Mr. Tanukikoji,
It has come to our attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted work titled the Star Wars Triology (the "Work") in the preparation of a work derived therefrom. My client has reserved all rights in the Work, first published in 1979, and have registered copyright therein. Your work entitled Lego Star Wars is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis. Example of therein is the use of the Death Star (tm) and the explosion of said Death Star in the movie Star Wars, published 1979, and your work, published in 2000.
As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for Lego Star Wars nor to make or distribute copies of same, we believe you have willfully infringed our client's rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $100,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.
My client demands that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies of same, that you deliver to me all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If we have not received an affirmative response from you by December 1st, 2000 indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, we shall take further action against you.
Very truly yours,
Sam Litigand, LLC.
Litigand and Partners.
(It doesn't mean that the votes were cast as intended, which (AFAIK) is a perfectly valid reason to challenge for a new election.
Well, you're so wrong its almost humorous. If a voter punches in two presidential candidates as his or her selection, the vote is invalid and is discarded. The ballots used were designed by a Democrat. The ballots had been sent out weeks before. There was ample time to review the ballot format, and procedures were in place to modify it if it had been requested. Election officers are in place at voting locations to assist people. If you screw up on your vote after all this, its your own damn fault for being stupid.
As for the numbers, 19,000 invalid ballots in one county, there were 15,000 last Presidential election with much lower turnout. Kind of interesting that the Democrats weren't alleging widespread voter fraud and Jesse Jackson wasn't asking for a Federal inquirery 4 years ago.
This is, quite simply, nothing more than the Democrats crying because it was so close and they don't like the results.
And no, I'm not a Republican, but the duplicitousness of the Gore and the Democrats is disgusting. It should tell you something that both Arkansas and Tennessee went for Bush.
For all the handwringing you get from Hollywood over liberal guilt and bandwagoning for the democrats, you sure do have a bunch of greedy bastards running the place, and Lucas is tops on the list.
For example, several Spanish galleons chockful of gold were recently found off the Florida coast by a treasure hunter. The US Government stepped in and said they can't salvage the ship. Governments and their heirs retain rights to warships unless they expressly give up those rights.
To steal a phrase, a million here, a million there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money.
I also posted an Al Gore satire as well. I actually prefer Bush over Gore, since I'm in the top 5% tax bracket.
1) War on Drugs by Tim Doran.
Well, Tim. It hurts my heart to see so many minorities put in jail by a unequal judicial system. As many of you know, I've admitted to using marijauna before, and true, I've voted for every major drug crime bill when I was, but that doesn't make my a hypocrit. Because I truly believe that we as a people need to send the right message to the lowly masses that drug use is bad. If we judge the war on drugs on that basis, then I think we have to assume that it is in fact an unqualified success. The most recent polls in fact, state that 53% of all Americans think drugs are bad.
2) Minority Religions...by Electric Angst
Well, Electric, I'm definately pro-special legislation to protect the special nature of these religions against persecution. I don't think many of you know that, while I was doing back breaking work on my dad's farm in Tennesse, I had a friend who was a bitch. I mean a witch. I mean a wiccan. She was also who I smoked pot with.
3) Why give a tax cut? by funkman
Why indeed? We need to have more taxes, especially on gasoline. As you know, I wrote in my book that the internal combustion engine is the single greatest threat to the world. Not only that, but people just aren't responsible with their money. Think of the great social programs we can enact with more tax money.
6) Encryption....by SquadBoy
Not many people know this, but when I'm hacking my Debian Kernal, I like to encrypt it. That way, Bill can't look at my porn.
1) War on Drugs by Tim Doran
The War on Drugs has been a consistently neglected topic in discussions surrounding this federal election. My question is, do you believe the War on Drugs has been an unqualified success, and if not, what would you change about it if elected president?
Now Tom, we all know that drugs are a very serious issue confronting our families today. Contrary to what my opponent says, I am not in the pocket of the big drug companies. I am not declaring war on grandma. I'm all for better healthcare and cheaper drugs. Thank you for your question.
2) Minority Religions...by Electric Angst
What will you do to protect the rights of atheists and those who hold minority faiths, such as Wicca, Santaria, Shinto, et al?
Santa what? My solution for atheists is to put a rifle in their hands and send them to Vietnam. As my papa's buddy Colin (you might know him from Desert Storm) used to say, there ain't no atheists in foxholes.
3) Why give a tax cut? by funkman
Well, Mr. Funk, I think its a crime that the average American citizen works an average of 87 days a year just to pay his taxes. So with that in mind, I'm proposing to cut the taxes off of the top 1% of the wage earners, because heck, they work the hardest. Why punish productivity?
4) electoral reform by carleton
Some people, especially those that favor '3-rd' party candidates, have called for the ending of the electoral college system to be replaced by a simple purely popular vote, or at least allowing for splitting the electoral votes by each state. The best recent example was the Bush-Clinton election. Clinton received 43% of the popular vote (but a sufficient majority of the electoral vote), whereas Perot got at least 10% of the popular vote but zero electoral votes. If memory serves, Vermont is the only state which does currently allow for its votes to be split; if someone wins 60% of the Vermont popular vote, they get 2 votes and the 40% candidate gets 1. This in contrast to California, where someone can get 51% of the popular vote, and therefore gets 53 (or whatever it is nowadays) electoral votes. What is your position on this issue?
I'm against it Larry. I'm not sure why, I just am.
8) Asteroid Defenses by Ethelred Unraed
I know when my asteroids flare up, its a serious situation. Unlike my candidate, I support further research into treatment of this painful malady.
When water evaporates, it just becomes water vapour, which will eventually become liquid again, etc. It doesn't generally have a chance of escaping a planet's gravity well.
Sure it does. Gas molecules collide with each other all the the time. Sometimes these collisions are energetic enough that the molecules are accelerated past escape velocity and they manage to escape the atmosphere.
I wonder if we'll soon be seeing lots of angry press-releases from Redmond, claiming that (insert your favourite open-source project here) has 'obviously' used code 'stolen' from Microsoft?
See, its not so simple for Microsoft to CLAIM that your favorite open source project has 'obviously' used code 'stolen' from Microsoft. Rather, they have to PROVE it. In Court. Where Exhibit A becomes Microsoft's source code, and Exhibit B becomes OSP Source code. IE, a matter of public record. I'm pretty sure Microsoft wants this one to quietly go away.
The Texas kind. Baseball and softball sized. In 1994, there was an incident I call the Mayfest massacre in Fort Worth. Mayfest is an open air fair they have every May (go figure) near the Trinity River. Well, one day in May, the weather turned ugly, and a REALLY BAD hailstorm hit. 4 people were critical injured by hailstones. Millions of dollars worth of damage to roofs and cars. My mother's Izuzu Rodeo looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. All the windows were knocked out and there were large dents on the roof and hood.
Flash forward to March of 2000 when the tornado hit downtown Fort Worth, and one of the people killed was actually killed by hailstones.
Needless to say, solar cells on rooftops wouldn't be the best idea here.
Because once a nice little hail storm hits your house, all of a sudden you're replacing a $200,000 roof instead of a $10,000 roof.
Ah, give me a fucking break. Carter killed funding to almost every alternative energy source as well, and this was AFTER the oil embargo crisis. It doesn't take a Republican to fuck things up, Demo's are just as good at it.
Claiming that the Republicans slowed down the technological development for at least 10 years is bullshit.
Thats not particularly true.
Traditionally, low voter turnout tends to benefit Republicans. Why? Because the Republican constituency tends to be very responsible about voting.
The Republican party is essentially composed of two primary segments, the religious right, and the fiscal conservatives. The Democrats, in comparison, are a hodgepodge of interest groups. The potential base for Democrats is larger, but its a lot harder to bring them together than it is for the Republicans. Typically, when they speak of low voter turnout, the mean young students, blacks and other minorities. People who, as a demographic, tend to vote democrat.
Red posing as a green writes:
So what's wrong with this? You don't think there might be a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in for a century?
I think there is probably a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in, I just don't think that the better alternative is us abandoning technology and relegating ourselves to a life of agrarian poverty (mind you, without the use of pesticides or fertilizers...products of an industrial society) experienced by much of the third world, which is what the outcome would be if red/green knee jerk liberals such as yourself had the opportunity. Personally, I think electrical power is a great invention, so fuck you if you disagree. Thats why I'm a member of the NRA.
Red posing as a green writes:
And I think zero population growth would be great
Zero population growth is great! With the help of HIV, pandemics of malaria (made possible by the banning of that bad, bad chemical DDT), cholera, dysentera, and antibiotic resistant tuberculosis, we may get to see zero pop g in our life time.
damn typos. My bad. Clinton, Democrat.
I went to a private school for 5 years (6th-10th grade) and public school the rest of the time.
Private schools have lots of things going for them that skews the debate unfairly.
1) In general, instruction is better at private school. Not because the teachers get paid more, because they don't (they actually make less than their public school counterparts on average), but because in general the kids are better behaved and this is more likely to attract teachers dedicated to teaching and not getting a paycheck and 3 months off a year.
2) Private schools are selective, public schools have to take you. When you are only taking applicants that score over the 80% on standardized tests, it makes you look a lot better than if you have to teach Joe Retard.
3) Private schools are smaller, and private school classrooms are smaller than public school counterparts. Its easy to be a demographic anamoly when your sample size is 200 individuals K-12 as opposed to 1400 individuals 10-12th grade.
4) Athletic programs aren't quite as important at private schools.
Any and all of these situations are correctible in the public school sector, but they won't be. The powers that be in school districts won't let them be.
How do otherwise smart people get sucked in by a creature like W? I don't understand it.
Simple. Fear of Gore. Its pretty much certain that Gore is a crook, and all it would've taken was Janet Reno appointing a special prosecutor like Freeh recommended. We've had to live with 8 years of Clinton and Gore pandering to fill up the DNC coffers. I don't want to have to live through 4 more years.
Of course, then we come to legacy. Clinton wanted comprehensive health care, and peace keeping missions to be his legacy. Noble enough. There's a very real fear that Gore wants his legacy to be the draconian elimination of pollution at the expense of a modern industrial society, and zero pop g to be his legacy.
Ironically, the money contributed mostly by big business is used to scum votes from the most impressionable Americans who are in no position to benefit from those business interests.
Thats not true at all! Every time you pop a top off that fresh brewed brewski, just say to yourself, "this bud's for you, and god bless America."
Seriously, as consumers, typically we benefit when businesses (even big business) also benefit. As stockholders (as most middle class people are these days) we also benefit when publicly owned companies benefit.
Get rid of 90% of the lawyers and 90% of our problems will disappear.
Well, if I remember from my economics class correctly, recessions are cyclical and normal patterns of behavior of the market.
The New Deal, btw, was pretty much failing. It was WWII that bailed us out of the depression.
But, while we're on what happened under the dems or the repubs, answer me this: how many wars have been conducted in the 20th century by Dems or Reps?
Off hand: WWI: Woodrow Wilson, democrat WWII: FDR, democrat Korea: Truman, democrat Vietnam: Kennedy/Johnson, democrat Gulf War: Bush, republican Bosnia/Kosovo: Clinton, republican
One wonders if Katz bothers to proof-read or validate his little essays. He reads like some freshman lit critical writing paper.
Although the term "Luddite" gets kicked around a lot, few people understand who the first Luddites really were.
Its pretty clear Katz isn't one of those people.
Contemporary Luddites are fighting technology to keep power rather than livelihood, though they have as much chance of succeeding as their predecessors did.
Please note, Katz's so called neo-Luddites aren't by any stretch of the imagination. The real Luddites are the people that break into scientific labs and release all the animals (even if the research is say something like a cure for a certain type of cancer), trample and pull out experimental plants, picket nuke power plants as being unsafe (compared to what? the smog generated by coal plants?) and physically try to thwart their construction (rather than by legislation, et al). Luddites don't work through legislation like Katz's so called Luddites, they work by terror and violence. They destroy other people's life works because of their own fear. There's very little difference between the Luddites, neo-Luddites, and the Inquisitors of the Catholic church. They want to bury your head in the sand, or bury you in the sand if you resist.
Apparently Katz considers anyone that disagrees with him as a Luddite. Don't like 5 year olds being able to get to p0rn unsupervised on the Internet: you are a Luddite! Information wants to be free. You're a corporation and want to maintain control, gasp, you are a Luddite.
Slashdot needs to get a grip and get rid of Katz. The only purpose he seem to has is to stir up the pot. Which isn't bad, they just need someone that doesn't have their head stuck up their ass.
Nice bit of rhetoric. Get a dig in at Microsoft while totally skirting the issue the previous poster brought up. He wasn't claiming Microsoft was more innovative than free software, just claiming that free software isn't innovative, and so far has only duplicated commercial apps and has shown very little innovation. But hey, ignore that, and dig Microsoft at your leisure.
A few points:
Just because you can freely copy something doesn't mean you should.
Just because you have to pay for something doesn't necessarily mean its bad.
From what I've been able to observe, the business model of free software revolves around service (ala Redhat and others), while the business model of conventional commercial software revolves around product. Linux has proven that commercial products don't necessarily produce a better product but its a little early in the game to predict and gloat over the demise of the commercial model. No matter what, altruism and geek innovation only carries things so far.
Some things you may actually have to pay for. Despite my anti-corporate tendencies and sympathies for the free software movement (even though I'm a techno-whore consultant), I think this insistence on ideological purity is a bit misguided.
Jonas Oberg writes: If freedom is of the most importance -- and it should be at all times -- the choice is always quite clear.
This, quite simply, bullshit. At least in the context of his post/essay. He doesn't mean freedom, as in freedom of choice, he means freedom as $0.00 and no repurcussions to modify/change/stamp your name on it and claim it for your own. He's actually arguing about restricting your freedom. Every once in a while, a vendor makes a product (and they want to be compensated for that product, and glowing peer review doesn't pay corporation's payroll expenses) and every once in a while its a product you either need or want. This guy suggests the honorable ideological response, that is, not to use it at all (rather than pirating it), but its still not very bright. It reminds me of a guy I took a foreign relations class with that kept insisting we needed to "do something" about Tibet. Sanctions? China just trades with someone else. The French, British, Germans, Japanese haven no problem with it. Invade? More people die than are already dying. Dialogue? It's what we are doing now. Its really all we can do. The situation, as unsavorable as it is, is something you have to deal with. Kinda like sometimes having to buy commercial software because a comparable free product isn't available and you don't have the time/money to develop it yourself.
I mean, I'd love to have my food and housing and transportation provided to me for free, and I'd churn out the code I really want to churn out (world creation simulations and games, of course) but reality is I have to pay my food, and housing, and transportation costs, so I charge money to write code I don't want to write. If a company writes software as its primary product, is it so unreasonable for a company to expect to get compensated when you use that product? Does it really make sense for you not to use that product because its not free, its source code isn't available? Even if its useful? Even if no competing product is as good? Even if you need to?
There are lots of cases where free software is superior to commercial software. There are also lots of cases where the reverse is true. You should use the one thats best for you or the company you work for, and not be constrained by some idealogue's idea of purity for the cause.