Re:See what happens when you rely on NT
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Microsoft Cracked
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· Score: 1
Huh? What are you TALKING about? If a user on a unix box received an email virus/trojan and ran it, it would NOT offer up the entire system to an attacker. It ONLY affects that person's sh*t, not the system itself. Only an IDIOT would, AS ROOT, chmod the software so that it would be system run-able and affect the whole system.
ANY useful unix admin would NEVER do this. The only people possibly screwed would be individual users. THEIR files would be in jeopardy, not any other file on the SYSTEM that belongs to daemons or root would be affected (or any files to which the user has write access as part of another group).
Yeah? OK. Where do you live? I will come to your house and make you drink some water from a stream nearby. You WILL drink it, I will make you drink it. You will NOT die like the fish in it because it is obviously a fantasy and mere scare tactics. I am also going to make you sit in a garage and breath car exhaust, not long enough to kill you, just long enough to dick up your lungs for the rest of your life. You WILL do it because I am going to make you fit your words to your behavior. It is all fantasy, afterall.
Hey bozo, the guv'mnt IS the people. Who do you think makes up the government? Aliens? They are your neighbors, friends, poor working stiffs. Just. Like. You.
You are demonizing your neighbors. You are dehumanizing the HUMANS, FELLOW CITIZENS, MOMS, DADS, SONS, DAUGHTERS who make up the government. The government you revile as "evil" is not. It is people like you, people like me, people like the guy in the restaurant with his girlfriend laughing over a stupid joke. Real monsters.
People like YOU are the monster. People like YOU are evil. You cheer when someone blows up "the guv'mnt" (or you plant the bombs yourself) when in fact, what is being murdered are fellow citizens, people, humans, good people, silly people, smart people, happy people, sad people, etc. PEOPLE. Not robots. Not monsters. American people with all the same concerns, loves, hates, feelings as other humans (you lack these things).
You FEELINGS about Gore and Bush are irrelevant in the outcome of the election. Your INTENT in voting Nader is irrelevant in the outcome of the election. The reason that voting for Nader in a swing state is the same thing as voting FOR Bush is because your state will most assuredly NOT give its electoral votes to Nader. He will not get any electoral votes from ANY state. By voting for Nader rather than Gore, who is closer to many of Nader views by a long shot, than Bush is you are effectively voting FOR Bush. The MOST likely vote from you (collectively as Nader supporters, not individuallY) in the absense of Nader and/or the Greens would be to vote Gore (those who would simply not vote would not likely be that significant). Your protest vote FOR Nader is EFFECTIVELY the same thing as a vote FOR Bush because the electoral votes will go to Bush rather than Gore.
Again, I assure you, there will not be a single electoral vote given to Nader, Buchannon, Browne, or the guy from the Natural Law party. Not a one.
EFFECTIVELY, your moral crusade in voting for Nader will NOT put him in the whitehouse. It WILL put Bush in the whiteshouse. It is fact. It is logic. It is reality. That is why a vote for Nader (in a swing state) IS the same as a vote for Bush. It is the ultimate outcome of the election that we are talking about, not your personal moral qualms, feelings, etc. They are irrelevant to the factual outcome of the election.
I am a Democrat and Gore supporter in a horrifically, monstrously Republican state...Utah. I would be quite happy to vote for Nader in November if a Nader supporter in Oregon or Washington is willing to vote for Gore, to help keep either of these swing states from giving their electoral votes to Bush (which is precisely what will happen if you vote Nader...you will NOT elect Nader but you will give your state's electoral votes to Bush).
I am sympathetic to the Greens wanting to get federal support in future elections and so I would like to see Nader get 5% of the vote for this purpose. I do NOT want to see this happen if it means Bush wins the election, however. Thus, you, the Nader/Green can get your 5% and federal support AND we can both avoid seeing Bush take the Whitehouse.
Voting for Gore in Utah is a wasted vote because this state is a Republican dictatorship. I would be spitting into the wind. I would happily give Nader my vote IF a Washington or Oregon resident will trade votes...YOU vote for Gore in my stead in a state where the vote COUNTS and I will vote for Nader in a state where is ultimately doesn't matter except in trying to get Nader and the Greens 5% of the vote. You win, I win, we all win.
Any trustworthy, logical, strategic thinkers in Washington and Oregon willing to do what's good for the country and for our personal votes?
In Bush's case, the inability to speak MIRRORS his basic, innate stupidity. He practically flunked out of college...because he's an idiot.
If you look at him, you will also see that there is no room for a fully functional human brain in that head of his. His eyeballs actually touch in the middle, they are sooo close together.
Wrong boyo. If Nader were not in the race, a lot of the Nader supporters would be GORE supporters. Why? A lot of the Nader vote is VERY green/environmental. The Republican party is VERY ANTI-environment (particularly if it means that some rich guy somewhere will be denied the ability to make MORE short-term money by cutting down trees, polluting water, wiping species off the face of the earth).
The Democratic party is a HELL of a lot environmental-friendly than the despoilers of the Republican party (a hidden planks in their platform is "the only good wildlife is DEAD AND GONE WILDLIFE" and "the only good space is OVER-DEVELOPED space"). It is simple really. A certain percentage of Nader voters would simply not vote if Nader weren't around, so they have no effect on the outcome anyway. Another sizeable percentage would go Democratic since that party is the only one of the two major parties with any chance in hell of winning the Presidency that even remotely squares with their environmental agenda.
On another note, I can assure you that the US public is conservative enough that it would NOT vote for an unmarried man and it would not vote to put a green in the Whitehouse. Some day, maybe, but in the present and near future? No. Way.
OF COURSE YOU SHOULD VOTE! ALL you get by NOT voting is the loss of the right to complain about what your political leaders are doing. You are NOT sending them a message by not voting. They only hear what the actual voters "tell them".
What does this mean? Well guess who votes in every damn election, like clockwork? One of the largest blocks are right-wing Christians. Even though they are a minority of the population, because they vote, and in large numbers, politicians get elected by them and only hear them. They don't give a damn about non-voters. You were silent, which simply means that by your silence you are OK with them and what they do.
If you want to have the right to complain or to be actually heard, you have to vote. It DOES matter who gets elected. It DOES affect your every day life. All the laws that get passed, the judges that get appointed ALL affects your life directly and indirectly. Your silence is NOT useful and does nothing but give them (politicians) license to do what the few VOTERS want them to do -- afterall, it was ONLY those who voted who put them in office and it is ONLY them who will re-elect them.
It should be illegal to NOT vote. If you want to make ANY use of ANY government service, be it student loans, wellfare, interstate highways, the federal airway system, etc, you should be required to vote.
NOT voting is merely lazy and stupid. It is a do-nothing activity that is justified by unjustifiable excuses. Only idiots and fools do not vote. You DO give up ALL right to get upset with ANY law passed when you don't make your voice heard.
I live in Utah, the most Republican state in the country. The Mormon citizens here are Republican practically by religious decree and they ALL have the same, robotic political viewpoint. Nevertheless, I vote in every election. I can't affect the presidency, it is a foregone conclusion that Utah will go with whatever creature, no matter who or what it is, who has "Republican" associated with its name, but I do get to affect the local government. There are enough of people like me here to make Salt Lake City a Democratic stronghold in a wilderness of robotons. We actually get to see moderate, and even slightly left-leaning individuals, even NON-rich individuals, win office here in Salt Lake.
The bulk of the population is rather moderate, yet because most of (you) are also idiots, the only voices heard by the bulk of representatives is the right-wing religious looney fanatic with hate and fear and ignorance proudly displayed.
One thing I really hate about the electoral college is the way presidents misuse it. Ronald Reagan barely broke above Carter in the popular vote. The percentages for both were close to 50%. With the electoral college, it was WAY in favor or Reagan. What does Reagan and the Republicans say?
They claim to have a "mandate" from "the people" in a "landslide victory". BULL!
What they REALLY had was barely over half the population voted for them, while very nearly half voted AGAINST them. Some "mandate" or "landslide". Nearly half the country against you is FAR from a mandate or landslide. This is one reason I really hate the electoral college. It needs to go, and presidents need to be elected on the popular vote AND take into account (as well as the winning side of Congressional elections) the real numbers of who voted for AND against you. You don't get to claim a "landslide" unless your candidate wins, say, 60% of the vote or higher. (the best way for this to happen is to go with proportional representation instead of our current winner-take-all system).
Even this isn't perfect. The people of the USA are leaning to electing Bush to the Presidency, someone they almost universally consider to be a bit dim. To a man and woman, most voters consider Gore the more knowledgable and qualified, yet they want to vote based on personality.
Wow, I almost talked myself into agreeing with the Founders on the untrustworthiness of the general electorate for voting. In any case, if Bush actually wins, it will be with a popular vote so close to 50% that there will be even less of a "mandate" than could be claimed by Reagan.
Ah well. MOST voters ARE idiots. MOST non-voters ARE ALSO IDIOTS because they think that by not voting, they are making some meaningful statement. Nope. You are not. You are giving up your right to complain about those that get elected. Period. You give up your right to complain about the elected officials AND their policies when you give over their election to other IDIOTS.
It is a federal matter because politicians have seen this issue as a means of getting votes/getting re-elected. They see citizens worry about the content available to their children on the net, see that if they do not say something these people want to hear about net content they will be labeled by an oponent as being FOR porn and hate, etc, for their children (doesn't have to be logical or true). If they say something logical like "It is the parent's responsibility to screen their children's use of the net or to setup filters on their own systems", it would NOT go over well with most of those likely to vote.
It would float like a lead brick with those voting Christian facist idiots who DO vote in EVERY election.
WAKE THE FU*K UP! The politicians have made such things as controlling net content for everyone a federal issue because those people most likely to vote have pushed it to be one. The politicians are simply doing what the likely voters want them to do! And so many of you idiots decide that you don't want to vote because you don't like what any of the politicos are saying or trying to legislate. Well, DUH! With YOUR voices out of the picture, of COURSE they are going to go with the voices of those doing the electing.
I don't like a lot of things that many politicians push, but where do you think all that comes from? It doesn't originate from them, it originates from the results of polls (formal and informal), from focus groups, but mostly it comes from the opinions, letters, emails, phonecalls from those citizens MOST LIKELY TO VOTE. Who gives a fu*k what you non-voters think or want. You have given up your right to complain by passively selecting FOR the politicians, and their positions, that you disagree with. You have decided to hand the legislative decision-making/direction-setting over to a handful of the eligible voters who DO vote. The politicos simply reflect those that voted for them. Often, this means ignorant, fearful, angry, over-religious morons who desire to mandate their beliefs and (non-)ideas upon the majority.
A people always get the government they deserve...one way or another.
THINK! Your social security number HAS to be used by the government. Sheesh. You MUST have it to GET social security and pay into social security. You need a social security number for the military too.
First off, the "most" government agencies meant USE of the number. They MUST use the number. Hell, it is a number generated for you BY the government, you paranoid wacko. It is an imperfect sentence not meant to imply that government agencies (ANY) should SELL social security numbers, only USE the numbers.
Guess what goober, your driver's license number is a government generated number associated with YOU too - your address, phone number, vehicle, legal record, etc. OH MY GAWD!
You ARE overly paranoid and very much a knee-jerker. THINK before you spout, please. I know it is hard to concentrate with all those black helicoptors buzzing around your hideaway, trying to find you. All those jack-booted thugs, traipsing about in the woods near you, hunting YOU because YOU are sooooo important DANGEROUS.
Gee-aw!
A 17 year old must have parental consent, unless legally defined as an emancipated minor, to join the military. An 18 year old is legally able to make the decision sans parents (doesn't mean he/she is mentally mature enough to really make such decisions - he/she isn't - but you have to draw a reasonable line somewhere).
Recent research has demonstrated that the frontal lobes of youngins' all the way into their low 20s are not fully developed. The frontal lobes play a critical role in judgement. Since the frontal lobes of youngins' are not developed, as a rule, to full adult extent, they are simply not de facto capable of making rational judgements as a general rule. The law has NOTHING to do with biological reality. The law precedes the latest biological information and it is subject to inertia even greater than that of the real world and physics. The law wont change (properly) to accomodate the latest facts of biology. Hence, kids who have no full capacity to make rational judgements, are given the LEGAL right to make them anyway, regardless of reality.
A little restriction on the obviously judgementally challenged teenager/preteen is not a problem at all, and is common. Parents DO have certain rights and powers that trump the unthinking desires and impulses of children.
Unions did not kill your city. Corporations did.
They didn't want to pay properly for the work of their laborers, so they bailed so they could pay lower wages to the desperate WHILE INCREASING THE PAY OF THE CEO AND OTHER DEAD-WEIGHT BY MANY HUNDREDS OF PERCENTS.
The cost of labor that is unionized is NOT the problem. The companie have PLENTY of cash - enough to pay their pussy corporate heads 6, 7, and 8 figure salaries AND give them multimillion dollar golden parachutes when they get tired or screw up and want to bail out. Sorry, but what is the REAL problem is paying top management 600% and higher salaries than they pay for the people who do the REAL work of the company.
Golden parachutes MUST die. 6 and 7 figure salaries for CEOs while begrudging workers a proper cost of living increase or proper medical coverage or proper, safe working conditions MUST DIE. THAT kind of crap is what is actually the problem. Unions were created to fight against the very thing that companies are doing (AGAIN - the whole labor movement derived from the excesses of management/privaledged trust-fundies/owners who wanted slaves for their companies and unlimited excessive, selfish, un-controlled wealth for themselves. EXACTLY what is happening again today.
Ultimately, unionization is the ONLY thing that will save even YOUR ass, your kids' asses, their kids' asses. I suggest you study history a little to learn just what brought on the labor movement. Then study up on the real reason for the drive against organized labor (rich, over-privaledged, selfish, greedy, aristocratic turds who want to bring back the excesses of the 19th century).
It is not enough to clone a few animals to save them from extinction. You need a VIABLE breeding population and a couple or three clones isn't it.
Even if you make male and female clones, you are still not going to make a viable breeding population. They would totally lack heterogosity.
There would be NO genetic variability.
The proper answer, in conjunction to this cloning, is to start collecting and freezing sperm from as many living, non-sibling males of the species of interest as possible. You can then maintain SOME genetic heterogenaeity, and thus preserve some semblance of species robustness and viability.
Simply breeding and breeding clones together in a small breeding population simply leads to complete loss of any genetic differences. It has the SAME result as brothers and sisters mating, and the resultin offspring mating with each other, and so on. You ENHANCE and amplify recessive traits and destroy all genetic variation. That is a direct road to extinction itself.
The users/customers need to know of vulnerabilities. They do NOT need the actual exploit tools. Publishing the vulnerability is one thing, providing a tool that actually exploits the vulnerability helps no one but script-kiddies. THEY are the idiots who are likely to actually download the exploit and then immediately use it to do their little, pointless, damage.
What possible good does it do to give script-kiddies the tools they need to bust systems that, otherwise, they are too stupid to be able to figure out themselves?
I have adsl service from uswest (now qwest) and can say that I like it and the service.
I have a 600kbps downlink/256kbps uplink and rarely have problems. When I have had problems, their tech support was rather good, though in each case they weren't much use...on a couple occassions I lost service (over the last year-and-a-half). It turned out to be a server problem in each case that didn't just affect me.
Part of my good fortune is that I am only 5000 feet from their local repeater (CLOSE). I also installed a dedicated cat 5 cable from my exterior phone box to my computer port to help things out a little bit more.
Checking it periodically, it appears that I average about 500kbps downloads, which isn't bad at all.
You cannot drag-n-drop files from mozilla to your desktop (or other file) on KDE but you can with Gnome. This is GOOD integration between Mozilla and Gnome that needs to be given to KDE too. This is a GOOD kind of integration, not the perverted, broken, evil "integration" practiced by M$ with their crap.
It merely means that Mozilla would be able to communicate/intercommunicate with your desktop environment while remaining a separate, independent application.
Not a troll. A fact. Stone, cold, dead-on fact. I have an Athlon 750. I have 128MB ram. I have a 600kbps DSL connection. There is no shortage of memory here. There is no weak processor here.
The text portion often renders about the same speed as does any version of netscape 4.* I have tried but the graphics are WAY slower...on EVERY page I have ever gone to. On Slashdot, the icons, the banners, ANY graphics are loaded WAY slow. On an web-email page I use from my university, the graphics load WAY slow (not critical for that page but it is annoying - I LIKE graphics). Essentially, on ANY page I go to that has graphical links, graphic decore, or banners - they all load incredibly slowly while netscape 4.73, which I have to keep going back to for "stability" vs any of the more recent netscape releases, loads images and text very quickly.
I have downloaded the M17 binary, I have downloaded the preM18 binary. I have downloaded a recent binary nightly build. I have downloaded the source of a nightly build and compiled/installed it myself. In no case at all has the slow graphics loading been corrected. Also in EVERY case the number of segfaults has been intolerable. Try to download newsgroup messages: segfault. Try to login to one of my pop email accounts: segfault. Try to download some file/tarball/rpm: 30-40% of the time...segfault.
It sure LOOKS pretty doing before it segfaults though. Unfortunately, with the slow graphic loading (this occurs, incidently, also on my celeron-based laptop with 96mb ram when it is connected directly to my university's lan) and segfaulting, it is impossible to use it for anything. Ultimately, I have to keep going back
to netscape 4.73 (which suffers far fewer bus errors than 4.74 OR 4.75). Konqueror looks to be the only hope I can see for getting past netscape/mozilla bus errors/segfaults or slow image loading behavior. And it will be ready FAR sooner than any final version of Mozilla. That is a fact, like it or not.
Err... I have been goofing around with several of the latest mozilla releases (M17, various nightly builds, compiling my own). I have found, in each and EVERY case, that page rendering and image rendering are WAY SLOW. MUCH slower than Netscape 4.73, 4.74, 4.75. I download pages and have to wait and wait and wait for certain image/links to render so I can move on.
I do like the newer blue theme or even the classic theme for mozilla (HATE the modern). However, I also think it should not be called my milestones, but rather tracked on segfaults, which it does CONSTANTLY: "Here we have mozilla segfault17, here is the latest segfault18. In a few weeks we'll have segfault19!"
After all the incredible amount of time that mozilla has been struggling along (and getting lapped by konquerer and the gnome equivalent), the thing it STILL does best of all is segfault. Ah well, at least it is DIFFERENT than bus errors. That counts for something doesn't it?
face. Cyber-nations would be more feasable if we had "Ghost in the Shell" type legally-recognized spirits floating around on the Internet. But since I don't see that happening any time soon, I am extremely pessimistic as to the predicitons made above.
Wha... What could it even possibly matter to YOU as a living, breathing, physical human being whether or not some "ghost in the machine" COPY of you (or whatever) exists in a computer network?
YOU still need to breath. YOU still need to eat. YOU still want to have sex. YOU still want to go on hikes. YOU still experience physical and emotional pain. YOU still need to be protected from the excesses of gluttonous corporations. Your "ghost" doesn't matter to YOU the physical being.
If all you want is to get job training, go to a tech school. If you want an education, go to college. The point of college is NOT just to get job training. You take philosophy, history, language(s), various science classes - and you interact with people from many different walks of life with many differing opinions. This is GOOD for you and good for society as a whole.
You gain information and grounding in the hows and whys of Western Civilization. You gain a grounding in the hows and whys of the (in the US) Constitution and our system of laws. You gain information about things that in a tiny, job-training-only school, you never even realize existed. You learn that people are different, have a right to be different, and that you MUST accomodate these differences.
Ignorance is evil. Merely seeking job training is an "education" in ignorance. One should ALWAYS seek to expand their knowledge and experiences rather than keep to their parochial, insignificant little worlds of unfounded, fear-based opinion with no basis in reality.
If you don't know how we got where we are, technologically AND socially, then you are in danger of repeating time-worn mistakes rather than actually learning from them and NOT repeating them. THAT is what a broader, non-job-training-only college is about.
Got news for you. Medicare, Social Security, roads/highways are ALL heavily favored in the USA. In other countries, the equivalents are also heavily favored. Try taking some of these equivalents from the Brits, Franks, Germans, etc. Wont happen.
The "people" in general LIKE REAL stores and shops. Sure, online shopping CAN be convenient, but it is also insubstantial. Many people gain social enjoyment by actually looking at, touching, trying out REAL merchandise while looking at some picture on the web just don't cut it.
I suppose those with your opinion would like a world where you NEVER have to directly interact with ANYONE...ONLY "communicating" via email and other such nonsense. If you don't actually interact with and SEE people dying or starving because there is no medicare or social security, you don't have to feel anything and don't need to care - until it is YOU on the receiving end (or your parents).
Nay, there are very favored social programs paid for in taxes. If you don't nail companies directly, then the costs will merely be taken from each persons individual income. As the world becomes more economically and socially homogenous, the structures (like the WTO and other international bodies) will certainly be capable and willing to correct the evil done by rampant merchantilism. The world is becoming MORE integrated, which will one day accept a more international, integrated set of rules and taxes (like it or not, that is the ultimate writing on the wall). The net is NOT a panacea for having to actually care for your fellow citizens. It is NOT the perfect solution allowing you to ignore social injustice, environmental degredation, etc. They will remain and you will pay, one way or another...and so will companies.
Who in their right mind would want BUSINESS to run the world? They had essentially free reign during the Industrial Revolution and they REALLY dropped the social and environmental ball. The horrid excesses wrought by nothing but greedy self-interest lead directly to labor unions, environmental regulations, anti-trust laws, etc. These things didn't just pop out of the ether with no good reason.
The NET does NOT make up for real interaction and real action.
Get out of your house, off your butt, and actually interact with humans face-to-face. Interact with the world, foresaking the false interaction with the "world" that you get with the impersonal net.
Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend? Do you actually have a life?
As soon as these corporations start doing harm to nations and citizens as a result, the international community will simply install a taxation system and control system to reign in the nasty companies, and nasty they will be.
NO company does good by way of its workers or the environment or community without the threat of government-sanctioned punishment for transgressing. They would pay the lowest, most poverty-pertetuation wages, pollute like bastards, without regulation. Taxation WILL begin once not paying (only fair) taxes begins to hurt much-loved and desired social programs.
Nonsense. Try this, READ A LONG NOVEL ONLY ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN. Then continue reading proper novels the proper way, in a book form. Which way is easier on the eyes? Which one requires the least power? Which one is more transportable and usable with or without a net connection? With or without toxic batteries? Which one NEVER suffers a hardware problem or data corruption?
Fact: Reading all the time from ANY computer monitor is hard on the eyes and contributes to the development of astigmatism, near sightedness, headaches (and, of course, repetitive stress disorders).
I would agree that for SOME forms of information, the electronic form is best, but then, how many actually ONLY read that stuff off a nasty monitor rather than printing it out and reading it the easier way? The paperless office hasn't occurred and isn't even CLOSE to occurring for similar reasons. Paper use has INCREASED, not decreased. A monitor, of any kind, is fine for short spurts of reading but if you really want to read a long, involved manual or journal, particularly in a single sitting, paper is the best, most efficient way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? What are you TALKING about? If a user on a unix box received an email virus/trojan and ran it, it would NOT offer up the entire system to an attacker. It ONLY affects that person's sh*t, not the system itself. Only an IDIOT would, AS ROOT, chmod the software so that it would be system run-able and affect the whole system.
ANY useful unix admin would NEVER do this. The only people possibly screwed would be individual users. THEIR files would be in jeopardy, not any other file on the SYSTEM that belongs to daemons or root would be affected (or any files to which the user has write access as part of another group).
Yeah? OK. Where do you live? I will come to your house and make you drink some water from a stream nearby. You WILL drink it, I will make you drink it. You will NOT die like the fish in it because it is obviously a fantasy and mere scare tactics. I am also going to make you sit in a garage and breath car exhaust, not long enough to kill you, just long enough to dick up your lungs for the rest of your life. You WILL do it because I am going to make you fit your words to your behavior. It is all fantasy, afterall.
Hey bozo, the guv'mnt IS the people. Who do you think makes up the government? Aliens? They are your neighbors, friends, poor working stiffs. Just. Like. You.
You are demonizing your neighbors. You are dehumanizing the HUMANS, FELLOW CITIZENS, MOMS, DADS, SONS, DAUGHTERS who make up the government. The government you revile as "evil" is not. It is people like you, people like me, people like the guy in the restaurant with his girlfriend laughing over a stupid joke. Real monsters.
People like YOU are the monster. People like YOU are evil. You cheer when someone blows up "the guv'mnt" (or you plant the bombs yourself) when in fact, what is being murdered are fellow citizens, people, humans, good people, silly people, smart people, happy people, sad people, etc. PEOPLE. Not robots. Not monsters. American people with all the same concerns, loves, hates, feelings as other humans (you lack these things).
You FEELINGS about Gore and Bush are irrelevant in the outcome of the election. Your INTENT in voting Nader is irrelevant in the outcome of the election. The reason that voting for Nader in a swing state is the same thing as voting FOR Bush is because your state will most assuredly NOT give its electoral votes to Nader. He will not get any electoral votes from ANY state. By voting for Nader rather than Gore, who is closer to many of Nader views by a long shot, than Bush is you are effectively voting FOR Bush. The MOST likely vote from you (collectively as Nader supporters, not individuallY) in the absense of Nader and/or the Greens would be to vote Gore (those who would simply not vote would not likely be that significant). Your protest vote FOR Nader is EFFECTIVELY the same thing as a vote FOR Bush because the electoral votes will go to Bush rather than Gore.
Again, I assure you, there will not be a single electoral vote given to Nader, Buchannon, Browne, or the guy from the Natural Law party. Not a one.
EFFECTIVELY, your moral crusade in voting for Nader will NOT put him in the whitehouse. It WILL put Bush in the whiteshouse. It is fact. It is logic. It is reality. That is why a vote for Nader (in a swing state) IS the same as a vote for Bush. It is the ultimate outcome of the election that we are talking about, not your personal moral qualms, feelings, etc. They are irrelevant to the factual outcome of the election.
I am a Democrat and Gore supporter in a horrifically, monstrously Republican state...Utah. I would be quite happy to vote for Nader in November if a Nader supporter in Oregon or Washington is willing to vote for Gore, to help keep either of these swing states from giving their electoral votes to Bush (which is precisely what will happen if you vote Nader...you will NOT elect Nader but you will give your state's electoral votes to Bush).
I am sympathetic to the Greens wanting to get federal support in future elections and so I would like to see Nader get 5% of the vote for this purpose. I do NOT want to see this happen if it means Bush wins the election, however. Thus, you, the Nader/Green can get your 5% and federal support AND we can both avoid seeing Bush take the Whitehouse.
Voting for Gore in Utah is a wasted vote because this state is a Republican dictatorship. I would be spitting into the wind. I would happily give Nader my vote IF a Washington or Oregon resident will trade votes...YOU vote for Gore in my stead in a state where the vote COUNTS and I will vote for Nader in a state where is ultimately doesn't matter except in trying to get Nader and the Greens 5% of the vote. You win, I win, we all win.
Any trustworthy, logical, strategic thinkers in Washington and Oregon willing to do what's good for the country and for our personal votes?
In Bush's case, the inability to speak MIRRORS his basic, innate stupidity. He practically flunked out of college...because he's an idiot.
If you look at him, you will also see that there is no room for a fully functional human brain in that head of his. His eyeballs actually touch in the middle, they are sooo close together.
Bush IS short on smarts. Fact.
Wrong boyo. If Nader were not in the race, a lot of the Nader supporters would be GORE supporters. Why? A lot of the Nader vote is VERY green/environmental. The Republican party is VERY ANTI-environment (particularly if it means that some rich guy somewhere will be denied the ability to make MORE short-term money by cutting down trees, polluting water, wiping species off the face of the earth).
The Democratic party is a HELL of a lot environmental-friendly than the despoilers of the Republican party (a hidden planks in their platform is "the only good wildlife is DEAD AND GONE WILDLIFE" and "the only good space is OVER-DEVELOPED space"). It is simple really. A certain percentage of Nader voters would simply not vote if Nader weren't around, so they have no effect on the outcome anyway. Another sizeable percentage would go Democratic since that party is the only one of the two major parties with any chance in hell of winning the Presidency that even remotely squares with their environmental agenda.
On another note, I can assure you that the US public is conservative enough that it would NOT vote for an unmarried man and it would not vote to put a green in the Whitehouse. Some day, maybe, but in the present and near future? No. Way.
OF COURSE YOU SHOULD VOTE! ALL you get by NOT voting is the loss of the right to complain about what your political leaders are doing. You are NOT sending them a message by not voting. They only hear what the actual voters "tell them".
What does this mean? Well guess who votes in every damn election, like clockwork? One of the largest blocks are right-wing Christians. Even though they are a minority of the population, because they vote, and in large numbers, politicians get elected by them and only hear them. They don't give a damn about non-voters. You were silent, which simply means that by your silence you are OK with them and what they do.
If you want to have the right to complain or to be actually heard, you have to vote. It DOES matter who gets elected. It DOES affect your every day life. All the laws that get passed, the judges that get appointed ALL affects your life directly and indirectly. Your silence is NOT useful and does nothing but give them (politicians) license to do what the few VOTERS want them to do -- afterall, it was ONLY those who voted who put them in office and it is ONLY them who will re-elect them.
It should be illegal to NOT vote. If you want to make ANY use of ANY government service, be it student loans, wellfare, interstate highways, the federal airway system, etc, you should be required to vote.
NOT voting is merely lazy and stupid. It is a do-nothing activity that is justified by unjustifiable excuses. Only idiots and fools do not vote. You DO give up ALL right to get upset with ANY law passed when you don't make your voice heard.
I live in Utah, the most Republican state in the country. The Mormon citizens here are Republican practically by religious decree and they ALL have the same, robotic political viewpoint. Nevertheless, I vote in every election. I can't affect the presidency, it is a foregone conclusion that Utah will go with whatever creature, no matter who or what it is, who has "Republican" associated with its name, but I do get to affect the local government. There are enough of people like me here to make Salt Lake City a Democratic stronghold in a wilderness of robotons. We actually get to see moderate, and even slightly left-leaning individuals, even NON-rich individuals, win office here in Salt Lake.
The bulk of the population is rather moderate, yet because most of (you) are also idiots, the only voices heard by the bulk of representatives is the right-wing religious looney fanatic with hate and fear and ignorance proudly displayed.
Vote you dumbasses.
One thing I really hate about the electoral college is the way presidents misuse it. Ronald Reagan barely broke above Carter in the popular vote. The percentages for both were close to 50%. With the electoral college, it was WAY in favor or Reagan. What does Reagan and the Republicans say? They claim to have a "mandate" from "the people" in a "landslide victory". BULL!
What they REALLY had was barely over half the population voted for them, while very nearly half voted AGAINST them. Some "mandate" or "landslide". Nearly half the country against you is FAR from a mandate or landslide. This is one reason I really hate the electoral college. It needs to go, and presidents need to be elected on the popular vote AND take into account (as well as the winning side of Congressional elections) the real numbers of who voted for AND against you. You don't get to claim a "landslide" unless your candidate wins, say, 60% of the vote or higher. (the best way for this to happen is to go with proportional representation instead of our current winner-take-all system).
Even this isn't perfect. The people of the USA are leaning to electing Bush to the Presidency, someone they almost universally consider to be a bit dim. To a man and woman, most voters consider Gore the more knowledgable and qualified, yet they want to vote based on personality.
Wow, I almost talked myself into agreeing with the Founders on the untrustworthiness of the general electorate for voting. In any case, if Bush actually wins, it will be with a popular vote so close to 50% that there will be even less of a "mandate" than could be claimed by Reagan.
Ah well. MOST voters ARE idiots. MOST non-voters ARE ALSO IDIOTS because they think that by not voting, they are making some meaningful statement. Nope. You are not. You are giving up your right to complain about those that get elected. Period. You give up your right to complain about the elected officials AND their policies when you give over their election to other IDIOTS.
It is a federal matter because politicians have seen this issue as a means of getting votes/getting re-elected. They see citizens worry about the content available to their children on the net, see that if they do not say something these people want to hear about net content they will be labeled by an oponent as being FOR porn and hate, etc, for their children (doesn't have to be logical or true). If they say something logical like "It is the parent's responsibility to screen their children's use of the net or to setup filters on their own systems", it would NOT go over well with most of those likely to vote.
It would float like a lead brick with those voting Christian facist idiots who DO vote in EVERY election.
WAKE THE FU*K UP! The politicians have made such things as controlling net content for everyone a federal issue because those people most likely to vote have pushed it to be one. The politicians are simply doing what the likely voters want them to do! And so many of you idiots decide that you don't want to vote because you don't like what any of the politicos are saying or trying to legislate. Well, DUH! With YOUR voices out of the picture, of COURSE they are going to go with the voices of those doing the electing.
I don't like a lot of things that many politicians push, but where do you think all that comes from? It doesn't originate from them, it originates from the results of polls (formal and informal), from focus groups, but mostly it comes from the opinions, letters, emails, phonecalls from those citizens MOST LIKELY TO VOTE. Who gives a fu*k what you non-voters think or want. You have given up your right to complain by passively selecting FOR the politicians, and their positions, that you disagree with. You have decided to hand the legislative decision-making/direction-setting over to a handful of the eligible voters who DO vote. The politicos simply reflect those that voted for them. Often, this means ignorant, fearful, angry, over-religious morons who desire to mandate their beliefs and (non-)ideas upon the majority.
A people always get the government they deserve...one way or another.
THINK! Your social security number HAS to be used by the government. Sheesh. You MUST have it to GET social security and pay into social security. You need a social security number for the military too.
First off, the "most" government agencies meant USE of the number. They MUST use the number. Hell, it is a number generated for you BY the government, you paranoid wacko. It is an imperfect sentence not meant to imply that government agencies (ANY) should SELL social security numbers, only USE the numbers.
Guess what goober, your driver's license number is a government generated number associated with YOU too - your address, phone number, vehicle, legal record, etc. OH MY GAWD!
You ARE overly paranoid and very much a knee-jerker. THINK before you spout, please. I know it is hard to concentrate with all those black helicoptors buzzing around your hideaway, trying to find you. All those jack-booted thugs, traipsing about in the woods near you, hunting YOU because YOU are sooooo important DANGEROUS. Gee-aw!
A 17 year old must have parental consent, unless legally defined as an emancipated minor, to join the military. An 18 year old is legally able to make the decision sans parents (doesn't mean he/she is mentally mature enough to really make such decisions - he/she isn't - but you have to draw a reasonable line somewhere).
Recent research has demonstrated that the frontal lobes of youngins' all the way into their low 20s are not fully developed. The frontal lobes play a critical role in judgement. Since the frontal lobes of youngins' are not developed, as a rule, to full adult extent, they are simply not de facto capable of making rational judgements as a general rule. The law has NOTHING to do with biological reality. The law precedes the latest biological information and it is subject to inertia even greater than that of the real world and physics. The law wont change (properly) to accomodate the latest facts of biology. Hence, kids who have no full capacity to make rational judgements, are given the LEGAL right to make them anyway, regardless of reality.
A little restriction on the obviously judgementally challenged teenager/preteen is not a problem at all, and is common. Parents DO have certain rights and powers that trump the unthinking desires and impulses of children.
Unions did not kill your city. Corporations did. They didn't want to pay properly for the work of their laborers, so they bailed so they could pay lower wages to the desperate WHILE INCREASING THE PAY OF THE CEO AND OTHER DEAD-WEIGHT BY MANY HUNDREDS OF PERCENTS.
The cost of labor that is unionized is NOT the problem. The companie have PLENTY of cash - enough to pay their pussy corporate heads 6, 7, and 8 figure salaries AND give them multimillion dollar golden parachutes when they get tired or screw up and want to bail out. Sorry, but what is the REAL problem is paying top management 600% and higher salaries than they pay for the people who do the REAL work of the company.
Golden parachutes MUST die. 6 and 7 figure salaries for CEOs while begrudging workers a proper cost of living increase or proper medical coverage or proper, safe working conditions MUST DIE. THAT kind of crap is what is actually the problem. Unions were created to fight against the very thing that companies are doing (AGAIN - the whole labor movement derived from the excesses of management/privaledged trust-fundies/owners who wanted slaves for their companies and unlimited excessive, selfish, un-controlled wealth for themselves. EXACTLY what is happening again today.
Ultimately, unionization is the ONLY thing that will save even YOUR ass, your kids' asses, their kids' asses. I suggest you study history a little to learn just what brought on the labor movement. Then study up on the real reason for the drive against organized labor (rich, over-privaledged, selfish, greedy, aristocratic turds who want to bring back the excesses of the 19th century).
It is not enough to clone a few animals to save them from extinction. You need a VIABLE breeding population and a couple or three clones isn't it.
Even if you make male and female clones, you are still not going to make a viable breeding population. They would totally lack heterogosity. There would be NO genetic variability.
The proper answer, in conjunction to this cloning, is to start collecting and freezing sperm from as many living, non-sibling males of the species of interest as possible. You can then maintain SOME genetic heterogenaeity, and thus preserve some semblance of species robustness and viability.
Simply breeding and breeding clones together in a small breeding population simply leads to complete loss of any genetic differences. It has the SAME result as brothers and sisters mating, and the resultin offspring mating with each other, and so on. You ENHANCE and amplify recessive traits and destroy all genetic variation. That is a direct road to extinction itself.
The users/customers need to know of vulnerabilities. They do NOT need the actual exploit tools. Publishing the vulnerability is one thing, providing a tool that actually exploits the vulnerability helps no one but script-kiddies. THEY are the idiots who are likely to actually download the exploit and then immediately use it to do their little, pointless, damage.
What possible good does it do to give script-kiddies the tools they need to bust systems that, otherwise, they are too stupid to be able to figure out themselves?
I have adsl service from uswest (now qwest) and can say that I like it and the service.
I have a 600kbps downlink/256kbps uplink and rarely have problems. When I have had problems, their tech support was rather good, though in each case they weren't much use...on a couple occassions I lost service (over the last year-and-a-half). It turned out to be a server problem in each case that didn't just affect me.
Part of my good fortune is that I am only 5000 feet from their local repeater (CLOSE). I also installed a dedicated cat 5 cable from my exterior phone box to my computer port to help things out a little bit more.
Checking it periodically, it appears that I average about 500kbps downloads, which isn't bad at all.
You cannot drag-n-drop files from mozilla to your desktop (or other file) on KDE but you can with Gnome. This is GOOD integration between Mozilla and Gnome that needs to be given to KDE too. This is a GOOD kind of integration, not the perverted, broken, evil "integration" practiced by M$ with their crap.
It merely means that Mozilla would be able to communicate/intercommunicate with your desktop environment while remaining a separate, independent application.
Not a troll. A fact. Stone, cold, dead-on fact. I have an Athlon 750. I have 128MB ram. I have a 600kbps DSL connection. There is no shortage of memory here. There is no weak processor here.
The text portion often renders about the same speed as does any version of netscape 4.* I have tried but the graphics are WAY slower...on EVERY page I have ever gone to. On Slashdot, the icons, the banners, ANY graphics are loaded WAY slow. On an web-email page I use from my university, the graphics load WAY slow (not critical for that page but it is annoying - I LIKE graphics). Essentially, on ANY page I go to that has graphical links, graphic decore, or banners - they all load incredibly slowly while netscape 4.73, which I have to keep going back to for "stability" vs any of the more recent netscape releases, loads images and text very quickly.
I have downloaded the M17 binary, I have downloaded the preM18 binary. I have downloaded a recent binary nightly build. I have downloaded the source of a nightly build and compiled/installed it myself. In no case at all has the slow graphics loading been corrected. Also in EVERY case the number of segfaults has been intolerable. Try to download newsgroup messages: segfault. Try to login to one of my pop email accounts: segfault. Try to download some file/tarball/rpm: 30-40% of the time...segfault.
It sure LOOKS pretty doing before it segfaults though. Unfortunately, with the slow graphic loading (this occurs, incidently, also on my celeron-based laptop with 96mb ram when it is connected directly to my university's lan) and segfaulting, it is impossible to use it for anything. Ultimately, I have to keep going back to netscape 4.73 (which suffers far fewer bus errors than 4.74 OR 4.75). Konqueror looks to be the only hope I can see for getting past netscape/mozilla bus errors/segfaults or slow image loading behavior. And it will be ready FAR sooner than any final version of Mozilla. That is a fact, like it or not.
Err... I have been goofing around with several of the latest mozilla releases (M17, various nightly builds, compiling my own). I have found, in each and EVERY case, that page rendering and image rendering are WAY SLOW. MUCH slower than Netscape 4.73, 4.74, 4.75. I download pages and have to wait and wait and wait for certain image/links to render so I can move on.
I do like the newer blue theme or even the classic theme for mozilla (HATE the modern). However, I also think it should not be called my milestones, but rather tracked on segfaults, which it does CONSTANTLY: "Here we have mozilla segfault17, here is the latest segfault18. In a few weeks we'll have segfault19!"
After all the incredible amount of time that mozilla has been struggling along (and getting lapped by konquerer and the gnome equivalent), the thing it STILL does best of all is segfault. Ah well, at least it is DIFFERENT than bus errors. That counts for something doesn't it?
Well, there IS an alternative that also gives onea viceral pleasure by tweaking the nose of the MPAA...download and keep using DeCSS/dvd-munitions.
They are STILL widely and easily available.
face. Cyber-nations would be more feasable if we had "Ghost in the Shell" type legally-recognized spirits floating around on the Internet. But since I don't see that happening any time soon, I am extremely pessimistic as to the predicitons made above.
Wha... What could it even possibly matter to YOU as a living, breathing, physical human being whether or not some "ghost in the machine" COPY of you (or whatever) exists in a computer network?
YOU still need to breath. YOU still need to eat. YOU still want to have sex. YOU still want to go on hikes. YOU still experience physical and emotional pain. YOU still need to be protected from the excesses of gluttonous corporations. Your "ghost" doesn't matter to YOU the physical being.
If all you want is to get job training, go to a tech school. If you want an education, go to college. The point of college is NOT just to get job training. You take philosophy, history, language(s), various science classes - and you interact with people from many different walks of life with many differing opinions. This is GOOD for you and good for society as a whole.
You gain information and grounding in the hows and whys of Western Civilization. You gain a grounding in the hows and whys of the (in the US) Constitution and our system of laws. You gain information about things that in a tiny, job-training-only school, you never even realize existed. You learn that people are different, have a right to be different, and that you MUST accomodate these differences.
Ignorance is evil. Merely seeking job training is an "education" in ignorance. One should ALWAYS seek to expand their knowledge and experiences rather than keep to their parochial, insignificant little worlds of unfounded, fear-based opinion with no basis in reality.
If you don't know how we got where we are, technologically AND socially, then you are in danger of repeating time-worn mistakes rather than actually learning from them and NOT repeating them. THAT is what a broader, non-job-training-only college is about.
Got news for you. Medicare, Social Security, roads/highways are ALL heavily favored in the USA. In other countries, the equivalents are also heavily favored. Try taking some of these equivalents from the Brits, Franks, Germans, etc. Wont happen.
The "people" in general LIKE REAL stores and shops. Sure, online shopping CAN be convenient, but it is also insubstantial. Many people gain social enjoyment by actually looking at, touching, trying out REAL merchandise while looking at some picture on the web just don't cut it.
I suppose those with your opinion would like a world where you NEVER have to directly interact with ANYONE...ONLY "communicating" via email and other such nonsense. If you don't actually interact with and SEE people dying or starving because there is no medicare or social security, you don't have to feel anything and don't need to care - until it is YOU on the receiving end (or your parents).
Nay, there are very favored social programs paid for in taxes. If you don't nail companies directly, then the costs will merely be taken from each persons individual income. As the world becomes more economically and socially homogenous, the structures (like the WTO and other international bodies) will certainly be capable and willing to correct the evil done by rampant merchantilism. The world is becoming MORE integrated, which will one day accept a more international, integrated set of rules and taxes (like it or not, that is the ultimate writing on the wall). The net is NOT a panacea for having to actually care for your fellow citizens. It is NOT the perfect solution allowing you to ignore social injustice, environmental degredation, etc. They will remain and you will pay, one way or another...and so will companies.
Who in their right mind would want BUSINESS to run the world? They had essentially free reign during the Industrial Revolution and they REALLY dropped the social and environmental ball. The horrid excesses wrought by nothing but greedy self-interest lead directly to labor unions, environmental regulations, anti-trust laws, etc. These things didn't just pop out of the ether with no good reason.
The NET does NOT make up for real interaction and real action.
Get out of your house, off your butt, and actually interact with humans face-to-face. Interact with the world, foresaking the false interaction with the "world" that you get with the impersonal net.
Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend? Do you actually have a life?
As soon as these corporations start doing harm to nations and citizens as a result, the international community will simply install a taxation system and control system to reign in the nasty companies, and nasty they will be.
NO company does good by way of its workers or the environment or community without the threat of government-sanctioned punishment for transgressing. They would pay the lowest, most poverty-pertetuation wages, pollute like bastards, without regulation. Taxation WILL begin once not paying (only fair) taxes begins to hurt much-loved and desired social programs.
Nonsense. Try this, READ A LONG NOVEL ONLY ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN. Then continue reading proper novels the proper way, in a book form. Which way is easier on the eyes? Which one requires the least power? Which one is more transportable and usable with or without a net connection? With or without toxic batteries? Which one NEVER suffers a hardware problem or data corruption?
Fact: Reading all the time from ANY computer monitor is hard on the eyes and contributes to the development of astigmatism, near sightedness, headaches (and, of course, repetitive stress disorders).
I would agree that for SOME forms of information, the electronic form is best, but then, how many actually ONLY read that stuff off a nasty monitor rather than printing it out and reading it the easier way? The paperless office hasn't occurred and isn't even CLOSE to occurring for similar reasons. Paper use has INCREASED, not decreased. A monitor, of any kind, is fine for short spurts of reading but if you really want to read a long, involved manual or journal, particularly in a single sitting, paper is the best, most efficient way to go.