At some point, it becomes cheaper to just write your own version of the software than to pay the per-seat license fees that MS and other commercial software vendors charge. If you're a large organization (or a consortium of really large organizations), writing your office apps in-house is economically viable.
I can see the headlines now.... "Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Asking Government to Investigate the Business Software Consortium's Practices for Possible Antitrust Violations."
In all seriousnes... I think something like that would be fantastic, if not practical.
They'll win if we let them. All they need to win is for people to keep buying their wares. I will NOT buy a CD @ $20+ nor will I let my kid. If enough of us adopt that stance and make it known that we are, then the RIAA and MPAA go away simply because they serve no purpose.
It also wouldn't hurt if the labels put out a decent product once and a while.
What happens when the entire low-wage, service industry switches over to automated kiosks and such? Not everyone can be a software developer or mechanical engineer or [insert high-paying, college education required job here].
What are all of the [insert whatever stereotype you prefer] going to do for work when all the low-wage, QuickieMart/GasStation Attendant, etc jobs are gone? Like it or not, this isn't Star Trek, where everyone is highly educated and unemployment is non-existent. Something to consider.
Would you go across a bridge built like that? I wouldn't if I had a choice in the matter. How different is this from many software projects? Not very. Management doesn't care about the software quality since they don't understand it anyway, the coders are passivly taught not to care either because it costs more to write well architected, well tested code. Code can be solid if effort is placed on writing solid code.
The difference is exactly what the article is attempting to point out: LIABILITY. If software houses/developers were held liable for the products they produced it would only take a nasty class action suit to change their tune. Quality matters when it directly impacts the bottom line. Managers and developers who continually produced buggy code would be considered too much of a liability to the companies bottom line to keep on board.
"What kind of psychological impact will it have if a baby is brought to term without any of the rocking, singing, ooh-ah, coo-coo, dinner, conversation, love and life of the mother in close contact? An "artificial womb" will presumably be a dark, enclosed tank with little or no human contact. There is substantial evidence to indicate that prenatal stimulation is important. I wonder what kind of messed up people will come out of these chambers."
I suppose that if they can simulate the womb, they could simulate the rest. I don't think it would be too difficult, or too far fetched, to have the mother (and father) record conversations, etc. Hell, they could record every minute and play it back a day off. Adjusting the sound, and even vibration levels, to simulate how it would be in the womb can't be that hard. Motion is even easier.
"At the moment, that cycle is slowing down as users feel applications are fast enough for their needs. The recent improvements in performance have been almost entirely for the sake of gaming performance and multimedia: AGP, 3D instructions, HW-accelerated DVD playback, HW-accelerated sound, cooling supplies, cool cases etc. -- precious little of that stuff is for business tasks."
I couldn't agree more. 75% of the PCs deployed at my office are P2/350's with 4Gb drives and 128Mb RAM. They run Win2K, Office2K and our main production client/server app just fine. I have no intention on replacing them for at least another year. If we decide to develop our own replacement for our production system, which would be entirely web based, I may extend that out even longer by deploying Linux in the office.
It seems to me that the only way to be truly safe is to build a clean system then ghost it. keep your data on a seperate drive, load up the clean image everyday and change your encryption keys immediately after the load of the clean system.
"The Justice Department fought hard to have the racist bits pulled from the cybercrime convention itself. I can't imagine they will let freedom of speech be curtailed via the backdoor in this way."
I wonder how hard the DOJ fought against some of the other recent bills that have been passed that fly in the face of the Constitution.
I give all of our developers local admin rights for their PCs. They are responsible for all software installations beyond the OS -- they have to come to me for the [shrinkwrap] software first though -- and they're responsible for fixing anything they 'break.' The policy has worked very well for me and the developers as they're happy that they can do their jobs without having to come to me for anything and I'm happy for the same reason.
"I just don't think that the average M$ shop wants to take the time involved for an average admin to get a secure-by-default product working, or pay the top dollars needed to get an admin savvy enough to already know how to do this."
I disagree. The money lost in downtime and negative publicity will exceed the cost of proper training and procedures. Anyone looking at the bottom line will see this -- of course, if they were really looking at the bottom line they'd be running something else.
Learning how secure IIS does take time but there are many good resources online that can be used, including MS. If all IIS admins would follow their (MS) recommended practices I'd be willing to bet that most of the worms out there wouldn't get anywhere.
"I just don't think that the average M$ shop wants to take the time involved for an average admin to get a secure-by-default product working, or pay the top dollars needed to get an admin savvy enough to already know how to do this."
I've personally gone through a couple stages of rage over this incident. Initially, I was in the 'Nuke em back to the stone age' mindset. I've now come to realize that would be ridiculous -- and unneccessary. The answer to the problem all revolves around oil.
If you stop and think for a moment, the countries of the Middle East have power only because we (the United States and our western allies) give it to them. Prior to the time that oil was discovered in the region, those nations were essentially off of our radar screen. They were a non-factor. Only with the discovery of oil did they become the powers that they are now.
The answer, therefore, is simple: Stop buying their oil. All of them. The US and it's allies should immediately cease all trade with the nations of the Middle East. All of them. You would be very hard pressed to find a single nation in that region that did not/does not harbor or support terrorist operations in some way. The western nations essentially need to forget that the Middle East even exists. We need to refuse to acknowledge them. Period. No trade, no communication, no travel to or from, no humanitarian aid, no emmigration -- nothing. This is, after all, what the terrorists have been asking for. Let's give it to them. We do not need to isolate ourselves, only them.
The net effect would be complete collapse of that region. Probably, it would be more effective than a nuclear strike with the added benefit of us not having to fire a single shot or waste a single American life.
So what do we do for oil? Short term, we get it elsewhere. Most of us never consider for a second that the world's largest oil producing nation is also virtually bankrupt. Yes, I mean Russia. The United States spent the better part of 50 years trying to bring down communism in the Soviet Union. We won. However, unlike WWII, there was no Marshall Plan to help rebuild the former Soviet Union -- to help it become a democratic, capitalistic nation as we did with Japan and Germany. The simple fact of the matter is that they need money and we need oil. What gives? The combined oil production of Russia and the US in conjunction with the other non-middle eastern oil producing nations should more than cover our needs with little or no price increase. It may even be possible for us to buy our oil from Russia and sell it to our allies at cost. If we work out an arrangement with Russia so that the cost of oil from them is no different than what we now pay OPEC, this would constitue a drastic reduction in the cost of oil for our allies. Think of the sentiment doing so would garner us.
Long term? Rather than spend 40+ billion dollars waging a war that we can not hope to win, spend it on finding fossil fuel alternatives. Part of the arrangment made with Russia and our allies should be that the primary industrial and scientific focus of all participating nations should be towards this end. Does anyone here think this is not an achievable or worthwhile goal?
As with the war that we're entering into, the plan I've outlined would take years before 'victory' could be declared. But I think it would work and I think the world would be a better place afterwards.
Not counting oil, I can not think of a single thing, other than overall distaste if not overt hatred towards the US that comes from that region. Not a single thing worthwhile that can not be produced here or done without. I, for one, say let them choke on their oil -- we don't need it.
"However, you seem to believe that the actions of those in another country condemn the innocent citizens of that country."
When I see news broadcasts of swarms cheering in the streets, handing out candy in celebration, then yes, I do.
I am sad to say that the time has come to finally stoop to their level. We need to respond swiftly and brutally and the response needs to be so unbelievably brutal and horrifying that no one will ever again consider attacking us for fear that everything and everyone they know and love will be utterly destroyed in response. We need to demonstrate this to the rest of the world and we need to do it every time we are attacked so that instead of cheering in the streets, they are cowering in their holes waiting for the violent death they know is coming.
Sick, disgusting and horrible -- yes. It saddens me deeply to realize that only when the nations (and their citizens) harboring and supporting these terrorist groups are made to pay dearly will this stop.
"How many slashdotters would buy Windows XP if not this boycott?"
I would. I decide what our corporate technology standards are, what products are purchased and what OS is installed on our 150+ PCs. Currently, that standard is Windows 2000 Professional and Server so I am in a prime position to upgrade to XP. However....
About a month or so ago, a rep from Microsoft called me to give me the pitch for XP and how it would make 'everything so much better.' I actually had a great deal of fun with that call. Essentially, I told him that I had absolutely no intention of going to any XP product anytime soon. He courteously informed me that if I didn't it would cost us way more when we finally upgraded. I responded by saying that 'anytime soon' was just my nice way of saying that I'd never goto XP. He balked at that one and asked why. I told him that, frankly, I didn't care one bit for MS's licensing practices, the quality (or lack thereof) of their products, the inherent insecurity of their products and a few others that I can't remember. When he asked what our intentions were, I told him that we would stay with the 2000 line for a couple years. After that we would begin evaluating alternative operating systems and applications -- primarily Linux. I then told him that our core application was a client server model that already had a web based front end and could easily be ported to Apache & Oracle or MySQL. As for Office and messaging applications, I told him that there were many solid alternatives to Exchange already on the market and StarOffice would work just fine for our Office Suite needs. At that point he said "Oh. Thank you for your time." and hung up.
I decided to start boycotting Microsoft products a while ago -- when the details about the new licensing scheme were released. I know that 150 PC and 20 servers isn't much to MS, but it's aleast a half million dollars when it's all said and done. Had it not been for the licensing changes, I probably would have upgraded.
Asking for refunds is a bad idea for another reason, especially if this were to go to court and the plaintiffs were to win... it would just be another reason for the losers who create these worms to keep creating them. I can see it now: "d00dZ! Not only can we strike at M$ but we can get all these lame ass ISPs in trouble too!"
No thanks.
"You know what I want? I want a third party database that will allow sysadmins to list their 24/7 telephone number along with blocks of IPs.
Good God man! Have you considered what that database would be worth in the eyes of a telemarketer/spammer!? Temptation like that (the temptation to sell the list) would be almost too much to bear for any capitalist organization. *shudder*
Isn't this the same way Apple got going....
on
Linux Win In Schools
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember that it used to be Macs everywhere in the schools. The major difference I can see between the Mac of the late 80's/early 90's and linux today (at least as far as the general public would see it) is that there wasn't an abundance of business software available for the Mac back then. There is a ton of quality, low/no-cost business software available for linux today.
There is also a good number of 'fun' software packages out there too -- MP3 players etc. to attract the Internet surfing masses. We just need a killer browser.
Granted, there wasn't anything in it that I didn't already know, but overall, the report was well written and acurate.
I have to say that I'm a bit surprised at the vast majority of the/.'ers here who are ranting over this report. I didn't see one mention of legislation or voluntary restrictions being needed -- only useful information for those parents out there who are pretty clueless about computers/Internet. Honestly, all the report did was provide information to parents who have no idea that their censorware was useless. Overall, I think that's a good thing.
I disagree. If everyone else produced GPL'd software, then MS would be free to use it provided they released the source. The only practice I see such a thing changing is that they'd have to open source anything they used GPL'd software in. Granted that is a huge change for them, and I can not even imagine them doing it, but still... I just don't see that changing their embrace and extend practices -- on the contrary, it would make it easier and cheaper for them.
You make some good counter points but I think your mindset is too static. You're making the assumption that television advertising will not adapt to the new environment. Granted the networks and advertisers will not want to adapt, but they will have to or die out.
What I mean is: Television advertising will change. Commercials will migrate into the shows. Product placement is already a big thing -- ever notice that everyone in a TV show uses an iMac? This type of advertising will continue along and, if done well, it won't 'harm' the show.
Of course, there are other approaches. They could easily have section of the screen that displays ads all of the time. They could increase the length of the ad to confuse the 30 second advance features or they could just do what everyone else seems to be doing -- lobby Congress to rewrite the copyright laws making it illegal to make a device that skips over ads or for some form of compensation.
My point is, however, that the broadcasters and advertisers are out to make a buck. It's their only reason for being. They will figure out a way to keep the revenue flowing.
"That's the primary different between my argument and that of a liberal. What I infered by my "Living Constitution" notion is that liberals believe in the insulting concept that our Constitution is free to ammend and develop as time progresses. In fact, the greatest thing about our Constitution is how little we have had to change it since we first wrote it. I welcome anyone to cite me an official document that has stood the test of time for such a period."
While I agree with you that the Constitution is one of the greatest documents ever penned and am extremely reluctant to even consider changing it, I digress -- in a way. One of the greatest things about the Constitution is that it is an amendable document. The Founding Fathers had the wisdom to know that they couldn't foresee everything and set it up so that it could be changed. That they were so farsighted to create a document that has lasted this long is incredible. It's such a shame that race of politicians is extinct.
It takes a 2/3rd majority to ammend the Constitution. That is a Good Thing(TM). It protects us all from the knee-jerk reactions of both parties -- in the case of the Republicans, the flag burning amendment and in the case of the Democrats.... well, I'm not aware of any proposed ammendments from them, but I can imagine that they'd gut the second if they had a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
At some point, it becomes cheaper to just write your own version of the software than to pay the per-seat license fees that MS and other commercial software vendors charge. If you're a large organization (or a consortium of really large organizations), writing your office apps in-house is economically viable.
I can see the headlines now.... "Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Asking Government to Investigate the Business Software Consortium's Practices for Possible Antitrust Violations."
In all seriousnes... I think something like that would be fantastic, if not practical.
They'll win if we let them. All they need to win is for people to keep buying their wares. I will NOT buy a CD @ $20+ nor will I let my kid. If enough of us adopt that stance and make it known that we are, then the RIAA and MPAA go away simply because they serve no purpose.
It also wouldn't hurt if the labels put out a decent product once and a while.
What happens when the entire low-wage, service industry switches over to automated kiosks and such? Not everyone can be a software developer or mechanical engineer or [insert high-paying, college education required job here].
What are all of the [insert whatever stereotype you prefer] going to do for work when all the low-wage, QuickieMart/GasStation Attendant, etc jobs are gone? Like it or not, this isn't Star Trek, where everyone is highly educated and unemployment is non-existent. Something to consider.
Would you go across a bridge built like that? I wouldn't if I had a choice in the matter. How different is this from many software projects? Not very. Management doesn't care about the software quality since they don't understand it anyway, the coders are passivly taught not to care either because it costs more to write well architected, well tested code. Code can be solid if effort is placed on writing solid code.
The difference is exactly what the article is attempting to point out: LIABILITY. If software houses/developers were held liable for the products they produced it would only take a nasty class action suit to change their tune. Quality matters when it directly impacts the bottom line. Managers and developers who continually produced buggy code would be considered too much of a liability to the companies bottom line to keep on board.
Technically, the phone powers Windows, not the other way around. When they make software that produces energy, let me know.
I think the more obvious misnomer is Smartphone.
"What kind of psychological impact will it have if a baby is brought to term without any of the rocking, singing, ooh-ah, coo-coo, dinner, conversation, love and life of the mother in close contact? An "artificial womb" will presumably be a dark, enclosed tank with little or no human contact. There is substantial evidence to indicate that prenatal stimulation is important. I wonder what kind of messed up people will come out of these chambers."
I suppose that if they can simulate the womb, they could simulate the rest. I don't think it would be too difficult, or too far fetched, to have the mother (and father) record conversations, etc. Hell, they could record every minute and play it back a day off. Adjusting the sound, and even vibration levels, to simulate how it would be in the womb can't be that hard. Motion is even easier.
...that a nation that started out as a penal colony would have some of the most conservative censorship laws?
"At the moment, that cycle is slowing down as users feel applications are fast enough for their needs. The recent improvements in performance have been almost entirely for the sake of gaming performance and multimedia: AGP, 3D instructions, HW-accelerated DVD playback, HW-accelerated sound, cooling supplies, cool cases etc. -- precious little of that stuff is for business tasks."
I couldn't agree more. 75% of the PCs deployed at my office are P2/350's with 4Gb drives and 128Mb RAM. They run Win2K, Office2K and our main production client/server app just fine. I have no intention on replacing them for at least another year. If we decide to develop our own replacement for our production system, which would be entirely web based, I may extend that out even longer by deploying Linux in the office.
...but ever since they shut down AT&T my Comcast speeds have been incredible.
While my heart goes out to the stranded AT&T folk, I really gotta love the SPEED!!!
It seems to me that the only way to be truly safe is to build a clean system then ghost it. keep your data on a seperate drive, load up the clean image everyday and change your encryption keys immediately after the load of the clean system.
"The Justice Department fought hard to have the racist bits pulled from the cybercrime convention itself. I can't imagine they will let freedom of speech be curtailed via the backdoor in this way."
I wonder how hard the DOJ fought against some of the other recent bills that have been passed that fly in the face of the Constitution.
I give all of our developers local admin rights for their PCs. They are responsible for all software installations beyond the OS -- they have to come to me for the [shrinkwrap] software first though -- and they're responsible for fixing anything they 'break.' The policy has worked very well for me and the developers as they're happy that they can do their jobs without having to come to me for anything and I'm happy for the same reason.
"I just don't think that the average M$ shop wants to take the time involved for an average admin to get a secure-by-default product working, or pay the top dollars needed to get an admin savvy enough to already know how to do this."
I disagree. The money lost in downtime and negative publicity will exceed the cost of proper training and procedures. Anyone looking at the bottom line will see this -- of course, if they were really looking at the bottom line they'd be running something else.
Learning how secure IIS does take time but there are many good resources online that can be used, including MS. If all IIS admins would follow their (MS) recommended practices I'd be willing to bet that most of the worms out there wouldn't get anywhere.
"I just don't think that the average M$ shop wants to take the time involved for an average admin to get a secure-by-default product working, or pay the top dollars needed to get an admin savvy enough to already know how to do this."
I've personally gone through a couple stages of rage over this incident. Initially, I was in the 'Nuke em back to the stone age' mindset. I've now come to realize that would be ridiculous -- and unneccessary. The answer to the problem all revolves around oil. If you stop and think for a moment, the countries of the Middle East have power only because we (the United States and our western allies) give it to them. Prior to the time that oil was discovered in the region, those nations were essentially off of our radar screen. They were a non-factor. Only with the discovery of oil did they become the powers that they are now. The answer, therefore, is simple: Stop buying their oil. All of them. The US and it's allies should immediately cease all trade with the nations of the Middle East. All of them. You would be very hard pressed to find a single nation in that region that did not/does not harbor or support terrorist operations in some way. The western nations essentially need to forget that the Middle East even exists. We need to refuse to acknowledge them. Period. No trade, no communication, no travel to or from, no humanitarian aid, no emmigration -- nothing. This is, after all, what the terrorists have been asking for. Let's give it to them. We do not need to isolate ourselves, only them.
The net effect would be complete collapse of that region. Probably, it would be more effective than a nuclear strike with the added benefit of us not having to fire a single shot or waste a single American life.
So what do we do for oil? Short term, we get it elsewhere. Most of us never consider for a second that the world's largest oil producing nation is also virtually bankrupt. Yes, I mean Russia. The United States spent the better part of 50 years trying to bring down communism in the Soviet Union. We won. However, unlike WWII, there was no Marshall Plan to help rebuild the former Soviet Union -- to help it become a democratic, capitalistic nation as we did with Japan and Germany. The simple fact of the matter is that they need money and we need oil. What gives? The combined oil production of Russia and the US in conjunction with the other non-middle eastern oil producing nations should more than cover our needs with little or no price increase. It may even be possible for us to buy our oil from Russia and sell it to our allies at cost. If we work out an arrangement with Russia so that the cost of oil from them is no different than what we now pay OPEC, this would constitue a drastic reduction in the cost of oil for our allies. Think of the sentiment doing so would garner us.
Long term? Rather than spend 40+ billion dollars waging a war that we can not hope to win, spend it on finding fossil fuel alternatives. Part of the arrangment made with Russia and our allies should be that the primary industrial and scientific focus of all participating nations should be towards this end. Does anyone here think this is not an achievable or worthwhile goal?
As with the war that we're entering into, the plan I've outlined would take years before 'victory' could be declared. But I think it would work and I think the world would be a better place afterwards.
Not counting oil, I can not think of a single thing, other than overall distaste if not overt hatred towards the US that comes from that region. Not a single thing worthwhile that can not be produced here or done without. I, for one, say let them choke on their oil -- we don't need it.
"However, you seem to believe that the actions of those in another country condemn the innocent citizens of that country."
When I see news broadcasts of swarms cheering in the streets, handing out candy in celebration, then yes, I do.
I am sad to say that the time has come to finally stoop to their level. We need to respond swiftly and brutally and the response needs to be so unbelievably brutal and horrifying that no one will ever again consider attacking us for fear that everything and everyone they know and love will be utterly destroyed in response. We need to demonstrate this to the rest of the world and we need to do it every time we are attacked so that instead of cheering in the streets, they are cowering in their holes waiting for the violent death they know is coming.
Sick, disgusting and horrible -- yes. It saddens me deeply to realize that only when the nations (and their citizens) harboring and supporting these terrorist groups are made to pay dearly will this stop.
Amen.
"How many slashdotters would buy Windows XP if not this boycott?"
I would. I decide what our corporate technology standards are, what products are purchased and what OS is installed on our 150+ PCs. Currently, that standard is Windows 2000 Professional and Server so I am in a prime position to upgrade to XP. However....
About a month or so ago, a rep from Microsoft called me to give me the pitch for XP and how it would make 'everything so much better.' I actually had a great deal of fun with that call. Essentially, I told him that I had absolutely no intention of going to any XP product anytime soon. He courteously informed me that if I didn't it would cost us way more when we finally upgraded. I responded by saying that 'anytime soon' was just my nice way of saying that I'd never goto XP. He balked at that one and asked why. I told him that, frankly, I didn't care one bit for MS's licensing practices, the quality (or lack thereof) of their products, the inherent insecurity of their products and a few others that I can't remember. When he asked what our intentions were, I told him that we would stay with the 2000 line for a couple years. After that we would begin evaluating alternative operating systems and applications -- primarily Linux. I then told him that our core application was a client server model that already had a web based front end and could easily be ported to Apache & Oracle or MySQL. As for Office and messaging applications, I told him that there were many solid alternatives to Exchange already on the market and StarOffice would work just fine for our Office Suite needs. At that point he said "Oh. Thank you for your time." and hung up.
I decided to start boycotting Microsoft products a while ago -- when the details about the new licensing scheme were released. I know that 150 PC and 20 servers isn't much to MS, but it's aleast a half million dollars when it's all said and done. Had it not been for the licensing changes, I probably would have upgraded.
Asking for refunds is a bad idea for another reason, especially if this were to go to court and the plaintiffs were to win... it would just be another reason for the losers who create these worms to keep creating them. I can see it now: "d00dZ! Not only can we strike at M$ but we can get all these lame ass ISPs in trouble too!"
No thanks.
"You know what I want? I want a third party database that will allow sysadmins to list their 24/7 telephone number along with blocks of IPs.
Good God man! Have you considered what that database would be worth in the eyes of a telemarketer/spammer!? Temptation like that (the temptation to sell the list) would be almost too much to bear for any capitalist organization. *shudder*
I remember that it used to be Macs everywhere in the schools. The major difference I can see between the Mac of the late 80's/early 90's and linux today (at least as far as the general public would see it) is that there wasn't an abundance of business software available for the Mac back then. There is a ton of quality, low/no-cost business software available for linux today.
There is also a good number of 'fun' software packages out there too -- MP3 players etc. to attract the Internet surfing masses. We just need a killer browser.
Granted, there wasn't anything in it that I didn't already know, but overall, the report was well written and acurate.
/.'ers here who are ranting over this report. I didn't see one mention of legislation or voluntary restrictions being needed -- only useful information for those parents out there who are pretty clueless about computers/Internet. Honestly, all the report did was provide information to parents who have no idea that their censorware was useless. Overall, I think that's a good thing.
I have to say that I'm a bit surprised at the vast majority of the
I disagree. If everyone else produced GPL'd software, then MS would be free to use it provided they released the source. The only practice I see such a thing changing is that they'd have to open source anything they used GPL'd software in. Granted that is a huge change for them, and I can not even imagine them doing it, but still... I just don't see that changing their embrace and extend practices -- on the contrary, it would make it easier and cheaper for them.
You make some good counter points but I think your mindset is too static. You're making the assumption that television advertising will not adapt to the new environment. Granted the networks and advertisers will not want to adapt, but they will have to or die out. What I mean is: Television advertising will change. Commercials will migrate into the shows. Product placement is already a big thing -- ever notice that everyone in a TV show uses an iMac? This type of advertising will continue along and, if done well, it won't 'harm' the show.
Of course, there are other approaches. They could easily have section of the screen that displays ads all of the time. They could increase the length of the ad to confuse the 30 second advance features or they could just do what everyone else seems to be doing -- lobby Congress to rewrite the copyright laws making it illegal to make a device that skips over ads or for some form of compensation.
My point is, however, that the broadcasters and advertisers are out to make a buck. It's their only reason for being. They will figure out a way to keep the revenue flowing.
"That's the primary different between my argument and that of a liberal. What I infered by my "Living Constitution" notion is that liberals believe in the insulting concept that our Constitution is free to ammend and develop as time progresses. In fact, the greatest thing about our Constitution is how little we have had to change it since we first wrote it. I welcome anyone to cite me an official document that has stood the test of time for such a period."
While I agree with you that the Constitution is one of the greatest documents ever penned and am extremely reluctant to even consider changing it, I digress -- in a way. One of the greatest things about the Constitution is that it is an amendable document. The Founding Fathers had the wisdom to know that they couldn't foresee everything and set it up so that it could be changed. That they were so farsighted to create a document that has lasted this long is incredible. It's such a shame that race of politicians is extinct.
It takes a 2/3rd majority to ammend the Constitution. That is a Good Thing(TM). It protects us all from the knee-jerk reactions of both parties -- in the case of the Republicans, the flag burning amendment and in the case of the Democrats.... well, I'm not aware of any proposed ammendments from them, but I can imagine that they'd gut the second if they had a chance.