The worlds of Belief and Reason are Orthagonal
on
Ye Olde World Charm
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Nice description of your position... from a reasoning point of view. As anyone who has attempted to understand the feminine mind can attest, reason isn't everything.
I will happily agree that science (the world of Reason, or Rational thought) cannot be made compatible with any scheme of religion or belief, because they do not intersect to any great degree. Science is a wonderful tool for explaining how things work, but it cannot do diddly to explain the 2AM question "Why are we here?" (And the mere existence of the Creationist Museum proves the converse.)
My question is why people keep dragging out this moldy old conflict? We all hold mutually exclusive thoughts in our heads ('All politicians are crooked' vs 'My senator fights the good fight', for example) so why can't we just drop this disagreement? If you fervently believe that Science holds all the answers and your neighbor fevently believes the FSM hold them instead, what have you lost?
As for myself, for matters pertaining to materials, speeds, and distances, and all things that can be measured, I choose Science and Reason as my tools. I believe that the scientists who do that stuff have a method that gives a very accurate result, a very good picture and explanation of the way the world works. For matters unmeasurable, I have found no such system or method that can explain them nearly so well... but I'm not so arrogant that I assume there can be no such system. I believe that many religious laws make excellent interpersonal 'Rules to Live By' even if they can never be "proved" to have come from their purported source.
Setting aside the sarcasm, the answer is Yes, I think someone would worry that "hey, we can bomb moscow and kill 10 million, but we don't want to damage the little town 10 miles east... that's why they developed the neutron bomb. It's the nuclear-weapon version of the flash-bang, very bad if it goes off next to you, but doesn't hurt people around the corner. The military planners you denigrate DID spend some time thinking about the issue, since they knew a bomb can drive the enemy out of an area, but it can't do a thing to keep it. Better if the buildings are still standing, even if they need a bit of decon.
Here's a little thought experiment:
Imagine you are sitting in a barracks in beautiful Germany, just west of the Fulda Gap. Over on the other side of said Gap is a large subset of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, all planning to cruise through it and over you on their way to Paris and points west. There aren't enough conventional munitions or bodies to fire them... but you can drop a 'tactical nuclear weapon' and stop the remainder in their tracks.
Pop Quiz: Do you want to be there with a weapon that's never been rigorously tested, whose characteristics aren't fully understood, or do you want one that was and is?
It seems that you are still stuck with some of the hippy mentality you pooh-poohed above - if you cannot understand the difference between the precise delivery of a 1 Kiloton tactical weapon and a county-destroying 50 Megaton Tsar Bomba then further discussion would seem moot.
And it does work... if you don't upgrade the Microsoft software. Would you expect it to just "continue to work" if you installed OS X, or Solaris, or *nix?
Yes, exactly as you said, although it appears that definition applies only on that side of the Pond:
In the UK {emphasis added}, since it is market dominance which poses the threat to competition, (1) a monopoly is deemed to exist when one company controls at least 25% of the market...
My compliments, sir - it's really just a cultural gap and we're both right!
If you had read the page you linked to, you would have seen that Gruber offered them a week's time just to agree to the challenge... and they failed to take him up on it. Inasmuch as
they failed (for a year) to demonstrate the hack they originally claimed to be able to do at the conference, and
they were unable to explain the hack to Apple engineers in anything but the theoretical sense (as proved by Apple having to resolve the issue themselves - which Apple's developers rapidly did), and
claimed repeatedly to have been coerced by Apple lawyers (while offering no evidence of the same)...
I have lost all confidence in their claims of last year. I will admit they seem to come up with the theory of the hack sometime prior to the conference, and that they NOW seem to have a working hack... of something Apple fixed last year, that was broken for ALL Operating Systems which use 3rd party drivers.
I'm also saddened by their stated reasons for claiming Apple was particularly vulnerable (OMG, those Mac users are snobs!11!1!), and the comments about eyes and cigarettes... that's not just hyperbole, that's fanboi-style hate - hardly the stuff an "objective" security researcher ought to be espousing.
They hardly seem deserving of a free computer, or even the news coverage they will undoubtedly receive. Too bad, they seemed like such bright guys...
Try one of the drivers found here... it'll be easy if you know which card you have: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&ServiceTag=&SystemID=DIM_PNT_9200_XPS_410&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=
A monopoly (from the Greek language monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a product or service, in other words a firm that has no competitors in its industry. Monopolies are characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods.
I am sure 25% control of the market would give a company great ability to steer the market... but it doesn't sound much like the above. OSX/Solaris/*nix fly in the face of "only one provider", and you're a braver man than I to claim there is a "lack of viable substitute goods" in the OS space in this particular venue. IMHO, anyway.
Yes, that's the way I read Hangul, syllabically. Since two of the other things Hangul verbs include are honorific suffixes and past-tense-indicative suffixes you would be tripling your effort to memorize the "whole word" pattern, and that ignores the short-form and long-form verb endings (which are interchangeable when speaking with your peers.) You quickly learn to parse those out while reading... though occasionally I still mistake a honoriffic-and-past-tense suffix for a textual syllable, and then hilarity ensues for a few moments.
Here's an example, in SKATS-transliterated syllables:
LE BE = kah tah = to go (dictionary form)
LEGG KT KN = kahs oh yo = (I) went (past-tense, short-form)
LE GGSGG KHM FU BE = kah shuh soom nee da = (you) went (honoriffic, past-tense, long-form)
The parent is spot-on regarding the amount of time it takes to learn to read Hangul, too... although learning to understand it takes a bit longer.
If the measuring device is wrong ...
on
Why Myths Persist
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· Score: 1
The poster stated several known cases where the brain can be shown to accept false or incomplete data. Given that, can we not assume that you could see the same event several times and see it incorrectly each and every time? If reproducibility is meaningless, does that negate the scientific process? No, of course not. Just because a colorblind person can't see a change of colors in a chemical compund doen't mean the change failed to occur. OTOH, who hasn't heard the stories of the "bright light at the end of the tunnel" and "looking down at my body on the operating table"... does the repetition of these tales of out-of-body-experiences serve to make them true in any sense?
The realms of Scientific Inquiry and Belief in the Supernatural (AKA Religion) are orthogonal... Religion is junk for explanations of HOW the physical world works, and Science is crap at explaining WHY we are all here on Earth. Horses for courses, gentlemen... there IS no Grand Unified Theory of Everything, in either system.
I'll agree with the other poster (Hillary is a bad choice 'cuz she's Hillary, not 'cuz she's a woman), and just ask which sterling exemplars of leadership your country has been led by in the last 30 frickin years, homey?
Do tell, please, so I can malign all of them with faint praise as you have all of ours. Or not, and reveal yourself as the poser amongst us that you appear.
And yes, I am intentionally posting AC... until you step up with something more than mere invective and a complete lack of understanding as to how we (Americans, which you are apparently not) could mislike a badly flawed candidate.
The point I make with Whitman is that even if return fire is expected a psycho will find a way to go down in a hail of bullets that takes as many people as he can.
Maybe next time you could let us know what your point is so we can actually discuss it, rather than have to guess.
The fact that there was return fire is what makes him such a great example: It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that cowards still kill when their victims are armed, they just do it from a safe distance.
Are you really arguing that the singular case of Charles Whitman (edifying though it might be) proves "beyond the shadow of a doubt" the behavior of all such cowards? Just locking and/or blocking the doors of some of the classrooms at Virginia Tech stymied THAT shooter...
I will argue the following, if you like - regardless of what the SHOOTER intends, it is vastly better for the targets to be able to defend themselves... and vastly better for our society that such idiots are removed swiftly and permanently from it. Over to you for rebuttal.
What makes you think they won't spot-check him in exactly that manner? Part of probation is seeing if the supervised-but-not-incarcerated-convict is still breaking the law he got put away for (or any others).
... and those reporters can still talk to the very same people of whom you speak. What they are not allowed to do is QUOTE that person in that agency directly. Period. Which means, perhaps, that reporters may have to go back to doing their job of listening hard enough to understand, taking the time to rephrase and explain, and getting off their fat @ssets and finding other sources who can VERIFY what they were told.
What I found most impressive in "All the President's Men" was the actions of Ben Bradley, not of Woodward-n-whatshisname - he never said they couldn't USE what Deep Throat was giving them, he just required that they get multiple attribution of any facts that they were claiming. Reporters who "interview" one source at the NHTSA (or any other government agency) and write a story are just being lazy, and need to get over themselves.
Actually, we don't know it's as high as 1 in 12, just that it happened 1 time so far... the true ratio may be 1 in a million (though all the posts from former Geek Squad members make that seem unlikely) or it may be 1 in 2.
What we know is this: the guys at the Consumerist stopped after they found 1 case. Hardly a big deal.
Campaign staffers had become concerned about the currency and accuracy of information on the site.
Anthony was overworked and suggested that they should make him a consultant.
They pumped and dumped him emotionally and economically through a series of early morning work-conflicting phone conferences that they kept cancelling at the last moment.
After they demanded he provide them with an amount he thought would be fair (by the next morning) he picked a number. Without the slightest attempt at a counteroffer they said no and went to MySpace management for resolution^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrights to the product he built.
MySpace came up with an eminently equitable|apparently totally legal solution. Mr. Anthony has been given the opportunity to build the site again with a different URL and full transfer of his friends list, as well as a priceless education into the political process and a true insight into the kind of people the Obama campaign IS willing to spend money upon, these selfsame site-napping staffers.
There, fixed that for you.
Obama staffers are not bumbling idiots; they tried a couple of approaches, things weren't working out, and ultimately they decided to run the site themselves.
Sorry, I beg to differ on this one. Paid campaign workers just created a bunch of bad publicity for Obama by their actions - what IS your definition of "bumbling idiots", if not that?
As elegantly suggested by Frank Herbert in Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment, perhaps what we need is a Bureau of Sabotage to slow down the speed of government activity. Interesting reads, the two of them, though not the equal of Dune.
Geez, drinkypoo, did you even read the story you quoted?
the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.
It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune.[emphasis added] Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.
Perhaps Bill Gates himself, personally, is worth your ire. Perhaps he should be more involved in where that money gets invested, rather than just paying money wranglers to do so. If anything, we should be out protesting the shoddy practices of the Bill Gates Investments institution, since they don't seem to be making much effort to be socially responsible.
But for the love of mike, please stop crapping on the one shining spot here, the B&MG Foundation. They are doing a helluva job, one that nobody was doing before they came along. You do your cause no justice by slamming them too.
For the record, I do NOT get a dime from BG or his minions... I use some of the products he sells, and have to support a bunch more of them, but I don't give a d@mn which OS/Office Suite/Mail program/whatever you want to use. I just like to keep the invective focused on the real problem, not the whole d@mn area.
Thanks for the reminder of party history, it's so easy to forget that my 'political lifetime' is vastly shorter than that of the parties.
I know, it's a bit of a shock, I actually used that damn dirty word 'liberal', not once, but twice when mentioning some of the history of the GOP. Thanks to 20 years of 'water-carrying' 'conservatives', many seem to believe that it's a dirty word, which one can use to describe people you are suppose to hate.
I know it's a shock, but what I said was that I prefer a Conservative political philosophy, not that I hate those who espouse a Liberal one. I reserved my ire for the two political parties, the Republicans & Democrats, neither of whom maps well onto Liberalism OR Conservatism. I would vastly prefer a Conservative Party to the current brand of Republican, and a true Liberal Party to the current Democrats.
Please, don't try your tired old 'blame Clinton act', it's been 10 years (and he was acquitted).
I don't blame Former President Clinton for anything other than what I said: he was an admitted perjurer who did have the fortune of being acquitted by the Senate. Doesn't make him innocent, just means his fellow politicians (of both parties) didn't feel it merited such a harsh penalty. It happened, it's over, and I don't care about it anymore... but the incident leads me to believe we won't see another full impeachment until a President is caught standing over a body with an actual smoking gun. That's an opinion, feel free to disagree.
As to whether the wiretapping is illegal... it looks like he's got lawyers who thought it was legal enough... it may have to go all the way to SCOTUS to be resolved. I make no claims regarding any lies to Congress - I said I think He believed that what he was doing was in the Nation's interest and will continue that I think that GWB believed that his actions were within the law. I also believe he was wrong, but no court has yet decided these issues... except the court of public opinions, and even there the court seems to be divided.
First of all, that's not my solution, it's the political solution currently being worked on by Congress. If we cut of spending for the troops outright, Bush will almost certainly leave them there until they run out of bullets. Do you want to see that happen? I don't.
Please accept my apology for misstating your position. As to the issue of Leaving the Troops, I don't see it as a possibility... in large part because I don't see the Congress actually manning up enough to cut the funding. Nor do I see any chance of a GWB coup. Bush may be wrongheaded and stubborn, but he is also consistant - he has always stated his intentions and then done his best to carry them out. It's not his fault if people keep judging him to be like all the other politicians, then getting surprised when he does what he said he would.
Rather than quote back the unexpected vitriol of the next two paragraphs, I'll just give you my plan for success in Iraq - send every soldier/sailor/airman/marine from the US, plus every one now stationed in "allied" countries starting with those pulling their own troops out, and conduct a MUCH larger version of the "big push" that IS achieving success in the Bagdhad area. Then get the troops out and let the Iraqis figure out their own problems. We couldn't force democracy on Occupied Germany after defeating them, we had to lead them to it AFTER they decided they wanted it, so why does everybody think we can do so in a country with no history or desire for such?
Your last line makes your own position pretty clear... maybe you should start getting your news from a wider circle of sources as well.
If you have ever believed that voting Republican was really a vote for smaller government, I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you.
You know, I really did hope/expect the Republicans would remember their conservative roots, and actually try to be the "Party of Smaller Government" - and I still sometimes think/dream that if the 9/11 attack hadn't come that we might have got some of that. IIRC there hadn't been much expansion, pre-event, but I may be wrong.
4 months and we aren't out of Iraq yet, how shameful.
No, what bugs me is that 4 months after the election we still see most Democrats pussyfooting around the issue - if they really believe they were elected to end the WoT, why aren't they doing more than make non-binding resolutions? Why aren't they making their case to the people? It seems they are already looking forward to the next election cycle, and that their CYA instincts are over-riding their desire to make a real difference. Standard practice, I suppose, but disappointing after all the rhetoric.
Considering that congress only controls spending, and that the Constitution doesn't explicitly give them the right to end a war,
Two statements I can wholeheartedly agree with... but then, finally, the meat of the problem...
the only effective way to get our troops out is to either attach timetables to a spending bill (done), and/or Impeach the President (they are working on it, but it needs more public support, and we need to get rid of Cheney first)
Your solutions are both wrong and unlikely to succeed in any useful way. (Well meant, I'm sure, but wrong nonetheless.) The only effective (and Constitutional) way (for Congress) to get our troops out is to stop paying for the war. Attaching timetables isn't within their powers, and even if it were, it's guaranteed to get W's veto. We all know that the Democrats aren't willing to cut off the funding completely, because they would be making it plain that they care more about $Getting_Out than about $Supporting_The_Troops. They want to have their cake and eat it too, and instead they're making a dog's breakfast of the whole thing.
As for your second method, while I would agree that W has skirted/crossed a number of legal & Constitutional boundries I'm also sure that no jury will ever convict him as you desire. If WJC could admittedly perjure himself (about a personal interaction, that should never have been prosecuted) and get away scott-free than there's no chance that GWB can be held liable for acting in what he perceives as the Nation's best interest.
I'm hoping for sweeping change in the next Administration, though in my case I'm hoping for a true small-government Conservative, like W was supposed to be. Given the backlash at W, it might not happen... but if the Democrats keep proving themselves the Party of Vocal-But-Not-Voteworthy-Convictions, it's not impossible.
It seems that some Wikivandalism was done, but has now been corrected - Sinbad the comic is alive and well. He had some unkind words for the vandal, but took it in good stride from their account.
I agree completely that the extension of copyright is a huge problem. I would wholeheartedly support an effort to roll back the rights of corporations in general, but that's not the issue here.
The copyright system is designed as a carrot, not a stick - it encourages a desired behavior (making the artistic works available after a period of time) by offering a benefit (exclusive distribution rights during that period). No mechanism is included to punish an artist who chooses to remove their work from distribution before it becomes available for free. That may be because it was not previously possible to do so, it may be because Congress never contemplated an artist even wanting to do so, it may be because of any number of reasons. Nevertheless, it's true - content providers or their agents can legally game the system as it now stands.
The corollary is true as well, the content provider is not required to allow you to easily preserve content. Neither "Fair Use" nor copyright law require them to allow you to preserve their content for them at all - you can because there are tools to do so, not because a law allows it (quite the opposite). If 20th Century Fox (or whoever the current owners are) chooses to stop making new versions of their product 'Die Hard' as new formats are developed, then so be it - you cannot sue them to put it on Blu-Ray just because you want it that way.
Lastly, I don't expect that I personally will be able to play a current version DVD of 'Die Hard' (or any current DVD) when the copyright finally runs out - but I do expect that works of lasting quality (like 'Die Hard', though not the sequels) will continue to be available in some playable format. I will also bet that somebody out there will be offering to convert your $OLD_FORMAT stuff to $SHINY_NEW_FORMAT versions, just as they do today. If there's money in it, business follows.
Here's my question for you - are you willing to work on/with your Congresscritter to criminalize artists for not living up to the bargain?
What we need is legislation explicitly protecting our rights to enrich the public domain.(emphasis added)
And exactly how much actual content have you provided, sir? Content that you had some part of making, that is, not the DVD-rips from **IA artists you so easily dismiss.
Maybe I'm just missing your point - what right are we supposed to be fighting for here? The "Right To Give Away Free Copies Of The Artistic Property Of Others Because We Are Too Cheap To Pay, It's So Easy To Stea^H^H^H^HInfringe That We Cannot Be Expected To Stop, And Besides Those Guys Make Too Much Money Anyway"?
Posting content that you didn't create is not fair, nor is it even "Fair Use"... it's the unlawful taking by you of the copyright owner's right to distribute as he/she/they wish. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should, nor does it make it legal to do so.
Take a chance and let a (trustworthy) fellow traveler take a picture of you once in a while... I did 5 years of being "the guy with the camera" and I have only 4 pictures with me in them that are any good. It's not that I want them for my own wall, but it's a real bummer to never have a shot of yourself actually having fun in $FOREIGN_COUNTRY.
It can also be an eyeopener to see what the folks around you were seeing - I learned that the barbers had been having their little laugh. Good times.
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I will happily agree that science (the world of Reason, or Rational thought) cannot be made compatible with any scheme of religion or belief, because they do not intersect to any great degree. Science is a wonderful tool for explaining how things work, but it cannot do diddly to explain the 2AM question "Why are we here?" (And the mere existence of the Creationist Museum proves the converse.)
My question is why people keep dragging out this moldy old conflict? We all hold mutually exclusive thoughts in our heads ('All politicians are crooked' vs 'My senator fights the good fight', for example) so why can't we just drop this disagreement? If you fervently believe that Science holds all the answers and your neighbor fevently believes the FSM hold them instead, what have you lost?
As for myself, for matters pertaining to materials, speeds, and distances, and all things that can be measured, I choose Science and Reason as my tools. I believe that the scientists who do that stuff have a method that gives a very accurate result, a very good picture and explanation of the way the world works. For matters unmeasurable, I have found no such system or method that can explain them nearly so well ... but I'm not so arrogant that I assume there can be no such system. I believe that many religious laws make excellent interpersonal 'Rules to Live By' even if they can never be "proved" to have come from their purported source.
Here's a little thought experiment:
Imagine you are sitting in a barracks in beautiful Germany, just west of the Fulda Gap. Over on the other side of said Gap is a large subset of the Soviet 8th Guards Army, all planning to cruise through it and over you on their way to Paris and points west. There aren't enough conventional munitions or bodies to fire them... but you can drop a 'tactical nuclear weapon' and stop the remainder in their tracks.
Pop Quiz: Do you want to be there with a weapon that's never been rigorously tested, whose characteristics aren't fully understood, or do you want one that was and is?
It seems that you are still stuck with some of the hippy mentality you pooh-poohed above - if you cannot understand the difference between the precise delivery of a 1 Kiloton tactical weapon and a county-destroying 50 Megaton Tsar Bomba then further discussion would seem moot.
And it does work ... if you don't upgrade the Microsoft software. Would you expect it to just "continue to work" if you installed OS X, or Solaris, or *nix?
- they failed (for a year) to demonstrate the hack they originally claimed to be able to do at the conference, and
- they were unable to explain the hack to Apple engineers in anything but the theoretical sense (as proved by Apple having to resolve the issue themselves - which Apple's developers rapidly did), and
- claimed repeatedly to have been coerced by Apple lawyers (while offering no evidence of the same)
...
I have lost all confidence in their claims of last year. I will admit they seem to come up with the theory of the hack sometime prior to the conference, and that they NOW seem to have a working hackI'm also saddened by their stated reasons for claiming Apple was particularly vulnerable (OMG, those Mac users are snobs!11!1!), and the comments about eyes and cigarettes ... that's not just hyperbole, that's fanboi-style hate - hardly the stuff an "objective" security researcher ought to be espousing.
They hardly seem deserving of a free computer, or even the news coverage they will undoubtedly receive. Too bad, they seemed like such bright guys ...
Dude, that was both hilarious and true. Kudos to you!
Here's an example, in SKATS-transliterated syllables:
- LE BE = kah tah = to go (dictionary form)
- LEGG KT KN = kahs oh yo = (I) went (past-tense, short-form)
- LE GGSGG KHM FU BE = kah shuh soom nee da = (you) went (honoriffic, past-tense, long-form)
The parent is spot-on regarding the amount of time it takes to learn to read Hangul, tooThe realms of Scientific Inquiry and Belief in the Supernatural (AKA Religion) are orthogonal ... Religion is junk for explanations of HOW the physical world works, and Science is crap at explaining WHY we are all here on Earth. Horses for courses, gentlemen ... there IS no Grand Unified Theory of Everything, in either system.
Do tell, please, so I can malign all of them with faint praise as you have all of ours. Or not, and reveal yourself as the poser amongst us that you appear.
And yes, I am intentionally posting AC ... until you step up with something more than mere invective and a complete lack of understanding as to how we (Americans, which you are apparently not) could mislike a badly flawed candidate.
I will argue the following, if you like - regardless of what the SHOOTER intends, it is vastly better for the targets to be able to defend themselves ... and vastly better for our society that such idiots are removed swiftly and permanently from it. Over to you for rebuttal.
What I found most impressive in "All the President's Men" was the actions of Ben Bradley, not of Woodward-n-whatshisname - he never said they couldn't USE what Deep Throat was giving them, he just required that they get multiple attribution of any facts that they were claiming. Reporters who "interview" one source at the NHTSA (or any other government agency) and write a story are just being lazy, and need to get over themselves.
What we know is this: the guys at the Consumerist stopped after they found 1 case. Hardly a big deal.
As elegantly suggested by Frank Herbert in Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment , perhaps what we need is a Bureau of Sabotage to slow down the speed of government activity. Interesting reads, the two of them, though not the equal of Dune .
But for the love of mike, please stop crapping on the one shining spot here, the B&MG Foundation. They are doing a helluva job, one that nobody was doing before they came along. You do your cause no justice by slamming them too.
For the record, I do NOT get a dime from BG or his minions ... I use some of the products he sells, and have to support a bunch more of them, but I don't give a d@mn which OS/Office Suite/Mail program/whatever you want to use. I just like to keep the invective focused on the real problem, not the whole d@mn area.
breeches == trousers worn by Ben Franklin, or the back ends of a number of modern cannon
I must admit, however, there IS a strange and awesome majesty to your original phrase ...
As to whether the wiretapping is illegal ... it looks like he's got lawyers who thought it was legal enough ... it may have to go all the way to SCOTUS to be resolved. I make no claims regarding any lies to Congress - I said I think He believed that what he was doing was in the Nation's interest and will continue that I think that GWB believed that his actions were within the law. I also believe he was wrong, but no court has yet decided these issues ... except the court of public opinions, and even there the court seems to be divided.
Please accept my apology for misstating your position. As to the issue of Leaving the Troops, I don't see it as a possibilityRather than quote back the unexpected vitriol of the next two paragraphs, I'll just give you my plan for success in Iraq - send every soldier/sailor/airman/marine from the US, plus every one now stationed in "allied" countries starting with those pulling their own troops out, and conduct a MUCH larger version of the "big push" that IS achieving success in the Bagdhad area. Then get the troops out and let the Iraqis figure out their own problems. We couldn't force democracy on Occupied Germany after defeating them, we had to lead them to it AFTER they decided they wanted it, so why does everybody think we can do so in a country with no history or desire for such?
Your last line makes your own position pretty clear ... maybe you should start getting your news from a wider circle of sources as well.
As for your second method, while I would agree that W has skirted/crossed a number of legal & Constitutional boundries I'm also sure that no jury will ever convict him as you desire. If WJC could admittedly perjure himself (about a personal interaction, that should never have been prosecuted) and get away scott-free than there's no chance that GWB can be held liable for acting in what he perceives as the Nation's best interest.
I'm hoping for sweeping change in the next Administration, though in my case I'm hoping for a true small-government Conservative, like W was supposed to be. Given the backlash at W, it might not happen ... but if the Democrats keep proving themselves the Party of Vocal-But-Not-Voteworthy-Convictions, it's not impossible.
It seems that some Wikivandalism was done, but has now been corrected - Sinbad the comic is alive and well. He had some unkind words for the vandal, but took it in good stride from their account.
The copyright system is designed as a carrot, not a stick - it encourages a desired behavior (making the artistic works available after a period of time) by offering a benefit (exclusive distribution rights during that period). No mechanism is included to punish an artist who chooses to remove their work from distribution before it becomes available for free. That may be because it was not previously possible to do so, it may be because Congress never contemplated an artist even wanting to do so, it may be because of any number of reasons. Nevertheless, it's true - content providers or their agents can legally game the system as it now stands.
The corollary is true as well, the content provider is not required to allow you to easily preserve content. Neither "Fair Use" nor copyright law require them to allow you to preserve their content for them at all - you can because there are tools to do so, not because a law allows it (quite the opposite). If 20th Century Fox (or whoever the current owners are) chooses to stop making new versions of their product 'Die Hard' as new formats are developed, then so be it - you cannot sue them to put it on Blu-Ray just because you want it that way.
Lastly, I don't expect that I personally will be able to play a current version DVD of 'Die Hard' (or any current DVD) when the copyright finally runs out - but I do expect that works of lasting quality (like 'Die Hard', though not the sequels) will continue to be available in some playable format. I will also bet that somebody out there will be offering to convert your $OLD_FORMAT stuff to $SHINY_NEW_FORMAT versions, just as they do today. If there's money in it, business follows.
Here's my question for you - are you willing to work on/with your Congresscritter to criminalize artists for not living up to the bargain?
Maybe I'm just missing your point - what right are we supposed to be fighting for here? The "Right To Give Away Free Copies Of The Artistic Property Of Others Because We Are Too Cheap To Pay, It's So Easy To Stea^H^H^H^HInfringe That We Cannot Be Expected To Stop, And Besides Those Guys Make Too Much Money Anyway"?
Posting content that you didn't create is not fair, nor is it even "Fair Use" ... it's the unlawful taking by you of the copyright owner's right to distribute as he/she/they wish. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should, nor does it make it legal to do so.
It can also be an eyeopener to see what the folks around you were seeing - I learned that the barbers had been having their little laugh. Good times.