Hopefully that will never happen, but should the worst occur, we may find that the public is much less accepting of this endeavour than before.
You're right, but you shouldn't be. What business of the public is it if a fellow blows himself up in his rocketship? So long as he doesn't damage anything in the process, of course.
But you're completely correct: an accident and suddenly folks will demand regulation 'for the good of the pilots.' And another industry will be set back another half-century.
Yeah, but who wants non-beer-drinkers working for one anyway? A man who can't enjoy a fine microbrew is a man who clearly has problems. Why might a man not drink?
It could be against his religion--but then his religion is false (for as we know our Savior Himself made wine from water), and thus not to be trusted.
It could be that he dislikes the taste--but then he is obviously tasteless, and thus not to be trusted.
It could be that he does not trust himself to drink--but then he is obviously not to be trusted.
The only legitimate reason not to drink is if one has willingly abstained from it as a kind of mortification or discipline--and one who has done that is no more likely to complain about everyone else getting beer than I am to complain when it'd a Friday, Wednesday, Lenten day or Advent day and the free meals all have meat.
Cannibalism historically does have two halves: the enhancing of oneself and the degrading of another. I would argue that transplantation still has those two halves: the recipient lives a longer life, and the donor is torn to pieces. It's consensual, certainly, but it's no less wrong.
Supposing that life force is indeed something real; surely, we can agree that it is not contained in the heart. If it is anywhere, it would have to be the brain.
Actually, I know folks who argue quite seriously that the heart is indeed in some way the seat of the emotions, and that those who have undergone heart transplants are never quite the same again. I don't know if it's true, but I have heard it so argued.
Perhaps you feel that it is degrading to consider ourselves as a collection of biological parts, like a machine, but with what we know today, this is demonstrably so.
We can certainly be used to make lampshades, too, but I don't agree with that either.
I'm rather curious as to how you perceive the body and mind... I suppose I see them as two completely separate things, interconnected to the degree that the former must support the latter... do you feel that they are one in a sense that biology does not fully explain, and that playing mix-and-match with parts of the body does something to upset this?
I believe that the body and the soul are two parts of a person, who is one. The body is not a machine to feed sensations to the soul; it is something in its own right (I don't subscribe to the Western dualistic idea in which the spiritual or rational is elevated above the physical or emotional). Since Joe Blow's body is Joe, disrespect to it is disrespect to Joe. That's why our ancestors stuck the heads of criminals on pikes; it's why we have laws against desecrating corpses.
I don't think that the recipient of a transplant is less human. He may be less himself--I really don't know. But he has IMHO done something wrong: he has ripped out another's organs and had them installed in himself. Like I wrote though, I would never make it illegal. I am a libertarian, after all. So long as no-one is killing others for their organs, the State hasn't any business what goes on.
'm quite curious as to your opinions, because you're the first person who has voiced an objection to organ donation based on something other than religious belief, distrust of the medical profession, or vaguely described discomfort with the idea.
Actually, my objection is religious: it's in accord with my philosophy. However, it's not religious in the sense of 'it says here not to do it, thus it's Eevviill.' My religion happens to believe that the body is as important as the soul, and that we will be raised bodily from the dead at the end of time, and thus that a corpse should be treated reverentially.
Personally, I don't care for organ transplantation: it smacks too much of cannibalism. Primitives ate the hearts of their enemies to absorb their life-force; we eat the hearts of strangers to prolong our own lives. So that is a deep philosophical objection on my own part.
I wouldn't make it illegal, of course: it's the donor's choice to give, and the recipient's to receive. It's a matter of personal freedom. But I won't donate my organs, and I hope that should I suffer organ failure I should have the courage not to falter in my belief. And I hope that others consider how gruesome the idea is: ripping another apart in order to use him is just ugly.
It is trivial to demonstrate that the above is incorrect. While breaking the speed limit is illegal, it is not necessarily any more dangerous. As an example, Auraria Parkway into downtown Denver is used as part of a race track every Labour Day--and yet during the rest of the year it is marked as a 35. Yes, race car drivers are trained: knock a few mph off for that.
Additionally, it can be very dangerous to be doing the limit when everyone else is not. If everyone else is doing 85 and you are the only one doing 55, they are not the problem: you are.
There's no magical effect which takes place when one transitions from a mile below to a mile over. Speed limits often bear very little relationship to safe speed (here in the US, the 55 mph limit was solely to save petrol, and served mostly to enrich the motel and roadside food industries, since trips took a third again as long as they should have.
Mindless obedience to regulations is hardly a sign of a functioning intellect.
Are you an idiot? There's a world of difference between meaning to kill and being indifferent to the possibility of killing. Even a second-grader can understand that. Certainly, the latter can often be legitimately illegal (I support reasonable drunk-driving laws), but by no means are the two instances even remotely similar.
Would you prefer to live in a police state which deals with people before they have done anything wrong? Very probably, I imagine. Most sheep would trade every single one of their rights for the illusion of safety. People like you make me sick.
The law should only punish actual misdoing, not potential misdoing. Or do you believe you should be fined $0.007 for every mile you drive?
You really don't get it, do you? Murder is the intent to kill: when one stabs a man with a knife in a bar fight (2nd degree murder) or snipes one's wife's lover from a tree stand (1st degree murder), one intends to kill; when one drives with a DVD player, or drunk, one does not intend to kill: it may happen, but that is not the intent.
They are different cases; that's why our legal system distinguishes between them. The man who sets out to kill another, and does so, has done worse than he who kills another on the spur of the moment; the man who kills in the heat of the moment has done worse than one who never meant to kill, but did anyway.
I've never seen rms be rude or impolite. He merely argues that proprietary software is not as good for the end user. I don't agree with his support for infanticide, but when it comes to software he's a good fellow.
I always thought Emacs is a pretty smart IDE. It can do IntelliSense-like things, and ties in with stuff like make, gcc, gdb &c. very well. But it's certainly not for everyone.
Idiot luddites refusing to see progress when it smacks them in the face.
What, then, is the progress? As I asked in my post, 'what, exactly, do maven or ant buy which make does not provide?' As I noted, they are written in an ugly language; they use an ugly syntax (XML has all the bad points of S-expressions and few of the good); they do not work with auto*. I did note that make has a bad point.
I also looked at a few sites trying to get an answer. As far as I can see, switching to maven or ant buys me nothing but pain.
What, exactly, do maven or ant buy which make does not provide? They are written in a slow, ugly, unpleasant language, yes. They use XML instead of decent flat text, yes. They lack the great library of tools which have grown up around make, yes. Why would I want this, again? I will grant that make's use of is an abomination, but other than that it's a damned good tool which does a damned good job.
Idiot Java/XML heads constantly re-inventing the wheel.
That hurts. I knew it was bad, but these two articles really drove it home. Compared to that, Iraq must have been rather good. How will we ever end it?
That's a really, really tough question. NK has enough artillery pointed at Seoul to destroy the city several times over, and has nukes. Unlike Iraq, we simply can't escalate for years and then destroy it: if we take any action, it will need to be decisive in the first few minutes. We'd need to take out every artillery piece and every nuke in the country in, say, 15 minutes. It's a tough nut to crack.
That's part of why we went into Iraq when we did: it was getting worse and worse, and had we waited until Hussein had nukes capable of hitting civilised states (Kuwait and Israel are where I figure he'd aim 'em), we'd have been much more constrained.
It's possible that when the current Kim dies that we will be able to resolve things, but I fear that we're looking at another, smaller Cold War situation: we have to wait until the North Koreans wise up to their system. That may take awhile.
And meanwhile men, women and children die daily in death camps--and we in the civilised world can do nothing about it.
You forgot transmission efficiency--I'm fairly certain that transmitting that power over any significant distance would make the electrical option less efficient than internal combustion alternative. Also, I'd like to know the source for your figures. You could be quite correct, but...
Yes,/etc/bashrc exists--and doesn't get opened. Who cares if a help browser opens a file anyway? Complaining that ghelp: launches a help browser is like complaining that http:// launches a web browser. It's a safe protocol: HTTP because it doesn't allow modifications (not quite true, but...) and GNOME Help for the same reason.
It didn't open anything in gedit (Firefox 0.9 on top of Fedora)--nothing at all. It did open the help browser, which said that///etc/bashrc (and/etc/bashrc, when I tried it) didn't exist (presumably, meaning that it's not a GNOME help file). So if the problem did exist once, it certainly doesn't now.
Not that I can see how running gedit as myself on a file is a bad thing.
I'm a libertarian but there is no completely libertarian party with a chance of winning. The Republicans are often more libertarian than the Democrats; the Democrats are sometimes more libertarian than the Republicans; and the Libertarian Party become ever loonier each year (and is inconsistent, to boot). Remember that one need not be a Libertarian to be a libertarian.
I am a right-libertarian: if forced to choose between economic and social liberty, I will choose economic liberty. The Republicans have tended to be better than the Democrats on economic liberty, and while I don't always agree with them on social issues, on those issues the Dems and Republicans hardly differ (e.g. drug legalisation).
Naturally I'll vote for a Republican before I vote for a Democrat.
Since, like it or not, we do have a two-party system, I have no choice but to prevent hurtingthe Republicans--if they are hurt, then the Democrats are necessarily helped. Since I find Democrats only slightly better than Greens and Communists, I damned well better help the Republicans.
That's why I always go in claiming to want something smaller, and let them think they're selling me on more than I want. Like when I bought my new bike, I knew that I was in the $400-$600 market: I told the guy $300, maybe a bit higher, and walked out with a bike that was at $430. Let 'em think they're winning.
What is it about our criminal justice system that makes it inadequate to try these people? The fact that it might let them go free if there is not enough evidence to convict them? If that is the line of argument, then I'm afraid we may have reached the stage where we decide we can no longer "afford" civil liberties--a very sad day, indeed. Consider the possibility that if we don't have enough evidence to convict someone, it may be because they are in fact innocent.
Yeah--and as I mentioned, that's great and good and desireable in a criminal system. It's not nearly so good in a war. How many soldiers were killed in the World Wars who had no desire to kill Americans? How many were conscripts who would much rather be home? Civil liberties are just that: civil. They don't apply outside of civil society.
War is a breakdown in the normal order of things. It's evil, and terrible, and injust--but sometimes it is necessary. It involves mass-murder, often of soldiers who'd be just as glad to be friends (cf. the Christmas Truce, 1914). It involves civilian casualties and fratricide. Its rules are different from those of civil society: the foe is guilty until proven innocent; he is not given council, but is given only a few minutes to surrender, if that. For all these reasons, war must be avoided when possible.
We didn't start this war; in fact, the great legacy of the Clinton years is a record of running away from it wherever possible (which is what led al Qaeda, and later the Taliban, to believe that the Bush administration would do the same). We didn't disrupt civil society. We didn't fire the first shot, but we're going to fire the last.
If you are talking about shooting people during combat, that is a different situation--but keep in mind that policemen are legally allowed to shoot people during "combat" as well.
The rules for police and soldiers are very different, and rightly so. I would much rather send soldiers in with somewhat softened rules than send in a militarised police.
Soldiers are trained for wholesale destruction of "the enemy" by any means necessary, not for the more delicate task of capturing criminals who are hiding amongst a civilian population.
You'd be surprised. Both the Army and the Marines have trained for the task. Believe it or not, that's where the Marines got much of their experience in the early parts of the 20th century, by fighting little wars against insurgents.
In most countries (including Iraq) I think we will get much better results by co-operating with the local law enforcement authorities, who speak the local language, are (somewhat) more trusted by the people, are familiar with how things are done locally, and (most importantly) don't produce so many more anti-American terrorists as a side effect of their efforts.
Which is what we're doing in Iraq. The old authorities didn't co-operate: indeed, Hussein provided shelter to many terrorists, made payments to the families of suicide bombers, attempted to murder a president of the United States, and had dealings with al Qaeda (I don't believe he was involved in the 11 September attacks, but there is compelling evidence that he had contacts with them in other instances). So we removed the old authorities, and turned the country over to new ones, who do speak the local language, are more trusted than we are and are familiar with local mores.
And FWIW, the vast majority of the insurgents in Iraq seem not the be Iraqis, but foreigners.
Again, this statement alone pretty much proves you are not a liberterian.
No, it pretty much proves that you are dense as a brick. Politics is not the art of the ideal, but of compromise, of having to choose the least bad out of one's alternatives (this is someone one learns as one grows older). Voting for anyone but Bush or Kerry is a waste of time--ask the Nader voters who would have preferred Gore over Bush any day of the week. Given that, I must decide which of the two candidates is least bad. Kerry annoys me; Bush annoys me. I happen to think that Bush is more of a friend of liberty than Kerry is, and where he is not, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as where Kerry is not.
Yeah, 'it doesn't affect me' sounds on the face of it a non-libertarian sentiment. But when having to decide between non-desirable alternatives, it's a valid criterion (although not a determining one). Each of us has to weigh all of the pros and cons of the Republican and Democratic candidates (the only ones with a chance of winning), and determine which will be tolerable.
And yes I have voted for the libertarian candidate in the past: I voted for Browne in the last election (Colorado was sewn up for Bush, so voting for Browne didn't increase the odds of Gore winning). Things look a lot tighter this time around, so I plan to vote for Bush. If we had instant runoff voting, I might vote first for the libertarian candidate, if he were sane. I've not looked at Badnarik's (sp?) site, though, so I don't know.
You have no objection to amending the constitution of the united states (our most sacred document) to deny marriage rights to a class of people.
Bullshit--I never stated that I supported such an action, merely that it doesn't overly annoy me, as it doesn't affect me. I'm against it, naturally, as I also noted: the solution to the problem is to stop issuing special legal privileges to husbands & wives (private privileges, of course, are another issue entirely). Abolish civil marriage, don't create a legal absurdity.
Why am I a libertarian? Because I support liberty. I am against the War on Some Drugs; I am in favour of free political speech (unlike President Bush, and a majority of both the Senate and the Supreme Court); I am in favour of federalist solutions wherever possible; I am against central government wherever avoidable; I am for market solutions wherever practical; I think that in almost every case it is best to delegate issues to the smallest government unit, if there's no way for government to ignore the issue at all. I believe that Mill's On Liberty should be required reading for anyone holding public office, and that there should be a test.
I only support Bush because Kerry would be worse, not because I think that he is good in and of himself.
I wonder what you mean by 'libertarian.' Probably some kind of anarcho-leftist.
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You're right, but you shouldn't be. What business of the public is it if a fellow blows himself up in his rocketship? So long as he doesn't damage anything in the process, of course.
But you're completely correct: an accident and suddenly folks will demand regulation 'for the good of the pilots.' And another industry will be set back another half-century.
It could be against his religion--but then his religion is false (for as we know our Savior Himself made wine from water), and thus not to be trusted.
It could be that he dislikes the taste--but then he is obviously tasteless, and thus not to be trusted.
It could be that he does not trust himself to drink--but then he is obviously not to be trusted.
The only legitimate reason not to drink is if one has willingly abstained from it as a kind of mortification or discipline--and one who has done that is no more likely to complain about everyone else getting beer than I am to complain when it'd a Friday, Wednesday, Lenten day or Advent day and the free meals all have meat.
Cannibalism historically does have two halves: the enhancing of oneself and the degrading of another. I would argue that transplantation still has those two halves: the recipient lives a longer life, and the donor is torn to pieces. It's consensual, certainly, but it's no less wrong.
Supposing that life force is indeed something real; surely, we can agree that it is not contained in the heart. If it is anywhere, it would have to be the brain.
Actually, I know folks who argue quite seriously that the heart is indeed in some way the seat of the emotions, and that those who have undergone heart transplants are never quite the same again. I don't know if it's true, but I have heard it so argued.
Perhaps you feel that it is degrading to consider ourselves as a collection of biological parts, like a machine, but with what we know today, this is demonstrably so.
We can certainly be used to make lampshades, too, but I don't agree with that either.
I'm rather curious as to how you perceive the body and mind... I suppose I see them as two completely separate things, interconnected to the degree that the former must support the latter... do you feel that they are one in a sense that biology does not fully explain, and that playing mix-and-match with parts of the body does something to upset this?
I believe that the body and the soul are two parts of a person, who is one. The body is not a machine to feed sensations to the soul; it is something in its own right (I don't subscribe to the Western dualistic idea in which the spiritual or rational is elevated above the physical or emotional). Since Joe Blow's body is Joe, disrespect to it is disrespect to Joe. That's why our ancestors stuck the heads of criminals on pikes; it's why we have laws against desecrating corpses.
I don't think that the recipient of a transplant is less human. He may be less himself--I really don't know. But he has IMHO done something wrong: he has ripped out another's organs and had them installed in himself. Like I wrote though, I would never make it illegal. I am a libertarian, after all. So long as no-one is killing others for their organs, the State hasn't any business what goes on.
'm quite curious as to your opinions, because you're the first person who has voiced an objection to organ donation based on something other than religious belief, distrust of the medical profession, or vaguely described discomfort with the idea.
Actually, my objection is religious: it's in accord with my philosophy. However, it's not religious in the sense of 'it says here not to do it, thus it's Eevviill.' My religion happens to believe that the body is as important as the soul, and that we will be raised bodily from the dead at the end of time, and thus that a corpse should be treated reverentially.
Which is why I support making them advisories, and issuing stiffer penalties when a driver causes an accident having exceeded the advisory.
For most of us guys, that would be 'every single pair in sight,' so I don't think there'll be too much new info there:-)
I wouldn't make it illegal, of course: it's the donor's choice to give, and the recipient's to receive. It's a matter of personal freedom. But I won't donate my organs, and I hope that should I suffer organ failure I should have the courage not to falter in my belief. And I hope that others consider how gruesome the idea is: ripping another apart in order to use him is just ugly.
It is trivial to demonstrate that the above is incorrect. While breaking the speed limit is illegal, it is not necessarily any more dangerous. As an example, Auraria Parkway into downtown Denver is used as part of a race track every Labour Day--and yet during the rest of the year it is marked as a 35. Yes, race car drivers are trained: knock a few mph off for that.
Additionally, it can be very dangerous to be doing the limit when everyone else is not. If everyone else is doing 85 and you are the only one doing 55, they are not the problem: you are.
There's no magical effect which takes place when one transitions from a mile below to a mile over. Speed limits often bear very little relationship to safe speed (here in the US, the 55 mph limit was solely to save petrol, and served mostly to enrich the motel and roadside food industries, since trips took a third again as long as they should have.
Mindless obedience to regulations is hardly a sign of a functioning intellect.
Are you an idiot? There's a world of difference between meaning to kill and being indifferent to the possibility of killing. Even a second-grader can understand that. Certainly, the latter can often be legitimately illegal (I support reasonable drunk-driving laws), but by no means are the two instances even remotely similar.
The law should only punish actual misdoing, not potential misdoing. Or do you believe you should be fined $0.007 for every mile you drive?
They are different cases; that's why our legal system distinguishes between them. The man who sets out to kill another, and does so, has done worse than he who kills another on the spur of the moment; the man who kills in the heat of the moment has done worse than one who never meant to kill, but did anyway.
I've never seen rms be rude or impolite. He merely argues that proprietary software is not as good for the end user. I don't agree with his support for infanticide, but when it comes to software he's a good fellow.
I always thought Emacs is a pretty smart IDE. It can do IntelliSense-like things, and ties in with stuff like make, gcc, gdb &c. very well. But it's certainly not for everyone.
What, then, is the progress? As I asked in my post, 'what, exactly, do maven or ant buy which make does not provide?' As I noted, they are written in an ugly language; they use an ugly syntax (XML has all the bad points of S-expressions and few of the good); they do not work with auto*. I did note that make has a bad point.
I also looked at a few sites trying to get an answer. As far as I can see, switching to maven or ant buys me nothing but pain.
Idiot Java/XML heads constantly re-inventing the wheel.
That's a really, really tough question. NK has enough artillery pointed at Seoul to destroy the city several times over, and has nukes. Unlike Iraq, we simply can't escalate for years and then destroy it: if we take any action, it will need to be decisive in the first few minutes. We'd need to take out every artillery piece and every nuke in the country in, say, 15 minutes. It's a tough nut to crack.
That's part of why we went into Iraq when we did: it was getting worse and worse, and had we waited until Hussein had nukes capable of hitting civilised states (Kuwait and Israel are where I figure he'd aim 'em), we'd have been much more constrained.
It's possible that when the current Kim dies that we will be able to resolve things, but I fear that we're looking at another, smaller Cold War situation: we have to wait until the North Koreans wise up to their system. That may take awhile.
And meanwhile men, women and children die daily in death camps--and we in the civilised world can do nothing about it.
You forgot transmission efficiency--I'm fairly certain that transmitting that power over any significant distance would make the electrical option less efficient than internal combustion alternative. Also, I'd like to know the source for your figures. You could be quite correct, but...
Yes, /etc/bashrc exists--and doesn't get opened. Who cares if a help browser opens a file anyway? Complaining that ghelp: launches a help browser is like complaining that http:// launches a web browser. It's a safe protocol: HTTP because it doesn't allow modifications (not quite true, but...) and GNOME Help for the same reason.
Not that I can see how running gedit as myself on a file is a bad thing.
Yes, folks, on a decent web server you can use URLs like http://my.domain.net/images/yellow-belly and your browser will Do the Right Thing.
I am a right-libertarian: if forced to choose between economic and social liberty, I will choose economic liberty. The Republicans have tended to be better than the Democrats on economic liberty, and while I don't always agree with them on social issues, on those issues the Dems and Republicans hardly differ (e.g. drug legalisation). Naturally I'll vote for a Republican before I vote for a Democrat.
Since, like it or not, we do have a two-party system, I have no choice but to prevent hurtingthe Republicans--if they are hurt, then the Democrats are necessarily helped. Since I find Democrats only slightly better than Greens and Communists, I damned well better help the Republicans.
That's why I always go in claiming to want something smaller, and let them think they're selling me on more than I want. Like when I bought my new bike, I knew that I was in the $400-$600 market: I told the guy $300, maybe a bit higher, and walked out with a bike that was at $430. Let 'em think they're winning.
Nope--you started it. Fighting words and all that.
Yeah--and as I mentioned, that's great and good and desireable in a criminal system. It's not nearly so good in a war. How many soldiers were killed in the World Wars who had no desire to kill Americans? How many were conscripts who would much rather be home? Civil liberties are just that: civil. They don't apply outside of civil society.
War is a breakdown in the normal order of things. It's evil, and terrible, and injust--but sometimes it is necessary. It involves mass-murder, often of soldiers who'd be just as glad to be friends (cf. the Christmas Truce, 1914). It involves civilian casualties and fratricide. Its rules are different from those of civil society: the foe is guilty until proven innocent; he is not given council, but is given only a few minutes to surrender, if that. For all these reasons, war must be avoided when possible.
We didn't start this war; in fact, the great legacy of the Clinton years is a record of running away from it wherever possible (which is what led al Qaeda, and later the Taliban, to believe that the Bush administration would do the same). We didn't disrupt civil society. We didn't fire the first shot, but we're going to fire the last.
If you are talking about shooting people during combat, that is a different situation--but keep in mind that policemen are legally allowed to shoot people during "combat" as well.
The rules for police and soldiers are very different, and rightly so. I would much rather send soldiers in with somewhat softened rules than send in a militarised police.
Soldiers are trained for wholesale destruction of "the enemy" by any means necessary, not for the more delicate task of capturing criminals who are hiding amongst a civilian population.
You'd be surprised. Both the Army and the Marines have trained for the task. Believe it or not, that's where the Marines got much of their experience in the early parts of the 20th century, by fighting little wars against insurgents.
In most countries (including Iraq) I think we will get much better results by co-operating with the local law enforcement authorities, who speak the local language, are (somewhat) more trusted by the people, are familiar with how things are done locally, and (most importantly) don't produce so many more anti-American terrorists as a side effect of their efforts.
Which is what we're doing in Iraq. The old authorities didn't co-operate: indeed, Hussein provided shelter to many terrorists, made payments to the families of suicide bombers, attempted to murder a president of the United States, and had dealings with al Qaeda (I don't believe he was involved in the 11 September attacks, but there is compelling evidence that he had contacts with them in other instances). So we removed the old authorities, and turned the country over to new ones, who do speak the local language, are more trusted than we are and are familiar with local mores.
And FWIW, the vast majority of the insurgents in Iraq seem not the be Iraqis, but foreigners.
No, it pretty much proves that you are dense as a brick. Politics is not the art of the ideal, but of compromise, of having to choose the least bad out of one's alternatives (this is someone one learns as one grows older). Voting for anyone but Bush or Kerry is a waste of time--ask the Nader voters who would have preferred Gore over Bush any day of the week. Given that, I must decide which of the two candidates is least bad. Kerry annoys me; Bush annoys me. I happen to think that Bush is more of a friend of liberty than Kerry is, and where he is not, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as where Kerry is not.
Yeah, 'it doesn't affect me' sounds on the face of it a non-libertarian sentiment. But when having to decide between non-desirable alternatives, it's a valid criterion (although not a determining one). Each of us has to weigh all of the pros and cons of the Republican and Democratic candidates (the only ones with a chance of winning), and determine which will be tolerable.
And yes I have voted for the libertarian candidate in the past: I voted for Browne in the last election (Colorado was sewn up for Bush, so voting for Browne didn't increase the odds of Gore winning). Things look a lot tighter this time around, so I plan to vote for Bush. If we had instant runoff voting, I might vote first for the libertarian candidate, if he were sane. I've not looked at Badnarik's (sp?) site, though, so I don't know.
Why am I a libertarian? Because I support liberty. I am against the War on Some Drugs; I am in favour of free political speech (unlike President Bush, and a majority of both the Senate and the Supreme Court); I am in favour of federalist solutions wherever possible; I am against central government wherever avoidable; I am for market solutions wherever practical; I think that in almost every case it is best to delegate issues to the smallest government unit, if there's no way for government to ignore the issue at all. I believe that Mill's On Liberty should be required reading for anyone holding public office, and that there should be a test.
I only support Bush because Kerry would be worse, not because I think that he is good in and of himself.
I wonder what you mean by 'libertarian.' Probably some kind of anarcho-leftist.