I have to say that if dropping viewports makes it easier for me to just give myself four or however many desktops, I'm all for it. I have no problem with advanced functionality in software I use, but if including it makes it harder to do something basic, then a re-think is needed at some point.
If you want 4 virtual desktops that are all connected to each other (ie, drag a window to the bottom of the screen and it flips to the desktop below it on a 2D grid), you want viewports. If you want to straddle a window and see half on one desktop and half on the other, you want viewports.
Viewports are essentially one huge 2D desktop that you move around on and see parts of at a time. Workspaces are like having a bunch of tables stacked on top of each other that you have to search through linearly to find what you want.
If anything, viewports seem more intuitive to me (being two dimensional instead of 1). I wouldn't be complaining if they disabled the functionality of one to dumb down the interface for users who couldn't grasp it if there was still a configuration option to enable the functionality found in gnome1. Instead, they entirely nuked one choice because a couple core developers preferred the other, telling the end users who complained to "get used to it because KDE/Windows/etc don't support viewports either".
But unfortunately during the discussion of the bug report, it became apparent that the developers really didn't care about this. It bothered me because one thing was being said on the public lists, while something rather contrary was being said in bugzilla.
If you look at the thread I started entitled "Viewports and gnome 2" in the desktop-devel archives, you'll see that not only were developers not really interested in doing anything about it, they were downright belligerant to anyone who questioned what they did... to the point where in trying to discuss the problem, I wasn't allowed to call viewports "viewports". I specifically pointed out at length what I found to be deficient about having only workspaces in gnome2 and I kept being told to tell them what I thought the deficiencies were as if they just gave me a kneejerk reaction instead of reading what I wrote. The gnome2 developers really turned me sour on the whole project and I could really care less about the future of gnome2 now. I'll use gnome1 until something better comes along.
Re:screenshots
on
Gnome 2.0 RC1
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Where is the pager? I am a gnome user - I hope you can customize it to something better than this.
If you want to use gnome 1.x style viewports, don't switch to gnome 2. Their "usability experts" decided it was too complicated to have both viewports and workspaces so they ripped viewports out, stating tht "we can do the same thing with workspaces". Well, after that, the programmer(s) responsible for that portion of gnome decided that the functionality provided by viewports was extra cruft that they wouldn't implement and everyone would just have to get used to doing things the way they liked it. Gone are the days when gnome offered ultimate flexibility because some usability pinheads know what's best for all of us.
Not trolling... I've been using gnome for years and downloaded/compiled/installed new gnome 2 tarballs up until the end of april when I got completely frustrated with the lack of progress. Yeah... it's open source so put up my code. I'm just a gnome user - I do have more things to do than work on gnome 2 when gnome 1 does everything that I want already. Alas, as much as I wanted to stay bleeding edge, I'm going to have to wait until the developers start listening to real users rather than "experts" again.
I firmly believe Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer are the absolute scum of the earth. I will not kiss their asses in any way, shape or form. I will vote against them regardless of how they vote on this particular bill but if they vote for it, I will not only vote against them, I will speak loud and clearly to the patrons of the restaurant I manage, I will shout from the rafters of my web page, I will write letters to the editor of my newspaper, etc. The only good the money they raise does is it buys them advertising. If you have enough people speaking out to rally the vote against you, all the money in the world won't help. You can be sure that I have all of my family and friends, regarless of whether they normally vote or give a rats ass about the CBDTPA, writing/calling to tell them to vote against the bill. A hundred ass-kissers telling them to vote for it doesn't mean a thing if ten times as many tell them to vote against the bill. Finally, I just had to get in the jab regarding their distaste for free speech via the CFR bill as well. I'm calling them out - if you vote for the bill, it shows the $600k (Clinton) and $400k (Schumer) from the entertainment industry bought their vote since they're supposedly for the little people and against big business.
I just finished writing my letter. Anyone is free to copy any parts of it that you'd like for inclusion in your own letters.
To the "honorable" Senator from New York,
My name is Kenneth Witherow. I am a computer consultant and writer from the town of
Livonia, NY. I am writing regarding a recently proposed legislative bill, S 2048 the
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). I strongly urge you to
vote against this bill.
The main premise of the bill is to create encryption systems to protect digital
content but despite the good intentions, it will cause great harm to independent content
creators, computer programmers, electronic hobbyists and others. It seeks to force digital
mechanisms such as computers to restrict the access to various media content used in
conjunction with it. In this pursuit, it restricts a person's ability to make copies for
personal use as allowed under both law and rulings from the Supreme Court.
Content producers claim that they cannot distribute the works via a digital medium
for fear that the content will be illegally copied. The government should not have the
power to sustain a business in the modern age because it's old methods are not any longer
viable. Digital content is extremely inexpensive to reproduce and the reason why forays
into this area fail is because the content producers refuse to lower their pricing to suit
the new market. Why is it that a compact disc costs $18 while a tape, which is more
expensive to produce, costs a mere $12? The content industry claims that the sky is falling
with the introduction of every new advance in their field. Television would be the end
of radio, VCRs the end of the movie business, MP3s the end of music distribution. Why is it
that an independent band can generate revenues selling their music for a modest price on
the internet but huge record labels cannot? The obvious answer is the music cartel, RIAA,
knows it's business model is outdated and refuses to change because that would eliminate
it's power. If this bill is passed, independent artists will not be able to create
and distribute works due to the requirements of CBDTPA and the barriers to entry for
non-wealthy creators. The MPAA and other institutions are in similar situations.
Because Microsoft has recently patented the system of Digital Rights Management,
the adoption of the CBDTPA would ensure that the Microsoft monopoly will continue well into
the future. As a user and developer of an alternate operating system, Linux, Microsoft
would prevent us from using DRM to comply with the CBDTPA and it would be illegal for
Linux to continue without it. This bill stifles software development and ensures that
a monopoly will be further seated in it's power, ensuring that it will hurt consumers
even more.
In 1998, another bill, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law.
This law greatly restricts my fair use rights, especially because I use an operating
system without a licensed DVD player available for it. One of the most damaging portions
of the DMCA is that it makes illegal what made the PC possible in the first place - it
outlaws reverse engineering. When the DMCA is combined with products sold under the
CBDTPA, it is quite obvious that the result is content which is not available in a usable
means, not copyable and illegal to retrieve via engineering methods. This ensures that
content will never effectively enter into the public domain after it's copyright expires
which is a gross violation of the Constitution's decree "To promote the Progress of
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". These two bills, not to
mention the continual extension of copyright, ensure that the first two portions of this
charge are violated. Restriction of engineering and software creation does not promote
science. Inability to access works in a non-creator provided method does not allow
exclusivity to last for a limited time.
You also recently voted for the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill
which means that you personally think money has a corrupting influence in politics. It is
well worth noting that the entertainment industry was your fifth highest ranking donator
so I am sure their money may influence your decision since you've stated it does. I never
voted for you, nor will I ever vote for you, but if you vote for this legislation, my
simple vote against you will turn into a local campaign against you assuming your
Campaign Finance Reform "fix" doesn't ban me from speaking against you before the
election as it currently does. Again, I strongly urge you to vote against S 2048.
The defense of the nation is one of the top priorities of the federal government( arguably the most important since if we're conquered, we lose our freedom ):
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.
Waaaaay down at the bottom is stuff like highways
Highway maintenance is covered in infrastructure costs.
education
Find the clause in the Constitution or an amendment which says people have the right to a federal education. It's a state issue
aids research
How many billions of federal dollars have been spent on AIDS over the last 20 years? How lucrative would it be for a private company to find and patent a vaccine or cure? Enough to drive private research? You bet. I feel for those who got AIDS via blood donations/birth but those who got AIDS because of their own desire (via drug use, unprotected sex, etc) should live with the choices they made and not look to everyone else to bail them out. Again, point out the constitutional mandate for drug research.
stem cell research
Again, this is in the domain of private research and is a very touchy issue ethically. If you wouldn't support the CIA's experiments during the middle of the last century, I have a hard time understanding how you could support this.
There is plenty of pork in the federal budget and there is more money than we can fathom which has simply evaporated in many federal agencies( $250 for a toilet seat( mainly due to red tape ) in the military budget is peanuts compared to the $800 million missing from the Dept of Education in 1999-2000 or the $2 billion missing in HUD during the same time frame.) Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly lays out the power of the federal governemnt. Reduce the federal government to those functions and most of the waste and a lot of corruption is gone. Fill the vacuum that's created with state/county/city agencies and charities where it's easier to keep an eye on things and prevent abuse.
NASA does have a military purpose among other federal interests. Perhaps it should be folded in with the Department of Defense since they already collaborate on many projects.
and a soldier with an M-16 on every domestic city block
violates posse comitatus and is the purpose of the second and third amendments. Of course, that didn't stop janet reno
How many of the people criticizing the cut have sat down and actually made a budget? The first thing you have to do is rank the priorities of your expenditures. Number one on my list is paying my mortgage and after that comes food, electricity, and other things which I need today if I'm going to be here tomorrow. WAAAAAAAY down on my list are things like entertainment, toys/gadgets, games, etc.
The federal government's most important priority is to maintain the infrastructure which makes the US possible. Things like operational costs of the three branches, minting money, foreign relations and maintaining a military (what good is all the other stuff if anyone can take it from us at whim?). In the middle area, you see things like HUD, Dept of Education, SSI, etc (stuff which they don't have a constitutional mandate to create but which people have become reliant upon). Way down at the bottom of the list, you'll find things like most of NASA, fluff research grants( did we REALLY need to spend $45k to find out how many people rinse their dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? ), etc. Things which are nice to have but aren't critical.
Now that you have your priorities, you only have a fixed amount of money to spend. An outside force has made it necessary to increase spending on one or several of your highest priority items. Nobody is going to die if NASA's budget gets reduced for a year or three to shore up our more important needs. If pure space research means that much to you, donate from your own pocket to one of the non-profit groups out there promoting research.
Everyday we seem to pass more and more laws that are seemingly(to me anyway) directly in conflict with Our Constitution.
Congresscritters are just doing what they're elected to do... every time they're up for election, their ads show two things: how much they did while they were in office and what a jerk their opponent is. If they were to come home and say "I did absolutely nothing during my last term", people would be outraged and probably wouldn't re-elect them.
Also, everyone who runs around electing people because they want to bring change (whether it's the greens, the reform party, democrats, republicans, etc) are at fault. Those candidates want to further remove us from the previous freedoms we enjoy. The federal government has three primary jobs and shouldn't stick it's nose into anything else: handle foreign relations, protect our citizens and regulate interstate affairs(States shouldn't be conducting diplomacy, the feds are the only ones who can protect our common border and ensure a state doesn't get out of control stripping rights, and we need an authoritive body to keep the states from acting like spoiled children). Any time the federal government gets involved elsewhere, expect us to lose rights or control there. The more regulation you support, the less freedom you'll get.
He would openly describe himself as a christian democrat
Careful guys, he's a christian so he must be evil. Come off it buddy, I'm an atheist and I don't run around calling everyone who holds some religious view I don't agree with a zealot out to get me. You do know that people are allowed to have different opinions than you, right? And just because they hold a different intellectual position doesn't make them a bad person, does it?
In normal times the opinion of these 2 avowed members of the ultra conservative christian right would be ridiculed, but at this moment in time they will get wide support in some areas.
So now Chuck Schumer is a member of the "ultra conservative christitan right"? Let's see... He authored the Brady Bill back in 1993 and the assault weapons ban in 1994, wrote the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, he's for socialized medicine and free prescription drugs, etc. Do you know who he beat to get his Senate seat? Conservative republican Al D'Amato.
Stop and think about all of that for a minute. Just because someone did something you don't like, they must be a member of the VRWC(Vast Right Wing Conspiracy), right? You want to talk about knee jerk situations in a crisis? You're calling one of the most liberal democrats in DC a right wing extremist. If you can't be bothered to do your homework regarding the people whom you're attacking, why should anyone bother listening to your attack. This is one of the reasons why/. would make a horrible lobbying group - so many people here are ignorant of politics but think because they're 1337 perl hackers, they can solve all the problems of the world. You think the legal advice offered on/. is usually bad, the political information is often 10x worse.
Moderators: -1 flamebait, -1 attacks/. elitism, -1 must be right wing nut
That bug was present in builds for about 12 hours one day....
happened in all 4 or so of the builds I tried between 2/2 and 2/12 or so... the previous build was deleted before installing the new each time. Will try a new build sometime today though
I suggest unchecking the "Use System Colors" checkbox in preferences under "Appearance > Colors" if you don't want mozilla to use the system colors
I can't pull down a current daily due to the load on their servers... but when I've downloaded them over the past couple weeks since the change, when I would go to Appearance->Colors, I would get an XML error. I moved.mozilla so it could create an entirely new profile (figuring it may have disagreed with my current profile) but it still brought up the error so, unfortunately, I can't simply disable system colors...
I was happily chugging along on the daily builds until sometime around the first of the month. Apparently, they decided to stop asking what color preferences you want and instead use the colors associated with your gtk theme as the default colors for text/background for the displayed pages. Sites like appwatch are unreadable because they chose to use the secondary foreground color so I'm still using a build from about a month ago. The bug's been in bugzilla since Feb 2nd along with a patch and they still haven't bothered to check it in. I thought they were supposed to be in the process of fixing the bugs right now rather than adding "features". The other thing that sucks is I had to fire up Netscape 4.7 to post this because the text entry seems to break at every line so when you insert long URLs, it chops them up so they don't work. I'm still trying to find that one in bugzilla...
Thats why the ACLU exists. Because people are "Innocent until PROVEN guilty" and deserve to be treated and defended as if they are indeed innocent UNTIL they are PROVEN guilty.
That is, unless you're a gun owner. Us gun owners are obviously responsible for all of the ills in society and thus we don't deserve protection. Sure, us hunters are using our guns in a legal manner now, but one day, each of us will snap and go on a killing spree so we need to be stopped before we do. The non-hunters don't have any justifiable use for guns so obviously, they're just going to use them to kill innocent people. As for the criminals using guns, they're a victim of society and should have their sentences reduced because if it weren't for the gun owners, they wouldn't be able to acquire guns to kill people. Maybe your freedom/rights defending ACLU and the ACLU I see attacking freedom/rights aren't the same people.
I have a student loan through the US Dept of Education that I'm paying back... my bill for january 2000 was never printed and I got a statement halfway through january notifying me of the problem. It also asked me to send in my payment ASAP and that they wouldn't charge a late fee for it.
Without that certificate, no Florida electors could vote in the electoral college ballot which is to take place that day. As things now stand, that would mean Mr. Gore would win.
In other words, if Gore and his cronies can litigate this for a couple months by constantly raises issues county by county, precinct by precinct, he could litigate his way to the presidency even if he loses Florida (as it very much appears that he will if the remaining military ballot is mostly republican as usual and votes for Bush don't magically get lost in the hand count of the democrat run Palm Beach County)
there is no way the state can gag the media until the next day. I have a constitutional right to call up an Alaskan citizen and brag about how my vote has is in four hours before their polls even open.
Sure... as an individual you have the right to do that. The question is whether the media should be allowed to use exit polling to broadcast winners while the election is in progress. They could claim First Amendment rights but as long as they're broadcasting via a public owned medium, they agree to abide by FCC regulation( ie, you can't show nudity on regular tv ) who is funded by Congress.
But if Florida doesn't participate, there are only 513 electors and thus only 257 are needed for a majority. (Gore wins).
Alas, florida did participate but because their
vote is, in essence, tied, they can't give their votes to a candidate. If florida can't cast their votes, it would be the same as giving them to a third party. The Constitution mandates that a candidate must get a majority of the electoral college votes and neither do so it would go to the House. Also, the republicans are speculating that they'll challenge the vote in Wisconsin in light of the bribe(cigarette for your Gore vote) and a mere 6k vote difference. Bush is also ahead in Oregon... if he takes Wisconsin from Gore, that gives it 264 Bush(11+7) to 249 Gore.
And while you're doing that, CNN and others shouldn't be allowed to do any reporting until the last polling station has closed.
FWIW, Bill O'Reilly (a prime time new analyst on FoxNews for those who don't know) is trying to get legislation sponsered that would prevent the release of exit polling data until all polls are closed in the future.
Ooooh... Name calling. I bet you're almost mature enough to vote!
Every method you favor favors Bush, and any method that favors Gore you shoot down.
A revote, either in Miami-Dade county or in the entire state simply wouldn't be fair to the other 49 states who didn't get to select their candidates with the foresight of the results of the other 49 states. 95k people picked Nader over Gore -- how many do you think would switch to Gore in a re-vote? That wouldn't be fair to Nader and his supporters. They had their chance to vote and it's THEIR FAULT if they fucked up. Get out of the victim mentality.
The Constitution proscribes for an election by the electoral college to give a majority, rather than a plurality, to a candidate. If the losing party, whomever it is, decides to challenge thousands of votes in court and the court ends up switching votes, you've violated the Constitution by making the courts the deciders of the Presidency rather than the people/electoral college. That is a violation of the Constitution because nowhere in the Constitution do they give federal judges the ability to switch votes( as partisan judges could use to to veto the will of the people ). If the votes are going to be desputed in that manner, the _ONLY_ other option under the Constitution would be to invalidate the entire florida presidential election and leave it up to the House. And like I said before, the House doesn't get one vote per rep but one vote per state. I have no idea who that favors because districting doesn't represent the entire state but small areas (for example again, Texas has 18 democratic reps out of 30). It may be the the House, despite having a republican majority, could elect Al Gore. In any effect, I'm sure you'll agree that it would be better to have a representative, who is responsible to their constituents, elect the President than a federal judge, who is accountable to nobody.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want 4 virtual desktops that are all connected to each other (ie, drag a window to the bottom of the screen and it flips to the desktop below it on a 2D grid), you want viewports. If you want to straddle a window and see half on one desktop and half on the other, you want viewports.
Viewports are essentially one huge 2D desktop that you move around on and see parts of at a time. Workspaces are like having a bunch of tables stacked on top of each other that you have to search through linearly to find what you want.
If anything, viewports seem more intuitive to me (being two dimensional instead of 1). I wouldn't be complaining if they disabled the functionality of one to dumb down the interface for users who couldn't grasp it if there was still a configuration option to enable the functionality found in gnome1. Instead, they entirely nuked one choice because a couple core developers preferred the other, telling the end users who complained to "get used to it because KDE/Windows/etc don't support viewports either".
If you look at the thread I started entitled "Viewports and gnome 2" in the desktop-devel archives, you'll see that not only were developers not really interested in doing anything about it, they were downright belligerant to anyone who questioned what they did... to the point where in trying to discuss the problem, I wasn't allowed to call viewports "viewports". I specifically pointed out at length what I found to be deficient about having only workspaces in gnome2 and I kept being told to tell them what I thought the deficiencies were as if they just gave me a kneejerk reaction instead of reading what I wrote. The gnome2 developers really turned me sour on the whole project and I could really care less about the future of gnome2 now. I'll use gnome1 until something better comes along.
If you want to use gnome 1.x style viewports, don't switch to gnome 2. Their "usability experts" decided it was too complicated to have both viewports and workspaces so they ripped viewports out, stating tht "we can do the same thing with workspaces". Well, after that, the programmer(s) responsible for that portion of gnome decided that the functionality provided by viewports was extra cruft that they wouldn't implement and everyone would just have to get used to doing things the way they liked it. Gone are the days when gnome offered ultimate flexibility because some usability pinheads know what's best for all of us.
Not trolling... I've been using gnome for years and downloaded/compiled/installed new gnome 2 tarballs up until the end of april when I got completely frustrated with the lack of progress. Yeah... it's open source so put up my code. I'm just a gnome user - I do have more things to do than work on gnome 2 when gnome 1 does everything that I want already. Alas, as much as I wanted to stay bleeding edge, I'm going to have to wait until the developers start listening to real users rather than "experts" again.
I firmly believe Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer are the absolute scum of the earth. I will not kiss their asses in any way, shape or form. I will vote against them regardless of how they vote on this particular bill but if they vote for it, I will not only vote against them, I will speak loud and clearly to the patrons of the restaurant I manage, I will shout from the rafters of my web page, I will write letters to the editor of my newspaper, etc. The only good the money they raise does is it buys them advertising. If you have enough people speaking out to rally the vote against you, all the money in the world won't help. You can be sure that I have all of my family and friends, regarless of whether they normally vote or give a rats ass about the CBDTPA, writing/calling to tell them to vote against the bill. A hundred ass-kissers telling them to vote for it doesn't mean a thing if ten times as many tell them to vote against the bill. Finally, I just had to get in the jab regarding their distaste for free speech via the CFR bill as well. I'm calling them out - if you vote for the bill, it shows the $600k (Clinton) and $400k (Schumer) from the entertainment industry bought their vote since they're supposedly for the little people and against big business.
To the "honorable" Senator from New York,
My name is Kenneth Witherow. I am a computer consultant and writer from the town of Livonia, NY. I am writing regarding a recently proposed legislative bill, S 2048 the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). I strongly urge you to vote against this bill.
The main premise of the bill is to create encryption systems to protect digital content but despite the good intentions, it will cause great harm to independent content creators, computer programmers, electronic hobbyists and others. It seeks to force digital mechanisms such as computers to restrict the access to various media content used in conjunction with it. In this pursuit, it restricts a person's ability to make copies for personal use as allowed under both law and rulings from the Supreme Court.
Content producers claim that they cannot distribute the works via a digital medium for fear that the content will be illegally copied. The government should not have the power to sustain a business in the modern age because it's old methods are not any longer viable. Digital content is extremely inexpensive to reproduce and the reason why forays into this area fail is because the content producers refuse to lower their pricing to suit the new market. Why is it that a compact disc costs $18 while a tape, which is more expensive to produce, costs a mere $12? The content industry claims that the sky is falling with the introduction of every new advance in their field. Television would be the end of radio, VCRs the end of the movie business, MP3s the end of music distribution. Why is it that an independent band can generate revenues selling their music for a modest price on the internet but huge record labels cannot? The obvious answer is the music cartel, RIAA, knows it's business model is outdated and refuses to change because that would eliminate it's power. If this bill is passed, independent artists will not be able to create and distribute works due to the requirements of CBDTPA and the barriers to entry for non-wealthy creators. The MPAA and other institutions are in similar situations.
Because Microsoft has recently patented the system of Digital Rights Management, the adoption of the CBDTPA would ensure that the Microsoft monopoly will continue well into the future. As a user and developer of an alternate operating system, Linux, Microsoft would prevent us from using DRM to comply with the CBDTPA and it would be illegal for Linux to continue without it. This bill stifles software development and ensures that a monopoly will be further seated in it's power, ensuring that it will hurt consumers even more.
In 1998, another bill, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law. This law greatly restricts my fair use rights, especially because I use an operating system without a licensed DVD player available for it. One of the most damaging portions of the DMCA is that it makes illegal what made the PC possible in the first place - it outlaws reverse engineering. When the DMCA is combined with products sold under the CBDTPA, it is quite obvious that the result is content which is not available in a usable means, not copyable and illegal to retrieve via engineering methods. This ensures that content will never effectively enter into the public domain after it's copyright expires which is a gross violation of the Constitution's decree "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". These two bills, not to mention the continual extension of copyright, ensure that the first two portions of this charge are violated. Restriction of engineering and software creation does not promote science. Inability to access works in a non-creator provided method does not allow exclusivity to last for a limited time.
You also recently voted for the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill which means that you personally think money has a corrupting influence in politics. It is well worth noting that the entertainment industry was your fifth highest ranking donator so I am sure their money may influence your decision since you've stated it does. I never voted for you, nor will I ever vote for you, but if you vote for this legislation, my simple vote against you will turn into a local campaign against you assuming your Campaign Finance Reform "fix" doesn't ban me from speaking against you before the election as it currently does. Again, I strongly urge you to vote against S 2048.
Waaaaay down at the bottom is stuff like highways
Highway maintenance is covered in infrastructure costs.
education
Find the clause in the Constitution or an amendment which says people have the right to a federal education. It's a state issue
aids research
How many billions of federal dollars have been spent on AIDS over the last 20 years? How lucrative would it be for a private company to find and patent a vaccine or cure? Enough to drive private research? You bet. I feel for those who got AIDS via blood donations/birth but those who got AIDS because of their own desire (via drug use, unprotected sex, etc) should live with the choices they made and not look to everyone else to bail them out. Again, point out the constitutional mandate for drug research.
stem cell research
Again, this is in the domain of private research and is a very touchy issue ethically. If you wouldn't support the CIA's experiments during the middle of the last century, I have a hard time understanding how you could support this.
There is plenty of pork in the federal budget and there is more money than we can fathom which has simply evaporated in many federal agencies( $250 for a toilet seat( mainly due to red tape ) in the military budget is peanuts compared to the $800 million missing from the Dept of Education in 1999-2000 or the $2 billion missing in HUD during the same time frame.) Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly lays out the power of the federal governemnt. Reduce the federal government to those functions and most of the waste and a lot of corruption is gone. Fill the vacuum that's created with state/county/city agencies and charities where it's easier to keep an eye on things and prevent abuse.
NASA does have a military purpose among other federal interests. Perhaps it should be folded in with the Department of Defense since they already collaborate on many projects.
and a soldier with an M-16 on every domestic city block
violates posse comitatus and is the purpose of the second and third amendments. Of course, that didn't stop janet reno
The federal government's most important priority is to maintain the infrastructure which makes the US possible. Things like operational costs of the three branches, minting money, foreign relations and maintaining a military (what good is all the other stuff if anyone can take it from us at whim?). In the middle area, you see things like HUD, Dept of Education, SSI, etc (stuff which they don't have a constitutional mandate to create but which people have become reliant upon). Way down at the bottom of the list, you'll find things like most of NASA, fluff research grants( did we REALLY need to spend $45k to find out how many people rinse their dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? ), etc. Things which are nice to have but aren't critical.
Now that you have your priorities, you only have a fixed amount of money to spend. An outside force has made it necessary to increase spending on one or several of your highest priority items. Nobody is going to die if NASA's budget gets reduced for a year or three to shore up our more important needs. If pure space research means that much to you, donate from your own pocket to one of the non-profit groups out there promoting research.
Congresscritters are just doing what they're elected to do... every time they're up for election, their ads show two things: how much they did while they were in office and what a jerk their opponent is. If they were to come home and say "I did absolutely nothing during my last term", people would be outraged and probably wouldn't re-elect them.
Also, everyone who runs around electing people because they want to bring change (whether it's the greens, the reform party, democrats, republicans, etc) are at fault. Those candidates want to further remove us from the previous freedoms we enjoy. The federal government has three primary jobs and shouldn't stick it's nose into anything else: handle foreign relations, protect our citizens and regulate interstate affairs(States shouldn't be conducting diplomacy, the feds are the only ones who can protect our common border and ensure a state doesn't get out of control stripping rights, and we need an authoritive body to keep the states from acting like spoiled children). Any time the federal government gets involved elsewhere, expect us to lose rights or control there. The more regulation you support, the less freedom you'll get.
Careful guys, he's a christian so he must be evil. Come off it buddy, I'm an atheist and I don't run around calling everyone who holds some religious view I don't agree with a zealot out to get me. You do know that people are allowed to have different opinions than you, right? And just because they hold a different intellectual position doesn't make them a bad person, does it?
So now Chuck Schumer is a member of the "ultra conservative christitan right"? Let's see... He authored the Brady Bill back in 1993 and the assault weapons ban in 1994, wrote the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, he's for socialized medicine and free prescription drugs, etc. Do you know who he beat to get his Senate seat? Conservative republican Al D'Amato.
Stop and think about all of that for a minute. Just because someone did something you don't like, they must be a member of the VRWC(Vast Right Wing Conspiracy), right? You want to talk about knee jerk situations in a crisis? You're calling one of the most liberal democrats in DC a right wing extremist. If you can't be bothered to do your homework regarding the people whom you're attacking, why should anyone bother listening to your attack. This is one of the reasons why /. would make a horrible lobbying group - so many people here are ignorant of politics but think because they're 1337 perl hackers, they can solve all the problems of the world. You think the legal advice offered on /. is usually bad, the political information is often 10x worse.
Moderators: -1 flamebait, -1 attacks /. elitism, -1 must be right wing nut
the full policy statement can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2001/fcc01090.html
FWIW, I just grabbed the latest daily and it now allows me to disable the system colors...
happened in all 4 or so of the builds I tried between 2/2 and 2/12 or so... the previous build was deleted before installing the new each time. Will try a new build sometime today though
I can't pull down a current daily due to the load on their servers... but when I've downloaded them over the past couple weeks since the change, when I would go to Appearance->Colors, I would get an XML error. I moved .mozilla so it could create an entirely new profile (figuring it may have disagreed with my current profile) but it still brought up the error so, unfortunately, I can't simply disable system colors...
I was happily chugging along on the daily builds until sometime around the first of the month. Apparently, they decided to stop asking what color preferences you want and instead use the colors associated with your gtk theme as the default colors for text/background for the displayed pages. Sites like appwatch are unreadable because they chose to use the secondary foreground color so I'm still using a build from about a month ago. The bug's been in bugzilla since Feb 2nd along with a patch and they still haven't bothered to check it in. I thought they were supposed to be in the process of fixing the bugs right now rather than adding "features". The other thing that sucks is I had to fire up Netscape 4.7 to post this because the text entry seems to break at every line so when you insert long URLs, it chops them up so they don't work. I'm still trying to find that one in bugzilla...
That is, unless you're a gun owner. Us gun owners are obviously responsible for all of the ills in society and thus we don't deserve protection. Sure, us hunters are using our guns in a legal manner now, but one day, each of us will snap and go on a killing spree so we need to be stopped before we do. The non-hunters don't have any justifiable use for guns so obviously, they're just going to use them to kill innocent people. As for the criminals using guns, they're a victim of society and should have their sentences reduced because if it weren't for the gun owners, they wouldn't be able to acquire guns to kill people. Maybe your freedom/rights defending ACLU and the ACLU I see attacking freedom/rights aren't the same people.
Let me also recommend Citizens Against Government Waste's report on the US Post Office's financial indescretions
I have a student loan through the US Dept of Education that I'm paying back... my bill for january 2000 was never printed and I got a statement halfway through january notifying me of the problem. It also asked me to send in my payment ASAP and that they wouldn't charge a late fee for it.
In other words, if Gore and his cronies can litigate this for a couple months by constantly raises issues county by county, precinct by precinct, he could litigate his way to the presidency even if he loses Florida (as it very much appears that he will if the remaining military ballot is mostly republican as usual and votes for Bush don't magically get lost in the hand count of the democrat run Palm Beach County)
Sure... as an individual you have the right to do that. The question is whether the media should be allowed to use exit polling to broadcast winners while the election is in progress. They could claim First Amendment rights but as long as they're broadcasting via a public owned medium, they agree to abide by FCC regulation( ie, you can't show nudity on regular tv ) who is funded by Congress.
Alas, florida did participate but because their vote is, in essence, tied, they can't give their votes to a candidate. If florida can't cast their votes, it would be the same as giving them to a third party. The Constitution mandates that a candidate must get a majority of the electoral college votes and neither do so it would go to the House. Also, the republicans are speculating that they'll challenge the vote in Wisconsin in light of the bribe(cigarette for your Gore vote) and a mere 6k vote difference. Bush is also ahead in Oregon... if he takes Wisconsin from Gore, that gives it 264 Bush(11+7) to 249 Gore.
FWIW, Bill O'Reilly (a prime time new analyst on FoxNews for those who don't know) is trying to get legislation sponsered that would prevent the release of exit polling data until all polls are closed in the future.
I know for a fact that FoxNews had called Florida for Gore at 7:40-45ish... What time do the polls close in Florida?
Ooooh... Name calling. I bet you're almost mature enough to vote!
Every method you favor favors Bush, and any method that favors Gore you shoot down.
A revote, either in Miami-Dade county or in the entire state simply wouldn't be fair to the other 49 states who didn't get to select their candidates with the foresight of the results of the other 49 states. 95k people picked Nader over Gore -- how many do you think would switch to Gore in a re-vote? That wouldn't be fair to Nader and his supporters. They had their chance to vote and it's THEIR FAULT if they fucked up. Get out of the victim mentality.
The Constitution proscribes for an election by the electoral college to give a majority, rather than a plurality, to a candidate. If the losing party, whomever it is, decides to challenge thousands of votes in court and the court ends up switching votes, you've violated the Constitution by making the courts the deciders of the Presidency rather than the people/electoral college. That is a violation of the Constitution because nowhere in the Constitution do they give federal judges the ability to switch votes( as partisan judges could use to to veto the will of the people ). If the votes are going to be desputed in that manner, the _ONLY_ other option under the Constitution would be to invalidate the entire florida presidential election and leave it up to the House. And like I said before, the House doesn't get one vote per rep but one vote per state. I have no idea who that favors because districting doesn't represent the entire state but small areas (for example again, Texas has 18 democratic reps out of 30). It may be the the House, despite having a republican majority, could elect Al Gore. In any effect, I'm sure you'll agree that it would be better to have a representative, who is responsible to their constituents, elect the President than a federal judge, who is accountable to nobody.
I had heard it on the radio yesterday and TV late tuesday night... I'll investigate into it more.