Until such a time as the constitution is modified to allow the fedral government to pass laws on arbitrary topics, it doesn't matter if you think they should. They can't. It's not legal. Any such law is invalid.
The purpoise of the constitution is to restrict the power of government. Our government becomes pointless if these restrictions are ignored.
How is it, exactly, that the government *is* the people? The way the US goverment currently works is that a system similar to popular vote selects a few top officials. These officials then raise taxes on everyone but themselves so as to allow them to appoint their friends to newly created government positions. The officials then stay in their elected offices through bread-and-circuses tactics. (Welfare, Medicare, etc - We tax you so that you don't have to pay yourself, err - yea.) How this is anywhere near "the governent is the people" I don't see.
If politicians and appointed officials could be trusted to always do what's best for everyone, and to preserve everyone's freedom, that would be wonderful. Unfortunately, it isn't realistic.
Look how much our constitution is ignored already by our elected officals. As long as they can continue passing and enforcing unconstitutional laws to stay in office - they will. This isn't right. It seems that our governemnt isn't even capible of enforcing it's own laws. We need to get rid of and restructure it so that it does what it must, and no more, because goverment by nature cannot be trusted with more than that.
Even if you could demonstrait that it was usefull to throw a kid in prison for life for three offenses of minor vandilism, it still doesn't take into account the fact that *any* felony counts twards the three strikes, and it's perfectly possible to commit three unrelated non-obvious felonies. Do you think someone should be thrown in jail for life for:
Driving 95 mph on a freeway. ("Driving to Endanger")
Graphitiing a wall.
Posession/sale of a felony level quantiy of pot.
I sure as hell think not. Especially if someone can get away with raping and murdering two people with only 10 years of jail time.
Slackware is/can be the "basic distro" that you speak of. Although Slackware does include X and KDE, etc - these are optional packages. What slackware doesn't include is all kinds of package maintence and system administration stuff. If you installed the appropriate packages, all you would have would be a kernel, some base libs, bash, and the basic commands.
We have significantly slowed the process of evolution through medical technology. Since we now go to insane lengths to allow *everyone* to live and reproduce, the gene pool won't change.
You question that FiServ is using Microsoft products. I give a link that gives evidence that they *do* in fact use a Microsoft setup. You rant for a paragraph about how terrible I am for bashing Microsoft.
I don't know if this particuar hole is Microsoft related or not. It probably isn't. FiServ *does* make significant use of Microsoft products in their banking setup. Finantial systems should be as secure as possible. Microsoft software is not optimal for security. FiServ deserves to be picked on for their insecurity. Microsoft software, even if unrelated to this particular security flaw, *is* being used by them, and *is* known for it's insecurity, so they *should* be flamed for using it.
Here is a list of 17 movies, I don't think they can be catigorised into 10 catigories by story line. I doubt you can come up with three pairs that have the same story line.
Star Wars: Episode 1 didn't need to be targeted at the "under 10" audience.
If Episode 2 is also targeted at the under 10 audience, none of the children who were 8-10 to see episode 1 will be the apropriate age to appreciate episode 2 when it comes out.
Episodes 4 - 6 were at least vaguely intelligent, with usefull stories. Episode 1 was not - and Jar Jar was a big part of that.
Libraries buy those books which their patrons want to read. As far as I can tell, there are three ways that my local public library determines what books they want to have.
Requested books.
Books similar to those taken out commonly.
Books that the librarian has heard good things about.
A good librarian will not use public opion as a judge of what books should be in his library.
Translating asm to C or C++ is almost impossible. In the compalation process, there are a lot of one way translations, variable and function names are lost, etc.
Today one can buy a PIII-550, 128M RAM, 20 gig harddrive, 19" color monitor and all the bells and whistles with a Windows 2000 license for under $1,000.
PIII-550: $100, 128M ram: $130, 20 gig hard drive: $200, 19" color monitor: $450, Windows 2000 Professional without install CD: $289
These components sum to $1169
When you add a Motherboard: $80, Case: $20, Mouse: $10, Keyboard: $10, Video Card: $60, Sound Card: $40, Speakers: $20, Floppy Drive: $20, CDROM Drive: $40, it starts to add up to more like $1469. Almost $1500. Not "under $1000".
Without the Windows 2000 licence, it would only be $1180, which is a lot closer to "under $1000", even if it still isn't. If you make it a 17 inch monitor, and a 13 gig hard drive, then it's "under $1000".
Computer Roleplaying Games, and Tabletop Roleplaying Games are different beasts entirely. Actual roleplaying (i.e. Playing a Role) is useful and interesting in ways that cannot currently be imitated on a computer.
We don't even live in a republic. We live in a country with a "Demented American Psudorepublican Government".
Citizens don't vote for laws, we're not a democracy.
Citizens' votes for elected officials don't directly cause officials to be elected. There's some electoral colledge crap, and other stuff. Also, we have a president and a supreme court, we ain't a republic eithor.
Maybe having a population of half-asleep zombies isn't as sensational of a problem as juntas butchering children, but it's still pretty offensive to me.
I'll take the juanitas butchering childeren every time. Then it's a heck of a lot easier to convince people there's a problem, and get them off their asses and fixing it.
We have freedom to some extent now. In many cases we have more than we did in the past. In many others we have less than we did in the past. It looks like in the case of information, our freedom is decreasing rapidly.
Freedom isn't free, nor is it stable. If we don't fight to keep what freedom we have, and fight to regain what freedom we've lost, and even fight to get freedom we currently lack, we soon won't even have the freedom to fight.
The public library in your town is demolished, or your mother dies. Which is it?
That's easy. My town's public library has no rare or unique material in it. It would be annoying to replace, but no big loss. On the other hand, my mother contains some interesting and uinque information and knowledge, and therefore should be preserved. Now if it were, say, my family's rare and wonderful book collections versus my mother, it would be a much harder decision. (I'd try to get my mom to write out some of what she knew before she died.)
You didn't see the caption on the illustration of the dead tree version.
Here's the caption:
Cambridge's Helix Code is working to improve the look of the interface for the Linux operationg system. Concentrating on improved graphics and pallettes that work with a mouse, the Helix Grome software top and above, is a departure from the text-based interface used by rivals like the KDE project, left.
Nice, clueful journalisim. Riight. More like gerbilisim.
It's not really illegal to distribute DeCSS. Some entities (like 2600) have had court orders preventing them from distributing it. If I put it on a floppy disk and gave the floppy to you, I would not have committed an illegal act.
Note that I specifically was talking about a distrobution like Mandrake where KDE is the default, and only using KDE apps, with supported hardware. For the type of person who needs an "easy to use desktop", KDE should provide most all the apps they need. Linux/KDE is much easier to use and more intuitive than any other avalible desktop at this time.
All the people who claim that Windows is easier than Linux all use one of the following examples:
The install sucks, it doesn't recognise my $piece_of_unsupported_hardware
If I run programs based on different toolkits, they look and act differently
If I run 12 different window managers/desktop enviornments, I get 12 different UIs.
My response to all of those has got to be "If you want Linux to be easy to use, Don't do that, you moron!" Any OS will be hard to use if you do that kind of thing.
Windows is hard to install on a Power Mac.
If you run programs from Win98, Win3.1, Office, and things that break the UI guidelines. You'll get confused pretty quick.
If you run explorer, explorer in "Web mode", Litestep, Windows 3.1 program manager, etc You'll get a whole bunch of different UIs.
For an Uber-geek, Linux provides advanced functionality.
For a newbie, Linux has 2 desktop enviornments, both of which provide a standard & consistant GUI interface.
When set up in a certain way, as I believe it is in the Mandrake, Corel, and Caldera Linux desktop distros, Linux is easier to use, more consistant, and more functional than Windows.
Thanks for the actual numbers on Soy oil. I wonder what the numbers are for grain alchohol.
As to the quantity of polution from these fuels, I did some research on the topic last year. Alchohol is significantly less poluting than gasoline. My sources seem to consider biodiesel as better than diesel, although it's polution output is only slightly less.
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Until such a time as the constitution is modified to allow the fedral government to pass laws on arbitrary topics, it doesn't matter if you think they should. They can't. It's not legal. Any such law is invalid.
The purpoise of the constitution is to restrict the power of government. Our government becomes pointless if these restrictions are ignored.
How is it, exactly, that the government *is* the people? The way the US goverment currently works is that a system similar to popular vote selects a few top officials. These officials then raise taxes on everyone but themselves so as to allow them to appoint their friends to newly created government positions. The officials then stay in their elected offices through bread-and-circuses tactics. (Welfare, Medicare, etc - We tax you so that you don't have to pay yourself, err - yea.) How this is anywhere near "the governent is the people" I don't see.
If politicians and appointed officials could be trusted to always do what's best for everyone, and to preserve everyone's freedom, that would be wonderful. Unfortunately, it isn't realistic.
Look how much our constitution is ignored already by our elected officals. As long as they can continue passing and enforcing unconstitutional laws to stay in office - they will. This isn't right. It seems that our governemnt isn't even capible of enforcing it's own laws. We need to get rid of and restructure it so that it does what it must, and no more, because goverment by nature cannot be trusted with more than that.
Even if you could demonstrait that it was usefull to throw a kid in prison for life for three offenses of minor vandilism, it still doesn't take into account the fact that *any* felony counts twards the three strikes, and it's perfectly possible to commit three unrelated non-obvious felonies. Do you think someone should be thrown in jail for life for:
I sure as hell think not. Especially if someone can get away with raping and murdering two people with only 10 years of jail time.
Once your child is a teenager, you should have tought them enough that they should be able to decide for himself what sites he should see.
Trying to prevent your teenager from viewing things that you don't want him to view is both bad parenting and a waste of effort.
Trying to prevent a teenager from viewing a .jpg of a woman's nipple will harm the teenager signifcantly more than seeing the .jpg possibly could.
The rights we're not going to get back if Bush, Gore, or Nader are elected.
Slackware is/can be the "basic distro" that you speak of. Although Slackware does include X and KDE, etc - these are optional packages. What slackware doesn't include is all kinds of package maintence and system administration stuff. If you installed the appropriate packages, all you would have would be a kernel, some base libs, bash, and the basic commands.
We have significantly slowed the process of evolution through medical technology. Since we now go to insane lengths to allow *everyone* to live and reproduce, the gene pool won't change.
You question that FiServ is using Microsoft products. I give a link that gives evidence that they *do* in fact use a Microsoft setup. You rant for a paragraph about how terrible I am for bashing Microsoft.
I don't know if this particuar hole is Microsoft related or not. It probably isn't. FiServ *does* make significant use of Microsoft products in their banking setup. Finantial systems should be as secure as possible. Microsoft software is not optimal for security. FiServ deserves to be picked on for their insecurity. Microsoft software, even if unrelated to this particular security flaw, *is* being used by them, and *is* known for it's insecurity, so they *should* be flamed for using it.
There is some evidence that FiServ does, in fact, make use of Microsoft products.
What? Only 10 basic story lines?
Here is a list of 17 movies, I don't think they can be catigorised into 10 catigories by story line. I doubt you can come up with three pairs that have the same story line.
The first three movies (4-6) were good quality age-nonspecific sci-fi.
Episode 1 had a fart gag, and a step-in-crap gag.
I don't think I need to comment further.
Star Wars didn't need a fart gag.
Star Wars didn't need a stepping in crap gag.
Star Wars: Episode 1 didn't need to be targeted at the "under 10" audience.
If Episode 2 is also targeted at the under 10 audience, none of the children who were 8-10 to see episode 1 will be the apropriate age to appreciate episode 2 when it comes out.
Episodes 4 - 6 were at least vaguely intelligent, with usefull stories. Episode 1 was not - and Jar Jar was a big part of that.
Libraries buy those books which their patrons want to read. As far as I can tell, there are three ways that my local public library determines what books they want to have.
A good librarian will not use public opion as a judge of what books should be in his library.
Translating asm to C or C++ is almost impossible. In the compalation process, there are a lot of one way translations, variable and function names are lost, etc.
Not a very *good* 19" monitor I bet... =P
PIII-550: $100, 128M ram: $130, 20 gig hard drive: $200, 19" color monitor: $450, Windows 2000 Professional without install CD: $289
These components sum to $1169
When you add a Motherboard: $80, Case: $20, Mouse: $10, Keyboard: $10, Video Card: $60, Sound Card: $40, Speakers: $20, Floppy Drive: $20, CDROM Drive: $40, it starts to add up to more like $1469. Almost $1500. Not "under $1000".
Without the Windows 2000 licence, it would only be $1180, which is a lot closer to "under $1000", even if it still isn't. If you make it a 17 inch monitor, and a 13 gig hard drive, then it's "under $1000".
Computer Roleplaying Games, and Tabletop Roleplaying Games are different beasts entirely. Actual roleplaying (i.e. Playing a Role) is useful and interesting in ways that cannot currently be imitated on a computer.
We don't even live in a republic. We live in a country with a "Demented American Psudorepublican Government".
Citizens don't vote for laws, we're not a democracy.
Citizens' votes for elected officials don't directly cause officials to be elected. There's some electoral colledge crap, and other stuff. Also, we have a president and a supreme court, we ain't a republic eithor.
I'll take the juanitas butchering childeren every time. Then it's a heck of a lot easier to convince people there's a problem, and get them off their asses and fixing it.
We have freedom to some extent now. In many cases we have more than we did in the past. In many others we have less than we did in the past. It looks like in the case of information, our freedom is decreasing rapidly.
Freedom isn't free, nor is it stable. If we don't fight to keep what freedom we have, and fight to regain what freedom we've lost, and even fight to get freedom we currently lack, we soon won't even have the freedom to fight.
That's easy. My town's public library has no rare or unique material in it. It would be annoying to replace, but no big loss. On the other hand, my mother contains some interesting and uinque information and knowledge, and therefore should be preserved. Now if it were, say, my family's rare and wonderful book collections versus my mother, it would be a much harder decision. (I'd try to get my mom to write out some of what she knew before she died.)
You didn't see the caption on the illustration of the dead tree version.
Here's the caption:
Nice, clueful journalisim. Riight. More like gerbilisim.
It's not really illegal to distribute DeCSS. Some entities (like 2600) have had court orders preventing them from distributing it. If I put it on a floppy disk and gave the floppy to you, I would not have committed an illegal act.
So you want to see the illegalization of charcoal, because it's a component in gunpoweder, and fertilizer, because it can be used to make bombs?
Note that I specifically was talking about a distrobution like Mandrake where KDE is the default, and only using KDE apps, with supported hardware. For the type of person who needs an "easy to use desktop", KDE should provide most all the apps they need. Linux/KDE is much easier to use and more intuitive than any other avalible desktop at this time.
All the people who claim that Windows is easier than Linux all use one of the following examples:
My response to all of those has got to be "If you want Linux to be easy to use, Don't do that, you moron!" Any OS will be hard to use if you do that kind of thing.
For an Uber-geek, Linux provides advanced functionality.
For a newbie, Linux has 2 desktop enviornments, both of which provide a standard & consistant GUI interface.
When set up in a certain way, as I believe it is in the Mandrake, Corel, and Caldera Linux desktop distros, Linux is easier to use, more consistant, and more functional than Windows.
Thanks for the actual numbers on Soy oil. I wonder what the numbers are for grain alchohol.
As to the quantity of polution from these fuels, I did some research on the topic last year. Alchohol is significantly less poluting than gasoline. My sources seem to consider biodiesel as better than diesel, although it's polution output is only slightly less.