Well, wikipedia quotes John Adams as disagreeing...but what would he know?
Often republics and monarchies are described as mutually exclusive.[1] Defining a republic as a non-monarchy, the most common short definition,[2] is based on this idea. Although largely covering what is usually understood by a republic such definition has some borderline issues, for example while the distinction between monarchy and republic was not always made as it is in modern times, while oligarchies are traditionally considered neither monarchy nor republic, and while such definition depends very much on the monarch concept, which has various definitions, not making clear which of these is used for defining republic. In his 1787 book, "Defence of the Constitutions," John Adams used the definition of "republic" in Samuel Johnson's 1755 "Dictionary" ("A government of more than one person"), but in the same book, and in several other writings, Adams made it clear that he thought of the British state as a republic because the executive, though single and called "king," had to obey laws made with the concurrence of the legislature ("the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." -March 6, 1775).
Yes, the USA is a Democratic Republic. Webster defines democracy thus:
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
This actually fits with the first definition at answers.com that you sited:
1 Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
In a "pure" democracy, which might be possible someday using AIs and the internet, representatives wouldn't be necessary. However, also quoting your other link, "Historically republics have not always been democratic in character, however. For example, the ancient Republic of Venice was ruled by an aristocratic elite."
Bottom line, a democracy doesn't *have* to be a republic, and a republic doesn't have to be a democracy. But the USA is a democracy, it is in fact a Democratic Republic. The two are not mutually exclusive, although examples can be found that are outside the intersection.
But IP isn't really a fundamental right, like property. It *is* different. The artifical legal creation of pseudo-property rights was done for a purpose, rather than based on any sort of inherent principle. IP is a form of social engineering. If we do away with that social engineering, we needs must do away with IP. The principles upon which property rights rest don't extend naturally to cover IP. Since the only IP rights that exist where created by government for the purpose of social engineering, then truely it is correct (in this instance) to say that it is the job of governemnt to determine what rights consumers vs producers vs middlemen have.
Not so sure I can agree. The civil war seems to fit both your criteria. It was bloody, and the death tolls incredibly high. I'm sure the South felt they had been invaded, their cities destroyed (Sherman's march to Atlanta), and then without doubt the South was "ruled by another government", to say nothing of Carpetbaggers. Depends on how you define "someone else", perhaps. Still, a good chunk of the USA has rather vivid memories that are still repeated from oldsters to their youngsters, regarding the invasion and occupation by a foreign power (the North,) and the humilation resulting from a war that was lost and the resultant penalities imposed. A lifestyle, for better or worse, was wiped out, and a culture surgically removed. People remember.
"Nobody said anything about the quality of the support at all because the quality of the support is immaterial." Well I'd say your first swing was a high fly, and out. Didn't even need three strikes. Of *course* the quality of the support is important. Is adequate and cheap good enough? Yes, for some it will be. Is shitty and cheap good enough? No, it isn't.
Actually redhat's marketcap is like $3 billion. That is what you'd need, currently. Between cash and cash equivalents, Novell has over 1/2 of that. Wouldn't it be a *kick* for Novell to buy redhat?
The post suggested that ISPs *use* OSS. Suggesting that their main supplier was cisco doesn't make sense in this context. The fact is that ISPs are like redhat, in that they use OSS to provide a service. Hey, redhat probably buys dry erase markers, too, but so what? What is surreal is the tanget you take this off on...
In terms of Novell hemoraging money on SuSe, that is ass backwards. Do you know how to read financial statements? At least google for it.
During the quarter, Novell recognized total Open Platform Solutions revenue of $56 million, which was up from $14 million in the year ago period.
This included $43 million from sales of OES (Open Enterprise Server), Novell's Linux replacement for NetWare, and $13 million of revenue from other Linux products.
Now if you asked, can SuSE keep Novell afloat indefinitely, you'd be asking the right question. Novell has the talent, and they are in the game. Lets see what they actually end up doing with that $1.7 billion cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments they have sitting around.
Something people seem to be missing here is the idea that oracle could just up and say, "we'll provide redhat's service, and charge 1/2". In terms of oracle's codebase, they have the people. They should know their code. But what about the rest? Without doubt, redhat knows the kernel. Anybody interested in the OS would look to redhat as an authority, and oracle not so much. Trying to set up email? VoIP? Need to set up the real time patches for your digital sound lab? The Art Institute of Where-ever has decided to implement a digital video processing lab? Think oracle will know about any of these things?
This is interesting and all, but not what was posted, that I responded to. The title, "Biased summary", and the text, "It is supposed to keep out unsigned drivers, kernel modifications, and security company competitors." Which is in the summary, but is a quote from the article. Hence, the quote was not indicating a biased summary, but rather the quote was indicitave of the rest of the article.
This was followed by the sig, "The sun is hot! Water is wet! Slashdot summary is biased! News at eleven."
I "lol"-ed at the fact that the anon coward used a direct quote to indicate a bias in the summary. "Quite quoting exactly what I say, or I'll call your reporting biased!"
While you are totally offtopic, still...WTF are you trying to say?
"Microsoft representatives didn't immediately respond to calls seeking comment on Authentium's move." That was indeed on the second page of the first article, whose title was: "Security Vendor Bypasses Microsoft's Vista PatchGuard", and which was *not* part of the slashdot article.
Rather, the followup article the next day was linked in the IntelliAdmin.com article, using the phrase "Microsoft immediately responded with a angry attack stating that that the hack harmed windows users by reducing the security of Windows." This link was to an article titled "Microsoft Decries Vista PatchGuard Hack".
First, your quote is a day late and therefor offtopic. It is distracting and I assume that is why you made it. Second, quoting a hyperlink that the article in question uses is hardly "involving a second website to get..." anything. That is an accurate summary of the article, because that is what the article did, and how the article described it.
If you wanted to say the article was biased, you could have tried. But you didn't. You seem to want to say the summary is biased, because you don't like what the article says. *shakes head*
Well but should they be able to stop me from buying a t-shirt that says, "Shiny, Captain!"?
Logos are one thing, sure. But "Nothing in the 'verse can stop me."?
Uh, no, the state did request help, New Mexico was willing to respond with National Guard units before the storm struck. It was four days before the feds responded, legally allowing New Mexico National Guardsman to legally cross the border. Now the law has changed, but if they wouldn't respond in the first scenario, why would they now?
I don't think you can say anyone "won" the civil war. We didn't win in Korea. We didn't win in Vietnam. I'm not even sure what it means anymore, to say we "won" in Iraq. Mission Accomplished. I don't think so.
"Could you list actual and specific cases where the Patriot Act, Patriot Act II, or Military Commissions Act have resulted in an American being unduly persecuted or oppressed? Any?"
Isn't that the scary thing about losing habeus corpus? How could anyone list actual or specific cases, when people could be spirited away in the dead of night without any requirements to acknowledge said abduction? However, I would suggest that american lawyers have been oppressed in their attempts to do their jobs, and this is fairly well documented. Or don't they count?
allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."
Note: this wouldn't have helped in New Orleans, since LA declared an emergency, and asked for help, and New Mexico said that they'd send national guard troops, even before the storm hit. Before such troops can cross a state line, it is required that Bush OK it. It took him a week. What good is it to allow Bush to go in, then, without state's consent?
Few people actually seem to know the history. Somehow sound bites are ruling the minds of most citizens. Thanks for saving me the time to dig it out. Moderators, someone please up this *informative*
Agreed that hiring them away would be cheaper, on paper, at least initially. And oracle has been hiring redhat kernel programmers. But what about goodwill? What about brandname recognition? There is a right and a wrong way to go about most things, and unless your microsoft, the wrong way tends to bite you in the ass. I'm not suggesting I can second guess this particular situation at all, by the way, just that in terms of "why would they ever want to" buy redhat, I can see some reasons why. Redhat's stock has dropped, for sure, but in terms of long term effect I'm not sure that (assuming they can adapt and last the next year or so) this won't be a net positive thing for redhat. Forgeting redhat for the moment (or assuming they do adjust and survive the short term uncertainty), this is almost surely going to be good for linux kernel adoptation, and all the GNU/Linux toolchain and APIs (and philosophy, too) that rides along with it. If it makes the pie bigger, redhat and suse and *everyone* can eat *more*, and oracle still gets a big slice, too. And it seems a no-brainer that it is going to make the pie bigger.
No, I have to disagree. It might make selling your work more difficult, yes. But it is more like the EPA (or perhaps the Sierra Club) than religion. You wouldn't (shouldn't) compare people protesting the use of lead in gasoline to religious evangelism. So long as rms and the GNU/FSF are based on reason rather than proof by authority, I think you are barking up the wrong tree with religious metaphors. Now people have tried to make everything from Science to Capitalism into a religion, but that isn't the fault of scientists, nor capitalists.
Agreed that morality issues tend to polarize, almost by definition. Most moralists intend to polarize, and there are those who even feed off of the exclusion that polarization provides. I see rms in terms of ethics, rather than morality. I don't think rms would ever say, "its right/wrong because authority says so", but rather rms lays out arguements for a system of ethics based on principles that are almost used like axioms. Maybe his AI background at work there.
Oracle is *already* hiring away redhat people. Doesn't look like "flee" is worth scratching at... I mean, we could say, "after redhat buys oracle, then what will they do with jboss." The fact that redhat can't buy oracle makes it pointless. However, in terms of why oracle would want to buy redhat (after engineering a much reduced price) is worth asking, regardless the attachment of hypothetical and improbable riders. You might say, "well, but you just refuted it by saying you don't believe it." And thats right, I dismissed it by saying it wasn't probable enough to be worth discussing.
Slashdot Mirror
But IP isn't really a fundamental right, like property. It *is* different. The artifical legal creation of pseudo-property rights was done for a purpose, rather than based on any sort of inherent principle. IP is a form of social engineering. If we do away with that social engineering, we needs must do away with IP. The principles upon which property rights rest don't extend naturally to cover IP. Since the only IP rights that exist where created by government for the purpose of social engineering, then truely it is correct (in this instance) to say that it is the job of governemnt to determine what rights consumers vs producers vs middlemen have.
Not so sure I can agree. The civil war seems to fit both your criteria. It was bloody, and the death tolls incredibly high. I'm sure the South felt they had been invaded, their cities destroyed (Sherman's march to Atlanta), and then without doubt the South was "ruled by another government", to say nothing of Carpetbaggers. Depends on how you define "someone else", perhaps. Still, a good chunk of the USA has rather vivid memories that are still repeated from oldsters to their youngsters, regarding the invasion and occupation by a foreign power (the North,) and the humilation resulting from a war that was lost and the resultant penalities imposed. A lifestyle, for better or worse, was wiped out, and a culture surgically removed. People remember.
"Nobody said anything about the quality of the support at all because the quality of the support is immaterial." Well I'd say your first swing was a high fly, and out. Didn't even need three strikes. Of *course* the quality of the support is important. Is adequate and cheap good enough? Yes, for some it will be. Is shitty and cheap good enough? No, it isn't.
Actually redhat's marketcap is like $3 billion. That is what you'd need, currently. Between cash and cash equivalents, Novell has over 1/2 of that. Wouldn't it be a *kick* for Novell to buy redhat?
In terms of Novell hemoraging money on SuSe, that is ass backwards. Do you know how to read financial statements? At least google for it. Now if you asked, can SuSE keep Novell afloat indefinitely, you'd be asking the right question. Novell has the talent, and they are in the game. Lets see what they actually end up doing with that $1.7 billion cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments they have sitting around.
Something people seem to be missing here is the idea that oracle could just up and say, "we'll provide redhat's service, and charge 1/2". In terms of oracle's codebase, they have the people. They should know their code. But what about the rest? Without doubt, redhat knows the kernel. Anybody interested in the OS would look to redhat as an authority, and oracle not so much. Trying to set up email? VoIP? Need to set up the real time patches for your digital sound lab? The Art Institute of Where-ever has decided to implement a digital video processing lab? Think oracle will know about any of these things?
This is interesting and all, but not what was posted, that I responded to. The title, "Biased summary", and the text, "It is supposed to keep out unsigned drivers, kernel modifications, and security company competitors." Which is in the summary, but is a quote from the article. Hence, the quote was not indicating a biased summary, but rather the quote was indicitave of the rest of the article.
This was followed by the sig, "The sun is hot! Water is wet! Slashdot summary is biased! News at eleven."
I "lol"-ed at the fact that the anon coward used a direct quote to indicate a bias in the summary. "Quite quoting exactly what I say, or I'll call your reporting biased!"
While you are totally offtopic, still...WTF are you trying to say?
"Microsoft representatives didn't immediately respond to calls seeking comment on Authentium's move." That was indeed on the second page of the first article, whose title was: "Security Vendor Bypasses Microsoft's Vista PatchGuard", and which was *not* part of the slashdot article.
Rather, the followup article the next day was linked in the IntelliAdmin.com article, using the phrase "Microsoft immediately responded with a angry attack stating that that the hack harmed windows users by reducing the security of Windows." This link was to an article titled "Microsoft Decries Vista PatchGuard Hack".
First, your quote is a day late and therefor offtopic. It is distracting and I assume that is why you made it. Second, quoting a hyperlink that the article in question uses is hardly "involving a second website to get..." anything. That is an accurate summary of the article, because that is what the article did, and how the article described it.
If you wanted to say the article was biased, you could have tried. But you didn't. You seem to want to say the summary is biased, because you don't like what the article says. *shakes head*
Well but should they be able to stop me from buying a t-shirt that says, "Shiny, Captain!"? Logos are one thing, sure. But "Nothing in the 'verse can stop me."?
There were two links. You missed it.
lol...that wasn't a summary, that was a quote from the article! How can quoting the article be a "biased summary"?
Uh, no, the state did request help, New Mexico was willing to respond with National Guard units before the storm struck. It was four days before the feds responded, legally allowing New Mexico National Guardsman to legally cross the border. Now the law has changed, but if they wouldn't respond in the first scenario, why would they now?
"We've never lost a war..."
I don't think you can say anyone "won" the civil war. We didn't win in Korea. We didn't win in Vietnam. I'm not even sure what it means anymore, to say we "won" in Iraq. Mission Accomplished. I don't think so.
"Could you list actual and specific cases where the Patriot Act, Patriot Act II, or Military Commissions Act have resulted in an American being unduly persecuted or oppressed? Any?"
Isn't that the scary thing about losing habeus corpus? How could anyone list actual or specific cases, when people could be spirited away in the dead of night without any requirements to acknowledge said abduction? However, I would suggest that american lawyers have been oppressed in their attempts to do their jobs, and this is fairly well documented. Or don't they count?
Problem was that the feds didn't do what they could have, why would they do any more when given more powers?
And the NM national guard units, who couldn't legally respond because crossing a state line required Bush's OK, which was withheld for a week.
Few people actually seem to know the history. Somehow sound bites are ruling the minds of most citizens. Thanks for saving me the time to dig it out. Moderators, someone please up this *informative*
:-)
thanks
Perhaps I ranted a little too strongly.
Agreed that hiring them away would be cheaper, on paper, at least initially. And oracle has been hiring redhat kernel programmers. But what about goodwill? What about brandname recognition? There is a right and a wrong way to go about most things, and unless your microsoft, the wrong way tends to bite you in the ass. I'm not suggesting I can second guess this particular situation at all, by the way, just that in terms of "why would they ever want to" buy redhat, I can see some reasons why. Redhat's stock has dropped, for sure, but in terms of long term effect I'm not sure that (assuming they can adapt and last the next year or so) this won't be a net positive thing for redhat. Forgeting redhat for the moment (or assuming they do adjust and survive the short term uncertainty), this is almost surely going to be good for linux kernel adoptation, and all the GNU/Linux toolchain and APIs (and philosophy, too) that rides along with it. If it makes the pie bigger, redhat and suse and *everyone* can eat *more*, and oracle still gets a big slice, too. And it seems a no-brainer that it is going to make the pie bigger.
No, I have to disagree. It might make selling your work more difficult, yes. But it is more like the EPA (or perhaps the Sierra Club) than religion. You wouldn't (shouldn't) compare people protesting the use of lead in gasoline to religious evangelism. So long as rms and the GNU/FSF are based on reason rather than proof by authority, I think you are barking up the wrong tree with religious metaphors. Now people have tried to make everything from Science to Capitalism into a religion, but that isn't the fault of scientists, nor capitalists.
Agreed that morality issues tend to polarize, almost by definition. Most moralists intend to polarize, and there are those who even feed off of the exclusion that polarization provides. I see rms in terms of ethics, rather than morality. I don't think rms would ever say, "its right/wrong because authority says so", but rather rms lays out arguements for a system of ethics based on principles that are almost used like axioms. Maybe his AI background at work there.
yikes! you are right (again, even). Seemed backwards to me the first time I read it, after googling for the quoted phrase to see what it meant.
Oracle is *already* hiring away redhat people. Doesn't look like "flee" is worth scratching at... I mean, we could say, "after redhat buys oracle, then what will they do with jboss." The fact that redhat can't buy oracle makes it pointless. However, in terms of why oracle would want to buy redhat (after engineering a much reduced price) is worth asking, regardless the attachment of hypothetical and improbable riders. You might say, "well, but you just refuted it by saying you don't believe it." And thats right, I dismissed it by saying it wasn't probable enough to be worth discussing.