Additionally, software such as NIS exists to fill the role of a single-sign-on, although I've only had painful experiences with it, personally (using Solaris in a completely crazy setup).
To admonish someone to just "live within your means" is arrogant and ignorant at the same time.
It could be, if you were talking to a kid living in a dinky, ratty studio who was working full-time and attending college full-time (on a $1000 "scholarship" awarded years previous) and counting the days until the money ran out, with the sole extravagance being a slow dialup connection (and associated phone) for about $25/mo - no TV, either. Which was my situation not very long ago.
For the folks I knew then and the ones I've known since then, most all have automobiles they are making payments on, having purchased either new ones, or fancy models... which can easily run $20,000-$40,000 right there! On top of that, then there are the rest of the "standard" items, such as music CDs, movies and associated DVDs, big televisions, alcohol, designer clothes... all things folks "can't live without", apparently, yet some do manage to get along fine with fewer or none of such items. In my case, I spent my poorest years yakking away on IRC, while writing crappy mIRC scripts, with a trip to the $2 movie theatre once a month or so. I read many books (used or borrowed from the library), though mostly fiction, and tooled around on an old bicycle when money for gas was tight.
However, your main thrust seems to be: it sucks to be stuck in a low-wage job, and yes it does. Yet, no one has a right to a nice job with a fat paycheck - you have to convince one of those fat-cat CEOs, or one of their many underlings, to give you such. How does one go about doing that? Good question, and one I don't have a universal answer for. "Hard work" comes close, though, and Americans are pretty damned lazy. Living in California or on the east coast probably doesn't help the situation, either.
If you're not making at least $43k, take home, per year then you're likely involved in some sort of system to cost-share or else you will fall into debt. All I can say is, "you're wrong". I'm proof of that, and I'm even a rabid gamer that spends thousands of dollars a year on PC parts and software. And those damned new gameboys. Hate you, Nintendo.
I'm not going to debate your points, as many are most likely pretty accurate. I will debate their relevance, though.
By "slavery", I mean "forced servitude". We can debate the unfairness of the tax system all day long (and we'd probably just be preaching to ourselves in the choir, anyway), but what's to stop someone from simply not working for money? You may point out the impracticality of that, and you'd be right, but it still exists. No one forces anyone to work in polite society.
I'm not spouting T-shirt wisdom from my ivory tower or gold-filled bank-vault. I live debt-free. I own a used car, rent an apartment, and my credit cards carry a zero balance. I live within my means, as it is said. It is my opinion that everyone should do the same. The one exception to my lifestyle: buying a house. I haven't figured out how to efficiently save $250,000 yet.:P Also, I work because I choose to. I want to buy computer parts and use a broadband line. I could live in missions and drift around doing whatever, but I'd rather not.;)
Moving on... Slavery is the natural state of anyone who lives paycheck-to-paycheck. That happens to be, in terms of population, a significant portion of society--probably close to 40%. We just don't call it slavery anymore because the cold hard facts are too much for most people to choke down through their public school education. People often live paycheck-to-paycheck to "maintain a lifestyle", also referred to as "living outside their means". New house, two cars, two kids, new boat, whatever. As opposed to buying a smaller, used house, or maybe a townhouse/condo, one used car (or another economy model, if required), and exercising discretion in other purchases and expenses. I dare say that most people living in conditions you describe did so because of choices they made.
[...] create a social class of permanently exploitable people who, statistically, will simply never have a chance of getting out of debt
One problem with that: those people didn't start out being in debt in the first place. In most all cases, said people CHOSE to saddle themselves with debt, so that they could have their new cars/clothes/house/whatever instead of chosing less expensive alternatives and/or locales. The only possible way your analogy could work is if you stated that said people decided to sell themselves into "slavery"... but then whose fault is it at that point?
[...] and jury nullification practically illegal [...]
Has anyone actually been punished for delivering a verdict other than those presented by the judge, and/or finding the defendant not guilty on the grounds that the law is wrong, etc.? Last I'd heard, the problem stemmed from people trying to inform the jury members of their rights while a trial was ongoing, and usually urging them to exercise said rights. The latter part of that is what I suppose tends to land people in trouble - "influencing the jury" or something.
Free will is horseshit. My free will sayeth : I will now fly around the room in my jimjams. It doesn't happen.
"Free will" is not the same as omnipotence. "Free will" never once meant the ability to violate laws of physics because you "willed" it, etc. The concept of a "free will" means that an individual can choose his own course of (in)action within the limitations already present. It is this concept of free will that both causes such things as the D.C. "sniper" situation... and the lack of similar events happening everywhere else on a daily basis.
Oh, *please*. Not only has CmdrTaco (or one of the other folks) said about 70% of the folks that read slashdot do so from Windows PCs according to their server logs, but gamers are the most likely group of all to use Windows. Perhaps you've not noticed, but there are precious few video game offerings for Linux as opposed to Windows currently. I certainly don't remember agreeing to any EULA stating I would never use Windows again when I was setting up my slackware router or mandrake proxy server...
As for executable files being used to display video, I'm with you all the way. Download and run.exes from a strange website claiming to be from a game I've never heard of before? I'm not going to touch them.
... doesn't mean something is good to ingest. There actually may be some truth behind the touted dangers of fluoridated water, aside from the whole matter of actually drinking something that really should only stay on your teeth for a while before being spat out.
A google for "fluoridation sewage" or "fluoridation sludge" will give you an interesting look on where cities get the raw material to add fluoride to water, and it's not very appetizing, especially considering the trace amounts of heavy metals and other rather toxic materials that just aren't feasible to remove from the "product". Then consider the possibility of skeletal fluorsis, which occurs when too much fluorine is ingested, which is where the skeletal bones basically rot/disintegrate.
Vaccination isn't without its dangers, although for the most serious viruses, polio, etc., the vaccination risk seems more than made up for. Refined sugar isn't a wise thing to stuff into your body, either. Maybe the guy is going overboard (haven't read about him, specifically), but there is certainly a grain of truth behind all that "whacky quackery".
... can still be done with an absentee ballot. I showed up at the polls with mine in-hand, ready to go right back out the door and drop it in the mailbox if they had any of those paperless e-voting machines. They actually did (Nevada), but once I noticed the machine I was on didn't have a paper printout/copy, I flagged down one of the tenders and had them void out the session and stick me on one of the others. I verified the printout, and since it was human-readable, figured that was good enough. No paper-trail == absentee ballot. Paperless voting is a very stupid/dangerous idea.
... have you tried to set up a simple cron job to run ntpdate automatically? I.e., throw your ntpdate command-line into a text file with "#!/bin/bash" as the first line, set it executable, then throw it in/etc/cron.daily? (Or hourly, etc., etc.)
Alternatively, you could tell ntp to use different time servers - you may be using ones that are getting hammered a lot.
No, I don't use a DVR. Still, Linux is Linux, so I hope this helps, if you've not tried such already.
Hm, I think I see the misunderstanding here. You're working with the understanding that the police (and justice system) are in place to directly prevent harm to you, which isn't a bad assumption in most cases: I can almost guarantee I'd know the outcome of my attempted mugging if I tried it in front of a police officer. So, I think I now understand your side of the issue. "Why burden myself with risk if the police will protect me?" It's a good question.
Here's my side of it, in two parts. The first is the simple matter of police not actually being present in the time of need. This could be for any number of reasons, ranging from a car not being in your neighborhood at the time, to a hurricane taking down the city. Here's an interesting link to a summary of average response times to 911 calls for a large American city.
The second reason is that police (and, for that matter, the government) are *not obligated* to provide protection for any individual citizen. Sounds crazy, but that's what the law of the land (USA, anyhow) says: Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981); Gonzalez v. Castle Rock is another one making its way through the courts, and a disturbing one, but the sticking point isn't actually the matter of the police being obligated, but whether they are liable for specific wording of some of their ordinances and/or some of the procedural mishaps that took place (or didn't), in relation to the wording of the ordinances involved with that locale's restraining orders.
In summary, the justice system (and police) exist as a deterrant and/or to punish crimes which have already occurred. Responsibility for one's own protection rests directly in the hands of the individual person. This is a somewhat simplified matter if there is only one's self to protect: you will either choose to take responsibility, or not. For those with family, it becomes a more involved issue.
Anyhow, I hope I've presented the case clearly, and cleared up some of the possible sticking points. I'll follow this up as a journal entry or something, if you'd prefer.
As a follow-on, I agree: someone with a weapon - anyone - is more dangerous than someone without a weapon. Firearms have been known as "the great equalizer" for a reason.;)
Logically, your argument is asinine. If there is an armed attacker, there is a threat to your life. As with any threat, the best way to meet one is with equal or greater force. This is known as "deterrence". Otherwise, the attacker has a *completely* free hand to do whatever he wants: rob, kill, rape, kidnap, etc.
The problem here is not whether or not the bad guys "get more weapons". Weapons have been and will be widely available to those who want them. The problem is flawed logic like yours, that says "hey, only the bad guys should carry weapons!" Criminals are generally vastly outnumbered by the rest of society. Consider the following scenario: imagine yourself to be a mugger, and every single person is known, for a fact, to be armed with and trained in the use of a firearm. How risky would your profession be, assuming that any alerted bystander would immediately come directly to the aid of your potential victim?
No, the answer is absolutely not to make every single person a helpless target for criminals.
Your. Logic. Is. Flawed. 36% of the eligible voters, ALL OF THEM, including the ones that chose to sit on the couch and not vote, cast a vote for Bush. 34% voted for Kerry. Some small fractions of a percent voted for other guys. Roughly 28% sat on their asses. So, since the ones that sat on their ass decided not to participate, we do what our system of government does with them and discount them entirely. THEY chose not to do jack, so no matter how anyone thinks they would have voted, the simple fact remains, they did not and so their unsaid say doesn't matter. Does. Not. Count. Does. Not. Matter.
And you still attack the person and ignore the argument, fudging figures even when it doesn't matter. I.e., sixty-two million, not fifty. You answer an argument with insults, you rant about off-topic subjects when presented with facts. You're wrong, no bullshit.
Forget the voting booth, man. Stay away from the rest of society! O.o
Not that the point was any less valid, but I posted the GP.
As for educating others, we'd rather you didn't, at least not until you can either gets your facts straight, or admit you were wrong, correct the error, and go from there.
Yes, please do go back to your "efforts to help", and please remember to be accurate with your facts in the future. It simply wouldn't do to have FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE TRAPPED ON THAT ROOF when, in fact, there are three guys on a raft. Sure, it'd be nice for the three guys, but not for the six families across town.
What bullshit have I presented (or, at the least, have not admitted fault on and corrected myself), mm? Also, how, exactly, would my abstaining from participating in every future election help anyone, anywhere?
What about the folks in Oregon? Should they host refugees? What about the auto mechanics? Should they do data-entry? Maybe we join the National Guard and head down there? Or buy a boat and start motoring around in what's left?
Frankly, no, at this point, *right now*, there is nothing more to be done, unless you feel like paying the bill, or going vigilante on the few criminals that are causing trouble down there.
I was talking about 1. why people lived there in the first place ("legitimate" reasons or not), 2. why many folks saved NO money and/or chose to stay, 3. and why disaster response organizations weren't on hand immediately afterwards. There WAS 48 hours' notice that it was a likely Category 5, and going to hit N.O.
The answers will shed light on all sorts of serious problems, from some cases of real poverty, to artificial poverty; no trust in our leaders at any given level; laziness and lack of foresight (both people and gov't), etc., etc., etc.
The thing to do *now* is plan how you will take care of you and yours in an emergency that may happen in your own area. While you're at it, make a Plan B, too.
And maybe "I" shot him and killed him first, removing one criminal from the streets and striking fear into the others that hear about the incident.
You keep ignoring the fact that a person often has very little chance against a determined attacker if they are not armed - and yet are extremely dangerous to an attacker if they *are* carrying a firearm.
Whoops! I suppose I should learn to read. I stand corrected:
"That number includes all manner of folks who are ineligible to vote, such as children, felons, etc. I don't have a ready figure on the number of eligible voters, but it is CERTAINLY NOT 301 million."
My point was, they've got people and supplies already. The average/.er can't "do anything" to actually help the folks in NO at this point* (unless you're a praying man).
Could you have forced the mayor to stockpile supplies, or made him move his fleet of 200 school busses so they would be potentially useful later?
Could you have moved ~30,000-60,000 people who couldn't leave? Or forcibly evacuated those that did not want to leave (let the civil rights people have a heyday with that one)?
Could you have handled the supposedly rampant violent crime problem, or made folks stop shooting at rescuers?
There are many ills that need curing, yes. Yes, some in the government. Some, however, are in society itself. When you have an answer to cure society's ills (which will then sort out most of the governmental ills on its own within a decade or so, once people start taking their duty as citizens seriously), and a method to get everyone to abide by them, let the rest of us know.
*Donating cash is the exception, but won't directly help much at this point.
The entire population of the USA is ~280 million. That number includes all manner of folks who are ineligible to vote, such as children, felons, etc. I don't have a ready figure on the number of eligible voters, but it is CERTAINLY NOT 351 million. When folks start using wildly inaccurate figures while ranting and raving, is it any wonder no one believes anything they say? A little truth goes a long way...
Just for the record: Bush officially won 62.02 million votes, while Kerry won 59.02 million. Interestingly, the reported percentage of eligible voters was 60.7%, supposedly the highest percentage since 1968. Hm.
Everyone quit your job. Pack up and get to LA as fast as possible (we'll get there Monday). Divide into two camps: those that don't like firearms, those that are armed to the teeth. Converge on NO: half get turned back, half of the others are shot by police as they rush past. Another half of those drop dead in the flooded streets due to sheer exhaustion (they were desk jockeys!) About this time, the remainder of the/.ers are starting to realize maybe they're not the best ones to be trying anything right about now, but before they can do anything else, another half are killed by roving bands of thugs (although the armed-to-the-teeth nerds happened to inflict enough damage to the thugs that things were relatively peaceful for the next day or so). Everyone else flees into the waiting arms of the police, only to be sent to the Superdome.
Slashdot Mirror
[..]Windows systems are good for being domain controllers and file servers for Windows clients [...]
Windows:
Client Access Licenses
Linux:
Samba
Additionally, software such as NIS exists to fill the role of a single-sign-on, although I've only had painful experiences with it, personally (using Solaris in a completely crazy setup).
... it's the stem cells from human fetuses that they have a problem with. It's one of those "slippery slope" cases, whether you believe it or not.
To admonish someone to just "live within your means" is arrogant and ignorant at the same time.
... which can easily run $20,000-$40,000 right there! ... all things folks "can't live without", apparently, yet some do manage to get along fine with fewer or none of such items. In my case, I spent my poorest years yakking away on IRC, while writing crappy mIRC scripts, with a trip to the $2 movie theatre once a month or so. I read many books (used or borrowed from the library), though mostly fiction, and tooled around on an old bicycle when money for gas was tight.
It could be, if you were talking to a kid living in a dinky, ratty studio who was working full-time and attending college full-time (on a $1000 "scholarship" awarded years previous) and counting the days until the money ran out, with the sole extravagance being a slow dialup connection (and associated phone) for about $25/mo - no TV, either. Which was my situation not very long ago.
For the folks I knew then and the ones I've known since then, most all have automobiles they are making payments on, having purchased either new ones, or fancy models
On top of that, then there are the rest of the "standard" items, such as music CDs, movies and associated DVDs, big televisions, alcohol, designer clothes
However, your main thrust seems to be: it sucks to be stuck in a low-wage job, and yes it does. Yet, no one has a right to a nice job with a fat paycheck - you have to convince one of those fat-cat CEOs, or one of their many underlings, to give you such. How does one go about doing that? Good question, and one I don't have a universal answer for. "Hard work" comes close, though, and Americans are pretty damned lazy. Living in California or on the east coast probably doesn't help the situation, either.
If you're not making at least $43k, take home, per year then you're likely involved in some sort of system to cost-share or else you will fall into debt.
All I can say is, "you're wrong". I'm proof of that, and I'm even a rabid gamer that spends thousands of dollars a year on PC parts and software. And those damned new gameboys. Hate you, Nintendo.
I'm not going to debate your points, as many are most likely pretty accurate. I will debate their relevance, though.
:P Also, I work because I choose to. I want to buy computer parts and use a broadband line. I could live in missions and drift around doing whatever, but I'd rather not. ;)
By "slavery", I mean "forced servitude". We can debate the unfairness of the tax system all day long (and we'd probably just be preaching to ourselves in the choir, anyway), but what's to stop someone from simply not working for money? You may point out the impracticality of that, and you'd be right, but it still exists. No one forces anyone to work in polite society.
I'm not spouting T-shirt wisdom from my ivory tower or gold-filled bank-vault. I live debt-free. I own a used car, rent an apartment, and my credit cards carry a zero balance. I live within my means, as it is said. It is my opinion that everyone should do the same. The one exception to my lifestyle: buying a house. I haven't figured out how to efficiently save $250,000 yet.
Moving on...
Slavery is the natural state of anyone who lives paycheck-to-paycheck. That happens to be, in terms of population, a significant portion of society--probably close to 40%. We just don't call it slavery anymore because the cold hard facts are too much for most people to choke down through their public school education.
People often live paycheck-to-paycheck to "maintain a lifestyle", also referred to as "living outside their means". New house, two cars, two kids, new boat, whatever. As opposed to buying a smaller, used house, or maybe a townhouse/condo, one used car (or another economy model, if required), and exercising discretion in other purchases and expenses. I dare say that most people living in conditions you describe did so because of choices they made.
I signed up for a /. account after I read one of his inane reviews... and before I realized how pointless the exercise would be.
8 3 :P
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13201&cid=875
[...] create a social class of permanently exploitable people who, statistically, will simply never have a chance of getting out of debt
One problem with that: those people didn't start out being in debt in the first place. In most all cases, said people CHOSE to saddle themselves with debt, so that they could have their new cars/clothes/house/whatever instead of chosing less expensive alternatives and/or locales. The only possible way your analogy could work is if you stated that said people decided to sell themselves into "slavery"... but then whose fault is it at that point?
[...] and jury nullification practically illegal [...]
Has anyone actually been punished for delivering a verdict other than those presented by the judge, and/or finding the defendant not guilty on the grounds that the law is wrong, etc.? Last I'd heard, the problem stemmed from people trying to inform the jury members of their rights while a trial was ongoing, and usually urging them to exercise said rights. The latter part of that is what I suppose tends to land people in trouble - "influencing the jury" or something.
So, were you just being melodramatic?
Free will is horseshit. My free will sayeth : I will now fly around the room in my jimjams. It doesn't happen.
"Free will" is not the same as omnipotence. "Free will" never once meant the ability to violate laws of physics because you "willed" it, etc. The concept of a "free will" means that an individual can choose his own course of (in)action within the limitations already present. It is this concept of free will that both causes such things as the D.C. "sniper" situation... and the lack of similar events happening everywhere else on a daily basis.
And coincidently you wouldn't show up at work the next morning... ... which is why you make the call from your boss' phone. :)
Does anyone even use Windows around here?
.exes from a strange website claiming to be from a game I've never heard of before? I'm not going to touch them.
Oh, *please*. Not only has CmdrTaco (or one of the other folks) said about 70% of the folks that read slashdot do so from Windows PCs according to their server logs, but gamers are the most likely group of all to use Windows. Perhaps you've not noticed, but there are precious few video game offerings for Linux as opposed to Windows currently. I certainly don't remember agreeing to any EULA stating I would never use Windows again when I was setting up my slackware router or mandrake proxy server...
As for executable files being used to display video, I'm with you all the way. Download and run
... doesn't mean something is good to ingest. There actually may be some truth behind the touted dangers of fluoridated water, aside from the whole matter of actually drinking something that really should only stay on your teeth for a while before being spat out.
A google for "fluoridation sewage" or "fluoridation sludge" will give you an interesting look on where cities get the raw material to add fluoride to water, and it's not very appetizing, especially considering the trace amounts of heavy metals and other rather toxic materials that just aren't feasible to remove from the "product". Then consider the possibility of skeletal fluorsis, which occurs when too much fluorine is ingested, which is where the skeletal bones basically rot/disintegrate.
Vaccination isn't without its dangers, although for the most serious viruses, polio, etc., the vaccination risk seems more than made up for. Refined sugar isn't a wise thing to stuff into your body, either. Maybe the guy is going overboard (haven't read about him, specifically), but there is certainly a grain of truth behind all that "whacky quackery".
... can still be done with an absentee ballot. I showed up at the polls with mine in-hand, ready to go right back out the door and drop it in the mailbox if they had any of those paperless e-voting machines.
They actually did (Nevada), but once I noticed the machine I was on didn't have a paper printout/copy, I flagged down one of the tenders and had them void out the session and stick me on one of the others. I verified the printout, and since it was human-readable, figured that was good enough. No paper-trail == absentee ballot. Paperless voting is a very stupid/dangerous idea.
... have you tried to set up a simple cron job to run ntpdate automatically? I.e., throw your ntpdate command-line into a text file with "#!/bin/bash" as the first line, set it executable, then throw it in /etc/cron.daily? (Or hourly, etc., etc.)
Alternatively, you could tell ntp to use different time servers - you may be using ones that are getting hammered a lot.
No, I don't use a DVR. Still, Linux is Linux, so I hope this helps, if you've not tried such already.
Hm, I think I see the misunderstanding here. You're working with the understanding that the police (and justice system) are in place to directly prevent harm to you, which isn't a bad assumption in most cases: I can almost guarantee I'd know the outcome of my attempted mugging if I tried it in front of a police officer. So, I think I now understand your side of the issue. "Why burden myself with risk if the police will protect me?" It's a good question.
Here's my side of it, in two parts. The first is the simple matter of police not actually being present in the time of need. This could be for any number of reasons, ranging from a car not being in your neighborhood at the time, to a hurricane taking down the city. Here's an interesting link to a summary of average response times to 911 calls for a large American city.
The second reason is that police (and, for that matter, the government) are *not obligated* to provide protection for any individual citizen. Sounds crazy, but that's what the law of the land (USA, anyhow) says: Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981); Gonzalez v. Castle Rock is another one making its way through the courts, and a disturbing one, but the sticking point isn't actually the matter of the police being obligated, but whether they are liable for specific wording of some of their ordinances and/or some of the procedural mishaps that took place (or didn't), in relation to the wording of the ordinances involved with that locale's restraining orders.
In summary, the justice system (and police) exist as a deterrant and/or to punish crimes which have already occurred. Responsibility for one's own protection rests directly in the hands of the individual person. This is a somewhat simplified matter if there is only one's self to protect: you will either choose to take responsibility, or not. For those with family, it becomes a more involved issue.
Anyhow, I hope I've presented the case clearly, and cleared up some of the possible sticking points. I'll follow this up as a journal entry or something, if you'd prefer.
As a follow-on, I agree: someone with a weapon - anyone - is more dangerous than someone without a weapon. Firearms have been known as "the great equalizer" for a reason. ;)
Logically, your argument is asinine. If there is an armed attacker, there is a threat to your life. As with any threat, the best way to meet one is with equal or greater force. This is known as "deterrence". Otherwise, the attacker has a *completely* free hand to do whatever he wants: rob, kill, rape, kidnap, etc.
The problem here is not whether or not the bad guys "get more weapons". Weapons have been and will be widely available to those who want them. The problem is flawed logic like yours, that says "hey, only the bad guys should carry weapons!" Criminals are generally vastly outnumbered by the rest of society.
Consider the following scenario: imagine yourself to be a mugger, and every single person is known, for a fact, to be armed with and trained in the use of a firearm. How risky would your profession be, assuming that any alerted bystander would immediately come directly to the aid of your potential victim?
No, the answer is absolutely not to make every single person a helpless target for criminals.
Which the use of is a felony (thank you, DMCA!). That's felon-as-in-pound-me-in-the-ass-federal-prison felon. Whee! Man, I love Congress!
Your. Logic. Is. Flawed.
36% of the eligible voters, ALL OF THEM, including the ones that chose to sit on the couch and not vote, cast a vote for Bush. 34% voted for Kerry. Some small fractions of a percent voted for other guys. Roughly 28% sat on their asses. So, since the ones that sat on their ass decided not to participate, we do what our system of government does with them and discount them entirely. THEY chose not to do jack, so no matter how anyone thinks they would have voted, the simple fact remains, they did not and so their unsaid say doesn't matter. Does. Not. Count. Does. Not. Matter.
And you still attack the person and ignore the argument, fudging figures even when it doesn't matter. I.e., sixty-two million, not fifty. You answer an argument with insults, you rant about off-topic subjects when presented with facts. You're wrong, no bullshit.
Forget the voting booth, man. Stay away from the rest of society! O.o
Not that the point was any less valid, but I posted the GP.
As for educating others, we'd rather you didn't, at least not until you can either gets your facts straight, or admit you were wrong, correct the error, and go from there.
Yes, please do go back to your "efforts to help", and please remember to be accurate with your facts in the future. It simply wouldn't do to have FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE TRAPPED ON THAT ROOF when, in fact, there are three guys on a raft. Sure, it'd be nice for the three guys, but not for the six families across town.
What bullshit have I presented (or, at the least, have not admitted fault on and corrected myself), mm? Also, how, exactly, would my abstaining from participating in every future election help anyone, anywhere?
What about the folks in Oregon? Should they host refugees? What about the auto mechanics? Should they do data-entry?
Maybe we join the National Guard and head down there? Or buy a boat and start motoring around in what's left?
Frankly, no, at this point, *right now*, there is nothing more to be done, unless you feel like paying the bill, or going vigilante on the few criminals that are causing trouble down there.
I was talking about 1. why people lived there in the first place ("legitimate" reasons or not), 2. why many folks saved NO money and/or chose to stay, 3. and why disaster response organizations weren't on hand immediately afterwards. There WAS 48 hours' notice that it was a likely Category 5, and going to hit N.O.
The answers will shed light on all sorts of serious problems, from some cases of real poverty, to artificial poverty; no trust in our leaders at any given level; laziness and lack of foresight (both people and gov't), etc., etc., etc.
The thing to do *now* is plan how you will take care of you and yours in an emergency that may happen in your own area. While you're at it, make a Plan B, too.
And maybe "I" shot him and killed him first, removing one criminal from the streets and striking fear into the others that hear about the incident.
You keep ignoring the fact that a person often has very little chance against a determined attacker if they are not armed - and yet are extremely dangerous to an attacker if they *are* carrying a firearm.
Whoops! I suppose I should learn to read. I stand corrected:
"That number includes all manner of folks who are ineligible to vote, such as children, felons, etc. I don't have a ready figure on the number of eligible voters, but it is CERTAINLY NOT 301 million."
Your turn, mate.
My point was, they've got people and supplies already. The average /.er can't "do anything" to actually help the folks in NO at this point* (unless you're a praying man).
Could you have forced the mayor to stockpile supplies, or made him move his fleet of 200 school busses so they would be potentially useful later?
Could you have moved ~30,000-60,000 people who couldn't leave? Or forcibly evacuated those that did not want to leave (let the civil rights people have a heyday with that one)?
Could you have handled the supposedly rampant violent crime problem, or made folks stop shooting at rescuers?
There are many ills that need curing, yes. Yes, some in the government. Some, however, are in society itself. When you have an answer to cure society's ills (which will then sort out most of the governmental ills on its own within a decade or so, once people start taking their duty as citizens seriously), and a method to get everyone to abide by them, let the rest of us know.
*Donating cash is the exception, but won't directly help much at this point.
The entire population of the USA is ~280 million. That number includes all manner of folks who are ineligible to vote, such as children, felons, etc. I don't have a ready figure on the number of eligible voters, but it is CERTAINLY NOT 351 million.
When folks start using wildly inaccurate figures while ranting and raving, is it any wonder no one believes anything they say? A little truth goes a long way...
Just for the record: Bush officially won 62.02 million votes, while Kerry won 59.02 million. Interestingly, the reported percentage of eligible voters was 60.7%, supposedly the highest percentage since 1968. Hm.
Okay, /., let's go fix this mess!
/.ers are starting to realize maybe they're not the best ones to be trying anything right about now, but before they can do anything else, another half are killed by roving bands of thugs (although the armed-to-the-teeth nerds happened to inflict enough damage to the thugs that things were relatively peaceful for the next day or so). Everyone else flees into the waiting arms of the police, only to be sent to the Superdome.
Everyone quit your job.
Pack up and get to LA as fast as possible (we'll get there Monday).
Divide into two camps: those that don't like firearms, those that are armed to the teeth.
Converge on NO: half get turned back, half of the others are shot by police as they rush past. Another half of those drop dead in the flooded streets due to sheer exhaustion (they were desk jockeys!) About this time, the remainder of the
Hm, tell you what: YOU go first.