So what is the difference between a civil union and a marriage? A church? Wouldn't we then define a marriage as a "legally recognized, and legally binding religious right", and a civil union as the same thing, but with the religion stripped from it? So what if there ARE sensible religions who see no problem with gay folk marrying?
Would a civil union have all the legal perks (and responsibilities) as a straight marriage?
If yes, then why must we draw a special category for on small subset of the population, to to exclude them?
I see no difference, outside of reproduction, between you and your wife, and Bob and his husband, and even the reproduction issue is rather dumb, since gay people do have means for acquiring children, and often do, which would make them completely identical to you and your wife.
Even stripping out the terminology, the issue is completely nonsensical. Granting gay people equal footing with straight people in the marriage arena has no ill effects on society, or individuals. As such, there is no ethical reason to bar it.
Oh, just in case we drag out "first amendment religious rights" (not to use a strawman, just dragging this out preemptively, in case someone uses it); a lot of churches were forced to marry black, and interracial, couples too, should we bar black and interracial couples marriage because some churches might not agree with it? The rights of actual people is always more important than the rights of some subset of religious institutions.
I try to sign all petitions, whether or whether not I agree with them, just because I think the public as a whole should have their say, with the caveat that the issue at hand should be an issue for government, and not just some moral or religious mumbo-jumbo, or whatnot. I've signed several hundred petitions for issues I'm rabidly against, just because I think the public should have a say, even if the odds are the public won't agree with me.
In any case, I don't really care if my name gets publicly attached to the issue, since I have no expectation of privacy when it comes to petitions. Hell, you have to enter your ADDRESS and FULL NAME, this pretty much flies in the face of any expected sense of privacy.
If you truly believe in something, you should have no problem with attaching your name to it, fear of reprisals or not. If there was a petition going around to legalize marijuana, give money to schools, promote true universal health-care, allow full equal rights to all people regardless of what their sexual preference is (and what religions dislike them for bigoted irrational reasons), disallow the term "terrorism" from the halls of congress, and cause us to withdrawl all influence and aid from Isreal or any other middle eastern country (notice, all of these views are VERY controversial, and might raise ire in some weak minded, violent morons); would sign it, underline my name, and scream this from rooftops, no matter what you may think or do. Why? Because doing the right thing is more important than my safety. If your more worried about harm than your beliefs, you have weak beliefs.
I wouldn't have signed this petition because it isn't the governments job to inflict Judeo-Christian morality on others.
Wait, so a bunch of RPG/Strategy nerds staged the whole thing? I always thought that the paint fumes from painting so many Warhammer figures would drive people loopy, and now I suppose we have proof!
That's what always got me about Street Fighter games, and their ilk. This type of game is the only type of game a large subset of my friends will ever play, and despite 26 years of trying, I still have no idea why I need 7000000 button presses to shoot a damn fireball. In a match of Bushido Blade I will kill them every time, since it makes so much sense. 3 stances, 2 attack buttons, one block button, instant kills, most of which makes sense since it is more a Bushido simulator than an actual fighting game. If Squenix made a sequal, I might be motivated to actually go out and buy that overpriced behemoth called the PS3.
Win7 Pro: $30.00 (academic discount) Nehlamem Pro Processor: 279.99 Latest Office 20xx: $50 (academic discount), or Free (torrent).
Total: $359.99
Still high, but manageable. My advice is find a friend who goes to school, or works at one. A lot of businesses will also offer a discount to their employees if relevant, especially copies of office.
Also something noteworthy is that the life situation of Michael Dell, as a multibillionare, is very different from the vast majority; thus whatever Michael Dell chooses will most likely not reflect what's best for you as an average income consumer. Even though the ape in us wants to try to mimic the decisions of the successful, it can sometimes be difficult to understand why mimicing isolated decisions is more likely to do you harm than good.
Huh? What does that have to do with the TFA? Michael Dell isn't suggesting we buy a new Porsche, he's just pimping Win7 to help out his company, with a nice helping of fake sincerity. Assuming we accept this as a real statement (in the advertising spirit in which it was offered) he still isn't saying anything that is not applicable to us non-millionaire plebes. Win7 Home is pretty cheap, hell, even a new Dell is within reason. Unless sometime during the night the economy tanked enough that ~$600 for a new manufactured computer is well out of reach for all but the richest of us.
If it is true that he actually uses Ubuntu at home, does this make Ubuntu a dumb decision for us non-millionaires, just because a millionaire uses it?
Millionaires aren't special, and many of their preferences can be shared by us poor folk as well. I'm guessing 7/10 millionaires prefer Coke over Pepsi, but last I checked I can afford to buy Coke easily. I might be skepitcal over advice to drink this coke out of $1000 crystal though.
So, the question is; where does his networth really matter in any of his statements? As a non-millionaire I will be grabbing a copy of Win7 ($30 for 7 academic licenses ftw), I will also be buying a new computer in the next two year (or at least a new mobo and processor), if my lifelong trend continues. I also am typing this via Ubuntu. And I, most assuredly, am NOT a millionaire.
So far, his support of the health bills written in the House by far-left committee chairmen are not encouraging for those who thought they elected a moderate. But as I said, it's too early to tell.
As a person whose political views often veer to the far left; I'd say his pet health bills are more... fascist? A public option would be to the left, some form of universal provision would be very far to the left, but what it looks like we're getting is NOT to the left. Basically all he's pushing is a mandate to give billions of extra dollars to the insurance companies, with no strings attached.
Actually, this has been true of most of his fiscal actions to date.
Thinking of the Fallout franchise: would you like to replace Nuka Cola with Coke or Pepsi? I'd wager that neither of the real-world replacements would really be as enjoyable as Nuka Cola, since it FITS in the Fallout Universe much better, thematically. The same goes for most "fake" products in futuristic and fantasy games. Imagine a far-future space shooter, littered with Coke vending machines, these WOULD be out of place, since I have a hard time actually believing that the great "soft drink wars" will really matter much in the age of interstellar travel, laser rifles, and alien encounters. I'd like to think that we, culturally, would have grown the hell up by then.
Though in a fantasy MMO I would love a quest allowing me to milk Coka Cola brand polar bears for their sweat, refreshing, nectar, which makes you lithe, fit, smart, and attractive to the ladies. Or perhaps killing and collecting the piss of Budweiser brand rats, to make a mild and refreshing concoction that will make you lithe, fit, smart, and attractive to the ladies.
First: I agree with you that this prize is crap....pissing off Americans who are not left-wing fanatical loons,
If you notice, most of the actual "left-wing" of the Democratic party don't like Obama either. Obama is NOT a leftist, he is a slightly left leaning moderate. Compare him, for example, to Kucinich or Feingold, both of whom could be classifed as left-wing, being the core of the progressive wing of the party. The difference between the left and Obama is as great as the difference between Reagan and Obama. I would have said Bush II, but I'm not quite sure how deep the difference between these two actually is yet.
They're helping to mobilize us "evil neocons" for 2012.
Well, if your parties public face continues to act like morons, I doubt very much you'll win.
I never stated it is. I merely mean that the same sentiment is still very alive and well, and because of this there is a not insignificant pool of people who would LOVE to have that certain senator from Wisconsin back. Our Government hasn't, yet, starting blocking dissonance, but this doesn't mean that the potential and the will aren't out there still.
Though one could argue, that if you replaced "International Communist Conspiracy" with "International Terrorist Conspiracy", where "terrorist" is very loose word that often amounts to "disagreement with US policies or interests", we would pretty much have the same thing.
Also, if you pay attention to what the crazies are saying, a lot of them are questioning the legitimacy of democratically elected officials because of the the letter after their name. To these people, political ideology is more important than democracy, which might not be "McCarthyism" as such, but is still damn dangerous.
McCarthyism is long dead and will not resurrect in out lifetime
Watch the news, and count the times that someone dismisses a purely political idea as "socialism", or how often people argue that our duly elected officials are "socialists". It might not be policy, but the sentiment is still there.
Wait... isn't that making a come-back? It seems a large percentage of people in America today (at least the vocal ones) would like McCarthy to be raised from the grave as a big bad Obama/50+% of the population smashing zombie. Hence tons of people bashing "socialism" as an evil thing, and not just a mere political view different than their own, not to say liberalism (more "socialism"), secularism (the first amendment is socialism), and the typo-become-slander "democrat" party (those legally elected "socialists").
So are the 1960's and their repression of anti-Vietnam speech.
As was the early 2000's anti-Iraq speech. I remember when being against our president, or his purely political war was considered to be Anti-American. I remember stories of critics being put on no-fly lists, and other watch lists. How times have changed.
Granted most of these aren't actually political edicts enforced from on-high, but they show the sentiment is still very alive. So we still have a VERY steep slope, since a large-ish population of the US would like wholesale censorship and political repression.
I'm not sure the extent of anything though, since our government is a sneeky bunch of spies still, who are still very likely to be closely monitoring any potential opposition to the dominant ideology. And it is ignoring the Judicial Branch, who frequently decides that our freedoms are subject to corporate whims (soft fascism, as someone here on/. eruditely put it earlier). This doubt also incorporates our copyright and patent fiascoes that are on-going. It is increasingly hard to draw a media/corporation/government line when it comes to rights violations.
Obviously, I'm not disagreeing with you, just adding some more steam to the boiler.
Footnote: I made my post a bit antagonistic to Republicans, and the previously ascendant Conservatives, Democrats and Liberals, though, are not free from guilt either. The current Obama health care issue is a good example of Moderate Liberal Status-Quo-ers trying to quench debate.
I meant the ability to upgrade things freely. You can do this on most Macs to a limited extent, but they are not quite as customizable as a "PC" (hate that term, Macs are also a PC). I'll give MacBooks and MacBook Pros a discount, since they are about as upgradable as any laptop, but iMacs are TERRIBLE to upgrade, Mini's require paint scrapers and around 4 hours of disassembly time to even upgrade the HDD or RAM. I found this limiting since I manage to keep computers around for 10+ years with yearly, or biyearly upgrades. I like to dig around inside my computer, and incrementally make it better.
A bad experience in this drove me to buy a Mac, but I found I missed it, and didn't like the fact that my $1k+ computer was drifting farther and farther out of date, and their was nothing I could do about it except buy another $1k+ computer, when a measly $200 of upgrades would have fixed it.
By control, I meant I have control over the contents of my computer.
Did you mean control in some other way? Like wanting to write drivers for fun perhaps?
Nothing wrong with wanting to do this. Not to my tastes, but people enjoy it.
I'm not flaming Macs, or Mac users, I'm just saying that computing isn't one size fits all. I loved OS X, but found the hardware problem to be a game killer (and needlessly expensive). Just my opinion. I had other problems with OS X that didn't meet my workflow, but these problems might be bonuses for others.
And then there are people like me, who "switched" to a Mac only, and had one exclusively, until I realized that even if OS X is better than Vista (in particular), I missed having control over my hardware, so "reswitched" back to PC. So now I have a Mac media streaming box, a big PC, and a laptop running Vista/Ubuntu.
Or my girlfriend, who grew up in a Mac only house. Who at some point after the Intel switch realized that Macs took a nose-dive, and now only runs Windows.
So in our household, 3 Windows PCs, 1 Linux PC, and 1 Mac PC (not counting the dead MacBook pro that was eaten for parts, or the defunct and broken iMac G3, which is really being "repaired" for her mom), after xmas, this will be 3 Windows, 2 Linux, and maybe 1 Mac (thinking of converting it to Linux).
In my girlfreinds parents house, though, there are NO PCs, and 2 Macs. So...
Who's disarming who? I've been thinking about this, and I don't know a single fellow lefty who is in favor of banning guns, outside of some whackjobs in the bay area who haven't figured out how to wash their hair yet (contrast this with the lunatic fringe of the gun crowd, who thinks everyone has a right to a nuclear weapon since it is technically an "arm"). Almost everyone I know owns a gun, and no one I know has been barred from owning one. Hell, my clinically diagnosed, mentally ill, mother owns a gun.
If I wanted to, I could walk into the nearest gun shop and pick one us, as could around 90% of the population, and no one would stop me.
I have no problem with felons not being able to own guns, since they already proved that they are incapable of operating within the rules of society. As for the mentally ill, this is a hard label to actually define, and I don't know anyone who has actually been barred from getting one. Who else is barred from owning guns? Children under the age of... what 16? I don't care, since its up to their parents. My dad took me shooting when I was 8, sure I didn't own it, but at that age what DID I own? Who else... unnaturalized residents, and illegal aliens?
"The constitution was designed to protect the freedoms of individuals," and "before corporations were treated as people, they could be undermined simply by using the protections of the constitution against them." contradict each other. So individuals exercising and protecting their Constitutional rights hurt non-individuals, so the answer was to redefine individuals. So basically it was handwaving (actually a clerical error) that did nothing to change behaviors.
I find this strange... People exercising their constitutional rights were hurting the free market, therefore we need to redefine person so we can avoid this. Personally I think individual rights come above some mythical, and abstract, free market.
By treating corporations as people, we eliminate that loophole to ensure that corporations are able to sell their products with as little regulation and oversight as possible. This is how it should be, folks.
I don't see this. Why the hell should corporations have the right to speech, privacy, and soon political speech (as if a corporation could have an opinion)? I can see the argument of not regulating them (I don't agree, but there is room for debate), but I can't see considering a fictitious entity to have the same rights that I do.
Despite the wishes of some people (Democrats for illegal immigrants and Republicans for corporations) I don't think rights apply to non-citizens. I
Depends on your definition of "rights", and where you think these "rights" flow from. If rights are nothing but what the state recognizes, then your statement is sound, unless the state decides that non-citizens have rights. If these rights are endowed by a creator (God, or natural rights), then they are universal, except for rights which involve the state. Thus an unnaturalized immigrant would have the right to speech, arms, assembly, religion, etc... but not the right to vote (but then we run into the issue of taxing them sans representation).
Another problem is that neither the Declaration, nor the Constitution explicitly state, without ambiguity, that the rights contained therein are only for citizens (the only "right" with such a restriction that I can immediately see is the ability to be president).
I'm not sure why corporations were accorded any rights in the first place. They should have legal responsibilities as legal entities but they should never be treated as individuals and certainly not citizens.
Agreed. Rights are a thing that applies only to individuals, not fictional entities. Unless of course rights flow from the state, then rights can apply to anything that the state wants.
That mantra is getting old. What does it not do that either of the other two do? I understood when Linux was difficult to set up but now you just pop in your KUbuntu CD and go...
I'm not who you were replying too, but I'll bite.
The various flavors of Ubuntu are very very nice, and have served to bring Linux much closer to the mythical "Year of Linux Desktop", but it still hasn't quite made it. Well, let me refine that previous statement, it has and hasn't made it, depending on what we're looking for. If we are looking for competition with OS X and Windows, then it hasn't. If our goal, instead, a good, stable, competent and adaptable OS environment, then it has. Sadly the latter statement is completely seperated from the former.
Ubuntu still lacks the overwhelming "user friendliness" of its competitors, both in GUI design, and in support for 3rd party hardware, and software. This is more important to the typical Joe-Sixpack type than being a generally complete OS. Kubuntu, and Ubuntu still lack "polish", they are not sexy, and have no desire to strive towards it. Most people might be shallow, but this is still important. Notice how much MS and Apple spend on usability studies, HCI experts, ergonomics, and design, now compare this to how much various Linux distros (or at least windowing systems) spend. Part of this is shallow users following the "shiney", but HCI, usability, and aesthetics are also very important towards productivity.
Another obstacle is that in most Linux distros, the "technical crap" is still to visible under the shell... People don't want to interact with the underlying OS anyone, they want everything to be a seamless experience within the shell. People don't care how it works, the most desirable feature of a modern OS is he ability to use it productively without EVER having to see the inner workings. They want information appliances... Push a lever, make toast. Linux isn't quite there yet, mostly because most of the contributors and users of Linux don't want it this way. No fault there, personally I don't blame them, but this detracts from its mass appeal.
3rd party support is a HUGE hurdle. I know that most of this is the vendor's fault, but it still stands in the way. How many Linux users complain about Flash here? How often do you still run into arcane driver problems that you have to hack your way out of? Its better now, but still isn't quite there for the average lazy Windows/OS X user. And worse, this idea of having to hand type config files has become a common meme for Linux, which drives people away. Even when this gets substantially better still, its going to be an up hill battle for adoption.
I don't see the problem though, why does Linux need to compete with OS X and Windows? It works, most people here love it and get things done on it, isn't that enough? Hell, Linux has roughly the same market share as OS X. Linux is a geek OS, a hobbyist and technical OS, and this is fine, its a niche. As far as common perception goes; "OS X is for those odd creative types, and yuppies who want to act like those odd creative types", "Windows is for normal people who want massive compatibility and a large collection of professional (for pay) software", and "Linux is for nerds who enjoy the ability to manipulate the arcane and scary inter-workings of their computers, and for business".
I don't see the inherent noisiness of it. If you sit there and stare at the interface for hours waiting for updates so you can immediately respond, then yes, it is noisy, but this is because you want it to be. If you check your conversation once or twice a day, and use the history feature to see if you missed anything important, then it is no more noisy than standard email, or a wiki.
When I first watched the promo movie, my first use for it was actually carrying out a couple collaborative fiction projects I had in mind for years. 4 or 5 people submitting running edits, and content additions a couple times a week, with another subtopic for discussion would be perfect, and almost completely noise free. Unless of course all my collaborators are on at once, and then it bascially transforms into a traditional chat/collaborative docs application. Like all chat, this could be noisy, if allowed to become so.
Its just like the people who complain that email (still!) is a productivity killer because they have the constant need to check it. It isn't the program, its the habits of the user.
I agree that defining what are rights and where they come from is a problem, I would even go so far as to say that it really is intractable.
I too have spent tons of time pondering this, and have a very small framework, which is still, sadly, completely within the realm of opinion. I think all rights are based on some form of empathy, or the golden rule, or Kant's Categorical Imperative (basically all of them are the same thing). From this, we can say that a certain set of rights (I have no clue how to quantify them...) is universally recognized. All of x are entitled to y. The problem then comes from our definition of a person. Sadly, this very rudimentary formulation isn't helpful beyond a microlevel. And, obviously, it is still impossible to quantify what a "right" is, outside of the basic "I wouldn't personally like it" level.
Which leads, then, to the various social contracts, which as you state isalmost purely consensual. Its a fun discussion, but if 2000+ years of philosophers, most smarter than most of us, can't find a decent answer...
In a way, we are victims of the success of our government's design... Long winded, carefully thought out positions are seen as boring, and so we ignore these in favor of the loud and obnoxious. So that, ultimately, the discussion is driven by the loudest and most entertaining.
I blame populism, as blasphemous as it sounds. When I vote, I vote for the character of the person, not that positions that they hold at the moment. Sadly, this is antiquated. I, also, find it very depressing that we vote for those who spend the most on advertisement. Even if we agree with them, I find the correlation between public spending and votes to be really troublesome. I don't know why the future of our country is almost 100% analogous to Coke vs. Pepsi. A rather depressing proposition.
The current "debate" is equally depressing. There are valid arguements for and against Obama's healthcare plans, but both sides are completely drowned out by morons screaming inanities. Sadly the media loves the controversy, and thus the valid arguments die. Or worse, get painted as a liberal vs. conservative circus, which is a complete misrepresentation of reality (as stated, I'm pretty much a socialist, and I'm as against the current plans as any conservative or libertarian). The worst part is that the media is our mirror to reality, and thus informs how we see the political/social world, making forming a justified opinion almost impossible for those who have lives too busy to intricately research the issues.
I only hope it gets better someday. I fear for America. The only opening I can see to fix our republican democracy is education (not indoctrination, but critical thinking skills, allowing people the criteria to form informed opinions). A just government depends on informed voters, which, sadly, we seem to be lacking.
A properly configured 'nix machine is much more difficult to exploit than a 'doze box.
Here is the problem. A properly configured Windows box is pretty damn hard to exploit. I haven't had a virus in my recent memory, and most other malware infections are wholly the users fault (i.e. no amount of OS level security will protect them). Granted, in my near 30 years of computers, I've had 2 Windows viruses, 0 Linux viruses, and 0 OS X/Mac Viruses, and 0 C64/Amiga/DOS/BSD ones as well. Well, really one Windows virus, the second was wholly my fault.
Anecdotal, yes. Relevant, perhaps.
The rub, though, is a properly configured box of any type, with a semi-educated competent user is pretty damn secure. A badly set up box, or a dumb user, is a recipe for disaster no matter what your OS of choice is.
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So what is the difference between a civil union and a marriage? A church? Wouldn't we then define a marriage as a "legally recognized, and legally binding religious right", and a civil union as the same thing, but with the religion stripped from it? So what if there ARE sensible religions who see no problem with gay folk marrying?
Would a civil union have all the legal perks (and responsibilities) as a straight marriage?
If yes, then why must we draw a special category for on small subset of the population, to to exclude them?
I see no difference, outside of reproduction, between you and your wife, and Bob and his husband, and even the reproduction issue is rather dumb, since gay people do have means for acquiring children, and often do, which would make them completely identical to you and your wife.
Even stripping out the terminology, the issue is completely nonsensical. Granting gay people equal footing with straight people in the marriage arena has no ill effects on society, or individuals. As such, there is no ethical reason to bar it.
Oh, just in case we drag out "first amendment religious rights" (not to use a strawman, just dragging this out preemptively, in case someone uses it); a lot of churches were forced to marry black, and interracial, couples too, should we bar black and interracial couples marriage because some churches might not agree with it? The rights of actual people is always more important than the rights of some subset of religious institutions.
I try to sign all petitions, whether or whether not I agree with them, just because I think the public as a whole should have their say, with the caveat that the issue at hand should be an issue for government, and not just some moral or religious mumbo-jumbo, or whatnot. I've signed several hundred petitions for issues I'm rabidly against, just because I think the public should have a say, even if the odds are the public won't agree with me.
In any case, I don't really care if my name gets publicly attached to the issue, since I have no expectation of privacy when it comes to petitions. Hell, you have to enter your ADDRESS and FULL NAME, this pretty much flies in the face of any expected sense of privacy.
If you truly believe in something, you should have no problem with attaching your name to it, fear of reprisals or not. If there was a petition going around to legalize marijuana, give money to schools, promote true universal health-care, allow full equal rights to all people regardless of what their sexual preference is (and what religions dislike them for bigoted irrational reasons), disallow the term "terrorism" from the halls of congress, and cause us to withdrawl all influence and aid from Isreal or any other middle eastern country (notice, all of these views are VERY controversial, and might raise ire in some weak minded, violent morons); would sign it, underline my name, and scream this from rooftops, no matter what you may think or do. Why? Because doing the right thing is more important than my safety. If your more worried about harm than your beliefs, you have weak beliefs.
I wouldn't have signed this petition because it isn't the governments job to inflict Judeo-Christian morality on others.
Wait, so a bunch of RPG/Strategy nerds staged the whole thing? I always thought that the paint fumes from painting so many Warhammer figures would drive people loopy, and now I suppose we have proof!
That's what always got me about Street Fighter games, and their ilk. This type of game is the only type of game a large subset of my friends will ever play, and despite 26 years of trying, I still have no idea why I need 7000000 button presses to shoot a damn fireball. In a match of Bushido Blade I will kill them every time, since it makes so much sense. 3 stances, 2 attack buttons, one block button, instant kills, most of which makes sense since it is more a Bushido simulator than an actual fighting game. If Squenix made a sequal, I might be motivated to actually go out and buy that overpriced behemoth called the PS3.
Win7 Pro: $30.00 (academic discount)
Nehlamem Pro Processor: 279.99
Latest Office 20xx: $50 (academic discount), or Free (torrent).
Total: $359.99
Still high, but manageable. My advice is find a friend who goes to school, or works at one. A lot of businesses will also offer a discount to their employees if relevant, especially copies of office.
Also something noteworthy is that the life situation of Michael Dell, as a multibillionare, is very different from the vast majority; thus whatever Michael Dell chooses will most likely not reflect what's best for you as an average income consumer.
Even though the ape in us wants to try to mimic the decisions of the successful, it can sometimes be difficult to understand why mimicing isolated decisions is more likely to do you harm than good.
Huh? What does that have to do with the TFA? Michael Dell isn't suggesting we buy a new Porsche, he's just pimping Win7 to help out his company, with a nice helping of fake sincerity. Assuming we accept this as a real statement (in the advertising spirit in which it was offered) he still isn't saying anything that is not applicable to us non-millionaire plebes. Win7 Home is pretty cheap, hell, even a new Dell is within reason. Unless sometime during the night the economy tanked enough that ~$600 for a new manufactured computer is well out of reach for all but the richest of us.
If it is true that he actually uses Ubuntu at home, does this make Ubuntu a dumb decision for us non-millionaires, just because a millionaire uses it?
Millionaires aren't special, and many of their preferences can be shared by us poor folk as well. I'm guessing 7/10 millionaires prefer Coke over Pepsi, but last I checked I can afford to buy Coke easily. I might be skepitcal over advice to drink this coke out of $1000 crystal though.
So, the question is; where does his networth really matter in any of his statements? As a non-millionaire I will be grabbing a copy of Win7 ($30 for 7 academic licenses ftw), I will also be buying a new computer in the next two year (or at least a new mobo and processor), if my lifelong trend continues. I also am typing this via Ubuntu. And I, most assuredly, am NOT a millionaire.
So far, his support of the health bills written in the House by far-left committee chairmen are not encouraging for those who thought they elected a moderate. But as I said, it's too early to tell.
As a person whose political views often veer to the far left; I'd say his pet health bills are more ... fascist? A public option would be to the left, some form of universal provision would be very far to the left, but what it looks like we're getting is NOT to the left. Basically all he's pushing is a mandate to give billions of extra dollars to the insurance companies, with no strings attached.
Actually, this has been true of most of his fiscal actions to date.
Thinking of the Fallout franchise: would you like to replace Nuka Cola with Coke or Pepsi? I'd wager that neither of the real-world replacements would really be as enjoyable as Nuka Cola, since it FITS in the Fallout Universe much better, thematically. The same goes for most "fake" products in futuristic and fantasy games. Imagine a far-future space shooter, littered with Coke vending machines, these WOULD be out of place, since I have a hard time actually believing that the great "soft drink wars" will really matter much in the age of interstellar travel, laser rifles, and alien encounters. I'd like to think that we, culturally, would have grown the hell up by then.
Though in a fantasy MMO I would love a quest allowing me to milk Coka Cola brand polar bears for their sweat, refreshing, nectar, which makes you lithe, fit, smart, and attractive to the ladies. Or perhaps killing and collecting the piss of Budweiser brand rats, to make a mild and refreshing concoction that will make you lithe, fit, smart, and attractive to the ladies.
First: I agree with you that this prize is crap. ...pissing off Americans who are not left-wing fanatical loons,
If you notice, most of the actual "left-wing" of the Democratic party don't like Obama either. Obama is NOT a leftist, he is a slightly left leaning moderate. Compare him, for example, to Kucinich or Feingold, both of whom could be classifed as left-wing, being the core of the progressive wing of the party. The difference between the left and Obama is as great as the difference between Reagan and Obama. I would have said Bush II, but I'm not quite sure how deep the difference between these two actually is yet.
They're helping to mobilize us "evil neocons" for 2012.
Well, if your parties public face continues to act like morons, I doubt very much you'll win.
Disagreement in ideology is not McCarthyism.
I never stated it is. I merely mean that the same sentiment is still very alive and well, and because of this there is a not insignificant pool of people who would LOVE to have that certain senator from Wisconsin back. Our Government hasn't, yet, starting blocking dissonance, but this doesn't mean that the potential and the will aren't out there still.
Though one could argue, that if you replaced "International Communist Conspiracy" with "International Terrorist Conspiracy", where "terrorist" is very loose word that often amounts to "disagreement with US policies or interests", we would pretty much have the same thing.
Also, if you pay attention to what the crazies are saying, a lot of them are questioning the legitimacy of democratically elected officials because of the the letter after their name. To these people, political ideology is more important than democracy, which might not be "McCarthyism" as such, but is still damn dangerous.
McCarthyism is long dead and will not resurrect in out lifetime
Watch the news, and count the times that someone dismisses a purely political idea as "socialism", or how often people argue that our duly elected officials are "socialists". It might not be policy, but the sentiment is still there.
the McCarthy era is still in living memory
Wait... isn't that making a come-back? It seems a large percentage of people in America today (at least the vocal ones) would like McCarthy to be raised from the grave as a big bad Obama/50+% of the population smashing zombie. Hence tons of people bashing "socialism" as an evil thing, and not just a mere political view different than their own, not to say liberalism (more "socialism"), secularism (the first amendment is socialism), and the typo-become-slander "democrat" party (those legally elected "socialists").
So are the 1960's and their repression of anti-Vietnam speech.
As was the early 2000's anti-Iraq speech. I remember when being against our president, or his purely political war was considered to be Anti-American. I remember stories of critics being put on no-fly lists, and other watch lists. How times have changed.
Granted most of these aren't actually political edicts enforced from on-high, but they show the sentiment is still very alive. So we still have a VERY steep slope, since a large-ish population of the US would like wholesale censorship and political repression.
I'm not sure the extent of anything though, since our government is a sneeky bunch of spies still, who are still very likely to be closely monitoring any potential opposition to the dominant ideology. And it is ignoring the Judicial Branch, who frequently decides that our freedoms are subject to corporate whims (soft fascism, as someone here on /. eruditely put it earlier). This doubt also incorporates our copyright and patent fiascoes that are on-going. It is increasingly hard to draw a media/corporation/government line when it comes to rights violations.
Obviously, I'm not disagreeing with you, just adding some more steam to the boiler.
Footnote: I made my post a bit antagonistic to Republicans, and the previously ascendant Conservatives, Democrats and Liberals, though, are not free from guilt either. The current Obama health care issue is a good example of Moderate Liberal Status-Quo-ers trying to quench debate.
Sorry for being a bit vague.
I meant the ability to upgrade things freely. You can do this on most Macs to a limited extent, but they are not quite as customizable as a "PC" (hate that term, Macs are also a PC). I'll give MacBooks and MacBook Pros a discount, since they are about as upgradable as any laptop, but iMacs are TERRIBLE to upgrade, Mini's require paint scrapers and around 4 hours of disassembly time to even upgrade the HDD or RAM. I found this limiting since I manage to keep computers around for 10+ years with yearly, or biyearly upgrades. I like to dig around inside my computer, and incrementally make it better.
A bad experience in this drove me to buy a Mac, but I found I missed it, and didn't like the fact that my $1k+ computer was drifting farther and farther out of date, and their was nothing I could do about it except buy another $1k+ computer, when a measly $200 of upgrades would have fixed it.
By control, I meant I have control over the contents of my computer.
Did you mean control in some other way? Like wanting to write drivers for fun perhaps?
Nothing wrong with wanting to do this. Not to my tastes, but people enjoy it.
I'm not flaming Macs, or Mac users, I'm just saying that computing isn't one size fits all. I loved OS X, but found the hardware problem to be a game killer (and needlessly expensive). Just my opinion. I had other problems with OS X that didn't meet my workflow, but these problems might be bonuses for others.
If you have an alternate way of referring to the original Doctor Who and the new Doctor Who show, I'm open to suggestions.
Doctor Two?
Why does everyone insist that people switch TO Macs, but not away from them?
And why do only rich people own Macs? I'm not rich, and I've owned a couple.
And then there are people like me, who "switched" to a Mac only, and had one exclusively, until I realized that even if OS X is better than Vista (in particular), I missed having control over my hardware, so "reswitched" back to PC. So now I have a Mac media streaming box, a big PC, and a laptop running Vista/Ubuntu.
Or my girlfriend, who grew up in a Mac only house. Who at some point after the Intel switch realized that Macs took a nose-dive, and now only runs Windows.
So in our household, 3 Windows PCs, 1 Linux PC, and 1 Mac PC (not counting the dead MacBook pro that was eaten for parts, or the defunct and broken iMac G3, which is really being "repaired" for her mom), after xmas, this will be 3 Windows, 2 Linux, and maybe 1 Mac (thinking of converting it to Linux).
In my girlfreinds parents house, though, there are NO PCs, and 2 Macs. So...
Oh wait... none of this means a damn thing.
Who's disarming who? I've been thinking about this, and I don't know a single fellow lefty who is in favor of banning guns, outside of some whackjobs in the bay area who haven't figured out how to wash their hair yet (contrast this with the lunatic fringe of the gun crowd, who thinks everyone has a right to a nuclear weapon since it is technically an "arm"). Almost everyone I know owns a gun, and no one I know has been barred from owning one. Hell, my clinically diagnosed, mentally ill, mother owns a gun.
If I wanted to, I could walk into the nearest gun shop and pick one us, as could around 90% of the population, and no one would stop me.
I have no problem with felons not being able to own guns, since they already proved that they are incapable of operating within the rules of society. As for the mentally ill, this is a hard label to actually define, and I don't know anyone who has actually been barred from getting one. Who else is barred from owning guns? Children under the age of... what 16? I don't care, since its up to their parents. My dad took me shooting when I was 8, sure I didn't own it, but at that age what DID I own? Who else... unnaturalized residents, and illegal aliens?
Please cite who these privileged 60 million are.
"The constitution was designed to protect the freedoms of individuals," and "before corporations were treated as people, they could be undermined simply by using the protections of the constitution against them." contradict each other. So individuals exercising and protecting their Constitutional rights hurt non-individuals, so the answer was to redefine individuals. So basically it was handwaving (actually a clerical error) that did nothing to change behaviors.
I find this strange... People exercising their constitutional rights were hurting the free market, therefore we need to redefine person so we can avoid this. Personally I think individual rights come above some mythical, and abstract, free market.
By treating corporations as people, we eliminate that loophole to ensure that corporations are able to sell their products with as little regulation and oversight as possible. This is how it should be, folks.
I don't see this. Why the hell should corporations have the right to speech, privacy, and soon political speech (as if a corporation could have an opinion)? I can see the argument of not regulating them (I don't agree, but there is room for debate), but I can't see considering a fictitious entity to have the same rights that I do.
Jail the stockholders.
That's the answer. Yes, it is a silly answer, but a very logical one.
Despite the wishes of some people (Democrats for illegal immigrants and Republicans for corporations) I don't think rights apply to non-citizens. I
Depends on your definition of "rights", and where you think these "rights" flow from. If rights are nothing but what the state recognizes, then your statement is sound, unless the state decides that non-citizens have rights. If these rights are endowed by a creator (God, or natural rights), then they are universal, except for rights which involve the state. Thus an unnaturalized immigrant would have the right to speech, arms, assembly, religion, etc... but not the right to vote (but then we run into the issue of taxing them sans representation).
Another problem is that neither the Declaration, nor the Constitution explicitly state, without ambiguity, that the rights contained therein are only for citizens (the only "right" with such a restriction that I can immediately see is the ability to be president).
I'm not sure why corporations were accorded any rights in the first place. They should have legal responsibilities as legal entities but they should never be treated as individuals and certainly not citizens.
Agreed. Rights are a thing that applies only to individuals, not fictional entities. Unless of course rights flow from the state, then rights can apply to anything that the state wants.
That mantra is getting old. What does it not do that either of the other two do? I understood when Linux was difficult to set up but now you just pop in your KUbuntu CD and go...
I'm not who you were replying too, but I'll bite.
The various flavors of Ubuntu are very very nice, and have served to bring Linux much closer to the mythical "Year of Linux Desktop", but it still hasn't quite made it. Well, let me refine that previous statement, it has and hasn't made it, depending on what we're looking for. If we are looking for competition with OS X and Windows, then it hasn't. If our goal, instead, a good, stable, competent and adaptable OS environment, then it has. Sadly the latter statement is completely seperated from the former.
Ubuntu still lacks the overwhelming "user friendliness" of its competitors, both in GUI design, and in support for 3rd party hardware, and software. This is more important to the typical Joe-Sixpack type than being a generally complete OS. Kubuntu, and Ubuntu still lack "polish", they are not sexy, and have no desire to strive towards it. Most people might be shallow, but this is still important. Notice how much MS and Apple spend on usability studies, HCI experts, ergonomics, and design, now compare this to how much various Linux distros (or at least windowing systems) spend. Part of this is shallow users following the "shiney", but HCI, usability, and aesthetics are also very important towards productivity.
Another obstacle is that in most Linux distros, the "technical crap" is still to visible under the shell... People don't want to interact with the underlying OS anyone, they want everything to be a seamless experience within the shell. People don't care how it works, the most desirable feature of a modern OS is he ability to use it productively without EVER having to see the inner workings. They want information appliances... Push a lever, make toast. Linux isn't quite there yet, mostly because most of the contributors and users of Linux don't want it this way. No fault there, personally I don't blame them, but this detracts from its mass appeal.
3rd party support is a HUGE hurdle. I know that most of this is the vendor's fault, but it still stands in the way. How many Linux users complain about Flash here? How often do you still run into arcane driver problems that you have to hack your way out of? Its better now, but still isn't quite there for the average lazy Windows/OS X user. And worse, this idea of having to hand type config files has become a common meme for Linux, which drives people away. Even when this gets substantially better still, its going to be an up hill battle for adoption.
I don't see the problem though, why does Linux need to compete with OS X and Windows? It works, most people here love it and get things done on it, isn't that enough? Hell, Linux has roughly the same market share as OS X. Linux is a geek OS, a hobbyist and technical OS, and this is fine, its a niche. As far as common perception goes; "OS X is for those odd creative types, and yuppies who want to act like those odd creative types", "Windows is for normal people who want massive compatibility and a large collection of professional (for pay) software", and "Linux is for nerds who enjoy the ability to manipulate the arcane and scary inter-workings of their computers, and for business".
I don't see the inherent noisiness of it. If you sit there and stare at the interface for hours waiting for updates so you can immediately respond, then yes, it is noisy, but this is because you want it to be. If you check your conversation once or twice a day, and use the history feature to see if you missed anything important, then it is no more noisy than standard email, or a wiki.
When I first watched the promo movie, my first use for it was actually carrying out a couple collaborative fiction projects I had in mind for years. 4 or 5 people submitting running edits, and content additions a couple times a week, with another subtopic for discussion would be perfect, and almost completely noise free. Unless of course all my collaborators are on at once, and then it bascially transforms into a traditional chat/collaborative docs application. Like all chat, this could be noisy, if allowed to become so.
Its just like the people who complain that email (still!) is a productivity killer because they have the constant need to check it. It isn't the program, its the habits of the user.
I thought the Little Ice Age was caused by boring volcanism.
The current cosmic ray flux, I think, isn't too far out of normal, just outside of the immediate (short term) norm.
I agree that defining what are rights and where they come from is a problem, I would even go so far as to say that it really is intractable.
I too have spent tons of time pondering this, and have a very small framework, which is still, sadly, completely within the realm of opinion. I think all rights are based on some form of empathy, or the golden rule, or Kant's Categorical Imperative (basically all of them are the same thing). From this, we can say that a certain set of rights (I have no clue how to quantify them...) is universally recognized. All of x are entitled to y. The problem then comes from our definition of a person. Sadly, this very rudimentary formulation isn't helpful beyond a microlevel. And, obviously, it is still impossible to quantify what a "right" is, outside of the basic "I wouldn't personally like it" level.
Which leads, then, to the various social contracts, which as you state isalmost purely consensual. Its a fun discussion, but if 2000+ years of philosophers, most smarter than most of us, can't find a decent answer...
In a way, we are victims of the success of our government's design... Long winded, carefully thought out positions are seen as boring, and so we ignore these in favor of the loud and obnoxious. So that, ultimately, the discussion is driven by the loudest and most entertaining.
I blame populism, as blasphemous as it sounds. When I vote, I vote for the character of the person, not that positions that they hold at the moment. Sadly, this is antiquated. I, also, find it very depressing that we vote for those who spend the most on advertisement. Even if we agree with them, I find the correlation between public spending and votes to be really troublesome. I don't know why the future of our country is almost 100% analogous to Coke vs. Pepsi. A rather depressing proposition.
The current "debate" is equally depressing. There are valid arguements for and against Obama's healthcare plans, but both sides are completely drowned out by morons screaming inanities. Sadly the media loves the controversy, and thus the valid arguments die. Or worse, get painted as a liberal vs. conservative circus, which is a complete misrepresentation of reality (as stated, I'm pretty much a socialist, and I'm as against the current plans as any conservative or libertarian). The worst part is that the media is our mirror to reality, and thus informs how we see the political/social world, making forming a justified opinion almost impossible for those who have lives too busy to intricately research the issues.
I only hope it gets better someday. I fear for America. The only opening I can see to fix our republican democracy is education (not indoctrination, but critical thinking skills, allowing people the criteria to form informed opinions). A just government depends on informed voters, which, sadly, we seem to be lacking.
A properly configured 'nix machine is much more difficult to exploit than a 'doze box.
Here is the problem. A properly configured Windows box is pretty damn hard to exploit. I haven't had a virus in my recent memory, and most other malware infections are wholly the users fault (i.e. no amount of OS level security will protect them). Granted, in my near 30 years of computers, I've had 2 Windows viruses, 0 Linux viruses, and 0 OS X/Mac Viruses, and 0 C64/Amiga/DOS/BSD ones as well. Well, really one Windows virus, the second was wholly my fault.
Anecdotal, yes. Relevant, perhaps.
The rub, though, is a properly configured box of any type, with a semi-educated competent user is pretty damn secure. A badly set up box, or a dumb user, is a recipe for disaster no matter what your OS of choice is.