And what are these enterprises supposed to do, compeat with the government when the government makes all the rules?
And just what rules are these that would prevent, say, Boeing, from launching a probe to Pluto? There are private companies providing launch services. The Planetary Society managed to launch Cosmos 1, but the mission was a failure. And if U.S. law is prohibitive somehow, slip the Russkies a couple rubles and you can pretty much do anything you want at Baikonur.
But there's no reason for a private for-profit corporation to do basic science. In fact they'd probably get sued by their stockholders for wasting money if they did.
Yea, like releasing all nonviolent drug offenders, most of whom are not "white", is racist.
Non sequitur. The fact that Paul exhibits common sense on the drug war issue says nothing about his views on any other. For example, being against the drug war might seem to be in favor of people controlling their own bodies - yet Paul wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and permit the states to prohibit abortion.
In fact, by promoting Paul, you damage progress on the drug war issue by associating it with him. "We should end drug prohibition." "Hah! You sound like Ron Paul! I'm not interested in anything a racist anti-science anti-religious-liberty loon like him has to say!"
In the meantime, though, while we're waiting for "Universal Enlightenment", while we're waiting for the the time "when men are prepared for it", government is something that's going to exist where ever humans are; at best some form of constitutional democracy that acts as an expedient, at worst brutal rule by mobs and strong-men.
It's a combination of forcing people to pay for stuff they are by definition not voluntarily willing to buy in a free market.
We can talk about ending this "forcing people to pay for stuff" as soon as we actually have a "free market" - that means no government-charted corporations, no government-transfered inherited wealth, no reserve banking system, no government issued land or resource deeds or copyrights or patents, no government-issued currency. These instances of government force are so ubiquitous that libertarian capitalists take them for granted; but trace any claim of property back and you'll find government force at the root, trace any concentration of wealth and you'll find government force enabling it. To then complain of taxes as government coercion is rather hypocritical.
And so long as we have this government engine that drives the concentration of economic power that we know as "capitalism", we'll need a few safety governors on that engine. Money is a government creation: render onto Caesar what is Caesar's.
We should instead have a regulatory climate friendly to the numerous private ventures trying to do the same damned thing without using our tax dollars in the process.
What private ventures are these that are putting sciecne satellites in orbit and sending probes to other planets?
Ok, there are a few private ventures interested in giving insanely wealthy people joyrides. NASA should stay out of that business, sure.
Then again, part of RP's appeal comes from his sanity rather than his strict adherence to unrealistic Libertarian ideals
His "sanity" such as his inability to accept the reality of biological evolution, his ability to make medical assessments of patients he's never examined (declaring that IDX is never medically necessary), his opposition to the separation of church and state and his typical Christian-right persecution complex? And his racism? (Paul-ites, before you claim he didn't write those articles, read the link and explain how he claimed authorship of them in 1996, just claiming they were quoted out of context?)
Libertarians need to disassociate themselves from Paul and identify him for what he is: a loon.
Easily 30% of what the federal government does could be cut back and then you can immediately pay off the deficit and then lower taxes. And those lost services would be replaced at the state level in the states that felt they were good enough to pay for.
So my federal taxes go down, and my state taxes go up - and since economies of scale are lost, my state taxes go up by more than my federal taxes go down. Brilliant!
Yes, there's plenty of wasted money at all levels of government - at the federal level, most "defense" spending is a waste; at the state level, law enforcement for "consensual crimes" is not only corrosive to liberty but darned expensive as well. And yes, there's legitimate debate to be had about what should be done at the state versus federal level. But that doesn't mean that there aren't good practical reasons for some things to be done at the federal level.
We are looting and pillaging it while ignoring the fact that the "free" money is really coming out of our own pockets.
Nah. Thanks to the "borrow and spend" philosophy followed by the GOP since Reagan, that money comes out of the pockets of future generations.
Yes. Yes, it is, for very good evolutionary reasons: organisms that don't find abstinence really difficult don't end up producing a lot of offspring. None of our ancestors were abstainers. We're all descended from a long line of fuckers.
Of course, sometimes recessive genes manifest, or people get infected with the meme for the most unnatural of all the perversions, chastity. If you're not into sex, that's your right.
But whatever your own choice, you can sit around and moralize and tsk-tsk all you want about how people shouldn't have sex unless it's under whatever set of conditions your socialization approves of; or you can recognize that the vast majority of people are going to continue to spend a lot of effort on getting laid, and how we can shape policies to minimize harm and maximize happiness in the context of that truth.
Why even take a risk?
"A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for." -- John A. Shedd (as best as I can figure from Google).
Doing anything that is at all interesting entails taking some risk.
So according to some weird twist of philosophy if you set up shop in a state you OWE YOUR EXISTENCE to it?
Uh, no. I am a person. The state didn't create me by issuing a corporate charter.
If, however, I someday incorporate one of my smallbusinesses, that corporation will exist only because of a charter issued by the State of Maryland; it will owe its existence to an act of government.
Corporations are "artificial persons" created by governments. Amazing how this simple fact is often overlooked by people who talk about "getting government out of business".
If Washington state chose to dissolve Microsoft (never mind that would never happen and is impossible)
Laws are on the books in all 50 states that provide for the revocation of corporate charters. It is indeed possible. (Though I grant, very unlikely).
Also investors are more than gamblers who expect to get paid without working. Investors are your pension, 401K plan, retirement account, mutual funds, and one of the ways our economy is so strong.
If I put money into stocks - whether in retirement accounts, mutual funds, or whatever - I'd be doing so in the hope that someone will buy them later at a higher price. That's a gamble. And I'm doing it without working for the companies involved, without laboring.
Gamblers may of course work very hard at their gambling, studying the odds and whatnot, but that doesn't make it productive labor.
Our economy is a house of cards, so far removed from the realities of making stuff and filling human needs and wants that it's staggering to consider. We abstract labor and materials and other resources into money, then abstract money into investments, then investments into speculative markets, until it reaches a point where everyone can panic and the whole thing fall apart based on the performance of those speculative markets - even though they day after a stock market crash, we have the same labor and materials and other resources we had the day before.
As Alan Watts once noted, "it was just as if someone had come to work on building a house and, on the morning of the Depression, the boss had said, 'Sorry, baby, but we can't build today. No inches.' 'Whaddya mean, no inches? We got wood. We got metal. We even got tape measures.' 'Yeah, but you don't understand business. We been using too many inches and there's just no more to go around.'"
Would Washington rather MS move their operations to Nevada and lose the tax base of all the employees?
Microsoft is a Washington corporation; it owes its existence to the State of Washington. I don't know what the corporation laws of Washington State are, but if they were sensible, Washington could simply dissolve Microsoft if they moved out of state.
This situation is actually a good argument for getting rid of corporate taxes.
Not at all. Corporate taxes reduce profits and redirect money away from "investors" - gamblers who expect to get paid without working. Payroll taxes reduce wages and redirect money away from people who actually work.
That corporations can game the system to avoid taxes is an argument for reforming regulation of these beasties, not for letting them off the hook on taxes.
With Muslims it's either kill them or they will kill you. It's that simple.
No, it's not. I've had the pleasure of meeting many fine Muslim folk, of training with them in the marital arts, of sharing meals and conversation, of having a Muslim man stay at my house for several days. Heck, from the headscarves his daughters wear I'm pretty sure my veterinarian is Muslim (not all sects hold dogs to be unclean).
When you hold such ignorant and fearful views, you give the terrorists a victory. Please stop giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States by spreading ignorance and lies about Muslims.
Everything that Dr. Paul has ever done and all the ideals he stands for seek the end of racism. The entire accusation was constructed by professional counterintelligence personel.
What, Daily Kos is full of professional counterintelligence personel?? That's the wackiest conspiracy theory I've heard in years.
Unfortunately for them anyone who actually looks into it or even just hears his side of the story will realize it's a joke.
His "side of the story" is that he has no idea how those nasty articles got into the newsletter he published under his own name. Which would mean he's not even competent to run a 'zine, much less a country. Yes, his side of the story is a joke...
calling a respectable candidate who's served in congress for 20 years and has a respectable record a "batshit crazy racist loon" is quite possibly the worst ad hominem attack I have ever heard in my life. It shows you have no ground to stand on to debate his views without distorting them and have to focus on attacking the man.
He's not a respectable candidate; the fact that he served in Congress for 20 years proves nothing. And it's not ad hominem to attack a person's batshit crazy views on biology, medicine, religion, and government, or to point out his backdoor route to getting pork for his district.
But it's ok, the vast majority of people see through your games little cointelpro agent and we'll be knocking on your door soon demanding you pay your dues to our society.
Now I'm a COINTELPRO agent because I point out Paul's flaws? Shit, that's the
wackiest conspiracy theory I've heard in my life. Yes, all these years of professing my politics on USENET,/., mailing lists, and so on, were just so I'd be in a position to denounce Ron Paul if he ever ran for President. My blog is an FBI front. Yeah. Time to refill the prescription for those anti-psychotic meds, my friend.
For such a merciful god, some of his followers sure show a hell of a lot ruthless killing sometimes.
Sure. True also of Jesus, the "prince of peace"; of JHVH (who is pretty much the same character as Allah); of the various Hindu deities; of the compassionate Buddha...humans show a hell of a lot ruthless killing sometimes. People are a problem.
take a page from General Pershing and do what he did. Line up about 50 of them. Dip bullets in pig blood. Execute all but one. Take the bodies, toss then into a common grave, pour pig blood & pig body parts on them, cover them up (while the one you let live watches). Let the only survivor go......they did that in the late 1919's era.......NOT ONE more act of terrorism for a long time.
The United States in not a democracy, never has been. Democracy is an insanely stupid form of government. What we have is a constitutional republic.
It's a constitutional democratic republic, which is a form of democracy.
Our puppet government in Afghanistan is also a constitutional republic, the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan", with a constitution adopted in 2004. Instead of being in the name of "We, the people", theirs is in the name of "In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficient, the Most Merciful".
Freedom of expression shall be inviolable. Every Afghan shall have the right to express thoughts through speech, writing, illustrations as well as other means in accordance with provisions of this constitution. Every Afghan shall have the right, according to provisions of law, to print and publish on subjects without prior submission to state authorities. Directives related to the press, radio and television as well as publications and other mass media shall be regulated by law.
So I see they're doing as good of job of following their constitution as our government is of following ours.
For example, a young idealistic student might post a comment at a site like NoJailForPot.com, and later think twice about it when applying for work after college at, say, a government agency or perhaps an investment house...
And maybe he or she should think twice before selling out their old idealism.
I've got old USENET posts on my blog dating back to the early 90s. Of course even more, and older ones, can be found via Google Groups. I like to think I'm a little wiser and better informed now, and might express myself a little more subtly these days; but I'm not ashamed of anything I said back then. Any potential employer who wouldn't want to hire me based on those, is a place I wouldn't want to work anyway.
it's because 10% of the country says he has no chance and the other 80% say, "Who's Ron Paul?"
No, it's because 10% of the country says he has no chance, 10% says he's a batshit crazy racist loon, and 70% say, "Who's Ron Paul?" If the 70% find out, most will join the "batshit crazy loon" group, which is why the "he has no chance" group is exactly right. It's long past time for people to get over the infatuation with Paul.
I was unaware that the whitehouse is what gives the president his power. I think it was a damn peice of paper. Or more specifically the words on said paper.
Words on paper don't give anyone power. What gives anyone power is the willingness of people - especially people with guns - to do what that person says.
Destroying the White House would have been a heavily symbolic gesture that would have decreased the ability of the U.S. to get people around the world to do what it says. Of course the destruction of the WTC did this somewhat, but blowing up the White House would have had a stronger symbolic effect, even if it killed fewer people.
Trying to "start a dialogue" with people who strap bombs onto themselves so they can go out and kill women and children on a city bus is not "clear thinking"
You start the dialog, and work to improve the political and economic situation, before they become desperate enough to strap bombs onto themselves.
Appeasement didn't work with Hitler
No, but better treatment of Germany after WWI could have prevented German citizens from becoming desperate enough to fall into line behind Hitler.
Seconded. I've used Gandi for years for several domains and had no trouble.
I think their T&C states clearly that in their opinion YOU own the domain name. Whereas many registrars appear to say that THEY own the domain name and you get to use it as long as you pay.
If you're spreading stacks of source code printouts on a large conference table, the code base isn't really all that large.
The entire codebase may be too large to print out, sure. But in any sane project, it's broken up into bite-size pieces using classes or file scoping or some encapsulation mechanism, and any one person only has to digest a few of these pieces. The code for the portion of the project you need to digest should be small enough to be printed out and spread on a big table.
its actual a response to a possible panic caused by people using bad detectors.
Then make a law banning the sale of bad detectors, or setting off alarms based on measurements from uncertified detectors. Don't point a gun at me and demand that I hand over my Geiger counter.
Not that I have a Geiger counter, nor do I live in NYC. If I did live there, I buy one, take it over the city hall, and make a big scene about how my "intelligence detector" was given very low readings in the area...
(In fact, you can get an alpha particle scintillation detector for under $30. I usually visit NYC a few times a year, if a stupid enough version of this law passes I might get one of these and carry it on my next trip just for the thrill of being a criminal.)
Only if you put the shit right up against the light.
A 300 watt halogen bulb puts out almost 6000 lumens, much more powerful than this light. You can start a fire with one, but not across the room or anything. You have to get the combustibles right up against it. (Which is why the newer floor lamps using this sort of bulb have a safety cage.)
There are many things in your house more dangerous than this super-bright flashlight.
Should they all have labels? The problem is that when everything has a warning label, the chatter drowns out the important warnings.
In this case, it is the city police who want this law. But the people don't benefit from it, just the police. The same thing holds for much of the Patriot Act; it is not a benefit for the people, but the FBI wanted it, and congress listened.
That's what happens when you live in a police state: laws and policy are made for the benefit of police, not the people.
Sure, ours is a mostly-benign police state; so long as you're white, middle class, fairly mainstream in your religious and political views, and don't make trouble by standing up for such outdated notions as individual liberty, you're unlikely to run into any trouble. But a benign police state is still a police state.
"More than three months after Democrat Al Gore conceded the hotly contested 2000 election, an independent hand recount of Florida's ballots released today says he would have lost anyway, even if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested."
Ok, let me try this one more time.
One more time: the issue of what would have happened under the recounts Gore requested is an issue of game strategy and is irrelevant.
The issue is that a complete recount using the "clear intent of the voter" standard - i.e., actually counting how many ballots each candidate received - would have had a different outcome.
Yes, I would have preferred Gore - to the same extent that I prefer a kick to the groin to a hot poker in the eye. Far beyond my desire for a lesser of two evils, though, is a desire for a system that might, just might, produce a non-evil result. Reliable elections are a prerequisite for this. (Better ballot access and better forms of ballots, such as instant runoff voting, are also prerequisites.) Sensible court decisions when disputes arise are also a requirement, and certainly Bush v Gore wasn't one.
They ran one of these down my main sewer line a few weeks ago to look at the tree roots that have gotten in...found out that the pipe hasn't collapsed, at least, so they routed it out and I can put off replacing it for a little while. Handy gadget.
No disagreement there. Gore, and the spineless wreck that is the Democratic Party since Clinton ruined it, played the game poorly, from the campaign through the recounts. They should have beaten Bush so badly that the election would have been beyond stealing, but Gore's failure to distinguish himself from Bush made his lead small enough to cheat.
Slashdot Mirror
And just what rules are these that would prevent, say, Boeing, from launching a probe to Pluto? There are private companies providing launch services. The Planetary Society managed to launch Cosmos 1, but the mission was a failure. And if U.S. law is prohibitive somehow, slip the Russkies a couple rubles and you can pretty much do anything you want at Baikonur.
But there's no reason for a private for-profit corporation to do basic science. In fact they'd probably get sued by their stockholders for wasting money if they did.
Non sequitur. The fact that Paul exhibits common sense on the drug war issue says nothing about his views on any other. For example, being against the drug war might seem to be in favor of people controlling their own bodies - yet Paul wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and permit the states to prohibit abortion.
In fact, by promoting Paul, you damage progress on the drug war issue by associating it with him. "We should end drug prohibition." "Hah! You sound like Ron Paul! I'm not interested in anything a racist anti-science anti-religious-liberty loon like him has to say!"
Well, that's government.
I'm all for the eventual elimination of government, but I'm a Zenarchist - I know that "Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn." Or as Thoreau put it, '"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.'
In the meantime, though, while we're waiting for "Universal Enlightenment", while we're waiting for the the time "when men are prepared for it", government is something that's going to exist where ever humans are; at best some form of constitutional democracy that acts as an expedient, at worst brutal rule by mobs and strong-men.
We can talk about ending this "forcing people to pay for stuff" as soon as we actually have a "free market" - that means no government-charted corporations, no government-transfered inherited wealth, no reserve banking system, no government issued land or resource deeds or copyrights or patents, no government-issued currency. These instances of government force are so ubiquitous that libertarian capitalists take them for granted; but trace any claim of property back and you'll find government force at the root, trace any concentration of wealth and you'll find government force enabling it. To then complain of taxes as government coercion is rather hypocritical.
And so long as we have this government engine that drives the concentration of economic power that we know as "capitalism", we'll need a few safety governors on that engine. Money is a government creation: render onto Caesar what is Caesar's.
What private ventures are these that are putting sciecne satellites in orbit and sending probes to other planets?
Ok, there are a few private ventures interested in giving insanely wealthy people joyrides. NASA should stay out of that business, sure.
His "sanity" such as his inability to accept the reality of biological evolution, his ability to make medical assessments of patients he's never examined (declaring that IDX is never medically necessary), his opposition to the separation of church and state and his typical Christian-right persecution complex? And his racism? (Paul-ites, before you claim he didn't write those articles, read the link and explain how he claimed authorship of them in 1996, just claiming they were quoted out of context?)
Libertarians need to disassociate themselves from Paul and identify him for what he is: a loon.
So my federal taxes go down, and my state taxes go up - and since economies of scale are lost, my state taxes go up by more than my federal taxes go down. Brilliant!
Yes, there's plenty of wasted money at all levels of government - at the federal level, most "defense" spending is a waste; at the state level, law enforcement for "consensual crimes" is not only corrosive to liberty but darned expensive as well. And yes, there's legitimate debate to be had about what should be done at the state versus federal level. But that doesn't mean that there aren't good practical reasons for some things to be done at the federal level.
Nah. Thanks to the "borrow and spend" philosophy followed by the GOP since Reagan, that money comes out of the pockets of future generations.
Yes. Yes, it is, for very good evolutionary reasons: organisms that don't find abstinence really difficult don't end up producing a lot of offspring. None of our ancestors were abstainers. We're all descended from a long line of fuckers.
Of course, sometimes recessive genes manifest, or people get infected with the meme for the most unnatural of all the perversions, chastity. If you're not into sex, that's your right.
But whatever your own choice, you can sit around and moralize and tsk-tsk all you want about how people shouldn't have sex unless it's under whatever set of conditions your socialization approves of; or you can recognize that the vast majority of people are going to continue to spend a lot of effort on getting laid, and how we can shape policies to minimize harm and maximize happiness in the context of that truth.
"A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for." -- John A. Shedd (as best as I can figure from Google).
Doing anything that is at all interesting entails taking some risk.
Uh, no. I am a person. The state didn't create me by issuing a corporate charter.
If, however, I someday incorporate one of my small businesses, that corporation will exist only because of a charter issued by the State of Maryland; it will owe its existence to an act of government.
Corporations are "artificial persons" created by governments. Amazing how this simple fact is often overlooked by people who talk about "getting government out of business".
Laws are on the books in all 50 states that provide for the revocation of corporate charters. It is indeed possible. (Though I grant, very unlikely).
If I put money into stocks - whether in retirement accounts, mutual funds, or whatever - I'd be doing so in the hope that someone will buy them later at a higher price. That's a gamble. And I'm doing it without working for the companies involved, without laboring.
Gamblers may of course work very hard at their gambling, studying the odds and whatnot, but that doesn't make it productive labor.
Our economy is a house of cards, so far removed from the realities of making stuff and filling human needs and wants that it's staggering to consider. We abstract labor and materials and other resources into money, then abstract money into investments, then investments into speculative markets, until it reaches a point where everyone can panic and the whole thing fall apart based on the performance of those speculative markets - even though they day after a stock market crash, we have the same labor and materials and other resources we had the day before.
As Alan Watts once noted, "it was just as if someone had come to work on building a house and, on the morning of the Depression, the boss had said, 'Sorry, baby, but we can't build today. No inches.' 'Whaddya mean, no inches? We got wood. We got metal. We even got tape measures.' 'Yeah, but you don't understand business. We been using too many inches and there's just no more to go around.'"
Exactly. Individual dollars are what are taxed; what are taxed are transactions.
Microsoft is a Washington corporation; it owes its existence to the State of Washington. I don't know what the corporation laws of Washington State are, but if they were sensible, Washington could simply dissolve Microsoft if they moved out of state.
Not at all. Corporate taxes reduce profits and redirect money away from "investors" - gamblers who expect to get paid without working. Payroll taxes reduce wages and redirect money away from people who actually work.
That corporations can game the system to avoid taxes is an argument for reforming regulation of these beasties, not for letting them off the hook on taxes.
No, it's not. I've had the pleasure of meeting many fine Muslim folk, of training with them in the marital arts, of sharing meals and conversation, of having a Muslim man stay at my house for several days. Heck, from the headscarves his daughters wear I'm pretty sure my veterinarian is Muslim (not all sects hold dogs to be unclean).
When you hold such ignorant and fearful views, you give the terrorists a victory. Please stop giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States by spreading ignorance and lies about Muslims.
What, Daily Kos is full of professional counterintelligence personel?? That's the wackiest conspiracy theory I've heard in years.
His "side of the story" is that he has no idea how those nasty articles got into the newsletter he published under his own name. Which would mean he's not even competent to run a 'zine, much less a country. Yes, his side of the story is a joke...
He's not a respectable candidate; the fact that he served in Congress for 20 years proves nothing. And it's not ad hominem to attack a person's batshit crazy views on biology, medicine, religion, and government, or to point out his backdoor route to getting pork for his district.
Now I'm a COINTELPRO agent because I point out Paul's flaws? Shit, that's the wackiest conspiracy theory I've heard in my life. Yes, all these years of professing my politics on USENET, /., mailing lists, and so on, were just so I'd be in a position to denounce Ron Paul if he ever ran for President. My blog is an FBI front. Yeah. Time to refill the prescription for those anti-psychotic meds, my friend.
Sure. True also of Jesus, the "prince of peace"; of JHVH (who is pretty much the same character as Allah); of the various Hindu deities; of the compassionate Buddha...humans show a hell of a lot ruthless killing sometimes. People are a problem.
Except that there's no evidence that Pershing did such a thing, and in fact was careful not to take actions that would turn people into "Mohammedan fanatics"; and similar defilement of the corpses of suicide bombers in Israel has been done recently and didn't stop terrorist attacks; and commiting terrorist acts of mass execution to discourage others from doing terrorist acts is a stupid idea.
We should not look to American war crimes in the Philippines as a model of how to behave.
It's a constitutional democratic republic, which is a form of democracy.
Our puppet government in Afghanistan is also a constitutional republic, the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan", with a constitution adopted in 2004. Instead of being in the name of "We, the people", theirs is in the name of "In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficient, the Most Merciful".
Article Thirty-Four of said constitution states:
So I see they're doing as good of job of following their constitution as our government is of following ours.
And maybe he or she should think twice before selling out their old idealism.
I've got old USENET posts on my blog dating back to the early 90s. Of course even more, and older ones, can be found via Google Groups. I like to think I'm a little wiser and better informed now, and might express myself a little more subtly these days; but I'm not ashamed of anything I said back then. Any potential employer who wouldn't want to hire me based on those, is a place I wouldn't want to work anyway.
No, it's because 10% of the country says he has no chance, 10% says he's a batshit crazy racist loon, and 70% say, "Who's Ron Paul?" If the 70% find out, most will join the "batshit crazy loon" group, which is why the "he has no chance" group is exactly right. It's long past time for people to get over the infatuation with Paul.
Words on paper don't give anyone power. What gives anyone power is the willingness of people - especially people with guns - to do what that person says.
Destroying the White House would have been a heavily symbolic gesture that would have decreased the ability of the U.S. to get people around the world to do what it says. Of course the destruction of the WTC did this somewhat, but blowing up the White House would have had a stronger symbolic effect, even if it killed fewer people.
You start the dialog, and work to improve the political and economic situation, before they become desperate enough to strap bombs onto themselves.
No, but better treatment of Germany after WWI could have prevented German citizens from becoming desperate enough to fall into line behind Hitler.
Seconded. I've used Gandi for years for several domains and had no trouble.
That's exactly why I picked 'em.
The entire codebase may be too large to print out, sure. But in any sane project, it's broken up into bite-size pieces using classes or file scoping or some encapsulation mechanism, and any one person only has to digest a few of these pieces. The code for the portion of the project you need to digest should be small enough to be printed out and spread on a big table.
Then make a law banning the sale of bad detectors, or setting off alarms based on measurements from uncertified detectors. Don't point a gun at me and demand that I hand over my Geiger counter.
Not that I have a Geiger counter, nor do I live in NYC. If I did live there, I buy one, take it over the city hall, and make a big scene about how my "intelligence detector" was given very low readings in the area...
(In fact, you can get an alpha particle scintillation detector for under $30. I usually visit NYC a few times a year, if a stupid enough version of this law passes I might get one of these and carry it on my next trip just for the thrill of being a criminal.)
Only if you put the shit right up against the light.
A 300 watt halogen bulb puts out almost 6000 lumens, much more powerful than this light. You can start a fire with one, but not across the room or anything. You have to get the combustibles right up against it. (Which is why the newer floor lamps using this sort of bulb have a safety cage.)
There are many things in your house more dangerous than this super-bright flashlight. Should they all have labels? The problem is that when everything has a warning label, the chatter drowns out the important warnings.
That's what happens when you live in a police state: laws and policy are made for the benefit of police, not the people.
Sure, ours is a mostly-benign police state; so long as you're white, middle class, fairly mainstream in your religious and political views, and don't make trouble by standing up for such outdated notions as individual liberty, you're unlikely to run into any trouble. But a benign police state is still a police state.
Ok, let me try this one more time.
One more time: the issue of what would have happened under the recounts Gore requested is an issue of game strategy and is irrelevant.
The issue is that a complete recount using the "clear intent of the voter" standard - i.e., actually counting how many ballots each candidate received - would have had a different outcome.
Yes, I would have preferred Gore - to the same extent that I prefer a kick to the groin to a hot poker in the eye. Far beyond my desire for a lesser of two evils, though, is a desire for a system that might, just might, produce a non-evil result. Reliable elections are a prerequisite for this. (Better ballot access and better forms of ballots, such as instant runoff voting, are also prerequisites.) Sensible court decisions when disputes arise are also a requirement, and certainly Bush v Gore wasn't one.
You mean like this?
They ran one of these down my main sewer line a few weeks ago to look at the tree roots that have gotten in...found out that the pipe hasn't collapsed, at least, so they routed it out and I can put off replacing it for a little while. Handy gadget.
No disagreement there. Gore, and the spineless wreck that is the Democratic Party since Clinton ruined it, played the game poorly, from the campaign through the recounts. They should have beaten Bush so badly that the election would have been beyond stealing, but Gore's failure to distinguish himself from Bush made his lead small enough to cheat.