It is very difficult to follow your logic. You've approached the argument with a predetermined outcome, and then spend the remaining effort slapping random conclusion segments together.
As eloquent as it is, your argument is not constructed using the standard "scientific method" that is taught to any U.S. public school grade schooler. Let's try to get back to that, shall we?
So you're trying to tell me that if I were to change one of those counties from red to blue (ie. the Florida debacle), that Gore should have by all rights won the election? Give me a break!
"Payroll taxes increased more under Reagan than under any other President. If you want, I'll go look up the numbers, but it was around a 30% hike."
Yes please look them up. When adjusted for inflation (which if you were working back then you'd remember how horrific the late 70s "stagflation" was), the tax "increases" weren't. But go ahead, look them up.
"Really? I pay more."
That's bull shit. Federal payroll taxes have not been increased. If you pay more, then it's because of state or local wage taxes.
"My property taxes just went up 20% this year to cover the shortage resulting from Bush's tax cuts. That's regressive taxation, penalizing me for owning property."
Again, bull shit. Let's assume you live in CA. If so property taxes were raised by your state because your governor drove it into the ground. You can't seriously think that anyone is going to believe that federal policies that at best indirectly affect state taxation are ever going to eclipse STATE tax policies themselves. Come on! That's just rationalizing nonsense. This is property tax we're talking about! If yours increased BLAME YOUR STATE FIRST! Then if you can, prove to me that your state's budget was financially sound and that their deficits didn't increase, nor their borrowing rates were raised, nor the tax base (population) decreased, nor corporations left, etc... etc... WOW! Do you live in an oversimplified dream land.
"Wow, are you ever reaching here... It's amazing the spin that Republicans will use. We had good times under Clinton and we're all supposed to be convinced it was an accident. We have shitty times under Bush and we're all supposed to be convinced it's Clinton's fault."
It's not all Clinton's fault. What I'm saying is that you are so quick to blame anything Republican that you check logic at the door. I'm a Democrat. I was a member of the YDA when Clinton was first elected. I don't care it you belive me or not. I know what a liar the man was, I was paying attention as he was doing it. If you want to rationalize it all to "Republican spin," then that's your shortcoming. But if you're going to give credit/blame a president for the state of the economy (which in itself is completely assinine considering how complex international economics of 6 billion people can be), it's amazing to me how you think that one political party (more specifically one man) has a monopoly on it.
"They wouldn't have become issues, because Clinton would have actually dealt with them instead of avoiding them for fear that we'd all find out about the campaign contributions."
What are you talking about? They wouldn't have become issues? THEY DIDN'T BECOME ISSUES! THAT'S THE POINT! It happened on their watch and they didn't even know! WOW! This is all basic stuff here. You can read any newspaper and get the dates for all this stuff. And lo and behold it happened during the Clinton administration and didn't become an issue until the Republican's caught it. That should absolutely shame any self-respecting Democrat. Stop spinning!
"Yes it is. But then you didn't know about the tax hikes under Reagan, which started you down the path of ignorant commentary."
Ignorance huh? I remember the double digit unemployment of the early 1980s. And I remember the gas lines of the late 1970s. My experience is first hand. I'm getting the strong feeling that your opinion is based on television hearsay. Re-read the first paragraph.
Live in denial... it doesn't hurt anyone but you. As my grandfather always said, "there's nothing more pathetic than a man who believes his own lies."
There were no tax hikes during the Reagan administration. In fact, it was George Bush's infamous "No New Taxes" line that most historians attribute to his losing the White House to Clinton in 1992. It was that breaking of Bush senior's word, added to the recession (which was a direct result of the tax hikes) that made it easy for a nobody from Arkansas to win the White House.
I am working class. I pay less taxes now than when under the Clintons. Directly due to Bush W's tax cuts. You will have to show me what tax hikes you're talking about... cause it sounds like you're twisting something there.
Deficit spending, though controversial, does have the short term effect of boosting the economy. It is the long term effects which cause concern. However, since Reagan's deficit spending was brought back to balance within ten years (during the Clinton administration), one could argue that deficit spending works when practiced responsibly. And historically, it has ONLY been practiced in that fashion... so far.
I too was unemployed back in 1991. And I would have found a job much sooner had not Clinton slowed down the recovery rate. Rubin's fiscal management almost tanked the recovery. If it wasn't for the private sector's exploitation of the internet coupled with asia's economic collapse, things would have been much worse. Most economists would agree. Greenspan is given most of the credit actually, only hardline Democrats attribute ANY of the economic success to Clinton's policies.
As I said before, there's no way you were ever a Republican. Your beliefs are all derived directly from Clinton-era obfuscation and spin.
Keep in mind that the dot com bubble burst during the Clinton administration. That the Enron scandle took place during the Clinton administration (it was the current administration that caught them). etc... Had Clinton been able to run for a third term, it would most likely be HIS administration dealing with the current economics, and we would NOT be coming out of it.
As for Dick Morris, he was a Republican then. That's why Didi Myers, and Stefenopolis (not to mention myself) hated him. Do some research dude. NPR.ORG is an excellent place to start.
"the fact that the policy ideas stunk and when economists and such told us so we accused them of bias"
Which policies exactly? That's a fairly strong statement considering that every economics teacher I ever had said that Regan's policies were responsible for the only non-war growth in America's history. Are they wrong? Do you attribute the growth during the Clinton era to policies that were patently non-Reagan?
"That's when I had my revelation and abandoned the party"
Yeah right. I find that hard to believe. I'm a registered Democrat, but even I know when my own party is spinning things. (Two words for you: Dick Morris.) You don't sound like a reborn liberal... you just sound unemployed.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. If you're going to simply repeat what you hear on TV, then at least take the time to do it accurately
"Novak said a confidential source at the CIA told him Plame was "an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operatives." -CNN
You really need to pay attention to the all the news. Not just the major networks. Go ahead and listen to Fox (conservative), Pacifica (liberal), NPR (somewhat balanced), etc... But listen to all of it. Then throw out all the stuff you know can't be possible, the spin crap, the soundbites taken out of context, the rest as hearsay and you might come up with a useful tidbit or two.
Don't just echo what you see in the 26 minutes of Dan Rather's broadcast. You'll only get the kind of news that guarantees viewers for the Maxipad commercials that way. Not really news.
"In a July 14 column, syndicated newspaper journalist and CNN contributor Robert Novak named former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction, citing Bush administration sources." - CNN
Now the real story is that Novak approached Wilson and asked him how he felt about his wife's outing by the present administration. Wilson had no idea what he was talking about. Out of shock, Wilson then went on a tyrade tearing into Bush, all the while Novak just smiled and wrote down "confirmed by husband".
That's called "seeding" a story. Kind of like the cliche question "when did you stop beating your wife?" Have you noticed how the story has completely slipped off the radar? Trust me, if there was a story here, it wouldn't have burnt out in just two weeks. But once people started checking sources, no one wanted to touch it anymore. As for now you're just echoing unconfirmed DC gossip that somehow made it to print and then became part of that week's feeding frenzy.
I'm not siding one way or the other on the administration's policies. But I do reckognize the current climate of sensationalizing everything and everything Bush in an effort to maintain the same kind of ratings that Watergate, Contra arms, Lewinsky and the like brought about.
You don't get the feeling that the Democrats are deliberately posting questions that they KNOW the administration can not answer without exposing some major intelligence gathering mechanisms?
What an outstanding tactic that must be. You know your opposition CAN'T answer the question, so you enflame the public and get them to demand answers. Meanwhile, the incumbancy slowly sinks in the polls as words like "conspiracy" and "liars" float around. All the while, those that seek to unseat them walk around with a smile on their face(s).
Until one of the opposing candidates starts presenting solutions based on the last fifty years of American foreign policy with an equal level of criticism for BOTH parties... and not just on the last TWO years in an effort to diminish their own party's culpability... then I will not have anything but contempt for those people who push today's golden (yet short sighted) candidate down my throat.
"The impact of unions and PACs has been negated by the McCain-Feingold prohibition against soft money donations to candidates and parties."
Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from the truth
Actually a simple search on the NPR website for "McCain Feingold" will reveal the entire story as it's developed over the past week, and how already the money has funelled around the law.
I'd like someone to explain to me how this is actually "grass roots," and not possibly one of the major parties (if not both) giving large sums in small packets under various proxies?
"the world's first commercial optical digital signal processor"
When I read the lead post, I thought it was an actual processor like on a PC motherboard... not a DSP. These aren't the same things are they? The possible applications listed on the press release seem to be entirely communications oriented. (ie. fiber optics)
Now a NAND gate using only optics (not electro-optics) would be fantastic. Maybe using some sort of wave interference to generate the logic table... and as you know you can build all of the other logic gates from a NAND!
I'd like to know how you emphasised the left side of the OR statement above. Shouldn't both sides of an OR statement be evaluated equally?
In other words, you've argued the "make no law respecting an establishment of religion" part quite effectively, but have completely pissed all over the "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" section.
So in the case of voluntary prayer, how can the government deny them when the constitution specifically states that the government CAN NOT prohibit it.
I think the flaw in your logic is contained in your last sentence. To the left of the semicolon you are correct in that teachers/students can pray or be religious (as protected by the constitution)... however you have made an incredible leap in that public property can not be used on which to conduct the free exercise of religion. Where did you infer that? It is not mentioned at all in the constitution, in fact I would say that the amendment specifically declares otherwise.
Is it possible that the position that the use of public property to be denied for religious purposes is a HUGE misinterpretation of the first amendment? Is this a reflection of the current Supreme Court's position, and if so is it valid? Given any court's particular demeanor, the amendment could be interpreted in dozens of ways and still be constituional, but to overemphasize one half of that OR statement while diminishing the other can't possibly be valid.
For instance, allow me to propose another interpretation that would be constitutional and, at least to me, would be more valid than the one you stated: Whereas the constitution speaks very clearly on it's position towards religion, there is absolutely no direct mention of funding public education. In which case, I would think that if there were a conflict between the practicing of religion and the funding of public schools that the latter would be in violation of the constitution. As such, due to the first amendment, no government institution could fund any public schooling because it would bring these schools under the "umbrella" of government. Schooling of children in the religion of their parents would obviously be protected under the first amendment if you weighed both sides of the OR clause equally. And there is absolutely no way for the government to dictate where and when religion can be practiced and as such any involvemnent in schooling of children by the government could be deemed interference in the free exercise thereof.
Granted, my proposed interpretation is also a leap... but I use it to demonstrate that there are extreme possibilities within the bounds of "interpretation," and that it is the designed mechanism of the constitution for us to discuss which interpretation is the best for those affected.
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Not that it matters, but I'm an atheist. And I did what everyone else who wasn't religious did... I stood up there with my hand on my heart and spoke with the rest of the class. When those nasty two words came up, I didn't say them. Big fat hairy deal.
This post is the epitome of why Linux is failing on the desktop! This argument isn't about Linux! It's about migration.
All of this pseudo-intelligencia, philosophizing garbage demonstrates how isolated most computer science geeks (and thus developers) are from the majority of computer users. Inevitably, the entrenched Linux community balks at standardization. That's just a fact. Somehow they derive their collective self image as software rebels. Linux is the icon for the anti-establishment, "we are not part of the normal world and proud of it," the internet is ours DAMN IT" crowd. Well get over yourselves. As Linux is adopted into the work force, more and more home users will adopt it also. AND THAT'S what this discussion is really about...
This isn't about Linux users! The majority of computer users use Microsoft Windows. So any decent designer would immediately recognize how easy it is to smooth out the learning curve by drawing on the one thing that almost all computer users have in common: familiarity with the gui. Windows users don't care about computers. They don't spend their days dreaming about kernel compilation... and they never will. They typically go to work, do their job and go home when they're done. Most don't turn computers on at home. Most don't have CompSci degrees... or any college degree for that matter. Most just want to use their computer the way they use their TV: turn on, watch, change channel, turn off.
If televisions were packaged like Linux distros: where components arrived in separate shipments, the consumer was responsible for complete assembly, the instruction manual's chapters were scattered all over the internet, with no two television sets having the same controls nor receiving the same channels... there would still be some self righteous jerk screaming how standardization would be the end of the world! And only a small percentage of isolated geeks would be watching TV expecting the rest of the world to lose their technical ignorance. Get real.
The expectation you have of the user to close the distance between what they know and what you want them to learn is naive. That's not how industries produce consumable goods. And like it or not, Linux is now part of that economy. Despite whatever philosophies you chose with which to see the world, supply and demand exists. If you choose to ignore that fact, I guarantee that there's someone else out there that's not so short sighted waiting to take over where you stopped short.
What really pisses me off is the throngs of Linux minions who scream that standardization is limiting freedom of choice. No one is saying that the desktop needs to be locked down to one gui! What is being said is that the default gui should be the same across all distros. That's not very difficult to do despite the KDE vs Gnome debate. You pick KDE. End of story. I'm a Gnome user myself, but let's face it, KDE is more similar to Win32. But so what? I would expect the distros to still have both standard and advanced installation options. The standard would be an out of the box vanilla KDE install. The advanced would give you the choice between desktops. Why is that so difficult? Answer: it's not. It's a pissing contest. No one wants to favor one desktop over the other. Linux users feel their sense of rebellion being flushed down the toilet as more and more non-Linux users cross over. Tough.
(I wasn't logged in previously, and thus it posted as A.C. My apologies)
Yes, the train to Auschwitz. It had an engineer. He made no decisions, just went where the track took him. It's exactly the same as an IT person hiding behind corporate policy.
I guess what ticks me off is that you're obviously intelligent. You're not the typical 14 year old "M$ sux u l0zer" crowd that posts here. And your points are right on the mark, so you've been exposed to the realities of business. To which frankly most here are completely oblivious. (Which is why Linux isn't really on the desktop).
But it does offend me that even after exposed to it, you almost seem to defend it. Perhaps that wasn't your intent... but you made no counter statement disclaiming your opinion in your first post. Which makes me think that you've just decided to suck it up and live with it. It was your comment about the poor job market that clinched it. As if you didn't have a choice.
The Auschwitz comment isn't about human rights or dead babies. It's about good men doing nothing. That's all. You obvioulsy know that it's crappy... yet you seem to condone it.
I am by no means one of the typical "flower-power whacko the-world-sucks-cause-no-one-listens-to-me liberals" that frequent slashdot. So don't get me wrong. You're right on target. (I added you to my friends list even before your last reply.) BUT it is your job as an IT person to express the trade-offs to the management. They need to know how their decisions affect people... especially when they're being made by the non-technical crowd as most fortune 500 managements tend to be.
For instance, I am what is commonly referred to as a control systems engineeer. I design and install computer systems (robots) on the manufacturing side. That one.NET commercial where the little japanese girl grafittis the car with industrial robots... from her PC in Japan frankly scares the shit out of me. And the propsed solution of M$ security has got to be the funniest thing I've ever seen. BUT, it will most likely be implemented because we live in an atmosphere of "I'm management, computer's are somebody else's problem."
Gee, great. So they get to make all the decisions... and they end up being bad ones. In my field, we don't connect our systems to the outside world. End of story, no security risk. The IT deparment are like remote cousins to us. We feel related to them in a way, but we don't want to invite them over for dinner unless we have to.
But every once in awhile I need to pass information in to their systems. Whether it be recipe management (what product shall we run today), or data acquisition (how did we do today)... eventually someone in a tie needs info that only my systems can give them. I would much rather just print the damn thing out and have them get off their lazy butt and come down to the production floor and get it... but alas!
So my resentment of the "we are IT we know better than you" attitude is mostly because I'm sick and tired of paranoia, power struggles, political gambits and all of the other crap that you cited as reasons why normal users should be mistreated, untrusted and otherwise keep their mouths shut until we tell you you can breath...
The problem isn't the users, it's the IT department is being told to do the impossible. There is no lock down in the world that will keep the great unknown from biting the manangement in the ass. You can't save them from their ignorance... but at least you can try to protect your users from it.:)
"If anything, people who don't use a command line are smarter than you because they're cutting down on keystrokes, thus improving their productivity."
As a new emacs user I'd disagree.
GUIs have their place... sure. For example, it is much easier to do simple "drag and drop" style data mangement in MSAccess, than it is to write UPDATE queries in straight SQL.
But, emacs has tons of shortcut features that puts it on the same playing field as "point and click." Tab completion, lisp routines bound to Ctrl keys, split windows/mulitple buffers, etc...
You'll find that you actually save time by your fingers never leaving the keyboard than you will with the standard move mouse, type keys, move mouse, type keys...
And you can run a shell (command line) within emacs. In fact I think my RH 8/bash install uses emacs as it's default shell editor. So most of these features are available on the command line.
You can run bash in OSX right? So I would think that all of these features would also be available to Mac users now.
In fact it's not just emacs... MSWindows has shortcuts in all of it's Office programs. They may not be used as frequently as the pull down menus, but they exist for those people who have gained a familiarity with the program. I've been using them for years in Excel and Word, frankly because it's easier to Ctrl+F to open the search dialog than it is to pull it down with the mouse.
I would have agreed with your point (although not with your tone) a few months ago, but now that I've had some experience with keyboard only shortcuts... I can see why the alpha geeks view "point and click" as too damn slow.
"That means that pirating software costs the developer the chance to recover the costs..."
Exactly. It costs the chance for revenue... not actual revenue. BIG DIFFERENCE!
See, potential revenue is imaginary. At the end of the fiscal year, potential revenue only seems to affect other imaginary things like stock value and the size of your loan ratings. These things, while having importance to the large company, shouldn't have anything to do with the consumer. I go to the store, I give money for a product, I receive said product. That's the extent to which economics concerns me. What goes on in the "black box" of the company that provides said goods is not my problem. So excuse me if I reject the philosophies currently being forced on me by such companies. They seem a bit self serving to me.
Copyright violation by law is not stealing. Theft is a completely different law, and there's a reason for that: no actual loss is being incurred. The entire concept of stealing an idea (not my words) was alien to traditional law, and new legislation had to be created in order to make such acts illegal. What was once completely legitimate a decade or two ago, is now considered abhorrent today... well at least considered so by the software companies who would like you to consider it abhorrent as well! Isn't it obvious that the BSA warnings are purely propaganda? That they need to reinforce in your mind that that CD you bought isn't really yours... doesn't that bother you? Heavy handed warnings about how the economy will bottom out, and how programming will end as we know it if you don't obey our rules... don't these seem to be taken directly out of Goebbels play book?
Let me let you in on a little secret here: there's no food being stolen from the developers mouths. These grumblings are completely from "MBA types" whining that their standard business model won't work unless there is some sort of economic controls forced onto the consumer. So instead of adapting their model, they beg for government protection. Let's have no misunderstanding about this... the entire concept of selling software is based on the idea that you can take a serviceand somehow package it as a product. You remove the model, and every programmer goes back to doing what they did before these inane laws sprung up: programs created on a case by case basis. Your pipes are fixed, call a plumber. Need some law advice, call a lawyer. Need a program... well, what do you think? What we do is a service people!
There is no product here without government protection. The original business model was:
Hire programmer.
Programmer builds program.
Programmer gets paid.
Programmer leaves.
Repeat at step 1.
The copyrighted version is:
Hire programmer.
Programmer builds program.
Gets paid.
Programmer leaves.
Program is packaged and sold.
Repeat at step 5.
Seems to me the current model actually removes the necessity of even keeping a programmer on staff. Of course the copyright model doesn't work without... well... copyrights. Which in turn requires government control. Hypocrisy at it's finest: the richest companies in the world (who would typically vote for the Republican ideals of smaller government) requiring their "open market" business models to be protected (hell, created) by government copyright law. It's not my problem that the companies are selling a product that without government intervention would have no value. They have artificially created a market by restricting the buyers freedom.
So when you defend copyrights, that whole scam is what you're really defending.
On a side note, I buy the CD and use the program... I toss the EULA. End of story. I guess I could make an announcement to the world (signed and notarized) that I accept the merchandise with the following modifications to the enclosed contract... which is my right under contract law. It seems to me that having the modifications notarized would reflect more of an effort to make the contract legally binding than the one-size-fits-all, both-parties-need-not-sign piece of paper attached to the CD. After using a red pen and initialing all of the modifications to the contract, I could file it in case of audit... it smacks of the same sort of pseudo-legal (until tested in a court of law) crap with which the BSA uses to make money.
Even if the game is released for free download... I still WISH to pay for it.
An excellent game, ported to an excellent OS.
What's not to pay for?
I didn't choose Linux because it's free (as in beer), I chose Linux because it's solid (as in ROCK). I have absolutely no problem with paying for good software. And since I know that software companies will only produce games in markets where there is profit to be made, I'm hoping that a GREAT game like this one might make enough money in the Linux market to make other producers "sit up and notice." So paying for the game is like an investment in the Linux gaming future!
But I'm not holding my breath. Because on the other side of the coin... software companies are going to think to themselves "If THIS game can't make a profit... then no game can!"
Eh... who cares. I want the game badly! Now to whom do I give this wad of cash?!
There's a difference between levitation and propulsion.
From the Financial Times article:
"Linear motors are "flattened out" versions of conventional rotary motors. As their name implies, they promote linear motion - of the kind required in many kinds of machine tools that use a large number of sliding and shuttling actions, fundamental to the job of cutting metal."
Linear motors are just rotary motors cut and laid out flat... or another way to explain them is a rotary motor of infinite radius.
"Maglev" is obviously short for magnetic levitation. Linear motors are common in maglevs simply because there is an air gap between the vehicle and the track. It would be very difficult to use conventional motors in such a system whithout driving wheels (or mechanical friction). However, other types of propulsion can also be used... such as jet engines, solid rocket boosters, etc. Although perhaps not practical for commercial trains, a maglev with rocket propulsion could be used for launching scram jets from the ground.
Linear motors can be used without magnetic levitation. It is completely feasible to use a linear motor on conventional wheeled "people movers." Although this application is rare since linear motors typical consume more energy than rotary motors.
I'm not saying turn off things. I'm not saying remove a user's ability to tweak and configure.
I'm saying that every distribution should install the same desktop TO START WITH.
You obviously, being the linux god that you are, are free to reconfigure your desktop anyway you like. Gnome/KDE... ximian, sawfish, enlightenment, etc... I don't care. But then again, neither does the typical user!
The average user stops installing once he/she removes the install CDs from the drive. Your post illustrates exactly why Linux isn't doing well on the desktop.
"Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works. He wants to be able to upgrade his PC , and have the hardware work in a few short minutes. He wants to read email, browse the web, talk to his mates online, and play some games."
That's EXACTLY right.
The biggest problem with Linux on the desktop is that there isn't a standard desktop. Which ironically is also it's best feature.
If you want linux to actually compete on the desktop, you need to have one desktop to represent the linux desktop. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have the freedom to tweak it to your heart's content. But the starting place for everyone should be the same. To convert an average user (ie. a user that doesn't give two cents about programming, but just wants to use the computer), you need to keep the learning curve as flat as possible. It's unfortunate that every distribution seems to have it's own way of doing things. Which means from linux box to linux box the computer will be completely alien to the inexperienced user.
Again, for an experienced user, this is a feature!
But to the average user this is just pure annoyance. They don't care what is happening underneath the desktop. They want to use their computer the way they use their TV. Turn it on, pick a channel, watch, turn off (repeat).
Not only are the distributions different, but versions of a distribution change too dramatically! I've had to change my desktop appearance at least 3-4 times in the last 2 years. And I've stuck to one distribution. From RedHat 6.2 to 7.3, I've seen gmc dissapear for nautilus, linuxconf go bye-bye and I still can't get zip files to open up within the file manager the way they used to. If this were my mother on her computer, she would have traded it in for WinXP the instant that her favorite webpages disappeared. There's no way that you're going to get her to go spelunking for config scripts!
A common desktop would be a nice start. But if you can't get all of the distributions to agree to one, then at least have a very small common "set" of desktops from which to choose. Upon installation you could have a "What OS are you familiar with?" checkbox, and then build the desktop accordingly (similar to KDE). This would also make the learning curve less steep. Win9x, Mac, OS/2, gnome, whatever... but in such a fashion that the average user would know exactly what to expect. Then the expert is free to go in and modify it to whatever he/she would like!
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It is very difficult to follow your logic. You've approached the argument with a predetermined outcome, and then spend the remaining effort slapping random conclusion segments together.
As eloquent as it is, your argument is not constructed using the standard "scientific method" that is taught to any U.S. public school grade schooler. Let's try to get back to that, shall we?
Since a picture says a thousand words: 2004 general election by county
So you're trying to tell me that if I were to change one of those counties from red to blue (ie. the Florida debacle), that Gore should have by all rights won the election? Give me a break!
"Payroll taxes increased more under Reagan than under any other President. If you want, I'll go look up the numbers, but it was around a 30% hike."
Yes please look them up. When adjusted for inflation (which if you were working back then you'd remember how horrific the late 70s "stagflation" was), the tax "increases" weren't. But go ahead, look them up.
"Really? I pay more."
That's bull shit. Federal payroll taxes have not been increased. If you pay more, then it's because of state or local wage taxes.
"My property taxes just went up 20% this year to cover the shortage resulting from Bush's tax cuts. That's regressive taxation, penalizing me for owning property."
Again, bull shit. Let's assume you live in CA. If so property taxes were raised by your state because your governor drove it into the ground. You can't seriously think that anyone is going to believe that federal policies that at best indirectly affect state taxation are ever going to eclipse STATE tax policies themselves. Come on! That's just rationalizing nonsense. This is property tax we're talking about! If yours increased BLAME YOUR STATE FIRST! Then if you can, prove to me that your state's budget was financially sound and that their deficits didn't increase, nor their borrowing rates were raised, nor the tax base (population) decreased, nor corporations left, etc... etc... WOW! Do you live in an oversimplified dream land.
"Wow, are you ever reaching here... It's amazing the spin that Republicans will use. We had good times under Clinton and we're all supposed to be convinced it was an accident. We have shitty times under Bush and we're all supposed to be convinced it's Clinton's fault."
It's not all Clinton's fault. What I'm saying is that you are so quick to blame anything Republican that you check logic at the door. I'm a Democrat. I was a member of the YDA when Clinton was first elected. I don't care it you belive me or not. I know what a liar the man was, I was paying attention as he was doing it. If you want to rationalize it all to "Republican spin," then that's your shortcoming. But if you're going to give credit/blame a president for the state of the economy (which in itself is completely assinine considering how complex international economics of 6 billion people can be), it's amazing to me how you think that one political party (more specifically one man) has a monopoly on it.
"They wouldn't have become issues, because Clinton would have actually dealt with them instead of avoiding them for fear that we'd all find out about the campaign contributions."
What are you talking about? They wouldn't have become issues? THEY DIDN'T BECOME ISSUES! THAT'S THE POINT! It happened on their watch and they didn't even know! WOW! This is all basic stuff here. You can read any newspaper and get the dates for all this stuff. And lo and behold it happened during the Clinton administration and didn't become an issue until the Republican's caught it. That should absolutely shame any self-respecting Democrat. Stop spinning!
"Yes it is. But then you didn't know about the tax hikes under Reagan, which started you down the path of ignorant commentary."
Ignorance huh? I remember the double digit unemployment of the early 1980s. And I remember the gas lines of the late 1970s. My experience is first hand. I'm getting the strong feeling that your opinion is based on television hearsay. Re-read the first paragraph.
Live in denial... it doesn't hurt anyone but you. As my grandfather always said, "there's nothing more pathetic than a man who believes his own lies."
There were no tax hikes during the Reagan administration. In fact, it was George Bush's infamous "No New Taxes" line that most historians attribute to his losing the White House to Clinton in 1992. It was that breaking of Bush senior's word, added to the recession (which was a direct result of the tax hikes) that made it easy for a nobody from Arkansas to win the White House.
I am working class. I pay less taxes now than when under the Clintons. Directly due to Bush W's tax cuts. You will have to show me what tax hikes you're talking about... cause it sounds like you're twisting something there.
Deficit spending, though controversial, does have the short term effect of boosting the economy. It is the long term effects which cause concern. However, since Reagan's deficit spending was brought back to balance within ten years (during the Clinton administration), one could argue that deficit spending works when practiced responsibly. And historically, it has ONLY been practiced in that fashion... so far.
I too was unemployed back in 1991. And I would have found a job much sooner had not Clinton slowed down the recovery rate. Rubin's fiscal management almost tanked the recovery. If it wasn't for the private sector's exploitation of the internet coupled with asia's economic collapse, things would have been much worse. Most economists would agree. Greenspan is given most of the credit actually, only hardline Democrats attribute ANY of the economic success to Clinton's policies.
As I said before, there's no way you were ever a Republican. Your beliefs are all derived directly from Clinton-era obfuscation and spin.
Keep in mind that the dot com bubble burst during the Clinton administration. That the Enron scandle took place during the Clinton administration (it was the current administration that caught them). etc... Had Clinton been able to run for a third term, it would most likely be HIS administration dealing with the current economics, and we would NOT be coming out of it.
As for Dick Morris, he was a Republican then. That's why Didi Myers, and Stefenopolis (not to mention myself) hated him. Do some research dude. NPR.ORG is an excellent place to start.
"the fact that the policy ideas stunk and when economists and such told us so we accused them of bias"
Which policies exactly? That's a fairly strong statement considering that every economics teacher I ever had said that Regan's policies were responsible for the only non-war growth in America's history. Are they wrong? Do you attribute the growth during the Clinton era to policies that were patently non-Reagan?
"That's when I had my revelation and abandoned the party"
Yeah right. I find that hard to believe. I'm a registered Democrat, but even I know when my own party is spinning things. (Two words for you: Dick Morris.) You don't sound like a reborn liberal... you just sound unemployed.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. If you're going to simply repeat what you hear on TV, then at least take the time to do it accurately
Good points.
You really need to pay attention to the all the news. Not just the major networks. Go ahead and listen to Fox (conservative), Pacifica (liberal), NPR (somewhat balanced), etc... But listen to all of it. Then throw out all the stuff you know can't be possible, the spin crap, the soundbites taken out of context, the rest as hearsay and you might come up with a useful tidbit or two.
Don't just echo what you see in the 26 minutes of Dan Rather's broadcast. You'll only get the kind of news that guarantees viewers for the Maxipad commercials that way. Not really news.
- CNN
Now the real story is that Novak approached Wilson and asked him how he felt about his wife's outing by the present administration. Wilson had no idea what he was talking about. Out of shock, Wilson then went on a tyrade tearing into Bush, all the while Novak just smiled and wrote down "confirmed by husband".
That's called "seeding" a story. Kind of like the cliche question "when did you stop beating your wife?" Have you noticed how the story has completely slipped off the radar? Trust me, if there was a story here, it wouldn't have burnt out in just two weeks. But once people started checking sources, no one wanted to touch it anymore. As for now you're just echoing unconfirmed DC gossip that somehow made it to print and then became part of that week's feeding frenzy.
I'm not siding one way or the other on the administration's policies. But I do reckognize the current climate of sensationalizing everything and everything Bush in an effort to maintain the same kind of ratings that Watergate, Contra arms, Lewinsky and the like brought about.
Think for yourself.
She reminds me of James Carville in that way.
You don't get the feeling that the Democrats are deliberately posting questions that they KNOW the administration can not answer without exposing some major intelligence gathering mechanisms?
What an outstanding tactic that must be. You know your opposition CAN'T answer the question, so you enflame the public and get them to demand answers. Meanwhile, the incumbancy slowly sinks in the polls as words like "conspiracy" and "liars" float around. All the while, those that seek to unseat them walk around with a smile on their face(s).
Until one of the opposing candidates starts presenting solutions based on the last fifty years of American foreign policy with an equal level of criticism for BOTH parties... and not just on the last TWO years in an effort to diminish their own party's culpability... then I will not have anything but contempt for those people who push today's golden (yet short sighted) candidate down my throat.
"The impact of unions and PACs has been negated by the McCain-Feingold prohibition against soft money donations to candidates and parties."
Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from the truth
Actually a simple search on the NPR website for "McCain Feingold" will reveal the entire story as it's developed over the past week, and how already the money has funelled around the law.
How does this internet fund raising effect the current climate of pro-campaign finance reform?
According to Kerry, Republicans have been contributing to Dean's campaign on the Internet.. Whether this is true or not, it very well could be. How would we ever know?
I'd like someone to explain to me how this is actually "grass roots," and not possibly one of the major parties (if not both) giving large sums in small packets under various proxies?
"the world's first commercial optical digital signal processor"
When I read the lead post, I thought it was an actual processor like on a PC motherboard... not a DSP. These aren't the same things are they? The possible applications listed on the press release seem to be entirely communications oriented. (ie. fiber optics)
Now a NAND gate using only optics (not electro-optics) would be fantastic. Maybe using some sort of wave interference to generate the logic table... and as you know you can build all of the other logic gates from a NAND!
I'd like to know how you emphasised the left side of the OR statement above. Shouldn't both sides of an OR statement be evaluated equally?
In other words, you've argued the "make no law respecting an establishment of religion" part quite effectively, but have completely pissed all over the "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" section.
So in the case of voluntary prayer, how can the government deny them when the constitution specifically states that the government CAN NOT prohibit it.
I think the flaw in your logic is contained in your last sentence. To the left of the semicolon you are correct in that teachers/students can pray or be religious (as protected by the constitution)... however you have made an incredible leap in that public property can not be used on which to conduct the free exercise of religion. Where did you infer that? It is not mentioned at all in the constitution, in fact I would say that the amendment specifically declares otherwise.
Is it possible that the position that the use of public property to be denied for religious purposes is a HUGE misinterpretation of the first amendment? Is this a reflection of the current Supreme Court's position, and if so is it valid? Given any court's particular demeanor, the amendment could be interpreted in dozens of ways and still be constituional, but to overemphasize one half of that OR statement while diminishing the other can't possibly be valid.
For instance, allow me to propose another interpretation that would be constitutional and, at least to me, would be more valid than the one you stated: Whereas the constitution speaks very clearly on it's position towards religion, there is absolutely no direct mention of funding public education. In which case, I would think that if there were a conflict between the practicing of religion and the funding of public schools that the latter would be in violation of the constitution. As such, due to the first amendment, no government institution could fund any public schooling because it would bring these schools under the "umbrella" of government. Schooling of children in the religion of their parents would obviously be protected under the first amendment if you weighed both sides of the OR clause equally. And there is absolutely no way for the government to dictate where and when religion can be practiced and as such any involvemnent in schooling of children by the government could be deemed interference in the free exercise thereof.
Granted, my proposed interpretation is also a leap... but I use it to demonstrate that there are extreme possibilities within the bounds of "interpretation," and that it is the designed mechanism of the constitution for us to discuss which interpretation is the best for those affected.
-------
Not that it matters, but I'm an atheist. And I did what everyone else who wasn't religious did... I stood up there with my hand on my heart and spoke with the rest of the class. When those nasty two words came up, I didn't say them. Big fat hairy deal.
Let's stop wasting tax money please.
This post is the epitome of why Linux is failing on the desktop! This argument isn't about Linux! It's about migration.
All of this pseudo-intelligencia, philosophizing garbage demonstrates how isolated most computer science geeks (and thus developers) are from the majority of computer users. Inevitably, the entrenched Linux community balks at standardization. That's just a fact. Somehow they derive their collective self image as software rebels. Linux is the icon for the anti-establishment, "we are not part of the normal world and proud of it," the internet is ours DAMN IT" crowd. Well get over yourselves. As Linux is adopted into the work force, more and more home users will adopt it also. AND THAT'S what this discussion is really about...
This isn't about Linux users! The majority of computer users use Microsoft Windows. So any decent designer would immediately recognize how easy it is to smooth out the learning curve by drawing on the one thing that almost all computer users have in common: familiarity with the gui. Windows users don't care about computers. They don't spend their days dreaming about kernel compilation... and they never will. They typically go to work, do their job and go home when they're done. Most don't turn computers on at home. Most don't have CompSci degrees... or any college degree for that matter. Most just want to use their computer the way they use their TV: turn on, watch, change channel, turn off.
If televisions were packaged like Linux distros: where components arrived in separate shipments, the consumer was responsible for complete assembly, the instruction manual's chapters were scattered all over the internet, with no two television sets having the same controls nor receiving the same channels... there would still be some self righteous jerk screaming how standardization would be the end of the world! And only a small percentage of isolated geeks would be watching TV expecting the rest of the world to lose their technical ignorance. Get real.
The expectation you have of the user to close the distance between what they know and what you want them to learn is naive. That's not how industries produce consumable goods. And like it or not, Linux is now part of that economy. Despite whatever philosophies you chose with which to see the world, supply and demand exists. If you choose to ignore that fact, I guarantee that there's someone else out there that's not so short sighted waiting to take over where you stopped short.
What really pisses me off is the throngs of Linux minions who scream that standardization is limiting freedom of choice. No one is saying that the desktop needs to be locked down to one gui! What is being said is that the default gui should be the same across all distros. That's not very difficult to do despite the KDE vs Gnome debate. You pick KDE. End of story. I'm a Gnome user myself, but let's face it, KDE is more similar to Win32. But so what? I would expect the distros to still have both standard and advanced installation options. The standard would be an out of the box vanilla KDE install. The advanced would give you the choice between desktops. Why is that so difficult? Answer: it's not. It's a pissing contest. No one wants to favor one desktop over the other. Linux users feel their sense of rebellion being flushed down the toilet as more and more non-Linux users cross over. Tough.
(I wasn't logged in previously, and thus it posted as A.C. My apologies)
.NET commercial where the little japanese girl grafittis the car with industrial robots... from her PC in Japan frankly scares the shit out of me. And the propsed solution of M$ security has got to be the funniest thing I've ever seen. BUT, it will most likely be implemented because we live in an atmosphere of "I'm management, computer's are somebody else's problem."
:)
Yes, the train to Auschwitz. It had an engineer. He made no decisions, just went where the track took him. It's exactly the same as an IT person hiding behind corporate policy.
I guess what ticks me off is that you're obviously intelligent. You're not the typical 14 year old "M$ sux u l0zer" crowd that posts here. And your points are right on the mark, so you've been exposed to the realities of business. To which frankly most here are completely oblivious. (Which is why Linux isn't really on the desktop).
But it does offend me that even after exposed to it, you almost seem to defend it. Perhaps that wasn't your intent... but you made no counter statement disclaiming your opinion in your first post. Which makes me think that you've just decided to suck it up and live with it. It was your comment about the poor job market that clinched it. As if you didn't have a choice.
The Auschwitz comment isn't about human rights or dead babies. It's about good men doing nothing. That's all. You obvioulsy know that it's crappy... yet you seem to condone it.
I am by no means one of the typical "flower-power whacko the-world-sucks-cause-no-one-listens-to-me liberals" that frequent slashdot. So don't get me wrong. You're right on target. (I added you to my friends list even before your last reply.) BUT it is your job as an IT person to express the trade-offs to the management. They need to know how their decisions affect people... especially when they're being made by the non-technical crowd as most fortune 500 managements tend to be.
For instance, I am what is commonly referred to as a control systems engineeer. I design and install computer systems (robots) on the manufacturing side. That one
Gee, great. So they get to make all the decisions... and they end up being bad ones.
In my field, we don't connect our systems to the outside world. End of story, no security risk. The IT deparment are like remote cousins to us. We feel related to them in a way, but we don't want to invite them over for dinner unless we have to.
But every once in awhile I need to pass information in to their systems. Whether it be recipe management (what product shall we run today), or data acquisition (how did we do today)... eventually someone in a tie needs info that only my systems can give them. I would much rather just print the damn thing out and have them get off their lazy butt and come down to the production floor and get it... but alas!
So my resentment of the "we are IT we know better than you" attitude is mostly because I'm sick and tired of paranoia, power struggles, political gambits and all of the other crap that you cited as reasons why normal users should be mistreated, untrusted and otherwise keep their mouths shut until we tell you you can breath...
The problem isn't the users, it's the IT department is being told to do the impossible. There is no lock down in the world that will keep the great unknown from biting the manangement in the ass. You can't save them from their ignorance... but at least you can try to protect your users from it.
As a new emacs user I'd disagree.
GUIs have their place... sure. For example, it is much easier to do simple "drag and drop" style data mangement in MSAccess, than it is to write UPDATE queries in straight SQL.
But, emacs has tons of shortcut features that puts it on the same playing field as "point and click." Tab completion, lisp routines bound to Ctrl keys, split windows/mulitple buffers, etc...
You'll find that you actually save time by your fingers never leaving the keyboard than you will with the standard move mouse, type keys, move mouse, type keys...
And you can run a shell (command line) within emacs. In fact I think my RH 8/bash install uses emacs as it's default shell editor. So most of these features are available on the command line.
You can run bash in OSX right? So I would think that all of these features would also be available to Mac users now.
In fact it's not just emacs... MSWindows has shortcuts in all of it's Office programs. They may not be used as frequently as the pull down menus, but they exist for those people who have gained a familiarity with the program. I've been using them for years in Excel and Word, frankly because it's easier to Ctrl+F to open the search dialog than it is to pull it down with the mouse.
I would have agreed with your point (although not with your tone) a few months ago, but now that I've had some experience with keyboard only shortcuts... I can see why the alpha geeks view "point and click" as too damn slow.
"That means that pirating software costs the developer the chance to recover the costs..."
Exactly. It costs the chance for revenue ... not actual revenue. BIG DIFFERENCE!
See, potential revenue is imaginary. At the end of the fiscal year, potential revenue only seems to affect other imaginary things like stock value and the size of your loan ratings. These things, while having importance to the large company, shouldn't have anything to do with the consumer. I go to the store, I give money for a product, I receive said product. That's the extent to which economics concerns me. What goes on in the "black box" of the company that provides said goods is not my problem. So excuse me if I reject the philosophies currently being forced on me by such companies. They seem a bit self serving to me.
Copyright violation by law is not stealing. Theft is a completely different law, and there's a reason for that: no actual loss is being incurred. The entire concept of stealing an idea (not my words) was alien to traditional law, and new legislation had to be created in order to make such acts illegal. What was once completely legitimate a decade or two ago, is now considered abhorrent today... well at least considered so by the software companies who would like you to consider it abhorrent as well! Isn't it obvious that the BSA warnings are purely propaganda? That they need to reinforce in your mind that that CD you bought isn't really yours... doesn't that bother you? Heavy handed warnings about how the economy will bottom out, and how programming will end as we know it if you don't obey our rules... don't these seem to be taken directly out of Goebbels play book?
Let me let you in on a little secret here: there's no food being stolen from the developers mouths. These grumblings are completely from "MBA types" whining that their standard business model won't work unless there is some sort of economic controls forced onto the consumer. So instead of adapting their model, they beg for government protection. Let's have no misunderstanding about this... the entire concept of selling software is based on the idea that you can take a service and somehow package it as a product. You remove the model, and every programmer goes back to doing what they did before these inane laws sprung up: programs created on a case by case basis. Your pipes are fixed, call a plumber. Need some law advice, call a lawyer. Need a program... well, what do you think? What we do is a service people!
There is no product here without government protection. The original business model was:
The copyrighted version is:
Seems to me the current model actually removes the necessity of even keeping a programmer on staff. Of course the copyright model doesn't work without... well... copyrights. Which in turn requires government control. Hypocrisy at it's finest: the richest companies in the world (who would typically vote for the Republican ideals of smaller government) requiring their "open market" business models to be protected (hell, created) by government copyright law. It's not my problem that the companies are selling a product that without government intervention would have no value. They have artificially created a market by restricting the buyers freedom.
So when you defend copyrights, that whole scam is what you're really defending.
On a side note, I buy the CD and use the program... I toss the EULA. End of story. I guess I could make an announcement to the world (signed and notarized) that I accept the merchandise with the following modifications to the enclosed contract... which is my right under contract law. It seems to me that having the modifications notarized would reflect more of an effort to make the contract legally binding than the one-size-fits-all, both-parties-need-not-sign piece of paper attached to the CD. After using a red pen and initialing all of the modifications to the contract, I could file it in case of audit... it smacks of the same sort of pseudo-legal (until tested in a court of law) crap with which the BSA uses to make money.
Ironically:
Even if the game is released for free download... I still WISH to pay for it.
An excellent game, ported to an excellent OS. What's not to pay for?
I didn't choose Linux because it's free (as in beer), I chose Linux because it's solid (as in ROCK). I have absolutely no problem with paying for good software. And since I know that software companies will only produce games in markets where there is profit to be made, I'm hoping that a GREAT game like this one might make enough money in the Linux market to make other producers "sit up and notice." So paying for the game is like an investment in the Linux gaming future!
But I'm not holding my breath. Because on the other side of the coin... software companies are going to think to themselves "If THIS game can't make a profit... then no game can!"
Eh... who cares. I want the game badly! Now to whom do I give this wad of cash?!
"My margaritas want a maglev blender!"
There's a difference between levitation and propulsion.
From the Financial Times article: "Linear motors are "flattened out" versions of conventional rotary motors. As their name implies, they promote linear motion - of the kind required in many kinds of machine tools that use a large number of sliding and shuttling actions, fundamental to the job of cutting metal."
Linear motors are just rotary motors cut and laid out flat... or another way to explain them is a rotary motor of infinite radius.
"Maglev" is obviously short for magnetic levitation. Linear motors are common in maglevs simply because there is an air gap between the vehicle and the track. It would be very difficult to use conventional motors in such a system whithout driving wheels (or mechanical friction). However, other types of propulsion can also be used... such as jet engines, solid rocket boosters, etc. Although perhaps not practical for commercial trains, a maglev with rocket propulsion could be used for launching scram jets from the ground.
Linear motors can be used without magnetic levitation. It is completely feasible to use a linear motor on conventional wheeled "people movers." Although this application is rare since linear motors typical consume more energy than rotary motors.
Re-read the post.
I'm not saying turn off things. I'm not saying remove a user's ability to tweak and configure.
I'm saying that every distribution should install the same desktop TO START WITH.
You obviously, being the linux god that you are, are free to reconfigure your desktop anyway you like. Gnome/KDE... ximian, sawfish, enlightenment, etc... I don't care. But then again, neither does the typical user!
The average user stops installing once he/she removes the install CDs from the drive. Your post illustrates exactly why Linux isn't doing well on the desktop.
"Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works. He wants to be able to upgrade his PC , and have the hardware work in a few short minutes. He wants to read email, browse the web, talk to his mates online, and play some games."
That's EXACTLY right.
The biggest problem with Linux on the desktop is that there isn't a standard desktop. Which ironically is also it's best feature.
If you want linux to actually compete on the desktop, you need to have one desktop to represent the linux desktop. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have the freedom to tweak it to your heart's content. But the starting place for everyone should be the same. To convert an average user (ie. a user that doesn't give two cents about programming, but just wants to use the computer), you need to keep the learning curve as flat as possible. It's unfortunate that every distribution seems to have it's own way of doing things. Which means from linux box to linux box the computer will be completely alien to the inexperienced user.
Again, for an experienced user, this is a feature!
But to the average user this is just pure annoyance. They don't care what is happening underneath the desktop. They want to use their computer the way they use their TV. Turn it on, pick a channel, watch, turn off (repeat).
Not only are the distributions different, but versions of a distribution change too dramatically! I've had to change my desktop appearance at least 3-4 times in the last 2 years. And I've stuck to one distribution. From RedHat 6.2 to 7.3, I've seen gmc dissapear for nautilus, linuxconf go bye-bye and I still can't get zip files to open up within the file manager the way they used to. If this were my mother on her computer, she would have traded it in for WinXP the instant that her favorite webpages disappeared. There's no way that you're going to get her to go spelunking for config scripts!
A common desktop would be a nice start. But if you can't get all of the distributions to agree to one, then at least have a very small common "set" of desktops from which to choose. Upon installation you could have a "What OS are you familiar with?" checkbox, and then build the desktop accordingly (similar to KDE). This would also make the learning curve less steep. Win9x, Mac, OS/2, gnome, whatever... but in such a fashion that the average user would know exactly what to expect. Then the expert is free to go in and modify it to whatever he/she would like!
Is it just me, or does just looking at the colors of a Pac-Man screen make everyone happy?
Something about that bright neon blue on a black background with a peperring of little white dots...
"Would an Ad-Sponsored OS/Desktop Work for OSS?"
no.
The first thing that I would do is trip out all the ad crap from the source and recompile.
There are TONS of turkey hunting sites all over the web. Do a quick google search and you will find that: "YES, turkey's can fly!"
It's common knowledge really for anyone that doesn't live in the city (anywhere from the Ozarks to the Appalchians!)
However, the WKRP episode is probably one of the top 20 funniest TV comedy sketches of all time! Perhaps domestic turkeys can't fly?
(It distresses me a little that they allowed such an obvious bit of dis-information to be posted along with the original story.)
Client side apps are already doing the job fairly well:
Everybuddy
There are others for the non-Linux crowd too. (Feel free to list a few... I'm busy at work.)
(And there's always Jabber.)
The only problem is the intentional changing of AIM, MSN protocols solely for the purpose of "breaking" third-party clients.