I'm so tired of the same, whiny liberal argument, popularized by a freaking Vonnegut novel, that Dresden was some horrifc perpetration of war crimes by America.
Dresden manufactured munitions. It was within the bounds of war, as ugly as war always is, that we bomb that city. That there was a firestorm is unfortunate as death and collateral damage in war ALWAYS is. This is a consequence of war. When the residents of Dresden were purging their city of Jews and sending their sons of to fight a war of aggression perhaps they should have thought twice.
Please, don't insult me by calling my argument a liberal one, because I am defintely no liberal. The bombing of dredsen was useless as it was inhumane. Did you even go the link that I posted? It says in plain text:
Dresden was a center of cultural and architectural wonders, including the famous Zwinger Museum and Palace and the cathedral, the Frauenkirche. There were no military objectives of any consequence in the city--its destruction could do nothing to weaken the Nazi war machine. U.S. and British air warfare had left Dresden intact until that point.
That directly contradicts what you said about dredsen manufacturing munitions. Also, Gemany had already essentaily lost the war, the bombings did nothing but to kill thousands of innocents. I understand that there are consequences to war, but generally you should try to minimize civilian death, not maximize it.
We, as a society, have proven that we don't understand things like moderation or responsibility.
Oh yes, so we should allow the government to be our model for moderation and responsibility. The government has never, and will never, have either moderation or responsibility. This country was founded on individual responsibility, and it is that which made our country great. Now, all we can think about is how to take away resposibility and let the government tell us what to do.
By the way, your analogy of marijuana use to drunk driving is highly flawed. Drunk driving is illegal, so is marijuana use. Yet, you argue that legalizing marijuana will lead to the same current problem that we have with drunk driving. Do you see the whhat's wrong?
So all in all, you're saying because things are already that bad, a few thousand more people wouldn't hurt?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I don't even know where you inferred that from my comment. I'm saying that since things are bad right now, we need to make them better. Why should hundreds of thousands of families be torn apart simply because someone harmlessly smoked a joint? Why should the US government spend billions of dollars every year just so that they can stop people from a victimless activity? Drug prohibition hasn't solved anything. There are still drugs on the streets, and there are still drug dealers. The only difference is that now drugs are profitable. If the US wants to stop funding terrorists through drugs, then they need to legalize the use of drugs. Prohibiting drugs, like alcohol, creates a market for crime.
And please, don't assume that because I stand for drug legalization means that I am a druggie. I have never even experimented with any illegal drugs. Hell, I don't even drink alcohol, I like to have control over myself. I stand for drug legalization because it is the only rational way to end the market for crime that has erupted from drug's prohibition.
By the way, can you explain in clear, concise terms why pot _should_ be illegal?
Explain to me first why it should. Studies have shown the kind of damage it does to the human brain - so tell me how that's beneficial to anyone? And why people with certain diseases should be allowed to use it, then?
Yes, I'm sure that there have been plenty of studies that show that an excess of pot is bad for you in some way. But there have also been plenty of studies that show that an excess of alcohol is bad for you. Should we go back to the days of the alcohol prohibition? In fact there have been studies that show that an excess of food, exercise, sex and even water can be bad for you. Should we ban those too? I'm sorry, but the burden of proof is on your side.
Why even tax the internet? After about 5 years of e-commerce being popular, we have seen the market take off. It started off with some bumps, but after the bubble burst, and all of the stupid dot-com companies died out, we were left with many legitimate e-commerce sites that were pulling in a large profit. Rather than law-makers seeing this as a sign that maybe low taxes are good, they see this as an opportunity to tax further. If law-makers truly believe that internet commerce is hindering their states because it is so cheap, then they should lower taxes in their state rather than trying to levy taxes on the internet.
It's kind of like two kids. One is very gifted and one is just regular intelligence. If you want to help the regular kid, you should spend extra time with him and help him. You should not try to force the gifted kid to act dumb.
Ok, so would you rather have wired not tell you that your modem is unprotected? If I were a sprint user, I would not be mad at wired, I would be pleased. I'd rather have wired hack my modem and tell me about it than some random script kiddie hack it and break into my email account.
Wow, people are really lazy. Not just you, the sentiment on this thread is that phoenix is better because you can hit ctrl+enter to add 'www.' and '.com' to whatever you type. I can't belive that anyone would actually choose their browser based on typing in 4 simple characters (most sites don't even require you to type in 'www.') Not to mention the many sites that use.net or.org.
I mean, there are reasons that phoenix is better. (Smaller less memmory usage, faster) but ctrl+enter is not one.
This is way offtopic, but just to let you know there already is enough money to feed everyone in the world. There is plenty of food to feed everyone. The problem is not a lack of money, it is the systems that are set up in third world countries. When food donations come poring in, the dictators take such a large proportion before it is distributed that the people pretty much don't get any of the original donation. Even if all of the armament budgets in the world were stopped, and all of the money donated to starving poeple, there would still be world hunger, because of the damn dictators.
It really amazes me how many trolls are here on slashdot today. Oh well...
You are correct that breaking up Microsoft would not be capitalism. But then you throw in your marxist view of over-throwing capitalsm. What do you propose it be replaced with? Socialism? Communism? Oh yeah, those sure are the key to free enterprise. The truth is, in a truly capitalist society, there would be nothing to overthrow because there would be no central power. I hate to break it to you, but we don't live in a capitalist society. We live in an increasingly socalist world. You say that capitalsim is the powerlessness of the poor? Hah! powerlessness of the poor is when an oppressive government mandates laws that further seperate the lines between the rich and the poor. Study your history and you'll see that every time, yes EVERY time there has been a large difference between the rich and the poor, it has been the result of a large, oppressive governent. The only way to stop the division is a small government. And always remember, the initiation of force should always be your last available option, not your first.
Sure, maybe you don't like skins, but I do. I LIKE WinAMP's ability to change its skin. That way it is different than every other app that I run, and it allows me to be at least a little bit unique, and allows me to make my computer feel like my own. Perhaps the compromise for Moz would be to have a theme that would use native widgets. That way, if you wanted to change the theme you could, but you also could use the native look as well.
Well, what jumps out at me is that, already, Phoenix is taking up 2/3 of the memory that Mozilla does. I just installed the 0.3 release, and it resides in 90M of RAM as opposed to ~140M for Mozilla.
140 M of RAM?!? What are you doing that brings your RAM usage to that high? I am currently using Moz with 5 open tabs and the mail/news reader open, and I am only using 37M of RAM...
I most definitely do not use CD-R's to trade music and movies here at college. I either use a program called Direct-Connect (which is definitely p2p) or just the basic Windows SMB File sharing (for which I use a program called ShareScan to access). I guess that this means that the RIAA should sue microsoft for allowing me to share music (wouldn't that be a fun lawsuit to watch).
Washington University in St. Louis also slows down Kazaa. But it is not a problem really. If I want to get files, we have set up a local hub using direct-connect. It is incredibly fast (I usually get speeds of 2-10 MB/sec (yes, that's megabytes))It is fast because it is all within the Wash. U. network, therefore none of the precious external bandwidth is used up. The only problem is that somethimes the newest songs are not available to be traded yet. But for us, blubster circumvents the slowdown because blubster uses udp, not tcp like most p2p software. Blubster can only be used to download songs though.
Capitalism just doesn't apply to certain markets where there is no scarcity. When it's force fitted people cry fowl
There is always scarcity. Yes, music can be copied infinitely for cheap, but where do you think it came form in the first place? It came from a scarce resource. (Don't misinterperet this to me liking N'Sync, I don't like their music, but I also don't see a problem with them making money because other people like it). Do you honestly think that capitalism has been force fitted into the market? Granted, the DMCA etc. are force, but the DMCA is not capitalism. Capitalism is the only natural market, any other market is just a bastardization. Any other market requires that force be used to maintain the equilibrium, and the threat of force will always eventually fail if given enough time.
I believe that you are missing the point. The fact is that the Patriot Act is in direct violation of the First Amendment. The college is being forced to stifle free speeach in order to comply with the law. So yes, whether or not you agree with the Patriot Act IS relevent, and the issue IS free speech. So, while you "cannot question the University's right to attempt to stay compliant with existing laws", you can question whether the law should exist in the first place.
That was a great post, if I had mod points, I would mod it up. One question though: Who exacly was the person that you are talking about from Louisiana? Just curious...
As the website says, the school dropped the flight shuttle program and allowed him to take the simulator with him when he left. Now, he doesn't want to pay $60/month any longer to store it, so he decided to sell it on ebay.
You still never answered my question about who you were talking about when you said that the LP was headed up by a neofascist kook. No one that I know of is even close to being a fascist that is in a high up position in the libertarian party.
By the way, Libertarians *do* care about free speech. The party publicly denounced the new campaign finance reform bill that limits political speech. Right now there havn't been many issues that have really been seriously threatening free speech. But if there ever is an issue, you can bet that the libertarians will be at the forefront of defending free speech. You won't be able to count on any other party to do that for you.
Libertarian party, which outwardly purports to be the defender of individual liberties and small government while inwardly being headed up by crazy neofascist kooks who focus more on eliminating corporate income tax than defending free speech.
I'm really confused by that statement. Who exacltly do you claim is a neofascist kook?
Whether you like it or not, corporate income tax is a larger issue than free speech. Although libertarians do strongly believe in free speech, it is not really an issue. Every party believes in free speech. Libertarians would rather talk about corporate income tax or the drug war or welfare, because this is where we differ from other political parties. I mean, libertarians could spend all their time discussing how much they believe in democracy, but that wouldn't win any votes. Mostly all political parties believe in democracy. You win votes by differing from the other parties.
Slashdot Mirror
That was a glorious post. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Thank you. Finally someone that understands the difference between anti-war and left-wing.
Dresden manufactured munitions. It was within the bounds of war, as ugly as war always is, that we bomb that city. That there was a firestorm is unfortunate as death and collateral damage in war ALWAYS is. This is a consequence of war. When the residents of Dresden were purging their city of Jews and sending their sons of to fight a war of aggression perhaps they should have thought twice.
Please, don't insult me by calling my argument a liberal one, because I am defintely no liberal. The bombing of dredsen was useless as it was inhumane. Did you even go the link that I posted? It says in plain text:
That directly contradicts what you said about dredsen manufacturing munitions. Also, Gemany had already essentaily lost the war, the bombings did nothing but to kill thousands of innocents. I understand that there are consequences to war, but generally you should try to minimize civilian death, not maximize it.
But the US hasn't used it on innocent civilians, dickhead.
Thats highly debatable.
We, as a society, have proven that we don't understand things like moderation or responsibility.
Oh yes, so we should allow the government to be our model for moderation and responsibility. The government has never, and will never, have either moderation or responsibility. This country was founded on individual responsibility, and it is that which made our country great. Now, all we can think about is how to take away resposibility and let the government tell us what to do.
By the way, your analogy of marijuana use to drunk driving is highly flawed. Drunk driving is illegal, so is marijuana use. Yet, you argue that legalizing marijuana will lead to the same current problem that we have with drunk driving. Do you see the whhat's wrong?
So all in all, you're saying because things are already that bad, a few thousand more people wouldn't hurt?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I don't even know where you inferred that from my comment. I'm saying that since things are bad right now, we need to make them better. Why should hundreds of thousands of families be torn apart simply because someone harmlessly smoked a joint? Why should the US government spend billions of dollars every year just so that they can stop people from a victimless activity? Drug prohibition hasn't solved anything. There are still drugs on the streets, and there are still drug dealers. The only difference is that now drugs are profitable. If the US wants to stop funding terrorists through drugs, then they need to legalize the use of drugs. Prohibiting drugs, like alcohol, creates a market for crime.
And please, don't assume that because I stand for drug legalization means that I am a druggie. I have never even experimented with any illegal drugs. Hell, I don't even drink alcohol, I like to have control over myself. I stand for drug legalization because it is the only rational way to end the market for crime that has erupted from drug's prohibition.
Yes, I'm sure that there have been plenty of studies that show that an excess of pot is bad for you in some way. But there have also been plenty of studies that show that an excess of alcohol is bad for you. Should we go back to the days of the alcohol prohibition? In fact there have been studies that show that an excess of food, exercise, sex and even water can be bad for you. Should we ban those too? I'm sorry, but the burden of proof is on your side.
Actually, its funny, but the riaa's site is currently down. But its proably due to the ms sql exploit, as they are running IIS.
Why even tax the internet? After about 5 years of e-commerce being popular, we have seen the market take off. It started off with some bumps, but after the bubble burst, and all of the stupid dot-com companies died out, we were left with many legitimate e-commerce sites that were pulling in a large profit. Rather than law-makers seeing this as a sign that maybe low taxes are good, they see this as an opportunity to tax further. If law-makers truly believe that internet commerce is hindering their states because it is so cheap, then they should lower taxes in their state rather than trying to levy taxes on the internet.
It's kind of like two kids. One is very gifted and one is just regular intelligence. If you want to help the regular kid, you should spend extra time with him and help him. You should not try to force the gifted kid to act dumb.
Ok, so would you rather have wired not tell you that your modem is unprotected? If I were a sprint user, I would not be mad at wired, I would be pleased. I'd rather have wired hack my modem and tell me about it than some random script kiddie hack it and break into my email account.
Do you have any links to back anything up?
Wow, people are really lazy. Not just you, the sentiment on this thread is that phoenix is better because you can hit ctrl+enter to add 'www.' and '.com' to whatever you type. I can't belive that anyone would actually choose their browser based on typing in 4 simple characters (most sites don't even require you to type in 'www.') Not to mention the many sites that use .net or .org.
I mean, there are reasons that phoenix is better. (Smaller less memmory usage, faster) but ctrl+enter is not one.
This is way offtopic, but just to let you know there already is enough money to feed everyone in the world. There is plenty of food to feed everyone. The problem is not a lack of money, it is the systems that are set up in third world countries. When food donations come poring in, the dictators take such a large proportion before it is distributed that the people pretty much don't get any of the original donation. Even if all of the armament budgets in the world were stopped, and all of the money donated to starving poeple, there would still be world hunger, because of the damn dictators.
It really amazes me how many trolls are here on slashdot today. Oh well...
You are correct that breaking up Microsoft would not be capitalism. But then you throw in your marxist view of over-throwing capitalsm. What do you propose it be replaced with? Socialism? Communism? Oh yeah, those sure are the key to free enterprise. The truth is, in a truly capitalist society, there would be nothing to overthrow because there would be no central power. I hate to break it to you, but we don't live in a capitalist society. We live in an increasingly socalist world. You say that capitalsim is the powerlessness of the poor? Hah! powerlessness of the poor is when an oppressive government mandates laws that further seperate the lines between the rich and the poor. Study your history and you'll see that every time, yes EVERY time there has been a large difference between the rich and the poor, it has been the result of a large, oppressive governent. The only way to stop the division is a small government. And always remember, the initiation of force should always be your last available option, not your first.
Sure, maybe you don't like skins, but I do. I LIKE WinAMP's ability to change its skin. That way it is different than every other app that I run, and it allows me to be at least a little bit unique, and allows me to make my computer feel like my own. Perhaps the compromise for Moz would be to have a theme that would use native widgets. That way, if you wanted to change the theme you could, but you also could use the native look as well.
Well, what jumps out at me is that, already, Phoenix is taking up 2/3 of the memory that Mozilla does. I just installed the 0.3 release, and it resides in 90M of RAM as opposed to ~140M for Mozilla.
140 M of RAM?!? What are you doing that brings your RAM usage to that high? I am currently using Moz with 5 open tabs and the mail/news reader open, and I am only using 37M of RAM...
I most definitely do not use CD-R's to trade music and movies here at college. I either use a program called Direct-Connect (which is definitely p2p) or just the basic Windows SMB File sharing (for which I use a program called ShareScan to access). I guess that this means that the RIAA should sue microsoft for allowing me to share music (wouldn't that be a fun lawsuit to watch).
Washington University in St. Louis also slows down Kazaa. But it is not a problem really. If I want to get files, we have set up a local hub using direct-connect. It is incredibly fast (I usually get speeds of 2-10 MB/sec (yes, that's megabytes))It is fast because it is all within the Wash. U. network, therefore none of the precious external bandwidth is used up. The only problem is that somethimes the newest songs are not available to be traded yet. But for us, blubster circumvents the slowdown because blubster uses udp, not tcp like most p2p software. Blubster can only be used to download songs though.
Nothing's wrong with him.
Capitalism just doesn't apply to certain markets where there is no scarcity. When it's force fitted people cry fowl
There is always scarcity. Yes, music can be copied infinitely for cheap, but where do you think it came form in the first place? It came from a scarce resource. (Don't misinterperet this to me liking N'Sync, I don't like their music, but I also don't see a problem with them making money because other people like it). Do you honestly think that capitalism has been force fitted into the market? Granted, the DMCA etc. are force, but the DMCA is not capitalism. Capitalism is the only natural market, any other market is just a bastardization. Any other market requires that force be used to maintain the equilibrium, and the threat of force will always eventually fail if given enough time.
I believe that you are missing the point. The fact is that the Patriot Act is in direct violation of the First Amendment. The college is being forced to stifle free speeach in order to comply with the law. So yes, whether or not you agree with the Patriot Act IS relevent, and the issue IS free speech. So, while you "cannot question the University's right to attempt to stay compliant with existing laws", you can question whether the law should exist in the first place.
That was a great post, if I had mod points, I would mod it up. One question though: Who exacly was the person that you are talking about from Louisiana? Just curious...
As the website says, the school dropped the flight shuttle program and allowed him to take the simulator with him when he left. Now, he doesn't want to pay $60/month any longer to store it, so he decided to sell it on ebay.
Ok, I can't convince you anything about neofascist kooks, however the Libertarian Party does care about free speech. Check out these links.
The LP condemns the CBDTPA
The LP calls for Dmitry Sklyarov's release
This link quotes Harry Browne as saying "I believe we need to end limits on encryption." (Its about 2/3 down the page)
So yes, the libertarian party, as well as its leaders, does care about issues with technology and free speech.
You still never answered my question about who you were talking about when you said that the LP was headed up by a neofascist kook. No one that I know of is even close to being a fascist that is in a high up position in the libertarian party.
By the way, Libertarians *do* care about free speech. The party publicly denounced the new campaign finance reform bill that limits political speech. Right now there havn't been many issues that have really been seriously threatening free speech. But if there ever is an issue, you can bet that the libertarians will be at the forefront of defending free speech. You won't be able to count on any other party to do that for you.
Libertarian party, which outwardly purports to be the defender of individual liberties and small government while inwardly being headed up by crazy neofascist kooks who focus more on eliminating corporate income tax than defending free speech.
I'm really confused by that statement. Who exacltly do you claim is a neofascist kook?
Whether you like it or not, corporate income tax is a larger issue than free speech. Although libertarians do strongly believe in free speech, it is not really an issue. Every party believes in free speech. Libertarians would rather talk about corporate income tax or the drug war or welfare, because this is where we differ from other political parties. I mean, libertarians could spend all their time discussing how much they believe in democracy, but that wouldn't win any votes. Mostly all political parties believe in democracy. You win votes by differing from the other parties.