A great example of how to move in that direction is the Fair Tax which gives a one-for-one tax credit for charitable donations.
You're mistaken on this point. I'm a Fair Tax advocate myself, and it has no provision for a tax credit for charitable deductions. The Fair Tax is a retail-level sales tax, and it's unaffected by whatever you donate to charity. See #12 in the FAQ.
I've "thrown my vote away" numerous times voting for a "third party candidate", knowing each time that it was nothing more than an act of protest which would be drowned out by the bickering tribes of Reps and Dems.
On the contrary! By voting for the lesser of two evils, you allow that lesser evil to pretend to have a mandate that doesn't in fact exist. Let the next republican or democrat who takes office, do so with 30% or less of the vote.
(And, if I hear one more prat try to blame Nader for Gore's loss, I'm going to hurl.)
nothing seems to get done right in these United States of America these days.
Fortunately, we have this other thing called the "Private Sector", which is where many things are done right, and organizations that consistently screw up have been known to go out of business...
The difference: there isn't another NeXT for Microsoft to buy.
You know, looking at the whole Longhorn train wreck, I have to wonder whether MS has the guts to make a very bold business decision for their next OS release cycle. Having blown several billions of dollars, having had to rollback to the windows 2003 server code base, having spent SIX YEARS without shipping, you have to ask: should they go through that again?
There are two OSs they could buy, which have a hope of fixing the mess. They could buy Solaris, or they could buy OS X. With Solaris, their customers will still be living in "patch hell", and there's no hope at all of Sun ever improving MS's UI, but at least the underlying OS will be securable, something that no MIcrosoft product has ever been. If they buy a license for OS X however, they could actually make life better for many, many people.
When Apple announced Carbon, many Mac developers had this whole "Carbon is going away, it will never be as fully supported as Cocoa, Apple is going to screw us, etc." attitude. This is one reason the Finder is a Carbon application.
Don't kid yourself: that's the ONLY reason finder is a Carbon app. I'm hoping that within a decade of the NeXT merger, Apple will decide that it's time to quit coddling the foot-draggers by throwing more money down the Carbon rathole.
They have all used Cocoa, the equivalent to.NET in Macland
Hold on, there... Cocoa isn't perfect, but comparing it to MS's JavaVM knock-off is pretty harsh.
to highlight the strengths of the Cocoa development environment.
More like, Apple uses Cocoa to get their work done, since it's far and away the best development environment available to them. For any developer at Apple, their job is to ship their product, not to prove anything about Cocoa or any other development tools.
Apple is much more productive, and based on my time there, I'm convinced that the reason for this is that Apple doesn't indulge in overstaffing, and more importantly, they don't load up with dozens of management levels. The biggest team I know of at Apple is Xcode, and those guys are very well organized into small groups for each major portion of the product: the compiler guys, the editor, the interface builder, the class modeller, etc.
Any of you who have been to Apple's WWDC and attended the "What's new in Cocoa" session, have probably seen the entire Cocoa development team on stage. Seriously, that's all of them.
And you can't see how some people don't want others to have guns
Of course I can see how some people don't want others to have guns. I can also see that the right to self-defense is rather more important than the gun-grabber's neuroses.
We need full as well as incremental backups (who wants to upload 10 GB every night???) that can be automated to run nightly.
So, do it. Use rsync to see what the diffs are between the full DMG you have on the remote server, and make another encrypted DMG with the daily diffs.
Clearly, you need to learn to parse a sentence. Notice that it does not grant the right, it acknowledges the right, and states one particular reason why the government must be limited from infringing the right. It does not declare that the right is contingent upon the need for the militia.
Even without the second amendment though, the writers of the constitution were quite aware of the right to defend oneself, even against a government (such as that of the king whom they had just overthrown.)
Although I understand and respect your opinion, that cow's already out of the barn, man.
That's really beside the point of the legality of owning and deploying landmines. They're quite a different thing from a weapon which you have to aim and fire.
The fourth Geneva Convention governs treatment of civilian personnel.
True, I stand corrected. They do, however, set forth that a soldier must be in uniform to be treated as a legal combatant. This is not an arbitrary distinction: Bill Whittle wrote an excellent essay on the subject of the covenant of sanctuary.
This would be true had the US not proceeded unilaterally,
I'm sure that the 32 other countries who sent troops to Iraq three years ago would be quite surprised to hear that the US acted unilaterally, as you've just stated. Try telling it to a Brit, for a start.
Nope, the US was fooled by Saddam's posturing. His own officers were stunned to learn shortly before the attack that Saddam didn't have the WMD's anymore.
BTW, it is a matter of record that 1) he had them in the past, 2) he'd used them, both against Iranian soldiers and his own civilians, and that 3) he was stonewalling the weapons inspectors. There was no way to know that he'd gotten rid of them, because he insisted on jerking the weapons inspectors around. With hindsight, you can claim otherwise, but every member of congress who voted to authorize the attack saw the very same information that the white house did.
Hence, illegal invasion.
Nope. Resumption of combat operations in a war that Saddam started with an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country in 1991.
If you want to argue legalities, then you're missing the biggest one of all, which is an American constitutional issue: the last war that the US congress actually declared was World War II. Every war the USA has fought since then has been not merely illegal, but unconstitutional, but that's a violation of US law, not international law. There's a reason why the constitution reserves the power to declare war to the congress: it's supposed to be difficult to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Gates is right -- the $100 laptop is useless.
Useless to him, certainly not useless to millions of poor people.
-jcr
So, does the Treasury Department file for chapter-11 on behalf of the government?
Well, when a government goes bankrupt, it doesn't liquidate. Its bonds just become worthless.
-jcr
A great example of how to move in that direction is the Fair Tax which gives a one-for-one tax credit for charitable donations.
You're mistaken on this point. I'm a Fair Tax advocate myself, and it has no provision for a tax credit for charitable deductions. The Fair Tax is a retail-level sales tax, and it's unaffected by whatever you donate to charity. See #12 in the FAQ.
-jcr
How about blaming the asshole who put Gore in the position of having to defend a perjurer?
He would have had a cake-walk, if it weren't for Clinton.
-jcr
"I'm essentially kept out of being part of the solution,"
sounds like capitulation to me.
-jcr
So, you choose to capitulate? Great plan.
-jcr
I've "thrown my vote away" numerous times voting for a "third party candidate", knowing each time that it was nothing more than an act of protest which would be drowned out by the bickering tribes of Reps and Dems.
On the contrary! By voting for the lesser of two evils, you allow that lesser evil to pretend to have a mandate that doesn't in fact exist. Let the next republican or democrat who takes office, do so with 30% or less of the vote.
(And, if I hear one more prat try to blame Nader for Gore's loss, I'm going to hurl.)
-jcr
I must take issue with the idea that we have Choices.
Well, if you're convinced that you don't, then clearly you can't be part of any solution.
-jcr
nothing seems to get done right in these United States of America these days.
Fortunately, we have this other thing called the "Private Sector", which is where many things are done right, and organizations that consistently screw up have been known to go out of business...
-jcr
But, such a thing can't be possible, surely?
-jcr
The difference: there isn't another NeXT for Microsoft to buy.
You know, looking at the whole Longhorn train wreck, I have to wonder whether MS has the guts to make a very bold business decision for their next OS release cycle. Having blown several billions of dollars, having had to rollback to the windows 2003 server code base, having spent SIX YEARS without shipping, you have to ask: should they go through that again?
There are two OSs they could buy, which have a hope of fixing the mess. They could buy Solaris, or they could buy OS X. With Solaris, their customers will still be living in "patch hell", and there's no hope at all of Sun ever improving MS's UI, but at least the underlying OS will be securable, something that no MIcrosoft product has ever been. If they buy a license for OS X however, they could actually make life better for many, many people.
-jcr
Sorry guys, but from that photo, I'm not convinced that this "product" is anything more than an early April Fool's joke.
-jcr
The front end was migrated off unix in one shot with no failures, no downtime and no hardware changes.
Sorry, but based on conversations with a friend who was working for Hotmail at the time, I flat-out don't believe you.
-jcr
When Apple announced Carbon, many Mac developers had this whole "Carbon is going away, it will never be as fully supported as Cocoa, Apple is going to screw us, etc." attitude. This is one reason the Finder is a Carbon application.
Don't kid yourself: that's the ONLY reason finder is a Carbon app. I'm hoping that within a decade of the NeXT merger, Apple will decide that it's time to quit coddling the foot-draggers by throwing more money down the Carbon rathole.
-jcr
They have all used Cocoa, the equivalent to .NET in Macland
Hold on, there... Cocoa isn't perfect, but comparing it to MS's JavaVM knock-off is pretty harsh.
to highlight the strengths of the Cocoa development environment.
More like, Apple uses Cocoa to get their work done, since it's far and away the best development environment available to them. For any developer at Apple, their job is to ship their product, not to prove anything about Cocoa or any other development tools.
-jcr
Apple is much more productive, and based on my time there, I'm convinced that the reason for this is that Apple doesn't indulge in overstaffing, and more importantly, they don't load up with dozens of management levels. The biggest team I know of at Apple is Xcode, and those guys are very well organized into small groups for each major portion of the product: the compiler guys, the editor, the interface builder, the class modeller, etc.
Any of you who have been to Apple's WWDC and attended the "What's new in Cocoa" session, have probably seen the entire Cocoa development team on stage. Seriously, that's all of them.
-jcr
And you can't see how some people don't want others to have guns
Of course I can see how some people don't want others to have guns. I can also see that the right to self-defense is rather more important than the gun-grabber's neuroses.
-jcr
Goody goody for Alienware on making an "economically sound" business of ripping people off.
If you know of Alienware putting a gun to somebody's head, or engaging in fraud, then file a charge with the appropriate authorities.
Unlike said consumer, I know Alienware is overpriced crap.
That's your opinion, not a fact.
My point is still valid.
Nope. Never was, still isn't.
-jcr
Just because a small percentage of consumers are too stupid to know it, doesn't make them not overpriced.
Flunked econ 101, did you?
-jcr
We need full as well as incremental backups (who wants to upload 10 GB every night???) that can be automated to run nightly.
So, do it. Use rsync to see what the diffs are between the full DMG you have on the remote server, and make another encrypted DMG with the daily diffs.
-jcr
But it was not the US's role to unilaterally enforce that.
Ever hear of the United Kingdom? How about Italy? The Ukraine? Or any of the other 32 countries that participated in that enforcement?
-jcr
Clearly, you need to learn to parse a sentence. Notice that it does not grant the right, it acknowledges the right, and states one particular reason why the government must be limited from infringing the right. It does not declare that the right is contingent upon the need for the militia.
Even without the second amendment though, the writers of the constitution were quite aware of the right to defend oneself, even against a government (such as that of the king whom they had just overthrown.)
-jcr
Although I understand and respect your opinion, that cow's already out of the barn, man.
That's really beside the point of the legality of owning and deploying landmines. They're quite a different thing from a weapon which you have to aim and fire.
-jcr
The fourth Geneva Convention governs treatment of civilian personnel.
True, I stand corrected. They do, however, set forth that a soldier must be in uniform to be treated as a legal combatant. This is not an arbitrary distinction: Bill Whittle wrote an excellent essay on the subject of the covenant of sanctuary.
This would be true had the US not proceeded unilaterally,
I'm sure that the 32 other countries who sent troops to Iraq three years ago would be quite surprised to hear that the US acted unilaterally, as you've just stated. Try telling it to a Brit, for a start.
but obtained a second resolution from the UN.
A second resolution? Try counting them up.
the US was lying.
Nope, the US was fooled by Saddam's posturing. His own officers were stunned to learn shortly before the attack that Saddam didn't have the WMD's anymore.
BTW, it is a matter of record that 1) he had them in the past, 2) he'd used them, both against Iranian soldiers and his own civilians, and that 3) he was stonewalling the weapons inspectors. There was no way to know that he'd gotten rid of them, because he insisted on jerking the weapons inspectors around. With hindsight, you can claim otherwise, but every member of congress who voted to authorize the attack saw the very same information that the white house did.
Hence, illegal invasion.
Nope. Resumption of combat operations in a war that Saddam started with an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country in 1991.
If you want to argue legalities, then you're missing the biggest one of all, which is an American constitutional issue: the last war that the US congress actually declared was World War II. Every war the USA has fought since then has been not merely illegal, but unconstitutional, but that's a violation of US law, not international law. There's a reason why the constitution reserves the power to declare war to the congress: it's supposed to be difficult to do.
-jcr
Overpriced computers
If people are buying them, then they're not overpriced.
-jcr