This was actually a good election. The Electoral votes aligned with the popular votes, which is how it ALWAYS should be IMO. However this is the first Presidentail election since 1988 where the Electoral votes aligned with the popular votes.
IMO, the Electoral rules should be that the two Senators have to vote by the majority of the popular vote of the whole state, while the members of Congress must vote based on the popular vote of their counties. This would make the election more fair IMO.
For example the state of Texas gave all Electoral votes to Bush, however Kerry had 30% or so of the popular vote and should have recieved 30% or so of the Electoral votes from Texas. In this election Bush would have won under these rules because of the 3 million+ popular votes he lead Kerry by.
I remember reading from some third party candidate on/. that voting for them would not lose the election for Kerry. However, I noticed on CNN the number of third party votes, especially in Ohio and Florida. If those third party votes went to Kerry, Kerry would have won Ohio and Florida and be president right now.
Bush won this election hands down, though I wonder if the rest of the world hates America right now?
Read this story. Near the end of the story you will see this:
Florida's law prohibiting bible reading in public schools was named after Harlow Chamberlin.
This has often been abused. Extremists run around saying that anyone that reads a Bible in public schools in Florida are wrong. The purpose of this law was to make it illegal to read a Bible to students, not for personal use on your personal time.
The only purpose in trying to shove prayer time into school is to try and force it into the faces of those who don't want it or to weed out those who don't conform to that particular system.
Who said anything about "force it into the faces of those who don't want it'? There is no need for a specific prayer time in school. However, if a student needs a certain time to pray, they should be allowed that. Note: this is not really a part of Chritianity, however, Muslims pray at certain times of day. While I do not agree with the Muslim religion, Muslim students should be allowed to follow their religion, even if it means them arriving a few moments late for class.
There is nothing wrong with learning about the history of religion. The only problem is that any actual learning would never happen. Did you learn in your class that the New Testament was only put together hundreds of years AD by the fledgling Catholic Church which was solidifying their power against the various other equally legitimate sects and that they picked and chose what to include drawing from Gnostic scriptures written hundreds of years BC?
I think you need to loosen your tinfoil hat. I am not a Catholic and do not follow their doctrine. I actually learned a lot about various religions from around the world that I would have otherwise never had the chance to learn about. Did that high school class on world religion change my life? No. Was it a good leaning experience? Yes.
I didn't know the teacher personally, my friend did. He was fired for reading his Bible. He was told it was inappropriate material for a school. He didn't file any lawsuit. He just got another job as a teacher at a differnt school.
If you can find a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court or, hell, even at the federal level, preventing a public school from teaching a unbiased comparative religions course I'll eat my hat.
I know a teacher who was fired for reading their Bible. He was reading his Bible during HIS break in HIS room when no one else was around. When did it become a crime to read a book of religion? Heck, even astronauts read the Bible from space.
That said, answer me this. How do you construct a school sponsored moment wherein kids can pray if they want to without in some manner distinguishing between those children who do and do not pray. To be different in elementary school/middle school is to be inferior. The kid who doesn't pray is being coerced by the system.
Students dont' need a moment of silence. If a student needs to pray at a certain time, then they should be allowed that.
I disagree that government is trying to take away freedom of religion. I think it would be more appropriate to say that the government (quite properly) has to act neutrally with regards to religion, neither favoring one religion over another, or favoring religious persons over non-religious persons.
I agree with you 100% with regards to the government acting neutrally with regards to religion.
With teachers, it's a whole different ballgame. They are in front of classrooms as a public service, not to promote their own political agenda. While I see some real harm in not allowing teachers to expose students to certain classes of ideas, it has to be balanced with the fact that, given half a chance, many teachers would gladly inject their own ideas into the classroom.
While I agree with you, that is not how it often happens in practice. Four of my good friends are teachers. I know of one teacher who was FIRED because he was caught reading his Bible during his OWN BREAK TIME WHILE NO STUDENTS WERE AROUND! Yes, this is a true story and these type of issues are what causes Christians to overreact. This teacher was in his classroom with the door shut during his break while no students were present. The principle walked in and saw him reading his Bible and fired him!
Exactly where is freedom of religion in that?
I am a senior programmer for a fortune 500. We have a very liberal stance on religion. Basically, we don't' care what your religion is and we allow you to worship as you see fit. We have Christian bible studies that take place at work, as well as Muslim Koran studies, etc. These group meetings however are not done on corporate time, they must be done on your launch time. To me this is a very good policy. Who cares what any one person believes? As long as your beliefs do not try to stop me from my beliefs, we are all good : )
Maybe if kids like you stopped praying in schools and pay attention, you'd realize why what your saying is crap.
Man, you REALLY have a short attention span or suffer from poor reading comprehension. I stated in my post that I have TWO kids, so exactly how am I a kid?
What is wrong with a few minutes to allow kids to pray or not to pray?
When I was in high school back in the late 1980's (I graduated in 1991), we had a history class that studied WORLD RELIGION. No one forced us to "worship" any God/god. We were just taught about various different religions, and IMO, it was an excellent class. If we are going to make a kids take a biology class, what is wrong with teaching a class on world religion (note: not any one specific religion)?
It is insane to try to deny the effect religion has had on the world over thousands of years affecting BILLIONS of people. To try to say that everyone should just forget about religion makes you sound like an idiot.
With republicans you can expect conservative right wing nominations that will challange civil liberties and keep science down in favor of religion
I think you have it wrong. I am a conservative Christian, however I am not a Republican or a Democrat, I am a Libertarian. I do agree that there are too many blinded Christians that follow Bush just because he said God on TV (it is really sad). I think your typical "conservative" Christian goes Republican because of a few simple issues.
Government is trying to take freedom of religion away
Abortion is killing a human
I agree with these two issues. It seems as if the government is saying it is OK to worship Budda, Satan or anything else, however if you worship (the Christian) God it is somehow wrong and should not be allowed, especially in schools. Students should be allowed to worship or not worship whoever/whatever they choose.
I personally believe in _total_ freedom of religion in shcools. That means that a student is allowed to worship God, Budda, Satan, or no god at all. The government should keep their nose and opinion out of the matter.
The abortion issue is a tough one. I personally think that minors should be required to get their parents permission before an abortion (a minor is not allowed to get a tatoo, drink beer or smoke, yet they can kill a human child?). However, an adult should be allowed to choose. I am pro-life, yet believe in free choice. IMO, the choice to kill your unborn child is between you and God. I would never abort a child (I have two), yet it is not my position to tell anyone how to live.
The sad thing is that there are many "Christians" out there that think it is their purpose to inflict their morals on you and the rest of the world. I try to influence the community I live in in a moral way, yet I would never expect someone to live the way I do. As a programming geek and amatuer astronomer I am very scientifically oriented. However, I still have a very powerfull spiritual influencey of God.
I have probably gone on enough, however, I want to leave you with the thought of not lumping all Christians or people of religion into one group. Though I will agree with you that sadly the majority is probably how you describe them.
It is not really a _big_ security risk. It basically can just hide where the link will really take you. Once your there, you can see in the URL bar what site you are really at. URL address bar spoofs are more of a security risk since they hid the real address from the user. That is what made some Joe Users think they were at CitiBank, etc.
The only thing this could be used for would be to send a user to a p0rn site without them knowing.
I put a test page up. There are two spoof tests on the page. The latest version of Firefox is not affected by either of them if you left click the link. However, if you middle click the first spoof test, Firefox takes you to the wrong site.
While the GUI in all versions of Mac OS X are "pretty", the "transparent" network of the desktop sucks. FTP doesn't support uploads, there is no SSH/SFTP, and a bunch of other protocols that are not supported. KDE REALLY kicks OS X's butt when it comes to the network being integrated into the desktop.
In KDE, you can just keep adding protocol handlers and extend KDE's network awareness to infinity.
I do hope you are correct. I have heard far too many cases like you mention, though as you point out the media usually just gives the fact that "Corp X ejected a black|old|gay man|women" without givng the reason. It is one of the reason I don't watch the news any more.
In practice it means you can exclude healthy straight non-old males.
A minor, but important correction:
In practice it means you can exclude healthy straight non-old
white males.
Exclude a healthy, straight non-old white male for any reason and you should be in the clear. Exclude a healthy, straight non-old black male, and you can be in a world of trouble. Heck exclude anyone that is not a healthy, straight non-old white male and the |race|age|sex|-ism card is pulled from the deck.
The purpose is to enhance the public domain. That was the original purpose. And the means to achieve that was to give a limited incentive to artitist to create. Greed has taken over and big corps and "artitst" now want a lifetime right to works and not release them into the public domain. Copyright was originally a contract between "The People" and the artists. "The People" granted the artist a limited monopoly allowing them to control who has a right to sell a work; in exchange, "The People" were to get that work as public domain after a limited time. I am sorry, but I do not consider more then 100 years a limited time. If you take an average age of say 75, and add 70 years to that, that is 145 years. Basically and work of art created during my lifetime will never be available to me as a public domain work for me to enjoy or use as a base for my creative work.
Having such a long copyright actually creates less of an incentive for an artist to continue creating works since they can get very rich and milk one work of art until they die. By having a reasonable copyright of 10 - 20 years, that give the artist enough time to make a nice sum of money from the work and then it will encourage them to create again further enhancing the public domain.
This is the dumbest argument I have ever heard. If someone has a copyright and makes money from that copyright, what is wrong with leaving that money generated from the copyright to their children? So not only do can authors leave money from the copyrighted work, they can also leave the work to continue to benefit someone who was not the author of the work. Again, you are forgetting the intent of copyright. It is to create a limited monopoly for the author of a work. People are making billions off of copyrighted works, all those billions can be left to the authors children(s). No need to extend copyright past the life of an author. IMO, there is no need to extend copyright past 10 - 20 years.
I did just that (and have been advising against them ever since). That's quite a few less bucks in their pocket.
You not the only one who has done this : )
I have told all my non-geek family/extended family members that Lexmark sucks and not to buy one. Everyone I told this to has purchased an HP or an Epson which are just as competitive on price and did not try to abuse the DMCA.
Umm, what country are you from? In the USA, that was NEVER the intent of copyright. Copyrights intent is to create a LIMITED monopoly for the author of a work. The incentive to create comes from getting a LIMITED monopoly on a work and THEN having that work pass into the public domain, thus creating an incentive to CREATE AGAIN.
If Congress had written the DMCA to support this scenario, the court would probably have upheld it.
It is not the courts job to uphold laws written by congress. It is their job to determine if a "law" is constituional or not and then make their judgement. The DMCA forbids people TALKING about "curcumvention techniques". If I were to make a web page that only TALKS about how to break some crappy DRM, I would be guilty of a CRIME under the DMCA. It is REALLY sad when congress passes a law that is against our first amendment right.
I absolutely hate comments that state the purpose of the Legislative branch is to "uphold" laws written by congress. The Legislative branch is supposed to be the arbitrator of whether a law is Constitutional or not; if a law is Constitutional, then they should enforce that law.
I don't like the type of radio Stern does, however, he should be allowed on the air. If you don't like him (like me), then CHANGE THE STATION (like me). I don't see what is hard about it.
I fail to see any entertainment value in Mr. Stern other than pure shock value.
Notice the bolded I. That is YOUR opinion and it should have no weight on what the rest of the nation can or cannot hear. The same goes for the government. They should have no power to say what I cannot hear. I am a conservative Christian Libertarian (I am all messed up : ) and I think Stern should be allowed on the air. Let the MARKET choose if they want to hear him. If he has no listeners, then he has no commercials and goes off the air. No need for "Big Brother" to try and step in and tell us what is "right or wrong".
You're correct about the "limited" part (it's in the constitution) but do you have a citation regarding your "original" claim? In reading various histories of copyright law I can't find a reference to when the ability to transfer a copyright was added to the law. Chapter 2 of US copyright law is called "copyright owner and transfer" so I'm guessing that transferring has been part of the law since the early days; at least for the past 100 years or so. If you know differently, please englighten me.
I was not very clear about ORIGINAL. What I was meaning was to be based on the DATE for the ORIGINAL copyright holder. It doesn't matter if you tranfer a copyright 1,000 times. What matters is the corruption by allowing a corporation or an individual to hold a copyright for more then about 20 years or so. Life + 70 years is NOT a LIMITED time. To the copyright holder (the one that the life + 70 is based on), it is an unlimited time since they have the copyright for their WHOLE life, thus from the perpective of the copyright holder it is really unlimited and IMO unconstitutional.
Does it connect like regular Cable modem with a nic? This looks very, very cool, however I would need to be able to use it under Linux. My cable modem ISP is Brighthouse and they do not block any ports and it works with any OS that supports a nic. I pay $45 a month now for 2Mbs down and 512Kbs up. I would swith to this service in a heart beat if it interfaces to my coputer with a regualr ole nic.
Is the political system of the United States in such a state to be repaired back to the intentions set forth in the Constitution?
Sadly, no. It is just the Judicial Branch of government in the USA that still makes rulings to benefit "The People", the Legislative branch and Executive branch have sold out to big business a long, long time ago. The Judicial branch is all "We" have left. When Judicial branch goes south, it is time to get our rifles and charge the White House.
Slashdot Mirror
IMO, the Electoral rules should be that the two Senators have to vote by the majority of the popular vote of the whole state, while the members of Congress must vote based on the popular vote of their counties. This would make the election more fair IMO.
For example the state of Texas gave all Electoral votes to Bush, however Kerry had 30% or so of the popular vote and should have recieved 30% or so of the Electoral votes from Texas. In this election Bush would have won under these rules because of the 3 million+ popular votes he lead Kerry by.
I remember reading from some third party candidate on /. that voting for them would not lose the election for Kerry. However, I noticed on CNN the number of third party votes, especially in Ohio and Florida. If those third party votes went to Kerry, Kerry would have won Ohio and Florida and be president right now.
Bush won this election hands down, though I wonder if the rest of the world hates America right now?
Badnarik of the Libertarian Party
Where did I say that "prayer time" should be mandated? Boy do you have issues with reading comprehension!
I didn't know the teacher personally, my friend did. He was fired for reading his Bible. He was told it was inappropriate material for a school. He didn't file any lawsuit. He just got another job as a teacher at a differnt school.
Exactly where is freedom of religion in that?
I am a senior programmer for a fortune 500. We have a very liberal stance on religion. Basically, we don't' care what your religion is and we allow you to worship as you see fit. We have Christian bible studies that take place at work, as well as Muslim Koran studies, etc. These group meetings however are not done on corporate time, they must be done on your launch time. To me this is a very good policy. Who cares what any one person believes? As long as your beliefs do not try to stop me from my beliefs, we are all good : )
What is wrong with a few minutes to allow kids to pray or not to pray?
When I was in high school back in the late 1980's (I graduated in 1991), we had a history class that studied WORLD RELIGION. No one forced us to "worship" any God/god. We were just taught about various different religions, and IMO, it was an excellent class. If we are going to make a kids take a biology class, what is wrong with teaching a class on world religion (note: not any one specific religion)?
It is insane to try to deny the effect religion has had on the world over thousands of years affecting BILLIONS of people. To try to say that everyone should just forget about religion makes you sound like an idiot.
Government is trying to take freedom of religion away
Abortion is killing a human
I agree with these two issues. It seems as if the government is saying it is OK to worship Budda, Satan or anything else, however if you worship (the Christian) God it is somehow wrong and should not be allowed, especially in schools. Students should be allowed to worship or not worship whoever/whatever they choose.
I personally believe in _total_ freedom of religion in shcools. That means that a student is allowed to worship God, Budda, Satan, or no god at all. The government should keep their nose and opinion out of the matter.
The abortion issue is a tough one. I personally think that minors should be required to get their parents permission before an abortion (a minor is not allowed to get a tatoo, drink beer or smoke, yet they can kill a human child?). However, an adult should be allowed to choose. I am pro-life, yet believe in free choice. IMO, the choice to kill your unborn child is between you and God. I would never abort a child (I have two), yet it is not my position to tell anyone how to live.
The sad thing is that there are many "Christians" out there that think it is their purpose to inflict their morals on you and the rest of the world. I try to influence the community I live in in a moral way, yet I would never expect someone to live the way I do. As a programming geek and amatuer astronomer I am very scientifically oriented. However, I still have a very powerfull spiritual influencey of God.
I have probably gone on enough, however, I want to leave you with the thought of not lumping all Christians or people of religion into one group. Though I will agree with you that sadly the majority is probably how you describe them.
The only thing this could be used for would be to send a user to a p0rn site without them knowing.
I put a test page up. There are two spoof tests on the page. The latest version of Firefox is not affected by either of them if you left click the link. However, if you middle click the first spoof test, Firefox takes you to the wrong site.
In KDE, you can just keep adding protocol handlers and extend KDE's network awareness to infinity.
I do hope you are correct. I have heard far too many cases like you mention, though as you point out the media usually just gives the fact that "Corp X ejected a black|old|gay man|women" without givng the reason. It is one of the reason I don't watch the news any more.
Having such a long copyright actually creates less of an incentive for an artist to continue creating works since they can get very rich and milk one work of art until they die. By having a reasonable copyright of 10 - 20 years, that give the artist enough time to make a nice sum of money from the work and then it will encourage them to create again further enhancing the public domain.
This is the dumbest argument I have ever heard. If someone has a copyright and makes money from that copyright, what is wrong with leaving that money generated from the copyright to their children? So not only do can authors leave money from the copyrighted work, they can also leave the work to continue to benefit someone who was not the author of the work. Again, you are forgetting the intent of copyright. It is to create a limited monopoly for the author of a work. People are making billions off of copyrighted works, all those billions can be left to the authors children(s). No need to extend copyright past the life of an author. IMO, there is no need to extend copyright past 10 - 20 years.
I have told all my non-geek family/extended family members that Lexmark sucks and not to buy one. Everyone I told this to has purchased an HP or an Epson which are just as competitive on price and did not try to abuse the DMCA.
Umm, what country are you from? In the USA, that was NEVER the intent of copyright. Copyrights intent is to create a LIMITED monopoly for the author of a work. The incentive to create comes from getting a LIMITED monopoly on a work and THEN having that work pass into the public domain, thus creating an incentive to CREATE AGAIN.
I absolutely hate comments that state the purpose of the Legislative branch is to "uphold" laws written by congress. The Legislative branch is supposed to be the arbitrator of whether a law is Constitutional or not; if a law is Constitutional, then they should enforce that law.
I am a Libertarian brother : ) No Dubya for me, though sadly we may be stuck with him for another 4 years : (
Does it connect like regular Cable modem with a nic? This looks very, very cool, however I would need to be able to use it under Linux. My cable modem ISP is Brighthouse and they do not block any ports and it works with any OS that supports a nic. I pay $45 a month now for 2Mbs down and 512Kbs up. I would swith to this service in a heart beat if it interfaces to my coputer with a regualr ole nic.