How can people honestly believe that a modern government could harbour ANY kind of conspiracy given that they can't even keep the affair of a President with an intern secret??
It took what, $40,000,000 and three years to nail that one down? I'd say that example goes directly against your point.
If Nixon had been able to put these changes in place, we never would have had access to those tapes. In fact, if he were alive now, he could get them all back.
I'll only address your first point, as I'm unfamiliar with the second situation. The unconstitutionality arises because while student participation was voluntary, the *teachers* were *obligated* to lead the class in the 1950s version of the Pledge. This is an authority figure, an agent of the government, endorsing a particular religious viewpoint to impressionable children, and therefore constitutes an establishment of religion.
Personally, I don't see what's the big deal with going back to the original wording. I haven't heard anyone object to that version. The "under God" phrase simply adds divisiveness to a Pledge that is supposed to support an "indivisible" nation.
I'm waiting for the chilling effect. So far I've kept nice and cosy with the DMCA around.
I'll take the bait...
When a graduate student
is afraid to present a paper, I shiver. The fact that MicroSoft, for whatever reason, chose not to actively oppose the paper is good, but the fact that the college was worried to that extent was a perfect example of chilling effect.
There was also Bruce Perens having to withdraw a demonstration because HP was afraid of the repercussions. That's free speech which was curtailed by the chilling effect of the DMCA.
There are more, but that should be enough to show that a chilling effect exists.
Spammers use an incredibly high percentages of shared resources (those thousands of lines of Bcc:'s don't just transmit themselves, after all), and I don't think that ISPs should be made to host them, and really doubt the constitutionality of such a law.
There is no constitutionality issue if ISPs are declared common carriers, like phone companies are. (Phone companies are prohibited from denying service to any customer as long as the customer doesn't use the service in an illegal way.) As for the bandwidth hogging, there's nothing stopping the ISPs from using tiered usage pricing.
"Americans" come from America which happens to be a couple of continents containing dozens of countries ALL of whom can and do identify themselves as "Americans" - and in fact many are offended when citizens of the USA claim that title for just themselves - it's sort of the worst sort of cultural imperialism - taking someone's identity.
You must be from outside the Americas. I've discussed this issue with dozens of Canadians, ten or so Mexicans, four Brazilians, two Argentinans and a Peruvian. (I'm meeting a Venezuelan this afternoon, I'll add her to the collection, but I really doubt she'll shift the demographic.)
NONE of those people have ever referred to themselves simply as Americans - North Americans, South Americans, Central Americans and even Latin Americans, but not "Americans".
ALL of them refer to citizens of the USA as "Americans". Not one has ever used USian or UnitedStatesian in normal conversation, though one of the Canadians occasionally likes to use USian in online discussion "just to get Americans' goats". One of the Mexicans pointed out that Mexico also consists of United States (i.e. it's the United States of Mexico).
NONE of them feel in the least offended by the common use of "American" to refer to USA citizens.
I suppose it's possible that these people aren't typical, and that the majority of Pan-American people who aren't from the USA bitterly resent having to use a prefix in order to be identified with the two continents as a unit, but I doubt it.
I suspect that terms like USian are normally only used by people from outside the Americas who want to be PC, and only in venues where citziens of the USA are likely to be among the audience. I have never heard a citizen of Great Britain, for example, when speaking to another GBian, refer to a USian. They're either Yanks, or they're (gasp!) Americans.
Re:Benchmark restrictions invalid: WORKAROUND
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 1
Fortunately shield laws are not restricted to major newspapers. Any periodical journal has the same rights. Start a genuine small-circulation computer magazine of your own (I'd recommend actual paper, Webzines are a murkier area just yet).
It was a voice vote, unfortunately, so there's no record of individual votes. The best bet is to write and ask how they voted; if they don't reply, assume they voted for it. That's not unreasonable, since silence in the voting would have the same effect as a yea.
Being in SC, I don't have to wonder about my Senators (of course, Strom is retiring anyway). I don't seem to be having much luck getting a reply or even an acknowledgement from my Representative, either, though he's happy to send me plenty of generic "Dear Constituent, vote for me" postcards (why not, I'm paying the postage).
So it's easy for me, I'm voting for the non-incumbents (no, I won't be voting for any third party candidates this time, not for Federal positions anyway - it's hard enough to shift incumbents around here). I'm campaigning hard against Fritz, encouraging all my friends to vote for anyone opposing him.
Still, I'd rather just get the stupid DMCA repealed by the legislature, if we can only get enough of them in who have a clue (and boot the clueless ones out).
And kudos to Bruce, who I'm sure had something to do with the quick turnaround. You da man!
I don't think the current state of affairs would surprise the Founders all that much.
No, that's why they worked so hard on checks and balances. They knew perfectly well that even good governmental systems tend to get out of whack with time, tending either toward excessively strong government (aka tyranny) or excessively weak government (anarchy), neither of which is optimal for ensuring the well-being of the governed.
They'd probably be more surprised the system works at all after two-and-a-quarter centuries across an entire continent.
Strictly speaking, most of a continent.;)
Or most of the planet, depending on your point of view...
To bring this to it's logical end by invoking the "nazi" clause: just because the bill to gather up the jews and the bill to gas those gathered might be seperate pieces of legislation doesn't mean they aren't related.
From the Jargon file: However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
I'll have no problem, and never will, playing my 16mm film in my 16mm projector that I create myself. I guess I just can't create digital distributions.
Then comes the legislation to "plug the analog hole" and a 16mm camera is legally reclassified as a "copyright circumvention device."
Open disobedience was used... to protest the British Tea Tax
Bad example, though the other two fit. The infamous Boston Tea Party was conducted under cover of night by guys disguised as American Indians. I don't recall reading of any other more open disobedience either.
Not arguing your main point, though, just being a pedant.
What this is really about is trying to get content, which costs money to produce, for free. Not a great poster child for civil disobedience. I find it hard to imagine freedom of speech covers training people to pirate copyrighted content.
A NOTA vote would be far preferable to spoiling a ballot, IMHO. In the event of a recount, there wouldn't be any "Is that a smudge, or did the voter mean to vote for X but had a bad pencil?"
The machine could be configured to spit out completely blank ballots; if your intent is to vote for NOTA, you have to say so unambiguously. That way only ballots which are sufficiently clear to be read by the machine are accepted.
It's incredible that these people are spending $3500 a machine for less definite results.
We had a divisive election with a highly questionable result because the paper ballots were difficult to audit, due to their marking mechanisms sometimes being indistinct. To solve the problem, they replace the sometimes indistinct paper ballots with completely invisible electronic ones that can't be audited at all? This sets a new standard in stupidity.
There are situations where electronics aren't appropriate. In a voting system you should have hard physical evidence of how many votes were cast for each person, so that recounts can be performed in close elections. Anonymity is a desirable quality in a ballot, but intangibility is not. If the chad-punching wasn't effective, then a method for unambiguously marking a ballot is needed. Replacing it with a system like this is simply begging for trouble.
I can only hope that both Bushes lose their elections by some tiny number of votes cast on these machines. We'll see the black boxes taken apart then, I guarantee it.
You're assuming that the Chinese OS will be open source. They haven't said it will be based on Linux, that was speculation.
For that matter, if they're willing to violate Microsoft's patents and/or copyrights (not that they've said they'll do that either) what's to stop them from taking a cavalier attitude toward the GPL?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but that really was a silly question.
It took what, $40,000,000 and three years to nail that one down? I'd say that example goes directly against your point.
If Nixon had been able to put these changes in place, we never would have had access to those tapes. In fact, if he were alive now, he could get them all back.
Of course everyone else is thinking the same thing... my brother had a dog named Fido. It was the only dog named Fido I ever met.
Personally, I don't see what's the big deal with going back to the original wording. I haven't heard anyone object to that version. The "under God" phrase simply adds divisiveness to a Pledge that is supposed to support an "indivisible" nation.
I'll take the bait...
When a graduate student is afraid to present a paper, I shiver. The fact that MicroSoft, for whatever reason, chose not to actively oppose the paper is good, but the fact that the college was worried to that extent was a perfect example of chilling effect.
There was also Bruce Perens having to withdraw a demonstration because HP was afraid of the repercussions. That's free speech which was curtailed by the chilling effect of the DMCA.
There are more, but that should be enough to show that a chilling effect exists.
I wonder if this explains why John Savage was forced to pull back his Slashdot interview.
There is no constitutionality issue if ISPs are declared common carriers, like phone companies are. (Phone companies are prohibited from denying service to any customer as long as the customer doesn't use the service in an illegal way.) As for the bandwidth hogging, there's nothing stopping the ISPs from using tiered usage pricing.
You must be from outside the Americas. I've discussed this issue with dozens of Canadians, ten or so Mexicans, four Brazilians, two Argentinans and a Peruvian. (I'm meeting a Venezuelan this afternoon, I'll add her to the collection, but I really doubt she'll shift the demographic.)
NONE of those people have ever referred to themselves simply as Americans - North Americans, South Americans, Central Americans and even Latin Americans, but not "Americans".
ALL of them refer to citizens of the USA as "Americans". Not one has ever used USian or UnitedStatesian in normal conversation, though one of the Canadians occasionally likes to use USian in online discussion "just to get Americans' goats". One of the Mexicans pointed out that Mexico also consists of United States (i.e. it's the United States of Mexico).
NONE of them feel in the least offended by the common use of "American" to refer to USA citizens.
I suppose it's possible that these people aren't typical, and that the majority of Pan-American people who aren't from the USA bitterly resent having to use a prefix in order to be identified with the two continents as a unit, but I doubt it.
I suspect that terms like USian are normally only used by people from outside the Americas who want to be PC, and only in venues where citziens of the USA are likely to be among the audience. I have never heard a citizen of Great Britain, for example, when speaking to another GBian, refer to a USian. They're either Yanks, or they're (gasp!) Americans.
Fortunately shield laws are not restricted to major newspapers. Any periodical journal has the same rights. Start a genuine small-circulation computer magazine of your own (I'd recommend actual paper, Webzines are a murkier area just yet).
If your HD crashes and you can't replace it for a while you will not be able to run SuSE Live Eval, but you will be able to run Knoppix.
I'm printing this out and pinning it up over the desk for easy reference - thanks!
As I said in my other reply, this was a voice vote so the 99-0 is a bit misleading.
Being in SC, I don't have to wonder about my Senators (of course, Strom is retiring anyway). I don't seem to be having much luck getting a reply or even an acknowledgement from my Representative, either, though he's happy to send me plenty of generic "Dear Constituent, vote for me" postcards (why not, I'm paying the postage).
So it's easy for me, I'm voting for the non-incumbents (no, I won't be voting for any third party candidates this time, not for Federal positions anyway - it's hard enough to shift incumbents around here). I'm campaigning hard against Fritz, encouraging all my friends to vote for anyone opposing him.
Still, I'd rather just get the stupid DMCA repealed by the legislature, if we can only get enough of them in who have a clue (and boot the clueless ones out).
And kudos to Bruce, who I'm sure had something to do with the quick turnaround. You da man!
No, that's why they worked so hard on checks and balances. They knew perfectly well that even good governmental systems tend to get out of whack with time, tending either toward excessively strong government (aka tyranny) or excessively weak government (anarchy), neither of which is optimal for ensuring the well-being of the governed.
They'd probably be more surprised the system works at all after two-and-a-quarter centuries across an entire continent.
Strictly speaking, most of a continent. ;)
Or most of the planet, depending on your point of view...
Which shall I write to first?
From the Jargon file: However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
I'm registered, I'm waiting for the elections... not that it did me much good last time.
Then comes the legislation to "plug the analog hole" and a 16mm camera is legally reclassified as a "copyright circumvention device."
Bad example, though the other two fit. The infamous Boston Tea Party was conducted under cover of night by guys disguised as American Indians. I don't recall reading of any other more open disobedience either.
Not arguing your main point, though, just being a pedant.
They're made by Western Digital, not Maxtor. The title was a typo.
RTFA. Mr. Perens purchased the DVDs in question.
The machine could be configured to spit out completely blank ballots; if your intent is to vote for NOTA, you have to say so unambiguously. That way only ballots which are sufficiently clear to be read by the machine are accepted.
It's incredible that these people are spending $3500 a machine for less definite results.
There are situations where electronics aren't appropriate. In a voting system you should have hard physical evidence of how many votes were cast for each person, so that recounts can be performed in close elections. Anonymity is a desirable quality in a ballot, but intangibility is not. If the chad-punching wasn't effective, then a method for unambiguously marking a ballot is needed. Replacing it with a system like this is simply begging for trouble.
I can only hope that both Bushes lose their elections by some tiny number of votes cast on these machines. We'll see the black boxes taken apart then, I guarantee it.
For that matter, if they're willing to violate Microsoft's patents and/or copyrights (not that they've said they'll do that either) what's to stop them from taking a cavalier attitude toward the GPL?