The government CANNOT stop you from saying whatever the hell you want to.
Sure they can. They do it all the time. There are many examples of governments that kill their own citizens when they say something the government doesn't like. That shuts up most people.
How do they handle ILLs when they cross provincial boundries? Is a copy of every science journal ever printed available somewhere in Saskatchewan? Of course OCLC has competitors for many of its services -- Those upstarts at the LOC and the Bibliotheque nationale de France among them. But I doubt they worry too much about Saskatchewan.
I obviously can't speak for them, but I can provide some background on what they do. OCLC is a nonprofit org providing services for approx 45,000 libraries around the world. If you are a librarian and need to figure out how to catalog a new book in your collection, you go to OCLC to see how others have done it. Ever needed an item that wasn't in your library? OCLC handles the system for arranging inter-library loans. They do a fair amount of original research for libraries and they even open source some of the results. PURL is another OCLC project that some of you may be familiar with. The Dublin Core MetaData Initiative was co-founded by a researcher who got his start at OCLC and is now running the W3C's Symantic Web Initiaitve. OCLC is very well known and respected in the library community.
Library budgets the world over are under attack given the current economic situation. This leaves less and less money available for building the kind of common infrastructure that will help libraries continue to provide new and relevant services for their patrons as more and more of the content becomes digital. OCLC certainly has both the right and the need to defend the Dewey Decimal Trademarks from infringers.
In India, South Africa and US the movements all used violence to achieve their aims.
Bull Fscking Shit! Small loony segements of these movements used violence (India and US - Don't know enough about SA). They were roundly condemned by the largest mainstream and achieved nothing.
All goverments are based on authority through violence.
No. Democratic governments derive their authority from the consent of their own people. If their people did not believe in them, then no amount of violence on the part of the gov't would enable that gov't to continue to exist.
When you attack people they will reprise.
Oh, by the way, I think you should go and research what an agnostic is before declaring yourself as one.
You should learn how to pick the correct word yourself before throwing stones at others. The grandparent posters seems to have a pretty good grasp of what an agnostic is while you have zero idea what the word reprise means.
Ok. Under Reagan, inflation recovered from the Jimmy Carter mess very quickly, and remained very low for the rest of the 80's bottoming out at 1.86% in 1986, so inflation didn't play a very big roll in that (source).
Wasn't Reagan that did that, it was Fed Chairman Paul Volker, a Carter appointee, who drastically cut growth in the money supply. Inflation had been building in the system due to Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter all running deficits while the Fed played fast and loose with the money supply.
I contend that the Reagan supply side economics helped the economy grow.
Probably did as much damage, long term, as help. You won't be getting as much Social Security. What the deficits did then and do now is allow this generation to spend profligately while making our children pay the bill. But then, how young are you? Maybe that's not such a bad idea...
Actually, public debt as a % of the GDP was higher under Clinton than under Reagan (source).
Actually, those figures you cited are mostly Bush I administration. The numbers only go to 1995 and do not include the surpluses generated in the later years of the Clinton administration.
The defense spending invested heavily in technology, and that helped the hi tech industries grow.
Mr. Cato Institute man, you can't have it both ways. Why do you believe the Defense Dept is better at picking high tech winners than private industry? Shouldn't DARPA funds be cut and the taxes returned to hard working Americans who will let good ol' capitalism sort out the winning ideas from the losers? Or do you only apply your Libertarian notions to gov't departments that you don't like?
If you carefully read the Cato cruft, it is easy to see that they have artfully defined each of their measures to show their guy (Reagan) in the best light. But the measures are usually falaciacious. Why so is left as an excercise for the student since I have to go to work early to hang onto the job I am lucky enough to still have under the Bush II administration.
I gave up on trying to use GnuCash long ago due to the impossibility of compiling it, and getting it to run.
Yes. I am an economist turned coder. I understand investment theory and accounting, I've been building enterprise software for the past decade, and I have been looking for a finance/accounting project to hack on in order to add support for high-end investment management problems. GNU/Cash seemed ideal until I tried to build it. Bah! These guys don't seem to have any real experience with software design of medium sized systems.
GC needs to broken up into smaller pieces that can be independently studied and built with limited dependencies on external packages. I should be able to build a command line accounting system using a base set of transaction libraries without needing to have much else installed except the libs and precompiler for my chosen backend database. Same for reports. They should need only the db support libs and an XML lib for parsing XML defined reports. Everything else is just GUI convenience or eye candy.
Horses and donkeys are separate species but they can still produce offspring called mules. The test is whether they can produce fertile offspring. Mules are usually sterile due to different numbers of chromosomes between donkeys and horses that kill the reproductive cells in the hybrid.
Ya gotta be pretty far out there on the hard core right to believe that Clinton was a left-wing president. You can't get elected once, let alone twice, as U.S. President if you are truly left wing. Clinton-Gore centrism was the reason that much of the left wanted to desert Gore for the Green Party in 2000.
There are many centrists (it ain't just the lefties) who believe that Bush did not win the election but was instead appointed by the Supreme Court. Remember, Gore won more votes nationally than did Bush. The Florida vote system was such a mess that we will never really know who won that state. In the end, the Supreme Court made a decision backed by an arbitrary but not unreasonable interpretation of what was fair.
They think that the Constitutional election process is only OK if it produces a left-wing president like Clinton. If it produces a centrist or right-wing President, it can be ignored at will.
They (the looney right) think that the Constitutional election process is only OK if it produces a right-wing president like Bush. If it produces a centrist or left-wing President, it can be ignored at will. This is why they attempted to impeach Clinton and why they are trying to recall Davis.
in Ohio (answers may vary by state?). Company went into Chapter 11. Code to an enterprise workflow system was sold by the bancruptcy atty to the founder for $1,000. You need to get hold of the atty who is handling the bancruptcy and make them an offer.
Code is an interesting case when assets are sold. Normally, a physical object can only be sold once. But rights to code could potentially be sold many times. Selling it many times may diminsh the value to each buyer. If you wish to Open Source the code, this might exacerbate the value decline if there are other interested buyers so you will have to be careful about exactly what rights you will have. As always, consult an atty.
To follow up, it has been pointed out that when the Nile floods (pre Aswan), much of the farmland remains under water for several months before it can be planted. This creats a large pool of available labor to do the work.
In fact Nehru thought that India and China had a lot in common and was quite shocked when Mao took some strategic hills from India a few years after China conquered India.
Tibet has been an independent country (even an empire at times) in Central Asia since about 1000 BCE. Tibet was taken over by the Chinese with help from the British in 1904. Go read up on Col. Younghusband's expedition. Basically, Tibet got caught in the middle of the "Great Game" between the British Indian Empire and the expansionist Russian Czars. The Chinese persuaded the Brits that Tibet was theirs. The Brits were happy to go along because the Chinese were a friendly semi-puppet of the West as a result of the Opium Wars. Tibet appeared to be talking with the Russian Czar, something the Brits could not tolerate. Tibet threw out the Chinese and restored their sovereignty after the Chinese revolution of 1911.
It was the CIA which was at least partly responsible for the 1959 problems. They were smuggling guns into Tibet with the help of the Nepalese. But giving guns to people who have such a reverence for life that they don't want to harm earthworms while digging irrigation trenches is not exactly a recipe for a successful revolution.
The Chinese did a rather thorough job of destroying Tibetan culture during the Cultural Revolution. Most of the monasteries were sacked, libraries burned, etc. Anyone trekking on the North side of Mt Everest can see the remnants of the Rongbuk Monastery for themselves. The Tibetans were forced to grow wheat in place of their native barley resulting in a bad famine during the 1960s[1]. The Chinese are currently moving large numbers of non-Tibetans into Tibet in order to reinforce their claims to Tibet by eventually dwarfing the native population.
Yes, Tibet was an oligarchical theocracy before the Chinese invaded. Funny how the senior lamas always seemed to be reincarnated into the upper crust families. But that is true today, too. Its just that the oligarchy is living in Bejing and the theology is now Communism (or whatever is left of it). Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Oh, and India was one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, quite friendly with the Soviet Union and not all that pro Western. In fact Nehru thought that India and China had a lot in common and was quite shocked when Mao took some strategic hills from India a few years after China conquered India.
[1] If you ever get into the Himalayas, check out the native barley beer known as chang. It is unfiltered, so you'll find the dregs floating in your cup. At 12,000+ ft altitudes it'll get you quite toasted quite fast.
What OSS needs, then, is a large benefactor (say, IBM) to step forward and tell MS that they will not cross-license their patents unless MS agrees that OSS projects may use them as well.
Excellent analysis of patents-as-oligopoly-protectors. I'm going to have to look through the economics lit and see what papers there are that describe this kind of system. Maybe there are other remedies for this problem.
Everytime is a pivotal time. There is always turmoil going on. Things always get worse before they get better. People are always apathetic. Corporations have been reaming us up the ass since the East India Company (or whatever the first joint stock company was) was formed.
The willingness to gather together for some inane fun is a great, great thing. Maybe these folks can think of some ways all of this activity can be used to bring some silliness into the world. That's all I wonder about.
After the economy turns around, everyone can go back to saving the world... okay...?
there is even a requirement in the laws establishing the interstate system that a certen persentage of the interstates be totaly strate and flat so that they can be used as runways in times of war.
Wonder how they dealt with this requirement in West Virginia?
That's how all PhD theses get started. Sure, by the time you are ready to apply for a grant or get your committee's approval for the topic, the idea is a little better stated, but this guy just needs training in how to get there, not a bitchslap that makes him forever afraid of trying on new ideas for size.
And to get it you HAVE to give them your name, address, phone number, date of birth, sex, etc. Which they have of me, just not the correct ones;)
That works only if you pay cash for every purchase. As soon as you use your debit/credit card, they can match a real name with that discount card. Its a real pickle of a problem. I don't want them amassing all that data on me either, but tonight we are having salmon that was marked $25 for a whole fish w/out the card and $5 with the card.
The problem with most 2nd Amendment folks is that they forget that it starts "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." and think that the Amendment implies that gov't cannot regulate anything about gun ownership.
2nd Amendment fanatics typically do not know their history very well. The vast majority of citizens in Colonial America did not own guns. Guns were hand made and quite expensive at the time of the American Revolution. As a result, all of the colonies were faced with critical shortages of arms and ammunition during the first years of the war. Also, the Continental Army came very, very close to a coup d'etat after the war when the Continental Congress could not pay the officers and men what they were owed for their service. It was averted at the last moment by Washington who gave a tearful address to the officers begging them not to. These experiences with a lack of preparation for defense and distrust of a standing army led the feds to pass the 2nd Amendment in 1791 and The Militia Act of 1792 which required all able bodied men, 18-45, to serve in their local militia and provide their own weapons and equipment. The problem with the act was that most people do not want to be forced to serve in an army of any kind and by the 1830s, most people were regularly dodging the requirement. Gun ownership in America really only got started after the Civil War when many returning soldiers were allowed to take their guns home with them. It was at this point that the myth that America had always been defended by heavily armed individual citizens began. The myth was eventually perverted into the notion that the 2nd Amendment was written as a protection for individuals and not an attempt to create a gov't regulated alternative to a standing army.
Your comment is funny. The situation is not, though. This has been the case with congress-critturs for a decade or more as well. They get paper mail, faxes, what-have-you and sort them into two piles for each major issue (pro or con) and then measure the height of those piles. If the content is too complex to interpret quickly, it is junked.
Your comment is nonsense. I've worked on Capital Hill and the situation is the exact opposite of what you describe. Hand written, complex letters get the best treatment. The fact that a constituent spent the time to hand-craft a letter is a good indication that the author is quite apt to both vote and potentially influence others to vote. These guys get a special response. Now the response may, in one sense, be canned. Most Congresspeople have a set of docs on their machines from which they can copy and paste, but some staff member will take the time to look up the answer and pull in the correct paragraphs to provide an in-depth answer to your concern. Further, if the issue is somewhat under the radar, such a letter may well have a disproportionate influence on the voting decisions of the Member or Senator. Two or three hand-crafted letters may be all that it takes to get you rep to vote your way.
The all-alike canned letter gets the least attention and is least likely to have any effect on the Congressperson. It is simply too easy to give a signature for a nice sounding petition or canned letter solicited by a paid operative in front of your local grocery. The signer was given a 10 second one-sided intro to what is probably a very complex issue and will probably will never remember they signed it anyway. They'll get a response that says "Thank you for writing, now go away and have a nice day."
It was Truman. The White House at the time was in very bad need of serious restoration. IIRC, at some point, the residence floor had been mucked with by adding iron supports that were too heavy for the lower structure and the building was in danger of collapse.
Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law.
The FCC passed rules on this several years ago. The intent was to deregulate cable set-top box ownership in the same way telephone handset ownership was deregulated.
In Section 629 of the Communications Act. Congress directed the FCC to adopt rules that would allow consumers to obtain "navigation devices," such as cable set-top boxes, remote control units and other equipment, from commercial sources other than their cable providers. In 1998, the Commission adopted navigation device rules with the intent of improving consumer choice by fostering a competitive retail market for this equipment and said that it would monitor the development of the commercial availability of navigation devices and commence a proceeding in the year 2000 to review the effectiveness of the rules and consider any necessary changes.
I still have the disks I used for my first Linux install. Can't recall what the labels mean and doubt the disks are still readable, but they are labeled SLS A1.3, A2 - A4, SLS B1 - B7, SLS C1 - C3, SLS D1 - D2, SLS S1, SLS T1 - T3. A total of 20 1.44 floppies. Ran these on a 25mhz 386sx w/ 9 MB RAM and a 100 MB disk. SLS A1.3 claims to using kernel 0.99pl11. These must have been done right about the time Slackware forked off from the SLS dist.
Maybe I'll try and auction them off on ebay and see if they are worth a six pack of beer. Then I'll have beer that is free-as-in-Linux.
As for the rest, I pity you, you poor, unhappy, angry person.
Poor? No, I'm doing far better than most, thank you. Unhappy? No, I thoroughly enjoy my life and my friends. Angry? Damn straight! I've lived through Watergate and Iran Contra. Now we have an administration that looks like its combining elements of both. Steals the election and lies to the public about foreign policy in order to overcome sensible objections to its policies.
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The government CANNOT stop you from saying whatever the hell you want to.
Sure they can. They do it all the time. There are many examples of governments that kill their own citizens when they say something the government doesn't like. That shuts up most people.
How do they handle ILLs when they cross provincial boundries? Is a copy of every science journal ever printed available somewhere in Saskatchewan? Of course OCLC has competitors for many of its services -- Those upstarts at the LOC and the Bibliotheque nationale de France among them. But I doubt they worry too much about Saskatchewan.
I obviously can't speak for them, but I can provide some background on what they do. OCLC is a nonprofit org providing services for approx 45,000 libraries around the world. If you are a librarian and need to figure out how to catalog a new book in your collection, you go to OCLC to see how others have done it. Ever needed an item that wasn't in your library? OCLC handles the system for arranging inter-library loans. They do a fair amount of original research for libraries and they even open source some of the results. PURL is another OCLC project that some of you may be familiar with. The Dublin Core MetaData Initiative was co-founded by a researcher who got his start at OCLC and is now running the W3C's Symantic Web Initiaitve. OCLC is very well known and respected in the library community.
Library budgets the world over are under attack given the current economic situation. This leaves less and less money available for building the kind of common infrastructure that will help libraries continue to provide new and relevant services for their patrons as more and more of the content becomes digital. OCLC certainly has both the right and the need to defend the Dewey Decimal Trademarks from infringers.
In India, South Africa and US the movements all used violence to achieve their aims.
Bull Fscking Shit! Small loony segements of these movements used violence (India and US - Don't know enough about SA). They were roundly condemned by the largest mainstream and achieved nothing.
All goverments are based on authority through violence.
No. Democratic governments derive their authority from the consent of their own people. If their people did not believe in them, then no amount of violence on the part of the gov't would enable that gov't to continue to exist.
When you attack people they will reprise.
Oh, by the way, I think you should go and research what an agnostic is before declaring yourself as one.
You should learn how to pick the correct word yourself before throwing stones at others. The grandparent posters seems to have a pretty good grasp of what an agnostic is while you have zero idea what the word reprise means.
Ok. Under Reagan, inflation recovered from the Jimmy Carter mess very quickly, and remained very low for the rest of the 80's bottoming out at 1.86% in 1986, so inflation didn't play a very big roll in that (source).
Wasn't Reagan that did that, it was Fed Chairman Paul Volker, a Carter appointee, who drastically cut growth in the money supply. Inflation had been building in the system due to Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter all running deficits while the Fed played fast and loose with the money supply.
I contend that the Reagan supply side economics helped the economy grow.
Probably did as much damage, long term, as help. You won't be getting as much Social Security. What the deficits did then and do now is allow this generation to spend profligately while making our children pay the bill. But then, how young are you? Maybe that's not such a bad idea...
Actually, public debt as a % of the GDP was higher under Clinton than under Reagan (source).
Actually, those figures you cited are mostly Bush I administration. The numbers only go to 1995 and do not include the surpluses generated in the later years of the Clinton administration.
The defense spending invested heavily in technology, and that helped the hi tech industries grow.
Mr. Cato Institute man, you can't have it both ways. Why do you believe the Defense Dept is better at picking high tech winners than private industry? Shouldn't DARPA funds be cut and the taxes returned to hard working Americans who will let good ol' capitalism sort out the winning ideas from the losers? Or do you only apply your Libertarian notions to gov't departments that you don't like?
If you carefully read the Cato cruft, it is easy to see that they have artfully defined each of their measures to show their guy (Reagan) in the best light. But the measures are usually falaciacious. Why so is left as an excercise for the student since I have to go to work early to hang onto the job I am lucky enough to still have under the Bush II administration.
I gave up on trying to use GnuCash long ago due to the impossibility of compiling it, and getting it to run.
Yes. I am an economist turned coder. I understand investment theory and accounting, I've been building enterprise software for the past decade, and I have been looking for a finance/accounting project to hack on in order to add support for high-end investment management problems. GNU/Cash seemed ideal until I tried to build it. Bah! These guys don't seem to have any real experience with software design of medium sized systems.
GC needs to broken up into smaller pieces that can be independently studied and built with limited dependencies on external packages. I should be able to build a command line accounting system using a base set of transaction libraries without needing to have much else installed except the libs and precompiler for my chosen backend database. Same for reports. They should need only the db support libs and an XML lib for parsing XML defined reports. Everything else is just GUI convenience or eye candy.
Horses and donkeys are separate species but they can still produce offspring called mules. The test is whether they can produce fertile offspring. Mules are usually sterile due to different numbers of chromosomes between donkeys and horses that kill the reproductive cells in the hybrid.
Ya gotta be pretty far out there on the hard core right to believe that Clinton was a left-wing president. You can't get elected once, let alone twice, as U.S. President if you are truly left wing. Clinton-Gore centrism was the reason that much of the left wanted to desert Gore for the Green Party in 2000.
There are many centrists (it ain't just the lefties) who believe that Bush did not win the election but was instead appointed by the Supreme Court. Remember, Gore won more votes nationally than did Bush. The Florida vote system was such a mess that we will never really know who won that state. In the end, the Supreme Court made a decision backed by an arbitrary but not unreasonable interpretation of what was fair.
They think that the Constitutional election process is only OK if it produces a left-wing president like Clinton. If it produces a centrist or right-wing President, it can be ignored at will.
They (the looney right) think that the Constitutional election process is only OK if it produces a right-wing president like Bush. If it produces a centrist or left-wing President, it can be ignored at will. This is why they attempted to impeach Clinton and why they are trying to recall Davis.
in Ohio (answers may vary by state?). Company went into Chapter 11. Code to an enterprise workflow system was sold by the bancruptcy atty to the founder for $1,000. You need to get hold of the atty who is handling the bancruptcy and make them an offer.
Code is an interesting case when assets are sold. Normally, a physical object can only be sold once. But rights to code could potentially be sold many times. Selling it many times may diminsh the value to each buyer. If you wish to Open Source the code, this might exacerbate the value decline if there are other interested buyers so you will have to be careful about exactly what rights you will have. As always, consult an atty.
To follow up, it has been pointed out that when the Nile floods (pre Aswan), much of the farmland remains under water for several months before it can be planted. This creats a large pool of available labor to do the work.
Oops, er, before anyone else says WTF?
In fact Nehru thought that India and China had a lot in common and was quite shocked when Mao took some strategic hills from India a few years after China conquered India.
I meant, of course, after China conquered Tibet.
Better check your "facts."
Tibet has been an independent country (even an empire at times) in Central Asia since about 1000 BCE. Tibet was taken over by the Chinese with help from the British in 1904. Go read up on Col. Younghusband's expedition. Basically, Tibet got caught in the middle of the "Great Game" between the British Indian Empire and the expansionist Russian Czars. The Chinese persuaded the Brits that Tibet was theirs. The Brits were happy to go along because the Chinese were a friendly semi-puppet of the West as a result of the Opium Wars. Tibet appeared to be talking with the Russian Czar, something the Brits could not tolerate. Tibet threw out the Chinese and restored their sovereignty after the Chinese revolution of 1911.
It was the CIA which was at least partly responsible for the 1959 problems. They were smuggling guns into Tibet with the help of the Nepalese. But giving guns to people who have such a reverence for life that they don't want to harm earthworms while digging irrigation trenches is not exactly a recipe for a successful revolution.
The Chinese did a rather thorough job of destroying Tibetan culture during the Cultural Revolution. Most of the monasteries were sacked, libraries burned, etc. Anyone trekking on the North side of Mt Everest can see the remnants of the Rongbuk Monastery for themselves. The Tibetans were forced to grow wheat in place of their native barley resulting in a bad famine during the 1960s[1]. The Chinese are currently moving large numbers of non-Tibetans into Tibet in order to reinforce their claims to Tibet by eventually dwarfing the native population.
Yes, Tibet was an oligarchical theocracy before the Chinese invaded. Funny how the senior lamas always seemed to be reincarnated into the upper crust families. But that is true today, too. Its just that the oligarchy is living in Bejing and the theology is now Communism (or whatever is left of it). Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Oh, and India was one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, quite friendly with the Soviet Union and not all that pro Western. In fact Nehru thought that India and China had a lot in common and was quite shocked when Mao took some strategic hills from India a few years after China conquered India.
[1] If you ever get into the Himalayas, check out the native barley beer known as chang. It is unfiltered, so you'll find the dregs floating in your cup. At 12,000+ ft altitudes it'll get you quite toasted quite fast.
What OSS needs, then, is a large benefactor (say, IBM) to step forward and tell MS that they will not cross-license their patents unless MS agrees that OSS projects may use them as well.
Excellent analysis of patents-as-oligopoly-protectors. I'm going to have to look through the economics lit and see what papers there are that describe this kind of system. Maybe there are other remedies for this problem.
Everytime is a pivotal time. There is always turmoil going on. Things always get worse before they get better. People are always apathetic. Corporations have been reaming us up the ass since the East India Company (or whatever the first joint stock company was) was formed.
The willingness to gather together for some inane fun is a great, great thing. Maybe these folks can think of some ways all of this activity can be used to bring some silliness into the world. That's all I wonder about.
After the economy turns around, everyone can go back to saving the world... okay...?
there is even a requirement in the laws establishing the interstate system that a certen persentage of the interstates be totaly strate and flat so that they can be used as runways in times of war.
Wonder how they dealt with this requirement in West Virginia?
Very few corporations rely on Linux for what ammounts to extorsion. SCO is certainly one of those.
That's how all PhD theses get started. Sure, by the time you are ready to apply for a grant or get your committee's approval for the topic, the idea is a little better stated, but this guy just needs training in how to get there, not a bitchslap that makes him forever afraid of trying on new ideas for size.
Well least there is no marketing dept so OSS projects don't get stupid names like scoop :)
No, instead they all get the same name, like Firebird.
And to get it you HAVE to give them your name, address, phone number, date of birth, sex, etc. Which they have of me, just not the correct ones ;)
That works only if you pay cash for every purchase. As soon as you use your debit/credit card, they can match a real name with that discount card. Its a real pickle of a problem. I don't want them amassing all that data on me either, but tonight we are having salmon that was marked $25 for a whole fish w/out the card and $5 with the card.
The problem with most 2nd Amendment folks is that they forget that it starts "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." and think that the Amendment implies that gov't cannot regulate anything about gun ownership.
2nd Amendment fanatics typically do not know their history very well. The vast majority of citizens in Colonial America did not own guns. Guns were hand made and quite expensive at the time of the American Revolution. As a result, all of the colonies were faced with critical shortages of arms and ammunition during the first years of the war. Also, the Continental Army came very, very close to a coup d'etat after the war when the Continental Congress could not pay the officers and men what they were owed for their service. It was averted at the last moment by Washington who gave a tearful address to the officers begging them not to. These experiences with a lack of preparation for defense and distrust of a standing army led the feds to pass the 2nd Amendment in 1791 and The Militia Act of 1792 which required all able bodied men, 18-45, to serve in their local militia and provide their own weapons and equipment. The problem with the act was that most people do not want to be forced to serve in an army of any kind and by the 1830s, most people were regularly dodging the requirement. Gun ownership in America really only got started after the Civil War when many returning soldiers were allowed to take their guns home with them. It was at this point that the myth that America had always been defended by heavily armed individual citizens began. The myth was eventually perverted into the notion that the 2nd Amendment was written as a protection for individuals and not an attempt to create a gov't regulated alternative to a standing army.
Your comment is funny. The situation is not, though. This has been the case with congress-critturs for a decade or more as well. They get paper mail, faxes, what-have-you and sort them into two piles for each major issue (pro or con) and then measure the height of those piles. If the content is too complex to interpret quickly, it is junked.
Your comment is nonsense. I've worked on Capital Hill and the situation is the exact opposite of what you describe. Hand written, complex letters get the best treatment. The fact that a constituent spent the time to hand-craft a letter is a good indication that the author is quite apt to both vote and potentially influence others to vote. These guys get a special response. Now the response may, in one sense, be canned. Most Congresspeople have a set of docs on their machines from which they can copy and paste, but some staff member will take the time to look up the answer and pull in the correct paragraphs to provide an in-depth answer to your concern. Further, if the issue is somewhat under the radar, such a letter may well have a disproportionate influence on the voting decisions of the Member or Senator. Two or three hand-crafted letters may be all that it takes to get you rep to vote your way.
The all-alike canned letter gets the least attention and is least likely to have any effect on the Congressperson. It is simply too easy to give a signature for a nice sounding petition or canned letter solicited by a paid operative in front of your local grocery. The signer was given a 10 second one-sided intro to what is probably a very complex issue and will probably will never remember they signed it anyway. They'll get a response that says "Thank you for writing, now go away and have a nice day."
It was Truman. The White House at the time was in very bad need of serious restoration. IIRC, at some point, the residence floor had been mucked with by adding iron supports that were too heavy for the lower structure and the building was in danger of collapse.
Why? Becase in most states owning your own cable box is against the law.
The FCC passed rules on this several years ago. The intent was to deregulate cable set-top box ownership in the same way telephone handset ownership was deregulated.
In Section 629 of the Communications Act. Congress directed the FCC to adopt rules that would allow consumers to obtain "navigation devices," such as cable set-top boxes, remote control units and other equipment, from commercial sources other than their cable providers. In 1998, the Commission adopted navigation device rules with the intent of improving consumer choice by fostering a competitive retail market for this equipment and said that it would monitor the development of the commercial availability of navigation devices and commence a proceeding in the year 2000 to review the effectiveness of the rules and consider any necessary changes.
I still have the disks I used for my first Linux install. Can't recall what the labels mean and doubt the disks are still readable, but they are labeled SLS A1.3, A2 - A4, SLS B1 - B7, SLS C1 - C3, SLS D1 - D2, SLS S1, SLS T1 - T3. A total of 20 1.44 floppies. Ran these on a 25mhz 386sx w/ 9 MB RAM and a 100 MB disk. SLS A1.3 claims to using kernel 0.99pl11. These must have been done right about the time Slackware forked off from the SLS dist.
Maybe I'll try and auction them off on ebay and see if they are worth a six pack of beer. Then I'll have beer that is free-as-in-Linux.
As for the rest, I pity you, you poor, unhappy, angry person.
Poor? No, I'm doing far better than most, thank you. Unhappy? No, I thoroughly enjoy my life and my friends. Angry? Damn straight! I've lived through Watergate and Iran Contra. Now we have an administration that looks like its combining elements of both. Steals the election and lies to the public about foreign policy in order to overcome sensible objections to its policies.
Clinton just wanted to get laid.