We own them and have no rights under the 4th amendment for property.
Well then, we'll just switch to a Fifth Amendment argument: "No person shall be deprived of Life, Liberty, and Property without due process of law." Try as you like, there's no legal way for the police to just walk up to citizens and arrest them for being someplace, and then seize their property by force.
That's not true at all. There are at least 2 other purposes: 1. Increasing the wealth of the most politically powerful people at the expense of everybody else. 2. Sending the sons and daughters of non-wealthy people overseas to risk life and limb in order to protect the business interests of the most politically powerful corporations.
They claim that Willie Nelson's song The Gambler is proof that online poker is illegal (yes, you read that right).
And of course, there are 2 lies in that: 1. Willie Nelson didn't write The Gambler, Kenny Rodgers did. 2. Obviously it's no more an accurate authority to consult than, say, citing Spinal Tap when discussing Stonehenge.
Two mistakes there: 1. Only some portions of the pre-United States United States were controlled by the corporations. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, for instance, was controlled by a theocracy, while other colonies were under the direct control of the British monarchy.
2. Corporations didn't exist a millenia ago. The first documented corporation was created in 1347.
I'm going to assume you're referring to Ron Paul. He and John Huntsman seem to be the only Republican candidates who have been showing signs of sense.
There are some big problems though: 1. Neither Paul nor Huntsman have a chance of winning the nomination, because those same corporations that they refuse to kowtow to are the ones who are providing campaign funding and media mouthpieces. For examples of this phenomenon, see the various campaigns of Dennis Kucinich (only truly notable question sent his way during primary debates: whether he'd seen a UFO), or the very intentional derailing of Howard Dean's 2004 campaign using some clever sound editing. 2. A lot of Paul's positions that don't have to do with war, torture, civil liberties, etc are likely to spark disagreement. For instance, the gold standard prevents the Federal Reserve from mitigating the effects of economic slumps and bubbles, and tends to benefit creditors (i.e. big banks) at the expense of debtors. 3. Even if they got into office, they'd still have to get their proposals through Congress. Right now, Congress and the Senate in particular will quite happily gut any major bill except those that enrich corporations at the expense of poor and middle-class people.
Fascism - compulsory submission to a philosophy - a very simple definition but it doesn't disagree with the one on the Webster website.
That's a serious oversimplification though: By your definition, every single government in recorded history is fascist. The Iroquois, for instance, while having a political and economic system that's well worth studying, also regularly conquered neighboring peoples. The United States, by your definition, would be considered fascist as early as the 1790's when Federalism was imposed by force on rebelling farmers in western Pennsylvania. The Amish aren't going to use force, but Amish elders will kick you out of the community if you don't play by their rules.
A more accurate definition of fascism: The belief that a nation's people should be a single body, operating in an entirely unified manner, under the direction of an unquestioned totalitarian state, and should use that unity to conquer first their own country and then other nations. As an important side-effect, a fascist state tries to violently purge itself of anyone who's too different to operate as part of the totalitarian state.
The Loony Party has in fact won a few elections, and also beaten major UK parties on occasion. As far as Pirate Parties go, I think an age difference might be at work here: Younger people like myself are used to listening to cogent arguments from people dressed in jeans and a T-shirt up against idiotic arguments from people in suits and ties. So we've learned the lesson that appearing respectable isn't all it's cracked up to be.
My take on the endless distributions: 1. They are all offering fundamentally similar and mostly-compatible products. Where they tend to differ is on packaging, what applications are supported as part of the distribution, and which UI you start out with. 2. With the possible exception of the package manager, it's almost always possible to rig one to get the advantages of another. That's one of the upsides of open source. 3. There is the Linux Standard Base which in theory means that even binaries can run the same way on all distributions.
What those 3 factors mean is that for the most part, the huge number of distributions means that users can get what they really want. For instance, a lot of business users want to use Red Hat Enterprise, because of its strong track record in business environments and its paid support. By contrast, a casual desktop user might prefer Mint or Ubuntu, which aims towards ease of use. A more technical desktop user might want an Arch or a Slackware system for more control of their system. Somebody who really cares about performance or tinkering under the hood might use a Gentoo or Linux From Scratch system. and so on. But they can all play nicely with each other, and skills from one translate pretty easily to others, and there's an always-evolving list of standouts that are good for beginners to try.
The competition actually helps: Good ideas prosper, bad ideas fade, and the result is better software. There hasn't been the kind of animosity that typified the Unix Wars of the 1980's.
I guess it depends a bit on what you are trying to do. Linux has analog synths, digital sound editors (with a lot of plugins and tools to play with), sequencers, notation software, and quite a lot of other tools. As a semi-pro (I get paid for a lot of what I do, but can't quit my day job), I've yet to find myself in a situation where I couldn't do what I needed to do running Linux.
Now, my needs are mostly pretty simple, because most of what I do is geared towards live performance rather than recording, but the tools are there and are pretty good quality.
At work - my boss, and MS Exchange. The MS Exchange thing can be solved technically, but the "boss" part of the equation can't.
At home - some games, slightly better support of unusual video formats. But I'm semi-switched already, and run Linux regularly on both my primary desktop and my netbook.
There was no point in issuing an alert over the alert system. If you were endangered by 9/11, that was because you were (A) in one of the planes, (B) in the Pentagon or (C) in lower Manhattan. Otherwise, you were in basically no more danger than you are on any other day.
For the people on the plane, they were dead already, there was absolutely nothing that could be done to save them. Emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.
For the Pentagon and lower Manhattan, everyone was already doing what they needed to do: If you were a firefighter, you were trying to put out the fire, and rescue people. If you were a policeman, you were trying to rescue people and keep everyone else away. And if you were anyone else, you were getting as far away as you could. Again, emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.
Also relevant to this situation: One common reaction to a disaster scenario that makes things worse is that a huge number of people call their loved ones in the affected areas. It's completely understandable, but it uses communications resources that might be useful for people who can actually do something to help.
But then I can just add another link to the chain to demolish that counterargument. Let's now say I connect to Fabulous Inc connects to BS&S connects to JustPlainSuper Inc connects to slashdot.org. I didn't choose BS&S, slashdot.org didn't choose BS&S, but both of us are affected by what BS&S does because Fabulous has no other cost effective way to reach JustPlainSuper.
In addition, thanks to the problem of peering, it doesn't even have to be your ISP causing the problem. It can be the ISP controlling any link in the chain between me and whatever I'm trying to communicate with.
For instance, if I get my Internet access via Fabulous Inc (who is net neutral, cheap, fast, etc), and I'm trying to reach, say, slashdot.org, to do that I might connect to Fabulous who connects to BS&S who connects to slashdot.org. I didn't choose to make use of BS&S's lines, Linux.org did. So if BS&S decides to not play fair, it doesn't matter what ISP I choose, because the only way to get to slashdot.org is to go through BS&S, and BS&S is throttling or blocking slashdot.org.
Agencies have the authority to write them because Congress handed them that authority, and Congress had that authority because we handed it to them.
And authority that Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. That's my point. Even if Obama vetoes, if Congress had the votes, they could override the veto and force Obama and the FCC to comply. Or they could defund the FCC entirely.
The majority of this species believes in an Earth that will exist forever because a 2500 year old anthology of books say so.
That statement is almost definitely incorrect, assuming you're referring to religious belief. First off, not one major religion had a fully set canon 2500 years ago, and the general pattern is one in which the world comes to an end and become a much better place when the dust settles.
The Christian anthology is about 1600 years old, put together by a committee in Byzantium around 360 CE, and finally approved by all major branches of Christianity only about 1550 CE. It makes very clear mention of the end of the world, and in fact the people who believe in this version of an invisible man often believe the world will end before global warming could kill us, making the whole issue unimportant. The Muslim anthology can be no older than 1300 years old, because Mohammed didn't exist before then. Both Sunni and Shia Islam have a firm belief in an end of the world, although they differ on exactly what signals it. The Jewish anthology is the oldest anthology, but it has a believe in a messiah that shows up to fix everything and basically ends the world as we know it. Indian and Asian faiths don't really have the same sort of formal anthologies, but Hindus definitely believe in the current world being destroyed and replaced, and Buddhists also have a definite set of circumstances in which the world comes to an end.
That covers the vast majority of religious believers. The major religions that don't have an "end of the world" scenario (Taoism, Shinto, native African faiths such as Yoruba, western paganism, etc) also don't have any sort of canon. And of course atheists also know the Earth will end in approximately 5 billion years thanks to the sun's main phase coming to an end.
So again I ask: what are you going to do about it? What will you or have you changed about your lifestyle to help avert global disaster?
The big things I already do that make my carbon consumption something like 20% of the average American's according to most of the carbon calculators: 1. Live close to your job and any other places you go frequently. If you can't live close to your job, telecommute whenever possible. 2. Live in multi-unit buildings rather than single-family homes. A 2-bedroom apartment in a hi-rise is much more efficient to heat than a modest house. 3. Insulate your home like crazy. This helps a lot in both summer and winter. Keep your home cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. Use your windows intelligently: in the summer, open them at night and close and shade them during the day. In the winter, close them up and make sure they're nicely sealed so that you maximize the passive solar warming. 4. If you're going any long distances, favor public transportation over driving. Trains are by far the most efficient way of getting around, followed by planes, followed by buses.
How about a third possibility: Both capitalism and "communism" (since the Soviet and Chinese economies were not even remotely similar to Marx's vision of communism) suck at real environmental planning.
Every political and business leader wants to maximize short-term economic output and minimize costs. One way to get that is to trash your future: let the environment be damaged, delay much-needed repairs, neglect your society's children, skimp on basic scientific research, take on debt rather than paying as you go, etc, etc. And in fact, they have very little choice, because if they fail to do so, another leader will come along and oust them by giving their followers higher economic output over the short term.
The debate over net neutrality has largely been split on party lines, with the Democratic party mostly being for keeping net neutrality laws in place, and the GOP looking to avoid them.
They aren't laws right now, they're regulations. In a conflict between laws and regulations, laws win.
Either go above the heads of the manipulative jerks and report what's making a hostile work environment, or start brushing up your resume, practice interviewing, and start looking for a new job.
If you're going to do the first one, going over the heads of manipulative jerks, do the second one as well, because chances are the manipulative jerk's superiors are manipulative jerks who are more invested in your manipulative jerk bosses than they are in you.
Applying regulation to the internet is the gateway to further government control. A LOT of control.
The Internet was started by the US Department of Defense. The telecoms who currently make up most of the backbone have always had lots of regulation about what they can and can't do, and have also typically operated with subsidies to build capacity. Unix, which has formed the software basis of a huge number of Internet nodes, was created by the heavily regulated AT&T. The FCC has always had some authority to regulate Internet traffic.
Saying "Keep your government hands off my Internet!" makes about as much sense as "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!".
I tend to argue that there's a different crux of the problem:
There's a big pile of money that government can use. Government needs to do stuff, and whenever it does stuff, it takes money off of the pile to hire people to do it, or sometimes just gives cash to some of its citizens and businesses. But that means it needs to put money back on the pile, and the only way it has to put money on the pile is to demand (using force if necessary) that people chip in some amount of dough.
1. Everyone wants their contribution to the pile of cash to be as small as possible, so they get more money. 2. Everyone wants as much of the pile of cash as possible to go to them, so they get more money.
You'll notice that if everybody gets what they want, the pile of cash quickly runs out. So in practice, only some people will get what they want. However, the decision about who gets what they want and who doesn't is not necessarily based on any good reason.
Sure, it's quicker to build a Linux box, do a "yum install x y z" and toss it out into the wild as a fully functional server, but the extra time required to really get a FreeBSD box tuned will come back in spades through performance and stability metrics.
Big deal. Yes, your machine might run slightly faster, but the simple fact is that computers spend a lot of their time idling these days (as they should). The whole point of computers is to value people time over machine time, and that means it's probably not worth the time to really tune your OS.
Same story on stability: For desktops, stability is nice, but you aren't generally trying for really long uptimes.
Slashdot Mirror
We own them and have no rights under the 4th amendment for property.
Well then, we'll just switch to a Fifth Amendment argument: "No person shall be deprived of Life, Liberty, and Property without due process of law." Try as you like, there's no legal way for the police to just walk up to citizens and arrest them for being someplace, and then seize their property by force.
That's not true at all. There are at least 2 other purposes:
1. Increasing the wealth of the most politically powerful people at the expense of everybody else.
2. Sending the sons and daughters of non-wealthy people overseas to risk life and limb in order to protect the business interests of the most politically powerful corporations.
They claim that Willie Nelson's song The Gambler is proof that online poker is illegal (yes, you read that right).
And of course, there are 2 lies in that:
1. Willie Nelson didn't write The Gambler, Kenny Rodgers did.
2. Obviously it's no more an accurate authority to consult than, say, citing Spinal Tap when discussing Stonehenge.
Well, if the next guy is named "Shirley", he might well be "different".
Two mistakes there:
1. Only some portions of the pre-United States United States were controlled by the corporations. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, for instance, was controlled by a theocracy, while other colonies were under the direct control of the British monarchy.
2. Corporations didn't exist a millenia ago. The first documented corporation was created in 1347.
I'm going to assume you're referring to Ron Paul. He and John Huntsman seem to be the only Republican candidates who have been showing signs of sense.
There are some big problems though:
1. Neither Paul nor Huntsman have a chance of winning the nomination, because those same corporations that they refuse to kowtow to are the ones who are providing campaign funding and media mouthpieces. For examples of this phenomenon, see the various campaigns of Dennis Kucinich (only truly notable question sent his way during primary debates: whether he'd seen a UFO), or the very intentional derailing of Howard Dean's 2004 campaign using some clever sound editing.
2. A lot of Paul's positions that don't have to do with war, torture, civil liberties, etc are likely to spark disagreement. For instance, the gold standard prevents the Federal Reserve from mitigating the effects of economic slumps and bubbles, and tends to benefit creditors (i.e. big banks) at the expense of debtors.
3. Even if they got into office, they'd still have to get their proposals through Congress. Right now, Congress and the Senate in particular will quite happily gut any major bill except those that enrich corporations at the expense of poor and middle-class people.
Fascism - compulsory submission to a philosophy - a very simple definition but it doesn't disagree with the one on the Webster website.
That's a serious oversimplification though: By your definition, every single government in recorded history is fascist. The Iroquois, for instance, while having a political and economic system that's well worth studying, also regularly conquered neighboring peoples. The United States, by your definition, would be considered fascist as early as the 1790's when Federalism was imposed by force on rebelling farmers in western Pennsylvania. The Amish aren't going to use force, but Amish elders will kick you out of the community if you don't play by their rules.
A more accurate definition of fascism: The belief that a nation's people should be a single body, operating in an entirely unified manner, under the direction of an unquestioned totalitarian state, and should use that unity to conquer first their own country and then other nations. As an important side-effect, a fascist state tries to violently purge itself of anyone who's too different to operate as part of the totalitarian state.
The Loony Party has in fact won a few elections, and also beaten major UK parties on occasion. As far as Pirate Parties go, I think an age difference might be at work here: Younger people like myself are used to listening to cogent arguments from people dressed in jeans and a T-shirt up against idiotic arguments from people in suits and ties. So we've learned the lesson that appearing respectable isn't all it's cracked up to be.
My take on the endless distributions:
1. They are all offering fundamentally similar and mostly-compatible products. Where they tend to differ is on packaging, what applications are supported as part of the distribution, and which UI you start out with.
2. With the possible exception of the package manager, it's almost always possible to rig one to get the advantages of another. That's one of the upsides of open source.
3. There is the Linux Standard Base which in theory means that even binaries can run the same way on all distributions.
What those 3 factors mean is that for the most part, the huge number of distributions means that users can get what they really want. For instance, a lot of business users want to use Red Hat Enterprise, because of its strong track record in business environments and its paid support. By contrast, a casual desktop user might prefer Mint or Ubuntu, which aims towards ease of use. A more technical desktop user might want an Arch or a Slackware system for more control of their system. Somebody who really cares about performance or tinkering under the hood might use a Gentoo or Linux From Scratch system. and so on. But they can all play nicely with each other, and skills from one translate pretty easily to others, and there's an always-evolving list of standouts that are good for beginners to try.
The competition actually helps: Good ideas prosper, bad ideas fade, and the result is better software. There hasn't been the kind of animosity that typified the Unix Wars of the 1980's.
I guess it depends a bit on what you are trying to do. Linux has analog synths, digital sound editors (with a lot of plugins and tools to play with), sequencers, notation software, and quite a lot of other tools. As a semi-pro (I get paid for a lot of what I do, but can't quit my day job), I've yet to find myself in a situation where I couldn't do what I needed to do running Linux.
Now, my needs are mostly pretty simple, because most of what I do is geared towards live performance rather than recording, but the tools are there and are pretty good quality.
At work - my boss, and MS Exchange. The MS Exchange thing can be solved technically, but the "boss" part of the equation can't.
At home - some games, slightly better support of unusual video formats. But I'm semi-switched already, and run Linux regularly on both my primary desktop and my netbook.
There was no point in issuing an alert over the alert system. If you were endangered by 9/11, that was because you were (A) in one of the planes, (B) in the Pentagon or (C) in lower Manhattan. Otherwise, you were in basically no more danger than you are on any other day.
For the people on the plane, they were dead already, there was absolutely nothing that could be done to save them. Emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.
For the Pentagon and lower Manhattan, everyone was already doing what they needed to do: If you were a firefighter, you were trying to put out the fire, and rescue people. If you were a policeman, you were trying to rescue people and keep everyone else away. And if you were anyone else, you were getting as far away as you could. Again, emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.
Also relevant to this situation: One common reaction to a disaster scenario that makes things worse is that a huge number of people call their loved ones in the affected areas. It's completely understandable, but it uses communications resources that might be useful for people who can actually do something to help.
But then I can just add another link to the chain to demolish that counterargument. Let's now say I connect to Fabulous Inc connects to BS&S connects to JustPlainSuper Inc connects to slashdot.org. I didn't choose BS&S, slashdot.org didn't choose BS&S, but both of us are affected by what BS&S does because Fabulous has no other cost effective way to reach JustPlainSuper.
In addition, thanks to the problem of peering, it doesn't even have to be your ISP causing the problem. It can be the ISP controlling any link in the chain between me and whatever I'm trying to communicate with.
For instance, if I get my Internet access via Fabulous Inc (who is net neutral, cheap, fast, etc), and I'm trying to reach, say, slashdot.org, to do that I might connect to Fabulous who connects to BS&S who connects to slashdot.org. I didn't choose to make use of BS&S's lines, Linux.org did. So if BS&S decides to not play fair, it doesn't matter what ISP I choose, because the only way to get to slashdot.org is to go through BS&S, and BS&S is throttling or blocking slashdot.org.
Agencies have the authority to write them because Congress handed them that authority, and Congress had that authority because we handed it to them.
And authority that Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. That's my point. Even if Obama vetoes, if Congress had the votes, they could override the veto and force Obama and the FCC to comply. Or they could defund the FCC entirely.
The majority of this species believes in an Earth that will exist forever because a 2500 year old anthology of books say so.
That statement is almost definitely incorrect, assuming you're referring to religious belief. First off, not one major religion had a fully set canon 2500 years ago, and the general pattern is one in which the world comes to an end and become a much better place when the dust settles.
The Christian anthology is about 1600 years old, put together by a committee in Byzantium around 360 CE, and finally approved by all major branches of Christianity only about 1550 CE. It makes very clear mention of the end of the world, and in fact the people who believe in this version of an invisible man often believe the world will end before global warming could kill us, making the whole issue unimportant. The Muslim anthology can be no older than 1300 years old, because Mohammed didn't exist before then. Both Sunni and Shia Islam have a firm belief in an end of the world, although they differ on exactly what signals it. The Jewish anthology is the oldest anthology, but it has a believe in a messiah that shows up to fix everything and basically ends the world as we know it. Indian and Asian faiths don't really have the same sort of formal anthologies, but Hindus definitely believe in the current world being destroyed and replaced, and Buddhists also have a definite set of circumstances in which the world comes to an end.
That covers the vast majority of religious believers. The major religions that don't have an "end of the world" scenario (Taoism, Shinto, native African faiths such as Yoruba, western paganism, etc) also don't have any sort of canon. And of course atheists also know the Earth will end in approximately 5 billion years thanks to the sun's main phase coming to an end.
So again I ask: what are you going to do about it? What will you or have you changed about your lifestyle to help avert global disaster?
The big things I already do that make my carbon consumption something like 20% of the average American's according to most of the carbon calculators:
1. Live close to your job and any other places you go frequently. If you can't live close to your job, telecommute whenever possible.
2. Live in multi-unit buildings rather than single-family homes. A 2-bedroom apartment in a hi-rise is much more efficient to heat than a modest house.
3. Insulate your home like crazy. This helps a lot in both summer and winter. Keep your home cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. Use your windows intelligently: in the summer, open them at night and close and shade them during the day. In the winter, close them up and make sure they're nicely sealed so that you maximize the passive solar warming.
4. If you're going any long distances, favor public transportation over driving. Trains are by far the most efficient way of getting around, followed by planes, followed by buses.
How about a third possibility: Both capitalism and "communism" (since the Soviet and Chinese economies were not even remotely similar to Marx's vision of communism) suck at real environmental planning.
Every political and business leader wants to maximize short-term economic output and minimize costs. One way to get that is to trash your future: let the environment be damaged, delay much-needed repairs, neglect your society's children, skimp on basic scientific research, take on debt rather than paying as you go, etc, etc. And in fact, they have very little choice, because if they fail to do so, another leader will come along and oust them by giving their followers higher economic output over the short term.
The debate over net neutrality has largely been split on party lines, with the Democratic party mostly being for keeping net neutrality laws in place, and the GOP looking to avoid them.
They aren't laws right now, they're regulations. In a conflict between laws and regulations, laws win.
Either go above the heads of the manipulative jerks and report what's making a hostile work environment, or start brushing up your resume, practice interviewing, and start looking for a new job.
If you're going to do the first one, going over the heads of manipulative jerks, do the second one as well, because chances are the manipulative jerk's superiors are manipulative jerks who are more invested in your manipulative jerk bosses than they are in you.
Hey, if spearmen can defeat modern armored fighting vehicles, surely an engineer can plant a few explosives and take out the mech infantry.
Applying regulation to the internet is the gateway to further government control. A LOT of control.
The Internet was started by the US Department of Defense. The telecoms who currently make up most of the backbone have always had lots of regulation about what they can and can't do, and have also typically operated with subsidies to build capacity. Unix, which has formed the software basis of a huge number of Internet nodes, was created by the heavily regulated AT&T. The FCC has always had some authority to regulate Internet traffic.
Saying "Keep your government hands off my Internet!" makes about as much sense as "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!".
Stop this ridiculous rhetoric to vent your anger at groups of people and focus on the individuals responsible.
We are - part of the problem is your bosses.
I tend to argue that there's a different crux of the problem:
There's a big pile of money that government can use. Government needs to do stuff, and whenever it does stuff, it takes money off of the pile to hire people to do it, or sometimes just gives cash to some of its citizens and businesses. But that means it needs to put money back on the pile, and the only way it has to put money on the pile is to demand (using force if necessary) that people chip in some amount of dough.
1. Everyone wants their contribution to the pile of cash to be as small as possible, so they get more money.
2. Everyone wants as much of the pile of cash as possible to go to them, so they get more money.
You'll notice that if everybody gets what they want, the pile of cash quickly runs out. So in practice, only some people will get what they want. However, the decision about who gets what they want and who doesn't is not necessarily based on any good reason.
FTFS:
Sure, it's quicker to build a Linux box, do a "yum install x y z" and toss it out into the wild as a fully functional server, but the extra time required to really get a FreeBSD box tuned will come back in spades through performance and stability metrics.
Big deal. Yes, your machine might run slightly faster, but the simple fact is that computers spend a lot of their time idling these days (as they should). The whole point of computers is to value people time over machine time, and that means it's probably not worth the time to really tune your OS.
Same story on stability: For desktops, stability is nice, but you aren't generally trying for really long uptimes.