Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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Just because peaceful protest should be *used* before violent opposition (and don't get me wrong -- I view violent opposition as an absolutely last-ditch measure -- hopefully, even if things are desperate, the threat of violent opposition should cause the need never to arise) doesn't mean that violent opposition should be ruled out.
Peaceful protest helps sway public opinion. But if public opinion is swayed, and a figure still refuses to step down and desires to use force to maintain his position, what other effective options other than force remain?
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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The only one quoted in that link who was in the congress writing the constitution was Madison. The others didn't write it, so they can't know what it was supposed to mean.
True, but all are considered Founding Fathers: Patrick Henry is a major figure in the founding of our country, and Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee were signers of the Declaration of Independence. And their opinions were clearly that citizenry should be armed.
But, fair enough. Here's a more in-depth analysis, including chunks of cited text from Alexander Hamilton, who *was* involved with the Constitution.
But as for embezzlers- an embezzler has already proved he's a thief. People who commit one crime frequently commit others.
An embezzler *shooting* someone?
I'd be curious to see the statistics on that.
Its risk mitigation- he's more likely to move onto another crime, possibly ciolent, than the average person. Especially since he'll likely become desperate- its very hard for an ex-con to get a job, who would trust a known embezzler?
Does removing his rights (and his political voice, as I'm complaing about above -- sorry, the way we treat people who have committed crimes really frusterates me) help him become a member of society again?
Re:Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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"avoid oppressive regimes" should be "prevent oppressive regimes". "Avoid" isn't a transitive verb.:-)
I could go for a grammar checker library on Linux that firefox could call...
Re:Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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There you have a populace that isn't standing an army (all standing armies do these days is get levelled - that's what heavy ordinance is for), but are equipped with not just assualt rifles, but mines, rocket propelled grenades, high explosives and a will to die for their cause. While they are managing to cause serious problems, they are a long way from overthrowing the government as long as the US military remains involved.
If an administration ever attempted to turn the United States military against said United States citizenry, there are several differences from Iraq:
(a) Many members of our military would probably not follow orders to kill US citizens.
(b) The target count is overwhelming. Our military isn't designed around carpet-bombing any more. An angry populace doesn't have long tank convoys to destroy.
(c) Resupply wouldn't exist. How long can you keep an A-10 flying without a populace providing fuel and parts for it?
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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I would think it would be clear now that in the modern world, with the current state of military technology, unless you are unbelievably powerful, a standing army does very little good. Witness the effectiveness of standing armies in any war in the last 20 years when one side possesses significant military hardware. All a standing army does is paint a nice big spot on the ground for where to drop the heavy ordinance. I think you are deluded if you believe any form of citizen's militia would be able to effectively stand against the current US military.
(a) It's hard to convince a complete military to stand against a nation's own people, unless the odds against the people are truly overwhelming. Take the final days of the Soviet Union, for instance -- Soviet troops refused to fire on peaceful protestors. They simply stopped their tanks and waited.
(b) We have weaponry designed around allowing for rapid response, short-term conflict with very favorable kill ratios. Yes, ground attack aircraft can achieve very good kill ratios during wartime, but if they lack resupply, they become useless very quickly.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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Okay, that's fair, but the principles still hold: unless you want to impress over 20% of your population into the military (and manage to somehow keep them all loyal) you aren't going to be able to control a population that wants you gone.
The point is that not a revolution literally needs to happen -- it's that the fact that it *could* has dissuasive impact.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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And the constitution was written when assault weapons and handguns didn't *exist*. SO the same logic that bans nuclear bombs can be used to ban them.
No, both assault weapons and handguns did exist in the Revolutionary War period. They weren't identical to the same as the guns we have today, true -- the concept of an automatic weapon didn't exist. An assault weapon was a bayonet-equipped musket. But it is necessary to provide someone an automatic weapon to keep them competitive with someone else with an automatic weapon. From the link above: Thomas Jefferson, for example, noted in 1803 that "None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined, is therefore at all times important." He later commented that "...we cannot be defended but by making every citizen a soldier, as the Greeks and Romans who had no standing armies."
The constitution is quite clear- well ordered militias are allowed arms.
I'll include another link from the site. Sure that's what they meant?
The stuff people spout about it being so people can revolt is pure bull, its a moddern idea espoused by a few far right nutjobs in the past century.
A *modern* idea? How do you explain the Revolutionary War? The writings of our Founding Fathers?
But stopping fellons from getting them easily, requiring registration, making resell illegal (unless reregistering), and limiting the amount of damage a gun can do before reloading are all decent comprimises.
Do you know how Castro took power? Cuba had a gun registry. Immediately after his coup, he took a collection of soldiers around and confiscated everyone's guns. If you have three guns registered and you don't turn over three guns, you were executed. He did so before people had time to organize. Then, he retained control of the military, which controlled the arms. Hence, control of the nation.
As for felons (people who have been convicted of a felony -- let's not try to isolate ourselves from them so that we can mistreat them without feeling bad about it) -- I could see limiting gun access to felons that have committed a felony using a *gun*. But how does it benefit anyone to have, say, an embezzler denied gun rights?
Heck, I'm still amazed that in most states, people in jail for committing a felony are denied *sufferage*. That's astounding (and a major coup for the Republican party -- drug crimes have eliminated much of the black vote).
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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SOrry, its not an either or thing. If you think weapons should be freely ownable, I should be able to own a nuclear bomb. The constitution doesn't forbid it, after all.
That's absurd. The Constitution was written in a time when nuclear bombs didn't *exist*. The game thory associated with the weapons of the times -- soldiers have rifles, citizens have rifles -- made guns a moderating influence. The game factors associated with nuclear bombs is *wildly* different from that associated with guns.
This is exactly the sort of thing reason that the judicial branch is allowed to interpret the Constitution -- to deal with technological advances.
For example, if the military gets the ability to run around with autonomous sniping helicopters and that becomes the main method of exerting military force, then civilians need to be able to have Stingers. That maintains the same balance as was present in the Constitution's authoring period.
Personally, I think civilians owning guns is not permitted by the constitution, and that militia means a state army. But I do think this is an area where compromises can be reached.
It's not a matter of compromise -- it can be *amended* if it's necessary to mean this. Please at least read and consider this -- the framers very clearly referred to an armed citizenry.
Please explain how the Democrats are trying to get rid of democracy.
Just as an aside, I'd like to point out:
Lots of potentially Democratic voters haven't registered (college students, in particular, are very poor at registering to vote).
Currently, according to the polls, Bush will win re-election. Not by a huge margin, but he will win.
If you are considering voting Democrat, and you live in a swing state, and haven't registered, you really, really should do so:
The swing states are: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Lousiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennesee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. If you live in one of these states and haven't yet registered, please do so. One of the reasons Bush gets so many votes is because so many elderly people are registered to vote and vote solidly Republican. Your vote is needed!
Remember that all it may take to alter the course of the election is winning the vote in your electoral district -- enough to swing a state. Last year, 500 votes in the right electoral district would have put a different President in office and given us an entirely different set of views on foreign affairs, research, military spending, research, abortion, research, charities that are trying to fight the spread of AIDS by teaching people about condoms, and research.
There are probably a lot of people down in a certain Florida county kicking themselves because *they* could have flipped the vote. His first term, Bush had to worry about re-election, so there were some constraints on what he can do. If he gets a second, there will be no limit. If you don't want to see the appointment of socially and religiously conservative judges (and these will *not* be the socially liberal and politically conservative judges that a Libertarian would like), please vote. *Please*. I'm going to do my part on Election Day. When I complain about abuses overseas and poor foreign policy, I'm complaining about not just what Bush is doing, but the choice of the American citizenry on the previous Election Day. We know what Bush does. There is no reasonable excuse not to vote in this upcoming election. Unless you are a religious conservative, please, please, please vote Kerry and get Bush out of office.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
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I don't own a gun, have no desire to do so, and I *still* think that bans on civilian gun ownership are stupid.
The function of the Second Amendment, which is to avoid totalitarian regimes hated by the populace, is provided to me even if I *don't* own a gun, as long as enough civilians own weapons comparable to those provided to the military.
Note that I don't want civilians to own *bombs*. The idea is to provide rough equality between a soldier and civilian -- in a fight, one soldier == roughly one civilian. Bombs mean that whoever strikes first can have a massive disproportionate advantage. Guns act as a moderating factor, bombs as a destablilizing factor.
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
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The Civil War?
I mean, they didn't win, but it was a near thing.
And just how many smart bombs do you think are around? Smart bombs are for targeting specific targets, and we don't have that many. They don't do anything against an overwhelming angry populace. I guess you could use nuclear weapons, but that's the kind of last-ditch effort that you'd have to be insane to use.
Why do you think we have the 2nd Amendment?
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Why do you think we *have* the Second Amendment, crispyman?
It has nothing to do with sport weapons.
It is, very simply, to avoid oppressive regimes from ever dominating the citizenry by disarming them.
A gun that could only shoot non-humans would have absolutely nothing to do with the spirit of the Second Amendment. Gun rights were guaranteed specifically so that *people* could be shot as a last ditch resort.
I have no interest in ever owning a gun -- the benefits provided by the Second Amendment are present as long as enough citizenry own guns. However, I strongly support allowing citizenry access to assault weapons.
Note that guns simply guarantee Hobbsian "rough equality" between people and soldiers -- if soldiers have assault rifles, people also need assault rifles. I do *not* support allowing people to have weapons that allow massive amplification of killing power above that of a soldier as long as they strike first -- like bombs and the like. Assault weapons? Sure, I'd say that it's pretty much essential to allow people to have assault weapons.
Take a look at Switzerland -- they have almost no limitations on the weapons civilians can have. You want a howitzer, you can have one. And if you're a male and above a certain age, you *must* own a rifle -- you're considered part of the militia. As a result (even aside from the fact that Switzerland has never been invaded) Switzerland has a low gun crime rate, much lower than the United States. It's hard to glamorize a tool that everyone has (e.g. you could stick someone in the eye with a pen, but everyone has a pen and it isn't very exciting). Furthermore, it's a dissusasive factor to someone who might consider committing a crime if most people are walking around with weapons. Sure, maybe you can pull out your gun and hold up a bank, but you're nothing special -- it'd be like doing so with a knife when everyone else has knives. Or with your bare hands when everyone else has bare hands -- you're going to be hurt by similarly-armed people.
I could *maybe* even see gun laws banning handguns. But never assault rifles. Assault weapons are the core of the Second Amendment.
SilentChris, I speak as a P2P (well, free, not commercial) developer. So I have some bias in that I don't like the big companies going after me. Someday, if I manage to find work doing what I like to do as a hobby, I'd like this to stay open.
As for the "drug trafficker's road", I can't agree with you. A road has only so much benefit for non-traffickers, but significant benefit for traffickers.
You point out that there are a great deal of illegal files on P2P networks. This is true, but consider why.
P2P filesharing does not inherently have any illegal characteristics. It is simply a transfer medium, much the same as the Internet is a transfer medium.
P2P filesharing systems almost always have two interesting characteristics:
(a) They provide resources for distributing a popular piece of data to grow almost without bound.
(b) They distribute costs of distribution of data across all consumers of that data.
Both of these characteristics are very valuable. The first tends to mean that the network does "more of what we want". It gives us the data we want without limitations based on how much bandwidth someone can get to distribute data. It means that I can create a rendered movie (a la Red versus Blue), post it to Slashdot, and *still* obtain the bandwidth necessary to distribute it -- I probably would not otherwise be able to do so. This is a case in which P2P filesharing has significantly allowed greater distribution of desired data.
The second means that there is a significant problem handled. We have no micropayment mechanism in place, so people are unwilling to pay for a file they download that might incur costs of half a cent in bandwidth. However, when millions of people download a file, they incur significant bandwidth costs. P2P filesharing provides an economic solution to this problem -- it has all consumers of the data automatically contribute to the cost of the data distribution. This is not a trivial problem to otherwise solve, and again provides significant benefits. It allows *anyone* to publish any amount of content, no matter how limited their means.
Now, you talk about illegality. Yes, this is true. However, consider why there are so many illegal files being traded. For a long time, it was kind of a pain to massively reproduce and distribute works. This let us create a mechanism for funding content production based on tying resource allocation to the content creator to the publication/distribution mechanism. We had big publishers spring up, take money for content creators, handle the difficult and expensive distribution, and then provide resources for the content creators to continue to create content. This worked very well for the era of books.
The problem is that P2P filesharing, very simply, makes it cheap and affordable for *anyone* to distribute data. There is a tremendous *demand* for copyrighted goods being distributed freely. P2P filesharing's solving of an economic problem and inherent efficiency make it much easier to supply any kind of content. Since supply is up and the demand for illegal content is so high (and not addressed by our existing distribution mechanisms -- on purpose), illegal content is currently the majority of the content on P2P filesharing networks. This isn't because of any inherent property of P2P filesharing -- it's just because that's what people want.
Now, you could ban it. You could say "This mechanism is so efficient and good that it allows people to do things that they couldn't do before. Our current system to fund content creation can't handle this. We're going to ban it." It does solve some social problems, but there are serious problems with banning such systems:
(a) We live in a global Internet. If some guy in Madagascar can create a P2P filesharing system, everyone can obtain it.
(b) Anonymous systems have nowhere near reached their full potential. As pressure against P2P filesharing users goes up, systems simply provide greater securi
And while I'm at it, I found a link to his tech initiatives page.
On here, he mentions a lot of stuff. One notable thing on here is that he was pushing a *real* opt-in antispam act, not the one that actually passed and allows opt-out spam.
Rick Boucher is one of the very few legislators that regularly lines up with common Slashdot concerns and while I don't know whether Boucher himself is technically adept, if he isn't he has someone in his office who is very much so, because he's very clueful on the issues he handles. I'd hate to see him lose office.
Screw that -- I paid for the satellites. I want the imagery to be available when I need it (this is *not* a minor issue -- at one point in the past I had a project stopped because I couldn't obtain free satellite imagery). If the funds to take the pictures are coming out of my pocket, I'm not interested in the USG being able to prevent release of such data. National security issue with letting people know what we're interested in monitoring? Fine. Allow tagging specific data, with a justification (which must be released after five years, and requires the person requesting that the data be delayed to sign the justification) as "delayed". This would allow for a delay of three years or something on the data gathered before it's free under FOIA.
I think that Moore does more to tug at emotional strings than he does to bring up facts.
That being said, I've yet to see him *lying*. I do think that we get a lot more input from the Right than from the Left, and that Moore at least provides a counterpoint.
Also, the frantic claims from the Right that Moore is a liar do not sit well with me.
Please, tell me. What about F9/11 did you take issue with? I see a *horde* of claims that Michael Moore is wrong and a liar and whatnot, but not one convincing claim that makes me think "yeah, that movie is BS". I haven't seen F9/11, but I have seen Bowling for Columbine. I think that Moore focuses too much on the emotional side of things instead of the factual -- the Charleton Heston interview footage did nothing to help proove Moore's point factually, but was emotionally powerful. However, using emotional arguments is *very* different from actually lying. Rove has Bush making emotional appeals all the time, like to courage and strength and whatnot.
Donald Becker started working on clustering Linux machines. He was one of the original founders of Beowulf, without which Slashdot would lose a lot of its culture. He is also responsible for a huge number of the Linux Ethernet drivers. A major reason that Linux is such a solid server OS is because of his work.
Tim Kosse of FileZilla, the only really good open-source FTP client for Windows I'm aware of. He's currently busy porting it to Linux using wxWidgets (read his development diary).
I have used and appreciated FileZilla for many years, but ultimately, I have to come down in favor of WinSCP. FileZilla uses old SCP code that makes SSH2 transfers move extremely slowly, whereas WinSCP can take advantage of the current codebase in PuTTY, and FileZilla doesn't support drag-and-drop.
Also, I'd like to second the Keith Packard thanks, though he isn't all that unsung, at least on Slashdot. Keith had one hell of an uphill battle to get where he was going, but kept plugging away. He's responsible for the user-friendly font selection mechanism in X today (those of us that remember old-style font descriptors will probably agree that there was a significant impediment there to user use). He's responsible for adding the improvements to XFree86 (now xorg) that allowed antialiased text to appear in Linux. I believe he is also responsible for the non-DRM resolution-changing extensions. He's a major reason that the Linux windowing environment hasn't fallen far behind (and if he had been allowed to incorporate his changes earlier, would probably have pushed Linux ahead).
Slashdot Mirror
Just because peaceful protest should be *used* before violent opposition (and don't get me wrong -- I view violent opposition as an absolutely last-ditch measure -- hopefully, even if things are desperate, the threat of violent opposition should cause the need never to arise) doesn't mean that violent opposition should be ruled out.
Peaceful protest helps sway public opinion. But if public opinion is swayed, and a figure still refuses to step down and desires to use force to maintain his position, what other effective options other than force remain?
The only one quoted in that link who was in the congress writing the constitution was Madison. The others didn't write it, so they can't know what it was supposed to mean.
True, but all are considered Founding Fathers: Patrick Henry is a major figure in the founding of our country, and Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee were signers of the Declaration of Independence. And their opinions were clearly that citizenry should be armed.
But, fair enough. Here's a more in-depth analysis, including chunks of cited text from Alexander Hamilton, who *was* involved with the Constitution.
But as for embezzlers- an embezzler has already proved he's a thief. People who commit one crime frequently commit others.
An embezzler *shooting* someone?
I'd be curious to see the statistics on that.
Its risk mitigation- he's more likely to move onto another crime, possibly ciolent, than the average person. Especially since he'll likely become desperate- its very hard for an ex-con to get a job, who would trust a known embezzler?
Does removing his rights (and his political voice, as I'm complaing about above -- sorry, the way we treat people who have committed crimes really frusterates me) help him become a member of society again?
"avoid oppressive regimes" should be "prevent oppressive regimes". "Avoid" isn't a transitive verb. :-)
I could go for a grammar checker library on Linux that firefox could call...
There you have a populace that isn't standing an army (all standing armies do these days is get levelled - that's what heavy ordinance is for), but are equipped with not just assualt rifles, but mines, rocket propelled grenades, high explosives and a will to die for their cause. While they are managing to cause serious problems, they are a long way from overthrowing the government as long as the US military remains involved.
If an administration ever attempted to turn the United States military against said United States citizenry, there are several differences from Iraq:
(a) Many members of our military would probably not follow orders to kill US citizens.
(b) The target count is overwhelming. Our military isn't designed around carpet-bombing any more. An angry populace doesn't have long tank convoys to destroy.
(c) Resupply wouldn't exist. How long can you keep an A-10 flying without a populace providing fuel and parts for it?
I would think it would be clear now that in the modern world, with the current state of military technology, unless you are unbelievably powerful, a standing army does very little good. Witness the effectiveness of standing armies in any war in the last 20 years when one side possesses significant military hardware. All a standing army does is paint a nice big spot on the ground for where to drop the heavy ordinance. I think you are deluded if you believe any form of citizen's militia would be able to effectively stand against the current US military.
(a) It's hard to convince a complete military to stand against a nation's own people, unless the odds against the people are truly overwhelming. Take the final days of the Soviet Union, for instance -- Soviet troops refused to fire on peaceful protestors. They simply stopped their tanks and waited.
(b) We have weaponry designed around allowing for rapid response, short-term conflict with very favorable kill ratios. Yes, ground attack aircraft can achieve very good kill ratios during wartime, but if they lack resupply, they become useless very quickly.
Okay, that's fair, but the principles still hold: unless you want to impress over 20% of your population into the military (and manage to somehow keep them all loyal) you aren't going to be able to control a population that wants you gone.
The point is that not a revolution literally needs to happen -- it's that the fact that it *could* has dissuasive impact.
And the constitution was written when assault weapons and handguns didn't *exist*. SO the same logic that bans nuclear bombs can be used to ban them.
No, both assault weapons and handguns did exist in the Revolutionary War period. They weren't identical to the same as the guns we have today, true -- the concept of an automatic weapon didn't exist. An assault weapon was a bayonet-equipped musket. But it is necessary to provide someone an automatic weapon to keep them competitive with someone else with an automatic weapon. From the link above: Thomas Jefferson, for example, noted in 1803 that "None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined, is therefore at all times important." He later commented that "...we cannot be defended but by making every citizen a soldier, as the Greeks and Romans who had no standing armies."
The constitution is quite clear- well ordered militias are allowed arms.
I'll include another link from the site. Sure that's what they meant?
The stuff people spout about it being so people can revolt is pure bull, its a moddern idea espoused by a few far right nutjobs in the past century.
A *modern* idea? How do you explain the Revolutionary War? The writings of our Founding Fathers?
But stopping fellons from getting them easily, requiring registration, making resell illegal (unless reregistering), and limiting the amount of damage a gun can do before reloading are all decent comprimises.
Do you know how Castro took power? Cuba had a gun registry. Immediately after his coup, he took a collection of soldiers around and confiscated everyone's guns. If you have three guns registered and you don't turn over three guns, you were executed. He did so before people had time to organize. Then, he retained control of the military, which controlled the arms. Hence, control of the nation.
As for felons (people who have been convicted of a felony -- let's not try to isolate ourselves from them so that we can mistreat them without feeling bad about it) -- I could see limiting gun access to felons that have committed a felony using a *gun*. But how does it benefit anyone to have, say, an embezzler denied gun rights?
Heck, I'm still amazed that in most states, people in jail for committing a felony are denied *sufferage*. That's astounding (and a major coup for the Republican party -- drug crimes have eliminated much of the black vote).
SOrry, its not an either or thing. If you think weapons should be freely ownable, I should be able to own a nuclear bomb. The constitution doesn't forbid it, after all.
That's absurd. The Constitution was written in a time when nuclear bombs didn't *exist*. The game thory associated with the weapons of the times -- soldiers have rifles, citizens have rifles -- made guns a moderating influence. The game factors associated with nuclear bombs is *wildly* different from that associated with guns.
This is exactly the sort of thing reason that the judicial branch is allowed to interpret the Constitution -- to deal with technological advances.
For example, if the military gets the ability to run around with autonomous sniping helicopters and that becomes the main method of exerting military force, then civilians need to be able to have Stingers. That maintains the same balance as was present in the Constitution's authoring period.
Personally, I think civilians owning guns is not permitted by the constitution, and that militia means a state army. But I do think this is an area where compromises can be reached.
It's not a matter of compromise -- it can be *amended* if it's necessary to mean this. Please at least read and consider this -- the framers very clearly referred to an armed citizenry.
Please explain how the Democrats are trying to get rid of democracy.
Just as an aside, I'd like to point out:
Lots of potentially Democratic voters haven't registered (college students, in particular, are very poor at registering to vote).
Currently, according to the polls, Bush will win re-election. Not by a huge margin, but he will win.
If you are considering voting Democrat, and you live in a swing state, and haven't registered, you really, really should do so:
The swing states are: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Lousiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennesee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. If you live in one of these states and haven't yet registered, please do so. One of the reasons Bush gets so many votes is because so many elderly people are registered to vote and vote solidly Republican. Your vote is needed!
Remember that all it may take to alter the course of the election is winning the vote in your electoral district -- enough to swing a state. Last year, 500 votes in the right electoral district would have put a different President in office and given us an entirely different set of views on foreign affairs, research, military spending, research, abortion, research, charities that are trying to fight the spread of AIDS by teaching people about condoms, and research.
There are probably a lot of people down in a certain Florida county kicking themselves because *they* could have flipped the vote. His first term, Bush had to worry about re-election, so there were some constraints on what he can do. If he gets a second, there will be no limit. If you don't want to see the appointment of socially and religiously conservative judges (and these will *not* be the socially liberal and politically conservative judges that a Libertarian would like), please vote. *Please*. I'm going to do my part on Election Day. When I complain about abuses overseas and poor foreign policy, I'm complaining about not just what Bush is doing, but the choice of the American citizenry on the previous Election Day. We know what Bush does. There is no reasonable excuse not to vote in this upcoming election. Unless you are a religious conservative, please, please, please vote Kerry and get Bush out of office.
I don't own a gun, have no desire to do so, and I *still* think that bans on civilian gun ownership are stupid.
The function of the Second Amendment, which is to avoid totalitarian regimes hated by the populace, is provided to me even if I *don't* own a gun, as long as enough civilians own weapons comparable to those provided to the military.
Note that I don't want civilians to own *bombs*. The idea is to provide rough equality between a soldier and civilian -- in a fight, one soldier == roughly one civilian. Bombs mean that whoever strikes first can have a massive disproportionate advantage. Guns act as a moderating factor, bombs as a destablilizing factor.
The Civil War?
I mean, they didn't win, but it was a near thing.
And just how many smart bombs do you think are around? Smart bombs are for targeting specific targets, and we don't have that many. They don't do anything against an overwhelming angry populace. I guess you could use nuclear weapons, but that's the kind of last-ditch effort that you'd have to be insane to use.
Why do you think we *have* the Second Amendment, crispyman?
It has nothing to do with sport weapons.
It is, very simply, to avoid oppressive regimes from ever dominating the citizenry by disarming them.
A gun that could only shoot non-humans would have absolutely nothing to do with the spirit of the Second Amendment. Gun rights were guaranteed specifically so that *people* could be shot as a last ditch resort.
I have no interest in ever owning a gun -- the benefits provided by the Second Amendment are present as long as enough citizenry own guns. However, I strongly support allowing citizenry access to assault weapons.
Note that guns simply guarantee Hobbsian "rough equality" between people and soldiers -- if soldiers have assault rifles, people also need assault rifles. I do *not* support allowing people to have weapons that allow massive amplification of killing power above that of a soldier as long as they strike first -- like bombs and the like. Assault weapons? Sure, I'd say that it's pretty much essential to allow people to have assault weapons.
Take a look at Switzerland -- they have almost no limitations on the weapons civilians can have. You want a howitzer, you can have one. And if you're a male and above a certain age, you *must* own a rifle -- you're considered part of the militia. As a result (even aside from the fact that Switzerland has never been invaded) Switzerland has a low gun crime rate, much lower than the United States. It's hard to glamorize a tool that everyone has (e.g. you could stick someone in the eye with a pen, but everyone has a pen and it isn't very exciting). Furthermore, it's a dissusasive factor to someone who might consider committing a crime if most people are walking around with weapons. Sure, maybe you can pull out your gun and hold up a bank, but you're nothing special -- it'd be like doing so with a knife when everyone else has knives. Or with your bare hands when everyone else has bare hands -- you're going to be hurt by similarly-armed people.
I could *maybe* even see gun laws banning handguns. But never assault rifles. Assault weapons are the core of the Second Amendment.
SilentChris, I speak as a P2P (well, free, not commercial) developer. So I have some bias in that I don't like the big companies going after me. Someday, if I manage to find work doing what I like to do as a hobby, I'd like this to stay open.
As for the "drug trafficker's road", I can't agree with you. A road has only so much benefit for non-traffickers, but significant benefit for traffickers.
You point out that there are a great deal of illegal files on P2P networks. This is true, but consider why.
P2P filesharing does not inherently have any illegal characteristics. It is simply a transfer medium, much the same as the Internet is a transfer medium.
P2P filesharing systems almost always have two interesting characteristics:
(a) They provide resources for distributing a popular piece of data to grow almost without bound.
(b) They distribute costs of distribution of data across all consumers of that data.
Both of these characteristics are very valuable. The first tends to mean that the network does "more of what we want". It gives us the data we want without limitations based on how much bandwidth someone can get to distribute data. It means that I can create a rendered movie (a la Red versus Blue), post it to Slashdot, and *still* obtain the bandwidth necessary to distribute it -- I probably would not otherwise be able to do so. This is a case in which P2P filesharing has significantly allowed greater distribution of desired data.
The second means that there is a significant problem handled. We have no micropayment mechanism in place, so people are unwilling to pay for a file they download that might incur costs of half a cent in bandwidth. However, when millions of people download a file, they incur significant bandwidth costs. P2P filesharing provides an economic solution to this problem -- it has all consumers of the data automatically contribute to the cost of the data distribution. This is not a trivial problem to otherwise solve, and again provides significant benefits. It allows *anyone* to publish any amount of content, no matter how limited their means.
Now, you talk about illegality. Yes, this is true. However, consider why there are so many illegal files being traded. For a long time, it was kind of a pain to massively reproduce and distribute works. This let us create a mechanism for funding content production based on tying resource allocation to the content creator to the publication/distribution mechanism. We had big publishers spring up, take money for content creators, handle the difficult and expensive distribution, and then provide resources for the content creators to continue to create content. This worked very well for the era of books.
The problem is that P2P filesharing, very simply, makes it cheap and affordable for *anyone* to distribute data. There is a tremendous *demand* for copyrighted goods being distributed freely. P2P filesharing's solving of an economic problem and inherent efficiency make it much easier to supply any kind of content. Since supply is up and the demand for illegal content is so high (and not addressed by our existing distribution mechanisms -- on purpose), illegal content is currently the majority of the content on P2P filesharing networks. This isn't because of any inherent property of P2P filesharing -- it's just because that's what people want.
Now, you could ban it. You could say "This mechanism is so efficient and good that it allows people to do things that they couldn't do before. Our current system to fund content creation can't handle this. We're going to ban it." It does solve some social problems, but there are serious problems with banning such systems:
(a) We live in a global Internet. If some guy in Madagascar can create a P2P filesharing system, everyone can obtain it.
(b) Anonymous systems have nowhere near reached their full potential. As pressure against P2P filesharing users goes up, systems simply provide greater securi
It gives more power to the executive branch, which already has vastly more political power than the Constitution ever intended.
No, I want the legislative branch to keep every check it can get on the executive branch.
Forget Demm and Rep for a moment -- we're going to have to live with this in the future.
And while I'm at it, I found a link to his tech initiatives page.
On here, he mentions a lot of stuff. One notable thing on here is that he was pushing a *real* opt-in antispam act, not the one that actually passed and allows opt-out spam.
Rick Boucher is one of the very few legislators that regularly lines up with common Slashdot concerns and while I don't know whether Boucher himself is technically adept, if he isn't he has someone in his office who is very much so, because he's very clueful on the issues he handles. I'd hate to see him lose office.
Screw that -- I paid for the satellites. I want the imagery to be available when I need it (this is *not* a minor issue -- at one point in the past I had a project stopped because I couldn't obtain free satellite imagery). If the funds to take the pictures are coming out of my pocket, I'm not interested in the USG being able to prevent release of such data. National security issue with letting people know what we're interested in monitoring? Fine. Allow tagging specific data, with a justification (which must be released after five years, and requires the person requesting that the data be delayed to sign the justification) as "delayed". This would allow for a delay of three years or something on the data gathered before it's free under FOIA.
I disagree.
I think that Moore does more to tug at emotional strings than he does to bring up facts.
That being said, I've yet to see him *lying*. I do think that we get a lot more input from the Right than from the Left, and that Moore at least provides a counterpoint.
Also, the frantic claims from the Right that Moore is a liar do not sit well with me.
Please, tell me. What about F9/11 did you take issue with? I see a *horde* of claims that Michael Moore is wrong and a liar and whatnot, but not one convincing claim that makes me think "yeah, that movie is BS". I haven't seen F9/11, but I have seen Bowling for Columbine. I think that Moore focuses too much on the emotional side of things instead of the factual -- the Charleton Heston interview footage did nothing to help proove Moore's point factually, but was emotionally powerful. However, using emotional arguments is *very* different from actually lying. Rove has Bush making emotional appeals all the time, like to courage and strength and whatnot.
Jobs was more of a manager. Credit goes where credit is due: Jef Raskin, Steve Capps, Bruce Horn, Bill Atkinson, etc.
Now that you mention JPL/NASA -- Donald Becker.
Donald Becker started working on clustering Linux machines. He was one of the original founders of Beowulf, without which Slashdot would lose a lot of its culture. He is also responsible for a huge number of the Linux Ethernet drivers. A major reason that Linux is such a solid server OS is because of his work.
Tim Kosse of FileZilla, the only really good open-source FTP client for Windows I'm aware of. He's currently busy porting it to Linux using wxWidgets (read his development diary).
I have used and appreciated FileZilla for many years, but ultimately, I have to come down in favor of WinSCP. FileZilla uses old SCP code that makes SSH2 transfers move extremely slowly, whereas WinSCP can take advantage of the current codebase in PuTTY, and FileZilla doesn't support drag-and-drop.
Also, I'd like to second the Keith Packard thanks, though he isn't all that unsung, at least on Slashdot. Keith had one hell of an uphill battle to get where he was going, but kept plugging away. He's responsible for the user-friendly font selection mechanism in X today (those of us that remember old-style font descriptors will probably agree that there was a significant impediment there to user use). He's responsible for adding the improvements to XFree86 (now xorg) that allowed antialiased text to appear in Linux. I believe he is also responsible for the non-DRM resolution-changing extensions. He's a major reason that the Linux windowing environment hasn't fallen far behind (and if he had been allowed to incorporate his changes earlier, would probably have pushed Linux ahead).
Another Linux gaming hero (though not as unsung as Lantinga, even if his Linux accomplishments are less well known) is John Carmack. Carmack:
* Promoted use of OpenGL over DirectX, stopping an important Microsoft lock-in tool.
* Created a series of (good) cross-platform games to encourage vendors to support Linux with 3d hardware -- probably at loss to his company.
* Wrote code for 3d drivers in the GLX era (pre-DRI) to help bootstrap the 3d world on Linux.
* Created a series of cross-platform engines that could be used to make cross-platform games.
* Open-sourced his older cross-platform game code to encourage production of games based on this code.
"It's not like UNIX is particularly difficult to use".
Think about what you're saying. Yeah, if you're interested in learning, it's not a big deal. If you treat your software strictly as a tool...
He used dashes, which the source I copied from was representing using hyphens. This is confusing, especially since the text also contains hyphens.
I probably should have reformatted it.