When Giuliani replaces Ashcroft in Bush Jr Part II, he'll be smart enough to pass a Patriot Act that won't get overturned, despite its fascist mechanics. Or you can vote for Kerry in November.
Right, I remember Kerry's heroic opposition to the Patriot Act...oh wait. Kerry has a horrible record on civil liberties. He supported the Clipper Chip and encryption bans (opposed by Ashcroft, of all people), thinks asset forfeiture is a great idea, and is enthusiastic about banks spying on their customers. My favorite line is this:
"John Kerry stands by his vote for the Patriot Act," says a March 11 campaign statement. "You can sum up the problems with the Patriot Act in two words: John Ashcroft... The real problem with the Patriot Act is not the law, but the abuse of the law."
So yes, the Patriot Act gives unreasonable and easily abused powers to the government, but *he* wouldn't *dream* of abusing them like those meanie Republicans. I hear he also has several bridges available for purchase.
If you care strongly about civil liberties, you're pretty much down to the Libertarian or Green party, depending on your economic views. I'm firmly capitalist but I can't support the LP because of several of their other nutty positions, so I'm still not sure what I'll do. I may just leave the Presidential section blank as a form of "none of the above".
Do not hand the government unlimited power and expect them to voluntarily restrain themselves. I'm a conservative and don't believe that Bush is a minion of Satan, but I don't trust him with the power he wishes to assume, and I certainly wouldn't trust Hillary with it.
As is, the poverty stricken are left with nowhere to go but the army.
If true, then the military is their best available option, and a draft would deprive many of them of that opportunity.
I agree with the idea
The idea of involuntary servitude to the government? Why stop at the military? The IRS needs sysadmins and DBAs, why not allow them to compel you to work for them at gunpoint?
Well, Wyatt, all the examples you cite show that the elected candidate as the one who got the most votes, so I'm not seeing your point.
There have been 4 presidential elections including 2000 where the candidate who received a plurality of popular votes lost in the Electoral College. Arguing that the guy with the most popular votes "really" won is silly. Both candidates would have campaigned very differently if the election were decided by popular vote because swing states become far less important, and many voters would likely have made different decisions whether or not to vote for third parties.
One of the curious facts about the activities of the 111th keyboarders discussion of antique typewriters is that almost none of the points raised by 'experts' were valid.
This must be the new talking point, I've seen it in a couple of places and it's utterly nonsensical. The initial criticisms of the memos were as follows: - Proportional spacing was not common for ordinary memos in 1972. True. - Raised superscripts were not common for ordinary memos in 1972. True. - It is exceptionally unlikely that a memo typed in 1972 would have pixel-perfect correspondence to the same text typed in Word with default settings. True.
I'm sure some did say that it was "impossible" for the memos to have been typed in 1972 instead of the more accurate "extremely improbable", but the points raised were entirely valid.
because under clinton inherited terrible numbers and turned them around
Wrong. The 90-91 recession was well over by the time of the election. The recovery would have happened under Clinton or Bush.
gwb inherited clinton's numbers
Which weren't good. The dot-coms were crashing, and Enron et al had built their profits on a foundation of fraud. We'd have had the recession under Gore as well. (And yes, if it had been Gore Republicans would be screaming about how he made the economy tank, and they'd be just as wrong).
The President does not control the economy. Anyone who says he does is either economically ignorant or trying to score political points.
Well good for him, but that hardly justifies the conditions sweatshop workers are forced endure
None of the workers are "forced" to endure anything. They work for Nike because it's their best available alternative. It's not pleasant, and it sucks that their other alternatives are even worse, but that's not Nike's fault.
Sensible people who oppose sweatshops realise they give people chances they would not otherwise have had.
In other words, Nike is improving their lives.
We're campaigning to make Nike and friends stop abusing people
So it's now "abuse" to improve someone's life by X if you could conceivably have improved their life by X+Y. Do you donate every dollar you possibly can to charity? If not, you're as blameworthy as Nike by that reasoning.
To me it's pretty obvious that letting companies fund political efforts leads to laws that put the needs of the people behind the needs of those companies.
s/companies/individuals and it's still true. You can't stop like-minded people from forming groups to advocate their positions, whether it's through corporations, political parties, PACs, or 527s. (Well, you can try, but you'd fail in addition to trashing the 1st Amendment).
It'd be far easier to get a list of the primes up to 100,000 (or sqrt(10^10)), and then take each ten-digit substring and perform the Sieve of Eratosthenes on each one.
And easier still to use java.math.BigInteger.isProbablePrime().
In this case, the pattern is f(n) = the nth 10-digit block of the digits of e whose digits add up to 49. f(5) is 5966290435.
Dammit, I would have figured that out eventually. No really. It didn't help that the indexes of the first 4 are 1, 5, 23, and 99, which is *almost* a multiply-by-4-and-add-something sequence.
How is this different from Microsoft's "activate within 30 days or the Windows/Office becomes unusable"?
Um, because that doesn't disable or destroy anything other than itself. It Office or Windows wiped your drive after the 30 days, Microsoft would be looking at the wrong end of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.
A true conservative is also FISCALLY conservative, which the Republicans are not. In fact, it seems they're even worse at wasting tax money than the Democrats now.
Sadly true. The most fiscally responsible budgets we've had recently came about due to gridlock between Clinton and the Republican Congress. A Kerry administration would most likely be better for the budget; not that Kerry wouldn't *want* to spend billions more, but Congress wouldn't go along with it. Still there's no way I can vote for him given his utter cluelessness on defense.
A real conservative under your definition would be, I think, a libertarian.
Yes. Unfortunately the actual Libertarian Party is run by complete nutjobs, leaving us small-l libertarians/classical liberals/South Park Republicans with no home.
third party recounts counting all ballets showed gore winning
I find it quite likely that Gore attended more ballets than Bush, although I don't quite see the relevance...
PS: when Bush's 1st Cousin in the tabulation room at Fox News decided to call the election for bush (when the data clearly showed 'too close to call') that's when things went down hill
Hmm, I wonder what had a greater impact, mistakenly calling Florida for Bush in the middle of the night, or mistakenly calling Florida for Gore while the polls were still open.
The electorial College should be removed from the constitution. It is just bad goverment.
That's a debateable point which I won't get into. But had there been no Electoral College in the 2000 election, both campaigns would have been run very differently (they would have paid attention to voters in Texas and New York, for example), and there's no way you can say with any confidence what the result would have been.
but i find most libertarians naive: the do not understand the concept of right vs license (ie the only protected exercises of a right are those exercises which don't violate the rights of others)
Er, that's pretty much the definining tenet of libertarianism. Subject to frequent debates about what your rights actually are and what actions violate them, of course.
See the problem? The FAA must publish all regulations and the regulation that requires ID does not exist, therefore according to law, the regulation does not exist. That is what he is trying to prove in court.
Right, and that's what I don't get. Congress could easily pass an actual law requiring ID to board a plane, and unlike many other laws it would be vaguely justifiable under the interstate commerce clause.
The military is having so little difficulty with recruitment and retention that it's been able to raise its recruitment standards and still stay up to strength. The Pentagon opposes the draft, the DoD opposes the draft, and the President opposes the draft.
The story isn't reported because it's a non-story. The only person to have actually suggested a draft is Charlie Rangel, a liberal Democrat, who keeps proposing the bill in order to generate FUD. It's then spread by those either too ignorant to know that it isn't going to happen, or those with a deliberate interest in spreading Rangel's FUD.
Quoting this at +2 because it's absolutely right. Barring an actual invasion of the US, there will not be a draft. It would be a career-ending move for any politician who supported it. (Except for those such as Rangel who "support" it for transparently cynical reasons).
If this is representative of the quality of the "censored" stories (which are still slashdotted), then they're censored for the same reason that Gene Ray isn't invited to discuss the time cube at physics conferences.
Mac OS 10.4 (tiger) will be the first truely 64 bit OS from Apple.
True, but that just means individual processes will be able to see a 64-bit address space. It won't actually make the G5 run any faster (in fact, 64-bit apps will probably be slightly slower because pointers will take up twice as much space in the caches).
A better analogy would be lockpicks: as far as I know, it's entirely legal to possess and even use lockpicks, as long as they aren't used for illegal purposes
Exactly. This is why Jack Valenti was accidentally correct when he called DeCSS a "digital crowbar".
imagine that this will go largely uncommented upon by the conservative community. It'd upset their faux populist image to come out so loudly in favor of the corporations that support them. They won't like it, but they won't be able to say anything about it.
Or it's possible that conservatives might actually support this ruling. You know, the whole individual freedom and limited government thing. (Which I freely admit the current administration has shown little respect for).
Cripes, when was the last time the EFF won a case? Reno v. ACLU?
Slashdot Mirror
Right, I remember Kerry's heroic opposition to the Patriot Act...oh wait. Kerry has a horrible record on civil liberties. He supported the Clipper Chip and encryption bans (opposed by Ashcroft, of all people), thinks asset forfeiture is a great idea, and is enthusiastic about banks spying on their customers. My favorite line is this:
So yes, the Patriot Act gives unreasonable and easily abused powers to the government, but *he* wouldn't *dream* of abusing them like those meanie Republicans. I hear he also has several bridges available for purchase.
If you care strongly about civil liberties, you're pretty much down to the Libertarian or Green party, depending on your economic views. I'm firmly capitalist but I can't support the LP because of several of their other nutty positions, so I'm still not sure what I'll do. I may just leave the Presidential section blank as a form of "none of the above".
Bullshit - give me ONE example of it being used to against "non-terrorists".
Here's 3 (taken from other replies, I'm just copying them at +2):
FBI bypasses First Amendment to nail a hacker
Ashcroft: Patriot Act fights child porn
Patriot Act used to shut down strip club bribery scheme: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3540572/
Do not hand the government unlimited power and expect them to voluntarily restrain themselves. I'm a conservative and don't believe that Bush is a minion of Satan, but I don't trust him with the power he wishes to assume, and I certainly wouldn't trust Hillary with it.
Any true conservative would immediately see that suspending due process of law is wrong.
Well said. Contrary to what some alleged conservatvies believe, the Bill of Rights is not followed by "unless the President says otherwise".
As is, the poverty stricken are left with nowhere to go but the army.
If true, then the military is their best available option, and a draft would deprive many of them of that opportunity.
I agree with the idea
The idea of involuntary servitude to the government? Why stop at the military? The IRS needs sysadmins and DBAs, why not allow them to compel you to work for them at gunpoint?
Well, Wyatt, all the examples you cite show that the elected candidate as the one who got the most votes, so I'm not seeing your point.
There have been 4 presidential elections including 2000 where the candidate who received a plurality of popular votes lost in the Electoral College. Arguing that the guy with the most popular votes "really" won is silly. Both candidates would have campaigned very differently if the election were decided by popular vote because swing states become far less important, and many voters would likely have made different decisions whether or not to vote for third parties.
One of the curious facts about the activities of the 111th keyboarders discussion of antique typewriters is that almost none of the points raised by 'experts' were valid.
This must be the new talking point, I've seen it in a couple of places and it's utterly nonsensical. The initial criticisms of the memos were as follows:
- Proportional spacing was not common for ordinary memos in 1972. True.
- Raised superscripts were not common for ordinary memos in 1972. True.
- It is exceptionally unlikely that a memo typed in 1972 would have pixel-perfect correspondence to the same text typed in Word with default settings. True.
I'm sure some did say that it was "impossible" for the memos to have been typed in 1972 instead of the more accurate "extremely improbable", but the points raised were entirely valid.
because under clinton inherited terrible numbers and turned them around
Wrong. The 90-91 recession was well over by the time of the election. The recovery would have happened under Clinton or Bush.
gwb inherited clinton's numbers
Which weren't good. The dot-coms were crashing, and Enron et al had built their profits on a foundation of fraud. We'd have had the recession under Gore as well. (And yes, if it had been Gore Republicans would be screaming about how he made the economy tank, and they'd be just as wrong).
The President does not control the economy. Anyone who says he does is either economically ignorant or trying to score political points.
Well good for him, but that hardly justifies the conditions sweatshop workers are forced endure
None of the workers are "forced" to endure anything. They work for Nike because it's their best available alternative. It's not pleasant, and it sucks that their other alternatives are even worse, but that's not Nike's fault.
Sensible people who oppose sweatshops realise they give people chances they would not otherwise have had.
In other words, Nike is improving their lives.
We're campaigning to make Nike and friends stop abusing people
So it's now "abuse" to improve someone's life by X if you could conceivably have improved their life by X+Y. Do you donate every dollar you possibly can to charity? If not, you're as blameworthy as Nike by that reasoning.
To me it's pretty obvious that letting companies fund political efforts leads to laws that put the needs of the people behind the needs of those companies.
s/companies/individuals and it's still true. You can't stop like-minded people from forming groups to advocate their positions, whether it's through corporations, political parties, PACs, or 527s. (Well, you can try, but you'd fail in addition to trashing the 1st Amendment).
It'd be far easier to get a list of the primes up to 100,000 (or sqrt(10^10)), and then take each ten-digit substring and perform the Sieve of Eratosthenes on each one.
And easier still to use java.math.BigInteger.isProbablePrime().
In this case, the pattern is f(n) = the nth 10-digit block of the digits of e whose digits add up to 49. f(5) is 5966290435.
Dammit, I would have figured that out eventually. No really. It didn't help that the indexes of the first 4 are 1, 5, 23, and 99, which is *almost* a multiply-by-4-and-add-something sequence.
How is this different from Microsoft's "activate within 30 days or the Windows/Office becomes unusable"?
Um, because that doesn't disable or destroy anything other than itself. It Office or Windows wiped your drive after the 30 days, Microsoft would be looking at the wrong end of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.
Really? Name three.
It's tough to find any prominent politician for weaker IP.
Here are the cosponsors for Rep. Boucher's proposal to weaken the DMCA. Several Republicans on the list.
So now, you've got laws that had good intent
I can't believe that. Well before the DMCA was passed, it was obvious that it was going to be used to attack fair use and shred users' rights.
A true conservative is also FISCALLY conservative, which the Republicans are not. In fact, it seems they're even worse at wasting tax money than the Democrats now.
Sadly true. The most fiscally responsible budgets we've had recently came about due to gridlock between Clinton and the Republican Congress. A Kerry administration would most likely be better for the budget; not that Kerry wouldn't *want* to spend billions more, but Congress wouldn't go along with it. Still there's no way I can vote for him given his utter cluelessness on defense.
A real conservative under your definition would be, I think, a libertarian.
Yes. Unfortunately the actual Libertarian Party is run by complete nutjobs, leaving us small-l libertarians/classical liberals/South Park Republicans with no home.
third party recounts counting all ballets showed gore winning
I find it quite likely that Gore attended more ballets than Bush, although I don't quite see the relevance...
PS: when Bush's 1st Cousin in the tabulation room at Fox News decided to call the election for bush (when the data clearly showed 'too close to call') that's when things went down hill
Hmm, I wonder what had a greater impact, mistakenly calling Florida for Bush in the middle of the night, or mistakenly calling Florida for Gore while the polls were still open.
The electorial College should be removed from the constitution. It is just bad goverment.
That's a debateable point which I won't get into. But had there been no Electoral College in the 2000 election, both campaigns would have been run very differently (they would have paid attention to voters in Texas and New York, for example), and there's no way you can say with any confidence what the result would have been.
but i find most libertarians naive: the do not understand the concept of right vs license (ie the only protected exercises of a right are those exercises which don't violate the rights of others)
Er, that's pretty much the definining tenet of libertarianism. Subject to frequent debates about what your rights actually are and what actions violate them, of course.
See the problem? The FAA must publish all regulations and the regulation that requires ID does not exist, therefore according to law, the regulation does not exist. That is what he is trying to prove in court.
Right, and that's what I don't get. Congress could easily pass an actual law requiring ID to board a plane, and unlike many other laws it would be vaguely justifiable under the interstate commerce clause.
The military is having so little difficulty with recruitment and retention that it's been able to raise its recruitment standards and still stay up to strength. The Pentagon opposes the draft, the DoD opposes the draft, and the President opposes the draft.
The story isn't reported because it's a non-story. The only person to have actually suggested a draft is Charlie Rangel, a liberal Democrat, who keeps proposing the bill in order to generate FUD. It's then spread by those either too ignorant to know that it isn't going to happen, or those with a deliberate interest in spreading Rangel's FUD.
Quoting this at +2 because it's absolutely right. Barring an actual invasion of the US, there will not be a draft. It would be a career-ending move for any politician who supported it. (Except for those such as Rangel who "support" it for transparently cynical reasons).
If this is representative of the quality of the "censored" stories (which are still slashdotted), then they're censored for the same reason that Gene Ray isn't invited to discuss the time cube at physics conferences.
Mac OS 10.4 (tiger) will be the first truely 64 bit OS from Apple.
True, but that just means individual processes will be able to see a 64-bit address space. It won't actually make the G5 run any faster (in fact, 64-bit apps will probably be slightly slower because pointers will take up twice as much space in the caches).
Doesn't compare to Iraq.
True. Iraq was arguably an actual threat, and Saddam's abuses were far worse than Slobo's.
[DMCA] Doesn't compare to the Patriot Act
Both were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Do you really think Al "Clipper" Gore would have done anything different?
A better analogy would be lockpicks: as far as I know, it's entirely legal to possess and even use lockpicks, as long as they aren't used for illegal purposes
Exactly. This is why Jack Valenti was accidentally correct when he called DeCSS a "digital crowbar".
Do you think "Friends of Osama" should be able to openly sell "Celebrating the attack on the Twin Towers"
Of course.
Using Iconography from previous terrors to promote new terrors is not (IMHO) a good thing.
True. But censorship is worse, and doesn't actually stop said promotion.
imagine that this will go largely uncommented upon by the conservative community. It'd upset their faux populist image to come out so loudly in favor of the corporations that support them. They won't like it, but they won't be able to say anything about it.
Or it's possible that conservatives might actually support this ruling. You know, the whole individual freedom and limited government thing. (Which I freely admit the current administration has shown little respect for).
Cripes, when was the last time the EFF won a case? Reno v. ACLU?
Sklyarov mostly won, so that might count.