Here's an intro for it without the socialistic slant: Today the governor of Pennsylvania signed a law barring municipalities from taxing their citizens and forcing them to pay for telecom access regardless of whether they want it or use it.
It was hailed as a victory for taxpayers, because the planned system in Philladelphia was expected to cost far more per "customer" than the same level of service would cost from a private firm.
Given the wonderful job government does delivering the mail, collecting taxes, collecting intelligence about non-existent WMDs in Iraq, running AmTrak, etc. do you really want them to be in charge of your internet service? Personally I'd rather pay less, get better service, and have the loss of customers to the competition hanging over Cox's head like the Sword of Damacles.
That's not competition, that's a tax-funded program. How is verizon (or any other carrier) supposed to compete against that? Verizon can't take the money from you against your will, like the government can. Verizon can't force you to be a customer.
And when the big corporations lobby for preferential legislation (which they do frequently), it's not capitalism, it's socialism. In capitalism the government can't hinder or support any private entity: their fates are left to the market to decide.
Do we have an expectation of privacy in public? Somebody with a telescopic lens can snap photos of you from hundreds of yards away, and shotgun microphones can record your conversations.
And (in the USA at least) the police can record what you do in public without any warrant. I'm as big of a civil liberties backer as any slashdotter, but I really don't think you have much of a right to privacy in public. And common sense says if you don't want it to be public knowledge, don't do it in public.
Also, with those tiny button-sized spy cameras and so forth, which are designed to be even less noticeable than somebody pointing a phone at you, is a cell phone a covert enough form of photography to even worry about it?
But if the government acknowledges a deity (and thereby a religion), it shows favoritism toward that religion, which violates our First Amendment rights. I don't mind individuals doing it (more power to you!), but when the government does it, even if it's something as small as printing "In God We Trust" on the money, it promotes a religion.
If we remove the limits on honest immigration, they won't be breaking the law to get here.
They also won't be tricked out of their money by the 'coyotes' who help them cross, and they won't be stuffed into cargo containers, where they risk suffocation, disease, dehydration, and starvation.
And most important they won't be used as cover by terrorists or other dangerous types sneaking into the country. If immigration was quota free, the honest immigrants would cross legally through the Customs checkpoints. The ones sneaking across the border would likely have something to hide, and could be stopped by the military (as foreign invaders) and detained.
I believe in those those ideas, but because I don't think any person should live at the expense of another.
When the government acknowledges God, it does promote a religious belief. Even something as simple as putting "In God we Trust" on the money or "Under God" in the Pledge. I don't trust in any god. Nonchristians don't trust in that god, they trust Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, The Great Spirit, or somebody else.
If you want to run for an office on the platform of limiting the government to the duties specifically outlined in the Constitution, then I would support you. But if you wanted to have the government promote any religious concept (such as keeping "In God we Trust" on money, or putting religious quotes, like the ten commandments, in government buildings), then I'd oppose you as vehemently as a Green, Republi-crat or other socialist.
Also his anti-immigration stance is more un-American than most Republi-crat policies. This nation is 100% immigrant (even the American Indians immigrated over the Bering Strait). Hard working immigrants are nothing but a boon for our nation, and if we eliminate welfare, the lazy ones won't want to come here.
He doesn't think the gay marriage amendment is necessary, because he thinks the states will all ban gay marriage. He does think it's wrong (based on his religion) and would deny people (of any religion) the right to marry the same sex.
From his front page:
we are committed to a civil government in these United States that acknowledges God.
Most of his positions are based on scripture. So as President, he would make Christian issues into government policy.
He supports the idea of putting the ten commandments in court houses: the ones that are applicible (such as "Thou shalt not kill") are already represented in our legal code.
Perhaps I misrepresented his position by saying "theocracy". He does not want to merge Christianity and the US government, but he does want to base the US government, and its laws and policies, on Christian principles.
His basic position is that the US (and man) were created by the Christian God, and that the US government should follow His teachings and laws, which is not appropriate for a nation so diverse.
You're right that the Constitution Party has similar views to the Libertarians. But the Constitution Party would say their main distinction is their belief that religion has a place in government. Here's his page where he talks about how the government should "Honor God".
I noticed he ducked my question about corruption in a bureaucray and turned it into an attack on our corrupt elected officials.
There's no public money in Chinese elections, but they've had serious problems with corruption recently. The USSR had massive corruption before the collapse.
I also don't see how a party that supposedly supports freedom can say they'd restrict you from spending money on a political ad, which is a blatent violation of our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press.
The only logical way to end corruption is to remove the decision making from the hands of government employees. If the government can't give subsidies to its favorite industries (because somebody in Congress finally reads the Constitution), there would be no motivation to bribe the officials.
Under the green system, as a candidate, you'd get all your campaign money from the government (meaning higher taxes, and forcing people to pay for campaigns they don't care for). Of course if the Department of Campaigning decides that you don't have enough support to run a full campaign they can restrict how much money they give you...so much for the Green party supporting an open, free election process.
Peroutka wants to turn the USA into a Christian theocracy. Badnarik is a Christian (I think), but he's wise enough to realize that not everybody else in the USA is one, and that he has no right to impose his beliefs on us non-Christians.
If I was a short-sighted fool, I might agree with you. Fortunately, I am not.
By voting for Mr. Badnarik (who has only a slightly greater chance of winning than Cowboy Neal), I send a message to politicians that I disapprove of their corruption, taxes, and neo-imperialism. As more and more people vote for third parties, this harmful political biopoly will be broken, and parties like the Libertarians and Greens will begin to win more important positions and be heard.
Over the past few years as people have become fed up with career politicians, and begun to vote Libertarian, Libertarian candidates have begun to affect elections. In the last election, the LP candidate for governor of WI took enough votes from the republican (according to exit polls) that the republican, who probably would have won a two party race, lost. Stories like that are becoming very common.
Close states are expected to have margins in the thousands, or even only the hundreds. Libertarians and Greens get more votes than that. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Badnarik gets more votes than Nader, especially since he's on twice as many ballots as Nader.
The Green party platform promotes raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. People tend to work harder (and smarter) the more their work is rewarded, and tend to put forth less effort, when their work goes unappreciated. We've seen historical examples of what happens when the most productive members of a society are taxed heavily: they leave (e.g. the doctors who fled socialized medicine in India and Pakistan in the 1970s) or reduce their effort (e.g. the low quality, low quantity production of workers in Cuba, North Korea, the former USSR, etc.), and the country becomes more impoverished than before.
How do you plan to implement such a tax heavy system, without falling victim to the troubles experienced by every other nation to attempt it?
It's commonly accepted that power corrupts politicians. The Greens are always speaking out against politicians who sell favors to their corporate buddies or other special interests. But the Green party also espouses a system where the government strictly regulates most industry.
How do you propose to have such strong government controlled regulation, without falling victim to the corruption inherent in a bureaucratic system?
People who vote for third party candidates are people who don't give a shit who will run the country.
I'll vote Third Party (Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party), because I do give a shit about who will run this country. As Mr. Badnarik said when he answered/. questions recently, John Kerry still favors deficit spending, a US military presence in Iraq (and 100+ other nations around the world), corporate subsidies, high taxes, the patriot act, the dmca, and all of the other things I dislike Bush for.
The difference between these two influence peddling career politicians is not significant enough for many of us to distinguish between them. If you can't see that, then you are the blind one.
I'll agree that Kerry is the lesser of two evils, mostly due to the fact that a Republican Congress will oppose many of his ideas, but as Mr. Badnarik pointed out: if you vote for the lesser of two evils, you're still voting for evil.
I second the mini itx idea (not sure about the CF). I have a Via Epia 533MHz box that works great for that kind of stuff.
It's only 20 or 30 watts, and the only moving parts are a small, quiet fan and the hard drive (get an old 5400rpm drive for even less noise/power).
I was just about to post that...
What makes champ car really cool is the in-car camera with all the useful info (like accel/brake pressure, rpms, speed, etc) when they show champ car racing on HDNet. It looks like the replay mode in GranTurismo 3, but in HDTV.
From this article: apparently 70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits.
From this article: Infected Windows PCs Now Source Of 80% Of Spam.
That explains why we're getting so much spam. The current level of spam is at least 150% of the current level of spam.
Why am I reminded of a quote from The Simpsons?
For those who love RPN, check out this RPN calculator for GTK (now GTKmm2.2 compliant): ghsiloP
I discovered last night that the stack doesn't scroll when you add lots of values, but I'll fix that soon.
How about a system where hikers who choose to can carry a GPS transmitter?
In addition, hikers with a group could rent a tricorder that shows them where the other transmitters in their group are, for finding lost kids.
The park rangers could use the GPS signals to find people before natural disasters or bad weather. They could also find people who don't return as scheduled, or stop moving for a long time.
The transmitters could even have a panic button that calls the ranger station.
And hikers can't really complain about privacy issues, since they get to choose whether to carry one or not.
It would save lives and cut down on S&R costs (a win, win situation). And they could charge the campers/hikers for the devices, so Joe Taxpayer wouldn't have to spend as much on the parks service.
Random shuffling is a byproduct of our MTV-induced brain damage, eh?
Should I point out to this idiot that we have something called "radio" that intermixes songs from multiple artists and albums, in an effort to provide what we call "variety"? Or that it predates xmms, winamp, and the ipod by several decades?
One would think a marketing professor would be familiar with these concepts.
The reason fox doesn't like Futurama or Family Guy (and kept moving them around and eventually gave them crappy time slots) is ownership.
Fox wants to own every show on Fox. Groening owns Futurama. Fox would rather show a stupid show it owns (like Oliver Beane) that gets worse ratings, but gives Fox a lionshare of the profits.
Tell that to the people being overrun by kudzu.
Burn it, it grows back. Salt the earth, it grows back. Spray herbicide, it grows faster! The only way to get rid of it is to dig up and destroy every single root.
And why exactly do you think I'm lying?
I installed 1.4 last year when I was visiting them, and have updated it from time to time. It has GNOME, OOo, Mozilla (I haven't emerged Firefox/Thunderbird yet, since Moz1.4 is more stable), gnucash and a bunch of card games and puzzle games.
They use it to send/read email, type up very simple documents, browse the web, balance the checkbook, and play card games.
I'd give them root access (it's their computer after all), but they wouldn't know what to do with it, so I don't see any point to.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an intro for it without the socialistic slant:
Today the governor of Pennsylvania signed a law barring municipalities from taxing their citizens and forcing them to pay for telecom access regardless of whether they want it or use it.
It was hailed as a victory for taxpayers, because the planned system in Philladelphia was expected to cost far more per "customer" than the same level of service would cost from a private firm.
Given the wonderful job government does delivering the mail, collecting taxes, collecting intelligence about non-existent WMDs in Iraq, running AmTrak, etc. do you really want them to be in charge of your internet service? Personally I'd rather pay less, get better service, and have the loss of customers to the competition hanging over Cox's head like the Sword of Damacles.
That's not competition, that's a tax-funded program. How is verizon (or any other carrier) supposed to compete against that? Verizon can't take the money from you against your will, like the government can. Verizon can't force you to be a customer.
And when the big corporations lobby for preferential legislation (which they do frequently), it's not capitalism, it's socialism. In capitalism the government can't hinder or support any private entity: their fates are left to the market to decide.
Do we have an expectation of privacy in public? Somebody with a telescopic lens can snap photos of you from hundreds of yards away, and shotgun microphones can record your conversations.
And (in the USA at least) the police can record what you do in public without any warrant. I'm as big of a civil liberties backer as any slashdotter, but I really don't think you have much of a right to privacy in public. And common sense says if you don't want it to be public knowledge, don't do it in public.
Also, with those tiny button-sized spy cameras and so forth, which are designed to be even less noticeable than somebody pointing a phone at you, is a cell phone a covert enough form of photography to even worry about it?
But if the government acknowledges a deity (and thereby a religion), it shows favoritism toward that religion, which violates our First Amendment rights. I don't mind individuals doing it (more power to you!), but when the government does it, even if it's something as small as printing "In God We Trust" on the money, it promotes a religion.
If we remove the limits on honest immigration, they won't be breaking the law to get here.
They also won't be tricked out of their money by the 'coyotes' who help them cross, and they won't be stuffed into cargo containers, where they risk suffocation, disease, dehydration, and starvation.
And most important they won't be used as cover by terrorists or other dangerous types sneaking into the country. If immigration was quota free, the honest immigrants would cross legally through the Customs checkpoints. The ones sneaking across the border would likely have something to hide, and could be stopped by the military (as foreign invaders) and detained.
I believe in those those ideas, but because I don't think any person should live at the expense of another.
When the government acknowledges God, it does promote a religious belief. Even something as simple as putting "In God we Trust" on the money or "Under God" in the Pledge. I don't trust in any god. Nonchristians don't trust in that god, they trust Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, The Great Spirit, or somebody else.
If you want to run for an office on the platform of limiting the government to the duties specifically outlined in the Constitution, then I would support you. But if you wanted to have the government promote any religious concept (such as keeping "In God we Trust" on money, or putting religious quotes, like the ten commandments, in government buildings), then I'd oppose you as vehemently as a Green, Republi-crat or other socialist.
Also his anti-immigration stance is more un-American than most Republi-crat policies. This nation is 100% immigrant (even the American Indians immigrated over the Bering Strait). Hard working immigrants are nothing but a boon for our nation, and if we eliminate welfare, the lazy ones won't want to come here.
He doesn't think the gay marriage amendment is necessary, because he thinks the states will all ban gay marriage. He does think it's wrong (based on his religion) and would deny people (of any religion) the right to marry the same sex.
From his front page: we are committed to a civil government in these United States that acknowledges God.
Most of his positions are based on scripture. So as President, he would make Christian issues into government policy.
He supports the idea of putting the ten commandments in court houses: the ones that are applicible (such as "Thou shalt not kill") are already represented in our legal code.
Perhaps I misrepresented his position by saying "theocracy". He does not want to merge Christianity and the US government, but he does want to base the US government, and its laws and policies, on Christian principles. His basic position is that the US (and man) were created by the Christian God, and that the US government should follow His teachings and laws, which is not appropriate for a nation so diverse.
You're right that the Constitution Party has similar views to the Libertarians. But the Constitution Party would say their main distinction is their belief that religion has a place in government.
Here's his page where he talks about how the government should "Honor God".
I noticed he ducked my question about corruption in a bureaucray and turned it into an attack on our corrupt elected officials.
There's no public money in Chinese elections, but they've had serious problems with corruption recently. The USSR had massive corruption before the collapse.
I also don't see how a party that supposedly supports freedom can say they'd restrict you from spending money on a political ad, which is a blatent violation of our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press.
The only logical way to end corruption is to remove the decision making from the hands of government employees. If the government can't give subsidies to its favorite industries (because somebody in Congress finally reads the Constitution), there would be no motivation to bribe the officials.
Under the green system, as a candidate, you'd get all your campaign money from the government (meaning higher taxes, and forcing people to pay for campaigns they don't care for). Of course if the Department of Campaigning decides that you don't have enough support to run a full campaign they can restrict how much money they give you...so much for the Green party supporting an open, free election process.
Peroutka wants to turn the USA into a Christian theocracy. Badnarik is a Christian (I think), but he's wise enough to realize that not everybody else in the USA is one, and that he has no right to impose his beliefs on us non-Christians.
If I was a short-sighted fool, I might agree with you. Fortunately, I am not.
By voting for Mr. Badnarik (who has only a slightly greater chance of winning than Cowboy Neal), I send a message to politicians that I disapprove of their corruption, taxes, and neo-imperialism. As more and more people vote for third parties, this harmful political biopoly will be broken, and parties like the Libertarians and Greens will begin to win more important positions and be heard.
Over the past few years as people have become fed up with career politicians, and begun to vote Libertarian, Libertarian candidates have begun to affect elections. In the last election, the LP candidate for governor of WI took enough votes from the republican (according to exit polls) that the republican, who probably would have won a two party race, lost. Stories like that are becoming very common.
Close states are expected to have margins in the thousands, or even only the hundreds. Libertarians and Greens get more votes than that. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Badnarik gets more votes than Nader, especially since he's on twice as many ballots as Nader.
The Green party platform promotes raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. People tend to work harder (and smarter) the more their work is rewarded, and tend to put forth less effort, when their work goes unappreciated. We've seen historical examples of what happens when the most productive members of a society are taxed heavily: they leave (e.g. the doctors who fled socialized medicine in India and Pakistan in the 1970s) or reduce their effort (e.g. the low quality, low quantity production of workers in Cuba, North Korea, the former USSR, etc.), and the country becomes more impoverished than before.
How do you plan to implement such a tax heavy system, without falling victim to the troubles experienced by every other nation to attempt it?
It's commonly accepted that power corrupts politicians. The Greens are always speaking out against politicians who sell favors to their corporate buddies or other special interests. But the Green party also espouses a system where the government strictly regulates most industry.
How do you propose to have such strong government controlled regulation, without falling victim to the corruption inherent in a bureaucratic system?
People who vote for third party candidates are people who don't give a shit who will run the country.
/. questions recently, John Kerry still favors deficit spending, a US military presence in Iraq (and 100+ other nations around the world), corporate subsidies, high taxes, the patriot act, the dmca, and all of the other things I dislike Bush for.
I'll vote Third Party (Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party), because I do give a shit about who will run this country. As Mr. Badnarik said when he answered
The difference between these two influence peddling career politicians is not significant enough for many of us to distinguish between them. If you can't see that, then you are the blind one.
I'll agree that Kerry is the lesser of two evils, mostly due to the fact that a Republican Congress will oppose many of his ideas, but as Mr. Badnarik pointed out: if you vote for the lesser of two evils, you're still voting for evil.
I second the mini itx idea (not sure about the CF). I have a Via Epia 533MHz box that works great for that kind of stuff.
It's only 20 or 30 watts, and the only moving parts are a small, quiet fan and the hard drive (get an old 5400rpm drive for even less noise/power).
I was just about to post that...
What makes champ car really cool is the in-car camera with all the useful info (like accel/brake pressure, rpms, speed, etc) when they show champ car racing on HDNet. It looks like the replay mode in GranTurismo 3, but in HDTV.
From this article:
apparently 70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits.
From this article:
Infected Windows PCs Now Source Of 80% Of Spam.
That explains why we're getting so much spam. The current level of spam is at least 150% of the current level of spam. Why am I reminded of a quote from The Simpsons?
For those who love RPN, check out this RPN calculator for GTK (now GTKmm2.2 compliant):
ghsiloP
I discovered last night that the stack doesn't scroll when you add lots of values, but I'll fix that soon.
How about a system where hikers who choose to can carry a GPS transmitter?
In addition, hikers with a group could rent a tricorder that shows them where the other transmitters in their group are, for finding lost kids.
The park rangers could use the GPS signals to find people before natural disasters or bad weather. They could also find people who don't return as scheduled, or stop moving for a long time.
The transmitters could even have a panic button that calls the ranger station.
And hikers can't really complain about privacy issues, since they get to choose whether to carry one or not.
It would save lives and cut down on S&R costs (a win, win situation). And they could charge the campers/hikers for the devices, so Joe Taxpayer wouldn't have to spend as much on the parks service.
Random shuffling is a byproduct of our MTV-induced brain damage, eh?
Should I point out to this idiot that we have something called "radio" that intermixes songs from multiple artists and albums, in an effort to provide what we call "variety"? Or that it predates xmms, winamp, and the ipod by several decades?
One would think a marketing professor would be familiar with these concepts.
The reason fox doesn't like Futurama or Family Guy (and kept moving them around and eventually gave them crappy time slots) is ownership.
Fox wants to own every show on Fox. Groening owns Futurama. Fox would rather show a stupid show it owns (like Oliver Beane) that gets worse ratings, but gives Fox a lionshare of the profits.
Tell that to the people being overrun by kudzu.
Burn it, it grows back. Salt the earth, it grows back. Spray herbicide, it grows faster! The only way to get rid of it is to dig up and destroy every single root.
Those are a few hundred jobs that are staying here instead of going to India. Would moving call centers to MS/AR/KY help those states improve?
It's probably better to move the call centers to India rather than MS/AR/KY. On average, Indians speak better English.
And I don't think the guy who said we have a low cost of living has tried to buy a house in Phoenix (or paid property or car taxes here).
And why exactly do you think I'm lying?
I installed 1.4 last year when I was visiting them, and have updated it from time to time. It has GNOME, OOo, Mozilla (I haven't emerged Firefox/Thunderbird yet, since Moz1.4 is more stable), gnucash and a bunch of card games and puzzle games.
They use it to send/read email, type up very simple documents, browse the web, balance the checkbook, and play card games.
I'd give them root access (it's their computer after all), but they wouldn't know what to do with it, so I don't see any point to.
My parents have a Gentoo Linux box, and only I have the root password.
Hidden under their tiny Open Source section:
rebuttal
Looking at the list of topics in their menu, and the predominance of MS products, it's obviously a biased site.