I guess we should give all 54 parties a share of the coming debate? They'd each get what - 30 seconds?
The point of the lawsuit is that the state of Arizona recognizes three parties - Democrat, Republican and Libertarian. That means when you register as a voter, you either register as a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or Independent. When you go to the polls, you see the candidates of those three parties, plus any Independents, on your ballot.
Despite that fact, there are only candidates from two of those parties. That would be perfectly fine if this debate were privately funded, but it is in fact funded by Arizona taxpayer money and held at Arizona State University, which is a taxpayer-funded institution. That means that the debate is obligated to include candidates from all three recognized parties, or move to a privately funded location and host the debate using nothing but private funds.
If all 54 of the parties you listed were recognized by the state of Arizona, then yes, a publicly funded debate would have to include candidates from every one of them, unless those candidates declined to attend.
And let's not hear that uninformed "they're all the same" nonsense. In the second debate, they came down on different sides of virtually every single question, with the exception of the draft.
The second debate was all pre-approved questions, despite the fact that they were from the audience. Could it be that both camps simply refused to approve questions that they knew their opponent would sound the same on?
Think how much less time would be wasted on debates if we had only one candidate! Instead of people having to watch two whole hours of something meaningless like a presidential debate, they wouldn't need a debate at all and people could get on to the more important things like watching Everybody Loves Raymond.
Republican National Convention fell a week after the deadline in Illinois for candidates to be certified. Thus, if the law were to be followed, Bush would not be able to be on the ballot in Illinois.
The Republican response: Ignore the deadline 'cause we're important. Nevermind that we'd scream like little girls if you ignored the deadline for the Democrats or a third party. We deserve a double standard, because, uhhhh...well we do.
Except this isn't a group of individuals. Arizona State is a government-funded institution. The money used to finance the debate comes from taxes. The essence of the lawsuit is that Arizona recognizes three political parties (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian), but only 2 of those 3 are represented in the debate.
To simplify it, would it be OK to take taxpayer money from the Arizona state treasury and use it to make campaign contributions to the two major parties?
The tampering the grandparent was describing has nothing to do with adding ballots. It has to do with changing ballots. If, for example, an approval ballot had Kerry and Cobb marked as approved, someone involved in counting the ballots could change that ballot so Kerry, Cobb and Nader were voted for on that ballot.
The number of ballots has not changed - it's still one person/one ballot. But Nader's vote total has been increased by one, and there is no way to determine that that extra vote of approval is fraudulent.
Firefox has an option in the "Web Features" panel to allow/disallow web sites to install software. Uncheck it and remove the Options menu item, and clicking a link to install an XPI extension won't do a thing.
I never said I had a problem with lefty stoners. They comprise most of my friends, in fact. I just meant that/. has enough stoners that the mods will get the reference to "chronic".
Plus its own off-grid electrical system (solar, if the climate permits), so the Gesta^WDEA won't come no-knocking when they subpoena Dilbert's electric bills.
If the third parties really made monkeys out of themselves, why do Democrats and Republicans work so hard to exclude them? Wouldn't it make more sense to have them in the political process, so the major party candidates could point and laugh and kick their asses in debates, making themselves seem that much better by comparison?
Voting Kerry is effectively an endorsement of all of Kerry's policies. That includes continued War in Iraq, gun control, and all his huge fiscally liberal promises like socialized medicine. Sure, you agree with him on some things (like his supposed pro-freedom record on social issues...example?), but don't you disagree with him on as many things?
Besides, unless you live in one of the swing states, your vote for Kerry will not count at all. If you do live in a swing state, your vote will count for a teeny tiny bit - too small to make any difference in which of the two major party canidates gets elected.
Precisely. Stacking charges. This allows the prosecutor's to have 12 charges against you intsead of one. They can then plea bargain down to just one or two charges if you plead guilty. This means prosecutors get their 90%+ conviction records they want if they want to become DA or something, and a lot of innocent people go to jail because they take the plea bargain rather than go through a costly trial at the risk of even longer jail time.
Easy. Just specify CFLAGS on the commandline. If your CLFAGS in make.conf is "-Os -pipe", but you want mencoder with -O2, just run
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" emerge mencoder
The specified CFLAGS are used for that emerge, with subsequent emerges using your unchanged make.conf settings. The same works if you want to override USE or any other option in make.conf for just one emerge.
I've heard this argument before, but it's never quite worked for me. I think there's two ways it can be interpreted and both have flaws. Another (supportive of Gentoo) poster has already said that Gentoo simply requires that you can follow EXACT instructions. That makes me nervous, as it sounds like it's not really learning, but rather just memorizing a bunch of commands. If that's the case, I don't think Gentoo really leaves you all that better trained than the ape at phone-tech support who flips through a manual and tells you to do whatever the book said without and actual cognitive thought.
Installing Gentoo isn't a magic rite of passage that turns anyone into an experienced Linux guru. All Gentoo does is force you to use command-line tools like mount and mk*fs. Compare this to other distros where the option is there to use the command-line tools, but it's easier to use the shiny GUI app. It's like the difference between a High School Spanish class and taking a foreign exchange trip to Spain for a few months; you will learn a lot more (assuming you want to learn in the first place) if you have to immerse yourself in a unfamiliar environment where you have to learn if you want to get anything done.
Of course, this path isn't suitable for everybody, which is why things like High School Spanish and RedHat exist. To each his own.
Conversely, though, it might be that Gentoo actually has good documentation that tells you WHY things work as opposed to just a list of key commands. If that's the case, however, why do I actually need the distro? Can't I just read the Gentoo documentation, learn about Linux's innerworkings, and then just apply that to whatever distro I see fit. After all, if I can edit an XF86Config file by hand under Gentoo, I can edit it by hand under RedHat. The GUI tools may change between distros, but the important stuff is always the same, so the Gentoo docs should be universal, making Gentoo a doc project that just has some sample software attached to it.
If Gentoo was only about teaching people how to use the console, then it probably would just be a pile of docs. However, Gentoo is about much more, which is why it is a full-fledged distro.
The problem now, is that the emphasis is shifted to raising the share price. The share price can be raised through dubious means, which is how Enron happened. If the system were not messed with, Enron could not happen, because if the CEO said "we have just made X billion dollars" investors would then rightly say "ok, fine send me a check". This can not be faked. Investors become the regulators, and they can decide to call back their money (dividends) or re-invest it in the company (by letting them keep it).
I'm a Libertarian and I had never heard or considered this side of the argument. I wish I had mod points, but in their absence, thanks for the info.
Re:More non-gun US murders than total Canada murde
on
Home Defense, Geek Style?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I've done significant research on violent crime in the US and no one really knows why the murder rate is so high
War on Drugs and gun control. That's it.
The War on Drugs inflates drug prices, which means selling drugs is a really profitable business. This finances gangs and provides incentive for them to kill each other in turf wars.
Gun control prevents individual citizens from owning guns and defending themselves against criminals.
Of course both of these effects vary greatly depending on location - this is why places with a bad gang problem and lots of gun control - NYC, Chicago and DX for example - have crime the worst.
Canada also is a lot colder than the U.S. Obviously, cold weather reduces crime. I'm going to write my senator right now and ask him to block out the sun in order to prevent crime. It's for the children!
NY has may-issue concealed carry. The issuing authority can deny your application for any reason they choose. This is far different from shall-issue, where your application must be approved as long as you meet all the requirements.
Alaska, BTW, has Vermont-style (aka right-to-carry) laws too.
Re:The AWB is not about Assault Weapons.
on
Assault Weapons Ban
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· Score: 2, Informative
Assault Weapons are submachineguns, which usually fire relatively low power cartridges. They are fully automatic - if you pull the trigger back, they'll fire until the magazine is empty. They are used for close-in assaults - clearing buildings, etc.
Not quite - "Assault weapon" is actually a term made up in 1988 by Josh Sugarmann, a writer for the Violence Policy Center. Submachineguns fire handgun cartridges, compared to rifles which fire rifle cartridges. SMGs are most often used by SWAT/counter-terrorist teams who need more firepower than a handgun, yet for whom rifles are too powerful, with too much capacity for over-penetration.
I can understand editing out a dull story, or a news item containing offensive content. But when a liberal paper decides to not publish reports of some democratic senators questionable activities, or a conservative news channel decides to not mention how a republican president is trashing Science, your saying this is just an "editorial cut" and not politicaly motivated censorship?
That's called exercising freedom of speech. They have a right to report or not to report whatever they damn well please. Rather than calling it censorship (which it is not; true censorship can only be done by government), it would be better to exercise your own freedom of speech, by telling people about that news agency's underreporting and patronizing news services whose policies you prefer.
Another thing that'd be nice would be some sort of comment-explanation-thingy for options in about:config. "image.animation_mode" can be figured out by us geeks using Google or guessing, but very few Firefox users would be able to decipher it. Something as simple as a tooltip that said "Controls how animated GIFs are displayed. Possible options:..." when you hovered over the related setting. The next step would be implementing a search feature of the explanations, similar to the filter for setting names already in place.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of the lawsuit is that the state of Arizona recognizes three parties - Democrat, Republican and Libertarian. That means when you register as a voter, you either register as a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or Independent. When you go to the polls, you see the candidates of those three parties, plus any Independents, on your ballot.
Despite that fact, there are only candidates from two of those parties. That would be perfectly fine if this debate were privately funded, but it is in fact funded by Arizona taxpayer money and held at Arizona State University, which is a taxpayer-funded institution. That means that the debate is obligated to include candidates from all three recognized parties, or move to a privately funded location and host the debate using nothing but private funds.
If all 54 of the parties you listed were recognized by the state of Arizona, then yes, a publicly funded debate would have to include candidates from every one of them, unless those candidates declined to attend.
The second debate was all pre-approved questions, despite the fact that they were from the audience. Could it be that both camps simply refused to approve questions that they knew their opponent would sound the same on?
Think how much less time would be wasted on debates if we had only one candidate! Instead of people having to watch two whole hours of something meaningless like a presidential debate, they wouldn't need a debate at all and people could get on to the more important things like watching Everybody Loves Raymond.
Republican National Convention fell a week after the deadline in Illinois for candidates to be certified. Thus, if the law were to be followed, Bush would not be able to be on the ballot in Illinois.
The Republican response: Ignore the deadline 'cause we're important. Nevermind that we'd scream like little girls if you ignored the deadline for the Democrats or a third party. We deserve a double standard, because, uhhhh...well we do.
I AM ABOVE THE LAW!To simplify it, would it be OK to take taxpayer money from the Arizona state treasury and use it to make campaign contributions to the two major parties?
The number of ballots has not changed - it's still one person/one ballot. But Nader's vote total has been increased by one, and there is no way to determine that that extra vote of approval is fraudulent.
Firefox has an option in the "Web Features" panel to allow/disallow web sites to install software. Uncheck it and remove the Options menu item, and clicking a link to install an XPI extension won't do a thing.
I never said I had a problem with lefty stoners. They comprise most of my friends, in fact. I just meant that /. has enough stoners that the mods will get the reference to "chronic".
Are you serious? /. has more lefty stoners than a Phish concert. Of course they know what he's talking about!
A quality security system certainly wouldn't hurt either.
If the third parties really made monkeys out of themselves, why do Democrats and Republicans work so hard to exclude them? Wouldn't it make more sense to have them in the political process, so the major party candidates could point and laugh and kick their asses in debates, making themselves seem that much better by comparison?
Besides, unless you live in one of the swing states, your vote for Kerry will not count at all. If you do live in a swing state, your vote will count for a teeny tiny bit - too small to make any difference in which of the two major party canidates gets elected.
Vote Libertarian or stay the fuck home.
Precisely. Stacking charges. This allows the prosecutor's to have 12 charges against you intsead of one. They can then plea bargain down to just one or two charges if you plead guilty. This means prosecutors get their 90%+ conviction records they want if they want to become DA or something, and a lot of innocent people go to jail because they take the plea bargain rather than go through a costly trial at the risk of even longer jail time.
I thought that name was already taken for their new desktop tract publishing software?
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" emerge mencoder
The specified CFLAGS are used for that emerge, with subsequent emerges using your unchanged make.conf settings. The same works if you want to override USE or any other option in make.conf for just one emerge.
Installing Gentoo isn't a magic rite of passage that turns anyone into an experienced Linux guru. All Gentoo does is force you to use command-line tools like mount and mk*fs. Compare this to other distros where the option is there to use the command-line tools, but it's easier to use the shiny GUI app. It's like the difference between a High School Spanish class and taking a foreign exchange trip to Spain for a few months; you will learn a lot more (assuming you want to learn in the first place) if you have to immerse yourself in a unfamiliar environment where you have to learn if you want to get anything done.
Of course, this path isn't suitable for everybody, which is why things like High School Spanish and RedHat exist. To each his own.
Conversely, though, it might be that Gentoo actually has good documentation that tells you WHY things work as opposed to just a list of key commands. If that's the case, however, why do I actually need the distro? Can't I just read the Gentoo documentation, learn about Linux's innerworkings, and then just apply that to whatever distro I see fit. After all, if I can edit an XF86Config file by hand under Gentoo, I can edit it by hand under RedHat. The GUI tools may change between distros, but the important stuff is always the same, so the Gentoo docs should be universal, making Gentoo a doc project that just has some sample software attached to it.
If Gentoo was only about teaching people how to use the console, then it probably would just be a pile of docs. However, Gentoo is about much more, which is why it is a full-fledged distro.
I'm a Libertarian and I had never heard or considered this side of the argument. I wish I had mod points, but in their absence, thanks for the info.
War on Drugs and gun control. That's it.
The War on Drugs inflates drug prices, which means selling drugs is a really profitable business. This finances gangs and provides incentive for them to kill each other in turf wars.
Gun control prevents individual citizens from owning guns and defending themselves against criminals.
Of course both of these effects vary greatly depending on location - this is why places with a bad gang problem and lots of gun control - NYC, Chicago and DX for example - have crime the worst.
Canada also is a lot colder than the U.S. Obviously, cold weather reduces crime. I'm going to write my senator right now and ask him to block out the sun in order to prevent crime. It's for the children!
Alaska, BTW, has Vermont-style (aka right-to-carry) laws too.
Not quite - "Assault weapon" is actually a term made up in 1988 by Josh Sugarmann, a writer for the Violence Policy Center. Submachineguns fire handgun cartridges, compared to rifles which fire rifle cartridges. SMGs are most often used by SWAT/counter-terrorist teams who need more firepower than a handgun, yet for whom rifles are too powerful, with too much capacity for over-penetration.
That's called exercising freedom of speech. They have a right to report or not to report whatever they damn well please. Rather than calling it censorship (which it is not; true censorship can only be done by government), it would be better to exercise your own freedom of speech, by telling people about that news agency's underreporting and patronizing news services whose policies you prefer.
As opposed to pro-government hysteria, such as what you get anytime your turn on a TV news broadcast?
Ain't it odd that behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic only comes from the anti-government side, and you never, ever, not once, hear from any news outlet anything about pro-government hysteria?
Is this what you want?
Another thing that'd be nice would be some sort of comment-explanation-thingy for options in about:config. "image.animation_mode" can be figured out by us geeks using Google or guessing, but very few Firefox users would be able to decipher it. Something as simple as a tooltip that said "Controls how animated GIFs are displayed. Possible options:..." when you hovered over the related setting. The next step would be implementing a search feature of the explanations, similar to the filter for setting names already in place.