Troll go home. We don't need another anonymous coward making unfounded statements about things that he poorly understands (including poor phonetic substitutes for French phrases whose meaning is likely also beyond his comprehension).
Indeed you did. I have a whole defense ready about the differences in tactics between politics and war, but I'll own up to missing that detail instead.
I'm better off looking for employment within the system than trying to stem it...
Indeed you are! If more people who were not career politicians (and who have no desire to become career politicians) were to run for office and reduce the more parasitic practices of government, real change would come much more quickly.
... in behalf of a waterfall of retards
Well, maybe you shouldn't run, you're far too cynical. Maybe it's just the difference between our UIDs.
So you know, I was half asleep going for 'funny' but hey, was an alright read I guess.
Yeah, that happens on the Internet. You have to watch out for those of us who have no sense of humor =)
They have a lot of similaritys, but where it matters they are different. McCain wants this war, Obama doesn't, McCain want's the internet destroyed, Obama doesn't.
Right, but neither of them opposed telecom immunity, and both are ignoring the domestic government surveillance we read about nearly every day here. Both approve of government bailouts for the housing market. These two issues alone IMO have huge ramifications for our country and our quality of life in the long term. They're dealbreakers for me.
You take the best option, on the most important issues, and continue to fight to get your voice heard on the other issues.
By voting for someone else, I am both taking the best option on the issues that matter the most to me and fighting to get my voice heard. In the only measure that political parties care about is voting. If I sit and post on Slashdot about how bad our choices are and how I want to see something else, and then go and vote in the guy I've been complaining about, that tells the party that they don't need to listen to me to get my vote.
Because in this country, more people will vote McCain without thinking then will vote Obama without thinking... statistics show republicans are far less likely to swing vote. Obama needs every thinking vote he can get.
I agree that politics have become very shallow in this country. I'm a little more optimistic than you about Obama's chances.
So, now with a page of rambleing to back it up what I was getting at, I say again. Vote for Obama, it's kind of important. Sorry if you disagree.
No need to apologize. Disagreement is more interesting.
"Reality Master 201, huh? What happened to the other 200 Reality Masters, did you argue them to death?"
(I agree with your original post and enjoyed your exchanges in this thread. I'm just trying to offset the good karma from my two highly-rated posts in this story.)
could you just vote for Mccain this time and save the hippy crap for the next election? it's kind of important.
You see what I did there?
Your statement shows a failure to recognize that there are a significant number of people who believe that McCain will take this country in the right direction and Obama the wrong. I am not one of them.
Your statement also shows a blatant disregard for a significant number people who believe that neither Obama nor McCain will take this country in the right direction. I am one of them. You are, in effect, asking me to suspend my principles in favor of your principles, and I'm sure you would be incensed if I were to suspend them in favor of those who support McCain. (In reality you probably wouldn't care, since I'm just some random internet dude, but you get the idea.)
Let me be frank. I know that this election will result in one of those two men as our next president. I fervently hope that it is Obama, because if we're going to have big spending I would rather see my tax dollars going to help the poor in my country than to fight wars of aggression. On this and likely several other points, your principles and mine match up. I cannot vote for Barack Obama, though, because he still wants more government while I want less. That is going to make far more difference in this country's direction in the long run as it factors into every single decision he makes, not just the hot-button ones that we're discussing now. It is for this same reason that I cannot vote for John McCain, though his stances on the hot-button issues would keep me from doing that anyway.
I am in a swing state, PA, so I'm seeing even more pressure to vote for Obama than I would otherwise. I seriously considered doing so, but have decided that in addition to following my principles, my vote for an alternative to the big two will make more of a statement precisely because I'm in a swing state. Everybody has a "lesser evil" choice; I don't think anybody when pressed will tell you that both nominees are exactly the same. Choosing to get out of the "lesser evil" game and vote for my principles, especially when my vote could conceivably make a difference, speaks volumes about my dissatisfaction with both political parties.
If this is a war (which it's not), then the good guys are the American electorate regardless of party affiliation, and the bad guys are the career politicians. If you don't want it to become a war, perhaps you should respect and educate your fellow citizens instead of deriding them and making it easier for the plutocracy to keep up the charade.
Douglas Adams again, because it's appropriate as usual:
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard." Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this. "It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No, nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in," said Ford. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them. They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
Once you start questioning the basics there's no turning back, and things just get stranger and stranger.
Indeed! What we know about the universe is only dwarfed by what we do not know.
You may be interested, if you haven't already come across it, in the holographic theory of the universe as proposed by David Bohm. He wrote a bunch of essays on the subject, later collected into a book called "Wholeness and the Implicate Order." The basic idea is that when non-local phenomena are present, all of our assumptions about the way things work is thrown out the window, and that (in some way) the whole of the universe exists in each and every particle. I'll confess that I only got about halfway through: it's very heavy QM in parts and very dry language in others.
An easier and more interesting (though probably less informative) read, and the book that led me to stop discounting the paranormal out of hand, is "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. The first few chapters are devoted to Bohm's theory as well as to the holonomic brain theory of Karl Pribam. Latter parts of the book are all about psychic experiments (with very interesting results) and experiences, and how they easily fit into the holographic model. I'm a bit credulous of some of his sources, but they're all listed and can be examined should you be inclined.
I've been digesting the information for over a year now and I find it to be a rather exciting theory with huge ramifications for the scientific establishment. I hope that, if nothing else, the idea gets a larger audience both within and without the scientific community, so that it may be tested as far as possible rather than simply being passed over.
Wow, here's something worthwhile in Idle. Good comment. I'm disinclined to believe in most of the things you mentioned, but like you I don't dismiss them out of hand, especially because I have never (knowingly) dealt with any people like that and have no real basis to judge their claims. I've heard stories of the paranormal that I find hard to believe, but I've heard enough of them from people I trust that I also find them hard to dismiss. It's a shame that more people don't share your outlook of toleration and community; we could all use a little enrichment.
But... the thrust of my argument is, that, if the USA is responsible for terrorism, by, as you would argue, putting in tyrants and also exploiting the natural resources of third world nations, then, inverting those policies should reduce terrorism, would it not? Similarly, sticking to those horrific policies would in fact continue to foment terrorism.
This is essentially what I believe, except for the statement that the US is "responsible" for terrorism. It would be more accurate to say that the US is responsible for creating an environment that is very conducive to terrorism (though we almost certainly have taken action in the past that those we acted upon would consider to be terrorism).
Terrorism has political and economic components, so the argument goes. There's economic dislocation, or poverty, inflicted by the horrible American exploitation of the third world through low oil prices. Thus, it follows that high oil prices would be good for the third world and I would argue that the hundreds of billions dollars and euros headed towards arabia are not exactly hurting the cause.
Well...no. Fluctuations in the price of oil have little to do with terrorism. Fact is, a lot of the profits from oil don't filter down through the populace because they're kept by the oil merchants that the US basically put into place. The US's future oil policy would have little effect on this, and even if we were to cut out Middle Eastern oil entirely, they will not starve. China and India will gladly buy the oil. In another 10-20 years, African nations will likely do the same.
Similarly, if Obama returns to RealPolitik and lets Iraq collapse, if it does in fact collapse, and then, a dictatorship thus rises -directly because of his decision-, then, is he not, again, fomenting terrorism in the middle east - even more -.
That's quite the chain of what-ifs. I am wondering why the blame for this hypothetical end result of George W. Bush's actions would rest solely on Barack Obama rather than mostly on George W. Bush.
I don't want to lend any credence to this dubious report, but could it be some evolutionary trait from before cows were kept in pens? I doubt that they always stood around in the same area when there were no fences to keep them there. Their magnetic sense (again, if it exists) probably doesn't serve a purpose today, but it may have at some point in the past.
Narbuncular Drop was a great student project showing off a new idea, and I'm glad it's still available to play with. Neglecting the gameplay polish, puzzle depth, and environmental detail improvements that went into Portal is, IMO, a gross error in judgment.
This is all doable, and advisable, but it won't come easy.
Most good things don't. =)
First, the electorate (that would be us voters)
(Thanks, I knew there was a word for that, but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was.)
must band together and DEMAND this from our elected officials and MAKE the elected officials perform or get out.
It would probably be easier just to convince non-politicians who like the idea to run. The current crop of career politicians is getting overripe. I think we're going to see a lot of new blood in upcoming election cycles, and I'll bet a lot of those folks will like the idea of transparency, especially since many of them will be running in reaction to the secretive and deceptive Bush administration. They probably haven't considered how (relatively) easy it is to implement a large increase of transparency.
Getting the word out and garnering interest shouldn't be so tough either. Informally-toned TV spots would work wonders for getting people interested. "I mean...it's like an American Idol where you get to (in aggregate) pick the tunes to be performed, influence the singer's style, and find out more about his or her character through personalized questions. Oh, yeah--results of your choices affect the way you live." Young people today spend as much time on the web as they do watching TV. Shaping the legal landscape around them is a natural extension of shaping their social landscape through sites like Facebook and Myspace.
The second issue you raise, the lack of time, is the more difficult of the two to tackle. My own thoughts are also along the lines of/.-style boards for discussion, with something like a more complex Firehose (with a dash of Wikipedia for flavor) to moderate top items to which the elected official should respond. I see nothing wrong with retaining a communications manager or even a small team if necessary, but the content that they generate should be clearly labeled as such and again, the more relaxed the better. I believe that the days of nothing but formally polished ghostwritten form letters are finished, and that a greater measure of community is coming (back?) to the political process.
That said, it seems that politicians become corrupt or unable to fight the corruption after joining the ranks of other politicians.
This is true in most cases, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's harder to become corrupted if you make yourself accountable to the people you represent. The platform you run on can and should include transparency as a component. You obviously can't announce every conversation you have or action you take, but you can do a lot more than simply making your voting record available and having your staff write form letters. Respond personally, blog-style, to any questions that are asked by a large enough number of those you represent. Give them a taste of your thought processes and guiding philosophies as they relate to your government position.
The technology to do this, and do it well, exists. A fancy blogging/polling system on your official site, with user-created and moderated questions, comments, and/or discussions will keep you informed of what they are thinking and what they want from you. This system should be publicly readable, but most likely only verified users from your district (or what have you) can ask and moderate questions.
If they find that you are compromising too much, they will let you know. Forcing yourself to report on what you are doing will make you less likely to fall into the trap of corruption. Openness does to corruption what distance does to gravity.
Depends on who you talk to. Since I'm responding, I'll say that Snow Crash is a fun romp with some cool ideas. I like it, but I know lots of people who are very "meh" about it, and after 3 readings the shine is wearing off for me. For a book with a somewhat similar flavor but a much, much more interesting world, check out The Diamond Age. That is my favorite Stephenson book.
Cryptonomicon is probably his best book, a must-read for geeks, and the best place to start if you're not afraid of 800+ pages. Where else will you find modular arithmetic explained in the narrative through a bent spoke and dented chain link forcing Alan Turing (who is keeping track in his head) to stop every X*Y pedal cycles to adjust it and keep the chain from falling off? You'll get a pretty polarized set of opinions on that one, and the usual non-endings (which you have yet to experience!) apply. Still a mighty fine slice of culture, if I do say so myself.
Thanks for the recommendation--that totally slipped under my radar and it looks like a lot of fun. The video alone has secured it a top 3 spot on my DS must-have list.
John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan that will create millions of good American jobs, ensure our nation's energy security, get the government's budget and spending practices in order, and bring relief to American consumers. Click to learn how the McCain Economic Plan will help bring reform, prosperity and peace to America. Read More...
I *have* a clue, and much of the reason my latest laptop is a Mac is the same: it just works.
Both of my previous laptops had issues with sleep mode. The last one towards the end also tended to overheat and shut down if I was doing something as simple as watching a Youtube video. I needed an external card to work in Reason without a noticeable delay between playing a note and hearing it sound. Not to mention all the little annoyances that regularly plague Windows machines.
All this went down a few months after Apple switched to Intel architecture. When the dust settled and Boot Camp was introduced, I realized I could have the best of both worlds: a laptop designed for multimedia processing, and (through Boot Camp) retain access to my collection of (pre-2004) Windows games.
Five months with the MacBook Pro and I'm a pretty happy camper. Macs aren't as trouble-free as the fanboys would lead you to believe: I am experiencing a minor yet annoying sound glitch when using the headphone jack and a mysterious failure to connect to my gf's Netgear wireless router, but other than that everything really has just worked.
Regarding the current issue with Psystar, I wish them the best of luck as I would love to see more people using a decent operating system. Maybe they'll open the door for a new round of Mac clones so I can get a desktop system running OS X without paying an arm and a leg for crippled expansion. As long as I remain a laptop user, however, I'm going to stick with Apple's hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not malicious or anything, it's just very, very poor writing and will make you angry.
Posting this using Chrome. Flash works just fine.
Ooh, and whatever code is responsible for posting /. comments (presumably Javascript) is _very_ noticeably faster compared to Firefox.
Troll go home. We don't need another anonymous coward making unfounded statements about things that he poorly understands (including poor phonetic substitutes for French phrases whose meaning is likely also beyond his comprehension).
The trick is to visit pages with those open tabs.
(FF3, 3 tabs open, maximum of 8 tabs earlier this session, 227MB RAM used).
I am a fucking blowhard, you insensitive clod!
I did say "without bullets"...
Indeed you did. I have a whole defense ready about the differences in tactics between politics and war, but I'll own up to missing that detail instead.
I'm better off looking for employment within the system than trying to stem it ...
Indeed you are! If more people who were not career politicians (and who have no desire to become career politicians) were to run for office and reduce the more parasitic practices of government, real change would come much more quickly.
... in behalf of a waterfall of retards
Well, maybe you shouldn't run, you're far too cynical. Maybe it's just the difference between our UIDs.
So you know, I was half asleep going for 'funny' but hey, was an alright read I guess.
Yeah, that happens on the Internet. You have to watch out for those of us who have no sense of humor =)
They have a lot of similaritys, but where it matters they are different. McCain wants this war, Obama doesn't, McCain want's the internet destroyed, Obama doesn't.
Right, but neither of them opposed telecom immunity, and both are ignoring the domestic government surveillance we read about nearly every day here. Both approve of government bailouts for the housing market. These two issues alone IMO have huge ramifications for our country and our quality of life in the long term. They're dealbreakers for me.
You take the best option, on the most important issues, and continue to fight to get your voice heard on the other issues.
By voting for someone else, I am both taking the best option on the issues that matter the most to me and fighting to get my voice heard. In the only measure that political parties care about is voting. If I sit and post on Slashdot about how bad our choices are and how I want to see something else, and then go and vote in the guy I've been complaining about, that tells the party that they don't need to listen to me to get my vote.
Because in this country, more people will vote McCain without thinking then will vote Obama without thinking... statistics show republicans are far less likely to swing vote. Obama needs every thinking vote he can get.
I agree that politics have become very shallow in this country. I'm a little more optimistic than you about Obama's chances.
So, now with a page of rambleing to back it up what I was getting at, I say again. Vote for Obama, it's kind of important. Sorry if you disagree.
No need to apologize. Disagreement is more interesting.
Oooh, I've got one!
"Reality Master 201, huh? What happened to the other 200 Reality Masters, did you argue them to death?"
(I agree with your original post and enjoyed your exchanges in this thread. I'm just trying to offset the good karma from my two highly-rated posts in this story.)
could you just vote for Mccain this time and save the hippy crap for the next election? it's kind of important.
You see what I did there?
Your statement shows a failure to recognize that there are a significant number of people who believe that McCain will take this country in the right direction and Obama the wrong. I am not one of them.
Your statement also shows a blatant disregard for a significant number people who believe that neither Obama nor McCain will take this country in the right direction. I am one of them. You are, in effect, asking me to suspend my principles in favor of your principles, and I'm sure you would be incensed if I were to suspend them in favor of those who support McCain. (In reality you probably wouldn't care, since I'm just some random internet dude, but you get the idea.)
Let me be frank. I know that this election will result in one of those two men as our next president. I fervently hope that it is Obama, because if we're going to have big spending I would rather see my tax dollars going to help the poor in my country than to fight wars of aggression. On this and likely several other points, your principles and mine match up. I cannot vote for Barack Obama, though, because he still wants more government while I want less. That is going to make far more difference in this country's direction in the long run as it factors into every single decision he makes, not just the hot-button ones that we're discussing now. It is for this same reason that I cannot vote for John McCain, though his stances on the hot-button issues would keep me from doing that anyway.
I am in a swing state, PA, so I'm seeing even more pressure to vote for Obama than I would otherwise. I seriously considered doing so, but have decided that in addition to following my principles, my vote for an alternative to the big two will make more of a statement precisely because I'm in a swing state. Everybody has a "lesser evil" choice; I don't think anybody when pressed will tell you that both nominees are exactly the same. Choosing to get out of the "lesser evil" game and vote for my principles, especially when my vote could conceivably make a difference, speaks volumes about my dissatisfaction with both political parties.
If this is a war (which it's not), then the good guys are the American electorate regardless of party affiliation, and the bad guys are the career politicians. If you don't want it to become a war, perhaps you should respect and educate your fellow citizens instead of deriding them and making it easier for the plutocracy to keep up the charade.
Douglas Adams again, because it's appropriate as usual:
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No, nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in," said Ford. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them. They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
Once you start questioning the basics there's no turning back, and things just get stranger and stranger.
Indeed! What we know about the universe is only dwarfed by what we do not know.
You may be interested, if you haven't already come across it, in the holographic theory of the universe as proposed by David Bohm. He wrote a bunch of essays on the subject, later collected into a book called "Wholeness and the Implicate Order." The basic idea is that when non-local phenomena are present, all of our assumptions about the way things work is thrown out the window, and that (in some way) the whole of the universe exists in each and every particle. I'll confess that I only got about halfway through: it's very heavy QM in parts and very dry language in others.
An easier and more interesting (though probably less informative) read, and the book that led me to stop discounting the paranormal out of hand, is "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. The first few chapters are devoted to Bohm's theory as well as to the holonomic brain theory of Karl Pribam. Latter parts of the book are all about psychic experiments (with very interesting results) and experiences, and how they easily fit into the holographic model. I'm a bit credulous of some of his sources, but they're all listed and can be examined should you be inclined.
I've been digesting the information for over a year now and I find it to be a rather exciting theory with huge ramifications for the scientific establishment. I hope that, if nothing else, the idea gets a larger audience both within and without the scientific community, so that it may be tested as far as possible rather than simply being passed over.
Wow, here's something worthwhile in Idle. Good comment. I'm disinclined to believe in most of the things you mentioned, but like you I don't dismiss them out of hand, especially because I have never (knowingly) dealt with any people like that and have no real basis to judge their claims. I've heard stories of the paranormal that I find hard to believe, but I've heard enough of them from people I trust that I also find them hard to dismiss. It's a shame that more people don't share your outlook of toleration and community; we could all use a little enrichment.
But... the thrust of my argument is, that, if the USA is responsible for terrorism, by, as you would argue, putting in tyrants and also exploiting the natural resources of third world nations, then, inverting those policies should reduce terrorism, would it not? Similarly, sticking to those horrific policies would in fact continue to foment terrorism.
This is essentially what I believe, except for the statement that the US is "responsible" for terrorism. It would be more accurate to say that the US is responsible for creating an environment that is very conducive to terrorism (though we almost certainly have taken action in the past that those we acted upon would consider to be terrorism).
Terrorism has political and economic components, so the argument goes. There's economic dislocation, or poverty, inflicted by the horrible American exploitation of the third world through low oil prices. Thus, it follows that high oil prices would be good for the third world and I would argue that the hundreds of billions dollars and euros headed towards arabia are not exactly hurting the cause.
Well...no. Fluctuations in the price of oil have little to do with terrorism. Fact is, a lot of the profits from oil don't filter down through the populace because they're kept by the oil merchants that the US basically put into place. The US's future oil policy would have little effect on this, and even if we were to cut out Middle Eastern oil entirely, they will not starve. China and India will gladly buy the oil. In another 10-20 years, African nations will likely do the same.
Similarly, if Obama returns to RealPolitik and lets Iraq collapse, if it does in fact collapse, and then, a dictatorship thus rises -directly because of his decision-, then, is he not, again, fomenting terrorism in the middle east - even more -.
That's quite the chain of what-ifs. I am wondering why the blame for this hypothetical end result of George W. Bush's actions would rest solely on Barack Obama rather than mostly on George W. Bush.
I don't want to lend any credence to this dubious report, but could it be some evolutionary trait from before cows were kept in pens? I doubt that they always stood around in the same area when there were no fences to keep them there. Their magnetic sense (again, if it exists) probably doesn't serve a purpose today, but it may have at some point in the past.
When it was ugly, buggy, and short?
Narbuncular Drop was a great student project showing off a new idea, and I'm glad it's still available to play with. Neglecting the gameplay polish, puzzle depth, and environmental detail improvements that went into Portal is, IMO, a gross error in judgment.
You forgot to end with "get off my lawn" =)
This is all doable, and advisable, but it won't come easy.
Most good things don't. =)
First, the electorate (that would be us voters)
(Thanks, I knew there was a word for that, but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was.)
must band together and DEMAND this from our elected officials and MAKE the elected officials perform or get out.
It would probably be easier just to convince non-politicians who like the idea to run. The current crop of career politicians is getting overripe. I think we're going to see a lot of new blood in upcoming election cycles, and I'll bet a lot of those folks will like the idea of transparency, especially since many of them will be running in reaction to the secretive and deceptive Bush administration. They probably haven't considered how (relatively) easy it is to implement a large increase of transparency.
Getting the word out and garnering interest shouldn't be so tough either. Informally-toned TV spots would work wonders for getting people interested. "I mean...it's like an American Idol where you get to (in aggregate) pick the tunes to be performed, influence the singer's style, and find out more about his or her character through personalized questions. Oh, yeah--results of your choices affect the way you live." Young people today spend as much time on the web as they do watching TV. Shaping the legal landscape around them is a natural extension of shaping their social landscape through sites like Facebook and Myspace.
The second issue you raise, the lack of time, is the more difficult of the two to tackle. My own thoughts are also along the lines of /.-style boards for discussion, with something like a more complex Firehose (with a dash of Wikipedia for flavor) to moderate top items to which the elected official should respond. I see nothing wrong with retaining a communications manager or even a small team if necessary, but the content that they generate should be clearly labeled as such and again, the more relaxed the better. I believe that the days of nothing but formally polished ghostwritten form letters are finished, and that a greater measure of community is coming (back?) to the political process.
That said, it seems that politicians become corrupt or unable to fight the corruption after joining the ranks of other politicians.
This is true in most cases, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's harder to become corrupted if you make yourself accountable to the people you represent. The platform you run on can and should include transparency as a component. You obviously can't announce every conversation you have or action you take, but you can do a lot more than simply making your voting record available and having your staff write form letters. Respond personally, blog-style, to any questions that are asked by a large enough number of those you represent. Give them a taste of your thought processes and guiding philosophies as they relate to your government position.
The technology to do this, and do it well, exists. A fancy blogging/polling system on your official site, with user-created and moderated questions, comments, and/or discussions will keep you informed of what they are thinking and what they want from you. This system should be publicly readable, but most likely only verified users from your district (or what have you) can ask and moderate questions.
If they find that you are compromising too much, they will let you know. Forcing yourself to report on what you are doing will make you less likely to fall into the trap of corruption. Openness does to corruption what distance does to gravity.
Only if you keep voting in the same assholes...
Touche =)
Depends on who you talk to. Since I'm responding, I'll say that Snow Crash is a fun romp with some cool ideas. I like it, but I know lots of people who are very "meh" about it, and after 3 readings the shine is wearing off for me. For a book with a somewhat similar flavor but a much, much more interesting world, check out The Diamond Age. That is my favorite Stephenson book.
Cryptonomicon is probably his best book, a must-read for geeks, and the best place to start if you're not afraid of 800+ pages. Where else will you find modular arithmetic explained in the narrative through a bent spoke and dented chain link forcing Alan Turing (who is keeping track in his head) to stop every X*Y pedal cycles to adjust it and keep the chain from falling off? You'll get a pretty polarized set of opinions on that one, and the usual non-endings (which you have yet to experience!) apply. Still a mighty fine slice of culture, if I do say so myself.
Birthday: it happens every year and is quite predictable.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it looks like your post and your sig were written by two entirely different people.
Thanks for the recommendation--that totally slipped under my radar and it looks like a lot of fun. The video alone has secured it a top 3 spot on my DS must-have list.
John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan that will create millions of good American jobs, ensure our nation's energy security, get the government's budget and spending practices in order, and bring relief to American consumers. Click to learn how the McCain Economic Plan will help bring reform, prosperity and peace to America. Read More...
Straight Talk Express, here I come!
I *have* a clue, and much of the reason my latest laptop is a Mac is the same: it just works.
Both of my previous laptops had issues with sleep mode. The last one towards the end also tended to overheat and shut down if I was doing something as simple as watching a Youtube video. I needed an external card to work in Reason without a noticeable delay between playing a note and hearing it sound. Not to mention all the little annoyances that regularly plague Windows machines.
All this went down a few months after Apple switched to Intel architecture. When the dust settled and Boot Camp was introduced, I realized I could have the best of both worlds: a laptop designed for multimedia processing, and (through Boot Camp) retain access to my collection of (pre-2004) Windows games.
Five months with the MacBook Pro and I'm a pretty happy camper. Macs aren't as trouble-free as the fanboys would lead you to believe: I am experiencing a minor yet annoying sound glitch when using the headphone jack and a mysterious failure to connect to my gf's Netgear wireless router, but other than that everything really has just worked.
Regarding the current issue with Psystar, I wish them the best of luck as I would love to see more people using a decent operating system. Maybe they'll open the door for a new round of Mac clones so I can get a desktop system running OS X without paying an arm and a leg for crippled expansion. As long as I remain a laptop user, however, I'm going to stick with Apple's hardware.