If you read the settlement, you will find that most of the reforms requested by the suit were implemented before the settlement was agreed upon. The NAACP agreed to drop further legal action because they didn't have a case. Period.
Suspected former criminals were systematically exempted from voting in Florida. That's right, suspected former criminals. Not only is this illegal as people who have served their debt to society are elligable to vote, people who are merely suspected of being convicted of crime, and most certainly weren't, are definately allowed to vote.
1) It is not illegal to ban ex convicts from voting. In fact 11 states have laws that automatically and permanently ban ex-convicts from voting. 2) Suspected criminals were placed on a list. Those on the list were given written notice of their inclusion and given proceedures to dispute the listing (it was simply to provide identification and a fingerprint). It was up to local county officials (not Jeb Bush or Catherine Harris) to implement the list, and many counties opted not to. Add on top of this voter turnout, and the fact that only 5 people complained that they were incorrectly not allowed to vote (because they didn't follow the dispute proceedures), and you have a complete non-story.
Ok, lets look at this "scandal":
Here is the official settlement between the NAACP and the Florida electon officials. From the bottom of page 1: Defendants have taken an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Florida... Plaintiffs have not alleged that Defendants acted in a purposefully discriminatory manner toward any group
The settlement is quick to point out that there was no charge of discrimination or election fraud by Catherine Harris, Jeb Bush, or any other Florida election official. Its a non-story.
Here are the facts behind this "scandal":
It was found in the 1998 election that a large number of convicted felons voted, which is against Florida state law.
As a result, Florida hired the services of ChoicePointe to compile a list of possible felons to prevent this in the 2000 election. The list included about 100,000 names.
Every one of those 100,000 people were notified by mail that they were included on the list and they were given a proceedure to dispute the listing (it was simply to go to you local police station with a photo-id and provide a finger print).
These names were given to local county election officials, who had the option of using the list to bar people from voting. Not every county used the list.
It is not known how many people were incorrectly banned from voting.
A total of 5 people claimed they were incorrectly not allowed to vote because they didn't follow the proceedure to remove their names. There could have been more, but only 5 people formally complained.
In an attempt to discredit the US presidency, British "investigative" reporter Greg Palast dug this up and tried to call it a scandal. Note that it only appeared in the opinion columns in the US media.
So, in an attempt to obey state law in the 2000 Florida election, an unknown number of legitimate voters were incorrectly included in the list. Of this unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties where the lists were used. Of this unknown number, an unknown number failed to respond to the notice that they would not be allowed to vote. Of this unknown number, an unknown number would have shown up to vote in the first place. Of this unknown number, an unknown number would have figured out the confusing ballot and voted for Gore in the first place (they say that 95% of ex convicts vote Democratic, which is hardly something that I would brag about).
Is this seriously the best scandal you can come up with?
Ramsey Clark has got to be one of the most extreem left-wing nutcases out there. Perhaps he is bitter after LBJ used him as a whipping boy after his 1968 defeat, and his subsequent 1974 senate defeat. Lets look at a few facts behind this guy:
He actively prosecuted anti-war protesters and draft dodgers when he was AG. Once out of office, he does a complete 180 and became an anti-war protester.
He accepted an invitation and met with Moammar Qadaffi in 1986, when Libya was the target of US Military action because of its terrorist ties.
He legally represented PLO leaders who were accused of murdering and thowing Leon Klinghoffer overboard from a cruise ship in a 1986 terrorist attack.
He legally represented Karl Linnas, a Nazi concentration camp guard who oversaw the killing of 12,000 Jews. He said it was ridiculous to prosecute them "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."
Clark has strong ties to the WWP (Workers World Party), a socialist party with origins from Stalin. This party has resisted the reformes made by Gorbachev in the USSR, insisted that China remain a "workers state", and supported the coup against Gorbachev.
The WWP and PAM (peoples anti-war mobilization) refused to condemn the 1990 Iraq invasion of Kuwait and Saddam Hussein, choosing only to condemn the US and President Bush. All other anti-war groups condemned both parties.
Clark flew to Baghdad in Nov. 1990 and met with Saddam Hussein. He accepted a return invitation in Feb, 1991.
Clark represented Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb charged with war crimes, and the rape and murder of thousands of Bosnian refugees.
A member of the "Red-Brown Alliance", a socialist movement that basically opposes anything from the west.
In October 1999, Clark met with Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade. Milosevic, by then facing war crimes charges before the UN tribunal, called his guest "brave, objective, and moral."
I can't possibly see why anybody would agree with or defend this guy.
Internet sales taxes are desperately needed. Not only are the well-off more likely to purchase things online... this is one of those 'rich getting richer' schemes that doesn't get much airplay
This is pure left-wing bull crap. First of all, the idea that rich somehow get off scott-free when it comes to taxes is laughable. The richest 5% already pay over 56% of the entire income tax base (Source). They are not getting any richer because of anything the government does.
Your just playing the same liberal card over and over. Try to convice the poor that the only reason they are poor is because some rich bastard stepped all over them to get rich. It doesn't work that way.
I don't know what is more disturbing: Somebody disgracing the sacred GPL for profit (GASP!), or the fact that somebody else actually examined a binary ROM looking for the binary signatures of Linux kernel functions.
One of the two needs to get a life (I'll leave it up to you to decide who).
I happen to believe that there should be some more levels of negotiation in between failure to comply and ALL OUT WAR.
What the hell have we been doing for the past 12 years? When military action with Iraq started being discussed last summer, you liberals were complaining about the same thing. Guess what? Its 8 months later, and we are still negotiating, and we have not yet gone to war. In fact, all of this sabre rattling that Bush has done in the last 8 months has done a great deal to avoid war. We have gone from Saddam quietly developing weapons to destroy us, to full UN resolutions, weapons inspectors, and a coalition in only 8 monhts, without a shot being fired. The Saudis are even talking about eliminating Saddam because they do not want a war to destabalize the region.
Bush... CREATES the threat situation where there was none before
How does that work? Is developing weapons of mass destruction and promising to use them against us not enough to create a "threat situation"? Do you want to wait around until he actually uses them against us? Would that be enough of a "threat situation"?
Now because of Bush's "Heroic, No non-since, Take control, Total domination threats", we have North Korea, a REAL international threat, breathing down our necks
This again goes to show your ignorance. North Korea is nothing like Iraq. Why? Because they told us they have nukes. The only reason a country would develop a nuke and then tell everybody about it is to gain diplomatic leverage, not to actually use them as a method to attack. If you look at the economic situation in North Korea, they have plenty of reason to want diplomatic leverage.
Having said that, the only reason you would develop a nuke and not tell anybody about it is so you can use it. If you are planning a surprize attack on an enemy, you do not advertise your attack methods in advance.
I know you don't care about any of this. Its much easier for you to sit around, smokin a peace pipe, and chanting for peace. I guess the only think you don't realize is that in a post 9/11 world, we can't afford so sit back and wait for people to attack us.
This is a joke, right? There is nothing "reliable" about floppy drives, or any removable magnetic media for that matter. Try pulling out a floppy that you have not used in 2 or 3 years and tell me if you can read the disk.
Can you reasonably compare the proffit bassed on M$'s O$ to keyboard sales?
If you could read, you would know that he was not comparing the "proffit" on Office and Windows to keyboards, he was just pointing out that Microsoft has many profitable products, not just Office and Windows.
The fact is that there is nothing new here but failure. M$ gets into each new market the same way, by dumping
No, Microsoft gets in each new market by offering products that people want. The didn't get the largest OS market share by "dumping". They got there by making a product that everybody wants so bad that they wait in line to buy the next release of Windows at midnight the day it is released. Do you seriosly think that "big dumb corporations" would "stick Office on every one of their 7,000 peons desks" if the corporations and peons didn't want to use it?
People are realizing that free makes economic sense. blah blah blah marketdroid blah blah proprietary blah blah blah blah
Who are these "people"?? The 2% of users who use Linux? Or the 95% who use Microsoft? I'll tell you what makes economic sense. Buying a product that everybody knows how to use, from the senior engineers down to the HR secretary. Why is it better to transition to "free" software if you have to spend thousands forcing people to learn how to use it, even when the majority do not want to learn?
Slammer, Code Red, Nmedia, SirCam, I love you, Klez, la te da te da
We, as a nation, actually build very little on our own shores
How is it that the US is the worlds largest exporter then? What are we selling?
Re:The best socialism...
on
Corporate KDE
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I want my tax dollars spent on whatever will allow the government to accomplish their job in the most efficient manner. I don't give a damn if the source code is open or if its "proprietary" software.
At least my nicotinergic receptors were sufficiently and pleasantly stimulated during my lifetime.
Translation:
At least my nicotinergic receptors were sufficiently and pleasantly stimulated during my shortened, putrid, more expensive lifetime (filled with yellow teeth, nicotine stained hands, uncontrollable cravings, and the knowledge that my filthy habit was unhealthy to the people that were close to me).
Why not spend more money on *preventing* war, in stead of *fighting* war?
What do you think Bush is doing? We have not fired a shot yet in Iraq (besides the no-fly zone incidents, but those have been happening for 8 years). We have been rattling sabres loud enough for months now that even Saudi Arabia is talking about forming a coup to oust Saddam Hussein. I would say that the money being spent now on military build-up and war prep is doing a great deal to prevent war.
There should be an political army as well as a millitary army, but then again, it won't be so "fun" to not be able to kill other human beings.
Its sad if you think this is true. I dare you to find any person in the military that wants to go to Iraq and kill people. I have a close relative in the Marines and the last thing that he wants to do is kill people.
The simple fact is that the world will always have its share of Hitlers and Husseins. If nothing were done about these tyrannical leaders, we would have much more death, fighting, and suffering.
While there may be many tyrannical leaders in this world, only one has gassed his own people, expressed a desire to destroy the entire US, supported terrorists (financially and otherwise), broken numerous UN resolutions, killed his own brother because he shared weapons secrets to the UN, and is actively working on developing Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological weapons. This is far deeper than "they have lots of oil!".
Even if it was, what is the crime in fighting a war for oil? The worlds economy largely rests on the supply of oil. Fossil fuels don't supply only SUV's and DRAM chip fabs. They heat homes, power schools, and provide the essential energy that anybody needs to survive.
Why does the left constantly whine about the oil problem, but when any reasonable solution is suggested (I.E., drilling in ANWR, securing oil from the middle east) they just point their fingers at those evil bastards who drive SUV's.
Ok, here are the facts behind your supposed Florida election scandal.
It was found in the 1998 election that a large number of convicted felons voted, which is against Florida state law.
As a result, Florida hired the services of ChoicePointe to compile a list of possible felons to prevent this in the 2000 election. The list included about 100,000 names.
Every one of those 100,000 people were notified by mail that they were included on the list and they were given a proceedure to dispute the listing (it was simply to go to you local police station with a photo-id and provide a finger print).
These names were given to local county election officials, who had the option of using the list to bar people from voting. Not every county used the list.
It is not known how many people were incorrectly banned from voting.
A total of 5 people claimed they were incorrectly not allowed to vote because they didn't follow the proceedure to remove their names. There could have been more, but only 5 people formally complained.
Here is the official settlement agreement from the NAACP. Read on the bottom of page 1:
Defendants have taken an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Florida... Plaintiffs have not alleged that Defendants acted in a purposefully discriminatory manner toward any group
It clearly states that nobody was accusing Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush or anybody else in Florida of any wrongdoing or fraud. So, your (and this Greg Palast fool) entire claim is the following: In 2000, Florida compiled a list of 100,000 convicted felons to prevent them from breaking state law and voting. Of that list of 100,000 people, an unknown number were legitimate voters. Of that unknown number of legitimate voters, an unknown number did not follow the proceedure to dispute their name being included on the list. Of that unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties that did not use the list in the election. Of that unknown number, an unknown number would have even bothered to show up to vote (expect about 40% for voter turnout averages). And, the official legal settlement as shown on the plaintiffs web site makes no accusation of fraud or wrong doing.
Is this seriously the best election scandal you can come up with?
1) That is an interesting interpretation of what happened. Here is a more realistic account of the 2000 Florida election:
The Florida Supreme court, voting thier political agenda, TRIED TO CHANGE FLORIDA STATE LAW by extending the deadline for election results to be certified. If you really did know anything about Government, you would know that this is NOT the role of the Judicial branch, but a function of the Legislative branch. This is why the US Supreme Court stepped in.
2) The role of the USSC is to stricly interpret the constitution. Thats it. As far as precedent goes, there wasn't any contrary precedent on the situation that they were ruling on (that is, State courts changing the law).
Nice. I've been realplayer free for 3 years now. We need to form a club called "RPA" -- RealPlayer Anonymous. It could provide a support group to help recovering RealPlayer users with a simple 12-step program.
The prohibitive cost of P4's, especially the higher end ones, has pretty much kept AMD processors as the choice for home system builders. Any new super high GHz P4's aren't really in the picture for many people.
Not true. I built a system a month and a half ago and it was actually about $50 cheaper to go with a Pentium 4/DDR400 solution than it was a Athlon XP 2400+/DDR400 solution.
I happen to know quite a few people that work for AMD and they all agree that AMD is bleeding money right now, and they have bet the entire farm on Hammer. If that bet takes longer to pay off than they are hoping, we are going to see some very rough times for the folks at AMD. Don't forget that Hector Ruiz is now at the head of AMD -- the same guy that drove the Motorola semiconductor group $1 Billion in the red.
Moore's law has nothing to do with speed. All it states is that the number of transistors on a manufactured IC will double every couple of years. Note that chip speed is never mentioned.
Also, if you think that Intel just reached the 3GHz level using an unoptimized design, you are most certainly wrong.
So by removing a step from the manufacturing process (imaging a new install onto a hard drive), that would somehow cost them more? I disbelieve
Apparently you do not have much experience with manufacturing. Manufacturing is easiest and cheapest when you can make everything the exact same way. Any time you deviate from this norm it costs money. This is why a RAM upgrade from Dell costs more than the price of RAM -- you also pay for them pulling the PC out of the standard production flow and customizing your PC.
I would venture to guess that the extreemly low volume of buyers who would order a PC with no OS would cause PC makers to have to charge a significant premium, expecially considering an OEM copy of WinXP only costs in the $50 range for a high volume OEM.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the settlement, you will find that most of the reforms requested by the suit were implemented before the settlement was agreed upon. The NAACP agreed to drop further legal action because they didn't have a case. Period.
Suspected former criminals were systematically exempted from voting in Florida. That's right, suspected former criminals. Not only is this illegal as people who have served their debt to society are elligable to vote, people who are merely suspected of being convicted of crime, and most certainly weren't, are definately allowed to vote.
1) It is not illegal to ban ex convicts from voting. In fact 11 states have laws that automatically and permanently ban ex-convicts from voting.
2) Suspected criminals were placed on a list. Those on the list were given written notice of their inclusion and given proceedures to dispute the listing (it was simply to provide identification and a fingerprint). It was up to local county officials (not Jeb Bush or Catherine Harris) to implement the list, and many counties opted not to. Add on top of this voter turnout, and the fact that only 5 people complained that they were incorrectly not allowed to vote (because they didn't follow the dispute proceedures), and you have a complete non-story.
Here is the official settlement between the NAACP and the Florida electon officials. From the bottom of page 1:
Defendants have taken an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Florida... Plaintiffs have not alleged that Defendants acted in a purposefully discriminatory manner toward any group
The settlement is quick to point out that there was no charge of discrimination or election fraud by Catherine Harris, Jeb Bush, or any other Florida election official. Its a non-story.
Here are the facts behind this "scandal":
It was found in the 1998 election that a large number of convicted felons voted, which is against Florida state law.
As a result, Florida hired the services of ChoicePointe to compile a list of possible felons to prevent this in the 2000 election. The list included about 100,000 names.
Every one of those 100,000 people were notified by mail that they were included on the list and they were given a proceedure to dispute the listing (it was simply to go to you local police station with a photo-id and provide a finger print).
These names were given to local county election officials, who had the option of using the list to bar people from voting. Not every county used the list.
It is not known how many people were incorrectly banned from voting.
A total of 5 people claimed they were incorrectly not allowed to vote because they didn't follow the proceedure to remove their names. There could have been more, but only 5 people formally complained.
In an attempt to discredit the US presidency, British "investigative" reporter Greg Palast dug this up and tried to call it a scandal. Note that it only appeared in the opinion columns in the US media.
So, in an attempt to obey state law in the 2000 Florida election, an unknown number of legitimate voters were incorrectly included in the list. Of this unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties where the lists were used. Of this unknown number, an unknown number failed to respond to the notice that they would not be allowed to vote. Of this unknown number, an unknown number would have shown up to vote in the first place. Of this unknown number, an unknown number would have figured out the confusing ballot and voted for Gore in the first place (they say that 95% of ex convicts vote Democratic, which is hardly something that I would brag about).
Is this seriously the best scandal you can come up with?
He actively prosecuted anti-war protesters and draft dodgers when he was AG. Once out of office, he does a complete 180 and became an anti-war protester.
He accepted an invitation and met with Moammar Qadaffi in 1986, when Libya was the target of US Military action because of its terrorist ties.
He legally represented PLO leaders who were accused of murdering and thowing Leon Klinghoffer overboard from a cruise ship in a 1986 terrorist attack.
He legally represented Karl Linnas, a Nazi concentration camp guard who oversaw the killing of 12,000 Jews. He said it was ridiculous to prosecute them "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."
Clark has strong ties to the WWP (Workers World Party), a socialist party with origins from Stalin. This party has resisted the reformes made by Gorbachev in the USSR, insisted that China remain a "workers state", and supported the coup against Gorbachev.
The WWP and PAM (peoples anti-war mobilization) refused to condemn the 1990 Iraq invasion of Kuwait and Saddam Hussein, choosing only to condemn the US and President Bush. All other anti-war groups condemned both parties.
Clark flew to Baghdad in Nov. 1990 and met with Saddam Hussein. He accepted a return invitation in Feb, 1991.
Clark represented Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb charged with war crimes, and the rape and murder of thousands of Bosnian refugees.
A member of the "Red-Brown Alliance", a socialist movement that basically opposes anything from the west.
In October 1999, Clark met with Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade. Milosevic, by then facing war crimes charges before the UN tribunal, called his guest "brave, objective, and moral."
I can't possibly see why anybody would agree with or defend this guy.
Internet sales taxes are desperately needed. Not only are the well-off more likely to purchase things online... this is one of those 'rich getting richer' schemes that doesn't get much airplay
This is pure left-wing bull crap. First of all, the idea that rich somehow get off scott-free when it comes to taxes is laughable. The richest 5% already pay over 56% of the entire income tax base (Source). They are not getting any richer because of anything the government does.
Your just playing the same liberal card over and over. Try to convice the poor that the only reason they are poor is because some rich bastard stepped all over them to get rich. It doesn't work that way.
I don't know what is more disturbing: Somebody disgracing the sacred GPL for profit (GASP!), or the fact that somebody else actually examined a binary ROM looking for the binary signatures of Linux kernel functions.
One of the two needs to get a life (I'll leave it up to you to decide who).
I happen to believe that there should be some more levels of negotiation in between failure to comply and ALL OUT WAR.
... CREATES the threat situation where there was none before
What the hell have we been doing for the past 12 years? When military action with Iraq started being discussed last summer, you liberals were complaining about the same thing. Guess what? Its 8 months later, and we are still negotiating, and we have not yet gone to war. In fact, all of this sabre rattling that Bush has done in the last 8 months has done a great deal to avoid war. We have gone from Saddam quietly developing weapons to destroy us, to full UN resolutions, weapons inspectors, and a coalition in only 8 monhts, without a shot being fired. The Saudis are even talking about eliminating Saddam because they do not want a war to destabalize the region.
Bush
How does that work? Is developing weapons of mass destruction and promising to use them against us not enough to create a "threat situation"? Do you want to wait around until he actually uses them against us? Would that be enough of a "threat situation"?
Now because of Bush's "Heroic, No non-since, Take control, Total domination threats", we have North Korea, a REAL international threat, breathing down our necks
This again goes to show your ignorance. North Korea is nothing like Iraq. Why? Because they told us they have nukes. The only reason a country would develop a nuke and then tell everybody about it is to gain diplomatic leverage, not to actually use them as a method to attack. If you look at the economic situation in North Korea, they have plenty of reason to want diplomatic leverage.
Having said that, the only reason you would develop a nuke and not tell anybody about it is so you can use it. If you are planning a surprize attack on an enemy, you do not advertise your attack methods in advance.
I know you don't care about any of this. Its much easier for you to sit around, smokin a peace pipe, and chanting for peace. I guess the only think you don't realize is that in a post 9/11 world, we can't afford so sit back and wait for people to attack us.
So Linux is coming a long way as a viable platform for high-quality editing
To bad they are about 5 years late.
Face it, 3.5" floppies are old, but *reliable*
This is a joke, right? There is nothing "reliable" about floppy drives, or any removable magnetic media for that matter. Try pulling out a floppy that you have not used in 2 or 3 years and tell me if you can read the disk.
Can you reasonably compare the proffit bassed on M$'s O$ to keyboard sales?
If you could read, you would know that he was not comparing the "proffit" on Office and Windows to keyboards, he was just pointing out that Microsoft has many profitable products, not just Office and Windows.
The fact is that there is nothing new here but failure. M$ gets into each new market the same way, by dumping
No, Microsoft gets in each new market by offering products that people want. The didn't get the largest OS market share by "dumping". They got there by making a product that everybody wants so bad that they wait in line to buy the next release of Windows at midnight the day it is released. Do you seriosly think that "big dumb corporations" would "stick Office on every one of their 7,000 peons desks" if the corporations and peons didn't want to use it?
People are realizing that free makes economic sense. blah blah blah marketdroid blah blah proprietary blah blah blah blah
Who are these "people"?? The 2% of users who use Linux? Or the 95% who use Microsoft? I'll tell you what makes economic sense. Buying a product that everybody knows how to use, from the senior engineers down to the HR secretary. Why is it better to transition to "free" software if you have to spend thousands forcing people to learn how to use it, even when the majority do not want to learn?
Slammer, Code Red, Nmedia, SirCam, I love you, Klez, la te da te da
Are you suggesting that Linux would be any better if they had a 95% market share?
Oh, and quit with the freeking dollar sign whenever you mention Microsoft. You look like a damn fool.
We, as a nation, actually build very little on our own shores
How is it that the US is the worlds largest exporter then? What are we selling?
I want my tax dollars spent on whatever will allow the government to accomplish their job in the most efficient manner. I don't give a damn if the source code is open or if its "proprietary" software.
At least my nicotinergic receptors were sufficiently and pleasantly stimulated during my lifetime.
Translation:
At least my nicotinergic receptors were sufficiently and pleasantly stimulated during my shortened, putrid, more expensive lifetime (filled with yellow teeth, nicotine stained hands, uncontrollable cravings, and the knowledge that my filthy habit was unhealthy to the people that were close to me).
Why would a software company be liable for the illegal actions of hackers?
Why not spend more money on *preventing* war, in stead of *fighting* war?
What do you think Bush is doing? We have not fired a shot yet in Iraq (besides the no-fly zone incidents, but those have been happening for 8 years). We have been rattling sabres loud enough for months now that even Saudi Arabia is talking about forming a coup to oust Saddam Hussein. I would say that the money being spent now on military build-up and war prep is doing a great deal to prevent war.
There should be an political army as well as a millitary army, but then again, it won't be so "fun" to not be able to kill other human beings.
Its sad if you think this is true. I dare you to find any person in the military that wants to go to Iraq and kill people. I have a close relative in the Marines and the last thing that he wants to do is kill people.
The simple fact is that the world will always have its share of Hitlers and Husseins. If nothing were done about these tyrannical leaders, we would have much more death, fighting, and suffering.
Why is oil not worth fighting for? Lets look at all the things that oil and other fossil fuels provide:
Heat for our homes
Energy to cook our food
Energy to light up the schools that educate our children
Energy to power our factories, shopping malls, goverment offices, and businesses
Energy and materials to make 99.9% of everything you are looking at right now (including the keyboard your typing on and the monitor your staring at)
Energy so we can drive to work
Energy so we can fly across the country in a couple of hours to see our Grandma and Grandpa
Energy so we can pile the family in the car and drive to the beach, or to church, or to your local anti-war (no blood for oil!!) protest rally
Why is it such a horrible thing to fight to secure these types of things?
While there may be many tyrannical leaders in this world, only one has gassed his own people, expressed a desire to destroy the entire US, supported terrorists (financially and otherwise), broken numerous UN resolutions, killed his own brother because he shared weapons secrets to the UN, and is actively working on developing Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological weapons. This is far deeper than "they have lots of oil!".
Even if it was, what is the crime in fighting a war for oil? The worlds economy largely rests on the supply of oil. Fossil fuels don't supply only SUV's and DRAM chip fabs. They heat homes, power schools, and provide the essential energy that anybody needs to survive.
Why does the left constantly whine about the oil problem, but when any reasonable solution is suggested (I.E., drilling in ANWR, securing oil from the middle east) they just point their fingers at those evil bastards who drive SUV's.
It was found in the 1998 election that a large number of convicted felons voted, which is against Florida state law.
As a result, Florida hired the services of ChoicePointe to compile a list of possible felons to prevent this in the 2000 election. The list included about 100,000 names.
Every one of those 100,000 people were notified by mail that they were included on the list and they were given a proceedure to dispute the listing (it was simply to go to you local police station with a photo-id and provide a finger print).
These names were given to local county election officials, who had the option of using the list to bar people from voting. Not every county used the list.
It is not known how many people were incorrectly banned from voting.
A total of 5 people claimed they were incorrectly not allowed to vote because they didn't follow the proceedure to remove their names. There could have been more, but only 5 people formally complained.
Here is the official settlement agreement from the NAACP. Read on the bottom of page 1:
Defendants have taken an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Florida... Plaintiffs have not alleged that Defendants acted in a purposefully discriminatory manner toward any group
It clearly states that nobody was accusing Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush or anybody else in Florida of any wrongdoing or fraud. So, your (and this Greg Palast fool) entire claim is the following: In 2000, Florida compiled a list of 100,000 convicted felons to prevent them from breaking state law and voting. Of that list of 100,000 people, an unknown number were legitimate voters. Of that unknown number of legitimate voters, an unknown number did not follow the proceedure to dispute their name being included on the list. Of that unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties that did not use the list in the election. Of that unknown number, an unknown number would have even bothered to show up to vote (expect about 40% for voter turnout averages). And, the official legal settlement as shown on the plaintiffs web site makes no accusation of fraud or wrong doing.
Is this seriously the best election scandal you can come up with?
Ok, here we go:
1) That is an interesting interpretation of what happened. Here is a more realistic account of the 2000 Florida election:
The Florida Supreme court, voting thier political agenda, TRIED TO CHANGE FLORIDA STATE LAW by extending the deadline for election results to be certified. If you really did know anything about Government, you would know that this is NOT the role of the Judicial branch, but a function of the Legislative branch. This is why the US Supreme Court stepped in.
2) The role of the USSC is to stricly interpret the constitution. Thats it. As far as precedent goes, there wasn't any contrary precedent on the situation that they were ruling on (that is, State courts changing the law).
I guess I should have expected as much from the Supreme Court that decided to throw out the results of the 2000 election, and coronate Bush.
And how were they wrong with this decision? Have you seen any valid recounts that actually proved them to be wrong? Didn't think so...
Nice. I've been realplayer free for 3 years now. We need to form a club called "RPA" -- RealPlayer Anonymous. It could provide a support group to help recovering RealPlayer users with a simple 12-step program.
I guess I should have said a Pentium 4 2.53Ghz vs an Athlon XP 2400+
The prohibitive cost of P4's, especially the higher end ones, has pretty much kept AMD processors as the choice for home system builders. Any new super high GHz P4's aren't really in the picture for many people.
Not true. I built a system a month and a half ago and it was actually about $50 cheaper to go with a Pentium 4/DDR400 solution than it was a Athlon XP 2400+/DDR400 solution.
I happen to know quite a few people that work for AMD and they all agree that AMD is bleeding money right now, and they have bet the entire farm on Hammer. If that bet takes longer to pay off than they are hoping, we are going to see some very rough times for the folks at AMD. Don't forget that Hector Ruiz is now at the head of AMD -- the same guy that drove the Motorola semiconductor group $1 Billion in the red.
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out why you are relating the AMD/Intel speed battle with anything that has to with Moore's Law. Here are a couple of resources for you to read up on:t m . pdf
http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.h
http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespaper
Moore's law has nothing to do with speed. All it states is that the number of transistors on a manufactured IC will double every couple of years. Note that chip speed is never mentioned.
Also, if you think that Intel just reached the 3GHz level using an unoptimized design, you are most certainly wrong.
So by removing a step from the manufacturing process (imaging a new install onto a hard drive), that would somehow cost them more? I disbelieve
Apparently you do not have much experience with manufacturing. Manufacturing is easiest and cheapest when you can make everything the exact same way. Any time you deviate from this norm it costs money. This is why a RAM upgrade from Dell costs more than the price of RAM -- you also pay for them pulling the PC out of the standard production flow and customizing your PC.
I would venture to guess that the extreemly low volume of buyers who would order a PC with no OS would cause PC makers to have to charge a significant premium, expecially considering an OEM copy of WinXP only costs in the $50 range for a high volume OEM.