PDF is like other overused "web" technologies like flash
PDF is not a "web" technology; it is a document processing and display technology. The problem is that it is the wrong tool for the job. If the intent is to publish web content, using a document processing and display technology would be an error. Now if the intent is to publish a document via the web, it may be the right tool for the job. Nothing wrong with putting a PDF on a website, just don't try to make it part of the web content.
Who wants totally uncontrolled system? Weed at 18, harder drugs at 21, no PCP or Oxy without prescription. Fair? Tax the lot of it and let transparent companies take control of the market and you eliminate virtually all of the violence associated with the drug trade. As it is, we simply enrich the kingpins and encourage more people to get into the business.
How about starting by eliminating the federal war on drugs that unconstitutionally prevents states from implementing such common sense policies? I think we are missing the forest for the trees when we say common sense should rule. First the rule of law should rule, and that means the Constitution. Once the highest law of the land is restored, common sense laws can follow. We should not try to implement common sense laws in the same illegal manner that the bad laws were.
Hillary Clinton is about as far from a socialist as possible. I have no idea why people trumpet this baseless notion. [..] Creating a "safety net" or a "welfare state" is not socialism. Those are simply policies meant to keep the populace complacent, nothing more. [..] Also, I believe that if she were truly socialist, she would receive much less than she does in "campaign contributions" (read: legalized bribes) from corporations.
Dude, chill.. GP misspelled fascist, that is all.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini
A democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. In the *theoretical* US constitutional republic, 99% of the population cannot take rights away from a single person.
That's correct. In order for citizens to violate the rights of others, a Constitutional Convention would have to be initiated under Article V in order for the Constitution to be amended to allow a citizen-initiated referendum to violate someone's rights. Otherwise, an illegal law is just as illegal, whether Congress or a referendum put it into place.
The bill's purpose is to establish a committee to study violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism, and to assist federal officials in training and education efforts to prevent such things.
No, the bill's purpose is to establish labels, and to get the public to accept those labels being applied to certain groups of people.
The actual use of the labels, in the bill's intended purpose of suppression of dissent, will come later.
The irony of these labels is that the government itself fits these labels with its interventionist foreign policy. So really what it wants is a monopoly on being able to legally act according to these labels!
The Constitution says nothing about Internet privacy, so Ron Paul would leave that issue to local control or the free market. Consider his position on the FDA -- he says that it's not necessary for any government body to ensure that drugs or supplements are safe because people will stop buying from companies that sell dangerous ones. Such a president wouldn't care if Google is snooping your search results -- they'd tell you to deal with it or use some other search engine.
You're missing the forest for the trees. The point is that right now the government enjoys more privacy than the citizens do, because the 4th Amendment has been tossed aside while the government itself hides behind state secrets.
Citizens have the choice whether or not to engage with private companies and what amount of information they want to divulge to those companies.
We do not have a choice when it comes to the government.
Ron Paul would both stop the government from violating the 4th Amendment by snooping on you directly without a warrant, and would stop "public private security partnerships" like the AT&T/NSA that hide behind state secrets. You do realize that he voted against the PATRIOT Act since day one, don't you?
When I read Paul's argument, I was even more appalled. Not only did he ignore the currently-known results of divesting from Sudan (in other words, it's working!), he also had the gall to (purposely?) confuse the Darfur genocide with the completely separate North-South civil war. So his basic argument was "we shouldn't be getting involved with other countries' civil wars"
Please name one good thing that will come out of any military intervention in Sudan.
Refer to Serbia and Kosovo if you need a history lesson.
Also name one good thing that comes out of economic sanctions, for the tradeoff of impoverishing and starving the very people that depend on economic activity for their wellbeing. Our decades of sanctions on various countries in the Middle East drove recruitment to radical Islam out of anger, desperation, and a general lack of anything better to do that comes out of a wrecked economy with no opportunities.
I agree that life outside of republican government is nasty, brutish, and short. The Sudanese will eventually learn this, and cease to tolerate it. This is a lesson that must be learned; it cannot be taught.
We could, however, offer them charitable aid in the form of humanitarian organizations on their soil and integration organizations for refugees who wish to come here and become U.S. citizens. However, it is not the role of government to send charitable aid, both because that charitable aid is coerced out of unwilling individuals, and because that charitable aid is rarely distributed to the intended recipients and more frequently traded for arms instead.
It's too bad we are so bent on impoverishing ourselves, by arming and subsidizing both sides of other conflicts around the world, and overextending our military when those actions fail to produce the predicted (U.S.-friendly) results. If we weren't, our citizens might have the money to send aid to the Sudanese.
That bill has nothing to do with thought crime. Sentencing guidelines for violent crimes based on intent cannot possibly be thoughtcrime, because a conviction for a violent crime must already have been obtained at the time when sentencing takes place!
The whole point of hate crimes is to increase the sentence, and thus reduce recidivism, in violent crime where the victim is selected anonymously based on group identity rather than based on a pre-existing relationship with the assailant. The DOJ's "Policymaker's Guide To Hate Crimes" presents the statistics showing the high level of recidivism, and the much higher general brutality of the crimes, when a victim is selected based on bias. It makes sense, because with a normal violent crime, once the victim is dispatched, they are gone, whereas with hate crimes, there is no end of potential victims to set off a violent criminal's hair trigger.
Ron got this one mostly wrong. I think he saw the $5M of new federal spending and kneejerked. I wouldn't blame him for voting it down on the spending, but he justified voting it down not on the spending, but on supposed thoughtcrime, with which I disagree.
Also, while Buckley is definitely a conservative, is he actually a Republican?
Buckley is as neo-con as they come.
I don't want to suggest the government should do our thinking for us,
Yet you do just that!
but the vast majority of the population is not going to gain an expert understanding of chemistry and health, and a body that makes safe usage decisions for them is appropriate and responsible.
The idea that the government should make safe usage decisions for me, and throw me in jail and seize my property if I do not obey it, is diametrically opposed to the notion of personal liberty. I can determine how to safely use drugs myself, thank you very much! If someone cannot, they do not deserve jail and all the other asinine consequences our society saddles even one-time drug users with; they deserve education.
Also, the idea that drug illegality caused rampant drug abuse is purely conjecture.
Drug illegality causes much of the harm associated with manufactured drugs. Impurity results from black market manufacturing. The black market has no concern for the well-being of the customer because it has no reputation to uphold. Irresponsible use comes from the lack of education on responsible use that originates in the black-and-white prohibitionist mindset. When people realize the prohibitionists are lying about soft drugs, they don't believe the limited truths they tell about hard drugs.
It's the same credibility gap that exists when parents who did drugs in their youth tell their kids to never do drugs and punish them if they do. That breaks down communication and deprives the kids of much-needed education on the subject.
The worst ones are the politicians and conservative radio personalities who did drugs themselves, but advocate jail and life-wrecking for any non-elite who does drugs, and claiming that this hateful treatment is for their own good... when actually it's to preserve the exclusivity of the elite class, who gets to walk away scot-free from a drug incident because of political connections and high-powered lawyers. That's not a coincidence. That's the way they architected it.
If all musicians are to lose their chances of making money via records because John Doe doesn't feel like spending any money on music (yet wants to listen to it all anyway..)
John Doe either doesn't know if he likes your music, or doesn't want to pay the price you are charging for the music.
Therefore you would have received no money from John Doe regardless of the existence of the download.
The logical approach is to better market your material and to reduce the price until the revenue is maximized.
The illogical approach is to demand more control and power from the government, the enforcement of which is paid for by all non-musicians and non-music-buyers.
Even if Ron Paul made it through the primary, he takes some ideas I want to see brought back to government - federalism, fiscal responsibility - to the anti-social extreme common among Libertarians.
Perhaps you could explain what is "anti-social extreme" about obeying one's oath to the Constitution. If you want "social" government, amend the Constitution or do it in your state. It's that simple. Government breaking its own laws in the name of being "social", whatever that means, is unacceptable, especially since such lawbreaking sets the precedent for destruction of liberty, a decidedly anti-social outcome.
I for one feel really badly about how we're basically screwing the fans out of their money. As much as this is sad, however, I'd like to ask everyone to bear with us and let us work out a solution to this issue. We're not doing this on purpose, and a solution will be found.
So MLB refusing refund requests is considered "not doing this on purpose" and "feeling really badly"? Please!
Uh, 3D acceleration may not be a kernel issue (for the most part -- the kernel is still responsible for securing concurrent DRI access), but the rest of GP's list most definitely is.
That's a post-modern argument, to say that all interpretations are equally valid and that nobody can be wrong. It is very clear what the letter and the intent of the Constitution was by reading the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist papers.
The fact is, people who violate the letter and the spirit of the Constitution are wrong and are breaking the law. The more egregious and willful the violation, the more wrong they are. And they deserve to be righted.
"Most people" may not care or will swallow any comforting interpretation handed to them, but "most people" aren't the ones making the laws. It takes a small but committed minority to make a difference, either a bad one -- in the case of the neocons and socialists and those who heed their interpretations -- or a positive one, returning us to the rule of law and common sense.
Justifying pornography because it is "natural" may not be the best way to defend it. Even from a non-religious point of view, many "natural" emotions and desires are not considered acceptable to society.
Do we really have to explicitly spell out the harm principle to people like yourself?
It doesn't matter WHO is elected to the federal government. It could be Bozo the Clown. The Constitution should not be violated. Tell me what part of regulating "commerce among the several states" allows the federal government to regulate non-interstate, non-commerce, that only has an effect on prices in a black market? And can you tell me a single activity of production that would be outside the grasp of the federal government at this point? This is NOT what the founders intended, and to simply toss up your arms and say "well, youse makes your choices" ignores the fact that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and a willful violation is an egregious, impeachable offense.
Congress cannot override the Constitution through an act of Congress. An unconstitutional act by the government thus cannot be forgiven through an act of Congress.
It is dubious whether the principle of ex post facto would apply to law-breaking government even in the case of a Constitutional amendment.
The only ex post facto forgiveness that will occur is if people roll over and let the government get away with this.
* Opposes hate crime legislation, as a crime is a crime is a crime, by statute. I'm pretty sure if you kill someone, the thing they would care about is their being dead, not what was going through your head when you did it.
Actually, if you actually check the voting record, he abstained on the hate crimes bill, he did not vote against it. By the way, intent is considered in every murder trial and is legislated in the laws for drug possession and soliciting minors to name just a few.
1) Under a gold standard, the (very high) volatility of gold is imposed on the general price level, making it that much harder to plan economic activity, and magnifying negative events.
Very high volatility? Check your facts. The only time the price of gold has been volatile has been when federal monetary policy had a significant shift, such as when gold and silver confiscation began, and when the gold standard was abandoned. Otherwise, it has steadily drifted up and down in accordance with general market trends. When inflation is high, the price of gold is high. When inflation is low, the price of gold is low.
And how do you propose to 'plan economic activity'? It's hard to do that gold standard or not, because people don't behave the way a planned economy wants them to. The federal reserve tries to get people to behave the way it wants by manipulating interest rates, with often exactly the opposite effect.
2) Significant amounts of gold must be held out of production, just for use as money, with signficant opportunity cost.
Bullshit. That's gold confiscation which is the system we have today under the federal reserve. With a gold standard, you can exchange a note for gold at any time. You need gold for an opportunity? Redeem your notes for it. There is no opportunity cost. It's just far easier to carry notes than bricks of gold.
3) Increasingly huge portions of the economy are diverted to gold production during times of economic growth because that, rather than e.g. cancer cures, have the highest return.
Bullshit. You know what happened to the vast majority of gold speculators during the last rush? They starved. There is no evidence that increasing mining operations at all affects the supply of gold. At some point, it costs more to mine it than it can be sold for, and that price is determined by the market. Gold hoarding increases the market price of gold, but it has costs of its own, because gold must be stored securely and secretly. Many people are going to invest in mining operations that have a good return. Mining operations with a poor return will go out of business. Just like today.
one does not have to modify, reverse engineer, disassemble or decompile the firmware image to see that it's linux and busybox based. one merely needs to download the image off the device and look at the strings in it.
According to the current state of the laws, that simple act qualifies as reverse engineering -- just lamely as XOR "encryption" qualifies as a "copyright protection mechanism" under the DMCA.
Again, if you don't like a country that has a religious foundation you are free to go somewhere else.
I'm sure everyone would like it if their opponents just resigned from the game. Unfortunately for you, there are enough people that view theocracy as injustice to make it quite unlikely that all of us will resign.
And don't give me any crap about how this country has a secular foundation. Our Founding Fathers put it in writing with various phrases such as this one: we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
The Founding Fathers were a mix of Deists and Atheists. None was a Christian in the sense of today's fundamentalism. Suggestion that the word "Creator" implies a particular religious dogma, especially one that did not exist at the time of the country's founding, is absurd!
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"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini
The electoral college is irrelevant if you are running for an office other than President.
Time to finally ratify Article the First...
The actual use of the labels, in the bill's intended purpose of suppression of dissent, will come later.
The irony of these labels is that the government itself fits these labels with its interventionist foreign policy. So really what it wants is a monopoly on being able to legally act according to these labels!
Citizens have the choice whether or not to engage with private companies and what amount of information they want to divulge to those companies.
We do not have a choice when it comes to the government.
Ron Paul would both stop the government from violating the 4th Amendment by snooping on you directly without a warrant, and would stop "public private security partnerships" like the AT&T/NSA that hide behind state secrets. You do realize that he voted against the PATRIOT Act since day one, don't you?
Refer to Serbia and Kosovo if you need a history lesson.
Also name one good thing that comes out of economic sanctions, for the tradeoff of impoverishing and starving the very people that depend on economic activity for their wellbeing. Our decades of sanctions on various countries in the Middle East drove recruitment to radical Islam out of anger, desperation, and a general lack of anything better to do that comes out of a wrecked economy with no opportunities.
I agree that life outside of republican government is nasty, brutish, and short. The Sudanese will eventually learn this, and cease to tolerate it. This is a lesson that must be learned; it cannot be taught.
We could, however, offer them charitable aid in the form of humanitarian organizations on their soil and integration organizations for refugees who wish to come here and become U.S. citizens. However, it is not the role of government to send charitable aid, both because that charitable aid is coerced out of unwilling individuals, and because that charitable aid is rarely distributed to the intended recipients and more frequently traded for arms instead.
It's too bad we are so bent on impoverishing ourselves, by arming and subsidizing both sides of other conflicts around the world, and overextending our military when those actions fail to produce the predicted (U.S.-friendly) results. If we weren't, our citizens might have the money to send aid to the Sudanese.
That bill has nothing to do with thought crime. Sentencing guidelines for violent crimes based on intent cannot possibly be thoughtcrime, because a conviction for a violent crime must already have been obtained at the time when sentencing takes place!
The whole point of hate crimes is to increase the sentence, and thus reduce recidivism, in violent crime where the victim is selected anonymously based on group identity rather than based on a pre-existing relationship with the assailant. The DOJ's "Policymaker's Guide To Hate Crimes" presents the statistics showing the high level of recidivism, and the much higher general brutality of the crimes, when a victim is selected based on bias. It makes sense, because with a normal violent crime, once the victim is dispatched, they are gone, whereas with hate crimes, there is no end of potential victims to set off a violent criminal's hair trigger.
Ron got this one mostly wrong. I think he saw the $5M of new federal spending and kneejerked. I wouldn't blame him for voting it down on the spending, but he justified voting it down not on the spending, but on supposed thoughtcrime, with which I disagree.
It's the same credibility gap that exists when parents who did drugs in their youth tell their kids to never do drugs and punish them if they do. That breaks down communication and deprives the kids of much-needed education on the subject.
The worst ones are the politicians and conservative radio personalities who did drugs themselves, but advocate jail and life-wrecking for any non-elite who does drugs, and claiming that this hateful treatment is for their own good... when actually it's to preserve the exclusivity of the elite class, who gets to walk away scot-free from a drug incident because of political connections and high-powered lawyers. That's not a coincidence. That's the way they architected it.
John Doe either doesn't know if he likes your music, or doesn't want to pay the price you are charging for the music.
Therefore you would have received no money from John Doe regardless of the existence of the download.
The logical approach is to better market your material and to reduce the price until the revenue is maximized.
The illogical approach is to demand more control and power from the government, the enforcement of which is paid for by all non-musicians and non-music-buyers.
Uh, 3D acceleration may not be a kernel issue (for the most part -- the kernel is still responsible for securing concurrent DRI access), but the rest of GP's list most definitely is.
That's a post-modern argument, to say that all interpretations are equally valid and that nobody can be wrong. It is very clear what the letter and the intent of the Constitution was by reading the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist papers.
The fact is, people who violate the letter and the spirit of the Constitution are wrong and are breaking the law. The more egregious and willful the violation, the more wrong they are. And they deserve to be righted.
"Most people" may not care or will swallow any comforting interpretation handed to them, but "most people" aren't the ones making the laws. It takes a small but committed minority to make a difference, either a bad one -- in the case of the neocons and socialists and those who heed their interpretations -- or a positive one, returning us to the rule of law and common sense.
Do we really have to explicitly spell out the harm principle to people like yourself?
It doesn't matter WHO is elected to the federal government. It could be Bozo the Clown. The Constitution should not be violated. Tell me what part of regulating "commerce among the several states" allows the federal government to regulate non-interstate, non-commerce, that only has an effect on prices in a black market? And can you tell me a single activity of production that would be outside the grasp of the federal government at this point? This is NOT what the founders intended, and to simply toss up your arms and say "well, youse makes your choices" ignores the fact that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and a willful violation is an egregious, impeachable offense.
Congress cannot override the Constitution through an act of Congress. An unconstitutional act by the government thus cannot be forgiven through an act of Congress.
It is dubious whether the principle of ex post facto would apply to law-breaking government even in the case of a Constitutional amendment.
The only ex post facto forgiveness that will occur is if people roll over and let the government get away with this.
Actually, if you actually check the voting record, he abstained on the hate crimes bill, he did not vote against it. By the way, intent is considered in every murder trial and is legislated in the laws for drug possession and soliciting minors to name just a few.
And what in the world does this have to do with Ron Paul, who may have been a doctor but was certainly never a judge?
And how do you propose to 'plan economic activity'? It's hard to do that gold standard or not, because people don't behave the way a planned economy wants them to. The federal reserve tries to get people to behave the way it wants by manipulating interest rates, with often exactly the opposite effect.
Bullshit. That's gold confiscation which is the system we have today under the federal reserve. With a gold standard, you can exchange a note for gold at any time. You need gold for an opportunity? Redeem your notes for it. There is no opportunity cost. It's just far easier to carry notes than bricks of gold.Bullshit. You know what happened to the vast majority of gold speculators during the last rush? They starved. There is no evidence that increasing mining operations at all affects the supply of gold. At some point, it costs more to mine it than it can be sold for, and that price is determined by the market. Gold hoarding increases the market price of gold, but it has costs of its own, because gold must be stored securely and secretly. Many people are going to invest in mining operations that have a good return. Mining operations with a poor return will go out of business. Just like today.Marc Emery is facing life in prison in the US for operating a cannabis seeds business in Canada, where such business is legal.