All I ever needed to know about rounding, I...
on
Rounding Algorithms
·
· Score: 1
learned from Ratt:
Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet You make the night, I always cross the line Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf Another day, some other way We're gonna go, but then we'll see you again I've had enough, we've had enough Cold in vain, she said
(Pre-chorus)
I knew right from the beginning That you would end up winnin' I knew right from the start You'd put an arrow through my heart
(Chorus)
Round and round With love we'll find a way just give it time Round and round What comes around goes around I'll tell you why
Dig
Lookin' at you, lookin' at me The way you move, you know it's easy to see The neon light's on me tonight I've got a way, we're gonna prove it tonight Like Romeo to Juliet Time and time, I'm gonna make you mine I've had enough, we've had enough It's all the same, she said
(Pre-chorus)
(Chorus)
Yeah!
Solo
Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet You make the night, I always cross the line Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf
(Chorus)
Round and round With love we'll find a way just give it time, time, time, time Round and round What comes around goes around I'll tell you why, why, why, why Round and round
When you don't have a cheap way to duplicate anything, or a fast way for information (ideas) to travel, these laws are not as necessary.
But there were musicians even before there was any kind of recordable media or the very idea of "distributing" music. In those days all you had to to do "duplicate" someone's music was memorize the work and then perform it yourself. That's pretty cheap, no?
just because YOU are ignorant of the mountains of academic theory and experiment and historical evidence that supports the basic idea of having IP regulation mechanisms for a healthy economy doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Whether I'm ignorant of it or not, and whether or not it even exists, is totally irrelevant. I don't care if you dump 3000000 tons of manuscripts of theories from Economics Phds on my doorstep, it doesn't change the fact that there WAS a time before IP law, and society progressed during that time.
Most likely, all of the theory you speak of is based on the same underlying assumptions... and as a result, all of those Phds and "experts" are going to keep arriving at the same conclusions until somebody is willing to look beyond the implicit assumptions and step "outside the box." We don't *know* that a (modern) society with no IP laws would work, but we know that the current system is dysfunctional. Given that we're headed in the wrong direction, I think it's time for a fresh view.
To use an analogy you might be able to comprehend: if you're driving in your car, destination Seattle, and you pass a sign reading "Miami, 500 miles" and then a few hours later pass a sign reading "Miami, 300 miles" what makes the most sense: keep going in the direction you're going, hoping that you'll arrive at the correct place? Or turn around and try a different route, even if you don't know for sure that it's correct either?
Are you saying there were no artists, musicians, or other content producers, before there were IP laws? There must not have been, if nobody would create content without the protection of IP laws, right?
but the idea of doing away with the idea of intellectual property alltogether does not pass even the most cursory "smell" test of history, economics, or public policy, either in theory or in practical experience.
There was a time when you could have said the same thing about the idea that it was wrong for white people to own black people. In other words, "it's always been that way" is never adequate justification for a particular policy.
And I'm pretty sure there was a time in history before IP laws... I don't know when the first IP laws were enacted, but I doubt IP was much of an issue to early humans who had to worry about more pressing things; like starting fires, hiding from sabre-tooth tigers, hunting sabre-tooth tigers, foraging for nuts and berries, etc.
I always thought proportional representation was a bad system because it led to unstable governments.
Why would you want stability in government? Haven't you head the expression "Politicans and Diapers should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason?"
A little unstability in government is a GOOD thing.. it keeps the incumbents from getting too cozy and secure, which reduces their ability to "influence" things for their corporate masters which means less corruption, etc.
Web 2.0?? Pfffttt... The Web is really just Gopher 2.0 anyway. The real future of the Internet is a return to our roots. Gopher 3.1 is the way forward... Haha, take that Tim O'Reilly. Let the battle of the buzzwords commence!
Pre-registrations will be accepted shortly for the Gopher 3.1 Expo, to be held sometime in the indeterminate future, somewhere in the Triangle area. Check the website often for details.
I'm not a big fan of unregulated free markets (since I've seen what they lead to),
An unregulated free market didn't lead to Microsoft, because we don't *have* an unregulated free market in the United States. In a real unregulated market, without things like patents, and the bazillions of dollars worth of government restrictions and regulations required to start a business, there would be a lot more competition for MS. It would actually be much harder for monopolies like MS to become overwhelmingly powerful in a real free market, because it would be much easier to set up shop and compete with them on a level playing field.
Of course some people say that there would be no innovation without patents... I contend that such an assertion is not true, and that the lack of artificial government granted monopolies (patents) would result in a constant "arms race" situation where companies would be forced to innovate constantly or die. Look at how military technology advances... the US is forced to constantly work on developing better battle technology exactly because there is no way to prevent our competitors from using what has already been invented. I mean, it's not like we could patent the nuclear bomb and keep Russia, China, India, Pakistan, etc. from using it...
Give us a real free market sometime, and let's see what happens... until then it's all just speculation, because we damn sure don't have anything approaching a free market now.
I've worked with AS/400s quite a bit in the past, and in my experience the damn things are wicked stable and reliable. You almost can't destroy the things... One place I used to work had an S/38 (the precursor to the AS/400) that was friggin' ancient and still hummed along like a champ day in and day out... until we upgraded it to a more modern AS/400. If you could find the old one in the junkyard still, I bet you could plug it in and IPL it today.
Anyway, with the newer iSeries, it's not like you're locked into some obscure technology platform if IBM ever decides to kill off OS/400. The newer ones will run Linux which gives you a nice migration / upgrade path. In fact, you might be well served to start out running Linux on something, whether or not it's an iSeries... then if your needs change you can scale up, down or horizontally with much greater ease than if you had to switch operating systems to switch to a different hardware platform. With Linux you might have to recompile everything, but it's still just Linux.
Just imagine, you start with Linux on xSeries (x86 boxes), and from there you can scale horizontally by clustering, and/or scale up to an iSeries or pSeries or OpenPower box, and ultimately you can scale all the way to a zSeries (mainframe). All without changing your operating system. That's a pretty strong story, and I'm pretty sure it's one main reason IBM is pushing Linux so hard.
The point is ridiculous - distros could just set up a menu with aliases like 'graphics editor' or 'drawing program' or 'media player' or whatever.
Some already do. I can't speak for any other distros, but as I type this I'm sitting at a machine running RHEL 4 WS, and the applications menu features names like:
Applications -> Accessories -> Text Editor Applications -> Graphics -> GIMP Image Editor Applications -> Graphics -> Xpdf PDF Viewer Applications -> Internet -> Firefox Web Browser Applications -> Internet -> IM Applications -> Internet -> Thunderbird Email Applications -> Sound & Video -> CD Player Applications -> Sound & Video -> Music Player Applications -> Sound & Video -> CD Player Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Juicer CD Ripper Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Recorder
etc. That's as easy to understand as anything you're going to find on Windows, IMO.
And the average user coming over from Windows probably doesn't launch this stuff from the command line a lot, so not knowing the actual executable name is no biggie. Really this isn't a "linux problem" in general, it's something specific distros need to handle in order to fit with their target market.
Depending on the exact semantics you choose for the definition of 'monopoly' you may be correct. But an interesting corrolary is that our government does work to create artificial monopolies by granting patents. A patent is just a temporary, government assigned monopoly on a limited domain. But in practice, patents help propogate large monopolies by working to favor large, established companies with plenty of resources for filing patents, litigating over patents, defending patent lawsuits, etc.
Software patents are especially bad in this regard, since they tend to be overly broad and abstract. In essense, the USPTO is now allowing one individual to *own* an idea, which is - IMO - ludicrous. Reform (or eliminate) the patent system and let companies compete on real merits (customer service, product quality, support, speed of delivery, whatever) and we would be making a strong step towards eliminating harmful monopolies.
The MySQL client libraries are GPL'ed now, so if you link against them, you would have to make your app GPL as well. This was a change that was made some time ago (the libraries were formerly LGPL'ed, I believe) and was the cause of something of a rift between PHP and MySQL, since the PHP license (was|is|??) not GPL compatible.
Of course nothing stops you from reverse engineering the protocol used to talk to the server, and write your own client libraries. In which case you could, AFAIK, bundle MySQL as part of a closed-source application without springing for a commercial license.
but nothing yet for #B until GNU Classpath is finished.
GNU Classpath is pretty close to complete, relative to JDK 1.4. Take a look and see. Most of the remaining problems are in pretty obscure or seldom used areas.
That's the "Java trap" RMS is talking about: java.* and javax.* are not yet open, and until they are all Java code is pinned to the Sun implementation.
Many java apps, including large, complex applications like Eclipse, JBoss, etc., have been shown to run using Classpath. Kaffe + Classpath or SableVM + Classpath is pretty dang close to a complete JDK 1.4 environment and will run many (maybe most) Java programs.
Ok, so this fall semester that just ended, I was taking a course in MPI Programming. It happened that it was my 4th consecutive class with the same instructor, who I'd gotten to know fairly well by then. And because the HPC program at this school is lightly attended, and I was taking a night class, I was the only student in the class. Anway, the "final exam" was set to be a programming assignment, which was to be of my choosing.
But the next to last night of class, the instructor asks me what I still have left to turn in, and I tell him "the last homework project and the final exam." He tells me to forget about the final exam and that he'll just use that last homework as the "final exam" grade; and that he's so impressed with what I've already turned in - and what he knows about me from the other classes - that he's already decided I get an 'A' in the class.
I, for one, would feel a great deal of anger at the individuals who committed the act. Which, coincidentally enough, is the same way I'd feel if it happened now.
Are tens of thousands of lives worth losing the right to make international calls freely with known terrorist networks (that is the limit of scope of the most recent NSA revelations).
Those tens of thousands of people are going to die one day, regardless... and a great many of them would probably say that they would rather die than live without freedom. "Live Free or Die" still means something to some people. Ultimately, none of us are guaranteed any certain lifespan, or is anybody else responsible for our safety. It may sound cruel, but it's reality. If you're worried about dying in a 9/11 style attack, you do have the option of moving out into the Montana wilderness somewhere and living a Unabomber lifestyle. Remember, neither you nor I (nor anyone else) is *entitled* to any certain lifestyle or standard of living.
If such systems as Echelon exist, they do serve a useful purpose albeit they may have the possibility of infringing our rights.
If they are controlled by an authoritarian government, and they *can* be used to infringe our rights, it's guaranteed that they *will* be used to infringe our rights. History should have taught us all this lesson by now. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" and all that...
How about we instead focus our energies to make sure they are used appropriately following due processes of law instead of trying to render them completely "ineffective" even for the worst cases for which they were designed.
Because it's impossible. Because the government A. controls the "rules", B. prosecutes people for violating the "rules" and C. controls the judges who run the trials. To expect to be able to force a government to obey it's own rules, when it willingly violates them, is naive. The government should not be "above the law" but in practice is pretty much always is. And it's getting more and more that way, because too many people are too willing to sit on their asses and watch it happen.
if you are not dismissed for that reason alone you just need to be ready to ask about "jury nullification" or tell the judge you are unable to fully follow his/directions on the law (tell the judge you learned in a civics class that you must not only judge the subject, but the law that is being applied as well)---that should get you dismissed fairly quickly based on what 2 other summoned jurors told me.
Just tell them that you're a "card carrying member" of the Fully Informed Jury Association, that should get your dismissed pretty quick.
If it were me, I'd go with Java and use the Eclipse IDE. Java is fairly easy to learn, fairly powerful and has large, useful standard class library and has a wealth of additional libraries (many F/OSS) available. If you're interested in grabbing stuff off the 'net, look into Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Or, for other protocols than HTTP, look into Jakarta Commons Net. If you want to invoke web-services calls, you might find Apache Axis useful.
As far as look and feel, Swing has come a long way as a GUI toolkit, but a lot of people like Eclipse's SWT. If you use Eclipse and the Rich Client Platform as a base for your applications, you get a lot of functionality "for free." It's probably worth your time to give it a look see at least.
If you don't like any of that, just use GNUStep and Objective-C.
Yep. Let's flood Carnivore / Echelon / whatever with so much bullshit that it goes up in smoke... To further that goal, we could also send a constant stream of emails back and forth to each other, containing "hot" words and phrase:
Assasinate President Bush Al-Queda Cell Plot Attack Bomb Dirty nuclear nukular muslim etc., etc.
I am afraid you are not quite understanding what exactly is going on in the United States at the moment: american leaders are not interested at all in commoners understanding what totalitarianism is, because that could significantly slow down their effort to establish the persistent model of it. Softly said, vague understanding of the term gives them much more manoeuvring space for media propaganda, said in full truth all old and foreign totalitarian ideology must be denied to population, otherwise somebody could discover the very striking similarities to so called "War on Terror".
It's already been discovered, and it's out there... just search the blogosphere... the problem is, the average American is totally fucking apathetic when it comes to defending the fundamental principles that define our nation. Freedom and Liberty are just words in history books to most americans sheep.
What the good guys can do about this is, unfortunately, a question that I don't know the answer to. Many of us see quite clearly what is happening, but not enough to prevent it. And when you try to tell people, they either A. don't believe, or B. don't care, or C. both of the above.
Yeah, the NSA spies on you illegally under Bush's orders. The DHS checks what you read. If you don't think that means we are living in a police state, then I think you definitely are sheep. Next thing you know you won't be able to check out Locke at the library, you might get revolutionary ideals somewhat like founding fathers...
Can I get an 'Amen' from the crowd???? Preach it brother AC, preach it!
Slashdot Mirror
learned from Ratt:
Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet
You make the night, I always cross the line
Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves
Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf
Another day, some other way
We're gonna go, but then we'll see you again
I've had enough, we've had enough
Cold in vain, she said
(Pre-chorus)
I knew right from the beginning
That you would end up winnin'
I knew right from the start
You'd put an arrow through my heart
(Chorus)
Round and round
With love we'll find a way just give it time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why
Dig
Lookin' at you, lookin' at me
The way you move, you know it's easy to see
The neon light's on me tonight
I've got a way, we're gonna prove it tonight
Like Romeo to Juliet
Time and time, I'm gonna make you mine
I've had enough, we've had enough
It's all the same, she said
(Pre-chorus)
(Chorus)
Yeah!
Solo
Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet
You make the night, I always cross the line
Tightened our belts, abuse ourselves
Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf
(Chorus)
Round and round
With love we'll find a way just give it time, time, time, time
Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why, why, why, why
Round and round
is the one used by richard pryor's character in superman iii to steal all of the half pennies from his company's payroll and become fabulously rich
Nah, I think these guys did it better...
When you don't have a cheap way to duplicate anything, or a fast way for information (ideas) to travel, these laws are not as necessary.
But there were musicians even before there was any kind of recordable media or the very idea of "distributing" music. In those days all you had to to do "duplicate" someone's music was memorize the work and then perform it yourself. That's pretty cheap, no?
just because YOU are ignorant of the mountains of academic theory and experiment and historical evidence that supports the basic idea of having IP regulation mechanisms for a healthy economy doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Whether I'm ignorant of it or not, and whether or not it even exists, is totally irrelevant. I don't care if you dump 3000000 tons of manuscripts of theories from Economics Phds on my doorstep, it doesn't change the fact that there WAS a time before IP law, and society progressed during that time.
Most likely, all of the theory you speak of is based on the same underlying assumptions... and as a result, all of those Phds and "experts" are going to keep arriving at the same conclusions until somebody is willing to look beyond the implicit assumptions and step "outside the box." We don't *know* that a (modern) society with no IP laws would work, but we know that the current system is dysfunctional. Given that we're headed in the wrong direction, I think it's time for a fresh view.
To use an analogy you might be able to comprehend: if you're driving in your car, destination Seattle, and you pass a sign reading "Miami, 500 miles" and then a few hours later pass a sign reading "Miami, 300 miles" what makes the most sense: keep going in the direction you're going, hoping that you'll arrive at the correct place? Or turn around and try a different route, even if you don't know for sure that it's correct either?
Without them we would stop getting new content.
Are you saying there were no artists, musicians, or other content producers, before there were IP laws? There must not have been, if nobody would create content without the protection of IP laws, right?
but the idea of doing away with the idea of intellectual property alltogether does not pass even the most cursory "smell" test of history, economics, or public policy, either in theory or in practical experience.
There was a time when you could have said the same thing about the idea that it was wrong for white people to own black people. In other words, "it's always been that way" is never adequate justification for a particular policy.
And I'm pretty sure there was a time in history before IP laws... I don't know when the first IP laws were enacted, but I doubt IP was much of an issue to early humans who had to worry about more pressing things; like starting fires, hiding from sabre-tooth tigers, hunting sabre-tooth tigers, foraging for nuts and berries, etc.
I always thought proportional representation was a bad system because it led to unstable governments.
Why would you want stability in government? Haven't you head the expression "Politicans and Diapers should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason?"
A little unstability in government is a GOOD thing.. it keeps the incumbents from getting too cozy and secure, which reduces their ability to "influence" things for their corporate masters which means less corruption, etc.
Web 2.0?? Pfffttt... The Web is really just Gopher 2.0 anyway. The real future of the Internet is a return to our roots. Gopher 3.1 is the way forward... Haha, take that Tim O'Reilly. Let the battle of the buzzwords commence!
Pre-registrations will be accepted shortly for the Gopher 3.1 Expo, to be held sometime in the indeterminate future, somewhere in the Triangle area. Check the website often for details.
Best dupes of the year, maybe?
Well, if anybody is actually interested in compiling such a list, check this out.
I'm not a big fan of unregulated free markets (since I've seen what they lead to),
An unregulated free market didn't lead to Microsoft, because we don't *have* an unregulated free market
in the United States. In a real unregulated market, without things like patents, and the bazillions of dollars worth of government restrictions and regulations required to start a business, there would be a lot more competition for MS. It would actually be much harder for monopolies like MS to become overwhelmingly powerful in a real free market, because it would be much easier to set up shop and compete with them on a level playing field.
Of course some people say that there would be no innovation without patents... I contend that such an assertion is not true, and that the lack of artificial government granted monopolies (patents) would result in a constant "arms race" situation where companies would be forced to innovate constantly or die. Look at how military technology advances... the US is forced to constantly work on developing better battle technology exactly because there is no way to prevent our competitors from using what has already been invented. I mean, it's not like we could patent the nuclear bomb and keep Russia, China, India, Pakistan, etc. from using it...
Give us a real free market sometime, and let's see what happens... until then it's all just speculation, because we damn sure don't have anything approaching a free market now.
I've worked with AS/400s quite a bit in the past, and in my experience the damn things
are wicked stable and reliable. You almost can't destroy the things... One place I used to work
had an S/38 (the precursor to the AS/400) that was friggin' ancient and still hummed along like
a champ day in and day out... until we upgraded it to a more modern AS/400. If you could
find the old one in the junkyard still, I bet you could plug it in and IPL it today.
Anyway, with the newer iSeries, it's not like you're locked into some obscure technology
platform if IBM ever decides to kill off OS/400. The newer ones will run Linux
which gives you a nice migration / upgrade path. In fact, you might be well served
to start out running Linux on something, whether or not it's an iSeries... then if your
needs change you can scale up, down or horizontally with much greater ease than if you
had to switch operating systems to switch to a different hardware platform.
With Linux you might have to recompile everything, but it's still just Linux.
Just imagine, you start with Linux on xSeries (x86 boxes), and from there you
can scale horizontally by clustering, and/or scale up to an iSeries or pSeries
or OpenPower box, and ultimately you can scale all the way to a zSeries (mainframe). All without
changing your operating system. That's a pretty strong story, and I'm pretty sure it's
one main reason IBM is pushing Linux so hard.
Do you mean by "drink too much??"
The point is ridiculous - distros could just set up a menu with aliases like 'graphics editor' or 'drawing program' or 'media player' or whatever.
Some already do. I can't speak for any other distros, but as I type this I'm sitting at a machine running RHEL 4 WS, and the applications menu features names like:
Applications -> Accessories -> Text Editor
Applications -> Graphics -> GIMP Image Editor
Applications -> Graphics -> Xpdf PDF Viewer
Applications -> Internet -> Firefox Web Browser
Applications -> Internet -> IM
Applications -> Internet -> Thunderbird Email
Applications -> Sound & Video -> CD Player
Applications -> Sound & Video -> Music Player
Applications -> Sound & Video -> CD Player
Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Juicer CD Ripper
Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Recorder
etc. That's as easy to understand as anything you're going to find on Windows, IMO.
And the average user coming over from Windows probably doesn't launch this stuff from the command line a lot, so not knowing the actual executable name is no biggie. Really this isn't a "linux problem" in general, it's something specific distros need to handle in order to fit with their target market.
Depending on the exact semantics you choose for the definition of 'monopoly' you may be correct. But an interesting corrolary is that our government does work to create artificial monopolies by granting patents. A patent is just a temporary, government assigned monopoly on a limited domain. But in practice, patents help propogate large monopolies by working to favor large, established companies with plenty of resources for filing patents, litigating over patents, defending patent lawsuits, etc.
Software patents are especially bad in this regard, since they tend to be overly broad and abstract. In essense, the USPTO is now allowing one individual to *own* an idea, which is - IMO - ludicrous. Reform (or eliminate) the patent system and let companies compete on real merits (customer service, product quality, support, speed of delivery, whatever) and we would be making a strong step towards eliminating harmful monopolies.
The MySQL client libraries are GPL'ed now, so if you link against them, you would have to make your app GPL as well. This was a change that was made some time ago (the libraries were formerly LGPL'ed, I believe) and was the cause of something of a rift between PHP and MySQL, since the PHP license (was|is|??) not GPL compatible.
Of course nothing stops you from reverse engineering the protocol used to talk to the server, and write your own client libraries. In which case you could, AFAIK, bundle MySQL as part of a closed-source application without springing for a commercial license.
but nothing yet for #B until GNU Classpath is finished.
GNU Classpath is pretty close to complete, relative to JDK 1.4. Take a look and see. Most of the remaining problems are in pretty obscure or seldom used areas.
That's the "Java trap" RMS is talking about: java.* and javax.* are not yet open, and until they are all Java code is pinned to the Sun implementation.
Many java apps, including large, complex applications like Eclipse, JBoss, etc., have been shown to run using Classpath. Kaffe + Classpath or SableVM + Classpath is pretty dang close to a complete JDK 1.4 environment and will run many (maybe most) Java programs.
Ok, so this fall semester that just ended, I was taking a course in MPI Programming. It happened that it was my 4th consecutive class with the same instructor, who I'd gotten to know fairly well by then. And because the HPC program at this school is lightly attended, and I was taking a night class, I was the only student in the class. Anway, the "final exam" was set to be a programming assignment, which was to be of my choosing.
But the next to last night of class, the instructor asks me what I still have left to turn in, and I tell him "the last homework project and the final exam." He tells me to forget about the final exam and that he'll just use that last homework as the "final exam" grade; and that he's so impressed with what I've already turned in - and what he knows about me from the other classes - that he's already decided I get an 'A' in the class.
How will that make you feel?
I, for one, would feel a great deal of anger at the individuals who committed the act. Which, coincidentally enough, is the same way I'd feel if it happened now.
Are tens of thousands of lives worth losing the right to make international calls freely with known terrorist networks (that is the limit of scope of the most recent NSA revelations).
Those tens of thousands of people are going to die one day, regardless... and a great many of them would probably say that they would rather die than live without freedom. "Live Free or Die" still means something to some people. Ultimately, none of us are guaranteed any certain lifespan, or is anybody else responsible for our safety. It may sound cruel, but it's reality. If you're worried about dying in a 9/11 style attack, you do have the option of moving out into the Montana wilderness somewhere and living a Unabomber lifestyle. Remember, neither you nor I (nor anyone else) is *entitled* to any certain lifestyle or standard of living.
If such systems as Echelon exist, they do serve a useful purpose albeit they may have the possibility of infringing our rights.
If they are controlled by an authoritarian government, and they *can* be used to infringe our rights, it's guaranteed that they *will* be used to infringe our rights. History should have taught us all this lesson by now. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" and all that...
How about we instead focus our energies to make sure they are used appropriately following due processes of law instead of trying to render them completely "ineffective" even for the worst cases for which they were designed.
Because it's impossible. Because the government A. controls the "rules", B. prosecutes people for violating the "rules" and C. controls the judges who run the trials. To expect to be able to force a government to obey it's own rules, when it willingly violates them, is naive. The government should not be "above the law" but in practice is pretty much always is. And it's getting more and more that way, because too many people are too willing to sit on their asses and watch it happen.
if you are not dismissed for that reason alone you just need to be ready to ask about "jury nullification" or tell the judge you are unable to fully follow his/directions on the law (tell the judge you learned in a civics class that you must not only judge the subject, but the law that is being applied as well)---that should get you dismissed fairly quickly based on what 2 other summoned jurors told me.
Just tell them that you're a "card carrying member" of the Fully Informed Jury Association, that should get your dismissed pretty quick.
Slashdot has also interviewed some presidential candidates (from 3rd parties), but I can't find the links.
Mike Badnarik - Libertarian
David Cobb - Green
I think they should check back on Slashdot more often for ideas.
Like what, repeating the same myth 3 or 4 times in a single day?
If it were me, I'd go with Java and use the Eclipse IDE. Java is fairly easy to learn, fairly powerful and has large, useful standard class library and has a wealth of additional libraries (many F/OSS) available. If you're interested in grabbing stuff off the 'net, look into Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Or, for other protocols than HTTP, look into Jakarta Commons Net. If you want to invoke web-services calls, you might find Apache Axis useful.
As far as look and feel, Swing has come a long way as a GUI toolkit, but a lot of people like Eclipse's SWT. If you use Eclipse and the Rich Client Platform as a base for your applications, you get a lot of functionality "for free." It's probably worth your time to give it a look see at least.
If you don't like any of that, just use GNUStep and Objective-C.
Yep. Let's flood Carnivore / Echelon / whatever with so much bullshit that it goes up in smoke... To further that goal, we could also send a constant stream of emails back and forth to each other, containing "hot" words and phrase:
Assasinate
President
Bush
Al-Queda
Cell
Plot
Attack
Bomb
Dirty
nuclear
nukular
muslim
etc., etc.
I am afraid you are not quite understanding what exactly is going on in the United States at the moment: american leaders are not interested at all in commoners understanding what totalitarianism is, because that could significantly slow down their effort to establish the persistent model of it. Softly said, vague understanding of the term gives them much more manoeuvring space for media propaganda, said in full truth all old and foreign totalitarian ideology must be denied to population, otherwise somebody could discover the very striking similarities to so called "War on Terror".
It's already been discovered, and it's out there... just search the blogosphere... the problem is, the average American is totally fucking apathetic when it comes to defending the fundamental principles that define our nation. Freedom and Liberty are just words in history books to most americans sheep.
What the good guys can do about this is, unfortunately, a question that I don't know the answer to. Many of us see quite clearly what is happening, but not enough to prevent it. And when you try to tell people, they either A. don't believe, or B. don't care, or C. both of the above.
Yeah, the NSA spies on you illegally under Bush's orders. The DHS checks what you read. If you don't think that means we are living in a police state, then I think you definitely are sheep. Next thing you know you won't be able to check out Locke at the library, you might get revolutionary ideals somewhat like founding fathers...
Can I get an 'Amen' from the crowd???? Preach it brother AC, preach it!