Illegal Immigration costs 1,200 per person, per year.... and pays the U.S. Federal Government almost twice the money it costs the states
This is NOT a case where immigrants are screweing the states out of benefits they did not "earn". Illegal Immigrants Pay MORE money in taxes then they take out.
Instead this is a case where the Federal Government is SCREWING the states. They get the cash and do not forward it back to the states fairly. Why? Immigrants generally pay social security taxes as well as federal taxes. On average, the total taxes they pay exceeds the total benefits they get. But the Fed keeps this money.
My Drivers' license is NOT the right place to try and enforce immigration laws. If we want to do that (and most people - including republicnas -DON'T want to that because despite the silly ideas you spouted, America has a HUGE benefit from illegal workers), we should do it directly, not step all over MY rights to do it.
P.S. This ignores the clear benefits to the local economoy of having them buy things at the local stores. American owned Grocery Stores in many areas would GO OUT OF BUSINESS if it were not for the local illegal immigrants.
If you are driving, a state cop can't demand to see your federal ID card - only your driver's licences.
I agree that you should not have to wait for supplies.
But the way to speed the supplies to you is to DISALLOW ABUSIVE amendments, not tack on anything they want to.
What if the democrats had actually voted it down? Would you blaime them - even though they clearly wanted you to have the assets?
Or do you have enough brains to realize that the Republicans were trying to SCREW YOU, taking a chance on delaying the supplies you need by attaching an abusive bill?
How can you support people that clearly USED you? They obviously don't care very much if you live or die - you are just a symbol to them that they can use against the american people.
Illegal aliens pay more money in taxes then they take out.
The problem is however that they mostly pay taxes to the FEDERAL government (they almost always pay to a social security number, but never get anything back), while they mostly take there, fairly earnedbenefits from the STATES.
This is incredibally unfair to the states, as they get screwed while the federal government is laughing all the way to the bank.
So yes, the states get screwed, but it is NOT the immigrants - they pay more then enough for the benefits they receive - it is the FEDERAL government that is screwing the states.
While the STATES tend to lose cash on the illiegal immigrants, the Federal Government, via taxes paid to social security, and the IRS, makes out like a bandit. They take in more money than the states lose.
On a per person basis, Illegal Immigrants are a positive effect on our economoy.
This is a real issue, but mainly because the Federal government keeps the money, while the states get screwed.
1) You did not list ways of confirmation. You listed ways of stopping dead people from voting. If you had listed ways of confirming, it would be "Hey, you go to remove these people from the 'dead' list", they are not dead. That was the real problem, forget about the dead voting it simply was NOT happening.
2) You still seem to have NO idea about voting. Stop shouting Majority Majority Majority. Majority is generally considered a STUPID way to vote, which is one of the reasons we don't use it. Here are a ton of ways to vote, since you seem to be caught on "Majority wins" as "right", especially ignoring the FAR more important primary system, which determines who you can vote for and who is not even considered:
Approval system: Vote yes or no for EACH candidate - you are allowed to vote yes for multiple candidates. Highest vote wins. (Nazis do not win using this method). Major Benefit: It encourages people to vote for third party candidates.
Negative Votes: Multiple sets of votes. Each time, the person with the most "hate them" votes is removed from the list. (This would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Instant Runoff: Here you vote normally, anyone with >50% of the vote wins, if no one gets it, drop the lowest candidate and try again.(Again, this would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Borda Count. You must rate all the candidates. If there are 5 candidates, the guy you like the best gets 5 points, the guy you like the worst gets 1 pt. Highest vote wins. (Again, this would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Free Point System: Here you are given say 5 points. You may give all points to one candidate, or if you prefer, give 2 points to one candidate and 3 to another, or 1 to each of 5 candidates, etc. etc. (Again, this would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Condorcet voting: Here you list your two race preferance for each possible two race, saying A>B, A>C and B>C, and these are counted and mathematically combined, and in the end the one candidate who has more wins then loses against all the ther candidate wins. If no candidate consistently has more wins than lossees against all the others, then drop the weakest and re-calculate. (Note this is considered by most people to be the most complicated system, but also considered to be the "fairest" by mathematicians.
-------
Basically, your insistence on a "Majority" totally fails if you have a three party race, and fixing the Electoral system without first fixing the Primary system is GARBAGE, because frankly the Primary system does far more damage to the elections than the Electoral system does.
3) Fine, but you are still wrong. Voting does NOT let people tell who they WANT in office (especially not in USA), all it does is tell which of the two people selected by the the primary parties is slightly more popular at the time of the vote. Who they want in office CHANGES all the time, and frankly most people have no idea about what the candidates are really like - all they have is "I like this guy".
You need to learn a LOT more about the system before spouting off.
1)Dead people did not really vote, live people did. One study found SOME record that claimed the person on the voting list was dead. That does not mean they were really dead. Even if you get a "Death Certificate", the death certificate does not have a DNA identity, just a name. And the voting lists don't have DNA identity either. Your basic problem is you are assuming that 50 "dead" voters means that they were really dead and should not be voting. In actuality, the probability is MUCH higher that they were really live, legal voters that had falsely been listed as Dead. If it were voter fraud it would have been somethign like 5,000 dead people - 50 is just NOT worth it.
2) You seem to think that a "majority" is the only way to decide things. Fine. What kind of Majority? Two candidates may seem like usual, but that is pretty much ONLY because of the Electoral college. The fact that it is so small a group, means any vote not for the front runners is a sure loser, so they artificillay drop the non-front runners, and this message gets kicked down to the voters. Most of the world's democracy deals with multiple candidates. When you have three or more candidates, lots more voting methods develop. There is the straight 1 vote per person, pick one, highest number wins method (which you seem to think is "right"). But that leads to HUGE problems. Here: 3 candidates, Nazi has 34% of the vote, Democrat has 33% and Comunist has 33%. But both the Democrats and the Comunists HATE the Nazi and if they could not win, they would vote for each other. Your way, the Nazi wins, even the 66% of the population wants him dead.
3) You also seem to think that the purpose of "voting" is to come to the "right" decision or "best candidate". That is bull crap. Voting at best gives you the most popular AT THE TIME OF THE VOTE, in no way does it make the "right" or "best" decision. The advantage of Voting is instead the ability to grant a non-violent means of power exchange - frankly it does not matter all that much WHO wins, as long as they don't SHOOT THE CITIZENS to get the power. The way the US tries to make that the right choices is simpler: a) Punish people for screwing up, b) educate all the citizens and hope that whichever power-hungry lunatic gets the most votes will not act too stupidly, and c) MAKE THEM WEAK. By setting up multiple checks and balances (including the Courts), and not granting any group too much power, we tend to prevent people from doing really stupid things. This means when executive branch/congress does something stupid, we have time to prove it to even the doubters.
P.S. This is the real problem with Congress complaining about Activist Judges. One of the ajor jobs of Judges is to tell Congress "STOP YOU IDIOT", and congress should listen to them, not call the judges nasty names.
No. You miss several points.
1) Bush SHOULD have known that there were no WMD's. It was not just reasonable ignorance. The fact that he did not know does not make his crime "better". That is like boardmembers of Enron saying "I didn't know our employees were committing crimes." Bush, like the boardmembers, job was to hire reliable people, not prejudiced fools that told him what he wanted to hear. There were members of the CIA that knew there were no WMD's. They were ignored.
2)You continue to ignore what Gore said. Gore did NOT lie, he exxagerated. There is a difference between the two. Clinton lied, Gore just exxaggerated.
3)More importantly, you are claiming that the thoughts and intents of the speakers are what is important. By claiming that Bush was too imcompetent (mainly when it came to hiring CIA agents) to figure out that he was blatantly telling a lie, you are claiming that the intent of the speaker is what is important. And it is quite clear that Gore never intended to imply that he invented the internet Fromt he context of his speech, it is clear he was trying to claim that of all the Congressmen, he was the most technological inclined. That is what the words "took the initiative" clearly means.
So if you go with "intent", we have a very anti-republican outcome. Bush is so incompetent he got us in a War that his father wisely chose not to get involved in, while Gore is an awkward boring speaker that used poorly choosen words to to exxagerate his tech-friendlyness.
I am pretty sure that is NOT what you want to say, so perhaps you might drop the "intent" argument.
You KNOW he never said that. How hard is it to actually quote what he said? It is WELL Documented. If you actually told the truth, people might actually pay attention to you.
Lets try it agin, without your constant lies.
What Gore said was simple:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
That is what he said.
The ONLY way you can interpret that as "I created the internet" is if you are so stupid that you:
Don't know what the word initiative means.
Don't know what the US Congress is and what it does. (Maybe you think they are a high end research facility...)
WORSE, YOU YOURSLEF KNOW YOU ARE LIEINGOtherwise you would give the full quote. What are you accusing Gore of doing? Oh yea, you are accusing him of not telling the truth
Let me give you a hint. When you accuse someone of not telling the truth, it is NOT sufficient to give parapharase what he said. Otherwise, you do EXACTLY what you are accusing him of doing. In order for a reasonable person to claim that someone else is lieing, they quote them WORD FOR WORD.
Otherwise, it is like claiming that Nixon said "I am... a crook."
Sure, you might have some of the words right, but without them all, you are blatantly lieing about what he said.
If you post something Pro-Democrat or Pro-US,or Pro-civil rights you get modded up.
If you post something Pro-Repbulcian or anti-US or safety over civil rights, you get modded down.
Try it. Put something out there simply stating that the US sucks. You will get modded down.
Some people however think that being pro-republican = pro-US, and pro-democrat is anti-US. That is just prejudice on their part. Democrats are US citizens, and generally love this country.
Republicans are NOT better at disguising it - they are better at convincing themselves that their lies don't matter but the Democrat's lies do matter.
Both partys lie. When the Public ignores the Repbulican lies (WMD), the Republican congratulate themselves on "disguising it". When the Public ignores the Democrat lies, the Republicans like you cry and think "NO one cares if the Democrats lies.:
The public in general laughs at this stupidity. Asside from a very few fanatics, most people see the Republican lies as often as the Democrat ones, and don't care that much.
But there is one truth. The things they lie about differ by a lot. Republicans lie about things like: WMD, who leaked CIA agent's names,
Democrats lie about things like: Sex, and credit for working on the internet.
SEE THE DIFFERNCE?????
1) You have admitted that you are wrong about the exact quote.
Now you try to weasel y our way out of being wrong by pretending that what he actuallly said is close enough to the lie you made up, that it doesn't matter.
2) The man took credit for something he did. Did he slightly exaggerate his effect? Possibly. Did the republicans COMPLETELY exaggerate what he claimed? Definitely. So the question becomes, is it more an exaggeration to lie when you claim he said 'invented the internet' when he instead just said 'took the initiative in creating the internet' or is it more an exaggeration to state you 'took the initiative in creating the internet' when you just approved funding.
That answer is clearly debatable. Basically, the exaggeration that you are doing is at least on par with the exaggeration that you claim he did.
3) He is a politician. ALL POLITICIANS EXAGGERATE. That is what they do. Making an exxageration is no big deal.
4) The republicans in particular, have NO standing to complain about when it comes to exxaggerating. They did FAR more than that with teh WMD. No, they did not state they had them. Instead they claimed Britain said that when CIA agents pretty much new they didnt. Then when they don't find any, they claimed that they were still looking simply because an election was going on. Then after the election when questioned about the fact that they didn't find any, they said it was too late to blame them.
Yes, Gore gave a statement that some might consider an exaggeration of his work. It is far less a crime then you are accusing him, and when you are accusing him, you yourself exxagerate what he said making you just as bad as him.
By any reasonable definition, you count as a either a Liar (if Gore fit that defintion, then so clearly do too - you were weres then him), or a moron, for not understanding what he did and what you did.
As others below have pointed out you have entirely missed his argument.
To recap, FAIRLY, instead of leaving imprortant details out:
1) The product you want is available for purchase, but only from a single source that has a monopoly.
2) The price is more than you're willing to pay, because they refuse to sell it seperately, insisting on grouping it together with similar products of LESSER worth to ensure higher profits for all.
3) Finally, after YEARS of refusing to sell the product in a reasonable form, the monoplies were forced to do so to compete with the illegal markets. (Selling single songs/customizable disks was invented BEFORE the internet, but the music industry refused to do it until piracy became rife)
When presented with contract terms NOW, you have the right to:
a) accept
b) offer a counterproposal
c) walk away
D) Go to the alternative contract that they are relunctantly being forced to use.
E) Sue the company for misusing the monopoly. Whoops, what was this thread about again? Oh yeah. The succesfull law suit against a company abusing a monopoly on music.
Not true at all. Let me list the way that it is an advantage.
Economies of scale. By having EVERYONE pay for the service, they can build it cheaper on a per person basis.
Yes if you don't use the service, you are getting screwed, but if you use the service then all teh "non-users" are subsidizing you.
Because of above, this encourages more people to use, which tends to encourage innovation.
Service availability. As it is done by an entire municipality it pretty much has to be a single service across the entire town. No "dead" areas or areas served by a different brand.
The above two factors work together. If the service is everywhere and everyone can use it then say your electric company could use it to check your electrical useage remotely instead of sending a meter reader. But it is not worth it to the electric company unless the service is available everywhere.
P.S. In some locations in the USA the city DOES provide/foot the bill for electric and telephone.
The reason why you prefer paper is that there ARE justificatiosn for having paper publications.
Weight.
Disposability
Better on your eyes
Bigger screen, better resolution
Less upfront investment
Better in-place distrubition system whose service charge is already built into the per use price
Better advertisement system which pays a larger portion of the costs.
---------
All of these except the "less upfront investment" are changing. In 10 years, they may have a light PDA that is easy on the eyes, large screen, near perfect resolution with free/near free radio wave updateing the data, for a low price, with UNOBTRUSIVE advertisements that still pay for the service.
When that day comes, magazines/newspapers may die out entirely
Case #2 is NOT prevalent in a student environment. Students tend not to work at home if they can avoid it. And the ones we really need to give the most help to generally can't afford a computer.
For those that actually do work at home, as it costs $0, they usually can afford buying it.
So basically, the only problem is getting the brighter students that do homework and own a computer to install it as a 2nd option. But, being brighter students that do homework and own a computer, the school should encourage them to learn how to install OO.
Finally there is a subset of smart students who can't afford the most up to date computers and therefore have an OLD copy of MS at home that can not load the newest MS doc format. You are leaving them out in the cold, while if you give them a freebee copy of OO, you help them out.
The question is, who do we try and help: The lazy well off kids that own MS software at home but are whiny about it taking work to install OO? Or the hard working, poor kids that don'town MS software at home and are happy to install the free OO software?
The U.S. Supreme Court has instead ruled the other way around - pornograhy IS covered under Free Speech rights.
What you are referring to is the rule that OBSCENITY is not covered under Free Speech Rights.
Those are entirely different words with entirely different meanings.
The prime example of this is if a bunch of strippers make a movie where women strip, and touch themselves while stating "Look at my gorgeous body, don't you want to touch it? Don't you want to see me touch myself? Sex is not evil. I am here to state that Sex is good. Please support Bill 2345 legallizing prostition, lap dancing and striping.".
That movie would CLEARLY be pornographic and would also CLEARLY be covered under the Free Speech Rights as discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When dealing with legal facts you have to use legal terms. Those precise definitions are incredibally important to the law.
"China is the world's leading... Internet,... web sites, blogs, e-mail, and online forums..., according to a study released Thursday. The OpenNet Initiative said that China employs thousands officials and private citizens to build a... sophisticated, and effective'...Internet... 'ONI sought to determine the... topics that the Chinese government finds... does so extensively,' said the study. 'Chinese citizens seeking access to Web sites containing content related to...,' the report said."
If you like what I write, but are not moding right now, just make me a "friend" by clicking on the grey box. Then anything I write will be moded up for you automatically.
Quite simply, they have ABUSED that priveldge. and people HAVE taken it up with the web site's authors, they ignore us.
Reading the content of a web page may not be a right, but they do NOT have the right to use up my bandwidth (and if I view over my cell phone, they are CHARGING me to do it).
Look, what they are doing is far worse than what we are doing. Why?because I did not sign anything/click on anything that said I agree to see their ads. Neither did any governemnt agency say, hey that's OK. They did NOT even warn me before making money off of my time that they were going to force me to see the ad.
Contracts are things BOTH people agree to. There is no "implicit contract" unless both sides are acting reasonable, and the advertisers ceased to act reasonable a LONG time ago.
By showing their web site to people WITHOUT getting agreement before hand to show me the ad, they accept the fact that I am under no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to see the ad. Instead the ad is treated just like any other content - it is something they are offering but NOT requireing me to see. I am perfectly within my rights to see some of the content on their pages but not all, and perfectly within my rights to see only the non-ad content.
The main problem is that the Advertisers have ABUSED the crap out of the consumers. Pop ups, pop unders, etc. etc. Ads then when you close them, they open new ads. etc. etc. etc.
Adverisers took the social contract, ripped it into fifty billion pieces, then get upset when we don't abide by our side of the contract?
Look, I am perfectly willing to see reasonable, well placed ads. I am seeing a Vonage banner ad above Slashdot write now. I am NOT forced to see intrusive, obnoxious crap that intereferes with the reason why I use the service. Anything that requires me to "click" on it to send it away qualifies as abusive intereference, and should be outlawed.
Morons think "If I can get them involved, they will pay more attention to my ad" Instead most consumers get ANGRY at both the site that is abusing them and the moron company that thinks "bad pr is better than no pr".
Slashdot Mirror
So technically, they should be able to learn something, they just should not be able to leave the country unless they get the export license.
Illegal Immigration costs 1,200 per person, per year .... and pays the U.S. Federal Government almost twice the money it costs the states
This is NOT a case where immigrants are screweing the states out of benefits they did not "earn". Illegal Immigrants Pay MORE money in taxes then they take out. Instead this is a case where the Federal Government is SCREWING the states. They get the cash and do not forward it back to the states fairly. Why? Immigrants generally pay social security taxes as well as federal taxes. On average, the total taxes they pay exceeds the total benefits they get. But the Fed keeps this money.
My Drivers' license is NOT the right place to try and enforce immigration laws. If we want to do that (and most people - including republicnas -DON'T want to that because despite the silly ideas you spouted, America has a HUGE benefit from illegal workers), we should do it directly, not step all over MY rights to do it.
P.S. This ignores the clear benefits to the local economoy of having them buy things at the local stores. American owned Grocery Stores in many areas would GO OUT OF BUSINESS if it were not for the local illegal immigrants.
I agree that you should not have to wait for supplies.
But the way to speed the supplies to you is to DISALLOW ABUSIVE amendments, not tack on anything they want to.
What if the democrats had actually voted it down? Would you blaime them - even though they clearly wanted you to have the assets?
Or do you have enough brains to realize that the Republicans were trying to SCREW YOU, taking a chance on delaying the supplies you need by attaching an abusive bill?
How can you support people that clearly USED you? They obviously don't care very much if you live or die - you are just a symbol to them that they can use against the american people.
While they have not actually been created yet, they are generally assumed to contain readable, exploitable information.
Illegal aliens pay more money in taxes then they take out.
The problem is however that they mostly pay taxes to the FEDERAL government (they almost always pay to a social security number, but never get anything back), while they mostly take there, fairly earnedbenefits from the STATES.
This is incredibally unfair to the states, as they get screwed while the federal government is laughing all the way to the bank.
So yes, the states get screwed, but it is NOT the immigrants - they pay more then enough for the benefits they receive - it is the FEDERAL government that is screwing the states.
But you left out the federal stuff.
While the STATES tend to lose cash on the illiegal immigrants, the Federal Government, via taxes paid to social security, and the IRS, makes out like a bandit. They take in more money than the states lose.
On a per person basis, Illegal Immigrants are a positive effect on our economoy.
This is a real issue, but mainly because the Federal government keeps the money, while the states get screwed.
2) You still seem to have NO idea about voting. Stop shouting Majority Majority Majority. Majority is generally considered a STUPID way to vote, which is one of the reasons we don't use it. Here are a ton of ways to vote, since you seem to be caught on "Majority wins" as "right", especially ignoring the FAR more important primary system, which determines who you can vote for and who is not even considered:
Approval system: Vote yes or no for EACH candidate - you are allowed to vote yes for multiple candidates. Highest vote wins. (Nazis do not win using this method). Major Benefit: It encourages people to vote for third party candidates.
Negative Votes: Multiple sets of votes. Each time, the person with the most "hate them" votes is removed from the list. (This would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Instant Runoff: Here you vote normally, anyone with >50% of the vote wins, if no one gets it, drop the lowest candidate and try again.(Again, this would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Borda Count. You must rate all the candidates. If there are 5 candidates, the guy you like the best gets 5 points, the guy you like the worst gets 1 pt. Highest vote wins. (Again, this would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Free Point System: Here you are given say 5 points. You may give all points to one candidate, or if you prefer, give 2 points to one candidate and 3 to another, or 1 to each of 5 candidates, etc. etc. (Again, this would have prevented the Nazis from taking power in germany)
Condorcet voting: Here you list your two race preferance for each possible two race, saying A>B, A>C and B>C, and these are counted and mathematically combined, and in the end the one candidate who has more wins then loses against all the ther candidate wins. If no candidate consistently has more wins than lossees against all the others, then drop the weakest and re-calculate. (Note this is considered by most people to be the most complicated system, but also considered to be the "fairest" by mathematicians. ------- Basically, your insistence on a "Majority" totally fails if you have a three party race, and fixing the Electoral system without first fixing the Primary system is GARBAGE, because frankly the Primary system does far more damage to the elections than the Electoral system does. 3) Fine, but you are still wrong. Voting does NOT let people tell who they WANT in office (especially not in USA), all it does is tell which of the two people selected by the the primary parties is slightly more popular at the time of the vote. Who they want in office CHANGES all the time, and frankly most people have no idea about what the candidates are really like - all they have is "I like this guy".
1)Dead people did not really vote, live people did. One study found SOME record that claimed the person on the voting list was dead. That does not mean they were really dead. Even if you get a "Death Certificate", the death certificate does not have a DNA identity, just a name. And the voting lists don't have DNA identity either. Your basic problem is you are assuming that 50 "dead" voters means that they were really dead and should not be voting. In actuality, the probability is MUCH higher that they were really live, legal voters that had falsely been listed as Dead. If it were voter fraud it would have been somethign like 5,000 dead people - 50 is just NOT worth it.
2) You seem to think that a "majority" is the only way to decide things. Fine. What kind of Majority? Two candidates may seem like usual, but that is pretty much ONLY because of the Electoral college. The fact that it is so small a group, means any vote not for the front runners is a sure loser, so they artificillay drop the non-front runners, and this message gets kicked down to the voters. Most of the world's democracy deals with multiple candidates. When you have three or more candidates, lots more voting methods develop. There is the straight 1 vote per person, pick one, highest number wins method (which you seem to think is "right"). But that leads to HUGE problems. Here: 3 candidates, Nazi has 34% of the vote, Democrat has 33% and Comunist has 33%. But both the Democrats and the Comunists HATE the Nazi and if they could not win, they would vote for each other. Your way, the Nazi wins, even the 66% of the population wants him dead.
3) You also seem to think that the purpose of "voting" is to come to the "right" decision or "best candidate". That is bull crap. Voting at best gives you the most popular AT THE TIME OF THE VOTE, in no way does it make the "right" or "best" decision. The advantage of Voting is instead the ability to grant a non-violent means of power exchange - frankly it does not matter all that much WHO wins, as long as they don't SHOOT THE CITIZENS to get the power. The way the US tries to make that the right choices is simpler: a) Punish people for screwing up, b) educate all the citizens and hope that whichever power-hungry lunatic gets the most votes will not act too stupidly, and c) MAKE THEM WEAK. By setting up multiple checks and balances (including the Courts), and not granting any group too much power, we tend to prevent people from doing really stupid things. This means when executive branch/congress does something stupid, we have time to prove it to even the doubters.
P.S. This is the real problem with Congress complaining about Activist Judges. One of the ajor jobs of Judges is to tell Congress "STOP YOU IDIOT", and congress should listen to them, not call the judges nasty names.
Microsoft is reverseing the reversal of their pro-gay rights policy.
2)You continue to ignore what Gore said. Gore did NOT lie, he exxagerated. There is a difference between the two. Clinton lied, Gore just exxaggerated.
3)More importantly, you are claiming that the thoughts and intents of the speakers are what is important. By claiming that Bush was too imcompetent (mainly when it came to hiring CIA agents) to figure out that he was blatantly telling a lie, you are claiming that the intent of the speaker is what is important. And it is quite clear that Gore never intended to imply that he invented the internet Fromt he context of his speech, it is clear he was trying to claim that of all the Congressmen, he was the most technological inclined. That is what the words "took the initiative" clearly means.
So if you go with "intent", we have a very anti-republican outcome. Bush is so incompetent he got us in a War that his father wisely chose not to get involved in, while Gore is an awkward boring speaker that used poorly choosen words to to exxagerate his tech-friendlyness.
I am pretty sure that is NOT what you want to say, so perhaps you might drop the "intent" argument.
"Taking the initiative", like most things politicians say, is so vague that it is physically impossible for anyone to prove it completely false.
What you just did is called an exaggeration. You did the exact same thing that they are accusing Gore of doing.
You KNOW he never said that. How hard is it to actually quote what he said? It is WELL Documented. If you actually told the truth, people might actually pay attention to you.
Lets try it agin, without your constant lies.
What Gore said was simple:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
That is what he said.
The ONLY way you can interpret that as "I created the internet" is if you are so stupid that you:
Don't know what the word initiative means.
Don't know what the US Congress is and what it does. (Maybe you think they are a high end research facility...)
WORSE, YOU YOURSLEF KNOW YOU ARE LIEINGOtherwise you would give the full quote. What are you accusing Gore of doing? Oh yea, you are accusing him of not telling the truth
Let me give you a hint. When you accuse someone of not telling the truth, it is NOT sufficient to give parapharase what he said. Otherwise, you do EXACTLY what you are accusing him of doing. In order for a reasonable person to claim that someone else is lieing, they quote them WORD FOR WORD.
Otherwise, it is like claiming that Nixon said "I am... a crook."
Sure, you might have some of the words right, but without them all, you are blatantly lieing about what he said.
If you post something Pro-Democrat or Pro-US,or Pro-civil rights you get modded up.
If you post something Pro-Repbulcian or anti-US or safety over civil rights, you get modded down.
Try it. Put something out there simply stating that the US sucks. You will get modded down.
Some people however think that being pro-republican = pro-US, and pro-democrat is anti-US. That is just prejudice on their part. Democrats are US citizens, and generally love this country.
Republicans are NOT better at disguising it - they are better at convincing themselves that their lies don't matter but the Democrat's lies do matter.
Both partys lie. When the Public ignores the Repbulican lies (WMD), the Republican congratulate themselves on "disguising it". When the Public ignores the Democrat lies, the Republicans like you cry and think "NO one cares if the Democrats lies.:
The public in general laughs at this stupidity. Asside from a very few fanatics, most people see the Republican lies as often as the Democrat ones, and don't care that much.
But there is one truth. The things they lie about differ by a lot. Republicans lie about things like: WMD, who leaked CIA agent's names,
Democrats lie about things like: Sex, and credit for working on the internet. SEE THE DIFFERNCE?????
Now you try to weasel y our way out of being wrong by pretending that what he actuallly said is close enough to the lie you made up, that it doesn't matter.
2) The man took credit for something he did. Did he slightly exaggerate his effect? Possibly. Did the republicans COMPLETELY exaggerate what he claimed? Definitely. So the question becomes, is it more an exaggeration to lie when you claim he said 'invented the internet' when he instead just said 'took the initiative in creating the internet' or is it more an exaggeration to state you 'took the initiative in creating the internet' when you just approved funding.
That answer is clearly debatable. Basically, the exaggeration that you are doing is at least on par with the exaggeration that you claim he did.
3) He is a politician. ALL POLITICIANS EXAGGERATE. That is what they do. Making an exxageration is no big deal.
4) The republicans in particular, have NO standing to complain about when it comes to exxaggerating. They did FAR more than that with teh WMD. No, they did not state they had them. Instead they claimed Britain said that when CIA agents pretty much new they didnt. Then when they don't find any, they claimed that they were still looking simply because an election was going on. Then after the election when questioned about the fact that they didn't find any, they said it was too late to blame them.
Yes, Gore gave a statement that some might consider an exaggeration of his work. It is far less a crime then you are accusing him, and when you are accusing him, you yourself exxagerate what he said making you just as bad as him.
By any reasonable definition, you count as a either a Liar (if Gore fit that defintion, then so clearly do too - you were weres then him), or a moron, for not understanding what he did and what you did.
To recap, FAIRLY, instead of leaving imprortant details out:
1) The product you want is available for purchase, but only from a single source that has a monopoly.
2) The price is more than you're willing to pay, because they refuse to sell it seperately, insisting on grouping it together with similar products of LESSER worth to ensure higher profits for all.
3) Finally, after YEARS of refusing to sell the product in a reasonable form, the monoplies were forced to do so to compete with the illegal markets. (Selling single songs/customizable disks was invented BEFORE the internet, but the music industry refused to do it until piracy became rife)
When presented with contract terms NOW, you have the right to:
a) accept
b) offer a counterproposal
c) walk away
D) Go to the alternative contract that they are relunctantly being forced to use.
E) Sue the company for misusing the monopoly. Whoops, what was this thread about again? Oh yeah. The succesfull law suit against a company abusing a monopoly on music.
Economies of scale. By having EVERYONE pay for the service, they can build it cheaper on a per person basis.
Yes if you don't use the service, you are getting screwed, but if you use the service then all teh "non-users" are subsidizing you.
Because of above, this encourages more people to use, which tends to encourage innovation.
Service availability. As it is done by an entire municipality it pretty much has to be a single service across the entire town. No "dead" areas or areas served by a different brand.
The above two factors work together. If the service is everywhere and everyone can use it then say your electric company could use it to check your electrical useage remotely instead of sending a meter reader. But it is not worth it to the electric company unless the service is available everywhere.
P.S. In some locations in the USA the city DOES provide/foot the bill for electric and telephone.
Weight.
Disposability
Better on your eyes
Bigger screen, better resolution
Less upfront investment
Better in-place distrubition system whose service charge is already built into the per use price
Better advertisement system which pays a larger portion of the costs.
---------
All of these except the "less upfront investment" are changing. In 10 years, they may have a light PDA that is easy on the eyes, large screen, near perfect resolution with free/near free radio wave updateing the data, for a low price, with UNOBTRUSIVE advertisements that still pay for the service.
When that day comes, magazines/newspapers may die out entirely
For those that actually do work at home, as it costs $0, they usually can afford buying it.
So basically, the only problem is getting the brighter students that do homework and own a computer to install it as a 2nd option. But, being brighter students that do homework and own a computer, the school should encourage them to learn how to install OO.
Finally there is a subset of smart students who can't afford the most up to date computers and therefore have an OLD copy of MS at home that can not load the newest MS doc format. You are leaving them out in the cold, while if you give them a freebee copy of OO, you help them out.
The question is, who do we try and help: The lazy well off kids that own MS software at home but are whiny about it taking work to install OO? Or the hard working, poor kids that don'town MS software at home and are happy to install the free OO software?
The U.S. Supreme Court has instead ruled the other way around - pornograhy IS covered under Free Speech rights.
What you are referring to is the rule that OBSCENITY is not covered under Free Speech Rights.
Those are entirely different words with entirely different meanings.
The prime example of this is if a bunch of strippers make a movie where women strip, and touch themselves while stating "Look at my gorgeous body, don't you want to touch it? Don't you want to see me touch myself? Sex is not evil. I am here to state that Sex is good. Please support Bill 2345 legallizing prostition, lap dancing and striping.".
That movie would CLEARLY be pornographic and would also CLEARLY be covered under the Free Speech Rights as discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When dealing with legal facts you have to use legal terms. Those precise definitions are incredibally important to the law.
I have to agree. But unfortunately the worst offenders are companies I would NOT buy from under any circumstances even before I saw the ad.
"China is the world's leading ... Internet, ... web sites, blogs, e-mail, and online forums ..., according to a study released Thursday. The OpenNet Initiative said that China employs thousands officials and private citizens to build a ... sophisticated, and effective' ...Internet ... 'ONI sought to determine the ... topics that the Chinese government finds ... does so extensively,' said the study. 'Chinese citizens seeking access to Web sites containing content related to ...,' the report said."
If you like what I write, but are not moding right now, just make me a "friend" by clicking on the grey box. Then anything I write will be moded up for you automatically.
Reading the content of a web page may not be a right, but they do NOT have the right to use up my bandwidth (and if I view over my cell phone, they are CHARGING me to do it).
Look, what they are doing is far worse than what we are doing. Why?because I did not sign anything/click on anything that said I agree to see their ads. Neither did any governemnt agency say, hey that's OK. They did NOT even warn me before making money off of my time that they were going to force me to see the ad.
Contracts are things BOTH people agree to. There is no "implicit contract" unless both sides are acting reasonable, and the advertisers ceased to act reasonable a LONG time ago.
By showing their web site to people WITHOUT getting agreement before hand to show me the ad, they accept the fact that I am under no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to see the ad. Instead the ad is treated just like any other content - it is something they are offering but NOT requireing me to see. I am perfectly within my rights to see some of the content on their pages but not all, and perfectly within my rights to see only the non-ad content.
Adverisers took the social contract, ripped it into fifty billion pieces, then get upset when we don't abide by our side of the contract?
Look, I am perfectly willing to see reasonable, well placed ads. I am seeing a Vonage banner ad above Slashdot write now. I am NOT forced to see intrusive, obnoxious crap that intereferes with the reason why I use the service. Anything that requires me to "click" on it to send it away qualifies as abusive intereference, and should be outlawed.
Morons think "If I can get them involved, they will pay more attention to my ad" Instead most consumers get ANGRY at both the site that is abusing them and the moron company that thinks "bad pr is better than no pr".