The relationship of Congress to the District of Columbia is structural before being personal. Anything of consequence in the District is subject to the approval of congress. There is little to no real local control as in the end, Congress directly controls the district budget.
Since the federal government has determined that Californians can't smoke their weed, how is it any surprise whatsoever that they would object to it in the District on precisely the same grounds?
Personally, I'd be much happier if they would dredge up funding for our shitty roads, pathetic public health care and crappy telecom service (just TRY to get DSL on Capitol Hill) a long time before I'd care either way about making weed legal.
You know, in these heightened times, it disgusts me that people waste time with things like "Geek Girls Naked!"
You only help the terrorists and you make baby jesus cry. Besides, think of the kittens.
Re:how can you have a legislative body that...
on
Lobbying For Linux
·
· Score: 1
Has no commonality of experience? Are you mad?
Five minutes of genealogical research should enlighten that misconception. Europe such as it is drawn today is as artificial as it has been at any point in time. "Germany" and "Italy," for example, are complete fabrications of the barely more than the last century. For the past 1200 years at least, the countries and people of Europe have been highly interrelated.
The Czars of Russia you mention were hardly Russian at all. Czarina Dagmar was a Danish princess, sister of King George of Greece and Queen Alexandra of England. Czarina Alexandra was a Hessen princess and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Catherine the Great was a German of nordic descent (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian).
The Holy Roman Empire, neither Holy nor Roman, discuss, is full of these relations like King Philip II of Spain (actually he was Portugeuse) marrying Queen Mary of England only to have her drop dead, cutting him off from England, but then having Charles V (his father), a Belgian who was raised by his Austrian aunt (actually she was Flemmish), hand him the Netherlands and Sicily, leading eventually to his marriage to Elizabeth de Valois, giving him interest in France, which isn't so surprising since his Grandmother was French.
Those ruling family common interests date back over a thousand years of European history and have had more than a small effect on commonality between nations, good or bad. It is nearly impossible to speak of Europe without speaking of interrelation.
As for having to be a Soviet Marxist to be a social progressive and all the other b.s. that went with those comments like not being patriotic and denegrating the deified founding fathers, the abolishionist movement was a progressive movement and there is a certain monument in our glorious nation's capital enshrining the spirit of Abraham Lincoln who played a minor part in that period of history and I don't believe was a Soviet communist.
You missed the point entirely, although you quickly countered with precisely my point, most of which has absolutely nothing to do with free-market capitalism and everything to do with social progressives, lefties, whatever you want to label them.
The problem that social progressives and marxists have succeeded in addressing is that capitalism does NOT inherently benefit all. Without those movements, be it the race/labor/feminist/glbt/peace/consumer rights/anti-globalisation movements etc., you would have much less. You would NOT have your HMO. You would NOT have airbags, seatbelts, 911 service, 30mpg. You (if your are female) or your would not have the right to vote, you (if you are male) wouldn't have the right to vote without being white and owning land. Slaves would still be slaves and if by some miracle slavery just disappeared on its own, we'd still have "colored" bathrooms. You certainly wouldn't be guaranteed a minimum wage, social security, medicare, unemployment insurance for that matter, you would not have a National Science Foundation and consquently you would not have the internet. The list goes on and on and that isn't even beginning the discussion on how wonderful unchecked capitalism is in developing countries or how the standard of living is higher in constitutional monarchies with socialist governments than in the shining beacon that is the U.S.A.
Income inequality does matter. For the roughly half of the USA that does not have health insurance it is because they cannot afford it. The same goes for housing and education. Hell, the same goes for elected officials. If suddenly the vast majority of people are making your $10k 2001 dollars and an election campaign costs a quarter billion, you will have a VERY short list of viable candidates just like the founding fathers intended. Of course, they also intended to have slaves and indentured servants.
Yes, let's return to those glory days since money means nothing when you can live in master's house.
Re:Think *wealth*, not *dollars*
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The rich are getting richer, but only linearly. One can eat only so much caviar per hour. Wherever capitalism has flourished, however, the poor, on the other hand, have done fantastic.
Oh, like in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union and its satellites where the nomenclatura became insanely wealthy and the poor became worse off than under communism.
It might also explain why the census bureau has a section entitled "Historical Income Inequality," which is an interesting read:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ineqtoc. html
In 1970, the bottom 10% earned $8,276
In 1970, the top 10% earned $90,209
In 2000, the bottom 10% earned $10,877
In 2000, the top 10% earned $149,273
Figures in 2001 dollars.
So, the bottom increased 31% over 30 years.
The top increased 66% over 30 years.
Doesn't sound entirely "linear," does it?
Of course, you also ignore the fact that if not for all those progressive liberal marxists, none of the social policies necessary to make your statement even remotely true would not have occurred and we'd still be living with child labor, no minimum wages, no maximum working hours, no occupational safety and health controls etc. etc. etc.
Your pride in technological advance does not have any relevance. I can just see the comparison in a turn of the 20th century sweat shop -- "but, hey, we have electric lights and flush toilets, when used to crap in the woods with a candle, so it's all good."
No, it wasn't and it is not.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts?
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If you want to know who "the rich" are, try surfing through here:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html
You will find that the oft-touted "top one percent" begins at $292,913. You will also find that the "top ten percent" begins at $92,754.
If you make more than $92,754, and many people on/. do, congratulations, you are one of "the rich" at least as far as the IRS, the vast majority of social scientists and most of the general public see it.
Yes, of the 130 Million personal returns received by the IRS in 2001 119,400,717 made under $100,000.
As for the tax cut, it does not take much math to see how any broad tax cut will benefit the rich. The bottom 62% of tax filers paid 14% of the income tax collected. The top 38% paid 86% of the tax, with the top 3% paid 41% of the tax. If we cut every penny of tax out for everyone making under $50,000, it would reduce tax revenue by only 14%. Since those people are still paying taxes, it doesn't take too much effort to see how the tax cuts certainly were much more to the benefit of other than the $50,000 or less 62% of the population, now does it?
"The Rich" is NOT a hard to define group. It is patently obvious. This is not liberal-pinko conspiracy theory. That definition is not an absurdity, it is a fact.
Don't insult our collective intelligence by assuming we can't define our terms when you scarcely begin to define your own.
...PSSST! I'm well aware of that, I live on Capitol Hill for godssake, surrounded in relatively close proximity by numerous military bases that are not physically contained within the Pentagon (DUH). However, since you couldn't name DHS properly, I'll take that all with a grain of salt.
It was a silly comparison to illustrate the silliness of an even sillier suggestion that 19th century British colonial administration could be considered "more complex" than something requiring a staff more than seven times as large as the pentagon nearly a century past the decline of the Empire, nothing more.
Maybe I should have made the equally as bleeding bloody obvious point that in 2003 the administration of Wal*Mart is more complex than administering the British Empire ever was. Considering most of the work in the latter was done with pen and paper, or, in the very advanced stages of the empire, typewriters, the point should scarcely need much elaboration.
Of course, we could digress into arguments about how the British Empire is still well and good through the Commonwealth of Nations and through massive foreign investment in effect making the British still the owners of half the world, but that would just be too assinine and tedious for words.
Pardon, despite agreeing with the notion that the issue at hand is a "bad idea," the remedy in question undeniably has the potential for being at best rather silly and at worst a bit abusive.
ICANN may have problems and people may have problems with ICANN, but they only remotely relate to the question at hand and certainly won't be remedied through the course of action suggested.
Publicly insinuating that someone is an uneducated troll for suggesting a response to a problem be reasonable and studied (i.e. confirming that ICANN is not already aware of the situation, as has been covered elsewhere in this thread), not whimsical and herdlike, is out of line.
Which isn't incredibly remarkable as that is the whole point of the Report and Order process. In that the FCC is directly accountable to Congress in its capacity to draft rules based directly on legislation passed by Congress, in this case the Telecom Act of 1996, none of this is very surprising. What, do people think they just pull these rules out of their arses? With all the hoopla generated by the innumberable matter-of-course events that happen every day, I wonder if anyone ever bothers to even glance at the occasional org-chart or budget before screaming foul-play.
Being as it is the government, the facts are readily available. Every single word spoken on the House and Senate floors can be searched at:
http://thomas.loc.gov
Wonder where Bushie is spending money? Try the office of management and budget:
http://www.omb.gov
Want to know how diligently your representatives are looking into problems in government? Try the General Accounting Office:
http://www.gao.gov
If you don't know where to start, try:
http://www.firstgov.gov
If you don't trust anything from your government, try the Open Government Awareness project at MIT. They have an interesting method of assigning levels of authenticity and verification of facts:
http://opengov.media.mit.edu/
Of course, the selection of facts can distort the truth, but that is just the nature of reality. If you're seeking absolute truth, that's a matter of faith, religious or otherwise.
p.s. Thanks for the object lesson in Americans only seeking answers via the media as you gave no non-media sources of information. I hope these help.
SJ 17 IS
108th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. J. RES. 17
Disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
July 15, 2003
Mr. DORGAN (for himself, Mr. LOTT, Mr. HOLLINGS, Ms. COLLINS, Mr. FEINGOLD, Ms. SNOWE, Mr. KERRY, Mrs. HUTCHISON, and Mr. WYDEN) introduced the following resolution; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
JOINT RESOLUTION
Disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to broadcast media ownership (Report and Order FCC 03-127, received by Congress on July 10, 2003), and such rule shall have no force or effect.
...unless of course you just get the facts and interpret them on your own... et voila, knowledge, not propaganda. Not a very popular option, but it usually exists.
Just because some schmuck screams "the sky is falling, it is ICANN's fault and they're doing nothing about it" doesn't mean any of the above is the case and certainly is not justification to incite a storm of pointlessly abusive email bombs that will be read by no one.
If you actually pay attention to what goes on at ICANN, or god forbid actually set foot inside the building, you'll quickly find that all these conspiracy theories about their relentless pursuit of world-domination via DNS and their consistent incompetence (they couldn't be much MORE competent for godssake) couldn't be further from the truth.
Sure, governments have been massive and complex in the past. However, it is a simple function of social and technological development that governments in general are now vastly more complex than ever before and this effort to coordinate such a massive and disparate number of departments into one, no matter the possibility that it is an enormous waste of time and money, is huge. The Pentagon houses 23,000 employees and is the largest building in the world. DHS already has over 170,000 -- more than seven times as large. Considering you could easily fit all of Australia, Canada, South Africa and India Houses, London's central administrative offices for each respectively, inside the Pentagon, that's pretty damned big, nay, dare I say 'bigger.' Which single administrative department of the British Empire was it that had over 170,000 employees requiring over 46 million square feet of office space?
I'd love to know next time the question comes up on Jeopardy.
Terrific. As the staff at ICANN can barely fill the coffeehouse across the street, hell, you could probably cram them all in the bathroom without too much work, I'm sure they'll appreciate the/. effect of 35,000 emails in a day on a single issue.
Yeah, bravo. The idea is alright, but suggesting it to the bagillion/. trolls that will see this is not exactly the epitome of civility. I feel for the sysadmin who is no doubt already writing the filter for anything regarding this issue that they are no doubt already aware of.
That's the most fair and balanced statement I've heard about them. Personally, I think any irrational news station should be bashed, and Fox News certainly is irrational.
If CNN "et. al" includes CSPAN (which, in all fairness it should as CNN was largely behind its creation), then, yes, they are doing a better job since they "cover" the news more than they interpret it with bias and spin.
Of course, you should never trust any single source of interpretation... and that is hardly news.
The assumption and constant media attention that DHS is entirely about terrorist threats is probably the biggest PR blunder behind people's lack of faith or even understanding of what DHS actually is. The Government Accounting Office is the research arm of Congress and has a large number of reports on the progress, or lack thereof, of DHS. However, it is not just "we caught three terrorists" as that is not all that is behind DHS, which covers everything from issues of immigration to natural disasters. It is a department more complex than anything ever attempted by any government in history, so don't expect the analysis of its effectiveness to be simple. Because DHS is all about communication between existing departments from local to federal, the majority of criticism is simply about effective communication.
The best starting point is here:
http://www.gao.gov/homelandsecurity.html
If you want simple anwsers, watch Fox News. Of course, it won't be the truth. It will be many things other than the truth. In fact, most of it will be complete fabrications and spin passed of as the truth, which of course people will believe without doing a shred of research and will then wonder how a government "of, by and for the people" can be so monumentally incompetent.
What amazes me more than anything is that in this "land of the free" where people have complete on-line access to the exact words being spoken in their Congress, with the full text of the bills in question available for their review, with representatives whose offices are scarcely more than a few single-digit miles from their homes, they continue to view government as some distant mythological creature they can only divine out through the eyes of the media and by media they generally refer to "CNN" when the internet their own government built allows them access to every major news source on the planet...
...and yet the most paranoid delusions are elevated to "insightful" at the same time the actual text of the law posted here goes without notice.
The legilative way is not what you should be afraid of, it is the schizophrenic social culture that can't find a single tree in the forest, yet is sure that it is burning to the ground.
I am not an apologist for PATRIOT or it's so-called sequel, however, instead of relying on journalistic or political spin... READ THE FRIGGEN BILL! If it is so important, and I certainly agree that it is, read the actual proposed legislation. PBS has a lovely PDF copy, with analysis. Also, keep in mind, this is a bill that will invariably experience significant modification before it succeeds or fails to become law.
There is heavily active debate here in Washington about the actual threat of this. Don't vote, refrain from voting, or god bless you move to Canada, it's lovely up there, based on propaganda.
That argument also excuses the MPAA from not offerring consumers an efficient means to purchase and acquire their products on-line. There is no excuse for the lack of innovation in the music industry. They've had a decade to ramp up to on-line distribution, which would save them an enormous amount of money. I HATE downloading music as with rare exception it takes days to patch together a complete album of consistent quality... and then if I want to listen to it in my car, I have to manufacture a CD-R. Ugh. Pain in the ass wholly worth five or ten bucks.
The MPAA HAS been struggling to provide digital content in theaters, let alone home use. It simply isn't cost effective yet in the way music is. It will be another decade before the average home user has the ability to download a five to fifteen gigabyte product in a reasonable period of time. More than likely, on-demand digital cable will provide more or less the same service and also provide it in HD. By the time online-distribution would be viable in its current form, consumers will be demanding all content in HD, further complicating on-line distribution via the model that is perfectly feasible today with music.
Perhaps it is more the fact that no reasonable person expects the MPAA to offer a viable on-line distribution model anytime in the near future and that DVDs have hit price points that are completely reasonable, costing the same as two tickets to the theater, the cost of a rental plus a late charge, or as mentioned in this thread, roughly the cost of the soundtrack to that movie.
Plus, we'd be indirectly supporting the effort of another, possibly communist country.
Shit, so much for using Linux. Damned scandanavian socialist pinko bastards are just taking over the world. First they gave us reliable celluar phones, then reliable OS kernels. If we don't stop them, they might bring us other scourges like affordable healthcare and pensions. They must be stopped.
Next thing you know will be trading with China. Oh, wait... In other news, the Senate just voted to allow Americans to travel to Cuba. The red hordes are coming. Trust no one.
Given the huge pile of disclosures that must be made for anyone, like myself, with a corporation, this absurd desire for complete privacy from the average Joe is laughable.
Except for all but the most insanely paranoid, you have NEVER had privacy. It just used to take more work to find you. Crippling a system because of John Q Public's irrational fears of 'being found' by some unknown bogeyman would be insane.
The option to limit what is publicly viewable is already an option. Use it and leave it alone for the rest of us.
Slashdot Mirror
The relationship of Congress to the District of Columbia is structural before being personal. Anything of consequence in the District is subject to the approval of congress. There is little to no real local control as in the end, Congress directly controls the district budget.
Since the federal government has determined that Californians can't smoke their weed, how is it any surprise whatsoever that they would object to it in the District on precisely the same grounds?
Personally, I'd be much happier if they would dredge up funding for our shitty roads, pathetic public health care and crappy telecom service (just TRY to get DSL on Capitol Hill) a long time before I'd care either way about making weed legal.
You know, in these heightened times, it disgusts me that people waste time with things like "Geek Girls Naked!"
You only help the terrorists and you make baby jesus cry. Besides, think of the kittens.
Has no commonality of experience? Are you mad?
Five minutes of genealogical research should enlighten that misconception. Europe such as it is drawn today is as artificial as it has been at any point in time. "Germany" and "Italy," for example, are complete fabrications of the barely more than the last century. For the past 1200 years at least, the countries and people of Europe have been highly interrelated.
The Czars of Russia you mention were hardly Russian at all. Czarina Dagmar was a Danish princess, sister of King George of Greece and Queen Alexandra of England. Czarina Alexandra was a Hessen princess and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Catherine the Great was a German of nordic descent (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian).
The Holy Roman Empire, neither Holy nor Roman, discuss, is full of these relations like King Philip II of Spain (actually he was Portugeuse) marrying Queen Mary of England only to have her drop dead, cutting him off from England, but then having Charles V (his father), a Belgian who was raised by his Austrian aunt (actually she was Flemmish), hand him the Netherlands and Sicily, leading eventually to his marriage to Elizabeth de Valois, giving him interest in France, which isn't so surprising since his Grandmother was French.
Those ruling family common interests date back
over a thousand years of European history and have had more than a small effect on commonality between nations, good or bad. It is nearly impossible to speak of Europe without speaking of interrelation.
...how the standard of living is higher in constitutional monarchies with socialist governments than in the shining beacon that is the U.S.A.
t or/indicator.cfm?File=indic_290_1_1.html
Uh huh. Sure. Tell us another one.
Ok, I'll tell you where you can confirm that Norway, Sweden and Canada are rated higher in terms of human development.
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/indica
As for having to be a Soviet Marxist to be a social progressive and all the other b.s. that went with those comments like not being patriotic and denegrating the deified founding fathers, the abolishionist movement was a progressive movement and there is a certain monument in our glorious nation's capital enshrining the spirit of Abraham Lincoln who played a minor part in that period of history and I don't believe was a Soviet communist.
You missed the point entirely, although you quickly countered with precisely my point, most of which has absolutely nothing to do with free-market capitalism and everything to do with social progressives, lefties, whatever you want to label them.
The problem that social progressives and marxists have succeeded in addressing is that capitalism does NOT inherently benefit all. Without those movements, be it the race/labor/feminist/glbt/peace/consumer rights/anti-globalisation movements etc., you would have much less. You would NOT have your HMO. You would NOT have airbags, seatbelts, 911 service, 30mpg. You (if your are female) or your would not have the right to vote, you (if you are male) wouldn't have the right to vote without being white and owning land. Slaves would still be slaves and if by some miracle slavery just disappeared on its own, we'd still have "colored" bathrooms. You certainly wouldn't be guaranteed a minimum wage, social security, medicare, unemployment insurance for that matter, you would not have a National Science Foundation and consquently you would not have the internet. The list goes on and on and that isn't even beginning the discussion on how wonderful unchecked capitalism is in developing countries or how the standard of living is higher in constitutional monarchies with socialist governments than in the shining beacon that is the U.S.A.
Income inequality does matter. For the roughly half of the USA that does not have health insurance it is because they cannot afford it. The same goes for housing and education. Hell, the same goes for elected officials. If suddenly the vast majority of people are making your $10k 2001 dollars and an election campaign costs a quarter billion, you will have a VERY short list of viable candidates just like the founding fathers intended. Of course, they also intended to have slaves and indentured servants.
Yes, let's return to those glory days since money means nothing when you can live in master's house.
The rich are getting richer, but only linearly. One can eat only so much caviar per hour. Wherever capitalism has flourished, however, the poor, on the other hand, have done fantastic.
Oh, like in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union and its satellites where the nomenclatura became insanely wealthy and the poor became worse off than under communism.
It might also explain why the census bureau has a section entitled "Historical Income Inequality," which is an interesting read: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ineqtoc
In 1970, the bottom 10% earned $8,276 In 1970, the top 10% earned $90,209 In 2000, the bottom 10% earned $10,877 In 2000, the top 10% earned $149,273
Figures in 2001 dollars.
So, the bottom increased 31% over 30 years. The top increased 66% over 30 years.
Doesn't sound entirely "linear," does it?
Of course, you also ignore the fact that if not for all those progressive liberal marxists, none of the social policies necessary to make your statement even remotely true would not have occurred and we'd still be living with child labor, no minimum wages, no maximum working hours, no occupational safety and health controls etc. etc. etc.
Your pride in technological advance does not have any relevance. I can just see the comparison in a turn of the 20th century sweat shop -- "but, hey, we have electric lights and flush toilets, when used to crap in the woods with a candle, so it's all good."
No, it wasn't and it is not.
If you want to know who "the rich" are, try surfing through here:
/. do, congratulations, you are one of "the rich" at least as far as the IRS, the vast majority of social scientists and most of the general public see it.
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html
You will find that the oft-touted "top one percent" begins at $292,913. You will also find that the "top ten percent" begins at $92,754.
If you make more than $92,754, and many people on
Yes, of the 130 Million personal returns received by the IRS in 2001 119,400,717 made under $100,000.
As for the tax cut, it does not take much math to see how any broad tax cut will benefit the rich. The bottom 62% of tax filers paid 14% of the income tax collected. The top 38% paid 86% of the tax, with the top 3% paid 41% of the tax. If we cut every penny of tax out for everyone making under $50,000, it would reduce tax revenue by only 14%. Since those people are still paying taxes, it doesn't take too much effort to see how the tax cuts certainly were much more to the benefit of other than the $50,000 or less 62% of the population, now does it?
"The Rich" is NOT a hard to define group. It is patently obvious. This is not liberal-pinko conspiracy theory. That definition is not an absurdity, it is a fact.
Don't insult our collective intelligence by assuming we can't define our terms when you scarcely begin to define your own.
...PSSST! I'm well aware of that, I live on Capitol Hill for godssake, surrounded in relatively close proximity by numerous military bases that are not physically contained within the Pentagon (DUH). However, since you couldn't name DHS properly, I'll take that all with a grain of salt.
It was a silly comparison to illustrate the silliness of an even sillier suggestion that 19th century British colonial administration could be considered "more complex" than something requiring a staff more than seven times as large as the pentagon nearly a century past the decline of the Empire, nothing more.
Maybe I should have made the equally as bleeding bloody obvious point that in 2003 the administration of Wal*Mart is more complex than administering the British Empire ever was. Considering most of the work in the latter was done with pen and paper, or, in the very advanced stages of the empire, typewriters, the point should scarcely need much elaboration.
Of course, we could digress into arguments about how the British Empire is still well and good through the Commonwealth of Nations and through massive foreign investment in effect making the British still the owners of half the world, but that would just be too assinine and tedious for words.
Pardon, despite agreeing with the notion that the issue at hand is a "bad idea," the remedy in question undeniably has the potential for being at best rather silly and at worst a bit abusive.
ICANN may have problems and people may have problems with ICANN, but they only remotely relate to the question at hand and certainly won't be remedied through the course of action suggested.
Publicly insinuating that someone is an uneducated troll for suggesting a response to a problem be reasonable and studied (i.e. confirming that ICANN is not already aware of the situation, as has been covered elsewhere in this thread), not whimsical and herdlike, is out of line.
Which isn't incredibly remarkable as that is the whole point of the Report and Order process. In that the FCC is directly accountable to Congress in its capacity to draft rules based directly on legislation passed by Congress, in this case the Telecom Act of 1996, none of this is very surprising. What, do people think they just pull these rules out of their arses? With all the hoopla generated by the innumberable matter-of-course events that happen every day, I wonder if anyone ever bothers to even glance at the occasional org-chart or budget before screaming foul-play.
http://www.fcc.gov/aboutus.html
Being as it is the government, the facts are readily available. Every single word spoken on the House and Senate floors can be searched at:
http://thomas.loc.gov
Wonder where Bushie is spending money? Try the office of management and budget:
http://www.omb.gov
Want to know how diligently your representatives are looking into problems in government? Try the General Accounting Office:
http://www.gao.gov
If you don't know where to start, try:
http://www.firstgov.gov
If you don't trust anything from your government, try the Open Government Awareness project at MIT. They have an interesting method of assigning levels of authenticity and verification of facts:
http://opengov.media.mit.edu/
Of course, the selection of facts can distort the truth, but that is just the nature of reality. If you're seeking absolute truth, that's a matter of faith, religious or otherwise.
p.s. Thanks for the object lesson in Americans only seeking answers via the media as you gave no non-media sources of information. I hope these help.
SJ 17 IS 108th CONGRESS 1st Session S. J. RES. 17 Disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES July 15, 2003 Mr. DORGAN (for himself, Mr. LOTT, Mr. HOLLINGS, Ms. COLLINS, Mr. FEINGOLD, Ms. SNOWE, Mr. KERRY, Mrs. HUTCHISON, and Mr. WYDEN) introduced the following resolution; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation JOINT RESOLUTION Disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to broadcast media ownership (Report and Order FCC 03-127, received by Congress on July 10, 2003), and such rule shall have no force or effect.
Probably about $1.9 Billion
o nt ent=430
When in doubt, read the budget. Duh.
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=12&c
...unless of course you just get the facts and interpret them on your own... et voila, knowledge, not propaganda. Not a very popular option, but it usually exists.
Just because some schmuck screams "the sky is falling, it is ICANN's fault and they're doing nothing about it" doesn't mean any of the above is the case and certainly is not justification to incite a storm of pointlessly abusive email bombs that will be read by no one.
If you actually pay attention to what goes on at ICANN, or god forbid actually set foot inside the building, you'll quickly find that all these conspiracy theories about their relentless pursuit of world-domination via DNS and their consistent incompetence (they couldn't be much MORE competent for godssake) couldn't be further from the truth.
Sure, governments have been massive and complex in the past. However, it is a simple function of social and technological development that governments in general are now vastly more complex than ever before and this effort to coordinate such a massive and disparate number of departments into one, no matter the possibility that it is an enormous waste of time and money, is huge. The Pentagon houses 23,000 employees and is the largest building in the world. DHS already has over 170,000 -- more than seven times as large. Considering you could easily fit all of Australia, Canada, South Africa and India Houses, London's central administrative offices for each respectively, inside the Pentagon, that's pretty damned big, nay, dare I say 'bigger.' Which single administrative department of the British Empire was it that had over 170,000 employees requiring over 46 million square feet of office space?
I'd love to know next time the question comes up on Jeopardy.
Terrific. As the staff at ICANN can barely fill the coffeehouse across the street, hell, you could probably cram them all in the bathroom without too much work, I'm sure they'll appreciate the /. effect of 35,000 emails in a day on a single issue.
/. trolls that will see this is not exactly the epitome of civility. I feel for the sysadmin who is no doubt already writing the filter for anything regarding this issue that they are no doubt already aware of.
Yeah, bravo. The idea is alright, but suggesting it to the bagillion
What is this, better living through DDoS?
"Irrational Fox News"
That's the most fair and balanced statement I've heard about them. Personally, I think any irrational news station should be bashed, and Fox News certainly is irrational.
If CNN "et. al" includes CSPAN (which, in all fairness it should as CNN was largely behind its creation), then, yes, they are doing a better job since they "cover" the news more than they interpret it with bias and spin.
Of course, you should never trust any single source of interpretation... and that is hardly news.
The assumption and constant media attention that DHS is entirely about terrorist threats is probably the biggest PR blunder behind people's lack of faith or even understanding of what DHS actually is. The Government Accounting Office is the research arm of Congress and has a large number of reports on the progress, or lack thereof, of DHS. However, it is not just "we caught three terrorists" as that is not all that is behind DHS, which covers everything from issues of immigration to natural disasters. It is a department more complex than anything ever attempted by any government in history, so don't expect the analysis of its effectiveness to be simple. Because DHS is all about communication between existing departments from local to federal, the majority of criticism is simply about effective communication.
The best starting point is here:
http://www.gao.gov/homelandsecurity.html
If you want simple anwsers, watch Fox News. Of course, it won't be the truth. It will be many things other than the truth. In fact, most of it will be complete fabrications and spin passed of as the truth, which of course people will believe without doing a shred of research and will then wonder how a government "of, by and for the people" can be so monumentally incompetent.
What amazes me more than anything is that in this "land of the free" where people have complete on-line access to the exact words being spoken in their Congress, with the full text of the bills in question available for their review, with representatives whose offices are scarcely more than a few single-digit miles from their homes, they continue to view government as some distant mythological creature they can only divine out through the eyes of the media and by media they generally refer to "CNN" when the internet their own government built allows them access to every major news source on the planet...
...and yet the most paranoid delusions are elevated to "insightful" at the same time the actual text of the law posted here goes without notice.
The legilative way is not what you should be afraid of, it is the schizophrenic social culture that can't find a single tree in the forest, yet is sure that it is burning to the ground.
here
I am not an apologist for PATRIOT or it's so-called sequel, however, instead of relying on journalistic or political spin... READ THE FRIGGEN BILL! If it is so important, and I certainly agree that it is, read the actual proposed legislation. PBS has a lovely PDF copy, with analysis. Also, keep in mind, this is a bill that will invariably experience significant modification before it succeeds or fails to become law.
There is heavily active debate here in Washington about the actual threat of this. Don't vote, refrain from voting, or god bless you move to Canada, it's lovely up there, based on propaganda.
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/patriot2-hi.pdf
That argument also excuses the MPAA from not offerring consumers an efficient means to purchase and acquire their products on-line. There is no excuse for the lack of innovation in the music industry. They've had a decade to ramp up to on-line distribution, which would save them an enormous amount of money. I HATE downloading music as with rare exception it takes days to patch together a complete album of consistent quality... and then if I want to listen to it in my car, I have to manufacture a CD-R. Ugh. Pain in the ass wholly worth five or ten bucks.
The MPAA HAS been struggling to provide digital content in theaters, let alone home use. It simply isn't cost effective yet in the way music is. It will be another decade before the average home user has the ability to download a five to fifteen gigabyte product in a reasonable period of time. More than likely, on-demand digital cable will provide more or less the same service and also provide it in HD. By the time online-distribution would be viable in its current form, consumers will be demanding all content in HD, further complicating on-line distribution via the model that is perfectly feasible today with music.
Perhaps it is more the fact that no reasonable person expects the MPAA to offer a viable on-line distribution model anytime in the near future and that DVDs have hit price points that are completely reasonable, costing the same as two tickets to the theater, the cost of a rental plus a late charge, or as mentioned in this thread, roughly the cost of the soundtrack to that movie.
Plus, we'd be indirectly supporting the effort of another, possibly communist country.
Shit, so much for using Linux. Damned scandanavian socialist pinko bastards are just taking over the world. First they gave us reliable celluar phones, then reliable OS kernels. If we don't stop them, they might bring us other scourges like affordable healthcare and pensions. They must be stopped.
Next thing you know will be trading with China. Oh, wait... In other news, the Senate just voted to allow Americans to travel to Cuba. The red hordes are coming. Trust no one.
Given the huge pile of disclosures that must be made for anyone, like myself, with a corporation, this absurd desire for complete privacy from the average Joe is laughable. Except for all but the most insanely paranoid, you have NEVER had privacy. It just used to take more work to find you. Crippling a system because of John Q Public's irrational fears of 'being found' by some unknown bogeyman would be insane. The option to limit what is publicly viewable is already an option. Use it and leave it alone for the rest of us.