I'm thinking "maybe its time to learn assembly, chuck away all this bloat, and push this metal really hard"
I'd like to learn x86 assembly. I bet we could write a fully functional ip, tcp/ip stack, and completely secure networking protocols in less than 1 meg. I bet we could come up with a fully functional OS in less than 10 meg.
Its much more impressive to me to see someone downgrade, albeit with new non-bloated software
Do I get suckup points 'cuz I'm still on two old 400 MHz machines?
Seriously. I don't see what the need is for the newest hottest machines (games excluded, which could be made massively more efficient). People do what with computers? They check mail, they print a few things, and they view (listen/view) media. We could do all of that 15 years ago...
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That will feed your average geek for a week
That's not learning to cook, though. You definitely need some green peppers with that. Rice doesn't cut it alone, either. Get some noodles. And butter. You want a snack? Try shredded cheese and diced and fried sausages. Everything must be lightly sauteed in oil. I'd better not catch you using crappy corn oil either. It'd better be high grapeseed or sesame oil for the vegetables and maybe I'll allow extra virgin olive oil for the chicken. How about cookware? A good set of the simplest cookware will cost $80. There are monetary barriers to get into cooking. Oh, you want a mixing bowl with that, or cutting boards? That's all extra.
Of course not, because it's *expensive.*
Expensive is $2.49/lb. for tomatoes when it takes 4 tomatos to make a single serving of tomato sauce. You want to make your own biscuits? Unless you're a baking prodigy you'd better figure on making at least 4 batches of biscuits which are just bad.
Oh yeah, and try acing a bechamel sauce on your first try to make the food worth eating. If all they're living on is rice and chicken breast in some light vegetable broth they might as well eat at McD's or Burger King for $10/day.
My food for today? 3 liters of free water and two cups of free coffee, plus a $4 meal at home
Mine: 4L of iced tea (I make tea at night and then mix some with water to dilute for iced tea the next morning, every day, every night... 4L), some chocolate, and two glasses of porter.
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p.s. You might need to learn how to cook, you'll be amazed how much money is spent on those daily trips to McDonalds or the pizza place
This has got to be one of the oldest "holier than thou" lines of B***S*** I have ever read.
Anyone who learns how to cook, properly, will easily spend twice as much cooking for themselves as they spent at McDs. If you want to really save money by buying groceries then don't learn to cook. Convert to a diet consisting entirely of prepackaged frozen food (tv dinners, pizza), soup, and oatmeal.
I've learned how to cook and it definitely doesn't save money.
In fact it's mere cosmic coincidence that bankers have money, businessmen offer products to make money, and politicians will accept payment to stay out of the way.
"Thus, by signing the agreement as it presently stands, one might be agreeing to certain things gratuitously, meaning simply that the licensee agrees to give Microsoft continuing control over how the protocols are used," Peterson said.
This is exactly how the real world works. The worlds of politics, business, law, promotions, even employment interviews, are based on recruiting your support for agreements which can't be negotiated.
Wasn't this how BIll managed to get Microsoft's ownership of an early version of DOS for a minimal amount of money? I'd heard he got someone else to enter an agreement which recognized it as owned by Microsoft, but he hadn't actually paid anyone else that contributed to writing it (yet).
Well, and all the poor German children around the 1940s. They thought it was like playing mountaineer when they got to join Boy Scouts (or whatever the German equivalent is).
Today I came into work _REAL_ early (6 AM) and, as I was walking across the parking lot I noticed these two extremely bright bodies next to each other in the ENE sky. If noon would be straight up and nine would be the horizon, these were about 10-10:30. I was wondering,"What stars are those?" Then I noticed they weren't twinkling and remember reading the/. headline before showering this morning.
I'm not a big astronomer, but I never complain when I get to see nice events like this. I even told the morning security guard.
You go on to list a bunch more issues that the president has no constitutional authority to decide on
You're right. I listed issues that people, should they feel they are qualified to choose a president, should be thinking about rather than filling their heads with the popularly debated issues.
Of course the president has no authority to decide on the issues which I listed, but should the people elect a president with those issues in mind, then the president would quit wasting our time with the distraction issues.
the election of the president is determined by a cumbersome and outdated system in which we are misled into believing is a true democracy, where everyone is invited to vote on the choice
Do not rely on Merriam-Webster or dictionary.com for your perception of democracy and republic. The definitions listed there are hopelessly circular and (wrongfully) mutually inclusive.
A democracy is a method of making a decision. Nothing more, nothing less. Democracy does not guarantee freedom. Democracy does not guarantee fairness. Democracy does not even guarantee proper representation. It's a method. That's all. It is possible to democratically elect ruthless dictators. Communists can be democratically elected. Politicians who favor reverting to a monarchy could, in theory, be democratically elected.
What we (are supposed to) have in the US is a government called a Republic. A Republic is difficult to define in general. Most popular dictionaries like to opt for the easy out and define a republic as a system of government in which a body of officials represents the people proportionally. Thinking critically, though, it is easy to see that a dictatorship is also a body of officials who represent their people proportionally (cynically).
Back to your point that the election of the president is made by a "cumbersome and outdated" system. First I'd like to mention that you're basking in little more than name-calling. Are cumbersome and outdated necessarily bad? In the case of electing a president the answer is "no". Cumbersome and outdated are good...if the president were adhering to his Constitutionally appointed job.
This is where we find the true meaning of a Republic. A Republic is any type of government that you want it to be. A Republic is like ISO certification. ISO doesn't tell a business how to do anything. ISO simply ensures that, however the business has declared it will conduct its tasks, that is exactly how they are conducting those tasks. Our Republic is enumerated in the Constitution of the United States and, should our government ever apply for ISO certification, they would fail miserably.
Let's talk about the president. Why is the system of choosing a president cumbersome and outdated? The president was never meant to have direct impact on the lives of normal citizens. The election of the president is supposed to be little more than a coffee table nuance for the general public. The Constitution deliberately set up a limited and restricted Federal government so that we, the people, would never need to give much thought to who the president is. The election of the President is cumbersome and outdated because it was supposed to only apply to choosing a man from amongst the peers of Congressmen to help coordinate and lead Congress in its duties: duties which are clearly delineated and properly restricted within the US Constitution.
So why do everyday people, with no concept of the games and maneuvers and systems operating within the big dome on Capital Hill, whine and worry about the election of the President? It is precisely because the President and Congrass HAVE overstepped their bounds, they ARE in gross violation of the US Constitution, they HAVE extended their reach so that the whim of a single man or group of Congressmembers can indeed reach out and distinctly touch individual American households.
This is not the way that it was meant to be. There are clear reasons for NOT wanting a Republic to evolve into a centralized federal behemoth. There are clear parallels that show our government modeling the behavior more of the (now defunct) USSR than modeling the behavior of a proper Constitutional republic.
To the federal politicians: You fail your ISO audit. To the American public: You fail your auditors exam.
Leave the voting to those of us who have read the SOP for the Federal Government of the United States (ie. Constitution). Do not dilute the signal pool with your ill-conceived noise.
And no matter what you decide, if you can, just get out and vote tomorrow.
This is the advocation of signal dilution. In network security monitoring one doesn't always want every packet, they only want relevant packets. When polling a population one doesn't want every vote but rather only the votes from people who are making informed and intelligent decisions.
Why are we seeing a massive push for "just vote"? The popularly accepted reason is that more votes will give a fair assessment of the minds of the American public. Will more votes lead to better government? Absolutely not. Get Out the Vote initiatives, at the end of the day, do only one thing: they give the illusion of legitimacy to a government which has long since overstepped its legitimate bounds.
Imagine polling an entire nation with a question which the population has no real knowledge of or, at best, deliberately vague hearsay knowledge. With a completely random sampling of people who have little or no knowledge of a subject the outcome of the poll will be close to a 45% split with about 10% choosing an odd answer. In this sort of a system the population is not being educated nor is the decision of the poll going to positively influence their lives. The only real benefit is a guaranteed job for the group conducting the poll.
American politics is very similar to a random poll of useless trivia. There are no real issues which the president legitimately has Constitutional authority to decide on. Abortion? Not a Constitutional federal issue. Health care? Not a Constitutional federal issue. World security and peace? Not a Constitutional federal issue (any real military mind will laugh derisively at the prospect of declaring a war against a vaporous enemy or against a small handful of people). Terrorist attacks? Not even a real issue. Gay marriages? NOT EVEN CLOSE to a Constitutional federal issue. All of these issues, and more, and all the ones which the candidates have discussed, are DUMMY issues. They're illusory issues. They're distractions.
What, then, are the real issues? The real issues comprise these: What exactly is the legal, Constitutional role of the federal government? How much money are we paying the federal government and what exactly are we getting in return? Is the federal government a wise investment for what can sometimes be figured as close to 25% of the GDP? Do we really want to continue centralizing our government? What other nations have supported a supremely centralized government and survived more than a few hundred years before abuses and taxes led the population to revolt? Are we really comfortable placing our reputations, in the eyes of the world, in the hands of several dozen extraordinarily greedy, wealthy, and ruthless men? Is this a wise move if we truly want to establish world peace?
These real issues will never be discussed. They are not money making issues. They are not issues which involve contracts, business, Wall Street, investors, or headlines on the nightly news with featured public relations shots of high-profile government issues.
Please, America. If you are devoting your time and energy to methodically following the dummy issues, don't bother to vote. If you do vote, write in "Joe Nobody" to save yourself from demonstrating your clear misunderstanding of what true Freedom and Liberty are.
Thanks for putting some perspective on this whole thing. Most of the people here are just slinging mud at each other using cheap name-calling and metaphors.
If the person isn't facing eviction within a month then they shouldn't be hitting the pain threshold. But if home is starting to look more and more like a tent in a state forest (with the possibility of being arrested for whatever legal technicality) then... by all means... take whatever is available.
You do live in the US, don't you? You are aware of the tax system? Our entire society is structured to make the stupidity of some people the problem of everyone else. To be perfectly blunt, our system rewards people who feign stupidity by giving them subsidies. It's not just in the government. The whole premise of insurance coverage (much of which is required by law) is to take the stupidity of some people and spread it out over the entire population.
While I agree with your overall sentiment (though you could refine your verbage) I have to wonder why you think you should be exempt from the crap that the rest of us deal with. Not just in taxes, but on the job, at restaraunts, driving down the road, or even walking down the street.
I often feel the same way,"Why am I charged for the stupidity of everyone around me?" There is no real answer except to take a deep breath and think,"That's how I know I'm not in heaven."
having ordered a 73-piece toolset from SEARS.com last week
Cheapskate. You shouldn't settle for anything less than 100 pieces.
At least this time I had a spare sparkplug and the tools to fix it - or so I thought - having ordered a 73-piece toolset from SEARS.com last week
As an engineer you should be well aware that, whenever ordering tools, make sure that they fit the application. You failed.
My toolkit only has 1/4" and 3/8" ratchets
That's why.
They had an 18mm socket that would fit over my sparkplug, but it was for a 1/2" drive ratchet
That's also why. If you'd purchased a worthwhile toolkit you would have a 18mm deepwell. If you had, as an engineer, ordered the appropriate tools for the job you would have the correct pieces.
Even though the clerk took pity on me and gave me the senior citizen discount (I'm 25) it still cost me $22 all told
For an engineer who rides a crotch rocket that's not much to complain about. You probably drop that on lunch in New York.
This morning, a scant fifteen hours after I rode it out of the shop, I found my motorcycle violated once again
It's obvious to the rest of the world (including me, excluding you) that your girlfriend has asked one of her friends to aid in stress-testing you. You're obviously not holding up very well.
The people haven't had a say in how government is run for 40 years now
Excellent point. It is logical that, as government becomes larger and larger, the people still will have no say in government. The only solution is to minimize the government. We can't keep both big business and big government under close watch, but if we minimize one, we can watch the other.
to being of, by, and for the corporations
By minimizing government, we will take away their supporter and level the field for the rest of us.
that gave the corporations the extra money they needed to effectively reverse the power structure of the United States
The only way to return the power structure to the people is to minimize it. We cannot legislate corporations into good behavior. If we try we will only increase the size of government and the big corporations will once again find a way to buy it out.
If it wasn't for the corporations- we'd have that smaller government
If our government hadn't backed the banking industry in the Civil War (under the guise of freeing slaves) the people would have kept their authority over the government. Without government (and banking) backing to legitimize their pillaging, the corporations would have been kept in check through natural means by the workers and consumers. This is a 150 year old problem to which the only solution is: The 9th and 10th Amendments. Minimize government, keep it in its place. Let the people wrangle with the corporations on a fair field.
I'm for the separation of corporation and state- but it's not going to be accomplished by cutting the taxes of the corporations
I agree completely. It's also not going to be accomplished by giving the government more authority over the corporations. You've pointed out quite well that corporations and perfectly capable of buying control of the government. The only real solution is to put the government back in its proper minimal role and let the people wage their natural struggle against market driven greed on a fair field.
You must be working from a different definition of "Libertarian" than the Libertarian Party is
Don't expect me to agree wholeheartedly with the LP nationals. We've had more than our fair share of debates.
The Libertarian Party does NOT support all of the Constitution. They don't even agree with most of it
You don't know the first thing about Libertarians. Libertarians agree with most of the Constitution. It's the Amendments after the Bill of Rights that we start taking issue with.
In fact, the LP is quite unique in USA politics, because the Republicans, Democrats, Reforms, Greens, and Constituionalists are all democratic, while the LP is undemocratic
You are so full of horse-crap. You are aware that the Republican party, as it was first conceived, was identical to the current Libertarian party? They were the staunch supporters of government non-interventionism. I don't know where you think you come off with Libertarians being nondemocratic. We vote, just like anyone else.
Recall that in a democracy, the word "government" can be replaced by "people".
You are a political moron. In a properly functioning republic, the word government can be replaced by the people. In a properly functioning communist state, the word government can be replaced by the people. In a properly functioning, democratically elected dictatorship, the dictator will most certainly tell you that the interests of the government are the interests of the people.
Get your head our of your butt. A democracy is nothing more than a system of making a decision by casting votes. It is possible to democratically elect a socialist republic--and they do it all the time in Europe.
but if the rich become truely abusive, then we can fall back to votes to take care of them
Assuming the people you vote for aren't in collusion with the rich to keep you paying the rent for them. You certainly hit a large percentage of branches when you fell out of the clueless tree, didn't you?
In a Libertarian country, money is the only power
Take your blinders off. In _ANY_ country, money (resources) is the only real power. Maybe you're convinced by a few candy coated pretty speeches on the television, or maybe you're still stewing in the good government crap that you learned in eighth grade... others of us have grown up. Welcome to the real world: Government is not on your side any more than any other stranger is. Government is not your default friend. The only solution is to minimize the government.
Only business from customers you don't really want anyways. Maybe if more people would grow a spine we could stuff these halfwits who think they're stellar managers (because they use MS-Project) back in their place serving us french fries.
Or do you keep the most popular OS on the planet around because you have to have it to run some of the most popular software packages?
Is that like kids saying they have to have Kazaa otherwise they won't be popular? Is that like kids whining for $200 tennis shoes? Maybe the world does revolve around spoiled, rich, underachiever brats who like to play manager with their nifty new MS-ProjectPlusSuperStellarEdition 2005 Ultra Pro XP.
I, however, will always have the brainpower while Mr. Yuppie over there goes berzerk when his HD crashes.
Given the examples of corruption, mismanagment, and downright short-sightedness on the part of private industry over the last 40 years, culminating in the current job market collapse, I think it would be VERY hard for government to do WORSE than private industry, which has shown itself to be an abject failure at absolutely anything long term
Maybe you don't realize that government has had a direct hand in guiding and regulating the industries that have collapsed over the past 40 years? One might say that the collapse was inevitable with the upper echelons of both groups milking the entire system dry.
A tax system driven by corporate interests is not from the government, it's from private industry
Maybe you're unfamiliar with the term collusion?
The only answer is to minimize the government and let the people deal with the corporations. If our government would quit backing the corps with our own tax money, we'd have more resources available to stage an effective strike.
The problem is- private industry isn't any better, at all
Private industry can't take money from your paycheck by fiat.
Find any specific existing law which is considered anti-corporate, and then "research" the Libertarian Party position on that law
That is completely out of line. There is an order of progression. An ideal Libertarian would scrap all the laws at once and go back to working from the Constitution. In this environment, the corporations have no more rights or protection than any individual.
This is not a question of being pro-corporate or anti-corporate. Those people who have no conception of a better system love to polarize the issue that way. Being a Libertarian is about recognizing that, currently, large corporations have an advantage over any competition due to legal government protection.
Yes. Those with the most money will always have the most power. Deal with it. We don't have to give them even more through our tax dollars.
You and I point out the same concept. You use bees as an example, I posted a quote from Chemical and Engineering News. You get interesting, I get troll.
I don't think the FEC should be wasting tax dollars fretting over the internet.
Television and radio ads are effectively because they are active advertising. The consumer _must_ participate in the advertisement in order to get back to normal programming. The advertisement takes 100% of the media stream. There are no ads for Kerry or Bush playing in the background while Metallica is playing in the foreground.
Advertising on the internet is much different. Let them spend all they want on internet advertising. Google will love it, Yahoo will love it, MSN will love it... but the consumers? Really I don't think internet advertising has much impact. I'm positive that search engines and launchpad websites can produce hundreds of studies to prove me wrong but their business relies on convincing people to spend money on internet ads. To the regular consumer, however, it's all too easy to ignore banner ads and get to the real content on a page. I have yet to meet anyone who has tried a new product or service due to internet advertising. I've bought things that were reviewed (eg. books) on a network bulletin board, but I've never bought anything from a paid advertisement. Internet advertising is passive advertising because it requires the consumer to willingly participate in the advertisement. If Bush or Kerry want to spend a billion dollars employing web monkeys to write a webpage then that's good for jobs and the economy. Unless they (illegally) hijack my browser, though, I'm still not going to view it.
So, again, why is the FEC wasting our taxpayer dollars arguing over 15 rules and trying to make them wrap around the internet?
So you can infringe on their copyrights without fear of getting caught?
Other than exercising your ability to be a pompous brow-beating twit... why do you even care if we're milking the media companies dry?
I don't like the current copyright law
So you don't care. So what was with the brow-beating interrogation?
but the solution is to change the law, not make it unenforceable
Semantics... and you have far too much blind faith in our political system if you think a group of rebellious teenagers can change the law. By and large, once we've hit our 30s and 40s, we don't have time to bother swapping files and movies and amassing the kinds of collections that attract legal attention, so file-sharing isn't much of an issue for those of us who are forging careers in politics, or actually making a decent salary, or voting.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking "maybe its time to learn assembly, chuck away all this bloat, and push this metal really hard"
I'd like to learn x86 assembly. I bet we could write a fully functional ip, tcp/ip stack, and completely secure networking protocols in less than 1 meg. I bet we could come up with a fully functional OS in less than 10 meg.
Its much more impressive to me to see someone downgrade, albeit with new non-bloated software
Do I get suckup points 'cuz I'm still on two old 400 MHz machines?
Seriously. I don't see what the need is for the newest hottest machines (games excluded, which could be made massively more efficient). People do what with computers? They check mail, they print a few things, and they view (listen/view) media. We could do all of that 15 years ago...
That will feed your average geek for a week
That's not learning to cook, though. You definitely need some green peppers with that. Rice doesn't cut it alone, either. Get some noodles. And butter. You want a snack? Try shredded cheese and diced and fried sausages. Everything must be lightly sauteed in oil. I'd better not catch you using crappy corn oil either. It'd better be high grapeseed or sesame oil for the vegetables and maybe I'll allow extra virgin olive oil for the chicken. How about cookware? A good set of the simplest cookware will cost $80. There are monetary barriers to get into cooking. Oh, you want a mixing bowl with that, or cutting boards? That's all extra.
Of course not, because it's *expensive.*
Expensive is $2.49/lb. for tomatoes when it takes 4 tomatos to make a single serving of tomato sauce. You want to make your own biscuits? Unless you're a baking prodigy you'd better figure on making at least 4 batches of biscuits which are just bad.
Oh yeah, and try acing a bechamel sauce on your first try to make the food worth eating. If all they're living on is rice and chicken breast in some light vegetable broth they might as well eat at McD's or Burger King for $10/day.
My food for today? 3 liters of free water and two cups of free coffee, plus a $4 meal at home
Mine: 4L of iced tea (I make tea at night and then mix some with water to dilute for iced tea the next morning, every day, every night... 4L), some chocolate, and two glasses of porter.
p.s. You might need to learn how to cook, you'll be amazed how much money is spent on those daily trips to McDonalds or the pizza place
This has got to be one of the oldest "holier than thou" lines of B***S*** I have ever read.
Anyone who learns how to cook, properly, will easily spend twice as much cooking for themselves as they spent at McDs. If you want to really save money by buying groceries then don't learn to cook. Convert to a diet consisting entirely of prepackaged frozen food (tv dinners, pizza), soup, and oatmeal.
I've learned how to cook and it definitely doesn't save money.
There really are no conspiracies
In fact it's mere cosmic coincidence that bankers have money, businessmen offer products to make money, and politicians will accept payment to stay out of the way.
If people would just stop talking about things they don't understand, things would get a lot more quiet.
Do you hear voices while you are reading posts online? Do they all sound like little children?
"Thus, by signing the agreement as it presently stands, one might be agreeing to certain things gratuitously, meaning simply that the licensee agrees to give Microsoft continuing control over how the protocols are used," Peterson said.
This is exactly how the real world works. The worlds of politics, business, law, promotions, even employment interviews, are based on recruiting your support for agreements which can't be negotiated.
Wasn't this how BIll managed to get Microsoft's ownership of an early version of DOS for a minimal amount of money? I'd heard he got someone else to enter an agreement which recognized it as owned by Microsoft, but he hadn't actually paid anyone else that contributed to writing it (yet).
Well, and all the poor German children around the 1940s. They thought it was like playing mountaineer when they got to join Boy Scouts (or whatever the German equivalent is).
Today I came into work _REAL_ early (6 AM) and, as I was walking across the parking lot I noticed these two extremely bright bodies next to each other in the ENE sky. If noon would be straight up and nine would be the horizon, these were about 10-10:30. I was wondering,"What stars are those?" Then I noticed they weren't twinkling and remember reading the /. headline before showering this morning.
I'm not a big astronomer, but I never complain when I get to see nice events like this. I even told the morning security guard.
You go on to list a bunch more issues that the president has no constitutional authority to decide on
You're right. I listed issues that people, should they feel they are qualified to choose a president, should be thinking about rather than filling their heads with the popularly debated issues.
Of course the president has no authority to decide on the issues which I listed, but should the people elect a president with those issues in mind, then the president would quit wasting our time with the distraction issues.
the election of the president is determined by a cumbersome and outdated system in which we are misled into believing is a true democracy, where everyone is invited to vote on the choice
Do not rely on Merriam-Webster or dictionary.com for your perception of democracy and republic. The definitions listed there are hopelessly circular and (wrongfully) mutually inclusive.
A democracy is a method of making a decision. Nothing more, nothing less. Democracy does not guarantee freedom. Democracy does not guarantee fairness. Democracy does not even guarantee proper representation. It's a method. That's all. It is possible to democratically elect ruthless dictators. Communists can be democratically elected. Politicians who favor reverting to a monarchy could, in theory, be democratically elected.
What we (are supposed to) have in the US is a government called a Republic. A Republic is difficult to define in general. Most popular dictionaries like to opt for the easy out and define a republic as a system of government in which a body of officials represents the people proportionally. Thinking critically, though, it is easy to see that a dictatorship is also a body of officials who represent their people proportionally (cynically).
Back to your point that the election of the president is made by a "cumbersome and outdated" system. First I'd like to mention that you're basking in little more than name-calling. Are cumbersome and outdated necessarily bad? In the case of electing a president the answer is "no". Cumbersome and outdated are good...if the president were adhering to his Constitutionally appointed job.
This is where we find the true meaning of a Republic. A Republic is any type of government that you want it to be. A Republic is like ISO certification. ISO doesn't tell a business how to do anything. ISO simply ensures that, however the business has declared it will conduct its tasks, that is exactly how they are conducting those tasks. Our Republic is enumerated in the Constitution of the United States and, should our government ever apply for ISO certification, they would fail miserably.
Let's talk about the president. Why is the system of choosing a president cumbersome and outdated? The president was never meant to have direct impact on the lives of normal citizens. The election of the president is supposed to be little more than a coffee table nuance for the general public. The Constitution deliberately set up a limited and restricted Federal government so that we, the people, would never need to give much thought to who the president is. The election of the President is cumbersome and outdated because it was supposed to only apply to choosing a man from amongst the peers of Congressmen to help coordinate and lead Congress in its duties: duties which are clearly delineated and properly restricted within the US Constitution.
So why do everyday people, with no concept of the games and maneuvers and systems operating within the big dome on Capital Hill, whine and worry about the election of the President? It is precisely because the President and Congrass HAVE overstepped their bounds, they ARE in gross violation of the US Constitution, they HAVE extended their reach so that the whim of a single man or group of Congressmembers can indeed reach out and distinctly touch individual American households.
This is not the way that it was meant to be. There are clear reasons for NOT wanting a Republic to evolve into a centralized federal behemoth. There are clear parallels that show our government modeling the behavior more of the (now defunct) USSR than modeling the behavior of a proper Constitutional republic.
To the federal politicians: You fail your ISO audit.
To the American public: You fail your auditors exam.
Leave the voting to those of us who have read the SOP for the Federal Government of the United States (ie. Constitution). Do not dilute the signal pool with your ill-conceived noise.
And no matter what you decide, if you can, just get out and vote tomorrow.
This is the advocation of signal dilution. In network security monitoring one doesn't always want every packet, they only want relevant packets. When polling a population one doesn't want every vote but rather only the votes from people who are making informed and intelligent decisions.
Why are we seeing a massive push for "just vote"? The popularly accepted reason is that more votes will give a fair assessment of the minds of the American public. Will more votes lead to better government? Absolutely not. Get Out the Vote initiatives, at the end of the day, do only one thing: they give the illusion of legitimacy to a government which has long since overstepped its legitimate bounds.
Imagine polling an entire nation with a question which the population has no real knowledge of or, at best, deliberately vague hearsay knowledge. With a completely random sampling of people who have little or no knowledge of a subject the outcome of the poll will be close to a 45% split with about 10% choosing an odd answer. In this sort of a system the population is not being educated nor is the decision of the poll going to positively influence their lives. The only real benefit is a guaranteed job for the group conducting the poll.
American politics is very similar to a random poll of useless trivia. There are no real issues which the president legitimately has Constitutional authority to decide on. Abortion? Not a Constitutional federal issue. Health care? Not a Constitutional federal issue. World security and peace? Not a Constitutional federal issue (any real military mind will laugh derisively at the prospect of declaring a war against a vaporous enemy or against a small handful of people). Terrorist attacks? Not even a real issue. Gay marriages? NOT EVEN CLOSE to a Constitutional federal issue. All of these issues, and more, and all the ones which the candidates have discussed, are DUMMY issues. They're illusory issues. They're distractions.
What, then, are the real issues? The real issues comprise these: What exactly is the legal, Constitutional role of the federal government? How much money are we paying the federal government and what exactly are we getting in return? Is the federal government a wise investment for what can sometimes be figured as close to 25% of the GDP? Do we really want to continue centralizing our government? What other nations have supported a supremely centralized government and survived more than a few hundred years before abuses and taxes led the population to revolt? Are we really comfortable placing our reputations, in the eyes of the world, in the hands of several dozen extraordinarily greedy, wealthy, and ruthless men? Is this a wise move if we truly want to establish world peace?
These real issues will never be discussed. They are not money making issues. They are not issues which involve contracts, business, Wall Street, investors, or headlines on the nightly news with featured public relations shots of high-profile government issues.
Please, America. If you are devoting your time and energy to methodically following the dummy issues, don't bother to vote. If you do vote, write in "Joe Nobody" to save yourself from demonstrating your clear misunderstanding of what true Freedom and Liberty are.
Thanks for putting some perspective on this whole thing. Most of the people here are just slinging mud at each other using cheap name-calling and metaphors.
If the person isn't facing eviction within a month then they shouldn't be hitting the pain threshold. But if home is starting to look more and more like a tent in a state forest (with the possibility of being arrested for whatever legal technicality) then... by all means... take whatever is available.
In regards to your subject line...
You do live in the US, don't you? You are aware of the tax system? Our entire society is structured to make the stupidity of some people the problem of everyone else. To be perfectly blunt, our system rewards people who feign stupidity by giving them subsidies. It's not just in the government. The whole premise of insurance coverage (much of which is required by law) is to take the stupidity of some people and spread it out over the entire population.
While I agree with your overall sentiment (though you could refine your verbage) I have to wonder why you think you should be exempt from the crap that the rest of us deal with. Not just in taxes, but on the job, at restaraunts, driving down the road, or even walking down the street.
I often feel the same way,"Why am I charged for the stupidity of everyone around me?" There is no real answer except to take a deep breath and think,"That's how I know I'm not in heaven."
having ordered a 73-piece toolset from SEARS.com last week
Cheapskate. You shouldn't settle for anything less than 100 pieces.
At least this time I had a spare sparkplug and the tools to fix it - or so I thought - having ordered a 73-piece toolset from SEARS.com last week
As an engineer you should be well aware that, whenever ordering tools, make sure that they fit the application. You failed.
My toolkit only has 1/4" and 3/8" ratchets
That's why.
They had an 18mm socket that would fit over my sparkplug, but it was for a 1/2" drive ratchet
That's also why. If you'd purchased a worthwhile toolkit you would have a 18mm deepwell. If you had, as an engineer, ordered the appropriate tools for the job you would have the correct pieces.
Even though the clerk took pity on me and gave me the senior citizen discount (I'm 25) it still cost me $22 all told
For an engineer who rides a crotch rocket that's not much to complain about. You probably drop that on lunch in New York.
This morning, a scant fifteen hours after I rode it out of the shop, I found my motorcycle violated once again
It's obvious to the rest of the world (including me, excluding you) that your girlfriend has asked one of her friends to aid in stress-testing you. You're obviously not holding up very well.
The people haven't had a say in how government is run for 40 years now
Excellent point. It is logical that, as government becomes larger and larger, the people still will have no say in government. The only solution is to minimize the government. We can't keep both big business and big government under close watch, but if we minimize one, we can watch the other.
to being of, by, and for the corporations
By minimizing government, we will take away their supporter and level the field for the rest of us.
that gave the corporations the extra money they needed to effectively reverse the power structure of the United States
The only way to return the power structure to the people is to minimize it. We cannot legislate corporations into good behavior. If we try we will only increase the size of government and the big corporations will once again find a way to buy it out.
If it wasn't for the corporations- we'd have that smaller government
If our government hadn't backed the banking industry in the Civil War (under the guise of freeing slaves) the people would have kept their authority over the government. Without government (and banking) backing to legitimize their pillaging, the corporations would have been kept in check through natural means by the workers and consumers. This is a 150 year old problem to which the only solution is: The 9th and 10th Amendments. Minimize government, keep it in its place. Let the people wrangle with the corporations on a fair field.
I'm for the separation of corporation and state- but it's not going to be accomplished by cutting the taxes of the corporations
I agree completely. It's also not going to be accomplished by giving the government more authority over the corporations. You've pointed out quite well that corporations and perfectly capable of buying control of the government. The only real solution is to put the government back in its proper minimal role and let the people wage their natural struggle against market driven greed on a fair field.
You must be working from a different definition of "Libertarian" than the Libertarian Party is
Don't expect me to agree wholeheartedly with the LP nationals. We've had more than our fair share of debates.
The Libertarian Party does NOT support all of the Constitution. They don't even agree with most of it
You don't know the first thing about Libertarians. Libertarians agree with most of the Constitution. It's the Amendments after the Bill of Rights that we start taking issue with.
In fact, the LP is quite unique in USA politics, because the Republicans, Democrats, Reforms, Greens, and Constituionalists are all democratic, while the LP is undemocratic
You are so full of horse-crap. You are aware that the Republican party, as it was first conceived, was identical to the current Libertarian party? They were the staunch supporters of government non-interventionism. I don't know where you think you come off with Libertarians being nondemocratic. We vote, just like anyone else.
Recall that in a democracy, the word "government" can be replaced by "people".
You are a political moron. In a properly functioning republic, the word government can be replaced by the people. In a properly functioning communist state, the word government can be replaced by the people. In a properly functioning, democratically elected dictatorship, the dictator will most certainly tell you that the interests of the government are the interests of the people.
Get your head our of your butt. A democracy is nothing more than a system of making a decision by casting votes. It is possible to democratically elect a socialist republic--and they do it all the time in Europe.
but if the rich become truely abusive, then we can fall back to votes to take care of them
Assuming the people you vote for aren't in collusion with the rich to keep you paying the rent for them. You certainly hit a large percentage of branches when you fell out of the clueless tree, didn't you?
In a Libertarian country, money is the only power
Take your blinders off. In _ANY_ country, money (resources) is the only real power. Maybe you're convinced by a few candy coated pretty speeches on the television, or maybe you're still stewing in the good government crap that you learned in eighth grade... others of us have grown up. Welcome to the real world: Government is not on your side any more than any other stranger is. Government is not your default friend. The only solution is to minimize the government.
What do you propose to do when someone says
Tell them to quit micromanaging.
Are you supposed to turn down business
Only business from customers you don't really want anyways. Maybe if more people would grow a spine we could stuff these halfwits who think they're stellar managers (because they use MS-Project) back in their place serving us french fries.
Or do you keep the most popular OS on the planet around because you have to have it to run some of the most popular software packages?
Is that like kids saying they have to have Kazaa otherwise they won't be popular? Is that like kids whining for $200 tennis shoes? Maybe the world does revolve around spoiled, rich, underachiever brats who like to play manager with their nifty new MS-ProjectPlusSuperStellarEdition 2005 Ultra Pro XP.
I, however, will always have the brainpower while Mr. Yuppie over there goes berzerk when his HD crashes.
Given the examples of corruption, mismanagment, and downright short-sightedness on the part of private industry over the last 40 years, culminating in the current job market collapse, I think it would be VERY hard for government to do WORSE than private industry, which has shown itself to be an abject failure at absolutely anything long term
Maybe you don't realize that government has had a direct hand in guiding and regulating the industries that have collapsed over the past 40 years? One might say that the collapse was inevitable with the upper echelons of both groups milking the entire system dry.
A tax system driven by corporate interests is not from the government, it's from private industry
Maybe you're unfamiliar with the term collusion?
The only answer is to minimize the government and let the people deal with the corporations. If our government would quit backing the corps with our own tax money, we'd have more resources available to stage an effective strike.
The problem is- private industry isn't any better, at all
Private industry can't take money from your paycheck by fiat.
Find any specific existing law which is considered anti-corporate, and then "research" the Libertarian Party position on that law
That is completely out of line. There is an order of progression. An ideal Libertarian would scrap all the laws at once and go back to working from the Constitution. In this environment, the corporations have no more rights or protection than any individual.
This is not a question of being pro-corporate or anti-corporate. Those people who have no conception of a better system love to polarize the issue that way. Being a Libertarian is about recognizing that, currently, large corporations have an advantage over any competition due to legal government protection.
Yes. Those with the most money will always have the most power. Deal with it. We don't have to give them even more through our tax dollars.
(Oops... did I just lose the argument?)
:)
No, but you came awfully close.
So, if any of you folks have a barcode with "666" in it
My driver's license has a 777.
Right. That explains why we can easily get Project for OS X
Right, because there was no such thing as a competent project manager before MS told you how to do it.
Lay off the crutches.
You and I point out the same concept. You use bees as an example, I posted a quote from Chemical and Engineering News. You get interesting, I get troll.
Mods on crack, as always.
I don't think the FEC should be wasting tax dollars fretting over the internet.
Television and radio ads are effectively because they are active advertising. The consumer _must_ participate in the advertisement in order to get back to normal programming. The advertisement takes 100% of the media stream. There are no ads for Kerry or Bush playing in the background while Metallica is playing in the foreground.
Advertising on the internet is much different. Let them spend all they want on internet advertising. Google will love it, Yahoo will love it, MSN will love it... but the consumers? Really I don't think internet advertising has much impact. I'm positive that search engines and launchpad websites can produce hundreds of studies to prove me wrong but their business relies on convincing people to spend money on internet ads. To the regular consumer, however, it's all too easy to ignore banner ads and get to the real content on a page. I have yet to meet anyone who has tried a new product or service due to internet advertising. I've bought things that were reviewed (eg. books) on a network bulletin board, but I've never bought anything from a paid advertisement. Internet advertising is passive advertising because it requires the consumer to willingly participate in the advertisement. If Bush or Kerry want to spend a billion dollars employing web monkeys to write a webpage then that's good for jobs and the economy. Unless they (illegally) hijack my browser, though, I'm still not going to view it.
So, again, why is the FEC wasting our taxpayer dollars arguing over 15 rules and trying to make them wrap around the internet?
So you can infringe on their copyrights without fear of getting caught?
Other than exercising your ability to be a pompous brow-beating twit... why do you even care if we're milking the media companies dry?
I don't like the current copyright law
So you don't care. So what was with the brow-beating interrogation?
but the solution is to change the law, not make it unenforceable
Semantics... and you have far too much blind faith in our political system if you think a group of rebellious teenagers can change the law. By and large, once we've hit our 30s and 40s, we don't have time to bother swapping files and movies and amassing the kinds of collections that attract legal attention, so file-sharing isn't much of an issue for those of us who are forging careers in politics, or actually making a decent salary, or voting.
I suppose you'll explode with self-righteous rage if I ask,"Why do you give a sh*t if we're milking media companies dry?"