I call Previous Art to the stand. Your client has fraudulently accused me of misusing intellectual property that was not your client's property to enforce.
This Prior Art belonged to the Romanticized Languages Inc.
I happen to hold several shares of said corporate entity, and therefore reserve the right to countersue your client for intellectual property theft (claiming the Quotation Mark as their own IP) AND intellectual property (threatening a share holder in the real owner of that IP).
What made Linux good was not that it competed with Windows (quite successfully despite the press and the critics of both OS's). Windows techs did learn to start community websites to help each other, so Linux user mindsets have permeated the Windows side of things.
Be happy, Microsoft might be an evil entity or a tool of evil men, but at the very least, many of its users found Linux or BSD or even Darwin because of this. By the same token, competition has been good for the Linux geeks. If the arena full of evil tyrants wasn't there, they would've never received the same press they got now. Had it not been for gaming, some geeks might have never discovered they were geeks.
Microsoft was a stage in evolution, if one seeks to see it as such. They put lots of cheap computers into the homes of those who would've been too inept to make use of the various Unices. Be happy for it, is what I say. Competition has been great for Linux, and would you truly wish to have the OS that is the world's biggest target?
If those in the community decide to fight against Microsoft, they will become what they kill. Microsoft became what they killed (IBM in 87 anyone?). Don't strive to kill Microsoft's joy. Microsoft is sinking themselves. Just keep doing what we've all been doing. It works far more than aggressively fighting for ground. Remember Sun Tzu: "Any warrior can fight a battle and win, but a master wins the war before the battle is fought." Try it. Microsoft is doing admirably at shoving their own foot in their own mouth. All the rest of us have to do is just help the "lusers" in our lives learn to use something else, and make that transition less painful than it would've been for them when many of us got into Unix.
You don't have to be a "guru" or a "wizard" or "3l33t" to help someone less technically inclined. Who knows, they might be able to help elsewhere.
Actually I had such a dispute. Damaged my credit pretty badly at the time. I still refused to pay. To make a long story short, a man's word is not worth gold anymore, a man's word is worth not a penny, while other men's words about that man are worth more than gold.
Makes you wonder why so few people are responsible nowadays... perhaps because all they have to do is be robots at work, and vege at night. Had they had to live up to what it was they said, life might be a bit different... for all of us.
The question that must be asked is... "what makes a bunch of bankers and liars for a living, make their word more worthwhile in people's eyes than the word of a man who actually produces something tangible and sells it for a living and therefore has at least some chance that he isn't just a liar for a living?"
Your tax dollars hard at work... so when they demand or you hear "pay your fair share" what are you paying for, exactly. Billions are spent on policing, and finding new "prevention" methods in the criminal arena, while in medicine they are treating symptoms rather than causes. Strange how in each field, the wrong approach is taken.
By all accounts I've read (and some old timers I've talked to) each generation expects more from the governments, pays far more and gets far less. The same is true of medicine. More toxins find their way into our food, our entertainment and such. I have old timer friends who used to be coke heads in the 50's. They tell me that clean coke (not crack and the like) made people relaxed, not hostile and seeking to kill for another fix. Strange? I get similar stories from potheads I've known in college. Strange that the police would punish nonviolent criminals, while violent rapists and murderers get acquitted? And not even acquitted on technicalities, but on mere "good behavior" or "time served" or more precisely "to make room in prison for tax cheats".
Tax cheats?? Wtf are we getting for our "fair share" that we have been paying? Highways? There's fucking potholes in DC! Nation's capital has goddamn potholes!! I've seen private toll roads with NO POTHOLES!! I've seen private estates and gated neighborhoods, "End Municipal Maintenance Here" read the sign. Far better roads, lower crime, and my friends living there all owned weapons, and didn't ever call the cops. They had armed security, well paid armed security at the neighborhood gates. Perhaps until people stop demanding things of gods and governments, those gods and governments will have no reason to demand things of their ignorant worshipers.
Why has nobody whacked Osama when he goes in for his "treatments" ?? I mean the constantly dwindling reward for his head (went from 50 mil after 9/11/2001 to something like 2 mil now) which is still considerable enough to keep any of us here on slashdot, and even most of the mercenaries out there, living it up for 10 to 20 years on that kind of cash.
And yet nobody's whacked Osama? Very strange to me. Its as if the millions are not worth it, or as if Osama didn't exist... guy only seems to exist the way Emanuel Goldstein existed in Orwell's "1984"... as a figment of imagination of "the Party". The eternal badguy, who always resurfaces just long enough to scare the brainless cattle back into place, and back into line at the abattoir, since we all know the "inner party" likes them a nice medium rare steak.:)
And here I was thinking that by the looks of the professional quality of Osama's videos (at least the ones on CNN and FOX) they were likely produced by the same federal agencies that produced Osama himself.
Course I could be mistaken, but it makes more sense, since Osama, from what I'm told, has had kidney problems that require expensive treatment in Saudi or Dubai. Maybe while he's at the hospital, he's using their Windows Vista machines to splice video streams that predate 9/11, to come up with those strange videos that always show up at just the right time to push through a certain agenda in the USA.
Calm down little buddy... the Bush Administration didn't wag shit. Those who consented to be ruled, those who willingly paid taxes and didn't even complain, those who registered to vote, those who joined the military and any and all others who helped are ALL complicit. We're all guilty of this, even the victims are guilty of it to some degree. To say otherwise is to have a naive outlook on things.
True, ALL governments are merely thugs who passed power down to their buddies (Clinton and Bush the elder vacation together, when they're not on TV)... but the peons who uphold said governments seem to think that a whole bunch of FALLIBLE MORTALS can rule over a bunch of FALLIBLE MORTALS who seemingly are more fallible and cannot be trusted to run their own lives.
You people amuse me beyond any measure. All who clamor government is necessary seem to think that governments provide justice, peace, honesty or some other measure of virtue. They must've missed the courts that rarely side with the truth, courts that rule against their own laws (even that so called "law of the land") courts that require you to have massive cash flow to even keep up with the case, nevermind actually win... am I missing anything?
And you all PAY for this, vote for this, and have even come under the impression that these thugs have your best interests in mind.
Yes indeed, I had cultivated a few contacts at ITS dept, who later told me that the department heads and my local administrati had lined up a way to have me "removed" for not being "cooperative" with the principal and a few teachers and office staff.
While I couldn't stop the administrative staff from using my workstation or any computer (they outranked me) to pirate software, I did resist mightily... legal and bureaucratic repercussions were explained to them... (and we're talking games, and home software, not school related stuff or "just" photoshop... we're talking about a LOT of games).
I went up to ITS, and discovered that pretty much everyone was doing it, which is fine and dandy, but keep in mind that the software being pirated and the possible fines would be paid out of the tax money of the local residents (myself included.) That is actually one of the only reasons I didn't report them. The BSA would've sued the city or the school district, not the individuals.
Either way, they were on their way to getting me fired for not playing ball. I don't mind software pirates, but it is rather upsetting when they're doing it on someone else's dime, with someone else's hardware on someone else's CD's, namely bought with tax money, yours and mine.
So rather than be fired later for not playing ball, or turning them in only to get my other business and my property taxed even higher the next year, I quit early on and saved myself the headaches. I made more money from my own businesses anyways. It wasn't as steady as a "steady job", but at least contract work was far more honorable than the farce that passed for kindergarten and elementary schooling.
All in all, I remembered once more why I really didn't like being a participant in "public schooling"... as a student OR as an admistratus.
Actually at the time I used to respect my "superiors". They did a remarkable job of teaching me that superior rank does not necessarily denote a good, honest, or what some may call a "moral" man or woman. As a result, I resigned.
A government institution, to be precise, and the locals were using government computers, government media (CDR's) and various other resources to pirate everything from Windows to Games for Windows... and you know what? I was nearly fired for bringing it up. Taking action with my "superiors" in IT over what I perceived to be a legitimate issue, and being not only stonewalled but also treated like scum, is what resulted in me tendering my resignation shortly thereafter. Total time on job? Less than a year... far less. Reason? Dirty business practices. Yes, this was a SCHOOL... these are the people teaching your kids what to think, and possibly (in rare instances of "good teachers") even how to think. Another example of government "honesty" and examples of justice. Piracy reigned, and when notified, my "superiors" felt offended that I did not remove the offending software. After much correspondence and arguments, and nothing getting done, I finally got fed up and left. There is a reason schools enjoy Linux like pricing on software. So many of the teachers pirate everything in sight, with full oversight of the various officials.
And then they teach kids that "crime doesn't pay". Talk about hypocrisy.
I have this funky feeling we're arguing on the same side of this particular topic and simply dicing up semantics more than actual content.
Then again, I do not equate a 'free market' with "capitalism" since capitalism simply refers to operations on capital, generally the movement, coalescence, dispersion or application of capital.
Sort of reminds me of that lovely Leninist concept of "humans are the most precious capital of all", and the later ensuing battle cry of communists the world over... "DESTROY ALL CAPITAL!"
I fully concur with your experience, though mine was different.
However, participants in business can and should realize (even if most have been too conditioned by schools to make the realization) that government is not only fallible, but it is a TOOL not a ruler. Tools are to be used. Most people let the tool use them, rather than using the tool. A business operator can and has the full right to demand a particular document format (PDF, etc) be used, or physical copies of documents be delivered. The power government is given nowadays is simple, it is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. That so many fear the IRS is also amusing. Audits occur when individuals enter into business with the IRS and then back down on an agreement. Its a private corporation, people, and as such, plays by the same rules any other contractor does.
One can also notify the IRS that their clients do not trust closed source software which cannot be vetted by the client or an agent acting on behalf of the client. Thus the only option is to convet ALL documentation to odf or odt or pdf or whatever format is desired. (I'd love to see someone demand html or ASCII or even Unicode, with these formats being universal if coded as such.)
Most businesses setup to do taxes aren't set up with the taxpayers as customers but rather as resources (think mineral fields in starcraft), and the IRS as the customer. After all, they don't serve their "clients" but the IRS. As a result, the tail has come to wag the dog, because the dog, in this case, has been trained since it was a puppy that the tail is in charge, rather than a tool for the dog to use.
Hell, for all I have heard, you can demand that because of religious or philosophical demands, you cannot use Microsoft standards because of their dirty business practices, and thus require all forms delivered in a truly open format. Of course, the caveat is that you have to truly believe this, and not just lie about it, since lies have a tendency to occasionally come back and bite you in the ass (like when you get audited and find you saved all your documents in.doc format.)
Anyone not just tax preparers can make such demands, and even have them honored (if you cannot pay your taxes because your beliefs force you to not use windows, then they cannot deny you the right to avoid buying windows or MS office, but most do not bother to research. The desire for ease, routine and lack of brain activity leads me to believe that most people would be better off brain dead and on life support, since they make so little use of their brains anyways.
For a bunch of "geeks" you all sure haven't read the classics, or have you simply not grokked the lessons therein?
If asked for suggestions, I would advise, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and perhaps dig around for Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" as well. Usually you can find them as a compendium on strategy and mindset in the business section of your local book shop. You can even read it there without buying it.
You cannot live free by depending on others to limit your choices. Make your own, and enjoy the fact that you did. Asking others to limit the choices through legislation or various standards will not make your life or anyone else's better, with the scant exception of those who want the particular law or standard to be enforced, or who stand to profit from enforcing it. If you're not part of that small mafia, you will not benefit, so why get upset?
Years back, I used to "fight for Linux" during my rebellious attempts at changing the world I lived in. You know what happened? I got tired, and went off to relax for awhile, read a whole bunch of books (yep, the paper kind, the ones that smell good). I came back, refreshed and relaxed, and found that the world had changed on its own. Hell, my less than tech savvy friends know what Linux is now. They've even heard of BSD. They got sick of windows without my having to lift a finger to convince them (they used to resist my attempts to convert them as if I was forcing them to adopt a new religion.)
Hell, my mom asked me to install BSD and Linux side by side for a test on her machine. She complained that KDE was useful but too slow, she thought Gnome had a tendency to self destruct after several months of heavy use and no reboots. This from someone who barely knew which version of windows she was using during my Open Source crusading years. If I don't bother to try, she might even pick up LaTEX.
Thus, I realized that you cannot change the world. You might influence the changes that DO take place, but you cannot force change. Thus, learn from those in power. Influence your environs... and sit back, pour yourself a glass of brandy, and enjoy the show. Quite fun, I assure you.
A third party service to convert various file formats or write a backup firmware and software that runs the stuff would be a very profitable sideline for someone inclined to do it.
I'm not, but I have other priorities. Some of you may find a way to implement this idea, and gather a crew that pulls it off. I'm passing this idea to you freely here online.
I don't patronize music players since I actually still use an small media server in the truck (a via C3, a couple of laptop hard drives, and a case machined in my shop at home), which plays anything and everything, without my having to pay anyone for the music I freely rip from my cds to take with me on the road. I have absolutely no desire to actually take an ipod with me wherever I go, however, since I actually enjoy listening to the sounds of the world around me.
Not sure I was trying to stick it to the man, just merely saying you'd be sticking it to the man MORE by living your life and enjoying it, rather than spending it flailing helplessly to "show them".
You won't be showing them. You're too weak to "show them". Those who are powerful enough to reach, touch or "show" them, will be BOUGHT by them. Those who cannot, will either form their own secret societies or other methods of staying alive and keeping their principles alive, or they will be brought down or eliminated by "them".
Period.
Generally most get bought, or get tired of fighting fruitless losing battles. There are alternatives to fighting.
The next time you do something trivial like break your leg, where exactly will you get an x-ray ? In your herb garden ?
I can afford to PAY for a trip to the doctor. I don't need the government to legislate me a 6 week wait in line before I get treated for something, though.
Except for when you need to drive on those public highways - financed by government (other people's) money
If you return all the taxes I still have forms for, that I've paid to the government on my businesses, and that my family paid on theirs, I will gladly never drive on a "public" highway, ever again.
That money alone adjusted for inflation, would buy me a plane and pay rent at a private airstrip, at this point, could probably BUY the airstrip given the desperation of so many mortgage holders:).
As for the "not helping my neighbors", I will digress from your rant and mention that most of my neighbors have asked for help before and I've gladly helped. Likewise, they helped me when i needed theirs. I got out of the city though, and seemingly, even out here, there's plenty of techies who got as fed up as I did. I disagree that I should be FORCED to help my neighbor. I merely did it because it brought me enjoyment and gave me someone to invite to my backyard for a barbecue or groundhog shoot. Had a government agency come to take half my land and commandeer my shed to "provide for the less fortunate" I would see that as criminal trespass or perhaps even, what it actually is... outright banditry under color of law (research the legal meaning of "color of authority" btw, it will be eye opening). But my own decision to help my neighbors is a different story. I have no problems with those who choose to help or not help consciously, without six black suited agents threatening them with kidnappin.... oh wait, they call it "arrest" and robber... oh wait they call it "seizure" or "confiscation".
"when passing a lecture to your professor, or passing a report to your boss,"
I used to pass them on paper. Do they demand electronics now? Pity. When I went through college, some half a decade ago, we used to know how to write by hand (amazing skill, I know). Good skill to have.
As for your second part of that statement. I am my own boss. I own two of my own businesses, and I'm pretty much retired at this point. I just check in now and again.
I fired my professors and quit college after 3 years. Had I done it sooner I might have saved some cash and gotten on with learning how life works sooner. As far as I can tell, most curricula teach one WHAT to think, not HOW to think. Sooner one gets out of school, the sooner one gets to live life. Not that I disapprove of autodidacts, or even those who manage to actually squeeze through school and get enough reading and experience on the side, or from the rare "good" teacher, but I haven't met that many.
If you want to experience real life, go boar hunting with a spear. Go bow hunting for grizzly or bow fishing, go king crab fishing in Alaska, or go camp out in the back woods a hundred miles from the nearest bit of "civilization" for a month with only your survival gear and a friend for company, and come back to society after surviving out there. Things such as politics or all this little worthless bullshit we all fight about around here, will seem FAR less important to you than they do now. Real life is what people DON'T live, not this shit they do 9 to 5 while pretending they're more than just meat automatons. Your "job" and "school" are not what real life is. Those are merely things people do while hiding from real life. Eventually, they face it, probably in old age, without having learned how to face it when they were capable of learning such a tough lesson. And then they suffer crises, heart attacks, etc.
And no, the herbs in my mother's garden aren't what you are probably thinking. They were mostly ginseng, aloe, etc... but the "secret" here, is that I started living life, rather than having it lived for me... and I've found that things fell together easier. Granted, the difference was that I've never been one to refuse asking for help. Do yourself a favor and either kick in your TV or fire your cable company... you'll suddenly have enough time in the day to even tend a garden and raise a pet. Hell, I'm still understanding the lesson, and I like to think I've gotten started on it some years back.
don't use the public healthcare system, don't take any medicine, and when someone invades, you'll be right at the front armed with flaming torch and/or pitchfork to defend your land
Nope, I don't use "public healthcare" that's for socialists who expect something from nothing and sign themselves away for "free stuff". I went off some medication I was prescribed, and instead went into my mother's herb garden and started using her plants instead. Surprisingly, I'm healthy now... the government and its sanctioned medics now see me as a "lost stream of revenue". I call myself "free".
Course the average schmuck will miss the part that once you accept free stuff, without doing a thing for it, the government that is strong enough to give you things, is also strong enough to take those things away, oh yeah, and it owns you. On that issue I stand where I say I do and don't play your game. I've yet, in my whole life, to take a single handout from the government, yours or anyone else's. As for "defending my land"... right now its "public use" and "public policy" schmucks like you that want to put highways through people's back yards or through their farmland that are the real enemy, not some foreign schmucks who can barely afford to feed their "armies", nevermind actually invade anyone's "land". I'm fairly sure I can defend my land from an invading army more effectively than you or anything you can afford to throw my way.
As for the "rarely if ever", you need to put your dick back in your pants boyo. You forget I'm not just a believer in the Free Market, but I also exercise it whenever possible. You forget that little issue that "I already have a paid copy of windows XP" retail, they threw it in with a laptop I bought (before I got into building my own). Why not use it if I feel like it? Not like Microsoft will give me a refund. That doesn't mean I'll be buying another copy of Windows ever again, but when they throw one in, I don't mind using it for games. I have yet to get much work on Windows though.
PS - I actually hold the title and deed to several lovely little pieces of property. Including the one my mom lives on. But thanks for the typical weak minded insults you hurled my way. Shows what an enlightened "real world thinker" you are.
PPS - most of the business minds in the world whose work I read, have discussed the fact that airlines are and were (as of 2000) overdue for financial collapse. Same with most big entities. They're too slow to maneuver, and most people that matter are either in on the take of their scams or have been clued into their scams and want no part of 'em. Either way... 9/11 and all this terrorism craze resulted in governments inflating moneys through the proverbial roof. As a result, all the security theater is not meant to "keep us safe from terrorists"... it is meant only to pump endless streams of freshly printed cash and credit into the coffers of the airlines to keep them afloat. And yes, I have driven on public and private roads, and I must say, with scant few exceptions, I've felt less bumps on private roads than on public roads, course most people don't realize that private roads generally charge tolls, surprise surprise. Prime example are the roads in Washington DC... the "shining example of America's Glory!"... I've driven those roads extensively, and even close to the White House and Congress, there are potholes... no joke. I live less than 500 miles from there, and my last job took me there every other day. Needless to say, you cannot PAY me to go there anymore.
PPPS - I say this, and take it as you will kiddo, but you should definitely look at whether such lovely things as tyrannical governments, church movements and inquisitions (crusades, etc) and other such groups "helped" technology and knowledge or helped to stifle it. Ask yourself if all our advances have been the results of government control, or of individuals hoping to cash in on a good idea. Look around, lots of people, many of whom I've known, used to flee
Be broken! Or at least bent. An old relative of mine, years ago when I was a child said that the laws are merely a fence, which keeps bovines in their place. Big dogs jump over them and little puppies slink under them, but only bovines are kept in check.
It sounds far better in its native tongue than it does translated to english, but pay heed that this holds true regardless of the country.
Likewise, for running roughshod over laws, most laws aren't written to help "the people" and never were. Recall the "regulative restrictions" placed upon CB (citizen's band) radios in the USA, requiring that individuals pay a 10 dollar license fee and getting "registered".
It was a shitty law meant to squeeze blood from the proverbial turnip. People did not comply, at all. When the regulation was reduced to mere "sign a form so we know you have one" (aka registration) people still refused. As a result, the whole thing was dropped formally due to "mass non compliance".
Irony? People still want to have legislators set the rules, when the simple rule is, as always has been, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but do it first and do it well." The legislators know this, which is why, regardless of the country or the century or the millenium, all governing bodies fuck the people good and hard, and then pretend it is someone else's fault.
"It is the free market's fault. It is the free individual's fault. It is society's fault."
If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!! There are plenty of competing standards, and plenty of clean open source software out there. Use it, or lose it. Just like freedom. It isn't granted by others. It is freely available to those who would make use of it and be cognizant of its presence and benefits. Period. Everything else on this subject is bullshit excuse making from impotent and incompetent wimps unable to stop from penis envy with Bill Gates. Instead of trying to "beat" the big boys, start actually side stepping them. Like the airlines and the big telecoms, they are ALL obsolete. So is central government and big agencies and militaries. The world's people will never see this, regardless of how blatantly visible it is to some of us. Stop asking for others to prohibit all options you can have, and exercise the power of your choice and your wallet. You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit. Don't like starbucks? Don't buy their cappucinos (in fact I make a far nicer one at home, and I get to put rum in mine too!!) Get used to it. If you don't approve of a company, STOP GIVING THEM PRESS... stop buying their products, and instead promote those that espouse the beliefs and values you support. I use Linux and BSD and rarely if ever drop back to windows to play a game WINEX doesn't support yet. That's it. My choices? Yes. Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted. Did I switch back to windows because WPA supplicant didn't work right when they first started? No, I merely did without wireless and went so far as to patch mine in a crude and unapproved fashion. The fixes are in and it works okay now. I made choices. So should you. Stop being angry. It helps nothing and wastes your energy pointlessly.
Hope my advice helps. I spent a lot of time being angry and political campaigning, here and IRL. None of it helped. Letting go, and voting with my walleet and my feet helped more. Try it.
In typical British fashion, or Euro-collectivist fashion, they're showing their colors by trying to persuade the government to go into space, rather than putting their "society" into action and getting a man up there WITHOUT the permission of some worthless bureaucratic tax feeders.
But hey, the Brits are part of that mythical "free western societies" in which they need the GOVERNMENT to do stuff, instead of themselves. Pitiful, pathetic, and totally predictable.
Hey, give it another century, maybe they'll figure out that the reason we're not all having summer homes on Venus is because certain bureaucrats are the ones calling the shots, and people are depending on them to provide results, when the ONLY way they get more funding is if the bureaucrats DON'T deliver results. Results means that the perceived need for bureaucrats is no longer there, which means bureaucrats go unemployed, thus bureaucrats can NEVER solve the problem they were employed to solve, or they go without a job.
Quite nice, if not my cup of tea. IMHO, BSD is for servers, but if I were tempted to use BSD for desktops, it'd be Desktop BSD.
That being said, it seems VERY clean and useful, but it does use KDE (no load time on my laptop, when accessing menus, which means something has been fixed on BSD that hasn't been fixed on Linux KDE yet.)
I think one can force it to use something other than KDE and still keep the "Desktop Tools", which make Desktop BSD quite useful. (Only OS that detected my SD MMC controller without a single extra effort from me.)
Yeah, because we all see, that according to God, spineless wimps like Adam damned us all to hell, right? Why? Because if the garden was so good, and man in the image of God, then why was man so weak as to get "tricked" into gaining knowledge?
It seems to me your precious marriage is why we ARE NOT in the garden anymore. Perhaps you should reevaluate what you exchanged to be married to someone that got you damned for eternity (by your loving God) because of the foolishness of the wife and the gullibility and weakness of the husband.
If you ask me, marriage was a way of saying "you broke it you bought it, sucker!"
And those of us married sure did.
PS - marriage dates to before the Torah and Talmud... thus before your vaunted "old testament".
Marriage was supposed to be a contract, it became a government and religious institution. Prenups became an attempt to bring the contract part of things back into it.
Technically, if a woman cannot enter into a prenup (unwilling) it means she's likely to be taking you only for your money and goods and will fleece you dry. If she loves you, she wouldn't give a damn, so long as the prenup wasn't some ridiculous shitty deal. Marriage as it stands in its institutionalized format, already IS a shitty deal.
Yes... I am quite certain I did most of the negating. I find that discarding the people who pulled me down gave me LOTS of spare time for my research and for my life (business and personal)... That being said, even my family and close friends know very little about my life nowadays. I find that even if they wanted to sell me out to anyone buying, there's nothing they can truly sell out. There is a reason why "private info" is called that. But, to each his or her own, far be it for me to forbid others what to do. Their lives are theirs to waste, and I will never stand in someone's path to their own harm. To do that would be to enslave them... and I don't believe involuntary servitude of others to be something I would uphold.
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Niiice!
I call Previous Art to the stand. Your client has fraudulently accused me of misusing intellectual property that was not your client's property to enforce.
This Prior Art belonged to the Romanticized Languages Inc.
I happen to hold several shares of said corporate entity, and therefore reserve the right to countersue your client for intellectual property theft (claiming the Quotation Mark as their own IP) AND intellectual property (threatening a share holder in the real owner of that IP).
-Yours truly
The Horde Inc.
What made Linux good was not that it competed with Windows (quite successfully despite the press and the critics of both OS's). Windows techs did learn to start community websites to help each other, so Linux user mindsets have permeated the Windows side of things.
Be happy, Microsoft might be an evil entity or a tool of evil men, but at the very least, many of its users found Linux or BSD or even Darwin because of this. By the same token, competition has been good for the Linux geeks. If the arena full of evil tyrants wasn't there, they would've never received the same press they got now. Had it not been for gaming, some geeks might have never discovered they were geeks.
Microsoft was a stage in evolution, if one seeks to see it as such. They put lots of cheap computers into the homes of those who would've been too inept to make use of the various Unices. Be happy for it, is what I say. Competition has been great for Linux, and would you truly wish to have the OS that is the world's biggest target?
If those in the community decide to fight against Microsoft, they will become what they kill. Microsoft became what they killed (IBM in 87 anyone?). Don't strive to kill Microsoft's joy. Microsoft is sinking themselves. Just keep doing what we've all been doing. It works far more than aggressively fighting for ground. Remember Sun Tzu: "Any warrior can fight a battle and win, but a master wins the war before the battle is fought." Try it. Microsoft is doing admirably at shoving their own foot in their own mouth. All the rest of us have to do is just help the "lusers" in our lives learn to use something else, and make that transition less painful than it would've been for them when many of us got into Unix.
You don't have to be a "guru" or a "wizard" or "3l33t" to help someone less technically inclined. Who knows, they might be able to help elsewhere.
Actually I had such a dispute. Damaged my credit pretty badly at the time. I still refused to pay. To make a long story short, a man's word is not worth gold anymore, a man's word is worth not a penny, while other men's words about that man are worth more than gold.
Makes you wonder why so few people are responsible nowadays... perhaps because all they have to do is be robots at work, and vege at night. Had they had to live up to what it was they said, life might be a bit different... for all of us.
The question that must be asked is... "what makes a bunch of bankers and liars for a living, make their word more worthwhile in people's eyes than the word of a man who actually produces something tangible and sells it for a living and therefore has at least some chance that he isn't just a liar for a living?"
Your tax dollars hard at work... so when they demand or you hear "pay your fair share" what are you paying for, exactly. Billions are spent on policing, and finding new "prevention" methods in the criminal arena, while in medicine they are treating symptoms rather than causes. Strange how in each field, the wrong approach is taken.
By all accounts I've read (and some old timers I've talked to) each generation expects more from the governments, pays far more and gets far less. The same is true of medicine. More toxins find their way into our food, our entertainment and such. I have old timer friends who used to be coke heads in the 50's. They tell me that clean coke (not crack and the like) made people relaxed, not hostile and seeking to kill for another fix. Strange? I get similar stories from potheads I've known in college. Strange that the police would punish nonviolent criminals, while violent rapists and murderers get acquitted? And not even acquitted on technicalities, but on mere "good behavior" or "time served" or more precisely "to make room in prison for tax cheats".
Tax cheats?? Wtf are we getting for our "fair share" that we have been paying? Highways? There's fucking potholes in DC! Nation's capital has goddamn potholes!! I've seen private toll roads with NO POTHOLES!! I've seen private estates and gated neighborhoods, "End Municipal Maintenance Here" read the sign. Far better roads, lower crime, and my friends living there all owned weapons, and didn't ever call the cops. They had armed security, well paid armed security at the neighborhood gates. Perhaps until people stop demanding things of gods and governments, those gods and governments will have no reason to demand things of their ignorant worshipers.
Why has nobody whacked Osama when he goes in for his "treatments" ?? I mean the constantly dwindling reward for his head (went from 50 mil after 9/11/2001 to something like 2 mil now) which is still considerable enough to keep any of us here on slashdot, and even most of the mercenaries out there, living it up for 10 to 20 years on that kind of cash.
:)
And yet nobody's whacked Osama? Very strange to me. Its as if the millions are not worth it, or as if Osama didn't exist... guy only seems to exist the way Emanuel Goldstein existed in Orwell's "1984"... as a figment of imagination of "the Party". The eternal badguy, who always resurfaces just long enough to scare the brainless cattle back into place, and back into line at the abattoir, since we all know the "inner party" likes them a nice medium rare steak.
And here I was thinking that by the looks of the professional quality of Osama's videos (at least the ones on CNN and FOX) they were likely produced by the same federal agencies that produced Osama himself.
Course I could be mistaken, but it makes more sense, since Osama, from what I'm told, has had kidney problems that require expensive treatment in Saudi or Dubai. Maybe while he's at the hospital, he's using their Windows Vista machines to splice video streams that predate 9/11, to come up with those strange videos that always show up at just the right time to push through a certain agenda in the USA.
Damn convenient all these "coincidences".
Calm down little buddy... the Bush Administration didn't wag shit. Those who consented to be ruled, those who willingly paid taxes and didn't even complain, those who registered to vote, those who joined the military and any and all others who helped are ALL complicit. We're all guilty of this, even the victims are guilty of it to some degree. To say otherwise is to have a naive outlook on things.
True, ALL governments are merely thugs who passed power down to their buddies (Clinton and Bush the elder vacation together, when they're not on TV)... but the peons who uphold said governments seem to think that a whole bunch of FALLIBLE MORTALS can rule over a bunch of FALLIBLE MORTALS who seemingly are more fallible and cannot be trusted to run their own lives.
You people amuse me beyond any measure. All who clamor government is necessary seem to think that governments provide justice, peace, honesty or some other measure of virtue. They must've missed the courts that rarely side with the truth, courts that rule against their own laws (even that so called "law of the land") courts that require you to have massive cash flow to even keep up with the case, nevermind actually win... am I missing anything?
And you all PAY for this, vote for this, and have even come under the impression that these thugs have your best interests in mind.
Wow. Just... wow.
Gee thanks. Here's the rest of that story:
Yes indeed, I had cultivated a few contacts at ITS dept, who later told me that the department heads and my local administrati had lined up a way to have me "removed" for not being "cooperative" with the principal and a few teachers and office staff.
While I couldn't stop the administrative staff from using my workstation or any computer (they outranked me) to pirate software, I did resist mightily... legal and bureaucratic repercussions were explained to them... (and we're talking games, and home software, not school related stuff or "just" photoshop... we're talking about a LOT of games).
I went up to ITS, and discovered that pretty much everyone was doing it, which is fine and dandy, but keep in mind that the software being pirated and the possible fines would be paid out of the tax money of the local residents (myself included.) That is actually one of the only reasons I didn't report them. The BSA would've sued the city or the school district, not the individuals.
Either way, they were on their way to getting me fired for not playing ball. I don't mind software pirates, but it is rather upsetting when they're doing it on someone else's dime, with someone else's hardware on someone else's CD's, namely bought with tax money, yours and mine.
So rather than be fired later for not playing ball, or turning them in only to get my other business and my property taxed even higher the next year, I quit early on and saved myself the headaches. I made more money from my own businesses anyways. It wasn't as steady as a "steady job", but at least contract work was far more honorable than the farce that passed for kindergarten and elementary schooling.
All in all, I remembered once more why I really didn't like being a participant in "public schooling"... as a student OR as an admistratus.
Actually at the time I used to respect my "superiors". They did a remarkable job of teaching me that superior rank does not necessarily denote a good, honest, or what some may call a "moral" man or woman. As a result, I resigned.
A government institution, to be precise, and the locals were using government computers, government media (CDR's) and various other resources to pirate everything from Windows to Games for Windows... and you know what? I was nearly fired for bringing it up. Taking action with my "superiors" in IT over what I perceived to be a legitimate issue, and being not only stonewalled but also treated like scum, is what resulted in me tendering my resignation shortly thereafter. Total time on job? Less than a year... far less. Reason? Dirty business practices. Yes, this was a SCHOOL... these are the people teaching your kids what to think, and possibly (in rare instances of "good teachers") even how to think. Another example of government "honesty" and examples of justice. Piracy reigned, and when notified, my "superiors" felt offended that I did not remove the offending software. After much correspondence and arguments, and nothing getting done, I finally got fed up and left. There is a reason schools enjoy Linux like pricing on software. So many of the teachers pirate everything in sight, with full oversight of the various officials.
And then they teach kids that "crime doesn't pay". Talk about hypocrisy.
Another reason to pick up homeschooling.
I have this funky feeling we're arguing on the same side of this particular topic and simply dicing up semantics more than actual content.
Then again, I do not equate a 'free market' with "capitalism" since capitalism simply refers to operations on capital, generally the movement, coalescence, dispersion or application of capital.
Sort of reminds me of that lovely Leninist concept of "humans are the most precious capital of all", and the later ensuing battle cry of communists the world over... "DESTROY ALL CAPITAL!"
Makes one wonder, does it not?
I fully concur with your experience, though mine was different.
.doc format.)
However, participants in business can and should realize (even if most have been too conditioned by schools to make the realization) that government is not only fallible, but it is a TOOL not a ruler. Tools are to be used. Most people let the tool use them, rather than using the tool. A business operator can and has the full right to demand a particular document format (PDF, etc) be used, or physical copies of documents be delivered. The power government is given nowadays is simple, it is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. That so many fear the IRS is also amusing. Audits occur when individuals enter into business with the IRS and then back down on an agreement. Its a private corporation, people, and as such, plays by the same rules any other contractor does.
One can also notify the IRS that their clients do not trust closed source software which cannot be vetted by the client or an agent acting on behalf of the client. Thus the only option is to convet ALL documentation to odf or odt or pdf or whatever format is desired. (I'd love to see someone demand html or ASCII or even Unicode, with these formats being universal if coded as such.)
Most businesses setup to do taxes aren't set up with the taxpayers as customers but rather as resources (think mineral fields in starcraft), and the IRS as the customer. After all, they don't serve their "clients" but the IRS. As a result, the tail has come to wag the dog, because the dog, in this case, has been trained since it was a puppy that the tail is in charge, rather than a tool for the dog to use.
Hell, for all I have heard, you can demand that because of religious or philosophical demands, you cannot use Microsoft standards because of their dirty business practices, and thus require all forms delivered in a truly open format. Of course, the caveat is that you have to truly believe this, and not just lie about it, since lies have a tendency to occasionally come back and bite you in the ass (like when you get audited and find you saved all your documents in
Anyone not just tax preparers can make such demands, and even have them honored (if you cannot pay your taxes because your beliefs force you to not use windows, then they cannot deny you the right to avoid buying windows or MS office, but most do not bother to research. The desire for ease, routine and lack of brain activity leads me to believe that most people would be better off brain dead and on life support, since they make so little use of their brains anyways.
Who said submissive?
Who said defeated?
You just cannot win with a frontal assault.
For a bunch of "geeks" you all sure haven't read the classics, or have you simply not grokked the lessons therein?
If asked for suggestions, I would advise, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and perhaps dig around for Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" as well. Usually you can find them as a compendium on strategy and mindset in the business section of your local book shop. You can even read it there without buying it.
You cannot live free by depending on others to limit your choices. Make your own, and enjoy the fact that you did. Asking others to limit the choices through legislation or various standards will not make your life or anyone else's better, with the scant exception of those who want the particular law or standard to be enforced, or who stand to profit from enforcing it. If you're not part of that small mafia, you will not benefit, so why get upset?
Years back, I used to "fight for Linux" during my rebellious attempts at changing the world I lived in. You know what happened? I got tired, and went off to relax for awhile, read a whole bunch of books (yep, the paper kind, the ones that smell good). I came back, refreshed and relaxed, and found that the world had changed on its own. Hell, my less than tech savvy friends know what Linux is now. They've even heard of BSD. They got sick of windows without my having to lift a finger to convince them (they used to resist my attempts to convert them as if I was forcing them to adopt a new religion.)
Hell, my mom asked me to install BSD and Linux side by side for a test on her machine. She complained that KDE was useful but too slow, she thought Gnome had a tendency to self destruct after several months of heavy use and no reboots. This from someone who barely knew which version of windows she was using during my Open Source crusading years. If I don't bother to try, she might even pick up LaTEX.
Thus, I realized that you cannot change the world. You might influence the changes that DO take place, but you cannot force change. Thus, learn from those in power. Influence your environs... and sit back, pour yourself a glass of brandy, and enjoy the show. Quite fun, I assure you.
A third party service to convert various file formats or write a backup firmware and software that runs the stuff would be a very profitable sideline for someone inclined to do it.
I'm not, but I have other priorities. Some of you may find a way to implement this idea, and gather a crew that pulls it off. I'm passing this idea to you freely here online.
I don't patronize music players since I actually still use an small media server in the truck (a via C3, a couple of laptop hard drives, and a case machined in my shop at home), which plays anything and everything, without my having to pay anyone for the music I freely rip from my cds to take with me on the road. I have absolutely no desire to actually take an ipod with me wherever I go, however, since I actually enjoy listening to the sounds of the world around me.
500 miles times roughly 50 cents per mile, plus fuel costs covered, is worth it per day.
Do the math.
Cute.
Not sure I was trying to stick it to the man, just merely saying you'd be sticking it to the man MORE by living your life and enjoying it, rather than spending it flailing helplessly to "show them".
You won't be showing them. You're too weak to "show them". Those who are powerful enough to reach, touch or "show" them, will be BOUGHT by them. Those who cannot, will either form their own secret societies or other methods of staying alive and keeping their principles alive, or they will be brought down or eliminated by "them".
Period.
Generally most get bought, or get tired of fighting fruitless losing battles. There are alternatives to fighting.
The next time you do something trivial like break your leg, where exactly will you get an x-ray ? In your herb garden ?
:).
I can afford to PAY for a trip to the doctor. I don't need the government to legislate me a 6 week wait in line before I get treated for something, though.
Except for when you need to drive on those public highways - financed by government (other people's) money
If you return all the taxes I still have forms for, that I've paid to the government on my businesses, and that my family paid on theirs, I will gladly never drive on a "public" highway, ever again.
That money alone adjusted for inflation, would buy me a plane and pay rent at a private airstrip, at this point, could probably BUY the airstrip given the desperation of so many mortgage holders
As for the "not helping my neighbors", I will digress from your rant and mention that most of my neighbors have asked for help before and I've gladly helped. Likewise, they helped me when i needed theirs. I got out of the city though, and seemingly, even out here, there's plenty of techies who got as fed up as I did. I disagree that I should be FORCED to help my neighbor. I merely did it because it brought me enjoyment and gave me someone to invite to my backyard for a barbecue or groundhog shoot. Had a government agency come to take half my land and commandeer my shed to "provide for the less fortunate" I would see that as criminal trespass or perhaps even, what it actually is... outright banditry under color of law (research the legal meaning of "color of authority" btw, it will be eye opening). But my own decision to help my neighbors is a different story. I have no problems with those who choose to help or not help consciously, without six black suited agents threatening them with kidnappin.... oh wait, they call it "arrest" and robber... oh wait they call it "seizure" or "confiscation".
"when passing a lecture to your professor, or passing a report to your boss,"
I used to pass them on paper. Do they demand electronics now? Pity. When I went through college, some half a decade ago, we used to know how to write by hand (amazing skill, I know). Good skill to have.
As for your second part of that statement. I am my own boss. I own two of my own businesses, and I'm pretty much retired at this point. I just check in now and again.
I fired my professors and quit college after 3 years. Had I done it sooner I might have saved some cash and gotten on with learning how life works sooner. As far as I can tell, most curricula teach one WHAT to think, not HOW to think. Sooner one gets out of school, the sooner one gets to live life. Not that I disapprove of autodidacts, or even those who manage to actually squeeze through school and get enough reading and experience on the side, or from the rare "good" teacher, but I haven't met that many.
If you want to experience real life, go boar hunting with a spear. Go bow hunting for grizzly or bow fishing, go king crab fishing in Alaska, or go camp out in the back woods a hundred miles from the nearest bit of "civilization" for a month with only your survival gear and a friend for company, and come back to society after surviving out there. Things such as politics or all this little worthless bullshit we all fight about around here, will seem FAR less important to you than they do now. Real life is what people DON'T live, not this shit they do 9 to 5 while pretending they're more than just meat automatons. Your "job" and "school" are not what real life is. Those are merely things people do while hiding from real life. Eventually, they face it, probably in old age, without having learned how to face it when they were capable of learning such a tough lesson. And then they suffer crises, heart attacks, etc.
And no, the herbs in my mother's garden aren't what you are probably thinking. They were mostly ginseng, aloe, etc... but the "secret" here, is that I started living life, rather than having it lived for me... and I've found that things fell together easier. Granted, the difference was that I've never been one to refuse asking for help. Do yourself a favor and either kick in your TV or fire your cable company... you'll suddenly have enough time in the day to even tend a garden and raise a pet. Hell, I'm still understanding the lesson, and I like to think I've gotten started on it some years back.
don't use the public healthcare system, don't take any medicine, and when someone invades, you'll be right at the front armed with flaming torch and/or pitchfork to defend your land
Nope, I don't use "public healthcare" that's for socialists who expect something from nothing and sign themselves away for "free stuff". I went off some medication I was prescribed, and instead went into my mother's herb garden and started using her plants instead. Surprisingly, I'm healthy now... the government and its sanctioned medics now see me as a "lost stream of revenue". I call myself "free".
Course the average schmuck will miss the part that once you accept free stuff, without doing a thing for it, the government that is strong enough to give you things, is also strong enough to take those things away, oh yeah, and it owns you. On that issue I stand where I say I do and don't play your game. I've yet, in my whole life, to take a single handout from the government, yours or anyone else's. As for "defending my land"... right now its "public use" and "public policy" schmucks like you that want to put highways through people's back yards or through their farmland that are the real enemy, not some foreign schmucks who can barely afford to feed their "armies", nevermind actually invade anyone's "land". I'm fairly sure I can defend my land from an invading army more effectively than you or anything you can afford to throw my way.
As for the "rarely if ever", you need to put your dick back in your pants boyo. You forget I'm not just a believer in the Free Market, but I also exercise it whenever possible. You forget that little issue that "I already have a paid copy of windows XP" retail, they threw it in with a laptop I bought (before I got into building my own). Why not use it if I feel like it? Not like Microsoft will give me a refund. That doesn't mean I'll be buying another copy of Windows ever again, but when they throw one in, I don't mind using it for games. I have yet to get much work on Windows though.
PS - I actually hold the title and deed to several lovely little pieces of property. Including the one my mom lives on. But thanks for the typical weak minded insults you hurled my way. Shows what an enlightened "real world thinker" you are.
PPS - most of the business minds in the world whose work I read, have discussed the fact that airlines are and were (as of 2000) overdue for financial collapse. Same with most big entities. They're too slow to maneuver, and most people that matter are either in on the take of their scams or have been clued into their scams and want no part of 'em. Either way... 9/11 and all this terrorism craze resulted in governments inflating moneys through the proverbial roof. As a result, all the security theater is not meant to "keep us safe from terrorists"... it is meant only to pump endless streams of freshly printed cash and credit into the coffers of the airlines to keep them afloat. And yes, I have driven on public and private roads, and I must say, with scant few exceptions, I've felt less bumps on private roads than on public roads, course most people don't realize that private roads generally charge tolls, surprise surprise. Prime example are the roads in Washington DC... the "shining example of America's Glory!"... I've driven those roads extensively, and even close to the White House and Congress, there are potholes... no joke. I live less than 500 miles from there, and my last job took me there every other day. Needless to say, you cannot PAY me to go there anymore.
PPPS - I say this, and take it as you will kiddo, but you should definitely look at whether such lovely things as tyrannical governments, church movements and inquisitions (crusades, etc) and other such groups "helped" technology and knowledge or helped to stifle it. Ask yourself if all our advances have been the results of government control, or of individuals hoping to cash in on a good idea. Look around, lots of people, many of whom I've known, used to flee
Be broken! Or at least bent. An old relative of mine, years ago when I was a child said that the laws are merely a fence, which keeps bovines in their place. Big dogs jump over them and little puppies slink under them, but only bovines are kept in check.
It sounds far better in its native tongue than it does translated to english, but pay heed that this holds true regardless of the country.
Likewise, for running roughshod over laws, most laws aren't written to help "the people" and never were. Recall the "regulative restrictions" placed upon CB (citizen's band) radios in the USA, requiring that individuals pay a 10 dollar license fee and getting "registered".
It was a shitty law meant to squeeze blood from the proverbial turnip. People did not comply, at all. When the regulation was reduced to mere "sign a form so we know you have one" (aka registration) people still refused. As a result, the whole thing was dropped formally due to "mass non compliance".
Irony? People still want to have legislators set the rules, when the simple rule is, as always has been, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but do it first and do it well." The legislators know this, which is why, regardless of the country or the century or the millenium, all governing bodies fuck the people good and hard, and then pretend it is someone else's fault.
"It is the free market's fault. It is the free individual's fault. It is society's fault."
If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!! There are plenty of competing standards, and plenty of clean open source software out there. Use it, or lose it. Just like freedom. It isn't granted by others. It is freely available to those who would make use of it and be cognizant of its presence and benefits. Period. Everything else on this subject is bullshit excuse making from impotent and incompetent wimps unable to stop from penis envy with Bill Gates. Instead of trying to "beat" the big boys, start actually side stepping them. Like the airlines and the big telecoms, they are ALL obsolete. So is central government and big agencies and militaries. The world's people will never see this, regardless of how blatantly visible it is to some of us. Stop asking for others to prohibit all options you can have, and exercise the power of your choice and your wallet. You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit. Don't like starbucks? Don't buy their cappucinos (in fact I make a far nicer one at home, and I get to put rum in mine too!!) Get used to it. If you don't approve of a company, STOP GIVING THEM PRESS... stop buying their products, and instead promote those that espouse the beliefs and values you support. I use Linux and BSD and rarely if ever drop back to windows to play a game WINEX doesn't support yet. That's it. My choices? Yes. Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted. Did I switch back to windows because WPA supplicant didn't work right when they first started? No, I merely did without wireless and went so far as to patch mine in a crude and unapproved fashion. The fixes are in and it works okay now. I made choices. So should you. Stop being angry. It helps nothing and wastes your energy pointlessly.
Hope my advice helps. I spent a lot of time being angry and political campaigning, here and IRL. None of it helped. Letting go, and voting with my walleet and my feet helped more. Try it.
In typical British fashion, or Euro-collectivist fashion, they're showing their colors by trying to persuade the government to go into space, rather than putting their "society" into action and getting a man up there WITHOUT the permission of some worthless bureaucratic tax feeders.
But hey, the Brits are part of that mythical "free western societies" in which they need the GOVERNMENT to do stuff, instead of themselves. Pitiful, pathetic, and totally predictable.
Hey, give it another century, maybe they'll figure out that the reason we're not all having summer homes on Venus is because certain bureaucrats are the ones calling the shots, and people are depending on them to provide results, when the ONLY way they get more funding is if the bureaucrats DON'T deliver results. Results means that the perceived need for bureaucrats is no longer there, which means bureaucrats go unemployed, thus bureaucrats can NEVER solve the problem they were employed to solve, or they go without a job.
Surprise surprise.
Dig up Desktop BSD.
Quite nice, if not my cup of tea. IMHO, BSD is for servers, but if I were tempted to use BSD for desktops, it'd be Desktop BSD.
That being said, it seems VERY clean and useful, but it does use KDE (no load time on my laptop, when accessing menus, which means something has been fixed on BSD that hasn't been fixed on Linux KDE yet.)
I think one can force it to use something other than KDE and still keep the "Desktop Tools", which make Desktop BSD quite useful. (Only OS that detected my SD MMC controller without a single extra effort from me.)
Yeah, because we all see, that according to God, spineless wimps like Adam damned us all to hell, right? Why? Because if the garden was so good, and man in the image of God, then why was man so weak as to get "tricked" into gaining knowledge?
It seems to me your precious marriage is why we ARE NOT in the garden anymore. Perhaps you should reevaluate what you exchanged to be married to someone that got you damned for eternity (by your loving God) because of the foolishness of the wife and the gullibility and weakness of the husband.
If you ask me, marriage was a way of saying "you broke it you bought it, sucker!"
And those of us married sure did.
PS - marriage dates to before the Torah and Talmud... thus before your vaunted "old testament".
I don't recall what is wrong with a prenup.
Marriage was supposed to be a contract, it became a government and religious institution. Prenups became an attempt to bring the contract part of things back into it.
Technically, if a woman cannot enter into a prenup (unwilling) it means she's likely to be taking you only for your money and goods and will fleece you dry. If she loves you, she wouldn't give a damn, so long as the prenup wasn't some ridiculous shitty deal. Marriage as it stands in its institutionalized format, already IS a shitty deal.
Pick a different analogy.
Dear Anonymous:
Yes... I am quite certain I did most of the negating. I find that discarding the people who pulled me down gave me LOTS of spare time for my research and for my life (business and personal)... That being said, even my family and close friends know very little about my life nowadays. I find that even if they wanted to sell me out to anyone buying, there's nothing they can truly sell out. There is a reason why "private info" is called that. But, to each his or her own, far be it for me to forbid others what to do. Their lives are theirs to waste, and I will never stand in someone's path to their own harm. To do that would be to enslave them... and I don't believe involuntary servitude of others to be something I would uphold.