The main reason for the interoperability problems in the first place is Congress's own legislation, the DMCA. Without that, there would be many more projects like Hymn that open up DRM'ed formats and promote interoperability. Now Congress is trying to cure one of the symptoms of its previous ill-conceived legislation with... more legislation.
Despite that the US the has not signed the Kyoto treaty [yet].
The Kyoto Protocol equivalent of things like the PATRIOT Act and CAN SPAM Act. You can draw a lot of criticism by not supporting it, because of the obtensible goals of these acts are so noble, but it's really the rational thing to do. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and the last thing we need is more idiotic, counterproductive measures to make a pretense of "doing something" about the problem. If you really care about the environment, push for a treaty that actually helps it, instead of this placebo which only outsources pollution (and jobs) to India and China.
Let's suppose that you are Louis Vuitton. You've spent a lot of years and a lot of money building up your brand name. So now, someone is *PAYING* the sales person in that store to show customers products by Dior everytime they ask to see your products. If you were Louis Vuitton you would not be happy about that.
I walk into a restraunt and order a Coke. The waitress offers me a Pepsi. Coke has "spent a lot of years and a lot of money building up its brand name", and "someone is *PAYING*" the waitress to offer customers Pepsi products when they try to order a Coke. Should this be illegal too?
What's EVEN more frightening is that they've wanted to have talks with the US for years, but the US has refused any direct negociations with them.
Not only does this thread have the obligatory hundred posts criticizing Bush for going into Iraq without enough international consensus, but you get +5 criticizing his insistence that other nations be part of the negotiations with Korea. So what's the official Bush-basher position, is his foreign policy too unilateral or too multilateral?
I see Microsoft ads in magazines claiming that the TCO a business using Windows is significantly less than using Linux. How can this be?
These studies typically assume that the status quo is Windows, the workforce is already skilled with Windows but not Linux, Windows is currently installed on the machines, etc. and what is being compared is the cost of sticking with Windows vs. switching operating systems, retraining the workforce, and similar expenses. These transition costs make Linux appear more expensive than Windows, even when the Linux solution itself is cheaper to run.
So, to make this into a question for Mr. Taylor, is this an accurate summary of the studies, and can you point to any that are conducted from a more neutral perspective, without making assumptions of one OS or the other enjoying a comfortable incumbent position?
why not have the fansubbers just release their subtitles with no video?
This would allow the die-hard fans to either purchase a legitimate non-English DVD and apply the subtitles themselves
Current state of affairs: Hmm, I hear such-and-such is a good anime, but it's not available here yet. I think I'll download a couple fansub episodes to see if it's any good. If I like it, I can preorder the region 1 release when it's announced, and if I don't, I can delete it and try something else.
Proposed alternative: Hmm, I hear such-and-such is a good anime, but it's not available here yet. I think I'll pay $75+ for a disc with only 50 minutes of content (which I've never seen before) to import it from Japan. Then I'll rip it to my computer, download a translated subtitle track, add the new subtitles with some software, burn a disc with the added subtitles, and watch it. If I like it, I can preorder the region 1 release when it's announced (or just import the whole series for a mere $500 - $1000) and if I don't I can just repeat this process with other series till I find something that better suits my tastes, or go completely broke.
Not being an American, someone may correct me on this, but doesnt the First Amendment only pertain to limitations on freedom and religious expression from the Government and not private companies?
Taken at face value, the amendment would seem to apply only what the legislative branch of the federal government can do. However, it's not too difficult to see that it applies even to this situation:
If there is no law against ThinkSecret's publishing this information, then Apple's case is moot.
If there is some law that Congress has passed that would preclude ThinkSecret from exercising freedom of the press, such a law could be considered unconstitutional because it would conflict with the First Amendment, and thus be unenforcable.
Apple, on the other hand, will try to portray preventing the publication of their secrets as a reasonable limitation on the powers of the press.
Re:This would be a bad thing (I am not a lawyer).
on
New Attacks on Spam
·
· Score: 1
I think what this honeypot guy is doing is clever, and I like it.
Not because I hope this legal tactic is upheld (though reducing spam would be nice), but because it so clearly illustrates the fallacy of so many other "licenses" out there. Sure it's silly to say "Here is a unique email address. By sending mail to it, you agree to...", but it's just as foolish to say "Thanks for buying our software. But if you actually run it, you agree to..." or "By opening the seal on this book/cd/box/whatever you agree to...".
Agreeing to any legal contract should be a conscious, deliberate process subject to negotiation by both parties. Because of power grabs like UTICA, that isn't always the case these days. This guy is taking the sad state of legal affairs and using it as a weapon against spam. It would be great if this license was struck down, because that would also be a blow to all the other unread, nonnegotiated, no-consideration pseudo-licenses out there. But in the meantime I'd rather see our messed up legal situation working to the advantage of an anti-spam project instead of the BSA.
An idea I've been playing around with lately is a small, quiet computer to use as a DVD server. Store all my frequently-watched DVD's as ISO files on USB hard drives. Admittedly, storing a lot of DVDs losslessly will be impractical until you can buy a 1TB+ external drive for under $400, but, not being one to let that stop me, I was hoping someone more familiar with the Mac's capabilities could help me figure out how well this box would stack up.
First requirement, I need something that can handle really large files. FAT32-based systems for instance can't handle a DVD-sized file. I'll assume the Mac has a decent filesystem format.
Next, I need to be able to mount the ISOs like a DVD. Windows has Daemon Tools, Linux has the mount command. Mac being BSD-based, things probably work pretty similarly in this respect to Linux.
Now the hard part, good DVD playback software that can be controlled programatically (command line parameters, a documented API, whatever) to go to particular chapters, menus, and so on. WinDVD on Windows, for instance, doesn't provide much in the way of a way for outside programs to control it (that's documented anyway). Xine on Linux does, but the playback looks rougher and more pixallated, at least on my current system. Can anyone shed any light on how well Mac DVD player software stacks up?
They just reduced the functionality of a unit I already own. I want a refund now for the lost functionality.
Most of the replies to this post are along the lines of "Apple never said the iPod had that functionality, so you aren't losing anything." Now, the parent does a bit overboard with the claim that the lost functionality should entitle someone to a refund, but those who claim no functionality was lost are also off-base.
If the manufacturer of my laptop issued a bios update that stopped me from booting Linux, and then responded to complaints with "hey, we marketed it as a WinXP system, so that's all you can run on it." I would be irked by the lost functionality. Likewise if Intel found a way to force all the overclocked systems out there to run at their rated speed, people would feel that functionality had been lost.
Issuing updates that deliberately break compatibility with other people's software is a very Microsoft tactic. If capabilities that used to work, and should still work, get squashed in the process of some company's efforts to corner the market on a technology, you have every right to be irritated about the lost features, whether they were advertised ones or not.
It's really amusing how many posts there are along the lines of "this just goes to show how evil Bush's apointees are!" Never mind the fact that George Tenet became CIA director 7/11/97 under President Clinton...
I would have loved to watch Whedon try and pitch this to the studios.
It would hardly be the most difficult pitch Whedon has had to make. Anyone who can start with the utter crap "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie, convince network execs to make a TV series out of it, and then have the show go on to be a wild success must be doing something right. At least with Firefly there is a small but devoted fan base, and DVD sales that greatly surpassed expectations.
In announcing their choice for a recount location, Cobb and Badnarik talk a lot about "reports of irregularities", "the integrity of the democratic process" being compromised, "voter intimidation", "voter suppression", and so on. Are we understand that these things are fine as long as Kerry won a state, but make one "compelled to demand a recount" if Bush won?
A recount and investigation should look into all the states, especially the close ones, whichever way they fell. How accurate WAS electronic voting? Were the new provisional ballot rules followed properly, or were they a means of stuffing ballot boxes with phony votes? How much "voter intimidation" took place in states where exercising your First Amendment rights with a Bush bumper sticker would get your tires slashed?
If Cobb and Badnarik are really serious about looking into irregularities and protecting the integrity of the democratic process, let's do it across the country. Sure, Ohio has the appeal of that of the "if this one state had voted the other way, the whole election would have turned out differently" states, it was closer than Florida or Texas, but Bush still won by a significant margin and counting the ballots over and over isn't going to alter that. Rather than doing a symbolic recount in a single state that was neither the closest nor home to the most irregularities, we should be looking into reported problems across the country and trying to fix things instead of doing this sort of ridiculous grandstanding.
What really happened is that fear won. Fear of terrorism, fear of gay marriage, fear of a lot of things.
Why does the left always try to dismiss things as "fear" rather than try to understand why people actually hold different opinions than they do? You're hardly the first to make this error, as phrases like "homophobia" demonstrate.
Here is a revelation for you. People can disagree with the opinions and values of others for reasons besides fear. Does the ACLU oppose prayer in schools out of "fear"? (oh no, if I hear someone quote the Bible I might spontaneously convert to Christianity, give away all my worldly belongings, and go off on a missionary trip to some remote part of the world) Do opponents of the Iraq war criticize it because of "fear"? (Any day now Saddam is going to break out of jail and launch a counter attack that will kill us all!) Of course not. Trying to trivialize the different values and opinions of others by dismissing them as "fear" is arrogant and highly intolerant of the diverse reasons for which people take positions on issues which, believe it or not, involves more than just fear.
As a card-carrying member of the "left" I can tell you that I do not oppose nuclear energy, nor do a number of my "leftist" friends.
Certainly not everyone on the left is opponent of nuclear power, but nearly all the vocal opponents of nuclear power are on the left of the political spectrum. The antinuclear movement is largely a conglomoration of radical environmentalists, feminist groups, and labor unions in industries such as coal mining that would be adversely affected by new power sources.
So what? If you took a Slashdot poll of who the next CEO of Microsoft should be, you might find widespread support for some guy who would give away all their IP and then disband the company. If you took a poll of the shareholders, they would have a different opinion. Why would anyone need to poll 113,000 people to realize that third parties have different agendas than the people doing the voting?
Even if foreigners are well-informed about the platforms of the candidates in a different country, why would they care about things like domestic issues or tax policy? Such people would have no interest in picking the candidate who would act in the best interest of Americans, but rather who would do things that were best for people in the poll-respondant's part of the world, regardless of whether the policies were good or bad for the candidate's own constituency. People in India want might more outsourcing, people in Japan might want America to run a bigger trade deficit with them, others might want to take America down a notch or two economically, politically, militarily, and so on.
Consider this interpretation of your data: people who actually have to live under the administration they are voting for are many times more likely to support Bush than are poll respondants who are foist a candidate upon someone else's country from afar.
I had been looking forward to this iPod... more space for music, and Apple was moving to a color screen. I don't care about the photo thing, but album art is cool when you're listening to music. The speculation (MacRumors, ThinkSecret, Slashdot, etc.) had been that the 60GB color screen iPod would fill the empty $499 price point. Instead, Apple has decided that the bigger size and the color screen are features worth an extra hundred bucks EACH.
I think this is indicitive of what you are talking about, that Apple is losing sight of doing one thing and doing it well. Instead of Apple saying "While increasing the capacity on the iPod, we also put a color screen on it. Have fun.", the photo aspect is being overplayed. It's tacked onto the product name. There are now TWO 40GB iPods. And Apple has allowed themselves to miss critical price points by $100 in the name of features nobody is clamoring for.
Will it succeed despite this apparent loss of focus? Who knows.
Kerry doesn't personally believe in some things, but he doesn't necessarily think that his beliefs should be made the basis of the law of the land because other people should be allowed to believe differently from him. Bush wants his personal belief system to become the law of the land.
Of course Kerry wants his beliefs to be the law of the land. He has cited his beliefs as the rationale behind his policies on things like the environment, poverty, and education. He has no problem with trampling someone's property rights in the name of the environment, because he believes it is the "right" thing to do, and he will gladly use the force of law to impose his values on others.
It is just on the hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage where Kerry hides behind this nice-sounding but empty argument. He invokes it to avoid having to avoid having to reconcile his own contradictory positions. On the one hand, he wants to be a liberal democrat and tow the party line on these issues. But he also wants to project an image as some sort of principled Catholic. When these two are at odds, he votes like a liberal democrat and defends it with this "don't impose your beliefs" idea. When they happen to coincide, he votes like a liberal democrat and cites it as an example of his beliefs guiding his actions.
I believe America has been blatanly violating Russian's copyright for a very large product category for many many years. What's the product you ask? Machine guns. Specifically, Kalashnikov design that had a world copyright (AK-47). US even resold unlicensed AK-47s to other countries.
Aside from the "world copyright" problem, and the fact that such a design would be covered by patents rather than copyrights, I have to ask... what sales?
AK-based rifles that are sold internationally are mostly produced in Eastern Europe, China, Egypt, etc. There is some demand within the U.S. for domestically produced AK clones, due to ATF rules being more limiting for firearms that are imported or contain a large quantity of foreign-made components, than on American-made firearms. However, this would hardly be a concern for people in other countries not subject to such restrictions, so I doubt anyone abroad would pay twice as much for an American-made AK than for a Chinese one.
While I do not doubt that Mikhail Kalashnikov receives no royalties from most of the AK-based rifles produced around the world, your assertion of U.S. based companies as big producers and exporters of AK's needs some evidence to back it up.
-It's Texas Republicans who are Gerrymandering in their redistricting efforts...
The Texas Democrats were also trying to Gerrymander, just as badly as the Republicans. They even resorted to tactics like leaving the state during sessions they were legally obligated to be at, to prevent a quorum from being present. This is hardly a case where one party wants to Gerrymander and the other doesn't, it's a case where the law says it is the Republicans turn to draw up the maps, and the Democrats threw a fit because they liked their Gerrymandering better than the Republicans'.
-Sinclair wishes to put an obviously anti Kerry Docuganda on TV...
And this is worse than anti-Bush / pro-Kerry documentaries being put on TV by PBS, CBS, Sundance, etc. how? And what is a Docuganda, a documentary produced in Uganda? When someone wants to bash Bush, the Democrats hail it as free speech, but when someone wants to bash Kerry, like this documentary or the swift boat book, they immediately call for censorship. The First Amendment is not just about the right to free speech as long as you have something liberal to say.
2. Despite what you are determined to believe, while the memos may have proven to be fake, the 'real facts' did in fact get out and guess what, they support what's expressed in the memos. That's what made it possible to verify them. Everyone and their brother agreed that what's in them is true.
While I disagree with all your points, this one is particularly troubling. Are you saying that it is okay if evidence is fake, as long as it supports your assumptions? What if a district attorney submitted into evidence a photoshopped picture of the defendant killing somebody, just to help his case that if the 'real facts' got out, everyone would know the defendant was a murderer? Wrong, wrong, wrong... conclusions should be arrived at based on the evidence at hand, not evidence conjured up to support foregone assumptions.
"Everybody and his brother" has expressed similar doubts about Kerry's record but you don't see the Swift Boat Vets fabricating documents do you? They get blasted enough as "liars" just for providing eyewitness accounts that paint Kerry in an unfavorable light, but if someone resorts to criminal acts of forgery to make Bush look bad, that's alright?/P.
On that point, I agree completely. Congress gives bills titles that divert attention from the legislation's real purpose or make it politically dangerous to go against it.
This is why my disagreement was entirely with regard to the naming of missiles. With weapon systems, it's more a matter of giving your side's stuff impressive names (Patriot, Eagle, Phantom, Aegis, etc.) and code-naming the other guy's stuff with dubious names (Fishbed, Backfire, Satan, Scud).
As far as Congressional legislation though, you are absolutely correct.
the kind of lying with which many things are sold to U.S. citizens. Other examples are: 1) The "Patriot" Missile, as though you are not patriotic unless you are in favor of a particular weapon of mass destruction.
False. Naming something Patriot does not automatically mean you must support it. If you root for the opposing team instead of the New England Patriots, does it make you un-American? Missiles have all sorts of names, some of which are meaningful, others of which are just catchy (Polaris, Trident, Tomahawk, etc.). If you don't like Poseidon missiles, they doesn't say much about your opinion of ancient Greek deities either.
As for the "weapon of mass destruction" comment, this is ridiculous. WMD refers to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. If you want to define it to encompass any random missile, than Saddam Hussein certainly had WMD in the form of Scuds, and Kerry owes Bush a big apology. Or you could just be tossing phrases around with no idea what you are saying.
The "Peacekeeper" Missile, which tries to give people the idea that a nuclear weapon keeps the peace.
This is one of the missiles where the name is actually fairly apt. The threat of nuclear annihilation made the prospect of all-out warfare too terrible. The cold war stayed cold because any direct attack from one superpower on another would have resulted in a situation nobody would win. Sure, "I won't attack your country because we would both die" is not nice as "I won't attack your country because I love you and would rather give you a hug", but even an uneasy peace between the major world powers is better than no peace at all. The point of a nuclear weapon is not to blow stuff up, it is that everyone else knows you could blow stuff up so they don't mess with you. If the U.S. uses its nuclear arsenal defensively, to deter attack, then names like the Peacekeeper make sense. If they had used it to blow up Baghdad instead of sending in ground troops, then your point about its name being a "lie" would have some validity.
Just because your religion says abortion is wrong doesn't mean that mine agrees with you. Hence the government should stay out of the way as it can often come down to a religious belief. I'm not saying that a politician can't or shouldn't allow thier religion to influence thier decisions or morality, but they have to keep in mind that not everyone shares thier religious beliefs.
The flaw in your idea of "not everyone has the same religious beliefs so you should be able to do whatever you want" attitude is that it fails to qualify that sentiment with "as long as you aren't hurting anybody else". The problem with abortion is that if the would-be victim is an entity that has rights, you're committing a horrible atrocity, and if they don't, what you're doing is fine. And while you may be okay with unilaterally deciding whether they do or not, this gets into a dangerous area of where the authority to make such decisions comes from.
One person might decide animals have no rights, and puree live kittens in a blender. Another might decide some ethnic group have no rights, and keep some of them as slaves. If someone objects to this behavior, even though their different viewpoint about the rights of the purported victims might stem from a religious perspective, are they really imposing their religious views?
Slashdot Mirror
The main reason for the interoperability problems in the first place is Congress's own legislation, the DMCA. Without that, there would be many more projects like Hymn that open up DRM'ed formats and promote interoperability. Now Congress is trying to cure one of the symptoms of its previous ill-conceived legislation with... more legislation.
Despite that the US the has not signed the Kyoto treaty [yet].
The Kyoto Protocol equivalent of things like the PATRIOT Act and CAN SPAM Act. You can draw a lot of criticism by not supporting it, because of the obtensible goals of these acts are so noble, but it's really the rational thing to do. The devil, as they say, is in the details, and the last thing we need is more idiotic, counterproductive measures to make a pretense of "doing something" about the problem. If you really care about the environment, push for a treaty that actually helps it, instead of this placebo which only outsources pollution (and jobs) to India and China.
Let's suppose that you are Louis Vuitton. You've spent a lot of years and a lot of money building up your brand name. So now, someone is *PAYING* the sales person in that store to show customers products by Dior everytime they ask to see your products. If you were Louis Vuitton you would not be happy about that.
I walk into a restraunt and order a Coke. The waitress offers me a Pepsi. Coke has "spent a lot of years and a lot of money building up its brand name", and "someone is *PAYING*" the waitress to offer customers Pepsi products when they try to order a Coke. Should this be illegal too?
What's EVEN more frightening is that they've wanted to have talks with the US for years, but the US has refused any direct negociations with them.
Not only does this thread have the obligatory hundred posts criticizing Bush for going into Iraq without enough international consensus, but you get +5 criticizing his insistence that other nations be part of the negotiations with Korea. So what's the official Bush-basher position, is his foreign policy too unilateral or too multilateral?
I see Microsoft ads in magazines claiming that the TCO a business using Windows is significantly less than using Linux. How can this be?
These studies typically assume that the status quo is Windows, the workforce is already skilled with Windows but not Linux, Windows is currently installed on the machines, etc. and what is being compared is the cost of sticking with Windows vs. switching operating systems, retraining the workforce, and similar expenses. These transition costs make Linux appear more expensive than Windows, even when the Linux solution itself is cheaper to run.
So, to make this into a question for Mr. Taylor, is this an accurate summary of the studies, and can you point to any that are conducted from a more neutral perspective, without making assumptions of one OS or the other enjoying a comfortable incumbent position?
why not have the fansubbers just release their subtitles with no video? This would allow the die-hard fans to either purchase a legitimate non-English DVD and apply the subtitles themselves
Current state of affairs: Hmm, I hear such-and-such is a good anime, but it's not available here yet. I think I'll download a couple fansub episodes to see if it's any good. If I like it, I can preorder the region 1 release when it's announced, and if I don't, I can delete it and try something else.
Proposed alternative: Hmm, I hear such-and-such is a good anime, but it's not available here yet. I think I'll pay $75+ for a disc with only 50 minutes of content (which I've never seen before) to import it from Japan. Then I'll rip it to my computer, download a translated subtitle track, add the new subtitles with some software, burn a disc with the added subtitles, and watch it. If I like it, I can preorder the region 1 release when it's announced (or just import the whole series for a mere $500 - $1000) and if I don't I can just repeat this process with other series till I find something that better suits my tastes, or go completely broke.
Not being an American, someone may correct me on this, but doesnt the First Amendment only pertain to limitations on freedom and religious expression from the Government and not private companies?
Taken at face value, the amendment would seem to apply only what the legislative branch of the federal government can do. However, it's not too difficult to see that it applies even to this situation:
If there is no law against ThinkSecret's publishing this information, then Apple's case is moot.
If there is some law that Congress has passed that would preclude ThinkSecret from exercising freedom of the press, such a law could be considered unconstitutional because it would conflict with the First Amendment, and thus be unenforcable.
Apple, on the other hand, will try to portray preventing the publication of their secrets as a reasonable limitation on the powers of the press.
I think what this honeypot guy is doing is clever, and I like it.
Not because I hope this legal tactic is upheld (though reducing spam would be nice), but because it so clearly illustrates the fallacy of so many other "licenses" out there. Sure it's silly to say "Here is a unique email address. By sending mail to it, you agree to...", but it's just as foolish to say "Thanks for buying our software. But if you actually run it, you agree to..." or "By opening the seal on this book/cd/box/whatever you agree to...".
Agreeing to any legal contract should be a conscious, deliberate process subject to negotiation by both parties. Because of power grabs like UTICA, that isn't always the case these days. This guy is taking the sad state of legal affairs and using it as a weapon against spam. It would be great if this license was struck down, because that would also be a blow to all the other unread, nonnegotiated, no-consideration pseudo-licenses out there. But in the meantime I'd rather see our messed up legal situation working to the advantage of an anti-spam project instead of the BSA.
An idea I've been playing around with lately is a small, quiet computer to use as a DVD server. Store all my frequently-watched DVD's as ISO files on USB hard drives. Admittedly, storing a lot of DVDs losslessly will be impractical until you can buy a 1TB+ external drive for under $400, but, not being one to let that stop me, I was hoping someone more familiar with the Mac's capabilities could help me figure out how well this box would stack up.
First requirement, I need something that can handle really large files. FAT32-based systems for instance can't handle a DVD-sized file. I'll assume the Mac has a decent filesystem format.
Next, I need to be able to mount the ISOs like a DVD. Windows has Daemon Tools, Linux has the mount command. Mac being BSD-based, things probably work pretty similarly in this respect to Linux.
Now the hard part, good DVD playback software that can be controlled programatically (command line parameters, a documented API, whatever) to go to particular chapters, menus, and so on. WinDVD on Windows, for instance, doesn't provide much in the way of a way for outside programs to control it (that's documented anyway). Xine on Linux does, but the playback looks rougher and more pixallated, at least on my current system. Can anyone shed any light on how well Mac DVD player software stacks up?
They just reduced the functionality of a unit I already own. I want a refund now for the lost functionality.
Most of the replies to this post are along the lines of "Apple never said the iPod had that functionality, so you aren't losing anything." Now, the parent does a bit overboard with the claim that the lost functionality should entitle someone to a refund, but those who claim no functionality was lost are also off-base.
If the manufacturer of my laptop issued a bios update that stopped me from booting Linux, and then responded to complaints with "hey, we marketed it as a WinXP system, so that's all you can run on it." I would be irked by the lost functionality. Likewise if Intel found a way to force all the overclocked systems out there to run at their rated speed, people would feel that functionality had been lost.
Issuing updates that deliberately break compatibility with other people's software is a very Microsoft tactic. If capabilities that used to work, and should still work, get squashed in the process of some company's efforts to corner the market on a technology, you have every right to be irritated about the lost features, whether they were advertised ones or not.
It's really amusing how many posts there are along the lines of "this just goes to show how evil Bush's apointees are!" Never mind the fact that George Tenet became CIA director 7/11/97 under President Clinton...
I would have loved to watch Whedon try and pitch this to the studios.
It would hardly be the most difficult pitch Whedon has had to make. Anyone who can start with the utter crap "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie, convince network execs to make a TV series out of it, and then have the show go on to be a wild success must be doing something right. At least with Firefly there is a small but devoted fan base, and DVD sales that greatly surpassed expectations.
In announcing their choice for a recount location, Cobb and Badnarik talk a lot about "reports of irregularities", "the integrity of the democratic process" being compromised, "voter intimidation", "voter suppression", and so on. Are we understand that these things are fine as long as Kerry won a state, but make one "compelled to demand a recount" if Bush won?
A recount and investigation should look into all the states, especially the close ones, whichever way they fell. How accurate WAS electronic voting? Were the new provisional ballot rules followed properly, or were they a means of stuffing ballot boxes with phony votes? How much "voter intimidation" took place in states where exercising your First Amendment rights with a Bush bumper sticker would get your tires slashed?
If Cobb and Badnarik are really serious about looking into irregularities and protecting the integrity of the democratic process, let's do it across the country. Sure, Ohio has the appeal of that of the "if this one state had voted the other way, the whole election would have turned out differently" states, it was closer than Florida or Texas, but Bush still won by a significant margin and counting the ballots over and over isn't going to alter that. Rather than doing a symbolic recount in a single state that was neither the closest nor home to the most irregularities, we should be looking into reported problems across the country and trying to fix things instead of doing this sort of ridiculous grandstanding.
What really happened is that fear won. Fear of terrorism, fear of gay marriage, fear of a lot of things.
Why does the left always try to dismiss things as "fear" rather than try to understand why people actually hold different opinions than they do? You're hardly the first to make this error, as phrases like "homophobia" demonstrate.
Here is a revelation for you. People can disagree with the opinions and values of others for reasons besides fear. Does the ACLU oppose prayer in schools out of "fear"? (oh no, if I hear someone quote the Bible I might spontaneously convert to Christianity, give away all my worldly belongings, and go off on a missionary trip to some remote part of the world) Do opponents of the Iraq war criticize it because of "fear"? (Any day now Saddam is going to break out of jail and launch a counter attack that will kill us all!) Of course not. Trying to trivialize the different values and opinions of others by dismissing them as "fear" is arrogant and highly intolerant of the diverse reasons for which people take positions on issues which, believe it or not, involves more than just fear.
As a card-carrying member of the "left" I can tell you that I do not oppose nuclear energy, nor do a number of my "leftist" friends.
Certainly not everyone on the left is opponent of nuclear power, but nearly all the vocal opponents of nuclear power are on the left of the political spectrum. The antinuclear movement is largely a conglomoration of radical environmentalists, feminist groups, and labor unions in industries such as coal mining that would be adversely affected by new power sources.
So what? If you took a Slashdot poll of who the next CEO of Microsoft should be, you might find widespread support for some guy who would give away all their IP and then disband the company. If you took a poll of the shareholders, they would have a different opinion. Why would anyone need to poll 113,000 people to realize that third parties have different agendas than the people doing the voting?
Even if foreigners are well-informed about the platforms of the candidates in a different country, why would they care about things like domestic issues or tax policy? Such people would have no interest in picking the candidate who would act in the best interest of Americans, but rather who would do things that were best for people in the poll-respondant's part of the world, regardless of whether the policies were good or bad for the candidate's own constituency. People in India want might more outsourcing, people in Japan might want America to run a bigger trade deficit with them, others might want to take America down a notch or two economically, politically, militarily, and so on.
Consider this interpretation of your data: people who actually have to live under the administration they are voting for are many times more likely to support Bush than are poll respondants who are foist a candidate upon someone else's country from afar.
Clinton didn't spend 200 billion dollars occupying a country.
So how much DID Clinton's war effort in the former Yugoslavia cost?
I had been looking forward to this iPod... more space for music, and Apple was moving to a color screen. I don't care about the photo thing, but album art is cool when you're listening to music. The speculation (MacRumors, ThinkSecret, Slashdot, etc.) had been that the 60GB color screen iPod would fill the empty $499 price point. Instead, Apple has decided that the bigger size and the color screen are features worth an extra hundred bucks EACH.
I think this is indicitive of what you are talking about, that Apple is losing sight of doing one thing and doing it well. Instead of Apple saying "While increasing the capacity on the iPod, we also put a color screen on it. Have fun.", the photo aspect is being overplayed. It's tacked onto the product name. There are now TWO 40GB iPods. And Apple has allowed themselves to miss critical price points by $100 in the name of features nobody is clamoring for.
Will it succeed despite this apparent loss of focus? Who knows.
Kerry doesn't personally believe in some things, but he doesn't necessarily think that his beliefs should be made the basis of the law of the land because other people should be allowed to believe differently from him. Bush wants his personal belief system to become the law of the land.
Of course Kerry wants his beliefs to be the law of the land. He has cited his beliefs as the rationale behind his policies on things like the environment, poverty, and education. He has no problem with trampling someone's property rights in the name of the environment, because he believes it is the "right" thing to do, and he will gladly use the force of law to impose his values on others.
It is just on the hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage where Kerry hides behind this nice-sounding but empty argument. He invokes it to avoid having to avoid having to reconcile his own contradictory positions. On the one hand, he wants to be a liberal democrat and tow the party line on these issues. But he also wants to project an image as some sort of principled Catholic. When these two are at odds, he votes like a liberal democrat and defends it with this "don't impose your beliefs" idea. When they happen to coincide, he votes like a liberal democrat and cites it as an example of his beliefs guiding his actions.
I believe America has been blatanly violating Russian's copyright for a very large product category for many many years. What's the product you ask? Machine guns. Specifically, Kalashnikov design that had a world copyright (AK-47). US even resold unlicensed AK-47s to other countries.
Aside from the "world copyright" problem, and the fact that such a design would be covered by patents rather than copyrights, I have to ask... what sales?
AK-based rifles that are sold internationally are mostly produced in Eastern Europe, China, Egypt, etc. There is some demand within the U.S. for domestically produced AK clones, due to ATF rules being more limiting for firearms that are imported or contain a large quantity of foreign-made components, than on American-made firearms. However, this would hardly be a concern for people in other countries not subject to such restrictions, so I doubt anyone abroad would pay twice as much for an American-made AK than for a Chinese one.
While I do not doubt that Mikhail Kalashnikov receives no royalties from most of the AK-based rifles produced around the world, your assertion of U.S. based companies as big producers and exporters of AK's needs some evidence to back it up.
-It's Texas Republicans who are Gerrymandering in their redistricting efforts...
The Texas Democrats were also trying to Gerrymander, just as badly as the Republicans. They even resorted to tactics like leaving the state during sessions they were legally obligated to be at, to prevent a quorum from being present. This is hardly a case where one party wants to Gerrymander and the other doesn't, it's a case where the law says it is the Republicans turn to draw up the maps, and the Democrats threw a fit because they liked their Gerrymandering better than the Republicans'.
-Sinclair wishes to put an obviously anti Kerry Docuganda on TV...
And this is worse than anti-Bush / pro-Kerry documentaries being put on TV by PBS, CBS, Sundance, etc. how? And what is a Docuganda, a documentary produced in Uganda? When someone wants to bash Bush, the Democrats hail it as free speech, but when someone wants to bash Kerry, like this documentary or the swift boat book, they immediately call for censorship. The First Amendment is not just about the right to free speech as long as you have something liberal to say.
2. Despite what you are determined to believe, while the memos may have proven to be fake, the 'real facts' did in fact get out and guess what, they support what's expressed in the memos. That's what made it possible to verify them. Everyone and their brother agreed that what's in them is true.
While I disagree with all your points, this one is particularly troubling. Are you saying that it is okay if evidence is fake, as long as it supports your assumptions? What if a district attorney submitted into evidence a photoshopped picture of the defendant killing somebody, just to help his case that if the 'real facts' got out, everyone would know the defendant was a murderer? Wrong, wrong, wrong... conclusions should be arrived at based on the evidence at hand, not evidence conjured up to support foregone assumptions.
"Everybody and his brother" has expressed similar doubts about Kerry's record but you don't see the Swift Boat Vets fabricating documents do you? They get blasted enough as "liars" just for providing eyewitness accounts that paint Kerry in an unfavorable light, but if someone resorts to criminal acts of forgery to make Bush look bad, that's alright?/P.
On that point, I agree completely. Congress gives bills titles that divert attention from the legislation's real purpose or make it politically dangerous to go against it.
This is why my disagreement was entirely with regard to the naming of missiles. With weapon systems, it's more a matter of giving your side's stuff impressive names (Patriot, Eagle, Phantom, Aegis, etc.) and code-naming the other guy's stuff with dubious names (Fishbed, Backfire, Satan, Scud).
As far as Congressional legislation though, you are absolutely correct.
the kind of lying with which many things are sold to U.S. citizens. Other examples are: 1) The "Patriot" Missile, as though you are not patriotic unless you are in favor of a particular weapon of mass destruction.
False. Naming something Patriot does not automatically mean you must support it. If you root for the opposing team instead of the New England Patriots, does it make you un-American? Missiles have all sorts of names, some of which are meaningful, others of which are just catchy (Polaris, Trident, Tomahawk, etc.). If you don't like Poseidon missiles, they doesn't say much about your opinion of ancient Greek deities either.
As for the "weapon of mass destruction" comment, this is ridiculous. WMD refers to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. If you want to define it to encompass any random missile, than Saddam Hussein certainly had WMD in the form of Scuds, and Kerry owes Bush a big apology. Or you could just be tossing phrases around with no idea what you are saying.
The "Peacekeeper" Missile, which tries to give people the idea that a nuclear weapon keeps the peace.
This is one of the missiles where the name is actually fairly apt. The threat of nuclear annihilation made the prospect of all-out warfare too terrible. The cold war stayed cold because any direct attack from one superpower on another would have resulted in a situation nobody would win. Sure, "I won't attack your country because we would both die" is not nice as "I won't attack your country because I love you and would rather give you a hug", but even an uneasy peace between the major world powers is better than no peace at all. The point of a nuclear weapon is not to blow stuff up, it is that everyone else knows you could blow stuff up so they don't mess with you. If the U.S. uses its nuclear arsenal defensively, to deter attack, then names like the Peacekeeper make sense. If they had used it to blow up Baghdad instead of sending in ground troops, then your point about its name being a "lie" would have some validity.
Just because your religion says abortion is wrong doesn't mean that mine agrees with you. Hence the government should stay out of the way as it can often come down to a religious belief. I'm not saying that a politician can't or shouldn't allow thier religion to influence thier decisions or morality, but they have to keep in mind that not everyone shares thier religious beliefs.
The flaw in your idea of "not everyone has the same religious beliefs so you should be able to do whatever you want" attitude is that it fails to qualify that sentiment with "as long as you aren't hurting anybody else". The problem with abortion is that if the would-be victim is an entity that has rights, you're committing a horrible atrocity, and if they don't, what you're doing is fine. And while you may be okay with unilaterally deciding whether they do or not, this gets into a dangerous area of where the authority to make such decisions comes from.
One person might decide animals have no rights, and puree live kittens in a blender. Another might decide some ethnic group have no rights, and keep some of them as slaves. If someone objects to this behavior, even though their different viewpoint about the rights of the purported victims might stem from a religious perspective, are they really imposing their religious views?