Blame the environmentalists too. They're even worse than politicians when it comes to misunderstanding science. Their ideology causes them to discount any evidence contrary to their preconceived view of how the world should work. They're backtracking and spinning now, but a few years ago they were all gung-ho about biofuel farming.
As long as government funds science, then science will be political. No sarcasm intended, just the reality. This is not to deny that corporate or private funding of science would not be similary biased. It's like journalism, true 100% objectivity is not an option. As long as we insist that government pay the salaries of scientists, we need to recognize that science will be political.
Let me guess, the people who killed Kennedy and orchestrated 9/11 are the same ones who are denying us free energy. It must be the the oil companies! They did it, along with Cheney! The only thing I can't figure out is where Roswell and the faked moon landing come into this.
The only proper position for a presidential candidate to make on science is, "It's none of the government's business!" Once you make science the province of government, it becomes subjective and political. In centuries past we had royal courts funding alchemists who always said what the king wanted to hear. Today we have government departments funding researchers who always say what the politicians want. What's the difference?
We certainly had Free Software before then, and whatever BSD made.
What the BSDs made was also Free Software, exactly meeting the FSF's definition. You of all people should know that. There were some unfree AT&T bits early on (which were actively being eliminated), but by the time of FreeBSD and NetBSD, it was completely free. And still is.
That said, I remember just how little buy-in we had with business people then, because Richard was the wrong guy to promote to them.
Precisely. "Open Source" was about the marketing. Despite RMS protestations to the contrary, there is no practical difference between Open Source and Free Software. The difference is in the marketing. One is a near religion requiring adherence to a specific philosophy, the other merely a licensing model.
This is a strange election. Hillary is more neo-conservative than many Republicans, while Huckabee is more progressive than man Democrats. Heck if Hillary were Baptist and Huckabee Methodist, they could switch parties and no one would notice!
That still does not explain why we are told by Malda to limit our discussion to only three named candidates. One of whom, by the way, is polling LESS than Ron Paul!
I don't believe in conspiracies. I've heard stories about how the MSM has orders not to mention Ron Paul, but I don't believe them. However, Slashdot is not doing us any service by fanning the flames of this conspiracy theory by ordering us to limit our discussion to only three named candidates.
Passengers flights are a monopoly? Maybe in some countries (due to government monopolistic grants), but here in the US it's still tons of cutthroat competition.
There ARE candidates who have not taken any RIAA/MPAA money. Not everyone is an establishment canddiate. One of them is on my signature. I would suggest you check out Ron Paul. But even if he doesn't fit your ideology, there are others. Kucinich dropped out, but you can always write his name in. Or go with a third party candidate (Libertarian, Green, Constitution, etc), none of whom will be getting any corporate cash.
This isn't throwing your vote away, because this isn't a horse race. You're not trying to outguess the pollsters, you're casting a vote for the person you feel best represents you, even if they have no chance of winning. In fact, the best way to make your vote "count" is to cast it for anyone other than the establishment candidates. Every percentage point independents and third party candidates get is a a clear signal sent aloft.
You want him to stop campaigning the week before Super Tuesday just so he can go back to DC and watch the *Senate* vote? Sheesh.
Here's a page with his privacy issues. If you still think he's in favor of warrantless searches you're nuts. <http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/privacy-and-personal-liberty/>. The retroactive immunity brouhaha is a distraction. People are trying to punish telcos, when it's congress that needs to be punished for giving these outrageous powers to the presidency.
The real issue is PATRIOT, which expanded the already bad FISA. No snooping without probable cause and warrant! Punish the telcos retroactively if you want, but punishing the abusers while keeping the power to abuse intact is stupid.
Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government. Without the special privileges government gives them it would be extremely difficult to get into a monopoly position, and once there they would have to keep prices low and provide good service, lest new firms arose to compete for that pie.
Big government encourages big business with regulatory and tax structures that encourage bigness. When it takes an army of accountants and lawyers to do business, only those firms large enough to afford an army of accountants and lawyers will do business! Add to that governments at all levels handing out exclusive contracts, and a patent system that explicitly encourages monopoly, then no one should be surprised at these behemoths striding across the land. Stop and think where Microsoft would be today without their government granted copyrights. Even if you agree with the concept of copyrights, their very monopolistic nature demands that they be limited.
Ron Paul will be best for technology, simply because he does not believe that it is any of government's business trying to manage it. The internet has shown the power of unfettered human creativity that happens when humans aren't micromanaged by government. It is a real life experiment demonstrating Hayek's spontaneous order.
The role of government is to protect and defend the lives, liberties and properties of the citizens. Powers beyond this only lead to authoritarianism of one brand or another. Candidate A may claim he's benevolent enough to manage all of our technology decisions, but even if he means well, what happens four or eight years down the road when Candidate B gets into office who isn't quite so benevolent? We need to keep government limited because government is inherently dangerous.
We geeks and engineers tend to think in terms of central administration and control. But the world does not work that way. It is extremely dynamic and subjective. You cannot bug fix it like you can software. Don't treat human beings like malleable code, they are not. Don't give government the role of national sysadmin! That would only lead to authoritarian BOFHism.
We need a candidate who would keep government out of technology and the internet, a candidate who won't try to micromanage our lives. That candidate is Ron Paul.
Even natural monopolies must compete with alternatives. In my city I might not have a choice other than AT&T for cable or Pacific Bell for telephone, but that does not mean I need a government to protect me from them. If they start charging too much I will switch to an alternative. Like a dish or a cell phone. Or I can simply do without television (extremely easy to do). If they start "gouging" they'll only attract more alternatives seeking a piece of the lucre. If the price gets too high, then it will become worthwhile to briefly tear up the streets and put in a new line.
Monopolies can certainly exist in a free market, but without the government privilege they get in today's reality, they would be forced to behave if they want to keep it.
How about actually trying a free market? Everyone assumes that's what the US has, but it is not. We have telco/cableco monopolies over the infrastructure because local governments gave them those monopolies. Want to lay down some fiber optic cable? You have to lobby to local governments. That last mile everyone talks about is owned by government. I am not suggesting we completely privatize streets, so providers can bid to rip them up for laying new lines. What I am suggesting is that government, not private business, is the major barrier to laying fiber optic cable.
Then you have the state and national governments that set tax and regulatory structures that encourage big businesses. Most of the ills people attribute to corporatism stem from indirect government encouragement of large corporations. When it takes an army of lawyers and accountants to deal with the government, then only firms large enough to afford an army of lawyers and accountants will thrive.
Imagine if government had its way back in the 1990's, and laid down ISDN lines to every household on the taxpayer's dime. What a waste that would have been! It wasn't that much better than the existing copper, but would have been a huge expense obsolete ten years later. If government gets its way today and lays down fiber optic, it will be obsolete in 2018. But technology can solve these problems, if only the flexibility of private businesses is allowed to operate. We are already bypassing the lastmile problem with highspeed wifi. WiMAX (and it successors) will make tearing up the city streets obsolete. Who knows what new technologies will be available in the 2020's, but I am certain it will be stuff to make 802.11n and WiMAX look like 1990's era 10BaseT.
I consider Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu/etc to all be the same distro, just different installation CDs. You can take an Ubuntu system, remove the GNOME packages then install the KDE packages, and have Kubuntu. They're that close. I made that caveat in my post, but you completely ignored it.
As for SuSE, it's news to me that their defaulting to GNOME, because it was KDE the last time I tried it, was a year ago February.
So what do you think I should do? Sell all my KDE stock? Use the same desktop that everyone else does, so that if the wolves attack they'll only eat the outlying sheep? Run around screaming in the streets that GNOME IZ DA SHITZ!
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Your government at work: Don't you feel safer with TSA's high school dropouts and mall security rejects protecting you?
Remember the mantra of the global warming doommongers: "We've got to do something! Anything!"
Blame the environmentalists too. They're even worse than politicians when it comes to misunderstanding science. Their ideology causes them to discount any evidence contrary to their preconceived view of how the world should work. They're backtracking and spinning now, but a few years ago they were all gung-ho about biofuel farming.
People confused their own narrow political world view for science. Will they learn from this blunder? Of course not.
As long as government funds science, then science will be political. No sarcasm intended, just the reality. This is not to deny that corporate or private funding of science would not be similary biased. It's like journalism, true 100% objectivity is not an option. As long as we insist that government pay the salaries of scientists, we need to recognize that science will be political.
Yes, but I thought we were talking about the early 90s.
Let me guess, the people who killed Kennedy and orchestrated 9/11 are the same ones who are denying us free energy. It must be the the oil companies! They did it, along with Cheney! The only thing I can't figure out is where Roswell and the faked moon landing come into this.
The only proper position for a presidential candidate to make on science is, "It's none of the government's business!" Once you make science the province of government, it becomes subjective and political. In centuries past we had royal courts funding alchemists who always said what the king wanted to hear. Today we have government departments funding researchers who always say what the politicians want. What's the difference?
Bob: You're an evil anarcho-syndicalist!
Fred: Well at least I'm not a anarcho-socialist sellout!
We certainly had Free Software before then, and whatever BSD made.
What the BSDs made was also Free Software, exactly meeting the FSF's definition. You of all people should know that. There were some unfree AT&T bits early on (which were actively being eliminated), but by the time of FreeBSD and NetBSD, it was completely free. And still is.
That said, I remember just how little buy-in we had with business people then, because Richard was the wrong guy to promote to them.
Precisely. "Open Source" was about the marketing. Despite RMS protestations to the contrary, there is no practical difference between Open Source and Free Software. The difference is in the marketing. One is a near religion requiring adherence to a specific philosophy, the other merely a licensing model.
So fat hairy deal. Bits of GNU does not compel one to prefix the whole with "GNU/...".
This is a strange election. Hillary is more neo-conservative than many Republicans, while Huckabee is more progressive than man Democrats. Heck if Hillary were Baptist and Huckabee Methodist, they could switch parties and no one would notice!
I keed I keed!
That still does not explain why we are told by Malda to limit our discussion to only three named candidates. One of whom, by the way, is polling LESS than Ron Paul!
I don't believe in conspiracies. I've heard stories about how the MSM has orders not to mention Ron Paul, but I don't believe them. However, Slashdot is not doing us any service by fanning the flames of this conspiracy theory by ordering us to limit our discussion to only three named candidates.
The obvious solution is for Washington state to go to war with Nevada!
Passengers flights are a monopoly? Maybe in some countries (due to government monopolistic grants), but here in the US it's still tons of cutthroat competition.
There ARE candidates who have not taken any RIAA/MPAA money. Not everyone is an establishment canddiate. One of them is on my signature. I would suggest you check out Ron Paul. But even if he doesn't fit your ideology, there are others. Kucinich dropped out, but you can always write his name in. Or go with a third party candidate (Libertarian, Green, Constitution, etc), none of whom will be getting any corporate cash.
This isn't throwing your vote away, because this isn't a horse race. You're not trying to outguess the pollsters, you're casting a vote for the person you feel best represents you, even if they have no chance of winning. In fact, the best way to make your vote "count" is to cast it for anyone other than the establishment candidates. Every percentage point independents and third party candidates get is a a clear signal sent aloft.
You want him to stop campaigning the week before Super Tuesday just so he can go back to DC and watch the *Senate* vote? Sheesh.
Here's a page with his privacy issues. If you still think he's in favor of warrantless searches you're nuts. <http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/privacy-and-personal-liberty/>. The retroactive immunity brouhaha is a distraction. People are trying to punish telcos, when it's congress that needs to be punished for giving these outrageous powers to the presidency.
The real issue is PATRIOT, which expanded the already bad FISA. No snooping without probable cause and warrant! Punish the telcos retroactively if you want, but punishing the abusers while keeping the power to abuse intact is stupid.
Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government. Without the special privileges government gives them it would be extremely difficult to get into a monopoly position, and once there they would have to keep prices low and provide good service, lest new firms arose to compete for that pie.
Big government encourages big business with regulatory and tax structures that encourage bigness. When it takes an army of accountants and lawyers to do business, only those firms large enough to afford an army of accountants and lawyers will do business! Add to that governments at all levels handing out exclusive contracts, and a patent system that explicitly encourages monopoly, then no one should be surprised at these behemoths striding across the land. Stop and think where Microsoft would be today without their government granted copyrights. Even if you agree with the concept of copyrights, their very monopolistic nature demands that they be limited.
Government isn't the solution, it's the problem!
Ron Paul will be best for technology, simply because he does not believe that it is any of government's business trying to manage it. The internet has shown the power of unfettered human creativity that happens when humans aren't micromanaged by government. It is a real life experiment demonstrating Hayek's spontaneous order.
The role of government is to protect and defend the lives, liberties and properties of the citizens. Powers beyond this only lead to authoritarianism of one brand or another. Candidate A may claim he's benevolent enough to manage all of our technology decisions, but even if he means well, what happens four or eight years down the road when Candidate B gets into office who isn't quite so benevolent? We need to keep government limited because government is inherently dangerous.
We geeks and engineers tend to think in terms of central administration and control. But the world does not work that way. It is extremely dynamic and subjective. You cannot bug fix it like you can software. Don't treat human beings like malleable code, they are not. Don't give government the role of national sysadmin! That would only lead to authoritarian BOFHism.
We need a candidate who would keep government out of technology and the internet, a candidate who won't try to micromanage our lives. That candidate is Ron Paul.
Even natural monopolies must compete with alternatives. In my city I might not have a choice other than AT&T for cable or Pacific Bell for telephone, but that does not mean I need a government to protect me from them. If they start charging too much I will switch to an alternative. Like a dish or a cell phone. Or I can simply do without television (extremely easy to do). If they start "gouging" they'll only attract more alternatives seeking a piece of the lucre. If the price gets too high, then it will become worthwhile to briefly tear up the streets and put in a new line.
Monopolies can certainly exist in a free market, but without the government privilege they get in today's reality, they would be forced to behave if they want to keep it.
How about actually trying a free market? Everyone assumes that's what the US has, but it is not. We have telco/cableco monopolies over the infrastructure because local governments gave them those monopolies. Want to lay down some fiber optic cable? You have to lobby to local governments. That last mile everyone talks about is owned by government. I am not suggesting we completely privatize streets, so providers can bid to rip them up for laying new lines. What I am suggesting is that government, not private business, is the major barrier to laying fiber optic cable.
Then you have the state and national governments that set tax and regulatory structures that encourage big businesses. Most of the ills people attribute to corporatism stem from indirect government encouragement of large corporations. When it takes an army of lawyers and accountants to deal with the government, then only firms large enough to afford an army of lawyers and accountants will thrive.
Imagine if government had its way back in the 1990's, and laid down ISDN lines to every household on the taxpayer's dime. What a waste that would have been! It wasn't that much better than the existing copper, but would have been a huge expense obsolete ten years later. If government gets its way today and lays down fiber optic, it will be obsolete in 2018. But technology can solve these problems, if only the flexibility of private businesses is allowed to operate. We are already bypassing the lastmile problem with highspeed wifi. WiMAX (and it successors) will make tearing up the city streets obsolete. Who knows what new technologies will be available in the 2020's, but I am certain it will be stuff to make 802.11n and WiMAX look like 1990's era 10BaseT.
Dollar: a piece of paper that when inked is worth less than the same piece of paper alone.
I consider Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu/etc to all be the same distro, just different installation CDs. You can take an Ubuntu system, remove the GNOME packages then install the KDE packages, and have Kubuntu. They're that close. I made that caveat in my post, but you completely ignored it.
As for SuSE, it's news to me that their defaulting to GNOME, because it was KDE the last time I tried it, was a year ago February.
So what do you think I should do? Sell all my KDE stock? Use the same desktop that everyone else does, so that if the wolves attack they'll only eat the outlying sheep? Run around screaming in the streets that GNOME IZ DA SHITZ!