Go read that list of "support". Other than that first item (which is vague and nebulous), it's all online stuff you get for free with other distros.
No, I don't know the details of their support. But I do know Lindows users and what they get for their $99. Call me cynical, but this $500 "deal" sounds like the Lindows version of free oil changes for the school bus fleet.
You don't have to live completely out of the system. If you pay taxes, you can't, and will need your social security number for your bank. But you *CAN* get away without using it for most other things.
The quickest way to lose is to roll over and give up. The quickest way to be a loser is to roll over and give up everytime you encounter a pessimistic post on Slashdot.
Does it come with support? If not, it's a ripoff. Because you can get other Linux distros and BSD systems for *FREE*! That's "free" as in however you want to define "free". Just download and use.
If you're going to pay taxes on it, you'll need your social security number. But there are still a thousand ways to get around it. Forget your banks and you loans, you'll need it there to set up an account.
But for a car? Easy! Use cash! It may not be as convenient, but if you don't want to use your social security number, isn't the inconvenience worth your liberty?
Cable? I don't have it. I do have a couple of video rental cards and none of them required a SSN. My DSL account didn't require it either. Telco? Didn't have to submit it. Electricity? Ditto.
Nice fantasy there. Any historical evidence to back up your scaremongering? I know it's in vogue to cast Republicans as the Ultimate Evil, but when writing a science fiction script, remember that suspension of disbelief will only get you so far...
America hasn't been bombed or invaded at nearly the same frequency as Great Britain.
I'm quite willing to accept a lower artistic output as the price of not getting bombed and invaded. I can always import my art from Great Britain after all...
So why aren't the Brits in the same boat? They're in Iraq as well. If the US is still at war in Iraq (as the US media keeps telling us every day) then so is Great Britain because there are there along with us. So why all the Hugo awards to the Brits if they should be in the middle of an artistic slump?
Both sides in the debate have misdefined "competition". One side imagines it to be a vigorously regulated market where every competitor is exactly the same size and has exactly the same number of customers. The other side imagines it to be fixed sized pie where competition exists so long as access to bribing government regulators is unhindered.
Neither is the truth. The current phone line monopolies exist because because the government mandated that they exist! For three quarters of a century it was unlawful to compete against the telcos. You can't solve it by more government regulation, because government regulation was what got us into this mess to begin with. Neither is the solution to let the telcos freely consolidate with other telcos, because that only exacerbates the mistake. The solution is very complex.
True competition cannot be mandated. It is created through freedom and liberty, not regulation and legislation. The reason we have a problem now is because we've tried to mix the two together. While it's going to take some work extricating us from the past, we should at least learn from our mistakes going forward, and not create the monopolies of the future.
Precisely. The "debate" isn't over gaming, as there is no debate over Civilization, SimCity, Solitaire or FreeCell. The "debate" is over sex and violence in video games.
No, I'm saying "stand up for what you believe." Regardless of your religion or lack of religion. That doesn't mean you can't ever change your mind, but it does mean you don't change your mind every time the polls don't go your way.
First, I never used the word "religion" in my post. Funny how you assume that anyone with a core belief system must be religious. "If your values don't ebb and flow like the tides you must be a fundamentalist nut!"
Personally I don't care if your core values are religious, secular or other. But if you're the kind of person that locks them away when you leave your home, you're precisely the kind of person I do NOT want in public office! Religion includes morality and ethics. If you leave your religion home when you go to the Senate to vote, you're also leaving your morality and ethics at home too.
p.s. Actually read Bush's comments, and don't assume what he said from a Slashdot title. It wasn't a stupid comment, and did not in fact advocate any "equal time". You might still disagree with it, but that still doesn't make it a stupid comment.
Privacy exists, but people treat it strangely. They want it to be legaly protected like property but are unwilling to personally protect it. For example, you lock your doors at night but consider buying a firewall too inconvenient. We peek out the door to see who's there before opening it, but we open every email regardless of who sends it.
Our attitude towards privacy is like living in a house without doors and then complaining that the government needs to do something to stop the epidemic of robberies.
Only three choices? My old boss said that software engineering was like a small blanket on a big bed. Whose feet do you want to get cold? It depends on which corner you tug on.
1) Time 2) Cost 3) Functionality 4) Quality
Tug on any one corner and the other three get shorted.
Where the article fails is in its assumption that merely working at home is the key. It is not. It's the fact that you're working for yourself doing what you want to do when you want to do at your own pace, that is the key. Upon this simple fact his whole thesis falls apart.
No matter how liberal a company's telecommuting policy is, a company can never reproduce the dynamics that led to Linux, KDE, Apache, Python, etc. That's not to say that businesses shouldn't be involved in Open Source, or are unable to produce Open Source. It's just that vocations can't compete with avocations when it comes to energy and dedication.
Why the heck do so many people expect religious politicians to abandon their core belief systems while in office? I don't care if a politician is left, right or middle, if he doesn't have a philosophy he adheres to, I don't want him in office.
Could you imagine some politician getting caught in a lie, and then explaining it away with "why should I hold my belief in honesty above all else?" Or a politician getting nabbed for murder, and then excusing himself with "why should I hold my belief in the sanctity of life above all else?"
Abandoning one's philosophy, religious or otherwise, for the sake of political expediency is NOT an act to be admired!
Hell, I've seen NEWSPAPERS do that. A friend of mine got interviewed on a city council race and the newspaper editor did that to him. I've never trusted a newspaper since. Always get independent confirmation before believing anything you read, see or hear in the news.
If you want to add bodies, let them do review work.
Let them do process busy work as well.
A few months back we were too crunched on the schedule, but another project had cancelled so there were loads of bodies available. But putting them to work coding would have destroyed the project. As always, upper management didn't understand that. So when I was asked where I could best use some extra help, I answered truthfully: have someone else write all the freaking documentation and attend all the freaking meetings so I dont' have to. Tada! They listened and I ended up with four extra hours per day to get the work done.
p.s. Of course, management never learns. Another project is slipping and they're throwing people at it as fast as they can cancel projects. Sigh.
By your definition property itself is a privilege.
I'm not denying that. I'm not agreeing either. This whole area is fraught with exceptions and pitfalls. Like public right of ways.
My right to property exists at the expense of everyone else being able to go where they want.
Only in terms of land property. Only land is a zero sum game. But even there you have many many ways of making pieces of the pie stretch to meet everyone's needs.
Hmmm, are you arguing against my right to lock my door at night?
Actually, I didn't state a position, I only stated what I consider to be fact. There are differences between rights and privileges, but that doesn't by itself declare one to be better than the other. Not everything that is good in this world is a right.
My opinion as to the morality of government intervention into private business practices is completely irrelevant to whether collective bargaining is or is not an unalienable natural right. The fact is that it is not.
You appear to misunderstand what the NRLB is chartered to do. Its purpose is to protect the rights of employees to organize and form unions.
Actually, the right to organize and form unions is already protected by the Bill of Rights (right of free speech and assembly). The NLRB is there for two other purposes. The first is to protect the privilege of the employee to remain employed. The second is to protect the privilege of certain groups (unions) to impose their will on other groups (business).
Please note that I am differentiating between a "right" and a "privilege". A "right" is liberty or property common to everyone, and does not exist at the expense of another. A "privilege" is a liberty or property that is not common to everyone, but common only to a group or class. A privilege only exists at the expense of another's rights or privileges. The privilege to collective bargaining can only exist by removing the right to voluntary association. This does not mean you can't *attempt* to collective bargain. It just means you can't coerce your employer into participating without a state granted privilege.
Slashdot Mirror
Go read that list of "support". Other than that first item (which is vague and nebulous), it's all online stuff you get for free with other distros.
No, I don't know the details of their support. But I do know Lindows users and what they get for their $99. Call me cynical, but this $500 "deal" sounds like the Lindows version of free oil changes for the school bus fleet.
You don't have to live completely out of the system. If you pay taxes, you can't, and will need your social security number for your bank. But you *CAN* get away without using it for most other things.
The quickest way to lose is to roll over and give up. The quickest way to be a loser is to roll over and give up everytime you encounter a pessimistic post on Slashdot.
Not a bad deal, overall
Does it come with support? If not, it's a ripoff. Because you can get other Linux distros and BSD systems for *FREE*! That's "free" as in however you want to define "free". Just download and use.
If you're going to pay taxes on it, you'll need your social security number. But there are still a thousand ways to get around it. Forget your banks and you loans, you'll need it there to set up an account.
But for a car? Easy! Use cash! It may not be as convenient, but if you don't want to use your social security number, isn't the inconvenience worth your liberty?
Cable? I don't have it. I do have a couple of video rental cards and none of them required a SSN. My DSL account didn't require it either. Telco? Didn't have to submit it. Electricity? Ditto.
Nice fantasy there. Any historical evidence to back up your scaremongering? I know it's in vogue to cast Republicans as the Ultimate Evil, but when writing a science fiction script, remember that suspension of disbelief will only get you so far...
I'm not going to bother adding the links for this because it will take time and not convince anyone.
Plus, it's easier to pull shit out your ass then to find evidence of your delusions.
It could have been worse. Blair could have come out in support of the Patriot Act...
America hasn't been bombed or invaded at nearly the same frequency as Great Britain.
I'm quite willing to accept a lower artistic output as the price of not getting bombed and invaded. I can always import my art from Great Britain after all...
So why aren't the Brits in the same boat? They're in Iraq as well. If the US is still at war in Iraq (as the US media keeps telling us every day) then so is Great Britain because there are there along with us. So why all the Hugo awards to the Brits if they should be in the middle of an artistic slump?
Both sides in the debate have misdefined "competition". One side imagines it to be a vigorously regulated market where every competitor is exactly the same size and has exactly the same number of customers. The other side imagines it to be fixed sized pie where competition exists so long as access to bribing government regulators is unhindered.
Neither is the truth. The current phone line monopolies exist because because the government mandated that they exist! For three quarters of a century it was unlawful to compete against the telcos. You can't solve it by more government regulation, because government regulation was what got us into this mess to begin with. Neither is the solution to let the telcos freely consolidate with other telcos, because that only exacerbates the mistake. The solution is very complex.
True competition cannot be mandated. It is created through freedom and liberty, not regulation and legislation. The reason we have a problem now is because we've tried to mix the two together. While it's going to take some work extricating us from the past, we should at least learn from our mistakes going forward, and not create the monopolies of the future.
Precisely. The "debate" isn't over gaming, as there is no debate over Civilization, SimCity, Solitaire or FreeCell. The "debate" is over sex and violence in video games.
You're basically saying "don't be evil"
No, I'm saying "stand up for what you believe." Regardless of your religion or lack of religion. That doesn't mean you can't ever change your mind, but it does mean you don't change your mind every time the polls don't go your way.
First, I never used the word "religion" in my post. Funny how you assume that anyone with a core belief system must be religious. "If your values don't ebb and flow like the tides you must be a fundamentalist nut!"
Personally I don't care if your core values are religious, secular or other. But if you're the kind of person that locks them away when you leave your home, you're precisely the kind of person I do NOT want in public office! Religion includes morality and ethics. If you leave your religion home when you go to the Senate to vote, you're also leaving your morality and ethics at home too.
p.s. Actually read Bush's comments, and don't assume what he said from a Slashdot title. It wasn't a stupid comment, and did not in fact advocate any "equal time". You might still disagree with it, but that still doesn't make it a stupid comment.
Privacy exists, but people treat it strangely. They want it to be legaly protected like property but are unwilling to personally protect it. For example, you lock your doors at night but consider buying a firewall too inconvenient. We peek out the door to see who's there before opening it, but we open every email regardless of who sends it.
Our attitude towards privacy is like living in a house without doors and then complaining that the government needs to do something to stop the epidemic of robberies.
Only three choices? My old boss said that software engineering was like a small blanket on a big bed. Whose feet do you want to get cold? It depends on which corner you tug on.
1) Time
2) Cost
3) Functionality
4) Quality
Tug on any one corner and the other three get shorted.
Where the article fails is in its assumption that merely working at home is the key. It is not. It's the fact that you're working for yourself doing what you want to do when you want to do at your own pace, that is the key. Upon this simple fact his whole thesis falls apart.
No matter how liberal a company's telecommuting policy is, a company can never reproduce the dynamics that led to Linux, KDE, Apache, Python, etc. That's not to say that businesses shouldn't be involved in Open Source, or are unable to produce Open Source. It's just that vocations can't compete with avocations when it comes to energy and dedication.
Why the heck do so many people expect religious politicians to abandon their core belief systems while in office? I don't care if a politician is left, right or middle, if he doesn't have a philosophy he adheres to, I don't want him in office.
Could you imagine some politician getting caught in a lie, and then explaining it away with "why should I hold my belief in honesty above all else?" Or a politician getting nabbed for murder, and then excusing himself with "why should I hold my belief in the sanctity of life above all else?"
Abandoning one's philosophy, religious or otherwise, for the sake of political expediency is NOT an act to be admired!
Hell, I've seen NEWSPAPERS do that. A friend of mine got interviewed on a city council race and the newspaper editor did that to him. I've never trusted a newspaper since. Always get independent confirmation before believing anything you read, see or hear in the news.
...the strongest review censorship I've seen yet.
Do you know what "censorship" means?
If you want to add bodies, let them do review work.
Let them do process busy work as well.
A few months back we were too crunched on the schedule, but another project had cancelled so there were loads of bodies available. But putting them to work coding would have destroyed the project. As always, upper management didn't understand that. So when I was asked where I could best use some extra help, I answered truthfully: have someone else write all the freaking documentation and attend all the freaking meetings so I dont' have to. Tada! They listened and I ended up with four extra hours per day to get the work done.
p.s. Of course, management never learns. Another project is slipping and they're throwing people at it as fast as they can cancel projects. Sigh.
By your definition property itself is a privilege.
I'm not denying that. I'm not agreeing either. This whole area is fraught with exceptions and pitfalls. Like public right of ways.
My right to property exists at the expense of everyone else being able to go where they want.
Only in terms of land property. Only land is a zero sum game. But even there you have many many ways of making pieces of the pie stretch to meet everyone's needs.
Hmmm, are you arguing against my right to lock my door at night?
This is not a matter of interpretation.
But you just said it was, just not in those words. The other poster didn't interpret it the way you did, so you accuse him of not comprehending it.
The ruling is freely available to read.
Considering the other poster quoted from it, I'm fairly confident that he did indeed read it.
Your position grants the employer...
Actually, I didn't state a position, I only stated what I consider to be fact. There are differences between rights and privileges, but that doesn't by itself declare one to be better than the other. Not everything that is good in this world is a right.
My opinion as to the morality of government intervention into private business practices is completely irrelevant to whether collective bargaining is or is not an unalienable natural right. The fact is that it is not.
Here's some advice for you: why don't you try actually comprehending the ruling, m'kay? Sometimes just reading it obviously isn't enough.
Translation: "Interpret the ruling the way I want you to interpret it, and we'll get along just fine, m'kay?"
You appear to misunderstand what the NRLB is chartered to do. Its purpose is to protect the rights of employees to organize and form unions.
Actually, the right to organize and form unions is already protected by the Bill of Rights (right of free speech and assembly). The NLRB is there for two other purposes. The first is to protect the privilege of the employee to remain employed. The second is to protect the privilege of certain groups (unions) to impose their will on other groups (business).
Please note that I am differentiating between a "right" and a "privilege". A "right" is liberty or property common to everyone, and does not exist at the expense of another. A "privilege" is a liberty or property that is not common to everyone, but common only to a group or class. A privilege only exists at the expense of another's rights or privileges. The privilege to collective bargaining can only exist by removing the right to voluntary association. This does not mean you can't *attempt* to collective bargain. It just means you can't coerce your employer into participating without a state granted privilege.