I'm going to pick at details here and say you should really say...
48% of VOTING Americans disagree with Bush.
What's the percentage of total turnout based on registered voters and then again on voting age citizens? I haven't looked it up yet.
I'd guess we had about 1.1M people turn out to vote and aren't there around 2.75M in the country? so less than 50% of the citizens, but then you have to factor in kids and what-not.
Well, approx. 56M voted for kerry, and 59M voted for bush. Total is 116M+ people (1% did vote for Nader, after all). Last count I heard there are about 260M people in the US, but i think that does include minors. I'm not sure where you got your 1.1M people voter turn out or population. Check CNN's front page, the popular votes are still listed at the time of this posting. Google to verify my population count.
I'm not sure why you want to discuss those that didn't vote; likely they didn't care at all, so I'd hardly say they are ok with what bush is doing if they simply don't care.
I think its pretty safe to say that those that diagree with bush mostly went to the polls, as well as those that agree with him. Otherwise I think its safe to assume the person just didn't care period. If you have enough of an opinion to disagree or agree, wouldn't you have voted? I suppose some people might not have still..
Ummm.... it's the dems that like to play funny games with the constitution. They don't like the fact that conservative judges actually look to what the constitution says, and what the founders meant when they wrote it. The dems think it needs to be "interpretted dynamically" (i.e. mean whatever the judge says it means).
Remind me again, who was it that wanted to make an amendment banning gay marriage, and also include with that a provision saying the courts could not rule on the constitionality of it?
congratulations america! you've completely alienated yourselves from all of your former allies and friends and earned the distrust and emnity of the rest of the planet.
Whoa, lets remeber that 48% of americans voted for Kerry, not bush.
The poll of voters has been increasing all of american history; adding women, minorities and just plain population growth. So I don't really think your statement means much.
No matter how you slice it, he won this election. Electorally, popular vote, plurality of states, plurality of precincts, plurality of counties.
True, although there are a few things I find interesting. One is how newcasters are calling his win 'desisive' because the popular vote between the two is a three million difference. Considering that 3M is 3% of ~120M votes, I don't call that desisive, I call it close.
The second is that Bush still did have a very close victory, which to me suggests there is still alot of opposition to him, about 48% of americans to be more exact.
What exactly do you want to change in regards to the rules of the games?
It'd be nice if they at least waited to get the offical numbers before declaring a winner. Imagine if there's a larger number of provisional votes in Ohio then anyone expects, and things actually do tip to Kerry. Would be pretty funny i think.
hat is why we still have vestigal organs like the appendix and tonsils. There are other mammals that still use those organs, but humans don't.
They may not be useless after all. Until just a few years ago, everyone said the gall badder was useless, but now they think it actually helps break down fat. More recently, some are beginning to think that the gall badder works in conjuction with the appendix, that you need both organs to perform certain tasks.
On a side note, the part of the human brain that should respond to pherimones stopped working eons ago...Don't think we communicate sexual arousal through color? Why do women color their cheeks with makeup?
If pherimones don't work anymore, why do women wear perfume?
Hmm, thought that was bring up a completely unrelated point to distract from the topic at hand, which is the best interest of the consumer. I don't think i deviated from that.
This response is somewhat like saying, "Maybe short term it is, but in the long term if it ends up inviting nuclear holocaust, then maybe not."
Again, what's the problem with discussing whats in the best intrest of the consumer short-term vs. long term? There is such a thing as cause and effect, and some effects may take longer to show.
Whether its clear to the consumer or not is irrelevent. A child might not understand something that is in their best intrest, but that don't mean that its not.
If the small chain isn't growing, then the only local benefit it has is the salary of the employees.
Not having growth isn't a bad thing. Its not always grow or die, its possible just to exist, neither growing or lossing.
Which could be a great benefit. This is actually the basis of arguments against Walmart. Do you think replacing 20 $8/hr jobs with 20 $5.25/hr jobs helps the local economy? Marginally better definatly, but if your making those kinds of wages the difference between 8 and 5 per hour can be significant.
By providing lower prices consumers can spend more money elsewhere in the community.
Some consumers, yes. Those that lost their jobs (including the owners, etc), at best have the newer lower paying job. I doubt any of those people have more money to contribute elsewhere. The lose of many small businesses also will hurt the tax income. If you charge less for something, there's less sales tax paid. If you pay your employees less, there's less income tax paid. Local governments will probably raise property tax to offset the lost tax, meaning that everyone in the area now has less to spend, not more.
So even if there were more benefits to purchasing from the smaller outfit, there is no way to quantify them (ie, you could be hurting the local economy by buying from them, so it's not a good general rule to buy from small places) and even if it were bad it's impossible to know that it would 'destroy the local economy' as you so melodramatically put it.
Sure there is, tax generated, average income of all the smaller shops (higher is better), where the profits of smaller shops go to (probably a local bank and/or reinvested in the area). You could probably look around and find some towns devistated since Walmart arrived, it shouldn't be hard to look at the numbers. I don't have the resources to quantify anything, but I bet someone is studying it.
Wait... the other societies aren't choices because you don't LIKE them? what kinda odd logic is that?
Not odd logic at all i would think. 'Hey, i can't wait to move to china where i have no rights and an oppressive goverment!'
Honestly, do you see anyone saying that? I didn't on a whim say 'i dislike societies x, y and z,' I have good reason not to like them (and thus eliminate them as a choice).
As a result, Wal-Mart has now forced Vlasic to cannibalize themselves and they end up having to file bankruptcy.
While i'm not a fan of walmart, i don't think they forced vlasic out of buisness. Vlasic could have said no, and been content with selling pickels at the grocery store.
I don't know about you, but most people i know still shop for groceries at the grocery store, not walmart. And if you only want vlasic pickels, you're not likely to buy whatever walmart replaced them with.
The music industry could say ok, bite me. If people want the latest CD, they'll go elsewhere, which may in the end hurt walmart, as the person going there soley to buy the cd might buy something else...but now they aren't going for the cds anymore.
Lots of societies on this planet to choose from... also, you could go live in the woods, or off yourself... lots of options.
Hmm, no likely you'll be arrested for hunting on a public park or private property, or if you choose to live by yourself you still have to pay property tax or lose your land...so no, i don't think those options fly.
The other societies to choose from...almost all of them are not really a choice because they are worse. Please don't try to say that we have the best then, because sometimes the best of the worst is still bad..
You choose to live in a society, if you won't live by the rules, you need to leave or suffer the consequences of your actions.
Actually you usually don't get to choose that. Where exactly can you go that there isn't a society already established? Not to mention various laws against suicide (which could be considered a way of 'leaving' society).
It does not mean you can copy the whole album because your friend said it was good and you weren't planning on buying it anyway.
Ok...so let me ask you, why bother with someone like that in the first place? If they weren't going to buy it anyway, you've lost $0 from them copying it.
Add to that the costof going after people like that, you are now in fact losing money. In the end, the people that aren't going to buy it aren't going to buy it, they'd just go without.
The problem is that the RIAA refuses to understand economic laws. Things are valuable only because they are scarce. We've eliminated scarcity for music and other data, so the value drops to 0.
If there's ever a time you could copy a car like you can a cd, yes that would put alot of people out of work, but the flip side is scarcity would likely be eliminated. At that point we'd have to find another reason to motivate people to do things, and there's nothing wrong with such a future.
However, what I vehemently disagree with is the parent's expression which implies a belief that the imposition of American laws on the rest of the world is a good thing!
How do you expect the law to work then? The parent is right; until your country has such a law, they would be immune and there will be people in your country trying to compromise US citizens computers.
I don't think the US should rule the world, but I don't think your country should be able to break into US property either.
So its your fault that you got broken into b/c of a faulty lock, that you may have not known was faulty? Good logic there.
The other half of this story isn't that the victim is the only one that suffers the consequences of spyware. How much bandwidth do you think spam and other spyware related traffic takes up? Your connection will be just as slow using firefox as IE.
So, basically, you call yourself an idiot since you just scapegoated to the most recognizable person you can identify and blame instead of holding all parties involved in that law's stupid passage accountable? Absolutely stupendous of you.
I never said that Congress was not responsible either, I was mearly refuting the claim that the administration had nothing to do with its stupid passage. Try to remember that I was replying to another post...
The Patriot Act passed at a time of national crisis. You would be having a field day if the President had not signed it, because you would be citing how he did not want to defend the nation, did not understand the concern, etc. It's a tactic called badmouthing, where you belittle someone regardless of the choice they make.
Since you're not a mind reader, and doubtful that you know what i am thinking now let alone then, I'll have to inform you that I never thought the Patriot act was a good idea and never supported it. In fact, i think there should be a law against passing laws just after a national crisis, to prevent knee-jerk reactions.
The Act would have not made it to the current administration's desk had it not been for Congress, that being BOTH houses approving it. There is plenty of blame to be aimed at those members of Congress. Blaming the President singularly is another fun tactic you are using, already mentioned as scapegoating.
Again, i never relived congress of responsiblity. They were reckless to be sure, but lets not forget who wrote the bill to begin with...Ashcroft, part of the current administration. Congress didn't read it, and that was exteremly reckless, but Bush & co. wrote and ratified it. As a side note, there's only one house; the other half of congress is the Senate.
Further, if you had read the Constitution and looked at the vote count, unless Bush pocket vetoed (and that only occurs in certain situations involving date of approval by the Congress (iow, likely did not apply to the Patriot Act but I'm not sure on this)) which maynot have been possible, even if he had vetoed the bill, it STILL would have passed because it easily met the 2/3rds majority -had it been revisited after the veto by the Congress-.
Why would he veto a bill that his administration wrote?
From your post i can only assume you're a rabid bush supporter, that will do anything to try and absolve him of his role in this mess even going so far as to ignoring facts. Seems to me like you're the scapegoater..
If the President does not sign a bill within 10 days of its passage through Congress it becomes law even without his signature.
That's correct, if he chooses not to veto it either. In this particular case, the President did in fact sign the bill in question, so your point is rather moot.
And neither did the current administration. It just signed it.
The administration's role in passing a bill is defined in the constitution. If the Pres. doesn't sign the bill, nothing becomes of it.. so I'd say that yes the current administration did help pass it, by completing the final action to make it a law.
The supreme court only deals with things after they are put into law, not before. Please try to understand the constitution.
The graphics looked horrific on all but the best cards, and simple things like finding a game online were screwed up (sync errors, anyone)?
Huh? The graphics looked great to me, on my old Ti4200. I never had anyproblems finding games online, although at first there was alot of lag, but they patched that pretty quickly.
The PC controls are also suprior, plus the extra vehicals made the game well worth it for me.
Halo Xbox suffered from crappy controls (especially the smaller ones, and the fact that while you can look left and right faster, the setting did nothing for up and down..), and bugs, like the rocket jump bug. Those 'features' were not missed by me.
If you murder a couple of people, you get the chair no questions ask no appeals, deal with it.
Well, I'm sure some of the people recently freed from death row b/c of new dna evidence would certainly not want you in charge. What good is a system that unjustly murders innocent people? Isn't that something we're trying to prevent in the first place?
Statistically speaking, I believe that the prominent threat to the airlines (notice I don't say "only") comes from Arab Muslim single males between the ages of 18 and 45
However, most people in that group are NOT terrorists. If they were mostly white males, would you hold the same view? I doubt it, especially after you would be put through the extra screening.
Some passengers may be inconvenienced
have you been searched? Its more then inconvenienced, you feel violated afterwards. I really hope that you are put under the microscope next time you fly.
however, if it will save lives, then I am quite willing for some people to end up having their feelings hurt.
Again, its a bit more then hurt feelings. Having government installed cameras everywhere, including our homes, might make things safer. Is that really how you want to live though? How free are you if you know you're constantly being watched. I'm sure there's plenty of behaviour that's not illegal that you don't want anyone else to witness.
Maybe USB devices will be the next "microfilm" of future spy/thriller movies.
Already happened. I saw a recent movie where an employee was able to hide a usb keychain drive in the bottom of a coffee mug, and use it to smuggle info in an out. I think it was the recruit, but not sure.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to pick at details here and say you should really say...
48% of VOTING Americans disagree with Bush.
What's the percentage of total turnout based on registered voters and then again on voting age citizens? I haven't looked it up yet.
I'd guess we had about 1.1M people turn out to vote and aren't there around 2.75M in the country? so less than 50% of the citizens, but then you have to factor in kids and what-not.
Well, approx. 56M voted for kerry, and 59M voted for bush. Total is 116M+ people (1% did vote for Nader, after all). Last count I heard there are about 260M people in the US, but i think that does include minors. I'm not sure where you got your 1.1M people voter turn out or population. Check CNN's front page, the popular votes are still listed at the time of this posting. Google to verify my population count.
I'm not sure why you want to discuss those that didn't vote; likely they didn't care at all, so I'd hardly say they are ok with what bush is doing if they simply don't care.
I think its pretty safe to say that those that diagree with bush mostly went to the polls, as well as those that agree with him. Otherwise I think its safe to assume the person just didn't care period. If you have enough of an opinion to disagree or agree, wouldn't you have voted? I suppose some people might not have still..
And that girl that got raped? Her fault for leaving the house alone without her burka on.
Your analogy is flawed; if the girl had been doing a fair amount of raping and her rape was in retaliation...well at that point maybe it was deserved.
Believe it or not the US is doing some pretty bad shit in other contries...remember we supported saddam because we didn't like Iran more at the time.
Ummm.... it's the dems that like to play funny games with the constitution. They don't like the fact that conservative judges actually look to what the constitution says, and what the founders meant when they wrote it. The dems think it needs to be "interpretted dynamically" (i.e. mean whatever the judge says it means).
Remind me again, who was it that wanted to make an amendment banning gay marriage, and also include with that a provision saying the courts could not rule on the constitionality of it?
congratulations america! you've completely alienated yourselves from all of your former allies and friends and earned the distrust and emnity of the rest of the planet.
Whoa, lets remeber that 48% of americans voted for Kerry, not bush.
Bush got more votes than any American in history.
The poll of voters has been increasing all of american history; adding women, minorities and just plain population growth. So I don't really think your statement means much.
No matter how you slice it, he won this election. Electorally, popular vote, plurality of states, plurality of precincts, plurality of counties.
True, although there are a few things I find interesting. One is how newcasters are calling his win 'desisive' because the popular vote between the two is a three million difference. Considering that 3M is 3% of ~120M votes, I don't call that desisive, I call it close.
The second is that Bush still did have a very close victory, which to me suggests there is still alot of opposition to him, about 48% of americans to be more exact.
What exactly do you want to change in regards to the rules of the games?
It'd be nice if they at least waited to get the offical numbers before declaring a winner. Imagine if there's a larger number of provisional votes in Ohio then anyone expects, and things actually do tip to Kerry. Would be pretty funny i think.
hat is why we still have vestigal organs like the appendix and tonsils. There are other mammals that still use those organs, but humans don't.
They may not be useless after all. Until just a few years ago, everyone said the gall badder was useless, but now they think it actually helps break down fat. More recently, some are beginning to think that the gall badder works in conjuction with the appendix, that you need both organs to perform certain tasks.
On a side note, the part of the human brain that should respond to pherimones stopped working eons ago...Don't think we communicate sexual arousal through color? Why do women color their cheeks with makeup?
If pherimones don't work anymore, why do women wear perfume?
I call red herring.
Hmm, thought that was bring up a completely unrelated point to distract from the topic at hand, which is the best interest of the consumer. I don't think i deviated from that.
This response is somewhat like saying, "Maybe short term it is, but in the long term if it ends up inviting nuclear holocaust, then maybe not."
Again, what's the problem with discussing whats in the best intrest of the consumer short-term vs. long term? There is such a thing as cause and effect, and some effects may take longer to show.
Whether its clear to the consumer or not is irrelevent. A child might not understand something that is in their best intrest, but that don't mean that its not.
If the small chain isn't growing, then the only local benefit it has is the salary of the employees.
Not having growth isn't a bad thing. Its not always grow or die, its possible just to exist, neither growing or lossing.
Which could be a great benefit. This is actually the basis of arguments against Walmart. Do you think replacing 20 $8/hr jobs with 20 $5.25/hr jobs helps the local economy? Marginally better definatly, but if your making those kinds of wages the difference between 8 and 5 per hour can be significant.
By providing lower prices consumers can spend more money elsewhere in the community.
Some consumers, yes. Those that lost their jobs (including the owners, etc), at best have the newer lower paying job. I doubt any of those people have more money to contribute elsewhere. The lose of many small businesses also will hurt the tax income. If you charge less for something, there's less sales tax paid. If you pay your employees less, there's less income tax paid. Local governments will probably raise property tax to offset the lost tax, meaning that everyone in the area now has less to spend, not more.
So even if there were more benefits to purchasing from the smaller outfit, there is no way to quantify them (ie, you could be hurting the local economy by buying from them, so it's not a good general rule to buy from small places) and even if it were bad it's impossible to know that it would 'destroy the local economy' as you so melodramatically put it.
Sure there is, tax generated, average income of all the smaller shops (higher is better), where the profits of smaller shops go to (probably a local bank and/or reinvested in the area). You could probably look around and find some towns devistated since Walmart arrived, it shouldn't be hard to look at the numbers. I don't have the resources to quantify anything, but I bet someone is studying it.
Wait... the other societies aren't choices because you don't LIKE them? what kinda odd logic is that?
Not odd logic at all i would think. 'Hey, i can't wait to move to china where i have no rights and an oppressive goverment!'
Honestly, do you see anyone saying that? I didn't on a whim say 'i dislike societies x, y and z,' I have good reason not to like them (and thus eliminate them as a choice).
r. If I can buy the same product for less, is it in my best interest to buy it for more?
Maybe short term it is, but in the long term if it ends up destroying your local economy, then maybe not.
As a result, Wal-Mart has now forced Vlasic to cannibalize themselves and they end up having to file bankruptcy.
While i'm not a fan of walmart, i don't think they forced vlasic out of buisness. Vlasic could have said no, and been content with selling pickels at the grocery store.
I don't know about you, but most people i know still shop for groceries at the grocery store, not walmart. And if you only want vlasic pickels, you're not likely to buy whatever walmart replaced them with.
The music industry could say ok, bite me. If people want the latest CD, they'll go elsewhere, which may in the end hurt walmart, as the person going there soley to buy the cd might buy something else...but now they aren't going for the cds anymore.
Lots of societies on this planet to choose from... also, you could go live in the woods, or off yourself... lots of options.
Hmm, no likely you'll be arrested for hunting on a public park or private property, or if you choose to live by yourself you still have to pay property tax or lose your land...so no, i don't think those options fly.
The other societies to choose from...almost all of them are not really a choice because they are worse. Please don't try to say that we have the best then, because sometimes the best of the worst is still bad..
You choose to live in a society, if you won't live by the rules, you need to leave or suffer the consequences of your actions.
Actually you usually don't get to choose that. Where exactly can you go that there isn't a society already established? Not to mention various laws against suicide (which could be considered a way of 'leaving' society).
It does not mean you can copy the whole album because your friend said it was good and you weren't planning on buying it anyway.
Ok...so let me ask you, why bother with someone like that in the first place? If they weren't going to buy it anyway, you've lost $0 from them copying it.
Add to that the costof going after people like that, you are now in fact losing money. In the end, the people that aren't going to buy it aren't going to buy it, they'd just go without.
The problem is that the RIAA refuses to understand economic laws. Things are valuable only because they are scarce. We've eliminated scarcity for music and other data, so the value drops to 0.
If there's ever a time you could copy a car like you can a cd, yes that would put alot of people out of work, but the flip side is scarcity would likely be eliminated. At that point we'd have to find another reason to motivate people to do things, and there's nothing wrong with such a future.
However, what I vehemently disagree with is the parent's expression which implies a belief that the imposition of American laws on the rest of the world is a good thing!
How do you expect the law to work then? The parent is right; until your country has such a law, they would be immune and there will be people in your country trying to compromise US citizens computers.
I don't think the US should rule the world, but I don't think your country should be able to break into US property either.
So its your fault that you got broken into b/c of a faulty lock, that you may have not known was faulty? Good logic there.
The other half of this story isn't that the victim is the only one that suffers the consequences of spyware. How much bandwidth do you think spam and other spyware related traffic takes up? Your connection will be just as slow using firefox as IE.
So b/c your country doesn't have a law making spyware illegal, its perfectly fine for you to install spyware on a US citizens computer?
You may not want our laws imposed on you, but we don't want your spyware imposed on us.
I wonder if the electronic transmission has "safety sensors" that won't shift to a lower gear if it might cause engine damage
probably, my 2003 acura tl type s does..
So, basically, you call yourself an idiot since you just scapegoated to the most recognizable person you can identify and blame instead of holding all parties involved in that law's stupid passage accountable? Absolutely stupendous of you.
I never said that Congress was not responsible either, I was mearly refuting the claim that the administration had nothing to do with its stupid passage. Try to remember that I was replying to another post...
The Patriot Act passed at a time of national crisis. You would be having a field day if the President had not signed it, because you would be citing how he did not want to defend the nation, did not understand the concern, etc. It's a tactic called badmouthing, where you belittle someone regardless of the choice they make.
Since you're not a mind reader, and doubtful that you know what i am thinking now let alone then, I'll have to inform you that I never thought the Patriot act was a good idea and never supported it. In fact, i think there should be a law against passing laws just after a national crisis, to prevent knee-jerk reactions.
The Act would have not made it to the current administration's desk had it not been for Congress, that being BOTH houses approving it. There is plenty of blame to be aimed at those members of Congress. Blaming the President singularly is another fun tactic you are using, already mentioned as scapegoating.
Again, i never relived congress of responsiblity. They were reckless to be sure, but lets not forget who wrote the bill to begin with...Ashcroft, part of the current administration. Congress didn't read it, and that was exteremly reckless, but Bush & co. wrote and ratified it. As a side note, there's only one house; the other half of congress is the Senate.
Further, if you had read the Constitution and looked at the vote count, unless Bush pocket vetoed (and that only occurs in certain situations involving date of approval by the Congress (iow, likely did not apply to the Patriot Act but I'm not sure on this)) which maynot have been possible, even if he had vetoed the bill, it STILL would have passed because it easily met the 2/3rds majority -had it been revisited after the veto by the Congress-.
Why would he veto a bill that his administration wrote?
From your post i can only assume you're a rabid bush supporter, that will do anything to try and absolve him of his role in this mess even going so far as to ignoring facts. Seems to me like you're the scapegoater..
If the President does not sign a bill within 10 days of its passage through Congress it becomes law even without his signature.
That's correct, if he chooses not to veto it either. In this particular case, the President did in fact sign the bill in question, so your point is rather moot.
And neither did the current administration. It just signed it.
The administration's role in passing a bill is defined in the constitution. If the Pres. doesn't sign the bill, nothing becomes of it.. so I'd say that yes the current administration did help pass it, by completing the final action to make it a law.
The supreme court only deals with things after they are put into law, not before. Please try to understand the constitution.
The graphics looked horrific on all but the best cards, and simple things like finding a game online were screwed up (sync errors, anyone)?
Huh? The graphics looked great to me, on my old Ti4200. I never had anyproblems finding games online, although at first there was alot of lag, but they patched that pretty quickly.
The PC controls are also suprior, plus the extra vehicals made the game well worth it for me.
Halo Xbox suffered from crappy controls (especially the smaller ones, and the fact that while you can look left and right faster, the setting did nothing for up and down..), and bugs, like the rocket jump bug. Those 'features' were not missed by me.
Domestice crime dropped 90%. Violent crime was cut in half.
I call bullshit. Go look up the rates today, i doubt that alcohol related violent crime is 50% of the violent crime committed.
If you murder a couple of people, you get the chair no questions ask no appeals, deal with it.
Well, I'm sure some of the people recently freed from death row b/c of new dna evidence would certainly not want you in charge. What good is a system that unjustly murders innocent people? Isn't that something we're trying to prevent in the first place?
Statistically speaking, I believe that the prominent threat to the airlines (notice I don't say "only") comes from Arab Muslim single males between the ages of 18 and 45
However, most people in that group are NOT terrorists. If they were mostly white males, would you hold the same view? I doubt it, especially after you would be put through the extra screening.
Some passengers may be inconvenienced
have you been searched? Its more then inconvenienced, you feel violated afterwards. I really hope that you are put under the microscope next time you fly.
however, if it will save lives, then I am quite willing for some people to end up having their feelings hurt.
Again, its a bit more then hurt feelings. Having government installed cameras everywhere, including our homes, might make things safer. Is that really how you want to live though? How free are you if you know you're constantly being watched. I'm sure there's plenty of behaviour that's not illegal that you don't want anyone else to witness.
Maybe USB devices will be the next "microfilm" of future spy/thriller movies.
Already happened. I saw a recent movie where an employee was able to hide a usb keychain drive in the bottom of a coffee mug, and use it to smuggle info in an out. I think it was the recruit, but not sure.