BSD and GPL have a *very* different spirit. The first one is strongly academic (making the source available with no strings attached, just requiring the user to give credits where they're due), the latter is strongly political (anti-proprietary, and openly communistic since it aims to abolish private property as far as software is concerned).
sigh. Well, there's the old "the GPL is communism" troll.
The GPL doesn't abolish private property as far as software is concerned. That statement is wrong on so many levels, and demonstrates so little understanding, that it is difficult to know where to begin.
First of all, copyrights are not property. Copyright is a monopoly right granted by government securing to the owner of the copyright certain rights to prevent the copying of a work except where permitted by copyright law. You may or may not agree that this is a good system. It is not, however, property except by a strained analogy. Copyright lacks characteristics of true property.
Secondly, the GPL does not undermine copyright. It DEPENDS on copyright in order to work. What the GPL does is to allow those who have donated their time and effort to the public good to assure that their product remains a public good, and that those who use their code and distribute the result must in turn distribute the code. It simply requires payment, not in money, but in kind. It doesn't even require you to relinquish ownership. It just requires you to distribute your source.
This is not communism. Communism is a system whereby a self-proclaimed elite takes over the mechanism of the state and imposes state socialism. The GPL is, if anything, a libertarian approach. It is certainly not a state socialist approach.
I don't know about Sam Greenblatt, but the fact that you can't get rid of BSD makes most professional developers very happy.
I presume that you mean lazy professional developers who want to pillage public domain code for their proprietary closed-source product and sell it back to the public, as opposed to ethical professional developers who will give back as it has been given to them, or else avoid using GPL code. Which kind are you?
Excellent point. There are parts of the city that I never go in, why the hell am i paying for street lights there. I never use the damned things. Its unfair people, blatantly unfair!. Do you ever stop to consider, just once, the possibility that you may derive indirect benefits from things and that government isn't about benefiting just YOU, its about the community. I think that a reasonable argument could be made that there might be benefits to the community. At least its not obvious that this is completely inappropriate for government.
Your point is even stronger if you use public schools as an example. It is something that the private sector can provide, that not everyone needs (not everyone has kids at a given point in time), yet we support it with our tax dollars because the benefits of providing the educational infrastructure leave most voters persuaded that it is a "good thing". Lack of infrastructure is killing the U.S.
You know, the funny thing is, privatization used to be about private business doing things more efficiently. In Pennsylvania, it is apparently about protecting the profits of bloated telcos that AREN'T getting the job done. Vote'em out folks.
Does that leave us with ANY next generation chip? Or are we stuck with the x86 architecture until 2020?
There's the POWER/PowerPC architecture. It isn't dead yet by any means. And x86-64 is a real step forward, even if it does maintain some backward compatibility.
And they can watch what little base they have completely erode. Very few progressives are going to vote for an obvious nutjob like Zell Miller.
To the vast majority of Americans, the so-called "progressives" ARE the nutjobs. You are missing the point. Pandering to a leftist agenda is making the Democrats the loser party.
If you can't beat em, join em? If the Democrats were to act like Zell Miller, then their popularity would sink even further. The existing base would desert, and right-wingers would stick with the original Republican party, instead of the nascent clones.
Nonsense. Blue-collar union members and Southern evangelicals would return to the party, and it would become competitive again.
I suspect you could care less about that, if it means that the Democratic party doesn't reflect your agenda. The fact that you consider Miller "right-wing" speaks volumes about your own position on the spectrum.
He's also the first president in many years (perhaps ever?) that won because he openly advocated limiting civil rights of an etnic group, and used it to divide the country.
Gays are not an ethnic group. I assume that you meant "ethnic" not "etnic".
We have to find a way to dumb ourselves down into simple ideology. Easy digestible soundbites. It sounds ridiculous but I see no other way -- 1992 was "The Economy, Stupid", nothing else has worked. People don't want to think about problems, they want to eat McD's and watch Joey.
And the Republicans hope you keep thinking this way, because it shows that you really don't understand why John Kerry lost this election.
You are so fixated on the presidential race that you are losing track of the fact that Republicans made significant gains in the Senate and House of Representatives as well. Tom Daschle lost. He was targeted, and his constituents booted him out. That's his reward for 4 years of obstructionism. Why?
You are so fixated on the presidential race you are ignoring that in every one of 11 states where there was a ballot initiative prohibiting gay marriage, it passed, in many cases by overwhelming majorities. Why?
Why don't people like you get it?
The Democratic party doesn't need to "dumb down". You can drop your geek pomposity. Your analysis indicates that you aren't any more "clueful" than the people who voted for someone other than Sen. Kerry.
There was a huge voter turnout. The media focus on the Democrat 527s missed the point that huge numbers of evangelicals and blue-collar people turned out to vote. They didn't always vote Republican, but many of them did. What you should be asking is, why?
Check those ballot initiatives. Look at the overall picture, and it becomes clear.
People didn't vote for George Bush because of his handling of the economy. They didn't vote for him solely because of war rhetoric.
They voted for him also because they didn't want a social liberal who has consistently voted for gun control, or who avoided a vote on an amendment to the consitution on gay marriage, to be president. They didn't vote for Sen. Kerry because he was a social liberal. They didn't vote for Sen. Kerry because Michael Moore was for him. They didn't vote for Sen. Kerry because they didn't like his behavior in the Vietnam era. They didn't like him because he was all-too-obviously the candidate of foreign powers.
If there was a "Dukakis in a tank" moment in this election, it was when John Kerry put on brand-new camos and went goose-hunting after the NRA came out for Bush. Many Kerry supporters missed the significance of this. The Kerry campaign people knew that the NRA had just split the union vote.
If the Democrats want to be successful again, they certainly can be. They could trounce the Republicans. But to do so, they would have to make changes that I suspect wouldn't make you very happy.
A Democrat who is opposed to homosexual marriage, who supports gun rights, who is socially conservative, can win. A Democrat who steps away from NAFTA and the WTO (unlike John Kerry or Bill Clinton), can win.
In other words, an old-fashioned Democrat who is socially conservative, mildly protectionist, and who supports a modest social safety net that won't break the bank but provides assurance of real bread n' butter security with regards to health care, can win, would win, and would do so handily. A Democrat who isn't afraid to knock heads overseas, and doesn't act like he cares more about whether the French like him than whether he is representing American interests, can win.
I doubt you would support such a person. You would much rather spit invective and pretend that everyone who thinks differently than you do is more stupid than you. Maybe you would vote for Nader or vote Green before you would vote for the kind of Democrat I'm talking about.
But if the Democrats as a party want to win, they need more Sen. Millers, not more Sen. Kerrys, running for national office.
He's telling those 200 THOUSAND voters that they should just not have bothered.
There aren't 200,000 provisional ballots waiting to be counted, and not all of those would be for Sen. Kerry. Not all of the provisional ballots would even be valid ballots, necessarily. Sen. Kerry is demonstrating good sense. There's nothing wrong with demonstrating good sense.
Just because you can't accept his defeat doesn't mean he can't. Maybe you and Michael Moore should go have a beer, a good cry, and move on. The election is over.
not to mention all the democrats that flipped!!! I hope they rot in hell!!!
Could it possibly be that not all Democrats have the same opinions as you? Is it possible that they decided they would go with the guy who actually represented them on issues they cared about, but who happened to be in another party, rather than take the guy in their on party whose only campaign issue (after "I'm not Howard Dean") is, "I'm not George Bush"?
Yes, I think it is distinctly possible. By the way, real mature way for you to handle your disappointment.
And please, don't let the world's most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election's Floridan antics.
There hasn't been a repeat of Florida. President Bush has won a clear victory. John Kerry has apparently conceded, which would demonstrate he has more character than Al Gore had.
The American people have made their choice, with more people voting than have voted in years. Do you have the grace to accept it? Consider it a test of your love for America.
It's pretty interesting (in an wretch-inducing way) that a core Republican strategy is to keep people from voting. The lengths to which they apparently will go to achieve this end makes one wonder how they can sleep at night...
Actually, we've had the highest turnout in decades, and Bush clearly has won. So much for your theory.
According to Gallup's mega-final-ultra poll out Sunday evening, 30 percent of registered voters in Florida have already voted, either through early voting or by absentee. Of those who have already voted, Kerry leads President Bush 51 percent to 43 percent.
According to the Des Moines Register poll out late Saturday evening, 27 percent of Iowa adults have already voted. And among those Kerry leads 52 percent to 41 percent.
The exit polls were clearly wrong, and were perhaps wishful thinking by Democratic pols. The final results show, as they have sometimes shown in the past, the unreliability of exit polls, particularly when turnout is heavy.
What I read into his statement is that Kerry knows how to govern a giant, rich country of highly polarized competing constituencies.
What I read into your statement is that you are a hopeless Kerry partisan who won't recognize an obvious attempt to dodge an issue by your candidate. Sadly, you are not the only person with these rose-colored glasses on.
But instead Kerry has made a clear statement of his receptiveness to a revisions in a central issue of a specific law. Bush would splutter something about "sovereignty is... er... sovereignty". Which one is serious? Which one is going to even understand, let alone care about, this issue? Kerry.
Actually, Senator Kerry will say and do absolutely anything, for now, if he thinks some fool will give him a vote because of it on November 2. Like buying a brand new set of camos and going hunting for the first time in his life because the NRA endorsement of Bush will split the union vote that Kerry might otherwise count on, this is just another Kerry stunt for votes. Don't count on him to make DMCA reform a priority once he is in office. He's been a Senator for years; why hasn't he taken concrete action before now, if this is really an issue he will pay attention to? Don't be so deluded.
That's not very libertarian. I've seen some of Trey's politics before (don't get me wrong, I'm a fan and think Orgazmo may be the best movie ever made). But when it comes to their political views, they are very retarded. They tend to believe all that crap Drudge puts on his blog. Any libertarian should be railing as hard as he/she can against this administration, and if they missed the chance to do this while taking pot shots at liberals I will be very disappointed.
Who appointed this anonymous coward the Libertarian Thought Police? Libertarians by definition have very divergent views on various topics. They are united by a general belief in individual liberty, but they also represent a range of opinions within the orbit of that belief. This AC is obviously a disappointed "liberal" who expected something that bashes Bush. Sorry if "Team America" doesn't come across as the second coming of Farenheit 9/11, but your commentary is utter bullshit, and anyone who mods up an AC is a doofus for doing so.
If you need the security blanket of a God, well, enjoy it. But don't pretend your emotional needs are science.
The 17th century scientist was firmly convinced that combustion was produced by an invisible substance called phlogiston. The 19th century scientist was convinced that the speed of light was infinite, and space was filled with ether. 20th century science never quite figured out whether quantum mechanics is voodoo or not, or why the behavior of light seems to fit both particle and wave theory. They can come up with some creative explanations though.
Science is a method, not a body of truth. I wish sometimes that history of science and Kuhn was more broadly required in college.
Three billion years of evolution gives plenty of time -- and plenty of trials that didn't work out so well, to explain the variety of life of earth.
That's a religious statement, not a scientific one. It is a statement of faith, not a falsifiable proposition. But if what you consider "science", that is to say, materialist positivism, is your religion, you are welcome to it. What you aren't entitled to is your unjustified pomposity towards those who are more honest about faith than you are.
*sigh*, it is just great to see this on the front page of Slashdot...:(
Sorry, but I stopped falling for ad-hominem attacks and guilt by association a long time ago. If you have an objection to the article that is based on facts relevant to the issues presented in the article, I'm listening. If the best you can do is to say "Hey, everyone there is all about anti-immigrant racism", you haven't said anything that contradicts the points raised in the article, which means you haven't convinced me of anything. Understand?
Maybe it will make them feel like they got something accomplished and they won't try as hard to buy a law that has a truly chilling effect. Wishful thinking, I know.
Actually, I think the purpose in having this law is more subtle than you may realize. This is directly aimed at networks that are DESIGNED to permit anonymous, non-traceable filesharing, which is the next coming thing.
Bad laws are bad laws, because of their potential consequences, and because we don't need them cluttering up our already vast legal codes
Understandably Infinium Labs sued [H]ardOCP for slander.
Not so understandably. Actually HardOCP pre-empted Infineum by filing for a declaratory judgment. Infinium is thus in an ugly position of having things they have been trying to gloss over proved in court. Tim Roberts must be a SCO-quality knucklehead. This is a lawsuit he didn't need to be involved in.
Then again, we don't want to hurt the innocent employess, and we don't want excessive government regulation.
The government should leave the Mafia alone then, I suppose. Why there are a hard-core of murderers associated with organized crime (residents of Bhopal might say that doesn't make the Mafia different from Union Carbide), many of those who worked with the crime syndicates did jobs not greatly different from employees of other large businesses.
When a business entity is used to do evil, we shouldn't let them use the innocent as a shield against punishment. The people who buy the pieces after the company is dissolved can take care of the good employees, and would probably want them anyway to keep their part running. Let's start jailing the bad buys at GreedyBastards Inc. just like we would John Gotti.
As a counter-weight to the continual cries of "diplomacy is useless!", consider the Cold War. The USA and the USSR didn't fight each other; all of their contact was (essentially) diplomacy. Yet the situation remained (relatively) peaceful, and eventually the danger went away.
During the so-called "Cold War" millions died in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Guatemala, Nicauragua, Cuba, etc. over the course of decades as the "Superpowers" engaged in bloody and terrible warfare by proxy. You clearly need to re-read your history of the period.
Actually, we don't know that, since we never had any confirmation that the reactors they were actually using for weapons research were ever "sealed" to begin with. The PRK's assurances were taken at face value. The breakdown in talks was due in no small part to years of PRK refusals to allow outside experts to confirm that they had dialed down their weapons program at all.
NK lauched long range missiles under Bush.
The PRK has had missle programs for decades, and their long-range missle development began long before George W. Bush became president. The notion that they developed such a program in three years is laughable. You obviously have no idea of the technical challenges involved.
Saddam disarmed under Bush I and Clinton
The many thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ites gassed during Bush I and Clinton would beg to differ with you. Most likely many of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were transferred to the Syrian desert, much like contraband oil exports were.
countries who really have WMD survive and don't get invaded.
Actually, most nations believed that the Iraqis still had WMDs, in no small part because Saddam hinted they did, so you logic fails. Of course, I suspect your argument is more politics than logic to begin with.
The ONLY way to deal with North Korea is diplomacy. Any other dealing will reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of minutes. THAT is why nobody has done anything about that particular psychotic dictator, except met with him diplomatically.
Nonsense. The current South Korean government wants everyone to believe that, but is simply isn't true.
The North Koreans aren't developing nuclear weapons because they are strong. They are developing them (and chemical weapons and biological weapons) because they are weak, and the weakness of dictators breeds paranoia and fear.
Do they have a large army? On paper, yes, an army so large it has bankrupted the country and they cannot feed themselves. An army without food or functioning equipment is cannon fodder, as Saddam Hussein discovered in the first Gulf War.
What has always been needed in dealing with the North Koreans is decisive actions. Not the pointless meandering cosmetic measures of the Clinton Administration, but firm deadlines and definite consquences. Years of temporizing has left the PRK with nothing but contempt for the U.S. and its apparent unwillingness to act decisively to protect its own interests.
Sorry, but your view is simply wrong. Diplomacy is meaningless unless it is backed by the ability to project power. Years of diplomacy without the clear willingness to project power has accomplished nothing. The PRK knows Lenin's rule -- Probe with a bayonet, and if you encounter mush, advance, if you touch steel, retreat. Our diplomacy has been "mush". It has created a greater danger than we began with, and left the PRK with the impression that they can blackmail food and other critical resources out of the rest of the world through the threat that, not only will they develop nuclear weapon technology, but they will propagate it in violation of international law.
We don't need more temporizing. We need the overwhelming application of military force, right now. That means using strategic nuclear weapons against the PRK to destroy every military installation, followed by a rapid invasion to secure the countryside and assure there can be no belated retaliation.
It is so strange how every generation seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Temporizing and a desire for "peace in our time", as well as a decision that initiating defensive war was unimaginable, caused World War II. The inability of nations outside of France to unite to destroy Napoleon when he was small and weak guaranteed nearly two decades of misery as the Grand Emperor tried to unite his world by force. The time to destroy an enemy is before they are strong enough to hurt. Wait until you have no choice but to fight, and you can be guaranteed that enemy will hurt you.
Strike now, and it will not only resolve the PRK problem, but likely the Iran problem as well when the mullahs see what the possible price of obstinance can be. Never underestimate the instinct of most tyrants for self-preservation.
Do we have any choice but to play ball with the N Koreans?
Sure we have another choice. We can blow them to hell, and make a point to any other rogue regimes that think about playing with nuclear weapons. The Iranians will certainly pay attention in such a case.
Let's see how the Minuteman IIIs perform when the warheads are live. A first strike, without the warning and posturing that would make the strike less effective and create unnecessary politics before the fact, would settle the issue permanently.
Slashdot Mirror
BSD and GPL have a *very* different spirit. The first one is strongly academic (making the source available with no strings attached, just requiring the user to give credits where they're due), the latter is strongly political (anti-proprietary, and openly communistic since it aims to abolish private property as far as software is concerned).
sigh. Well, there's the old "the GPL is communism" troll.
The GPL doesn't abolish private property as far as software is concerned. That statement is wrong on so many levels, and demonstrates so little understanding, that it is difficult to know where to begin.
First of all, copyrights are not property. Copyright is a monopoly right granted by government securing to the owner of the copyright certain rights to prevent the copying of a work except where permitted by copyright law. You may or may not agree that this is a good system. It is not, however, property except by a strained analogy. Copyright lacks characteristics of true property.
Secondly, the GPL does not undermine copyright. It DEPENDS on copyright in order to work. What the GPL does is to allow those who have donated their time and effort to the public good to assure that their product remains a public good, and that those who use their code and distribute the result must in turn distribute the code. It simply requires payment, not in money, but in kind. It doesn't even require you to relinquish ownership. It just requires you to distribute your source.
This is not communism. Communism is a system whereby a self-proclaimed elite takes over the mechanism of the state and imposes state socialism. The GPL is, if anything, a libertarian approach. It is certainly not a state socialist approach.
I don't know about Sam Greenblatt, but the fact that you can't get rid of BSD makes most professional developers very happy.
I presume that you mean lazy professional developers who want to pillage public domain code for their proprietary closed-source product and sell it back to the public, as opposed to ethical professional developers who will give back as it has been given to them, or else avoid using GPL code. Which kind are you?
I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
I'm ashamed that you are an American too. Stop your pointless off-topic trolling. It is truly sickening.
Excellent point. There are parts of the city that I never go in, why the hell am i paying for street lights there. I never use the damned things. Its unfair people, blatantly unfair!. Do you ever stop to consider, just once, the possibility that you may derive indirect benefits from things and that government isn't about benefiting just YOU, its about the community. I think that a reasonable argument could be made that there might be benefits to the community. At least its not obvious that this is completely inappropriate for government.
Your point is even stronger if you use public schools as an example. It is something that the private sector can provide, that not everyone needs (not everyone has kids at a given point in time), yet we support it with our tax dollars because the benefits of providing the educational infrastructure leave most voters persuaded that it is a "good thing". Lack of infrastructure is killing the U.S.
You know, the funny thing is, privatization used to be about private business doing things more efficiently. In Pennsylvania, it is apparently about protecting the profits of bloated telcos that AREN'T getting the job done. Vote'em out folks.
Does that leave us with ANY next generation chip? Or are we stuck with the x86 architecture until 2020?
There's the POWER/PowerPC architecture. It isn't dead yet by any means. And x86-64 is a real step forward, even if it does maintain some backward compatibility.
And they can watch what little base they have completely erode. Very few progressives are going to vote for an obvious nutjob like Zell Miller.
To the vast majority of Americans, the so-called "progressives" ARE the nutjobs. You are missing the point. Pandering to a leftist agenda is making the Democrats the loser party.
If you can't beat em, join em? If the Democrats were to act like Zell Miller, then their popularity would sink even further. The existing base would desert, and right-wingers would stick with the original Republican party, instead of the nascent clones.
Nonsense. Blue-collar union members and Southern evangelicals would return to the party, and it would become competitive again.
I suspect you could care less about that, if it means that the Democratic party doesn't reflect your agenda. The fact that you consider Miller "right-wing" speaks volumes about your own position on the spectrum.
He's also the first president in many years (perhaps ever?) that won because he openly advocated limiting civil rights of an etnic group, and used it to divide the country.
Gays are not an ethnic group. I assume that you meant "ethnic" not "etnic".
We have to find a way to dumb ourselves down into simple ideology. Easy digestible soundbites. It sounds ridiculous but I see no other way -- 1992 was "The Economy, Stupid", nothing else has worked. People don't want to think about problems, they want to eat McD's and watch Joey.
And the Republicans hope you keep thinking this way, because it shows that you really don't understand why John Kerry lost this election.
You are so fixated on the presidential race that you are losing track of the fact that Republicans made significant gains in the Senate and House of Representatives as well. Tom Daschle lost. He was targeted, and his constituents booted him out. That's his reward for 4 years of obstructionism. Why?
You are so fixated on the presidential race you are ignoring that in every one of 11 states where there was a ballot initiative prohibiting gay marriage, it passed, in many cases by overwhelming majorities. Why?
Why don't people like you get it?
The Democratic party doesn't need to "dumb down". You can drop your geek pomposity. Your analysis indicates that you aren't any more "clueful" than the people who voted for someone other than Sen. Kerry.
There was a huge voter turnout. The media focus on the Democrat 527s missed the point that huge numbers of evangelicals and blue-collar people turned out to vote. They didn't always vote Republican, but many of them did. What you should be asking is, why?
Check those ballot initiatives. Look at the overall picture, and it becomes clear.
People didn't vote for George Bush because of his handling of the economy. They didn't vote for him solely because of war rhetoric.
They voted for him also because they didn't want a social liberal who has consistently voted for gun control, or who avoided a vote on an amendment to the consitution on gay marriage, to be president. They didn't vote for Sen. Kerry because he was a social liberal. They didn't vote for Sen. Kerry because Michael Moore was for him. They didn't vote for Sen. Kerry because they didn't like his behavior in the Vietnam era. They didn't like him because he was all-too-obviously the candidate of foreign powers.
If there was a "Dukakis in a tank" moment in this election, it was when John Kerry put on brand-new camos and went goose-hunting after the NRA came out for Bush. Many Kerry supporters missed the significance of this. The Kerry campaign people knew that the NRA had just split the union vote.
If the Democrats want to be successful again, they certainly can be. They could trounce the Republicans. But to do so, they would have to make changes that I suspect wouldn't make you very happy.
A Democrat who is opposed to homosexual marriage, who supports gun rights, who is socially conservative, can win. A Democrat who steps away from NAFTA and the WTO (unlike John Kerry or Bill Clinton), can win.
In other words, an old-fashioned Democrat who is socially conservative, mildly protectionist, and who supports a modest social safety net that won't break the bank but provides assurance of real bread n' butter security with regards to health care, can win, would win, and would do so handily. A Democrat who isn't afraid to knock heads overseas, and doesn't act like he cares more about whether the French like him than whether he is representing American interests, can win.
I doubt you would support such a person. You would much rather spit invective and pretend that everyone who thinks differently than you do is more stupid than you. Maybe you would vote for Nader or vote Green before you would vote for the kind of Democrat I'm talking about.
But if the Democrats as a party want to win, they need more Sen. Millers, not more Sen. Kerrys, running for national office.
He's telling those 200 THOUSAND voters that they should just not have bothered.
There aren't 200,000 provisional ballots waiting to be counted, and not all of those would be for Sen. Kerry. Not all of the provisional ballots would even be valid ballots, necessarily. Sen. Kerry is demonstrating good sense. There's nothing wrong with demonstrating good sense.
Just because you can't accept his defeat doesn't mean he can't. Maybe you and Michael Moore should go have a beer, a good cry, and move on. The election is over.
not to mention all the democrats that flipped!!! I hope they rot in hell!!!
Could it possibly be that not all Democrats have the same opinions as you? Is it possible that they decided they would go with the guy who actually represented them on issues they cared about, but who happened to be in another party, rather than take the guy in their on party whose only campaign issue (after "I'm not Howard Dean") is, "I'm not George Bush"?
Yes, I think it is distinctly possible. By the way, real mature way for you to handle your disappointment.
And please, don't let the world's most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election's Floridan antics.
There hasn't been a repeat of Florida. President Bush has won a clear victory. John Kerry has apparently conceded, which would demonstrate he has more character than Al Gore had.
The American people have made their choice, with more people voting than have voted in years. Do you have the grace to accept it? Consider it a test of your love for America.
It's pretty interesting (in an wretch-inducing way) that a core Republican strategy is to keep people from voting. The lengths to which they apparently will go to achieve this end makes one wonder how they can sleep at night...
Actually, we've had the highest turnout in decades, and Bush clearly has won. So much for your theory.
According to Gallup's mega-final-ultra poll out Sunday evening, 30 percent of registered voters in Florida have already voted, either through early voting or by absentee. Of those who have already voted, Kerry leads President Bush 51 percent to 43 percent.
According to the Des Moines Register poll out late Saturday evening, 27 percent of Iowa adults have already voted. And among those Kerry leads 52 percent to 41 percent.
The exit polls were clearly wrong, and were perhaps wishful thinking by Democratic pols. The final results show, as they have sometimes shown in the past, the unreliability of exit polls, particularly when turnout is heavy.
What I read into his statement is that Kerry knows how to govern a giant, rich country of highly polarized competing constituencies.
What I read into your statement is that you are a hopeless Kerry partisan who won't recognize an obvious attempt to dodge an issue by your candidate. Sadly, you are not the only person with these rose-colored glasses on.
But instead Kerry has made a clear statement of his receptiveness to a revisions in a central issue of a specific law. Bush would splutter something about "sovereignty is... er... sovereignty". Which one is serious? Which one is going to even understand, let alone care about, this issue? Kerry.
Actually, Senator Kerry will say and do absolutely anything, for now, if he thinks some fool will give him a vote because of it on November 2. Like buying a brand new set of camos and going hunting for the first time in his life because the NRA endorsement of Bush will split the union vote that Kerry might otherwise count on, this is just another Kerry stunt for votes. Don't count on him to make DMCA reform a priority once he is in office. He's been a Senator for years; why hasn't he taken concrete action before now, if this is really an issue he will pay attention to? Don't be so deluded.
That's not very libertarian. I've seen some of Trey's politics before (don't get me wrong, I'm a fan and think Orgazmo may be the best movie ever made). But when it comes to their political views, they are very retarded. They tend to believe all that crap Drudge puts on his blog. Any libertarian should be railing as hard as he/she can against this administration, and if they missed the chance to do this while taking pot shots at liberals I will be very disappointed.
Who appointed this anonymous coward the Libertarian Thought Police? Libertarians by definition have very divergent views on various topics. They are united by a general belief in individual liberty, but they also represent a range of opinions within the orbit of that belief. This AC is obviously a disappointed "liberal" who expected something that bashes Bush. Sorry if "Team America" doesn't come across as the second coming of Farenheit 9/11, but your commentary is utter bullshit, and anyone who mods up an AC is a doofus for doing so.
If you need the security blanket of a God, well, enjoy it. But don't pretend your emotional needs are science.
The 17th century scientist was firmly convinced that combustion was produced by an invisible substance called phlogiston. The 19th century scientist was convinced that the speed of light was infinite, and space was filled with ether. 20th century science never quite figured out whether quantum mechanics is voodoo or not, or why the behavior of light seems to fit both particle and wave theory. They can come up with some creative explanations though.
Science is a method, not a body of truth. I wish sometimes that history of science and Kuhn was more broadly required in college.
Three billion years of evolution gives plenty of time -- and plenty of trials that didn't work out so well, to explain the variety of life of earth.
That's a religious statement, not a scientific one. It is a statement of faith, not a falsifiable proposition. But if what you consider "science", that is to say, materialist positivism, is your religion, you are welcome to it. What you aren't entitled to is your unjustified pomposity towards those who are more honest about faith than you are.
*sigh*, it is just great to see this on the front page of Slashdot... :(
Sorry, but I stopped falling for ad-hominem attacks and guilt by association a long time ago. If you have an objection to the article that is based on facts relevant to the issues presented in the article, I'm listening. If the best you can do is to say "Hey, everyone there is all about anti-immigrant racism", you haven't said anything that contradicts the points raised in the article, which means you haven't convinced me of anything. Understand?
Maybe it will make them feel like they got something accomplished and they won't try as hard to buy a law that has a truly chilling effect. Wishful thinking, I know.
Actually, I think the purpose in having this law is more subtle than you may realize. This is directly aimed at networks that are DESIGNED to permit anonymous, non-traceable filesharing, which is the next coming thing.
Bad laws are bad laws, because of their potential consequences, and because we don't need them cluttering up our already vast legal codes
Understandably Infinium Labs sued [H]ardOCP for slander.
Not so understandably. Actually HardOCP pre-empted Infineum by filing for a declaratory judgment. Infinium is thus in an ugly position of having things they have been trying to gloss over proved in court. Tim Roberts must be a SCO-quality knucklehead. This is a lawsuit he didn't need to be involved in.
Then again, we don't want to hurt the innocent employess, and we don't want excessive government regulation.
The government should leave the Mafia alone then, I suppose. Why there are a hard-core of murderers associated with organized crime (residents of Bhopal might say that doesn't make the Mafia different from Union Carbide), many of those who worked with the crime syndicates did jobs not greatly different from employees of other large businesses.
When a business entity is used to do evil, we shouldn't let them use the innocent as a shield against punishment. The people who buy the pieces after the company is dissolved can take care of the good employees, and would probably want them anyway to keep their part running. Let's start jailing the bad buys at GreedyBastards Inc. just like we would John Gotti.
As a counter-weight to the continual cries of "diplomacy is useless!", consider the Cold War. The USA and the USSR didn't fight each other; all of their contact was (essentially) diplomacy. Yet the situation remained (relatively) peaceful, and eventually the danger went away.
During the so-called "Cold War" millions died in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Guatemala, Nicauragua, Cuba, etc. over the course of decades as the "Superpowers" engaged in bloody and terrible warfare by proxy. You clearly need to re-read your history of the period.
NK broke the reactor seals under Bush.
Actually, we don't know that, since we never had any confirmation that the reactors they were actually using for weapons research were ever "sealed" to begin with. The PRK's assurances were taken at face value. The breakdown in talks was due in no small part to years of PRK refusals to allow outside experts to confirm that they had dialed down their weapons program at all.
NK lauched long range missiles under Bush.
The PRK has had missle programs for decades, and their long-range missle development began long before George W. Bush became president. The notion that they developed such a program in three years is laughable. You obviously have no idea of the technical challenges involved.
Saddam disarmed under Bush I and Clinton
The many thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ites gassed during Bush I and Clinton would beg to differ with you. Most likely many of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were transferred to the Syrian desert, much like contraband oil exports were.
countries who really have WMD survive and don't get invaded.
Actually, most nations believed that the Iraqis still had WMDs, in no small part because Saddam hinted they did, so you logic fails. Of course, I suspect your argument is more politics than logic to begin with.
The ONLY way to deal with North Korea is diplomacy. Any other dealing will reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of minutes. THAT is why nobody has done anything about that particular psychotic dictator, except met with him diplomatically.
Nonsense. The current South Korean government wants everyone to believe that, but is simply isn't true.
The North Koreans aren't developing nuclear weapons because they are strong. They are developing them (and chemical weapons and biological weapons) because they are weak, and the weakness of dictators breeds paranoia and fear.
Do they have a large army? On paper, yes, an army so large it has bankrupted the country and they cannot feed themselves. An army without food or functioning equipment is cannon fodder, as Saddam Hussein discovered in the first Gulf War.
What has always been needed in dealing with the North Koreans is decisive actions. Not the pointless meandering cosmetic measures of the Clinton Administration, but firm deadlines and definite consquences. Years of temporizing has left the PRK with nothing but contempt for the U.S. and its apparent unwillingness to act decisively to protect its own interests.
Sorry, but your view is simply wrong. Diplomacy is meaningless unless it is backed by the ability to project power. Years of diplomacy without the clear willingness to project power has accomplished nothing. The PRK knows Lenin's rule -- Probe with a bayonet, and if you encounter mush, advance, if you touch steel, retreat. Our diplomacy has been "mush". It has created a greater danger than we began with, and left the PRK with the impression that they can blackmail food and other critical resources out of the rest of the world through the threat that, not only will they develop nuclear weapon technology, but they will propagate it in violation of international law.
We don't need more temporizing. We need the overwhelming application of military force, right now. That means using strategic nuclear weapons against the PRK to destroy every military installation, followed by a rapid invasion to secure the countryside and assure there can be no belated retaliation.
It is so strange how every generation seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Temporizing and a desire for "peace in our time", as well as a decision that initiating defensive war was unimaginable, caused World War II. The inability of nations outside of France to unite to destroy Napoleon when he was small and weak guaranteed nearly two decades of misery as the Grand Emperor tried to unite his world by force. The time to destroy an enemy is before they are strong enough to hurt. Wait until you have no choice but to fight, and you can be guaranteed that enemy will hurt you.
Strike now, and it will not only resolve the PRK problem, but likely the Iran problem as well when the mullahs see what the possible price of obstinance can be. Never underestimate the instinct of most tyrants for self-preservation.
Do we have any choice but to play ball with the N Koreans?
Sure we have another choice. We can blow them to hell, and make a point to any other rogue regimes that think about playing with nuclear weapons. The Iranians will certainly pay attention in such a case.
Let's see how the Minuteman IIIs perform when the warheads are live. A first strike, without the warning and posturing that would make the strike less effective and create unnecessary politics before the fact, would settle the issue permanently.