"I don't. I say that it is a bad thing to force guns on people and then _EXPECT_ that they will know how to use them, and responsibly."
I think here lies the problem you are having with it. Nobody in the US uses FORCE to REQUIRE you to own a gun. We all respect your right to chose not to own any firearms, or even have them arround you. You are perfectly within your rights to ask people to leave if they bring guns into your home or business. Or to leave thier firearms outside. And few will call you down for it.
I own guns, I use guns. I would NEVER use one on a person except in self-defence, but I also respect the rights of those who don't want them arround them. I don't really know many people who have objections to ME carting one arround if I chose, and they wouldn't ask me to leave if I did. But that's just me and the people arround me. If I were to carry a firearm, nobody would ever know. That's the whole point of Concealed Carry.
As for missing and harming someone else. Studies show that of all instances where concealed carry permit holders use thier weapons, only 2% cause harm to an innocent person. Either by mistaking the target for a dangerous person or by missing and hitting someone not involved. Compared to the Police, who have a rate of 11%. To be fair, the Police are in a much more dangerous situation. However, it does show that those who have the education and the weapons are not out being vigalantes. I'm talking about people who cary concealed firearms LEGALY. I've taken the concealed carry course in Utah, and they talk about the guns and such. But they spend about 80% on the law and saftey. Things such as when to use your weapon, when it's legal, when it's safe, and when it's not. They even mentioned a specific situation that was mentioned in the discussion here. If they're after your wallet, give it to them. It's not worth killing someone over. Be prepared if that isn't enough for them, but let them have it. Also, keep in mind, a person can cover a 3-4 foot distance in less then one second. If you're in close, a gun is not the right weapon. Best to keep it hidden.
What is right and what is real are two different things. Sure, it would be great if the world were such a great place that I didn't feel in danger. Where we didn't have people running about killing each other and causing all sorts of other problems. I'd love that, and I'd feel much safer. There is a good chance I wouldn't own guns either. At least not for defence. Target shooting and hunting can be very enjoyable activities. Sure, the world may change and this will all be the case. Great. That doesn't help me in the present. The fact is that the government (police) can not protect me. This is proven by the number of people that become victims of crime each day. Therefore it is my responsibility to protect myself. IMO, if you don't protect yourself you have no right to complain when you become the next victim. That doesn't mean you have to carry a gun. Martial arts are an option, stun guns, mace, a knife, all will work, if you know how to use them. Same with a gun. It's a TOOL. By itself, it's no more dangerous then any of the other items you could use. With knowledge it can be a very usefull tool. Without knowledge you could cause more harm then good. If you go buy a gun, it is your responsibility to learn how to use it properly. Just like when you go buy a chainsaw, or a hammer. If you don't do that, don't complain to me when you cut your arm off, hit your thumb with the hammer, or shoot yourself. It's YOUR FAULT. Not the guns', not the hammers', and not the chainsaws'. And certainly not the manufacturers of those products. A gun is a TOOL, and it's use is the sole responsibility of the person weilding it. It's called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Something we seem to have forgotten in this country, and most of the rest of the world apparently.
Should we take away all the chemicals to make gunpowder? Explosives? Gee that sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Make it so people can't make explosives. Well, one of the required chemicals in many explosives is Sulfuric Acid. Look at the top of a car batery sometime, that's right! It contains sulfuric acid. And that's not even the tip of the iceberg. Most of the others have the same type of problem with banning them.
Moral of the story: You can't legislate morality. You can't FORCE people to "be good" because you made a law that says they have to! Sorry about the reality check, but that's life.
I believe every OS/2 CDROM has disk images on it. You need LOADDSKF.EXE to make the floppies. The images are.DSK files IIRC. Just make all of them and boot from disk 0. OS/2 2.1 took about 30 floppies, but didn't use all of them. Many of them are just device drivers. After that I bought a CDROM, but there was a directory with the images on all the ones I got. I even used it once to replace a bad disk 0.;) I think LOADDSKF.EXE is on the CD as well. Oh, it's a dual-mode EXE file, DOS or OS/2 can run it!
I've thought about doing this for awhile. I have been lacking the time to learn the required skills. If there is interest in getting a team together to design a SOM/WPS system for Linux, I'm game. I'll even have some time to work on it soon.;)
This is the one thing I would want to make my Linux experience complete. KDE and GNOME are nice, but neither holds a candle to WPS.
I started using OS/2 at version 2.0. I first got it because I wanted to multitask on a 386/25. I had a BBS I ran, and needed to use the computer while it was going. A BBS doesn't use much in the way of system resources, so I figgured it would be easy.. it wasn't. DesqView was as close as I could get. Then I found OS/2.
Keep in mind, this was about 1993, Win95 had not even been announced. There was talk about Ciaro, Chicago, or whatever, but it was all vapor.
I still like it's GUI better then anything else I can find. Including KDE and GNOME. WPS is intuitive, fast, and can be very good-looking with help. IBM is a business company, so the defaults were a bit dry, but with a little config it can be really nice. And there are no config files you need to mess with to do it. You can improve performance by editing CONFIG.SYS, but it's not required. OS/2 can perform resonably well on my old 386/25. Linux/X is painfull.
As for your comments, Yes, it has a command shell, with DOS-like commands. It was marketed as a DOS replacement, so they wanted it to be familiar. There were 2 command shells, the OS/2 shell, and the DOS emulator. It's DOS emulation is amazing, more so considering the time it was written. There were programs I couldn't run in real dos that worked great in OS/2's DOS box.
The GUI is of thier own design. It's object oriented, and very feature rich. M$ only wishes they could write such a good GUI. The default configs sucked though, you really had to take a little time and edit the color scheme and maybe throw a background up. It is nothing at all like X, nor was it ever intended to be as far as I can tell. I found it much eaiser to learn WPS then most X window managers.
It does not come with remote administration. That is one area I always thought they needed to work on. There are programs like PCAnywhere for it, but that's not nearly as good as a UNIX system's capabilities.
I thought the interface was eaiser then anything else I've used before or since. It made a ton of sense once you remembered you have more then one mouse button. EVERYTHING could be right-clicked to get a context menu. And most programs included that support too. The Win-OS/2 program was a bit of a hack, but it was a pretty good emulator. It basicly ran Win3.1 under it's DOS emulator. The windowed version was a video driver hack. There is probably some stuff the WINE team could use in that area.
It's great because at that time there was nothing that could touch it based on technology and usabilty. I think there are a few things they should have fixed early on, that they knew about and gave us kludges for. Like the SIQ problem. Now, I'd say Linux has gotten close to it's technology, but has a ways to go before usability can even come close. We had that in OS/2 in 1993! Win95 and NT have decent GUI's, but still lack when compared to OS/2. WPS and SOM still have no equal, IMO.
Is it better then UNIX? That all depends. For UNIX users, probably not. For OS/2 users, certainly. For Windows users, well, anything is better!:) If you want an easy to use GUI, in a system you can get up and running very quickly without editing text files, it's great. If you want flexability and source code, UNIX is where it's at. It all depends on what you want in an OS. I use Linux a lot, and I really like it. I still load up OS/2 once in a while, but I've moved so much of my work to Linux now that I just don't need it as much anymore. I still miss the GUI though.
I really wish IBM would just open the source under GPL or some other OSS license and let those of us who want it work on porting the parts we like to Linux. With Linux as the kernel and SOM/WPS as the UI it would really rock. But so far Big Blue has declined many efforts to get the code. In this latest situation Stardock even offered to pay for it, just to make a new version of OS/2 Client. *sigh*
Of course, now there is little software available. So it's been going down for a while. There's some great stuff, but Linux is getting all the attention now. Hopefully IBM will see the light and help us get some of the great parts of OS/2 into Linux. Come on IBM! Follow the lead of SGI! They're giving us XFS, can't you give us WPS/SOM?
You've got part of an idea here... Flesh it out, follow the path back to where it started going downhill.
Education in the US got worse when the government took control over it and created a monopoly. Sure, you can pay to put your kid in private school. But you shouldn't have to pay for everyone else's kids in the public school system in that case. Not to mention those of us who have no kids. Why am *I* paying for other people's education? I'd rather further my own. Since people lose about 30% to taxes (at least that's what comes out of my paycheck) they don't have the cash to put thier kids in private school. And public school is "free". Of course, they are still paying for it, they just don't see it. It's like me telling you that you have to pay me money each year for your childs education AND you have to pay someone else to ACCUALLY educate you kid. Are you going to pay me?? Of course not. So why do you pay the government? If you don't have kids in there, you shouldn't have to pay for it.
Getting the government out just means more freedom for parents to decide how to educate thier kids and it stops stealing the resources they need to pay for that decision. If thier kids don't want to attend a particular school, and they agree, they can let them go to work, or go to a tech school, home school, whatever.
As for the other comments about more bums etc.. I doubt it would be a problem. People usually realize that there is no money in having no skills and will take some training and get a job. Not to mention, the parents still have final say till the kids are 18. Besides, there's always work to be done cleaning all those new schools after the staff and students have left for the day. Or any of the other labor type jobs. And with a little school they could become mechanics or even *gasp* computer help desk etc.. Point is, there is work available even for people of little skill. And oppertunities to move up in the world with a little work. Sure, you don't start out making much, but it's enough to support yourself on. And the taxes would be lower (because they stopped stealing money for education, because as voters you kicked out the people that refused to, RIGHT??) So they would keep more of what they earn.
Before government got involved education was much better. People left school knowing how to read, write, and do basic math. Sure, some people didn't go, and didn't learn it on thier own. Like today, there was work for them to do.
Blah. So what? With local console access I could break into any x86 machine I've ever seen. Sometimes it taks a lot of effort, but if the machine is stolen and I have the time to open it I can get into it. No x86 box I've ever seen stores passwords anywhere other then CMOS, that is erasable via a jumper on the motherboard or removing the battery for a while. Even in the off chance it were FLASH, just call arround a bit. There are always chips available. Not to mention most Flashable BIOS units have a special key combo you can use to initialize the FLASH sequence, used in case you try to update your FLASH and it doesn't work right and kills your box. It just loads the flash image from floppy.
As for getting into Linux, how do you boot? LILO probably, most people running Linux use it. At the prompt just type "linux single" sometime and see what it does.;) Of course the image name could be different, hit tab.;) I believe there is even a key combo to get the lilo prompt if it's set to not show it.
Or I could just take out the HD and put another one in. Most systems are set to autodetect the HDs on bootup, and will change the config automaticly without needing BIOS config.
Of course, the point of this message is that nothing is secure if the attacker has physical access to it. Crackers have broken hardware security many times in the past, and probably will continue to. Most dongles are crackable, Playstation, DVD Region codes, Computers, Networks, and probably a ton of other stuff I haven't thought of.
Now now, don't go advocating violence. There is no need for it.
If everyone like you, who feels there is no viable option in the established political system would go VOTE we wouldn't have this problem! The Libertarians have been growing steadily for the past 20 years, but we need all the help we can get. Let's exhaust all peacefull measures before we go calling for revolution.
I say again, if you don't like this QUIT VOTING FOR THEM!!! And don't just not vote either, that's become a sign that you don't care or are generally happy with the way things are to the Republicrat polititions. There is only ONE political party I'm aware of that consistantly fights for your rights, the Libertarian Party. Slashdoters are generally able to see through the FUD, if you don't like them for some reason, feel free to send me email and I'll hapilly debate you on it. Even better, find out what they stand for with your brain! www.lp.org.
Abuse of freedom??? Nope, sorry, you can't abuse freedom unless you cause harm to someone else. The parent approved of the children seeing the movie in this case. She simply couldn't stay with them. I don't see a problem here. If a law is unjust, it is the responsibility of the citizens to refuse to observe it. It's called "civil dissobedience", look it up. Mr. Katz is using is actions to speak out for freedom and the rights of parents to decide what is and is not "OK" for thier kids. I see no problem with this. He is relating the story to us to let us all know that he doesn't like the law, and what he did about it. If you don't want your kids to watch something, tell them and handle it however you wish to. But please allow the same freedom to everyone else.
As for the religious stuff, keep in mind that relgious freedom means just that. Not just freedom to be Christian. I respect your views, and will not try to force you to change them. All I ask in return is that you do the same for everyone else you don't agree with. I've studied Christianity, and IMO it's the Christian thing to do. Lucifer was cast out because he couldn't accept that God wanted to allow people to make thier own choices (he wanted to force everyone to do the right thing). It's all right there in your Bible, the book of Gennisis, IIRC. I think it's great that you stick to your beliefs, that's rare in this day and age. I'd just ask that you consider the fact that not everyone agrees with you and let everyone else live thier life the way they want to, and to raise thier kids the way they want to.
BTW: Most religious people I've spoken to agree with my reading of that part of the Bible, so I'm not alone here. And before you flame me as an ignorant person who doesn't know religion, I've read most of the Bible, The Book of Mormon, and parts of other things like the Koran. I've also studied most variants of Chirstianity and a few other religions in my search for spiritual enlightenment. I think I at least have part of a clue.
I like the tagline on the/. page I'm viewing right now.. "Do not think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold." It's particularly revelant in discussions about religion.
Best wishes.
Re:people who were offered but can't invest
on
Red Hat IPO Surprise
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You didn't leave an email address.;)
Oh.. my above address doesn't work.. if you want to contact me use bigboss@xmission.com
"The same thing that gives you the right to state your opinions. If you can work out what that is, just recognise the same rights for him."
Hmmm.../. posts seem to have an interesting way of obscuring the meaning of one's words. I never said he can't state his oppinion. If it seemed that way, my mistake. However, this is really far from the point I was attempting to make.
"But of course he insists that he's right and that people who disagree with him are wrong - by definition his views are the ones that he considers to be right. Just like you insist that you're right and he's wrong. "
Quite true. But I am not going about telling the world they should be calling a product something else. I'm not calling everyone else down for not calling it what *I* think it should be called. I'm just saying that I think it should be called "Linux" for a number of reasons that are important to me. I am also saying he can call it whatever he wants, but should afford that same right to others instead of correcting them every time they say "Linux" rather then "GNU/Linux" or "The GNU System". As has been reported here and in other places. I have never spoken to him myself, but the GNU press releases and various interviews have him consistantly acting in this manner.
"Do you seriously believe that Linux / Free Software / whatever you believe in is in danger from it being found out that people in the movement (even prominent people) act like humans? "
There is a difference between acting like a human and acting like a spoiled, petty, child. To have a professional disagreement is one thing. To run about causing all the noise RMS has is another. This is, of course, my oppinion and you may feel differently.
As to the bit about Linux/Free software being in danger. It is, if the goal is mainstream acceptance. If the goal is free software for the sake of free software, then I doubt it will ever be in real danger. It's a matter of perspectives. I would like to see free software and Linux become accepted in the industry at large. Perhaps so far as to be the "standard". I have purely selfish reasons for wanting this, like being able to work on STABLE systems for a change. NT is driving me crazy.
"Like i said, i think he should give up on the name because "Linux" has too much momentum as the name for the system, not just the kernel, for him to succeed. but important as he and the FSF are to the movement, I think the idea that the movement will be wrecked by his views on the name is totally implausible."
Fans of OS/2 didn't see it getting marginalized at it's peak either. A few key mistakes by IBM killed it, as a mainstream product. It was "implausible" to us that a great product would be basicly killed by a few mistakes. It was.
And it's not his views on the name I'm concerned with. It's his behaviour regarding his views on the name. I don't think it matters what anyone calls it, if you want to run arround calling it "StupidiX", fine. But to cause this uproar over such a silly, petty, thing as the name, makes us all look bad. Remember, the people making the decisions on what software to deploy are PHBs. They know only what they read in the papers. To see this going on sends the message that we can't even figgure out what to call the damn thing, how could we write decent software?. This damages the credibility of Free Software and Linux in thier eyes. Those who know the benefits of Free Software and Linux are not the people we need to convince. It's the people that sign the checks, the PHBs.
I don't recall the poster saying that RMS can't call it whatever he wants. He objects to RMS spouting off about it to the press. It doesn't help that he is saying stuff like: "The GNU system, whether you call it GNU or whether you think it's Linux". THINK it's Linux?? The world has been calling it that for YEARS. What gives him the right to make a statement like that? This is basicly saying that it's not Linux, and nobody should be calling it that.
Now, that said, I will be the first in line to praise RMS for what he has accomplished. All the GNU tools are great, I use them and like them. And if he wants to reffer to Linux as GNU/Linux or "The GNU system", then more power to him. I object to his insistance that the rest of us are wrong and HE is right, that HE should set the name for this system.
At this late satge of the game this type of thing is dissasterous. Regardless of your stance on the name issue, this infighting makes all of us look like petty, stupid children. The press is going to pick up on this and it could deal a nasty blow to the Linux momentum. I can see the M$ FUD now, "Linux is going to splinter just like the old UNIX systems, then you will have to worry about all kinds of incompatibilities. With M$ software you don't have that problem, we control it all."
If RMS wants to kill the free software movement, this is a damn good way to start. If he really wanted it called GNU/Linux or whatever, he should have said something in the begining, before we started gaining market acceptance. It's too late now. We need to project an image of unity to the outside world. We need to show them we can avoid the problems that created all those different, incompatible UNIX systems, and to some degree the different flavors of BSD. Or we lose.
Is the goal here Freedom? "World Dommination"? If we are to get there, we need to be able to grant everyone the freedom to call it what they want. If Debian wants to call it GNU/Linux, fine. But those who want to call it that need to grant the same right to those of us who preffer "Linux". There is room for everyone. But this petty squabling needs to come to an end.
If you don't feel comfortable doing it, DON'T. It's a complex procedure involving soldering leads within a sub-milimeter tollerance. All that while not overheating the board so you don't damage the BGA mounted dragonball. Not for the faint-of-heart. If you haven't done close pitch soldering before, don't even think about doing it without at least getting some practice in on a board you don't care about.
There are some guys getting an opperation underway to sell this as a service. I believe they wanted $150 to upgrade a Palm V. Opening the case without damage is tough, and the soldering isn't easy either, even for the experienced. I'd say it's a fair price. They say they will also sell upgraded units. Keep in mind, doing something like this will void your waranty. If you break it, or have someone else break it for you, don't call 3Com.
As for if you need it, I'd say no. I'm not using the 1MB my pro came with.. Of course that didn't stop me from upgrading it to 2MB anyway, but that's not the point.;)
I have to admit I'm not as familiar as I should be with the situation there. I think the basis of the problem with them is that they export everything. It all goes to other countries where people can afford the products. So here in the US and Canada we see those great shoes or whatever. Of course, they could be made domesticly, but it would cost more so the big companies exploit the Asian people to raise thier bottom line. It's easy to get what passes for a good "economy" in a situation like that. There is money flowing in and out of the country, so they declare it a good economy. But with all of the products being exported, they can't be used to raise the quality of life for those people. And the only people making real money are the people who hold the contracts with the companies elsewhere. The ones exploiting the workers. This is a regretable situation. It seems to me to have many parallels to the situation with the industrial revolution here in the US. Many workers were exploited to make the rich richer. I think I see what you're getting at here, but there is recourse available to people, and the way things are here in the present I can't see anyone getting away with something like that, even if the laws against it were removed. We are quite sensitive to things like that now, and would organize boycotts and such.. I don't feel that the laws regarding such things should be removed, but perhaps rewriten a bit. I would need more research on the topic to discuss that.
I think that the attitude that the economy is good while the people suffered could have contributed to the Asian market crash. As well as the great depression here in the US. At some point the money will stop flowing because there are not enough end customers to keep it self-sustaining. At that point the economy will crash.
I think the problem is how "economy" is defined. It seems to currently be used to discuss how much companies are making, rather then the health of the society. Durring the downsizing period you mention the profit margins of companies went up. Thus they term it a good economy. I have to agree with you in that it seems silly to do that. I think more needs to be considered to guage the economic health of a country.
What, exactly, do you "get back" in Canada? As I said, I'm not very familiar with the way things are done up north. Are we talking about government programs designed to help people with things? Such as housing, schooling, medical care, etc.?
It could be that your government accually makes good use of the funds it collects and has decent programs to help the people. But in the US I can bet most anyone will tell you it's not that way here. And not because they don't have money available to do it, because they are very wastefull and don't have the slightest idea what's going on arround them. What happens here is very simple, those of us in the "middle class" pay all the taxes, while the poor get dependant on handouts and the rich hide behined all thier tax shelters that the middle class can't afford.
The poor people on government programs can't afford to try to get a job and make life better for themselves because the government has it set up in such a way that the day they get a job they are off any kind of assistance. I believe it should cut off, but at least give them a chance to get a paycheck. This happened to someone I know. This creates a cycle of dependancy that is tough to break.
Most people I speak with in the US feel that the government corruption is so bad that it is literally "he who has the gold, makes the rules". The rich lobby the government and give "campaign contributions" (I call them bribes). And oh, look, the laws that get passed benefit the rich somehow.
This is the primary reason we have a problem in the US, IMO. The government was supposed to be, "By the People, For the People". That means ALL the people. And it's not.
This is why I presently subscribe the the Libertarian Party viewpoint. I think we need to move toward that direction. All the way there? Maybe not, nobody is always right, but it's a place to start. What choice to we have? Both the Democrats and the Republicans have made it worse, and put us in this situation to begin with. They have been given many, many chances to fix it, and always say they will, only to get back into office and give us more of the same. When groups start organizing and getting ready to go to war with the government, there is a problem. The militia movement in the US demonstrates this. The government still fails to get the message.
Remember, we have multipule parties to balance each other out. With the Democrats and the Republicans both much the same now, we need something else. It's no wonder to me that the vast majority of us in the US don't vote. We have had nobody to vote FOR! But to not vote just tells them we want more of the same, it no longer sends a statement other then that.
While an assumption behined capitalism is that a better economy means a healtier society, it is a proven FACT that socialisim doesn't work and only makes life worse for the masses then capitalism. You end up with fewer rich people at the top of the chain and far more people in a far worse situation then our poor people here in the US have to deal with in most cases. Not to mention no hope of ever getting a chance to make a better life for yourself. At least in the US you could start in the mailroom and become an executive in 20 years. I'll be the first to say it doesn't happen often anymore with the huge turnover rates I see arround me, but it can, and has happened.
Those are, of course, the two extremes. There is a large grey area in the middle where most every country now resides. Perhaps Canada has found a good balance. I don't know, I've never lived there. Or perhaps Ammericans just have different expectations. Keep in mind that this country exists because the colonists were sick of TAXES. And we pay far more in taxes then they did.
We're getting a bit far-flung for a SlashDot discussion, reply to Email if you want. We're allready way off topic.
Sob story? Look who's talking! "We were treated like shit because we were immigrants from India" Yeah yeah...
BTW: Using a personal example isn't a sob story, it's a statement of supporting evidence from real life.
Again, you say government costs money, I provided alternate sources of revenue for a government and you get out a flamethrower. Are you capable of holding an inteligent conversation? Or is everyone that doesn't subscribe to your viewpoint without comment sick and wrong?
Yes, there were problems with the industrial revolution. There are problems with ANY change. There are also problems with just leaving things the way they are and ignoring the problem.
And the slaves were used for a number of things. Which is a moot point anyway as slavery was outlawed shortly afterward and still is.
There were a number of contributing causes to the great depression, it's niave to say that one thing alone could cause something so sweeping.
The economy is a measure of how people are doing. If there are no customers spending money, just how healthy do you think an enocomy can be? If the government is stealing our money, we have less to spend on other things. Thus lowering the overall health of the economy at large. It's simple cause and effect relationship.
Who is talking about buzzwords here, hmmmm? You're flaming about and playing the slavery card. As if profanity makes a better argument. In this last message you prove you have no clue. Go do some research and come back with inteligent arguments or go away. I won't respond to another message like the last one, as there is no point. If your entire argument rests on swearing and the contents of the first message, you have proven that you don't know what you're talking about and like to ignore factual evidence.
The problem with your supposition is that the USA got by just fine for about 100 years without taxes. This, durring the industrial revolution. We led the way in pretty much every area of technology and innovation. Now, there is so much government interfernece and taxation that we are starting to fall behind. The Asian market crash is the only reason we still have the lead. Winning, and being lost too, are different.
It all comes down to if you think the government can do a better job of managing your money then you can. If they can make your life better then you can. I know, from experience, that they can't. If I did not have about $800/month STOLEN from me, I'd be quite well off, have no debt, and be in a nice home. Instead, I'm working my way out of debt SLOWLY, and renting a room. Yes, it's my fault I'm there, but I don't expect anyone to just hand me the money to get out, and I don't see the government looking to hand me MY money to pay for it with. Oh, and did I mention that the $800/month I pay to the government WAS NOT ENOUGH??? I still owe about $600 MORE!!!! This is causing me to be forced to live a lifestyle I do not enjoy. If I had all the money that is being stolen from me in my bank account, I would be much better off.
It's called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. And it's a premise that this country was built on. I don't know jack about Canadian history, so I won't comment on them. But here we created a country based on freedom and personal responsibility. And I, for one, would preffer it went back to that.
Any way you slice it, taxation is wealth redistribution. The government is attempting to play at Robin Hood. And doing a poor job of it I might add.
If you like the way they do things in Canada, I wish you the best. Enjoy it. I preffer the way our founding fathers designed this country and would like it to return to its previous way of doing things. What we have now causes more problems then it solves.
For one, I allready have to pay for garbage collection. It's about $15/month to a private company. They provide the big plastic things to put the trash in, and drive arround and pick it up. Easy, and worth it, IMO.
Note that the LP (Libertarian Party) believes that the government's place is to protect life and property. They believe the government should have both a police force, as well as a military force. However, our military should not be running arround the planet interfering with other countries. We are not the worlds' police force. The police and defence would be paid for by tarrifs and service fees. Sort of like taxes I suppose, but your money goes to a specific service, not to the general fund that they can do anything they want with. It's very specific, and you can tell what they are doing, full disclosure.
And yes, if you don't own a car you shouldn't have to pay for the roads. If you want to ride the train, for example, the train fares you pay go toward maintaining the tracks and the trains themselves. If you drive a car, you allready pay property taxes on the car. I would think that a good soultion for the roads is to charge you a "road maintance fee" instead. As I said, it's basicly the same as a tax, but you only pay if you use the service and the money goes only to certain things. The DMV arround here probably collects billions in property taxes and Driver Licence fees. That should support the roads reasonably well.
Basicly, the government should provide services and charge for them like a business. What do you think taxes are? It's just that you can't see where taxes are going, and they always seem to go up with no benefit to me. In a fee-for-service structure, you know exactly what you are paying for.
If the government had to live within it's means and charge a fair fee for it's services we would all be better off. If the people won't pay for a service, we don't need it. This gives the power to the people, where it belongs.
It should be noted that I do not speak for the LP. I've just been researching them since I couldn't find anyone to vote *FOR*. The big 2 parties both suck, and I was looking for someone. The way I see it, not voting just tells them we want more of the same. Voting for the LP tells them I want my freedom. In any case, voting for any other party tells them I am not happy, which I want to do. I want the Republicrats to know I am not happy at all with the way they are handling things.
Do a little research before dismissing them as a group. You may be surprised, if you're willing to be open minded and logical about it. Compare the pros and cons and make up your own mind. The message you posted was just regurgitated drivel from the Republicrats, THINK!
For a good place to get info on the LP platform head over to LP Home.
The first time I did the text configs manually. The HOWTO gave me everything I needed. I even got diald working on the first try.
The second time I found the RedHat GUI utilities very usefull. Point, click, dial, done. Worked great from the control-panel RedHat wrote as well as LinuxConf. I hear KPPP works well too, but I have DSL now so I don't care.;)
How can you bet that a libertarian government wouldn't do the exact same shit? Every party that has gotten into power talks one story and acts another...until we have a whole load of libertarians in office don't you dare go around spouting how much different it would be.
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So doing *NOTHING* is better??? How long shall the Ammerican people stand by and let the government trample them??? I agree, there is a chance the Libertarians will do the SAME things as the big 2. However, that is not a reason not to vote for them. The alternative, IMO, is to NOT VOTE! The other 2 both suck. The message THAT sends to polititions is that we are HAPPY with the way things are going!!!! We need to stand up and DEMAND CHANGE. We need to vote thier fat asses OUT if they don't do what we say, and NOW. Voting Libertarian sends a message, that we don't want the government meddling in our lives. And that we WILL vote them out (FIRE THEM) if they don't do what we want to vote how we tell them to.
Right now, like every monopoly, they don't give a shit because THEY DON'T HAVE TO. YOU WILL KEEP TAKING IT IN THE ASS, SO WHY NOT KEEP PUSHING!?!?!
Oops.... I typed it wrong on SlashDot. I'll get ti corrected. It's bigboss@my-dejanews.com. I notice I had an underscore in there.. if that bounces for some reason use bigboss@xmission.com.
If all they wanted was to be sure credit is given to the CDDB when lookups are performed the license would have said something simple. Such as: Durring all lookups of CDDB information the user will be notified in a conspicous manner that CDDB is the source of Album/Title information.
Restricting re-distribution of data they don't own as well as the other things people have allready commented on is what has people upset.
Even if, for the sake of argument, it has not yet become an "ugly corporate monster", the writing is on the wall, so to speak. A license like this one tells OSS people that this company plans to become an "ugly corporate monster" and this bothers us becuase WE created that database! It came, at least in part, from user submissions.
Also, those players and utilities that support lookups are ALLREADY telling users about it! The only ones I've used that support it make a big deal out of it because it's so nice! Not to mention people like myself that use it mostly in scripts, we can't display logos or hyperlinks to your WWW site! You do remember text mode, don't you?
That is why there is a call right now to produce a free, open spec that anyone can use in any way they want. No companies restricting the uses or forcing people to display logos and such. I, and many others, find such restrictions horrid and refuse to support those who would use them.
You may want to look in on the other side of the fence and try to see why people are upset.
Catch some of the earlier posts.. there is another guy who mentioned it first.. we should work together to form this thing.
As for resources. I have a gig or two available (since the last known size I'm aware of on that database is 50Meg it's not a big problem). I also have 256K DSL I'm willing to use for this. I sugest we think up a way to distribute the load so that one server doesn't have to carry the entire burden.
Simple soultion. Get a small Gell-Cell battery to run it from. Then connect that battery to the car power supply with a charging circuit. Now you have a backup power supply. You need to put good filtering on the supply from the car, large caps should help. Or, better yet, find a way to power it isolated from the main car supply. A switching power supply with a small transformer would do. Most DC/DC converters are built like this.
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"I don't. I say that it is a bad thing to force guns on people and then _EXPECT_ that they will know how to use them, and responsibly."
I think here lies the problem you are having with it. Nobody in the US uses FORCE to REQUIRE you to own a gun. We all respect your right to chose not to own any firearms, or even have them arround you. You are perfectly within your rights to ask people to leave if they bring guns into your home or business. Or to leave thier firearms outside. And few will call you down for it.
I own guns, I use guns. I would NEVER use one on a person except in self-defence, but I also respect the rights of those who don't want them arround them. I don't really know many people who have objections to ME carting one arround if I chose, and they wouldn't ask me to leave if I did. But that's just me and the people arround me. If I were to carry a firearm, nobody would ever know. That's the whole point of Concealed Carry.
As for missing and harming someone else. Studies show that of all instances where concealed carry permit holders use thier weapons, only 2% cause harm to an innocent person. Either by mistaking the target for a dangerous person or by missing and hitting someone not involved. Compared to the Police, who have a rate of 11%. To be fair, the Police are in a much more dangerous situation. However, it does show that those who have the education and the weapons are not out being vigalantes. I'm talking about people who cary concealed firearms LEGALY. I've taken the concealed carry course in Utah, and they talk about the guns and such. But they spend about 80% on the law and saftey. Things such as when to use your weapon, when it's legal, when it's safe, and when it's not. They even mentioned a specific situation that was mentioned in the discussion here. If they're after your wallet, give it to them. It's not worth killing someone over. Be prepared if that isn't enough for them, but let them have it. Also, keep in mind, a person can cover a 3-4 foot distance in less then one second. If you're in close, a gun is not the right weapon. Best to keep it hidden.
What is right and what is real are two different things. Sure, it would be great if the world were such a great place that I didn't feel in danger. Where we didn't have people running about killing each other and causing all sorts of other problems. I'd love that, and I'd feel much safer. There is a good chance I wouldn't own guns either. At least not for defence. Target shooting and hunting can be very enjoyable activities. Sure, the world may change and this will all be the case. Great. That doesn't help me in the present. The fact is that the government (police) can not protect me. This is proven by the number of people that become victims of crime each day. Therefore it is my responsibility to protect myself. IMO, if you don't protect yourself you have no right to complain when you become the next victim. That doesn't mean you have to carry a gun. Martial arts are an option, stun guns, mace, a knife, all will work, if you know how to use them. Same with a gun. It's a TOOL. By itself, it's no more dangerous then any of the other items you could use. With knowledge it can be a very usefull tool. Without knowledge you could cause more harm then good. If you go buy a gun, it is your responsibility to learn how to use it properly. Just like when you go buy a chainsaw, or a hammer. If you don't do that, don't complain to me when you cut your arm off, hit your thumb with the hammer, or shoot yourself. It's YOUR FAULT. Not the guns', not the hammers', and not the chainsaws'. And certainly not the manufacturers of those products. A gun is a TOOL, and it's use is the sole responsibility of the person weilding it. It's called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Something we seem to have forgotten in this country, and most of the rest of the world apparently.
Should we take away all the chemicals to make gunpowder? Explosives? Gee that sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Make it so people can't make explosives. Well, one of the required chemicals in many explosives is Sulfuric Acid. Look at the top of a car batery sometime, that's right! It contains sulfuric acid. And that's not even the tip of the iceberg. Most of the others have the same type of problem with banning them.
Moral of the story: You can't legislate morality. You can't FORCE people to "be good" because you made a law that says they have to! Sorry about the reality check, but that's life.
I believe every OS/2 CDROM has disk images on it. You need LOADDSKF.EXE to make the floppies. The images are .DSK files IIRC. Just make all of them and boot from disk 0. OS/2 2.1 took about 30 floppies, but didn't use all of them. Many of them are just device drivers. After that I bought a CDROM, but there was a directory with the images on all the ones I got. I even used it once to replace a bad disk 0. ;) I think LOADDSKF.EXE is on the CD as well. Oh, it's a dual-mode EXE file, DOS or OS/2 can run it!
I've thought about doing this for awhile. I have been lacking the time to learn the required skills. If there is interest in getting a team together to design a SOM/WPS system for Linux, I'm game. I'll even have some time to work on it soon. ;)
This is the one thing I would want to make my Linux experience complete. KDE and GNOME are nice, but neither holds a candle to WPS.
I started using OS/2 at version 2.0. I first got it because I wanted to multitask on a 386/25. I had a BBS I ran, and needed to use the computer while it was going. A BBS doesn't use much in the way of system resources, so I figgured it would be easy.. it wasn't. DesqView was as close as I could get. Then I found OS/2.
:) If you want an easy to use GUI, in a system you can get up and running very quickly without editing text files, it's great. If you want flexability and source code, UNIX is where it's at. It all depends on what you want in an OS. I use Linux a lot, and I really like it. I still load up OS/2 once in a while, but I've moved so much of my work to Linux now that I just don't need it as much anymore. I still miss the GUI though.
Keep in mind, this was about 1993, Win95 had not even been announced. There was talk about Ciaro, Chicago, or whatever, but it was all vapor.
I still like it's GUI better then anything else I can find. Including KDE and GNOME. WPS is intuitive, fast, and can be very good-looking with help. IBM is a business company, so the defaults were a bit dry, but with a little config it can be really nice. And there are no config files you need to mess with to do it. You can improve performance by editing CONFIG.SYS, but it's not required. OS/2 can perform resonably well on my old 386/25. Linux/X is painfull.
As for your comments, Yes, it has a command shell, with DOS-like commands. It was marketed as a DOS replacement, so they wanted it to be familiar. There were 2 command shells, the OS/2 shell, and the DOS emulator. It's DOS emulation is amazing, more so considering the time it was written. There were programs I couldn't run in real dos that worked great in OS/2's DOS box.
The GUI is of thier own design. It's object oriented, and very feature rich. M$ only wishes they could write such a good GUI. The default configs sucked though, you really had to take a little time and edit the color scheme and maybe throw a background up. It is nothing at all like X, nor was it ever intended to be as far as I can tell. I found it much eaiser to learn WPS then most X window managers.
It does not come with remote administration. That is one area I always thought they needed to work on. There are programs like PCAnywhere for it, but that's not nearly as good as a UNIX system's capabilities.
I thought the interface was eaiser then anything else I've used before or since. It made a ton of sense once you remembered you have more then one mouse button. EVERYTHING could be right-clicked to get a context menu. And most programs included that support too. The Win-OS/2 program was a bit of a hack, but it was a pretty good emulator. It basicly ran Win3.1 under it's DOS emulator. The windowed version was a video driver hack. There is probably some stuff the WINE team could use in that area.
It's great because at that time there was nothing that could touch it based on technology and usabilty. I think there are a few things they should have fixed early on, that they knew about and gave us kludges for. Like the SIQ problem. Now, I'd say Linux has gotten close to it's technology, but has a ways to go before usability can even come close. We had that in OS/2 in 1993! Win95 and NT have decent GUI's, but still lack when compared to OS/2. WPS and SOM still have no equal, IMO.
Is it better then UNIX? That all depends. For UNIX users, probably not. For OS/2 users, certainly. For Windows users, well, anything is better!
I really wish IBM would just open the source under GPL or some other OSS license and let those of us who want it work on porting the parts we like to Linux. With Linux as the kernel and SOM/WPS as the UI it would really rock. But so far Big Blue has declined many efforts to get the code. In this latest situation Stardock even offered to pay for it, just to make a new version of OS/2 Client. *sigh*
Of course, now there is little software available. So it's been going down for a while. There's some great stuff, but Linux is getting all the attention now. Hopefully IBM will see the light and help us get some of the great parts of OS/2 into Linux. Come on IBM! Follow the lead of SGI! They're giving us XFS, can't you give us WPS/SOM?
You've got part of an idea here... Flesh it out, follow the path back to where it started going downhill.
Education in the US got worse when the government took control over it and created a monopoly. Sure, you can pay to put your kid in private school. But you shouldn't have to pay for everyone else's kids in the public school system in that case. Not to mention those of us who have no kids. Why am *I* paying for other people's education? I'd rather further my own. Since people lose about 30% to taxes (at least that's what comes out of my paycheck) they don't have the cash to put thier kids in private school. And public school is "free". Of course, they are still paying for it, they just don't see it. It's like me telling you that you have to pay me money each year for your childs education AND you have to pay someone else to ACCUALLY educate you kid. Are you going to pay me?? Of course not. So why do you pay the government? If you don't have kids in there, you shouldn't have to pay for it.
Getting the government out just means more freedom for parents to decide how to educate thier kids and it stops stealing the resources they need to pay for that decision. If thier kids don't want to attend a particular school, and they agree, they can let them go to work, or go to a tech school, home school, whatever.
As for the other comments about more bums etc.. I doubt it would be a problem. People usually realize that there is no money in having no skills and will take some training and get a job. Not to mention, the parents still have final say till the kids are 18. Besides, there's always work to be done cleaning all those new schools after the staff and students have left for the day. Or any of the other labor type jobs. And with a little school they could become mechanics or even *gasp* computer help desk etc.. Point is, there is work available even for people of little skill. And oppertunities to move up in the world with a little work. Sure, you don't start out making much, but it's enough to support yourself on. And the taxes would be lower (because they stopped stealing money for education, because as voters you kicked out the people that refused to, RIGHT??) So they would keep more of what they earn.
Before government got involved education was much better. People left school knowing how to read, write, and do basic math. Sure, some people didn't go, and didn't learn it on thier own. Like today, there was work for them to do.
Blah. So what? With local console access I could break into any x86 machine I've ever seen. Sometimes it taks a lot of effort, but if the machine is stolen and I have the time to open it I can get into it. No x86 box I've ever seen stores passwords anywhere other then CMOS, that is erasable via a jumper on the motherboard or removing the battery for a while. Even in the off chance it were FLASH, just call arround a bit. There are always chips available. Not to mention most Flashable BIOS units have a special key combo you can use to initialize the FLASH sequence, used in case you try to update your FLASH and it doesn't work right and kills your box. It just loads the flash image from floppy.
;) Of course the image name could be different, hit tab. ;) I believe there is even a key combo to get the lilo prompt if it's set to not show it.
As for getting into Linux, how do you boot? LILO probably, most people running Linux use it. At the prompt just type "linux single" sometime and see what it does.
Or I could just take out the HD and put another one in. Most systems are set to autodetect the HDs on bootup, and will change the config automaticly without needing BIOS config.
Of course, the point of this message is that nothing is secure if the attacker has physical access to it. Crackers have broken hardware security many times in the past, and probably will continue to. Most dongles are crackable, Playstation, DVD Region codes, Computers, Networks, and probably a ton of other stuff I haven't thought of.
Now now, don't go advocating violence. There is no need for it.
If everyone like you, who feels there is no viable option in the established political system would go VOTE we wouldn't have this problem! The Libertarians have been growing steadily for the past 20 years, but we need all the help we can get. Let's exhaust all peacefull measures before we go calling for revolution.
I say again, if you don't like this QUIT VOTING FOR THEM!!! And don't just not vote either, that's become a sign that you don't care or are generally happy with the way things are to the Republicrat polititions. There is only ONE political party I'm aware of that consistantly fights for your rights, the Libertarian Party. Slashdoters are generally able to see through the FUD, if you don't like them for some reason, feel free to send me email and I'll hapilly debate you on it. Even better, find out what they stand for with your brain! www.lp.org.
Abuse of freedom??? Nope, sorry, you can't abuse freedom unless you cause harm to someone else. The parent approved of the children seeing the movie in this case. She simply couldn't stay with them. I don't see a problem here. If a law is unjust, it is the responsibility of the citizens to refuse to observe it. It's called "civil dissobedience", look it up. Mr. Katz is using is actions to speak out for freedom and the rights of parents to decide what is and is not "OK" for thier kids. I see no problem with this. He is relating the story to us to let us all know that he doesn't like the law, and what he did about it. If you don't want your kids to watch something, tell them and handle it however you wish to. But please allow the same freedom to everyone else.
/. page I'm viewing right now.. "Do not think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold." It's particularly revelant in discussions about religion.
As for the religious stuff, keep in mind that relgious freedom means just that. Not just freedom to be Christian. I respect your views, and will not try to force you to change them. All I ask in return is that you do the same for everyone else you don't agree with. I've studied Christianity, and IMO it's the Christian thing to do. Lucifer was cast out because he couldn't accept that God wanted to allow people to make thier own choices (he wanted to force everyone to do the right thing). It's all right there in your Bible, the book of Gennisis, IIRC. I think it's great that you stick to your beliefs, that's rare in this day and age. I'd just ask that you consider the fact that not everyone agrees with you and let everyone else live thier life the way they want to, and to raise thier kids the way they want to.
BTW: Most religious people I've spoken to agree with my reading of that part of the Bible, so I'm not alone here. And before you flame me as an ignorant person who doesn't know religion, I've read most of the Bible, The Book of Mormon, and parts of other things like the Koran. I've also studied most variants of Chirstianity and a few other religions in my search for spiritual enlightenment. I think I at least have part of a clue.
I like the tagline on the
Best wishes.
You didn't leave an email address. ;)
Oh.. my above address doesn't work.. if you want to contact me use bigboss@xmission.com
"The same thing that gives you the right to state your opinions. If you can work out what that is, just recognise the same rights for him."
/. posts seem to have an interesting way of obscuring the meaning of one's words. I never said he can't state his oppinion. If it seemed that way, my mistake. However, this is really far from the point I was attempting to make.
Hmmm...
"But of course he insists that he's right and that people who disagree with him are wrong - by definition his views are the ones that he considers to be right. Just like you insist that you're right and he's wrong. "
Quite true. But I am not going about telling the world they should be calling a product something else. I'm not calling everyone else down for not calling it what *I* think it should be called. I'm just saying that I think it should be called "Linux" for a number of reasons that are important to me. I am also saying he can call it whatever he wants, but should afford that same right to others instead of correcting them every time they say "Linux" rather then "GNU/Linux" or "The GNU System". As has been reported here and in other places. I have never spoken to him myself, but the GNU press releases and various interviews have him consistantly acting in this manner.
"Do you seriously believe that Linux / Free Software / whatever you believe in is in danger from it being found out that people in the movement (even prominent people) act like humans? "
There is a difference between acting like a human and acting like a spoiled, petty, child. To have a professional disagreement is one thing. To run about causing all the noise RMS has is another. This is, of course, my oppinion and you may feel differently.
As to the bit about Linux/Free software being in danger. It is, if the goal is mainstream acceptance. If the goal is free software for the sake of free software, then I doubt it will ever be in real danger. It's a matter of perspectives. I would like to see free software and Linux become accepted in the industry at large. Perhaps so far as to be the "standard". I have purely selfish reasons for wanting this, like being able to work on STABLE systems for a change. NT is driving me crazy.
"Like i said, i think he should give up on the name because "Linux" has too much momentum as the name for the system, not just the kernel, for him to succeed. but important as he and the FSF are to the movement, I think the idea that the movement will be wrecked by his views on the name is totally implausible."
Fans of OS/2 didn't see it getting marginalized at it's peak either. A few key mistakes by IBM killed it, as a mainstream product. It was "implausible" to us that a great product would be basicly killed by a few mistakes. It was.
And it's not his views on the name I'm concerned with. It's his behaviour regarding his views on the name. I don't think it matters what anyone calls it, if you want to run arround calling it "StupidiX", fine. But to cause this uproar over such a silly, petty, thing as the name, makes us all look bad. Remember, the people making the decisions on what software to deploy are PHBs. They know only what they read in the papers. To see this going on sends the message that we can't even figgure out what to call the damn thing, how could we write decent software?. This damages the credibility of Free Software and Linux in thier eyes. Those who know the benefits of Free Software and Linux are not the people we need to convince. It's the people that sign the checks, the PHBs.
I don't recall the poster saying that RMS can't call it whatever he wants. He objects to RMS spouting off about it to the press. It doesn't help that he is saying stuff like: "The GNU system, whether you call it GNU or whether you think it's Linux". THINK it's Linux?? The world has been calling it that for YEARS. What gives him the right to make a statement like that? This is basicly saying that it's not Linux, and nobody should be calling it that.
Now, that said, I will be the first in line to praise RMS for what he has accomplished. All the GNU tools are great, I use them and like them. And if he wants to reffer to Linux as GNU/Linux or "The GNU system", then more power to him. I object to his insistance that the rest of us are wrong and HE is right, that HE should set the name for this system.
At this late satge of the game this type of thing is dissasterous. Regardless of your stance on the name issue, this infighting makes all of us look like petty, stupid children. The press is going to pick up on this and it could deal a nasty blow to the Linux momentum. I can see the M$ FUD now, "Linux is going to splinter just like the old UNIX systems, then you will have to worry about all kinds of incompatibilities. With M$ software you don't have that problem, we control it all."
If RMS wants to kill the free software movement, this is a damn good way to start. If he really wanted it called GNU/Linux or whatever, he should have said something in the begining, before we started gaining market acceptance. It's too late now. We need to project an image of unity to the outside world. We need to show them we can avoid the problems that created all those different, incompatible UNIX systems, and to some degree the different flavors of BSD. Or we lose.
Is the goal here Freedom? "World Dommination"? If we are to get there, we need to be able to grant everyone the freedom to call it what they want. If Debian wants to call it GNU/Linux, fine. But those who want to call it that need to grant the same right to those of us who preffer "Linux". There is room for everyone. But this petty squabling needs to come to an end.
If you don't feel comfortable doing it, DON'T. It's a complex procedure involving soldering leads within a sub-milimeter tollerance. All that while not overheating the board so you don't damage the BGA mounted dragonball. Not for the faint-of-heart. If you haven't done close pitch soldering before, don't even think about doing it without at least getting some practice in on a board you don't care about.
;)
There are some guys getting an opperation underway to sell this as a service. I believe they wanted $150 to upgrade a Palm V. Opening the case without damage is tough, and the soldering isn't easy either, even for the experienced. I'd say it's a fair price. They say they will also sell upgraded units. Keep in mind, doing something like this will void your waranty. If you break it, or have someone else break it for you, don't call 3Com.
As for if you need it, I'd say no. I'm not using the 1MB my pro came with.. Of course that didn't stop me from upgrading it to 2MB anyway, but that's not the point.
Travis
Someone is selling one on EBay... $135 I think. It's a plug in replacement if you're willing to perform open-case surgery your III. :)
There we go. That's accually a good example.
I have to admit I'm not as familiar as I should be with the situation there. I think the basis of the problem with them is that they export everything. It all goes to other countries where people can afford the products. So here in the US and Canada we see those great shoes or whatever. Of course, they could be made domesticly, but it would cost more so the big companies exploit the Asian people to raise thier bottom line. It's easy to get what passes for a good "economy" in a situation like that. There is money flowing in and out of the country, so they declare it a good economy. But with all of the products being exported, they can't be used to raise the quality of life for those people. And the only people making real money are the people who hold the contracts with the companies elsewhere. The ones exploiting the workers. This is a regretable situation. It seems to me to have many parallels to the situation with the industrial revolution here in the US. Many workers were exploited to make the rich richer. I think I see what you're getting at here, but there is recourse available to people, and the way things are here in the present I can't see anyone getting away with something like that, even if the laws against it were removed. We are quite sensitive to things like that now, and would organize boycotts and such.. I don't feel that the laws regarding such things should be removed, but perhaps rewriten a bit. I would need more research on the topic to discuss that.
I think that the attitude that the economy is good while the people suffered could have contributed to the Asian market crash. As well as the great depression here in the US. At some point the money will stop flowing because there are not enough end customers to keep it self-sustaining. At that point the economy will crash.
I think the problem is how "economy" is defined. It seems to currently be used to discuss how much companies are making, rather then the health of the society. Durring the downsizing period you mention the profit margins of companies went up. Thus they term it a good economy. I have to agree with you in that it seems silly to do that. I think more needs to be considered to guage the economic health of a country.
What, exactly, do you "get back" in Canada? As I said, I'm not very familiar with the way things are done up north. Are we talking about government programs designed to help people with things? Such as housing, schooling, medical care, etc.?
It could be that your government accually makes good use of the funds it collects and has decent programs to help the people. But in the US I can bet most anyone will tell you it's not that way here. And not because they don't have money available to do it, because they are very wastefull and don't have the slightest idea what's going on arround them. What happens here is very simple, those of us in the "middle class" pay all the taxes, while the poor get dependant on handouts and the rich hide behined all thier tax shelters that the middle class can't afford.
The poor people on government programs can't afford to try to get a job and make life better for themselves because the government has it set up in such a way that the day they get a job they are off any kind of assistance. I believe it should cut off, but at least give them a chance to get a paycheck. This happened to someone I know. This creates a cycle of dependancy that is tough to break.
Most people I speak with in the US feel that the government corruption is so bad that it is literally "he who has the gold, makes the rules". The rich lobby the government and give "campaign contributions" (I call them bribes). And oh, look, the laws that get passed benefit the rich somehow.
This is the primary reason we have a problem in the US, IMO. The government was supposed to be, "By the People, For the People". That means ALL the people. And it's not.
This is why I presently subscribe the the Libertarian Party viewpoint. I think we need to move toward that direction. All the way there? Maybe not, nobody is always right, but it's a place to start. What choice to we have? Both the Democrats and the Republicans have made it worse, and put us in this situation to begin with. They have been given many, many chances to fix it, and always say they will, only to get back into office and give us more of the same. When groups start organizing and getting ready to go to war with the government, there is a problem. The militia movement in the US demonstrates this. The government still fails to get the message.
Remember, we have multipule parties to balance each other out. With the Democrats and the Republicans both much the same now, we need something else. It's no wonder to me that the vast majority of us in the US don't vote. We have had nobody to vote FOR! But to not vote just tells them we want more of the same, it no longer sends a statement other then that.
While an assumption behined capitalism is that a better economy means a healtier society, it is a proven FACT that socialisim doesn't work and only makes life worse for the masses then capitalism. You end up with fewer rich people at the top of the chain and far more people in a far worse situation then our poor people here in the US have to deal with in most cases. Not to mention no hope of ever getting a chance to make a better life for yourself. At least in the US you could start in the mailroom and become an executive in 20 years. I'll be the first to say it doesn't happen often anymore with the huge turnover rates I see arround me, but it can, and has happened.
Those are, of course, the two extremes. There is a large grey area in the middle where most every country now resides. Perhaps Canada has found a good balance. I don't know, I've never lived there. Or perhaps Ammericans just have different expectations. Keep in mind that this country exists because the colonists were sick of TAXES. And we pay far more in taxes then they did.
We're getting a bit far-flung for a SlashDot discussion, reply to Email if you want. We're allready way off topic.
Travis
Sob story? Look who's talking! "We were treated like shit because we were immigrants from India" Yeah yeah...
BTW: Using a personal example isn't a sob story, it's a statement of supporting evidence from real life.
Again, you say government costs money, I provided alternate sources of revenue for a government and you get out a flamethrower. Are you capable of holding an inteligent conversation? Or is everyone that doesn't subscribe to your viewpoint without comment sick and wrong?
Yes, there were problems with the industrial revolution. There are problems with ANY change. There are also problems with just leaving things the way they are and ignoring the problem.
And the slaves were used for a number of things. Which is a moot point anyway as slavery was outlawed shortly afterward and still is.
There were a number of contributing causes to the great depression, it's niave to say that one thing alone could cause something so sweeping.
The economy is a measure of how people are doing. If there are no customers spending money, just how healthy do you think an enocomy can be? If the government is stealing our money, we have less to spend on other things. Thus lowering the overall health of the economy at large. It's simple cause and effect relationship.
Who is talking about buzzwords here, hmmmm? You're flaming about and playing the slavery card. As if profanity makes a better argument. In this last message you prove you have no clue. Go do some research and come back with inteligent arguments or go away. I won't respond to another message like the last one, as there is no point. If your entire argument rests on swearing and the contents of the first message, you have proven that you don't know what you're talking about and like to ignore factual evidence.
Travis
The problem with your supposition is that the USA got by just fine for about 100 years without taxes. This, durring the industrial revolution. We led the way in pretty much every area of technology and innovation. Now, there is so much government interfernece and taxation that we are starting to fall behind. The Asian market crash is the only reason we still have the lead. Winning, and being lost too, are different.
It all comes down to if you think the government can do a better job of managing your money then you can. If they can make your life better then you can. I know, from experience, that they can't. If I did not have about $800/month STOLEN from me, I'd be quite well off, have no debt, and be in a nice home. Instead, I'm working my way out of debt SLOWLY, and renting a room. Yes, it's my fault I'm there, but I don't expect anyone to just hand me the money to get out, and I don't see the government looking to hand me MY money to pay for it with. Oh, and did I mention that the $800/month I pay to the government WAS NOT ENOUGH??? I still owe about $600 MORE!!!! This is causing me to be forced to live a lifestyle I do not enjoy. If I had all the money that is being stolen from me in my bank account, I would be much better off.
It's called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. And it's a premise that this country was built on. I don't know jack about Canadian history, so I won't comment on them. But here we created a country based on freedom and personal responsibility. And I, for one, would preffer it went back to that.
Any way you slice it, taxation is wealth redistribution. The government is attempting to play at Robin Hood. And doing a poor job of it I might add.
If you like the way they do things in Canada, I wish you the best. Enjoy it. I preffer the way our founding fathers designed this country and would like it to return to its previous way of doing things. What we have now causes more problems then it solves.
Travis
Go follow the link... they have a mirror link on the "Hard Limit Reached" notice! ;)
./ that server too!
Let's
For one, I allready have to pay for garbage collection. It's about $15/month to a private company. They provide the big plastic things to put the trash in, and drive arround and pick it up. Easy, and worth it, IMO.
Note that the LP (Libertarian Party) believes that the government's place is to protect life and property. They believe the government should have both a police force, as well as a military force. However, our military should not be running arround the planet interfering with other countries. We are not the worlds' police force. The police and defence would be paid for by tarrifs and service fees. Sort of like taxes I suppose, but your money goes to a specific service, not to the general fund that they can do anything they want with. It's very specific, and you can tell what they are doing, full disclosure.
And yes, if you don't own a car you shouldn't have to pay for the roads. If you want to ride the train, for example, the train fares you pay go toward maintaining the tracks and the trains themselves. If you drive a car, you allready pay property taxes on the car. I would think that a good soultion for the roads is to charge you a "road maintance fee" instead. As I said, it's basicly the same as a tax, but you only pay if you use the service and the money goes only to certain things. The DMV arround here probably collects billions in property taxes and Driver Licence fees. That should support the roads reasonably well.
Basicly, the government should provide services and charge for them like a business. What do you think taxes are? It's just that you can't see where taxes are going, and they always seem to go up with no benefit to me. In a fee-for-service structure, you know exactly what you are paying for.
If the government had to live within it's means and charge a fair fee for it's services we would all be better off. If the people won't pay for a service, we don't need it. This gives the power to the people, where it belongs.
It should be noted that I do not speak for the LP. I've just been researching them since I couldn't find anyone to vote *FOR*. The big 2 parties both suck, and I was looking for someone. The way I see it, not voting just tells them we want more of the same. Voting for the LP tells them I want my freedom. In any case, voting for any other party tells them I am not happy, which I want to do. I want the Republicrats to know I am not happy at all with the way they are handling things.
Do a little research before dismissing them as a group. You may be surprised, if you're willing to be open minded and logical about it. Compare the pros and cons and make up your own mind. The message you posted was just regurgitated drivel from the Republicrats, THINK!
For a good place to get info on the LP platform head over to LP Home.
PPP???? What are you smoking?
;)
The first time I did the text configs manually. The HOWTO gave me everything I needed. I even got diald working on the first try.
The second time I found the RedHat GUI utilities very usefull. Point, click, dial, done. Worked great from the control-panel RedHat wrote as well as LinuxConf. I hear KPPP works well too, but I have DSL now so I don't care.
How can you bet that a libertarian government wouldn't do the exact same shit? Every party that has gotten into power talks one story and acts another...until we have a whole load of libertarians in office don't you dare go around spouting how much different it would be.
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So doing *NOTHING* is better??? How long shall the Ammerican people stand by and let the government trample them??? I agree, there is a chance the Libertarians will do the SAME things as the big 2. However, that is not a reason not to vote for them. The alternative, IMO, is to NOT VOTE! The other 2 both suck. The message THAT sends to polititions is that we are HAPPY with the way things are going!!!! We need to stand up and DEMAND CHANGE. We need to vote thier fat asses OUT if they don't do what we say, and NOW. Voting Libertarian sends a message, that we don't want the government meddling in our lives. And that we WILL vote them out (FIRE THEM) if they don't do what we want to vote how we tell them to.
Right now, like every monopoly, they don't give a shit because THEY DON'T HAVE TO. YOU WILL KEEP TAKING IT IN THE ASS, SO WHY NOT KEEP PUSHING!?!?!
Oops.... I typed it wrong on SlashDot. I'll get ti corrected. It's bigboss@my-dejanews.com. I notice I had an underscore in there.. if that bounces for some reason use bigboss@xmission.com.
If all they wanted was to be sure credit is given to the CDDB when lookups are performed the license would have said something simple. Such as: Durring all lookups of CDDB information the user will be notified in a conspicous manner that CDDB is the source of Album/Title information.
Restricting re-distribution of data they don't own as well as the other things people have allready commented on is what has people upset.
Even if, for the sake of argument, it has not yet become an "ugly corporate monster", the writing is on the wall, so to speak. A license like this one tells OSS people that this company plans to become an "ugly corporate monster" and this bothers us becuase WE created that database! It came, at least in part, from user submissions.
Also, those players and utilities that support lookups are ALLREADY telling users about it! The only ones I've used that support it make a big deal out of it because it's so nice! Not to mention people like myself that use it mostly in scripts, we can't display logos or hyperlinks to your WWW site! You do remember text mode, don't you?
That is why there is a call right now to produce a free, open spec that anyone can use in any way they want. No companies restricting the uses or forcing people to display logos and such. I, and many others, find such restrictions horrid and refuse to support those who would use them.
You may want to look in on the other side of the fence and try to see why people are upset.
Travis
Catch some of the earlier posts.. there is another guy who mentioned it first.. we should work together to form this thing.
As for resources. I have a gig or two available (since the last known size I'm aware of on that database is 50Meg it's not a big problem). I also have 256K DSL I'm willing to use for this. I sugest we think up a way to distribute the load so that one server doesn't have to carry the entire burden.
I can't get a response from the server.. are we SlashDotted allready??
Simple soultion. Get a small Gell-Cell battery to run it from. Then connect that battery to the car power supply with a charging circuit. Now you have a backup power supply. You need to put good filtering on the supply from the car, large caps should help. Or, better yet, find a way to power it isolated from the main car supply. A switching power supply with a small transformer would do. Most DC/DC converters are built like this.