he still has a few things to discover about what makes a Christian.
As do all Christians who voted for him, unless I missed the Biblical amendment where "Thou shalt not lie" and "When someone hits your cheek, offer him the other" were changed to "Lie to cover up your mistakes" and "Invade sovereign nations that you have a grudge against".
There's just something Christian hypocrisy... the Puritans would be proud.
Too late to change anything, but I'm curious about your standings (especially since you sound intelligent and claimed to not have voted for $Diety):
1. You say Kerry's health plan was unworkable - how did you come to that conclusion?
2. You said you have "general misgivings that any man worth $160M can somehow connect with the Average American" - are you aware of Bush's net worth? (For the record, Kerry's net worth is a fraction of Bush's if you exclude Teresa)
3. You said you are sold on "concrete plans with milestones and goals". What concrete plans with milestones & goals did Bush present?
4. Final question - you say you realize now that the war was unjustified. How do you feel about Bush's claim that if he had to do it all over again, even knowing what we know now, that'd he do it just the same?
I promise I'm not a troll - I'm just trying to understand why intelligent, informed people might have voted for Bush.
Well, let's see.. who sponsored the training of Osama bin Laden decades ago? Who turned Afghanistan into a battle ground between "the good guys" and "the communists"?
Islamic militants may be to blame for 9/11, but US foreign policy deserves a lot of blame for creating the islamic militants to begin with. Or, at the very least, for fanning the flames of their hatred.
Killing someone in a car might be covered by manslaughter or murder laws, but driving still has it's own set of regulations to prevent you driving through residential areas at 100mph.
Yes, and as we all know, no one EVER speeds in residential areas.
Like another poster said, you just can't regulate human stupidity.
I was agreeing with your post, right until you said "Bush is doing something decisive about it".
I guess you are right - but I do not believe it is decisive in a positive way. I don't think we made a lot of friends by preemptively invading Iraq when it was clear at the time (as it is now), that Iraq had little or nothing to do with 9/11 and terrorism. There are better ways to make international friends, such as a foreign policy that significantly reduces its meddling in 3rd world governments.
On an unrelated note, I like the link in your sig. Hopefully one day our voting system will evolve to one where we each feel we have voted for the candidate(s) who best represent our interests!
While I do agree that there is a lot of controversy over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, it's hyperbole to say it "blatantly violates the First Amendment". At best, it's a grey area, since the Supreme Court has upheld similar restrictions when it comes to contributions and candidate attack ads. The wording of law, based on what I've read, will not restrict actual issue advocacy ads, but rather the sham ads that have been funded by corporate and union money that was not held accountable under previous electioneering laws.
As opposed to the USA PATRIOT Act, which has much more clear violations of the Constitution - namely the 4th Amendment. Check out this article's analysis of section 215 of the act.
We're obviously on different sides of the fence, but I appreciate good political discussion:-)
Having said that, the notion that the Bush administration has not used the PATRIOT Act to protect us from terrorist attacks is just plain wrong. Many attacks have been foiled, including major ones.
Any evidence to back that up? I would be curious to know how many "foiled terrorist attacks" there were before and after the USA PATRIOT Act was passed. Assuming the number has gone up, then what percentage of those used powers granted under the USA PATRIOT Act? It's not a simple scientific query - there were many changes made in public & private attitudes and perceptions after 9/11. I would hypothesize that increased public awareness alone probably foiled more terrorist attacks than powers granted by the USA PATRIOT Act. Richard Reid's (aka The Shoe Bomber's) attempted terrorism is just such an example. He was a British passenger on a flight outbound from Paris, and it was observant passengers & flight attendents who prevented him from blowing up the blame. Not FBI agents looking at his library records, nor police secretly reviewing his financial affairs.
You're comparison of the war on terrorism with the war on drugs is typical of the misconceptions here on/. The war on terrorism is very real whether or not you have your head buried in the ground.
I believe terrorism is very real. We've had terrorism before 9/11, on 9/11, and we will continue to have it after 9/11. The terrorists will change, their motivations and methods will change, but we'll always have terrorism. This "war on terrorism" is a catch-phrase, a gimmick. It is the Bush administration's way to ignore all of the complicated, messy details of why terrorism exists, and instead to fill the newspapers and talk shows with a simple "We're the righteous good guys, and we're going to kill the terrorist bad guys" message.
Terrorism works because it preys upon people's fears. This "war on terrorism" does the same thing - it creates and exploits the public's fears.
I'm sorry, but the fact that a law entitled "USA PATRIOT Act" passed the Senate almost unanimously, just 45 days after a major terrorist attack on US soil, with NO discussion or debate, does not strike you as un-democratic?
Thankfully ONE of our senators, Russ Feingold (D-WI), actually has a clue.
I, for one, do NOT believe that the USA PATRIOT Act has stopped ANY terrorist attack, anymore than the No-Child Left Behind Act. After all, we haven't had any terrorist attacks since NCLB passed, right? Repeat after me: Correlation != Causation.
The failures that led to 9/11, as I understand them, were not from a lack of power or authority by intelligence agencies. It was due to poor communication and poor management. The "war on terror" is, IMHO, the new "war on drugs". It's an Orwellian war - never-ending war on a faceless enemy that you must support or else you are unpatriotic.
Are terrorists out there? Yes. Not all of them are hail from Saudi Arab^H^H^HIraq. Some are American citizens (McVeigh, for one. And anyone remember the Unabomber?) Will giving up our essential freedoms protect us from the terrorists? No. I don't feel any safer on an airplane now that I know no one on board has a tweezers, nail clips, or cuticle scissors. I don't feel safer knowing the the FBI can demand my library reservations, financial records, and health history, all without my knowledge (secret searches), with no judicial oversight. If you think I'm exaggerating, I suggest you read up a bit.
But the terrorists are really out to get us, folks. They tell us every day, and they are not kidding.
Parent is right - its not a bug in Windows itself, but rather a piece of software running on Windows - from (one of the)FA's:
Richard Riggs, an advisor to the technicians union, said the FAA - the American aviation regulator - had been planning to fix the program for some time. "They should have done it before they fielded the system," he said.
The GP was comparing running Firefox vs IE/Avant/XP SP2/Ad-blocker software, on Windows. Clearly, Firefox is easier to install & use. The fact that Firefox binary releases don't work well on a Gnome1 system is completely irrelevant.
At least you were nice enough to not completely blame Mozilla.org:)
Um, because that doesn't disable or destroy anything other than itself. It Office or Windows wiped your drive after the 30 days, Microsoft would be looking at the wrong end of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.
Define 'disable'. If you are not prepared nor capable of reinstalling Windows with a legitimate activation key, and Windows won't let you log in to save your files, I'd say the computer is pretty well disabled. Now, you could argue that a savvy user could still boot to command-line mode, or boot to Knoppix and rescue the files, just as a savvy user using this developer's software could have rescued their ~ dir from/tmp. But if you don't know the tools or methods that are out there (most Windows users don't), then the net result is the same - your data is gone.
Or, similarly, you restore your system after Windows deactivates, and the restore process wipes your data by re-imaging the drive - again, you lose your data.
Now in both of these cases, there is much more warning (Microsoft's annoying reminders and probably the system restore process has a big red warning message) and time (30 days) for a user to seek help, but that's just a matter of degree. How much warning is enough? Just a EULA? Or a nag screen? How much time is enough time - 30 days? 15 days? or how about 15 minutes?
And finally, how savvy does a user have to be to recover their data - do they have to know about Knoppix? Or how to recover deleted files? Or is the data securely deleted, no chance of recovery, hope you have backups?
Like I said, I don't agree with the developer's decision to do what he did, but I don't see it as being that different than what Microsoft does - it's on the same spectrum, just farther down.
This should be modded up - here is a large outcry against one developer attempting to protect his intellectual property (granted, an unpopular concept here on/. it seems) with malicious consequences for pirating the software.
How is this different from Microsoft's "activate within 30 days or the Windows/Office becomes unusable"? If your computer won't boot to desktop or you can't read your files because you pirated the software, should Microsoft be legally liable for damages? What if you try to restoring your system with the system cds, which wipes out your home directory? At what point do we cross the line between "developer's fault" and "user's stupidity"?
Or my favorite - "I lost / misplaced my registration key, so I just found one on the net". Just because you can't manage your information (== email or reg keys) effectively, does not give you the right to use an illicit key and expect to be recognized as a legit user. Microsoft doesn't care if you bought a license to XP & then used a warez key.
I agree that what the developer did is wrong, and the community has clearly demonstrated that to him (the product is already discontinued).
I don't know the legal ramifications of what the developer did, but as many others have stated in this thread, the legality of EULAs is so far untested. I assume the program had a EULA that, at least on the surface, would appear to protect the developer (ie has a clause that says "Developer is not responsible for anything that happens, ever", like all EULAs do). The chain of "fault" would probably go something like doctor (for malpractice), the hospital / clinic (for allowing unauthorized software to access or delete medical records), and then *maybe* the developer for potentially malicious code.
Of course he'll get off free... as soon as the RNC is over. After all, why go the trouble of booking him, and going to court and the appeals process, when you can just hold him for a few days, without charges, until the RNC is over, and then say "Oh well, guess we can't charge you, you're free to go".
I think this is a wonderful idea! Unfortunately, I don't have much faith that it would ever happen, since lawyers tend to be a very powerful lobby, not to mention that many of our Congress-critters are lawyers, and trying to "socialize" them would produce probably the loudest screams for "free market!" and "capitalism!" that this country has ever heard.
Scientists have to work VERY hard to secure funds for their endevours. It can take literally YEARS to secure the funding for a SINGLE project! If they've built something that costs 1 million, you can bet that they only had money enough to build ONE.
I hate to say it, but then the scientists need to find someone WITH A COMPUTER SECURITY CLUE!
I don't expect physicists to know how to secure a network. But I would expect that, if they are dealing with precious data and networks, that they would hire or find volunteers to help protect that data. Too bad it doesn't sound like that's the case.
Sounds like either your computer or your install got corrupted. I've been using OO.org for about 2 years, for everything from presentations to my wedding invitations, and have never had the types of problems you describe. Sometimes converting presentations to Powerpoint has object placement issues, but for the most part everything else I've tried just works. The new export to PDF in 1.1 (I think?) is just great - it produces great, small PDFs! And I've been able to create address labels, as well, and the standard Avery label numbers were already built-in.
In fact, one of the few occassions that OpenOffice did crash on me, it recovered gracefully on the next startup. MS Office seems to have gotten better in 2k/XP with that, but 97 was pretty bad (which was what I replaced with OO). Also, I love the fact that OO is 100 mb download, versus the 3-4 CDs that MS Office takes.
The only thing I'm missing is an Access-replacement - a nice lightweight database for doing stuff like address books, that doesn't require a full MySQL server, but is painful to do in a spreadsheet.
Many mass-market users don't really know about the wonderful software available online. If they don't see it on the shelves of Best Buy and CompUSA, it doesn't exist in their reality.
Somewhat related example - I was working on a database extract with someone today. He was trying to count columns and ensure the fields were lining up in this ASCII extract file - in *NOTEPAD*. He called me up because he was having so much trouble - apparently Notepad breaks lines at 1024 characters, whether you've got word wrap on or not. Since this format is 1670 characters / line, he was having serious trouble trying to figure out if things were lining up.
The first thing I told him to do was download Crimson Editor, a great freeware text editor (one of many), and his job all of a sudden got an order of magnitude easier!
He's an intelligent guy, knows his stuff (moreso than your average grandmother), but just didn't realize the plethora of tools available online, for absolutely free. There's a lot of people like that.
"The Fifth Sacred Thing" - wonderful book! I think that story really describes the situation & trends we're seeing in a lot of ways in modern American culture. I hope that we realize another way before that fiction has become prophecy!
Until we overhaul the voting system (instant runoff ballots) third parties will continue to be irrelevant. My vote doesn't matter.
I agree with your first thought. However, how do we overhaul the voting system? WE don't - it's the people in power (whom we elected) who have to make the changes. And obviously, they're not going to overhaul a system that works very well for them.
As many others have said in this thread - if all of the people who thought their votes didn't matter would just vote for some third party candidate, that third party candidate would probably win. And why not do it? If you think your vote doesn't matter anyway, than why do you care who you vote for (in the presidential election)? Hopefully you are going to vote in the more local elections anyway, so pick a 3rd party to vote for in the presidential election, too. After all - it doesn't matter anyway, right?:)
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he still has a few things to discover about what makes a Christian.
As do all Christians who voted for him, unless I missed the Biblical amendment where "Thou shalt not lie" and "When someone hits your cheek, offer him the other" were changed to "Lie to cover up your mistakes" and "Invade sovereign nations that you have a grudge against".
There's just something Christian hypocrisy... the Puritans would be proud.
Too late to change anything, but I'm curious about your standings (especially since you sound intelligent and claimed to not have voted for $Diety):
1. You say Kerry's health plan was unworkable - how did you come to that conclusion?
2. You said you have "general misgivings that any man worth $160M can somehow connect with the Average American" - are you aware of Bush's net worth? (For the record, Kerry's net worth is a fraction of Bush's if you exclude Teresa)
3. You said you are sold on "concrete plans with milestones and goals". What concrete plans with milestones & goals did Bush present?
4. Final question - you say you realize now that the war was unjustified. How do you feel about Bush's claim that if he had to do it all over again, even knowing what we know now, that'd he do it just the same?
I promise I'm not a troll - I'm just trying to understand why intelligent, informed people might have voted for Bush.
Except that Linus couldn't be on a presidential ballot for the same reason that the Governator can't. :P
:-P
Except it doesn't matter - read the GP again:
At least that leaves two years to put the backdoor into the voting machines for Stallman/Torvalds vs. and Gates/Ballmer '08.
When you've got l33t 5kilLz, it doesn't matter if your candidate is on the ballot or not
Well, let's see.. who sponsored the training of Osama bin Laden decades ago? Who turned Afghanistan into a battle ground between "the good guys" and "the communists"?
Islamic militants may be to blame for 9/11, but US foreign policy deserves a lot of blame for creating the islamic militants to begin with. Or, at the very least, for fanning the flames of their hatred.
Killing someone in a car might be covered by manslaughter or murder laws, but driving still has it's own set of regulations to prevent you driving through residential areas at 100mph.
Yes, and as we all know, no one EVER speeds in residential areas.
Like another poster said, you just can't regulate human stupidity.
I was agreeing with your post, right until you said "Bush is doing something decisive about it".
I guess you are right - but I do not believe it is decisive in a positive way. I don't think we made a lot of friends by preemptively invading Iraq when it was clear at the time (as it is now), that Iraq had little or nothing to do with 9/11 and terrorism. There are better ways to make international friends, such as a foreign policy that significantly reduces its meddling in 3rd world governments.
On an unrelated note, I like the link in your sig. Hopefully one day our voting system will evolve to one where we each feel we have voted for the candidate(s) who best represent our interests!
While I do agree that there is a lot of controversy over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, it's hyperbole to say it "blatantly violates the First Amendment". At best, it's a grey area, since the Supreme Court has upheld similar restrictions when it comes to contributions and candidate attack ads. The wording of law, based on what I've read, will not restrict actual issue advocacy ads, but rather the sham ads that have been funded by corporate and union money that was not held accountable under previous electioneering laws.
As opposed to the USA PATRIOT Act, which has much more clear violations of the Constitution - namely the 4th Amendment. Check out this article's analysis of section 215 of the act.
We're obviously on different sides of the fence, but I appreciate good political discussion :-)
/. The war on terrorism is very real whether or not you have your head buried in the ground.
Having said that, the notion that the Bush administration has not used the PATRIOT Act to protect us from terrorist attacks is just plain wrong. Many attacks have been foiled, including major ones.
Any evidence to back that up? I would be curious to know how many "foiled terrorist attacks" there were before and after the USA PATRIOT Act was passed. Assuming the number has gone up, then what percentage of those used powers granted under the USA PATRIOT Act? It's not a simple scientific query - there were many changes made in public & private attitudes and perceptions after 9/11. I would hypothesize that increased public awareness alone probably foiled more terrorist attacks than powers granted by the USA PATRIOT Act. Richard Reid's (aka The Shoe Bomber's) attempted terrorism is just such an example. He was a British passenger on a flight outbound from Paris, and it was observant passengers & flight attendents who prevented him from blowing up the blame. Not FBI agents looking at his library records, nor police secretly reviewing his financial affairs.
You're comparison of the war on terrorism with the war on drugs is typical of the misconceptions here on
I believe terrorism is very real. We've had terrorism before 9/11, on 9/11, and we will continue to have it after 9/11. The terrorists will change, their motivations and methods will change, but we'll always have terrorism. This "war on terrorism" is a catch-phrase, a gimmick. It is the Bush administration's way to ignore all of the complicated, messy details of why terrorism exists, and instead to fill the newspapers and talk shows with a simple "We're the righteous good guys, and we're going to kill the terrorist bad guys" message.
Terrorism works because it preys upon people's fears. This "war on terrorism" does the same thing - it creates and exploits the public's fears.
I'm sorry, but the fact that a law entitled "USA PATRIOT Act" passed the Senate almost unanimously, just 45 days after a major terrorist attack on US soil, with NO discussion or debate, does not strike you as un-democratic?
Thankfully ONE of our senators, Russ Feingold (D-WI), actually has a clue.
I, for one, do NOT believe that the USA PATRIOT Act has stopped ANY terrorist attack, anymore than the No-Child Left Behind Act. After all, we haven't had any terrorist attacks since NCLB passed, right? Repeat after me: Correlation != Causation.
The failures that led to 9/11, as I understand them, were not from a lack of power or authority by intelligence agencies. It was due to poor communication and poor management. The "war on terror" is, IMHO, the new "war on drugs". It's an Orwellian war - never-ending war on a faceless enemy that you must support or else you are unpatriotic.
Are terrorists out there? Yes. Not all of them are hail from Saudi Arab^H^H^HIraq. Some are American citizens (McVeigh, for one. And anyone remember the Unabomber?) Will giving up our essential freedoms protect us from the terrorists? No. I don't feel any safer on an airplane now that I know no one on board has a tweezers, nail clips, or cuticle scissors. I don't feel safer knowing the the FBI can demand my library reservations, financial records, and health history, all without my knowledge (secret searches), with no judicial oversight. If you think I'm exaggerating, I suggest you read up a bit.
But the terrorists are really out to get us, folks. They tell us every day, and they are not kidding.
So who are we fighting again? The Eurasians or Eastasians?
Parent is right - its not a bug in Windows itself, but rather a piece of software running on Windows - from (one of the)FA's:
Richard Riggs, an advisor to the technicians union, said the FAA - the American aviation regulator - had been planning to fix the program for some time. "They should have done it before they fielded the system," he said.
(emphasis added)
Bravo - intelligent, thoughtful, insightful post! Wish I had mod points!
So, uh, you run IE on your Gnome1 system instead?
:)
The GP was comparing running Firefox vs IE/Avant/XP SP2/Ad-blocker software, on Windows. Clearly, Firefox is easier to install & use. The fact that Firefox binary releases don't work well on a Gnome1 system is completely irrelevant.
At least you were nice enough to not completely blame Mozilla.org
Um, because that doesn't disable or destroy anything other than itself. It Office or Windows wiped your drive after the 30 days, Microsoft would be looking at the wrong end of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.
/tmp. But if you don't know the tools or methods that are out there (most Windows users don't), then the net result is the same - your data is gone.
Define 'disable'. If you are not prepared nor capable of reinstalling Windows with a legitimate activation key, and Windows won't let you log in to save your files, I'd say the computer is pretty well disabled. Now, you could argue that a savvy user could still boot to command-line mode, or boot to Knoppix and rescue the files, just as a savvy user using this developer's software could have rescued their ~ dir from
Or, similarly, you restore your system after Windows deactivates, and the restore process wipes your data by re-imaging the drive - again, you lose your data.
Now in both of these cases, there is much more warning (Microsoft's annoying reminders and probably the system restore process has a big red warning message) and time (30 days) for a user to seek help, but that's just a matter of degree. How much warning is enough? Just a EULA? Or a nag screen? How much time is enough time - 30 days? 15 days? or how about 15 minutes?
And finally, how savvy does a user have to be to recover their data - do they have to know about Knoppix? Or how to recover deleted files? Or is the data securely deleted, no chance of recovery, hope you have backups?
Like I said, I don't agree with the developer's decision to do what he did, but I don't see it as being that different than what Microsoft does - it's on the same spectrum, just farther down.
This should be modded up - here is a large outcry against one developer attempting to protect his intellectual property (granted, an unpopular concept here on /. it seems) with malicious consequences for pirating the software.
How is this different from Microsoft's "activate within 30 days or the Windows/Office becomes unusable"? If your computer won't boot to desktop or you can't read your files because you pirated the software, should Microsoft be legally liable for damages? What if you try to restoring your system with the system cds, which wipes out your home directory? At what point do we cross the line between "developer's fault" and "user's stupidity"?
Or my favorite - "I lost / misplaced my registration key, so I just found one on the net". Just because you can't manage your information (== email or reg keys) effectively, does not give you the right to use an illicit key and expect to be recognized as a legit user. Microsoft doesn't care if you bought a license to XP & then used a warez key.
This is a ridiculous and stupid example.
I agree that what the developer did is wrong, and the community has clearly demonstrated that to him (the product is already discontinued).
I don't know the legal ramifications of what the developer did, but as many others have stated in this thread, the legality of EULAs is so far untested. I assume the program had a EULA that, at least on the surface, would appear to protect the developer (ie has a clause that says "Developer is not responsible for anything that happens, ever", like all EULAs do). The chain of "fault" would probably go something like doctor (for malpractice), the hospital / clinic (for allowing unauthorized software to access or delete medical records), and then *maybe* the developer for potentially malicious code.
Of course he'll get off free... as soon as the RNC is over. After all, why go the trouble of booking him, and going to court and the appeals process, when you can just hold him for a few days, without charges, until the RNC is over, and then say "Oh well, guess we can't charge you, you're free to go".
So much for "free speech"
I think this is a wonderful idea! Unfortunately, I don't have much faith that it would ever happen, since lawyers tend to be a very powerful lobby, not to mention that many of our Congress-critters are lawyers, and trying to "socialize" them would produce probably the loudest screams for "free market!" and "capitalism!" that this country has ever heard.
:)
Still, it's fun to dream about
Scientists have to work VERY hard to secure funds for their endevours. It can take literally YEARS to secure the funding for a SINGLE project! If they've built something that costs 1 million, you can bet that they only had money enough to build ONE.
I hate to say it, but then the scientists need to find someone WITH A COMPUTER SECURITY CLUE!
I don't expect physicists to know how to secure a network. But I would expect that, if they are dealing with precious data and networks, that they would hire or find volunteers to help protect that data. Too bad it doesn't sound like that's the case.
Shhh! I'm trying to spread anti-MS FUD :)
Sounds like either your computer or your install got corrupted. I've been using OO.org for about 2 years, for everything from presentations to my wedding invitations, and have never had the types of problems you describe. Sometimes converting presentations to Powerpoint has object placement issues, but for the most part everything else I've tried just works. The new export to PDF in 1.1 (I think?) is just great - it produces great, small PDFs! And I've been able to create address labels, as well, and the standard Avery label numbers were already built-in.
In fact, one of the few occassions that OpenOffice did crash on me, it recovered gracefully on the next startup. MS Office seems to have gotten better in 2k/XP with that, but 97 was pretty bad (which was what I replaced with OO). Also, I love the fact that OO is 100 mb download, versus the 3-4 CDs that MS Office takes.
The only thing I'm missing is an Access-replacement - a nice lightweight database for doing stuff like address books, that doesn't require a full MySQL server, but is painful to do in a spreadsheet.
Many mass-market users don't really know about the wonderful software available online. If they don't see it on the shelves of Best Buy and CompUSA, it doesn't exist in their reality.
Somewhat related example - I was working on a database extract with someone today. He was trying to count columns and ensure the fields were lining up in this ASCII extract file - in *NOTEPAD*. He called me up because he was having so much trouble - apparently Notepad breaks lines at 1024 characters, whether you've got word wrap on or not. Since this format is 1670 characters / line, he was having serious trouble trying to figure out if things were lining up.
The first thing I told him to do was download Crimson Editor, a great freeware text editor (one of many), and his job all of a sudden got an order of magnitude easier!
He's an intelligent guy, knows his stuff (moreso than your average grandmother), but just didn't realize the plethora of tools available online, for absolutely free. There's a lot of people like that.
I was thinking something more like this...
What's really going to blow your mind is...
Would he still have liked what he likes if the companies that produced what he likes weren't spending those millions on it?
"The Fifth Sacred Thing" - wonderful book! I think that story really describes the situation & trends we're seeing in a lot of ways in modern American culture. I hope that we realize another way before that fiction has become prophecy!
Until we overhaul the voting system (instant runoff ballots) third parties will continue to be irrelevant. My vote doesn't matter.
:)
I agree with your first thought. However, how do we overhaul the voting system? WE don't - it's the people in power (whom we elected) who have to make the changes. And obviously, they're not going to overhaul a system that works very well for them.
As many others have said in this thread - if all of the people who thought their votes didn't matter would just vote for some third party candidate, that third party candidate would probably win. And why not do it? If you think your vote doesn't matter anyway, than why do you care who you vote for (in the presidential election)? Hopefully you are going to vote in the more local elections anyway, so pick a 3rd party to vote for in the presidential election, too. After all - it doesn't matter anyway, right?