"Sorry, I don't buy this. We have representative (rather than direct) democracy exactly for this reason, so that generally unpopular decisions can be taken by the representatives convinced of the decisions' wisdom."
You don't have to buy it, that's the way things are done in washington. You really think republicans don't vote for bills they agree with it if the bill has an onorous rider? You think republicans don't compromise?
If so you are truly delusional.
"Either Kerry is, indeed, a flip-flopper changing his opinions honestly but too frequently for a grown up man, or he is a whore caring more about his electability than integrity."
False dichotomy. Look it up. It's a common logical fallacy.
They are probably waiting till after the election to go after oprah. She has a tremendous amount of influence on women voters so you don't want to make her your enemy before the election. Since he won't be running again I suspect Bush will try to punish oprah later.
No, it's because none of them are competing with clear channel which is a HUGE donor to the republica party. THe idea was to hamstring viacom while giving clearchannel immunity from all past and future infringements.
The republicans freed the slaves but they had a change of heart later when it came time to give those slaves civil rights. The democrats lost the south for decades because they wanted to give blacks the same civil rights as whites. Sorry to have history intrude into your bubble there but...
"The bill was riding on a defense spending bill - voting against that would have been politically suicidal."
This is something the "kerry is a flip flopper" crowd just does not seem to understand. SOmetimes you have to vote for something horrible in order to get something you need or want.
Alas for some crimes the law is warped. Child pornography is one of them. You are pretty much presumed guilty and even if you are innocent nobody will believe you once you are charged.
That survey was taken feb 2004. Things in Iraq have gotten much worse since then and If you took the same survey today I bet the results would be a lot different.
BTW I think it's awful that people present these kinds of "statistics". How can you pretend that the situation in Iraq is the same today as it was in Feb of 2004? There is no difference between presenting irrelevent and outdated stats and outright lying.
"Sadly, no. It is just the Judicial Branch of government in the USA that still makes rulings to benefit "The People", the Legislative branch and Executive branch have sold out to big business a long, long time ago."
It won't be long before the judicial branch is bought also. Already Judges are being brought along junkets for "educational purposes" where conservative think tanks give them an all expense paid vacations and educate them on things like the sanctity of intellectual property or some nonsense. Also every politician running has made it a point that they will probably nominate judges sometime in their term so better vote for the guy who will pick judges that will rule your way.
Finally I don't think I need to say anything about the supreme court do I?
Oh I get it. You get to call other people zealots but they don't get to call you a zealot. Even though you are guilty of the same motivations as them.
Just exactly what is the difference between your motivation to have people talk to you the way you want them to and other peoples motivation to have people use open source software? Nothing. If they are a zealot then you are a zealot too.
"when in fact my entire POINT was that the term zealot was overused,"
No. You point was that only people people who like open source are zealots. According to your towering intellect the term zealot does not apply to people who shill for MS here every day.
"As far as the religion thing, nowhere have I claimed open source is a religion, but it does have parallels with religion. "
No it does not. You can claim that until you are blue in the face but that does not make it true.
"The decisions of most religious people are driven by a sense of morality."
The decisions of non religious people are also driven by morality. In no way shape or form is morality an exclusive domain of religion.
"While these are not the same thing, they clearly stand on the opposide side of a line from the microsoft driving force, which is personal gain and profit."
Which makes it even less rational and more zealotry.
"My motive, as a member of the open source community, is to discuss things rationally and in a sane fashion, without resorting to immature nonsense like bashing people with overused terms like zealot, which don't even apply to the people you're bashing."
Why? You must be some sort a zealot. Where is the profit in that? Is there some sort of a discussion religion you belong to? Is there a discussion god you worship. Just exactly what is the source of your zealotry in this matter.
BTW I am also interested in where else you go to ensure rational discussion. Are the people of slashdot the only beneficieries of your tireless efforts to civilize us? Have you been to gotdotnet.com or the MS boards to make sure they are being rational too. It doesn't seem fair to deny those people the benefit of being civilized by you. It's not fair of you to discriminate against them.
I knew you would not understand one word I said. You really need to read up on the legislative process even though I highly doubt your tiny little republitard brain can understand any of it.
I'll leave you with this little bit that maybe you can comprehend.
Life is complex. The govt is complex. Legislation is complex. Bills senators vote on are complex.
You 'tards are unable to grasp that complexity and reduce everything down to black or white. So to you it looks like kerry is a flip flopper, to a person that can think deeper it's obvious he has voted differently on different versions of the same bill.
Why do I bother, you didn't understand anything I have said have you?
"All I have done is argue that the term zealot does NOT apply to people who support microsoft products, because the most vocal supporters are those who stand to profit from it, and those who don't profit from it but support it, do so due to misinformation or generally being attached to one thing due to familiarity. That is NOT zealotry."
That's a mighty strange definition of zealotry. Even by your own twisted definition of zealotry there are lots of MS zealots on slashdot. Just look around.
"Don't assume that just because I'm not a mindless sheep who bashes anything proprietary on slashdot that I don't understand altruism."
If you understood altruism then the thought might have occured to you. You might have understood that many people participate in open source in order to help people. The fact that you did not list altruism says volumes about where your mindset is.
You have a kneejerk hatred of people who advocate open source software and automatically lable them zealot. Then you add bizaare motivations on to them pretending that people use open source have some sort of a religious affliation with it. As if they go to some open source church and worship some open source god. Nobody prays to an open source god, there is no open source church, open source is not a religion and yet you keep tagging it as such. Why? Most likely because you can not relate to the altruistic impulse.
I would buy your argument is all that code review had produced better quality code. If the reviewers did not catch exploits how can be sure they caught backdoors.
I would urge you to get in touch with reality. I would urge you to learn about the legislative process. Senators vote for and against many versions of bill. Bills always have riders which has nothing to do with the title of the bill. Senators always compromise and sometimes trade votes. During a 20 year career in the senate he has voted for hundreds of thousands of individual items in omnibus bills.
I don't really expect your tiny little republitard brain to understand any of this. All you can understand is what Rush tells you. Your tiny little pea brain is unable to understand how somebody can vote for one version of a bill and against another and why a senator may agree with the premise of a bill but vote against it because of the implementation.
To you a 20 year senate record seems confusing. There are so many votes, so many bills, so many riders. That's why you vote against people because they look french.
Yes because it's so hard to believe that MS would do any good thing. They have always made money by embracing and extending standards. They have said many times that that's their strategy. They don't have ONE product on the market that has not either broken a standard or extended one.
So when Dancing Santa says something that is so obviously not true he should be modded down.
Oh I am sorry I didn't realize I was talking to a republitard. Excuse me I thought you might have higher thinking powers.
Kerry is FLIP FLOPPER ha ha ha ha. I bet that's real funny in your republitard circle huh? Oh wait a minute he also LOOKS FRENCH!!!!!. Har Har Har you republitards are a hoot!
Huh? You are trying to give iraqi property back to the iraqis? What kind of nonsense is that?
I tell you what. I'll believe that iraqis run their own country the day they join OPEC and negotiate to get the highest possible price for their oil.
Until then I will continue to presume that they have no real control over their most valuable property. We will give them back the worthless shit and keep the best shit for ourselves.
Wow amazing, you managed to ignore my entire post and not address one point I made. Truly amazing.
Again I am so glad you love the iraqi people now. Too bad you didn't give a flying fuck about them while saddam was killing them by the bucketful. If you cared about them then you would have saved hundreds of thousands of people. Now they are dead beacause you didn't give a shit and belittled people who did.
Now that you love the iraqis and care about the freedoms of others please love the sudanese and ugandans. I know how much you hate the UN but according to those good for nothing bastards tens of thousands of children have died in Uganda alone. Even if you hate the UN maybe you can find it in your heart to help those people achieve democracy.
I have objections to polygamy. I think it would be great for society as a matter of fact. Two people can go out and earn a living while the other takes care of the kids. Polygamy has been the norm in marriages for centuries, monogomy is a relatively new idea.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sorry, I don't buy this. We have representative (rather than direct) democracy exactly for this reason, so that generally unpopular decisions can be taken by the representatives convinced of the decisions' wisdom."
You don't have to buy it, that's the way things are done in washington. You really think republicans don't vote for bills they agree with it if the bill has an onorous rider? You think republicans don't compromise?
If so you are truly delusional.
"Either Kerry is, indeed, a flip-flopper changing his opinions honestly but too frequently for a grown up man, or he is a whore caring more about his electability than integrity."
False dichotomy. Look it up. It's a common logical fallacy.
"Try talking to soliders in Iraq, who support Bush at least 3 to 1."
I know quite a few soldiers and none of them suport bush, I don't believe your 3 to 1 figure.
"Things in Iraq are nowhere near as bad as they were a year ago, or two or 10"
Says you who lives safely ensconsed in your suburbia. Iraqi polls indicate otherwise.
"The only ones claiming they are worse are people who benifited by Saddams dictatorship and the subversion of the UN."
Those and the ones left standing after their kids, parents, friends, and neighbors have been blown up.
They are probably waiting till after the election to go after oprah. She has a tremendous amount of influence on women voters so you don't want to make her your enemy before the election. Since he won't be running again I suspect Bush will try to punish oprah later.
No, it's because none of them are competing with clear channel which is a HUGE donor to the republica party. THe idea was to hamstring viacom while giving clearchannel immunity from all past and future infringements.
The republicans freed the slaves but they had a change of heart later when it came time to give those slaves civil rights. The democrats lost the south for decades because they wanted to give blacks the same civil rights as whites. Sorry to have history intrude into your bubble there but...
"The bill was riding on a defense spending bill - voting against that would have been politically suicidal."
This is something the "kerry is a flip flopper" crowd just does not seem to understand. SOmetimes you have to vote for something horrible in order to get something you need or want.
Alas for some crimes the law is warped. Child pornography is one of them. You are pretty much presumed guilty and even if you are innocent nobody will believe you once you are charged.
Yea, I bet the taliban and the christian coalition are seething over them.
That survey was taken feb 2004. Things in Iraq have gotten much worse since then and If you took the same survey today I bet the results would be a lot different.
BTW I think it's awful that people present these kinds of "statistics". How can you pretend that the situation in Iraq is the same today as it was in Feb of 2004? There is no difference between presenting irrelevent and outdated stats and outright lying.
"Sadly, no. It is just the Judicial Branch of government in the USA that still makes rulings to benefit "The People", the Legislative branch and Executive branch have sold out to big business a long, long time ago."
It won't be long before the judicial branch is bought also. Already Judges are being brought along junkets for "educational purposes" where conservative think tanks give them an all expense paid vacations and educate them on things like the sanctity of intellectual property or some nonsense. Also every politician running has made it a point that they will probably nominate judges sometime in their term so better vote for the guy who will pick judges that will rule your way.
Finally I don't think I need to say anything about the supreme court do I?
Oh I get it. You get to call other people zealots but they don't get to call you a zealot. Even though you are guilty of the same motivations as them.
Just exactly what is the difference between your motivation to have people talk to you the way you want them to and other peoples motivation to have people use open source software? Nothing. If they are a zealot then you are a zealot too.
"when in fact my entire POINT was that the term zealot was overused,"
No. You point was that only people people who like open source are zealots. According to your towering intellect the term zealot does not apply to people who shill for MS here every day.
"As far as the religion thing, nowhere have I claimed open source is a religion, but it does have parallels with religion. "
No it does not. You can claim that until you are blue in the face but that does not make it true.
"The decisions of most religious people are driven by a sense of morality."
The decisions of non religious people are also driven by morality. In no way shape or form is morality an exclusive domain of religion.
"While these are not the same thing, they clearly stand on the opposide side of a line from the microsoft driving force, which is personal gain and profit."
Which makes it even less rational and more zealotry.
"My motive, as a member of the open source community, is to discuss things rationally and in a sane fashion, without resorting to immature nonsense like bashing people with overused terms like zealot, which don't even apply to the people you're bashing."
Why? You must be some sort a zealot. Where is the profit in that? Is there some sort of a discussion religion you belong to? Is there a discussion god you worship. Just exactly what is the source of your zealotry in this matter.
BTW I am also interested in where else you go to ensure rational discussion. Are the people of slashdot the only beneficieries of your tireless efforts to civilize us? Have you been to gotdotnet.com or the MS boards to make sure they are being rational too. It doesn't seem fair to deny those people the benefit of being civilized by you. It's not fair of you to discriminate against them.
I knew you would not understand one word I said. You really need to read up on the legislative process even though I highly doubt your tiny little republitard brain can understand any of it.
I'll leave you with this little bit that maybe you can comprehend.
Life is complex. The govt is complex. Legislation is complex. Bills senators vote on are complex.
You 'tards are unable to grasp that complexity and reduce everything down to black or white. So to you it looks like kerry is a flip flopper, to a person that can think deeper it's obvious he has voted differently on different versions of the same bill.
Why do I bother, you didn't understand anything I have said have you?
"All I have done is argue that the term zealot does NOT apply to people who support microsoft products, because the most vocal supporters are those who stand to profit from it, and those who don't profit from it but support it, do so due to misinformation or generally being attached to one thing due to familiarity. That is NOT zealotry."
That's a mighty strange definition of zealotry. Even by your own twisted definition of zealotry there are lots of MS zealots on slashdot. Just look around.
"Don't assume that just because I'm not a mindless sheep who bashes anything proprietary on slashdot that I don't understand altruism."
If you understood altruism then the thought might have occured to you. You might have understood that many people participate in open source in order to help people. The fact that you did not list altruism says volumes about where your mindset is.
You have a kneejerk hatred of people who advocate open source software and automatically lable them zealot. Then you add bizaare motivations on to them pretending that people use open source have some sort of a religious affliation with it. As if they go to some open source church and worship some open source god. Nobody prays to an open source god, there is no open source church, open source is not a religion and yet you keep tagging it as such. Why? Most likely because you can not relate to the altruistic impulse.
"Religion, faith, zealotry... those are all different behaviors"
You forgot one. Altruism.
I know that's a very strange concept to people like you but some people are charitable.
I would buy your argument is all that code review had produced better quality code. If the reviewers did not catch exploits how can be sure they caught backdoors.
I would urge you to get in touch with reality. I would urge you to learn about the legislative process. Senators vote for and against many versions of bill. Bills always have riders which has nothing to do with the title of the bill. Senators always compromise and sometimes trade votes. During a 20 year career in the senate he has voted for hundreds of thousands of individual items in omnibus bills.
I don't really expect your tiny little republitard brain to understand any of this. All you can understand is what Rush tells you. Your tiny little pea brain is unable to understand how somebody can vote for one version of a bill and against another and why a senator may agree with the premise of a bill but vote against it because of the implementation.
To you a 20 year senate record seems confusing. There are so many votes, so many bills, so many riders. That's why you vote against people because they look french.
You know I think I'll install it and see what happens. Maybe a great new open source project or a way to learn cocoa and objective C.
Yes because it's so hard to believe that MS would do any good thing. They have always made money by embracing and extending standards. They have said many times that that's their strategy. They don't have ONE product on the market that has not either broken a standard or extended one.
So when Dancing Santa says something that is so obviously not true he should be modded down.
Oh I am sorry I didn't realize I was talking to a republitard. Excuse me I thought you might have higher thinking powers.
Kerry is FLIP FLOPPER ha ha ha ha. I bet that's real funny in your republitard circle huh? Oh wait a minute he also LOOKS FRENCH!!!!!. Har Har Har you republitards are a hoot!
Huh? You are trying to give iraqi property back to the iraqis? What kind of nonsense is that?
I tell you what. I'll believe that iraqis run their own country the day they join OPEC and negotiate to get the highest possible price for their oil.
Until then I will continue to presume that they have no real control over their most valuable property. We will give them back the worthless shit and keep the best shit for ourselves.
"I was in middle school asshole"
Oh I am sorry, I thought I was talking to an adult.
"I do love these people. What would you suggest doing? Oh wait, I bet Kerry has a "plan" for this....."
Yes he does, it involves more then doing nothing. Bush has plan too, he will completelly ignore the situation like he did for the last four years.
"Naw, I think we should start with making sure people can spell first....."
Yes because spelling is waaaaay more important then 20,000 dead children.
"Oh I did? Really? You have a transcript of what I said?"
I am sorry I thought I was talking to an adult.
"Ok, so, what is the UN doing about it? "
A lot you may want to read about it sometime. Not enough of course but lots more then Bush administraotion has done.
Wow amazing, you managed to ignore my entire post and not address one point I made. Truly amazing.
Again I am so glad you love the iraqi people now. Too bad you didn't give a flying fuck about them while saddam was killing them by the bucketful. If you cared about them then you would have saved hundreds of thousands of people. Now they are dead beacause you didn't give a shit and belittled people who did.
Now that you love the iraqis and care about the freedoms of others please love the sudanese and ugandans. I know how much you hate the UN but according to those good for nothing bastards tens of thousands of children have died in Uganda alone. Even if you hate the UN maybe you can find it in your heart to help those people achieve democracy.
I have objections to polygamy. I think it would be great for society as a matter of fact. Two people can go out and earn a living while the other takes care of the kids. Polygamy has been the norm in marriages for centuries, monogomy is a relatively new idea.