What makes you think Firefox is shooting for Acid3? Given how long they've rested on their laurels, dillydallying on Acid2 while IE of all browsers caught up to them, I have very little faith that they're going to suddenly give standards the priority they deserve again.
Firefox builds that pass the Acid2 test have been out for a long time now. Microsoft is just now releasing IE builds that pass the Acid2 test. I'm a little puzzled by what you mean. I do think it will be some time before we see Firefox passing the Acid3 test though, since Mozilla is getting ready to release the final beta of Firefox 3 right now, and the next public release isn't due for a year, I believe.
Once again, I have NEVER had IE7 use as much ram as they are claiming under Vista. I have to question the "replicates real-world usage patterns" thing.
I just opened IE7, and it took up 52 MB RAM. I then loaded one YouTube video, the Slashdot main page, and two Slashdot articles (all in seperate tabs). It hit 101MB, and I don't think it'd be too hard to get it to 500MB. I guess there's a few more factors involved here. For the record, Firefox 2.0.12 takes up 80MB with all the same pages plus this comment page (furthermore, all comments are displayed in Firefox, where IE7 has the default view since I'm not logged in). I guess it just depends on your system.
That's the part I always found hilarious. I would regularly have around 100 tabs open with various things I needed to deal with. After an hour or so I would have it down to my last tab. I would look at FF2's memory usage and it would be just over 900 MB on a laptop with 1 GB in it.
That's an awful lot more memory than I've ever seen Firefox use, so clearly something else is going on, but several of those pages are still stored in memory even if you close the tabs. The Undo Closed Tab feature caches those pages and their histories. I'm sure you'll be happy to know several hundred memory leaks have been fixed in Firefox 3, so with any luck, you won't have that problem anymore.
If you're depressed because of a neurological glitch - yeah, meds might help. But if like me you're depressed because of environmental issues (cabin fever compounded by social phobias) - they might just not work at all - Prozac didn't do shit for me, didn't even cause a reaction when I OD'd on it.
How do we know that those environmental issues aren't what causes the chemical imbalance?
The hydrazine has a low boiling point (114C). The high temperatures from the satellite rentry would have boiled the hydrazine and caused fuel tank rupture LONG before the satellite hit the ground.
Except a similar hydrazine tank on the Columbia did survive and the fuel was still liquid inside. Which is why it was believed by NASA this one would survive as well.
Personally, I think the risk was overblown (the chances of it affecting a populated area are slim, but better safe than sorry, I guess), but to say everything bad would have burned up on re-entry is unsubstantiated and probably wrong.
As for the charges, it's just political maneuvering. According to the news report, the President invoked executive powers to keep his aides from talking. Congress can hold those aides in contempt all they want, but the Judicial Branch is unlikely to enforce the contempt charge. As a result, it accomplishes nothing more than grandstanding to look like they're doing something about Bush's policies.
I'm curious why you think the judicial branch would uphold his claims of executive privilege. That's not a Constitutional privilege. If Presidential aides break the law, should they be immune from investigation as long as the President invokes executive privilege? The real issue is that the Justice Department has said they won't investigate and bring charges, meaning it wouldn't go to court in the first place -- seems a bit of an odd choice if the court wouldn't do something about it. But Congress still has its own power to enforce the citation. And how can you impeach if you don't have any evidence to go on? That's the entire point of calling the aids to TESTIFY, which they refused to do.
And this is related to the FISA bill. Boehner was mad they weren't going to get straight to the spy bill like the President wanted.
But of course, President sockpuppet prefers not to mention that....
The President himself doesn't feel the need to mention that. He was admonishing Congress yesterday, claiming that:
Members of Congress knew all along that this deadline was approaching. They said it themselves. They've had more than six months to discuss and deliberate. And now they must act, and pass legislation that will ensure our intelligence professionals have the tools they need to keep us safe.
Earlier this week the Senate did act, and passed a strong bill, and did so with a bipartisan majority. The Senate bill will ensure that we can effectively monitor those seeking to harm our people. The Senate bill will provide fair and just liability protection for companies that assisted in the efforts to protect America after the attacks of September the 11th. Without this protection, without this liability shield, we may not be able to secure the private sector's cooperation with our intelligence efforts. And that, of course, would put the American people at risk.
Our government has no greater responsibility than getting this work done, and there really is no excuse for letting this critical legislation expire. I urge congressional leaders to let the will of the House and the American people prevail, and vote on the Senate bill before adjourning for their recess. , and could reopen dangerous gaps in our intelligence. Failure to act would also make the private sector less willing to help us protect the country, and this is unacceptable. The House should not leave Washington without passing the Senate bill.
Of course, as you said, all previously authorized wiretaps under the expiring act go on, and as the House Intelligence Chair put it:
First, NSA can use its authority under Executive Order 12333 to conduct surveillance abroad of any known or suspected terrorist. There is no requirement for a warrant. There is no requirement for probable cause. Most of NSA's collection occurs under this authority.
Second, NSA can use its authority under the Protect America Act, enacted last August, to conduct surveillance here in the U.S of any foreign target. This authority does not "expire" on Saturday, as you have stated. Under the PAA, orders authorizing surveillance may last for one year - until at least August 2008. These orders may cover every terrorist group without limitation. If a new member of the group is identified, or if a new phone number or email address is identified, the NSA may add it to the existing orders, and surveillance can begin immediately. We will not "go dark."
Third, in the remote possibility that a new terrorist organization emerges that we have never previously identified, the NSA could use existing authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor those communications. Since its establishment nearly 30 years ago, the FISA Court has approved nearly every application for a warrant from the Department of Justice. In an emergency, NSA or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may begin surveillance immediately, and a FISA Court order does not have to be obtained for three days. The former head of FISA operations for the Department of Justice has testified publicly that emergency authorization may be granted in a matter of minutes.
In summary: There really doesn't seem to be a need for this law at all, let alone the provisions like telecom immunity.
My typical memory-burning web surfing session is to go to Google News or especially to Fark.com, open up about 100 tabs of potentially interesting news stories, and then go read them one at a time, closing each one after I've read it. It's one thing to have the browser use lots of memory while I've got all the tabs open - but when I've finished with them all, and just have the original page back, or even hit "Home" to get "about:blank", the browser typically *still* has over 100MB of RAM and is often burning 20-70% of CPU.
I've never had Firefox use that much CPU, but many of those tabs you closed are still cached in memory (along with each of their histories) so they'll reopen really fast if you Undo Closed Tab. Closing the tabs does not necessarily mean they're going away. Changing this option in your about:config should keep that from happening (I think), but you'll also lose some of your session restore functionality. I have it on, and I've never had any of the problems you and a lot of other people have, but I hope this helps.
Well, that about wraps it up for (insert whatever right you thought you had).
It's not over yet. It goes back to the House and into conferencing. The House is adamantly against telecom immunity; last week, the House leadership sent a letter to the Senate condemning it. I believe there's a strong chance that telecom immunity won't be able to make it out of the House, but it might be a good thing to call your Representatives (and Senators, since they're on the conferencing committee too.)
Re:What about the CONTRIBUTIONS?
on
Has Ron Paul Quit?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Your post just shows how well the propoganda swinging this country into a corporate fascism dominated by what is essentially nobility while the rest of us are forced to work as wages slaves.
Wait a minute, you're worried about corporate fascism and wage slaves, but you're supporting the guy who has sponsored bills to remove all regulation from corporations? Everything from the minimum wage to worker safety laws to anti-trust law? Explain to me how that makes sense. I don't get it.
Hmmmm, IOWA, MAINE, NEVADA, Louisiana that is just off the top of my head. He has gotten Double DIGITS TONS. More states than Huckabee has or Fred Thompson and especially more than that FRINGE candidate Giuliani. There is this thing called the internet where you can read results of ACTUAL voting before you insert your foot in your mouth.
The difference is that Thompson didn't campaign, and Guiliani thought he didn't need to campaign until Florida. Meanwhile, Ron Paul's campaign and his supporters were frantically campaigning everywhere they could, and all they managed was minor percentages in the states that matter in our retarded primary/caucus system. Try putting things into context before your tell people off, please.
Ask yourself, IF George Washington, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were alive today. WHO would they vote for?
That's a good question. George Washington privately supported John Adam's efforts to arrest dissenting newspaper editors, one of whom died in jail. They were both for powerful federal governments, and Washington was known to strongly support a powerful executive. Franklin never wanted our version of a republic to begin with; he was aiming for a much more democratic system. Maybe. Jefferson probably wouldn't be going for any Republican candidate, but if he did, it might have been Paul, given his opinions on a national bank (which many founding father's supported) state's rights -- although how much of that was because of the Federalist's actions while in office is questionable, I think.
The Founding Fathers were not the sacred, allwise men who would all unanimously support your candidate. They were politicians and businessmen just like the ones we have today. They had violent and bitter disagreements. Adams, hated Franklin -- read his correspondence while he and Franklin were in France. Jefferson was too much of a coward to publicly speak up against Adams' policies while he was Vice President, even though he privately strongly disagreed with them (trying to start a war with France, the Alien and Sedition Acts, etc.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. The Founding Fathers were not some kind of Jesus Team. You shouldn't have to wrongly invoke them to lend credence to Ron Paul's political theory, which many of them would have been bitterly opposed to.
I don't trust any of them. They all want the job, which should be enough in itself to disqualify them.
So what, we should just give up and go home, and let come whatever may? Even if you are right, being apathetic and cynical about it isn't going to change anything. It brings to mind learned helplessness -- the idea that it sucks, and there's nothing we can do about it, so let's just give up, even when there is a chance to make things better. I think it's a little too cynical to say everyone that ever ran for President or wanted to be President did so for nefarious reasons. I'm sure plenty of them just wanted the fame and power, but I think at least a few wanted to try and do something good for the country.
Why should I believe that he won't be warped and corrupted by the power of the President's office?
Maybe he will, but that doesn't mean that he, or any other Presidential candidate, won't do anything good while in office.
By the same token, why should you trust anyone, ever? Politicians are just people capable of violating trust on a grander scale.
Clinton has no principles, she panders to any voting bloc she thinks can help her, and not only did she not divorce her adulterous asshole of a husband, but she can't keep his mouth shut during her campaign.
I don't necessarily disagree about HRC, but I don't think you and I know enough about about their relationship to make judgments. Maybe she didn't divorce him because she loved him and could forgive him? On the other side, perhaps it was political. Maybe it was a mixture of both. I don't think it's fair to judge someone on speculation about their personal life; maybe she was just being a really kind person, or maybe not.
Maybe I'm just too naive and optimistic, though.;)
Which means absolutely nothing as far as any of the issues mentioned in the summary: "Copyright infringement, net neutrality, wireless spectrum, content filtering, broadband deployment".
No wonder you posted as an AC - your answer is the same any politician would give when asked a question - use a lot of BBBs (bullshit bingo buzzwords) to avoid actually giving an answer.
Obama is for net neutrality, for increased broadband deplayment (including the use of the wireless spectrum), and wants to pass laws strengthening the privacy of individuals on the Internet to apply to both corporations and the government. He also advocates reforming the patent system. This are all clearly stated on his web site.
I noticed the story was tagged with every variant of Ron Paul, which puzzles me, because Ron Paul is against net neutrality (says it counts as regulation by telling the ISPs they can't regulate), could care less if ISPs implement content filtering (regulation!), doesn't give a crap about broadband deployment (government should have nothing to do with it! Free market will fix it!), and doesn't care a whit what corporations do with our information (regulation), although I believe he would demand very stringent privacy laws on the government side, which is a very good thing, but overall, he doesn't come close to offering what other candidates do. There are even other Republican candidates with better positions.
Those do not incur the risk of radioactive contamination, which has long-term consequences that are more worrying than those resulting directly from the incident (I'm not saying every nuclear incident goes the way of Chernobyl -- just pointing out there is a risk). So it's not just a matter of comparing casualties resulting from the particular explosion/meltdown/whatever.
Coal mining accidents might not incur the risk of significant radioactive contamination, but the combustion of coal doesrelease massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere, and people living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to more radiation than those living near nuclear power plants.
I've always found these statistics to be interesting:
For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.
Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.
That said, there are NO sources for this statement. The PDF link gives a 404 and they don't explain what they meant other than using broad terms. It sounds like a lot of FUD without a source to back it up. Does anybody have the PDF? If not then I'd like to see more sources than just an un-signed editorial on Raw Story.
If you RTFA, it's from The New Yorker. Or, at least it was in TFA when I read it earlier today before Slashdot posted it.
I'm too lazy to check to see about the link now, but fortunately, since I thought the article interesting, I saved it. So here it is. It's an 18 page PDF, The proposal is mentioned on page 11.
Ron Paul has done everything he can to ban abortion. What, exactly, do you think the purpose of declaring a zygote to be a human life is? Making it legally equivalent to a human life makes killing one legal murder. That makes it a federal ban. Removing the jurisdiction of the courts is clearly a way to attempt to keep them from overturning an abortion ban. You might want to look up Ron Paul's other positions too. His positions on abortion is only the tip of the iceberg. He's also against net neutrality, federal privacy laws, he's tried to repeal all federal antitrust laws, worker safety laws, federal overtime rules and the minimum wage, and he's sent millions to his local Texas shrimp industries while decrying pork-barrel spending. Some of these actions go along with libertarianism, but I have a hard time believing there are Slashdotters out there that'd be happy if Microsoft had never had to worry about antitrust laws.;)
Ron Paul is not the savior he's made out to be at all. He's as bad, if not worse, than a lot of the other candidates running.
Damn the new Slashdot moderation system. Undoing Redundant -- I mean to mod you Insightful. You've made a lot of excellent points in this thread. Seriously, Taco, give us a confirm dialog or something, 'cause I just wasted all my mod points.:\
Every single person who doubts that this is more than coincidental can surely be excused for the sole reason that the implications are kind of hard to get a full handle on. It's really kind of shocking.
I'm a computer professional, and my Vista box has been my most trouble-free Windows machine yet. To read Slashdot I would've thought it was the OS equivalent of a burning paper bag full of dog crap on my doorstep, but surprisingly my experience with it's been great.
I'd just like to add I had the same experience. I had to buy a new laptop, and at the time all that I could get on the laptop I wanted was Vista. So I bought it, fully prepared to install XP on it, mainly because of all the horrible things I had heard about it. Vista pleasantly surprised me. I actually like Vista; I haven't had a single problem with it, it's very fast (Kubuntu does boot faster, but applications in Vista open faster), everything so far just works, and yes, I've even adjusted to the UI to the point where I like it now.
Like the parent, I don't see any compelling reason for moving to Vista, but I don't see any reason not to either. I've gone from warning people against Vista to telling them it's fine to just go with it. I don't see any problem with Consumer Reports advising people to move to Vista, although I agree they should have been more fair to Linux.
Well, here's a fine column on that website you linked that should give you a hint. He also voted to ban adoptions by gay couples, and more. Look harder. Look closer at the laws he's sponsored in that post as well.
So as long as he didn't write any articles there on the subject, we can ignore all the pro-life, anti-homosexual bills he's sponsored? This year alone:
H.R.2597 : To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.1095 : To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.R.1094 : To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.300 To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
We the People Act - Prohibits the Supreme Court and each federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.
He has a long history of sponsoring such bills -- and let's not even talk about what he's voted for -- as this, some much worse. Ron Paul is vehemently against homosexual rights, and he's especially eager to allow states to ban it and forbid the courts from judging that as discrimination. He has, however, supported laws to discriminate against homosexuality federally. Look it up. This is great resource.
I'm curious about what you mean by "principled" voting record. Is talking about leaving things up for the "states to decide" while trying to ban abortion on the federal level principled? Is talking about the need to remove power from corporations while at the same time sponsoring bills to repeal worker safety laws, the minimum wage, and federal antitrust law, plus dozens of other laws, even including child labor and overtime laws, principled? What about his earmarks for the local shrimp industry while decrying those evil politicians wasting out money? What about proclaiming himself as a purveyor of libertarianism while trying to outlaw flag-burning?
I'd be all for the kind of candidate people think Ron Paul is, but this guy ain't him. Aside from that, you also have to take into account his lunatic economic theories, his stance regarding the Internet, and complete withdrawal from all international organizations. I mean, Jesus. I see all these people talking about how great he is, and then very fre of them seem to actually be aware of, you know, his actual record.
Actually, Ron Paul has sponsored several laws and Constitutional amendments to ban abortion. On the federal level. He might claim to be for states rights, but try looking up some of the laws he hassponsored. Seriously. Just because a candidate knows how to talk to you doesn't mean you should ignore his actual record. Ron Paul is all for legislating his personal morality, and his record shows it.
...He's against network neutrality, he's tried to repeal federal health and worker safety laws twice, he's tried to repeal the minimum wage, he's tried to weaken unions, he's tried to get rid of anti-trust law, to permit federal kickbacks, and much, much more. I haven't been able to find anything about his stance on privacy, but given his record I'm fairly sure he's entirely opposed to federal privacy laws.
Please -- look up Ron Paul's record before you talk about what a great guy he is.
Millions of people who browse two or three pages, then close their browser have no problems.
Those of us who leave Firefox running for days at a time have problems. Firefox consumes GIGABYTES of memory in short order for me, and yes, I see this as a major programming fault.
I've used Firefox on my current laptop, running Vista and Linux; on a very old computer running 98SE and Linux; on a Dell running XP that's a couple of years old. On none of these machines have I had any memory problems with Firefox, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think of myself as a power user. I often have 30-40 tabs open in one or two windows, and I leave Firefox running for days at a time when I'm too lazy to just close everything.
Not everyone experiences the problems you describe. I think that was part of the problem with them not being fixed, because a lot of people simply can't reproduce the problems you're describing, and then worse, some people have gone around screaming their browser uses too much memory by their own arbitrary standards, so I suspect that the people with real problems -- like you, evidently -- may have been drowned out. I can't say that it's fixed in Firefox 3, because I don't experience the problem, but when I tried out the Beta, it did seem snappier, and I know they've done a huge amount of backend work.
Wait...what? Of all the things, the Ents were pretty damn close to how JRR Tolkien wrote them; very deliberate to the point where they appeared slow and oafish, but terrible when roused, and pretty out-of-touch with the world in any case. If anything, Tolkien's Treebeard was sillier than Jackson's.
Treebeard was not by any means out-of-touch with the world. He was fully aware of what was going on, as he had had many sources of information -- Gandalf and and even Saruman had once spoken often with him, because they knew him to be wise and knowledgeable. Over and over again, Treebeard is described as extremely intelligent and has an uncanny knowledge of events. Merry and Pippin did not need to rouse the Ents to action in the book, because Treebeard was already concerned about what was going on, and Merry and Pippin were just another further motivator for him. The only concern he had was convincing all the other Ents to rouse themselves, which he and a few other activist Ents (many had been severely wounded or lost many of their trees to Saruman) succeeded in doing. In the movie, Treebeard is reasonably kind, but an idiot.
In the book, Treebeard uses the Hobbits as an aid in convincing the other Ents to act. He's the master of the situation, fully aware, cognizant, and active. In the movie, he's an oaf that decides to do nothing until he actually sees what's going on -- like he wouldn't have before? Huh? And suddenly the democratic Entmoot is canceled out just because Treebeard got angry? It really doesn't make much sense, compared with the book, but I suppose it's more dramatic. I think that's the kind of changes the GP is talking about, and there indeed a lot of them -- scenes and events changed to become more dramatic instead of logical.
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Firefox builds that pass the Acid2 test have been out for a long time now. Microsoft is just now releasing IE builds that pass the Acid2 test. I'm a little puzzled by what you mean. I do think it will be some time before we see Firefox passing the Acid3 test though, since Mozilla is getting ready to release the final beta of Firefox 3 right now, and the next public release isn't due for a year, I believe.
I just opened IE7, and it took up 52 MB RAM. I then loaded one YouTube video, the Slashdot main page, and two Slashdot articles (all in seperate tabs). It hit 101MB, and I don't think it'd be too hard to get it to 500MB. I guess there's a few more factors involved here. For the record, Firefox 2.0.12 takes up 80MB with all the same pages plus this comment page (furthermore, all comments are displayed in Firefox, where IE7 has the default view since I'm not logged in). I guess it just depends on your system.
That's an awful lot more memory than I've ever seen Firefox use, so clearly something else is going on, but several of those pages are still stored in memory even if you close the tabs. The Undo Closed Tab feature caches those pages and their histories. I'm sure you'll be happy to know several hundred memory leaks have been fixed in Firefox 3, so with any luck, you won't have that problem anymore.
How do we know that those environmental issues aren't what causes the chemical imbalance?
Except a similar hydrazine tank on the Columbia did survive and the fuel was still liquid inside. Which is why it was believed by NASA this one would survive as well.
Personally, I think the risk was overblown (the chances of it affecting a populated area are slim, but better safe than sorry, I guess), but to say everything bad would have burned up on re-entry is unsubstantiated and probably wrong.
I'm curious why you think the judicial branch would uphold his claims of executive privilege. That's not a Constitutional privilege. If Presidential aides break the law, should they be immune from investigation as long as the President invokes executive privilege? The real issue is that the Justice Department has said they won't investigate and bring charges, meaning it wouldn't go to court in the first place -- seems a bit of an odd choice if the court wouldn't do something about it. But Congress still has its own power to enforce the citation. And how can you impeach if you don't have any evidence to go on? That's the entire point of calling the aids to TESTIFY, which they refused to do.
And this is related to the FISA bill. Boehner was mad they weren't going to get straight to the spy bill like the President wanted.
The President himself doesn't feel the need to mention that. He was admonishing Congress yesterday, claiming that:
Of course, as you said, all previously authorized wiretaps under the expiring act go on, and as the House Intelligence Chair put it:
In summary: There really doesn't seem to be a need for this law at all, let alone the provisions like telecom immunity.
I've never had Firefox use that much CPU, but many of those tabs you closed are still cached in memory (along with each of their histories) so they'll reopen really fast if you Undo Closed Tab. Closing the tabs does not necessarily mean they're going away. Changing this option in your about:config should keep that from happening (I think), but you'll also lose some of your session restore functionality. I have it on, and I've never had any of the problems you and a lot of other people have, but I hope this helps.
It's not over yet. It goes back to the House and into conferencing. The House is adamantly against telecom immunity; last week, the House leadership sent a letter to the Senate condemning it. I believe there's a strong chance that telecom immunity won't be able to make it out of the House, but it might be a good thing to call your Representatives (and Senators, since they're on the conferencing committee too.)
Wait a minute, you're worried about corporate fascism and wage slaves, but you're supporting the guy who has sponsored bills to remove all regulation from corporations? Everything from the minimum wage to worker safety laws to anti-trust law? Explain to me how that makes sense. I don't get it.
The difference is that Thompson didn't campaign, and Guiliani thought he didn't need to campaign until Florida. Meanwhile, Ron Paul's campaign and his supporters were frantically campaigning everywhere they could, and all they managed was minor percentages in the states that matter in our retarded primary/caucus system. Try putting things into context before your tell people off, please.
That's a good question. George Washington privately supported John Adam's efforts to arrest dissenting newspaper editors, one of whom died in jail. They were both for powerful federal governments, and Washington was known to strongly support a powerful executive. Franklin never wanted our version of a republic to begin with; he was aiming for a much more democratic system. Maybe. Jefferson probably wouldn't be going for any Republican candidate, but if he did, it might have been Paul, given his opinions on a national bank (which many founding father's supported) state's rights -- although how much of that was because of the Federalist's actions while in office is questionable, I think.
The Founding Fathers were not the sacred, allwise men who would all unanimously support your candidate. They were politicians and businessmen just like the ones we have today. They had violent and bitter disagreements. Adams, hated Franklin -- read his correspondence while he and Franklin were in France. Jefferson was too much of a coward to publicly speak up against Adams' policies while he was Vice President, even though he privately strongly disagreed with them (trying to start a war with France, the Alien and Sedition Acts, etc.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. The Founding Fathers were not some kind of Jesus Team. You shouldn't have to wrongly invoke them to lend credence to Ron Paul's political theory, which many of them would have been bitterly opposed to.
So what, we should just give up and go home, and let come whatever may? Even if you are right, being apathetic and cynical about it isn't going to change anything. It brings to mind learned helplessness -- the idea that it sucks, and there's nothing we can do about it, so let's just give up, even when there is a chance to make things better. I think it's a little too cynical to say everyone that ever ran for President or wanted to be President did so for nefarious reasons. I'm sure plenty of them just wanted the fame and power, but I think at least a few wanted to try and do something good for the country.
Maybe he will, but that doesn't mean that he, or any other Presidential candidate, won't do anything good while in office.
By the same token, why should you trust anyone, ever? Politicians are just people capable of violating trust on a grander scale.
I don't necessarily disagree about HRC, but I don't think you and I know enough about about their relationship to make judgments. Maybe she didn't divorce him because she loved him and could forgive him? On the other side, perhaps it was political. Maybe it was a mixture of both. I don't think it's fair to judge someone on speculation about their personal life; maybe she was just being a really kind person, or maybe not.
Maybe I'm just too naive and optimistic, though. ;)
Obama is for net neutrality, for increased broadband deplayment (including the use of the wireless spectrum), and wants to pass laws strengthening the privacy of individuals on the Internet to apply to both corporations and the government. He also advocates reforming the patent system. This are all clearly stated on his web site.
I noticed the story was tagged with every variant of Ron Paul, which puzzles me, because Ron Paul is against net neutrality (says it counts as regulation by telling the ISPs they can't regulate), could care less if ISPs implement content filtering (regulation!), doesn't give a crap about broadband deployment (government should have nothing to do with it! Free market will fix it!), and doesn't care a whit what corporations do with our information (regulation), although I believe he would demand very stringent privacy laws on the government side, which is a very good thing, but overall, he doesn't come close to offering what other candidates do. There are even other Republican candidates with better positions.
Coal mining accidents might not incur the risk of significant radioactive contamination, but the combustion of coal does release massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere, and people living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to more radiation than those living near nuclear power plants.
I've always found these statistics to be interesting:
Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.
If you RTFA, it's from The New Yorker. Or, at least it was in TFA when I read it earlier today before Slashdot posted it.
I'm too lazy to check to see about the link now, but fortunately, since I thought the article interesting, I saved it. So here it is. It's an 18 page PDF, The proposal is mentioned on page 11.
Ron Paul has sponsored several bills that would effectively ban abortion. To prevent the courts from overturning these laws, he's also sponsored multiple bills to remove the authority of the courts to make judgments on any abortion-related cases. I can't recall that power being in the Constitution.
Ron Paul has done everything he can to ban abortion. What, exactly, do you think the purpose of declaring a zygote to be a human life is? Making it legally equivalent to a human life makes killing one legal murder. That makes it a federal ban. Removing the jurisdiction of the courts is clearly a way to attempt to keep them from overturning an abortion ban. You might want to look up Ron Paul's other positions too. His positions on abortion is only the tip of the iceberg. He's also against net neutrality, federal privacy laws, he's tried to repeal all federal antitrust laws, worker safety laws, federal overtime rules and the minimum wage, and he's sent millions to his local Texas shrimp industries while decrying pork-barrel spending. Some of these actions go along with libertarianism, but I have a hard time believing there are Slashdotters out there that'd be happy if Microsoft had never had to worry about antitrust laws. ;)
Ron Paul is not the savior he's made out to be at all. He's as bad, if not worse, than a lot of the other candidates running.
Damn the new Slashdot moderation system. Undoing Redundant -- I mean to mod you Insightful. You've made a lot of excellent points in this thread. Seriously, Taco, give us a confirm dialog or something, 'cause I just wasted all my mod points. :\
Why yes, I suppose it would be.
I'd just like to add I had the same experience. I had to buy a new laptop, and at the time all that I could get on the laptop I wanted was Vista. So I bought it, fully prepared to install XP on it, mainly because of all the horrible things I had heard about it. Vista pleasantly surprised me. I actually like Vista; I haven't had a single problem with it, it's very fast (Kubuntu does boot faster, but applications in Vista open faster), everything so far just works, and yes, I've even adjusted to the UI to the point where I like it now.
Like the parent, I don't see any compelling reason for moving to Vista, but I don't see any reason not to either. I've gone from warning people against Vista to telling them it's fine to just go with it. I don't see any problem with Consumer Reports advising people to move to Vista, although I agree they should have been more fair to Linux.
Well, here's a fine column on that website you linked that should give you a hint. He also voted to ban adoptions by gay couples, and more. Look harder. Look closer at the laws he's sponsored in that post as well.
So as long as he didn't write any articles there on the subject, we can ignore all the pro-life, anti-homosexual bills he's sponsored? This year alone:
H.R.2597 : To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.1095 : To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.R.1094 : To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.300 To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
We the People Act - Prohibits the Supreme Court and each federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.
He has a long history of sponsoring such bills -- and let's not even talk about what he's voted for -- as this, some much worse. Ron Paul is vehemently against homosexual rights, and he's especially eager to allow states to ban it and forbid the courts from judging that as discrimination. He has, however, supported laws to discriminate against homosexuality federally. Look it up. This is great resource.
I'm curious about what you mean by "principled" voting record. Is talking about leaving things up for the "states to decide" while trying to ban abortion on the federal level principled? Is talking about the need to remove power from corporations while at the same time sponsoring bills to repeal worker safety laws, the minimum wage, and federal antitrust law, plus dozens of other laws, even including child labor and overtime laws, principled? What about his earmarks for the local shrimp industry while decrying those evil politicians wasting out money? What about proclaiming himself as a purveyor of libertarianism while trying to outlaw flag-burning?
I'd be all for the kind of candidate people think Ron Paul is, but this guy ain't him. Aside from that, you also have to take into account his lunatic economic theories, his stance regarding the Internet, and complete withdrawal from all international organizations. I mean, Jesus. I see all these people talking about how great he is, and then very fre of them seem to actually be aware of, you know, his actual record.
Actually, Ron Paul has sponsored several laws and Constitutional amendments to ban abortion. On the federal level. He might claim to be for states rights, but try looking up some of the laws he has sponsored. Seriously. Just because a candidate knows how to talk to you doesn't mean you should ignore his actual record. Ron Paul is all for legislating his personal morality, and his record shows it.
...He's against network neutrality, he's tried to repeal federal health and worker safety laws twice, he's tried to repeal the minimum wage, he's tried to weaken unions, he's tried to get rid of anti-trust law, to permit federal kickbacks, and much, much more. I haven't been able to find anything about his stance on privacy, but given his record I'm fairly sure he's entirely opposed to federal privacy laws.
Please -- look up Ron Paul's record before you talk about what a great guy he is.
I've used Firefox on my current laptop, running Vista and Linux; on a very old computer running 98SE and Linux; on a Dell running XP that's a couple of years old. On none of these machines have I had any memory problems with Firefox, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think of myself as a power user. I often have 30-40 tabs open in one or two windows, and I leave Firefox running for days at a time when I'm too lazy to just close everything.
Not everyone experiences the problems you describe. I think that was part of the problem with them not being fixed, because a lot of people simply can't reproduce the problems you're describing, and then worse, some people have gone around screaming their browser uses too much memory by their own arbitrary standards, so I suspect that the people with real problems -- like you, evidently -- may have been drowned out. I can't say that it's fixed in Firefox 3, because I don't experience the problem, but when I tried out the Beta, it did seem snappier, and I know they've done a huge amount of backend work.
Treebeard was not by any means out-of-touch with the world. He was fully aware of what was going on, as he had had many sources of information -- Gandalf and and even Saruman had once spoken often with him, because they knew him to be wise and knowledgeable. Over and over again, Treebeard is described as extremely intelligent and has an uncanny knowledge of events. Merry and Pippin did not need to rouse the Ents to action in the book, because Treebeard was already concerned about what was going on, and Merry and Pippin were just another further motivator for him. The only concern he had was convincing all the other Ents to rouse themselves, which he and a few other activist Ents (many had been severely wounded or lost many of their trees to Saruman) succeeded in doing. In the movie, Treebeard is reasonably kind, but an idiot.
In the book, Treebeard uses the Hobbits as an aid in convincing the other Ents to act. He's the master of the situation, fully aware, cognizant, and active. In the movie, he's an oaf that decides to do nothing until he actually sees what's going on -- like he wouldn't have before? Huh? And suddenly the democratic Entmoot is canceled out just because Treebeard got angry? It really doesn't make much sense, compared with the book, but I suppose it's more dramatic. I think that's the kind of changes the GP is talking about, and there indeed a lot of them -- scenes and events changed to become more dramatic instead of logical.