"there's nothing stopping these developers from giving $1m of this to pay for someone else to work full time on the project..."
Except the non-competing clause in their contracts, of course.
And of course too, Widenius has a point, a moot point but a point: buying out everyone that happens to compete with you is a tried and true strategy to get away competitors. It's only it is not a long time strategy against a strong and open market, it doesn't scale and it happens that open source projects with an open community backing them up (say, KDE, Debian... PostgreSQL) are the most resistant against such strategy.
"Could sub every "trac" in that post with "redmine" and it'd be the same thing."
They are indeed very similar (I already stated Trac to be the "spiritual father" of Redmine). *But* its multiproject abilities stand on the way of a "solo show" IT. For one, it makes "too easy" to start multiple projects when I can bet it's not only not needed but counterproductive on the asker's environment. On the other hand it's Python vs Ruby, but I don't want to start a flamewar here.
"I do wish redmine had a more robust bug tracker. Some of the features that bugzilla has would be nice specifically this one [ability to obviously superseed a file but a newer one]"
Exactly my point. Yours is a very clear example of the tool working against your mind (remember I told mind to be the number one needed tool?). Both Trac and Redmine already provide the asked ability not only in a way but in two different ways, it's only that they don't do it by means of featuritis. On one hand you can upload the new version with a different name (say, "somestuff_v1" and "somestuff_v2" and just use the wikisyntax to crossline the old one. And then, if you really expect something to be versioned, why don't you just put it under the control of the source management tool (say, git, subversion or whatever)? You will know what's the current working version (the last one) and you can pinpoint other relevant versions as needed -oh, and you'll retain easierly the document history).
"I work as the sole IT employee [...] I've always got multiple programming (both new systems and improvements/changes to existing systems), integration, research, maintenance tasks/projects on my To Do list, in varying stages of completion. At any given time, I need to be able to jump back to one of these items and pick up where I left off"
So: 1) His best tool must be his mind: he must use it to set his own procedures (and exceptions), so pointing to reads like David Allen's "Getting Things Done" or "Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators" are a foremost. 2) Given the right ideas are in his mind and given that it's a solo show, the leaner the tools the better: he don't need contrains on the tools when he can adopt them by his own criteria. That's where even such a fine tool like Redmine is a bit of an overkill. I'd find in this case its conceptual father to be a better fit. Trac, that is.
Let's have a look about how Trac fits the bill:
* For a start it really helps the guy that do the thing instead of getting in his way in favor of the one that plans the thing (so, i.e. there are not -at least by default, fixed workflows nor fancy flowcharts to the content of a project manager but absolutly unuseful for a single or a short development/multitasking group).
* It allows (but not commands) tight but lean integration between wiki pages, tickets, milestones and source code management. You will fastly and easily group your tickets by milestones (like, say, "work as usual year 2009" or "summer campaign"), by components (like "central servers", "help desk"...), by type (like "bug", "enhancement"...), by priority and severity but you will be *not* forced to use them if you don't want to (as an example, shorter shops tend to use either priority or severity, but not both).
* It lacks "proper" multiproject and nested tickets support but, as I already said, that's not a problem since you are alone and workflow/procedures are basically in your head (and described on a wiki page too). In example, a component/milestone combo provides for a nice solution for your short, unbudgeted, as time allows, personal/internal "microprojects", and being wiki-based, hierarchycal tickets can be easily mimicked using a "superticket" ticket type that links to all the related "subtickets" which in turn "backlink" to the parent.
So, my recomendation is Edgewall's Trac because of it leaness and functionality, more or less like this:
* Wiki pages organized by "machines", "services" and "procedures" with proper links among them (a procedure affects some services that are offered by some machines; a machine hosts some services -or parts of them; each service has some associated procedures and expands through one/some machines).
* Bug/Enhancement tickets for "usual" day-to-day activities eventually grouped by milestones (like "operations 2009") and components (like "core services", "helpdesk", "CRM"...). They allow for a description and a variable number of notes either direct or question/reply style, so you will know exactly where did you gave it six months ago, when you last time worked on it; its wiki syntax will allow for links to the pages for the affected machines/services/procedures and even the exact transaction on the source management system where/when you activated that new service or corrected that bug.
* Project-like components/milestones/tickets for bigger tasks (aka "microprojects").
*...and your own intelligence and discipline to firmly tie everything in place.
You define banning the entry to the University Campus to a student without a customary investigation or even an interview a "little additional caution"??? Certainly when some people don't get it, they just don't get it.
"So you acknowledge this bad stuff happens. Can you acknowledge that it can be prevented?"
Yes. And I know how to prevent it 100% guaranteed: let's kill them all. It's not only 100% guarantee but it's double safe: not only we will prevent the killer to do his malady but even if somehow he manages to get with his deadly duty he won't find how to kill because we came earlier.
It's perfect, MWAHAHAHAHAHA.
Now: can you please reconsider the proposition that even if A always precedes B (like breathing always precedes killing someone) preventing A maybe is not a good or proportional measure to in fact prevent B?
"She wrote a threat in a public forum, directly relating violence to her classroom."
Are you aware that the very class agenda she looked for attending next monday includes stabing (death) people in the throat, do you?
"There are no First Amendment violations here, there is no lurking Big Brother."
I'm not keen to firearms but I expect my country mates not to become so dumbass as to take legal actions against somebody just if he dares to say "next monday some people will see some nice shots from my gun" when he is known to go to a firefield by monday.
"Oh? When exactly did they say they look forward to stabbing someone in the throat?"
When did they study mortuary science where stabbing bodies in the throat is almost customary?
"If someone says it (not a character in a story or philosophical dilemma), it's called a death threat."
Not.
Context is all. Would you call the police against Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel because they are killing softly Roberta Flack with their song?
When a mortuary science student says publicly on a blog that she is "looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy" it's obvious she is talking about her monday's class.
"If your country is fine with people running around threatening to kill people, I don't care. It's not artistic, it's stupid and may cause some people to live in fear."
Well, I think we agree: it's certainly stupid live in fear because some girl is saying some mild nonsenses after a bad love affair.
And it's criminal making pay such woman because of your (the University's) own stupidity.
"Even if society totally collapsed, there would be enough information left over for people to rebuild eventually."
Why the descendants of the event would want or need to?
While information is a treasure is not the most valuable posession of the human race: it's intelligence. And as long as there are humans over there, their intelligence will be with them. On the other hand, why would somebody want to "rebuild" a failed civilization when they can build a different one anew?
"Online upgrades. Suppose you have a service that needs to be available on a 24 x 7 basis."
I can imagine and I see how this is a case you can (and should) control by proper design, not DB*1 features. If you *need* it 24x7 then you can't and shouldn't deppend on a SPOF*2. What will happen when you want to migrate to the new and shinny Oracle current+one? If your DB is not a SPOF then there's no problem with stopping part of the system for upgrading, is it?
*1 DB: Data Base *2 SPOF: Single point of failure.
"Unless I'm seriously mistaken, UFOs tend to come from space, not the ground."
You are both seriously mistaken and too young to know. Back in the seventies (the big days of the UFO scene) we all "knew" that places like Canary Islands or the Bermuda Triangle were submarine secret UFO bases (well, not so secret since everybody knew about them).
"Once the line is setup the cost to deliver any given MB of data would be extremely small. All the network infrastructure has to be on anyways"
Well, that's not exactly true. They are madly overselling their trunk bandwith and there it is where their savings are. If you don't know about telcos, think on domestic terms: you can buy a gigabit switch for your home network so you have a "dedicated" gigabit link to any computer at home. Still all those gigabits end up at your xDSL residential connection to the Internet so, in the end, while your computers are fed up at gigabit rates they all still share a meagre connection out of your home.
"I'm pretty sure most hosting providers limit you for total downloads/month..."
*All* of them do it. XXX Mb/s * 3600 * 24 * 30 == alotted bandwidth per month. The issue is that some of them do it the obvios honest way and others do it bording fraud.
"You're ASSUMING the next knucklehead who was to maintain the code knows how to set tab stops properly."
So, in order for others no to impose you their "standard" tabstop your proposition is to impose everybody *your* "standard" tabstop?
And about knuckleheads, if you accept them disorganizing your source code, what will be next? Allow those knucleheads to write your source code? *That* is the real failure.
"That's why I usually go out of my way to persuade the developers in my team to write good commit comments."
In my experience you must teach them how to do proper commits first!
For too many "new generation" developers, commits are too much alike "Ctrl-S" so first you need to explain them "commit" is not shortcut for "save" and that while a commit is not needed to include a whole functional change (it depends on local practices, though) it should add a significant meaningful change. Only *then* they'll be able to add a meaningful commit message (like "bug#1234: the employee list now returns proper values for subcontrated people as per spec#101". It can be much better than this, but this is the bare minimum).
"Also, you NEVER should use tabs instead of spaces for indentation."
WRONG!!! You always should use tabs for indentation... PROPERLY!
"What happens if someone happens to use an editor that expands tabs to something different so that code no longer lines up?"
This CAN'T happen as long as you are using tabs properly: only on the rightmost side up to the right start of the block. I challenge you to find a situation where properly tabbing leads to misaligning due to changing tab width.
90% of code is rubish. Which should come to no surprise since 90% of everything is rubish.
The point here is that there're not so much qualitatively different high-level solutions to "the art of programming". The fact that after 30/40 years of repeating basically the same (obvious) things most of us can't cope with its basics shows the obvious: 90% of coders are rubish. The fact that 90% of coders think about themselves to be in the other 10% doesn't help, either.
"Last time I checked, US troops are still dying in Iraq left and right. In fact, many more died there after the defeat of the Iraq's regular military, due to the insurgency"
But that's a politics fact not a military one. When was the last time an Irakian city suffered a carpet bombing ala Dresden? Heck, what are the chances of nukes to be used against Irak, even tactical ones?
USA troops are dying in Irak because USA government so does want.
"Why would a country's government nuke itself?"
Why not? I'm sure the Constitution Fathers didn't allow for an open end (civilians owning weapons for whatever they see fit) because the threats they were able to imagine but because of the threats they were *not* able to imagine. But just look at contemporary history: both what "itself" and "citizen" means for a government are opened to definitions. What if Washington DC suddenly finds (well, not suddently but because the raise of a politician with, say, a funny moustache and accent, and a like for Wagner works) that California is not really part of "ourselves" (or that Mexico and Canada are indeed part of "ourselves", for that matter)? What is it about mormons and thus, Utah? What about all those pesky niggers, or jews?
"Just mentioning that shows what an idiot you are."
Telling I'm an idiot is telling Jefferson, Franklin at al. were idiots. Please pay attention that the militia was *not* thought as a means to defend the country against foreign threats but against the abuse of their very own government against its citizens.
"How useful are nukes in Iraq? Oh wait, we haven't used them..."
Exactly. And then, why USA has not used nukes in Irak? Because military limitations or has been because politics? And then, how much strengh has the Irakian government over USA politics to be sure that this or that is out of question? Certainly zero. And the USA government supports exactly my opinion as it shows the fact that it's not quite accepting whatever Iranian government wants to say about their own nuclear program.
"You can't control a populace if you kill them all."
Certainly. Corollary number 1: you don't need to control a populace if you kill them all. Corollary number 2: you will have an easier time controlling a populace if you kill some of it on crudel and bestial ways to show the others.
"And you can't kill them all with the military unless the military agrees"
Not an assertion proper from a republican. You can't kill them all with the military unless you *command* the military. Where does the phrase comes from? Military is there to protect democracy, not to practice it.
"they're not going to if the populace includes their own families and countrymen. "
Uh... Are you forgetting about those little Draft Riots in New York, 1863, due to *citizens* opposing *Congress* were *Congress* under command of *Abraham Lincoln*, no less, mandated *military* the use of bayonets and heavy artillery in order to kill up to 2000 *countrymen*?
Are you forgetting about that little issue in the USA about the definition of "itself" and "citizen" between 1861 and 1865 when about 1 million of American *countrymen* were killed by the *military* (one side or the other)?
"Yours is just a stupid nonsensical liberal argument against gun ownership."
"Under a "true" free market, corporations wouldn't even exist because they are a creation of government"
Sorry, but not, they aren't. Corporations are not a creation of government, but a *recognized* by government (in hope to better control them). People have formed gangbands for as long as we have memories and corporations are only the government-blessed form for a gangband. Just take a history book (or even a fiction one) and you'll find it by the example. From Ali-Baba and the forty thieves onwards.
"I'd like to know why this lady spent two nights in jail for a *civil* violation."
Because on a free market, once you have enough money you can buy enough fear to maintain your desired 'statu quo'.
You think you are arguing against the thread when you are instead conceding.
"I want an open source phone, I really do, but I can't justify spending 500 on little more than a PDA + phone."
You seem to forget that *all* PDA+phone-like devices cost 500+. If you get some WinMo or iPhone almost for peanuts is because they are heavily subsidized by the carriers (wich, of course, get their ROI and way more on the long run). And as long as you (consumers in general) concede to the carriers' game you will get whatever is in the best interest of the carriers, not yours. And as long as your (consumers in general) concede to the carriers' game, device makers will produce them to the carriers' expectations, not yours.
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"there's nothing stopping these developers from giving $1m of this to pay for someone else to work full time on the project..."
Except the non-competing clause in their contracts, of course.
And of course too, Widenius has a point, a moot point but a point: buying out everyone that happens to compete with you is a tried and true strategy to get away competitors. It's only it is not a long time strategy against a strong and open market, it doesn't scale and it happens that open source projects with an open community backing them up (say, KDE, Debian... PostgreSQL) are the most resistant against such strategy.
So yes, Monty has a point... whatever.
"Could sub every "trac" in that post with "redmine" and it'd be the same thing."
They are indeed very similar (I already stated Trac to be the "spiritual father" of Redmine). *But* its multiproject abilities stand on the way of a "solo show" IT. For one, it makes "too easy" to start multiple projects when I can bet it's not only not needed but counterproductive on the asker's environment. On the other hand it's Python vs Ruby, but I don't want to start a flamewar here.
"I do wish redmine had a more robust bug tracker. Some of the features that bugzilla has would be nice specifically this one [ability to obviously superseed a file but a newer one]"
Exactly my point. Yours is a very clear example of the tool working against your mind (remember I told mind to be the number one needed tool?). Both Trac and Redmine already provide the asked ability not only in a way but in two different ways, it's only that they don't do it by means of featuritis. On one hand you can upload the new version with a different name (say, "somestuff_v1" and "somestuff_v2" and just use the wikisyntax to crossline the old one. And then, if you really expect something to be versioned, why don't you just put it under the control of the source management tool (say, git, subversion or whatever)? You will know what's the current working version (the last one) and you can pinpoint other relevant versions as needed -oh, and you'll retain easierly the document history).
"I use redmine, see http://www.redmine.org/"
I'd say, yes... but not.
Look at the environment:
"I work as the sole IT employee [...] I've always got multiple programming (both new systems and improvements/changes to existing systems), integration, research, maintenance tasks/projects on my To Do list, in varying stages of completion. At any given time, I need to be able to jump back to one of these items and pick up where I left off"
So:
1) His best tool must be his mind: he must use it to set his own procedures (and exceptions), so pointing to reads like David Allen's "Getting Things Done" or "Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators" are a foremost.
2) Given the right ideas are in his mind and given that it's a solo show, the leaner the tools the better: he don't need contrains on the tools when he can adopt them by his own criteria. That's where even such a fine tool like Redmine is a bit of an overkill. I'd find in this case its conceptual father to be a better fit. Trac, that is.
Let's have a look about how Trac fits the bill:
* For a start it really helps the guy that do the thing instead of getting in his way in favor of the one that plans the thing (so, i.e. there are not -at least by default, fixed workflows nor fancy flowcharts to the content of a project manager but absolutly unuseful for a single or a short development/multitasking group).
* It allows (but not commands) tight but lean integration between wiki pages, tickets, milestones and source code management. You will fastly and easily group your tickets by milestones (like, say, "work as usual year 2009" or "summer campaign"), by components (like "central servers", "help desk"...), by type (like "bug", "enhancement"...), by priority and severity but you will be *not* forced to use them if you don't want to (as an example, shorter shops tend to use either priority or severity, but not both).
* It lacks "proper" multiproject and nested tickets support but, as I already said, that's not a problem since you are alone and workflow/procedures are basically in your head (and described on a wiki page too). In example, a component/milestone combo provides for a nice solution for your short, unbudgeted, as time allows, personal/internal "microprojects", and being wiki-based, hierarchycal tickets can be easily mimicked using a "superticket" ticket type that links to all the related "subtickets" which in turn "backlink" to the parent.
So, my recomendation is Edgewall's Trac because of it leaness and functionality, more or less like this: ...and your own intelligence and discipline to firmly tie everything in place.
* Wiki pages organized by "machines", "services" and "procedures" with proper links among them (a procedure affects some services that are offered by some machines; a machine hosts some services -or parts of them; each service has some associated procedures and expands through one/some machines).
* Bug/Enhancement tickets for "usual" day-to-day activities eventually grouped by milestones (like "operations 2009") and components (like "core services", "helpdesk", "CRM"...). They allow for a description and a variable number of notes either direct or question/reply style, so you will know exactly where did you gave it six months ago, when you last time worked on it; its wiki syntax will allow for links to the pages for the affected machines/services/procedures and even the exact transaction on the source management system where/when you activated that new service or corrected that bug.
* Project-like components/milestones/tickets for bigger tasks (aka "microprojects").
*
"I don't know if I want to meet the pigeon capable of carrying a standard clay tablet."
Standard? Didn't you mean metric clay tablet? Anyway, we only use imperial clay tablets around here, thunkverymuch.
"I see no harm in a little additional caution"
You define banning the entry to the University Campus to a student without a customary investigation or even an interview a "little additional caution"??? Certainly when some people don't get it, they just don't get it.
"So you acknowledge this bad stuff happens.
Can you acknowledge that it can be prevented?"
Yes. And I know how to prevent it 100% guaranteed: let's kill them all. It's not only 100% guarantee but it's double safe: not only we will prevent the killer to do his malady but even if somehow he manages to get with his deadly duty he won't find how to kill because we came earlier.
It's perfect, MWAHAHAHAHAHA.
Now: can you please reconsider the proposition that even if A always precedes B (like breathing always precedes killing someone) preventing A maybe is not a good or proportional measure to in fact prevent B?
""Tatro said she was 'looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy" Is reason enough to be concerned."
She was attending a course on embalming, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!
"She wrote a threat in a public forum, directly relating violence to her classroom."
Are you aware that the very class agenda she looked for attending next monday includes stabing (death) people in the throat, do you?
"There are no First Amendment violations here, there is no lurking Big Brother."
I'm not keen to firearms but I expect my country mates not to become so dumbass as to take legal actions against somebody just if he dares to say "next monday some people will see some nice shots from my gun" when he is known to go to a firefield by monday.
"Oh? When exactly did they say they look forward to stabbing someone in the throat?"
When did they study mortuary science where stabbing bodies in the throat is almost customary?
"If someone says it (not a character in a story or philosophical dilemma), it's called a death threat."
Not.
Context is all. Would you call the police against Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel because they are killing softly Roberta Flack with their song?
When a mortuary science student says publicly on a blog that she is "looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy" it's obvious she is talking about her monday's class.
"If your country is fine with people running around threatening to kill people, I don't care. It's not artistic, it's stupid and may cause some people to live in fear."
Well, I think we agree: it's certainly stupid live in fear because some girl is saying some mild nonsenses after a bad love affair.
And it's criminal making pay such woman because of your (the University's) own stupidity.
"Even if society totally collapsed, there would be enough information left over for people to rebuild eventually."
Why the descendants of the event would want or need to?
While information is a treasure is not the most valuable posession of the human race: it's intelligence. And as long as there are humans over there, their intelligence will be with them. On the other hand, why would somebody want to "rebuild" a failed civilization when they can build a different one anew?
"Online upgrades. Suppose you have a service that needs to be available on a 24 x 7 basis."
I can imagine and I see how this is a case you can (and should) control by proper design, not DB*1 features. If you *need* it 24x7 then you can't and shouldn't deppend on a SPOF*2. What will happen when you want to migrate to the new and shinny Oracle current+one? If your DB is not a SPOF then there's no problem with stopping part of the system for upgrading, is it?
*1 DB: Data Base
*2 SPOF: Single point of failure.
"Name four."
Go to Google; search for "black offensive afroamerican"; 2,580,000 results.
QED.
"U.F.O. stands for Unidentified Flying Object. Those are the only conditions for being a U.F.O."
That's what people like *you* try to make us believe... /me goes for his tinfoil hat with a clever glint on his eyes.
"Unless I'm seriously mistaken, UFOs tend to come from space, not the ground."
You are both seriously mistaken and too young to know. Back in the seventies (the big days of the UFO scene) we all "knew" that places like Canary Islands or the Bermuda Triangle were submarine secret UFO bases (well, not so secret since everybody knew about them).
"No, Cromar has it on the money. Black is not a bad word, its the context you use Black in that can be offensive."
Well, it seems that in too many places in the USA *any* context where black is used for a person is bad context (i.e. in contrast to "afroamerican").
"Oh wait isn't that what happens with cars ??? yes Gas. but is really gas and MB the same thing ?"
It surely is the same... that explains why I have to weekly refill my computer when it gets empty of ones (somehow zeroes seem to be more durable).
"Once the line is setup the cost to deliver any given MB of data would be extremely small. All the network infrastructure has to be on anyways"
Well, that's not exactly true. They are madly overselling their trunk bandwith and there it is where their savings are. If you don't know about telcos, think on domestic terms: you can buy a gigabit switch for your home network so you have a "dedicated" gigabit link to any computer at home. Still all those gigabits end up at your xDSL residential connection to the Internet so, in the end, while your computers are fed up at gigabit rates they all still share a meagre connection out of your home.
"I'm pretty sure most hosting providers limit you for total downloads/month..."
*All* of them do it. XXX Mb/s * 3600 * 24 * 30 == alotted bandwidth per month. The issue is that some of them do it the obvios honest way and others do it bording fraud.
"You're ASSUMING the next knucklehead who was to maintain the code knows how to set tab stops properly."
So, in order for others no to impose you their "standard" tabstop your proposition is to impose everybody *your* "standard" tabstop?
And about knuckleheads, if you accept them disorganizing your source code, what will be next? Allow those knucleheads to write your source code? *That* is the real failure.
"That's why I usually go out of my way to persuade the developers in my team to write good commit comments."
In my experience you must teach them how to do proper commits first!
For too many "new generation" developers, commits are too much alike "Ctrl-S" so first you need to explain them "commit" is not shortcut for "save" and that while a commit is not needed to include a whole functional change (it depends on local practices, though) it should add a significant meaningful change. Only *then* they'll be able to add a meaningful commit message (like "bug#1234: the employee list now returns proper values for subcontrated people as per spec#101". It can be much better than this, but this is the bare minimum).
"Also, you NEVER should use tabs instead of spaces for indentation."
WRONG!!! You always should use tabs for indentation... PROPERLY!
"What happens if someone happens to use an editor that expands tabs to something different so that code no longer lines up?"
This CAN'T happen as long as you are using tabs properly: only on the rightmost side up to the right start of the block. I challenge you to find a situation where properly tabbing leads to misaligning due to changing tab width.
90% of code is rubish. Which should come to no surprise since 90% of everything is rubish.
The point here is that there're not so much qualitatively different high-level solutions to "the art of programming". The fact that after 30/40 years of repeating basically the same (obvious) things most of us can't cope with its basics shows the obvious: 90% of coders are rubish. The fact that 90% of coders think about themselves to be in the other 10% doesn't help, either.
"Last time I checked, US troops are still dying in Iraq left and right. In fact, many more died there after the defeat of the Iraq's regular military, due to the insurgency"
But that's a politics fact not a military one. When was the last time an Irakian city suffered a carpet bombing ala Dresden? Heck, what are the chances of nukes to be used against Irak, even tactical ones?
USA troops are dying in Irak because USA government so does want.
"Why would a country's government nuke itself?"
Why not? I'm sure the Constitution Fathers didn't allow for an open end (civilians owning weapons for whatever they see fit) because the threats they were able to imagine but because of the threats they were *not* able to imagine. But just look at contemporary history: both what "itself" and "citizen" means for a government are opened to definitions. What if Washington DC suddenly finds (well, not suddently but because the raise of a politician with, say, a funny moustache and accent, and a like for Wagner works) that California is not really part of "ourselves" (or that Mexico and Canada are indeed part of "ourselves", for that matter)? What is it about mormons and thus, Utah? What about all those pesky niggers, or jews?
"Just mentioning that shows what an idiot you are."
Telling I'm an idiot is telling Jefferson, Franklin at al. were idiots. Please pay attention that the militia was *not* thought as a means to defend the country against foreign threats but against the abuse of their very own government against its citizens.
"How useful are nukes in Iraq? Oh wait, we haven't used them..."
Exactly. And then, why USA has not used nukes in Irak? Because military limitations or has been because politics? And then, how much strengh has the Irakian government over USA politics to be sure that this or that is out of question? Certainly zero. And the USA government supports exactly my opinion as it shows the fact that it's not quite accepting whatever Iranian government wants to say about their own nuclear program.
"You can't control a populace if you kill them all."
Certainly.
Corollary number 1: you don't need to control a populace if you kill them all.
Corollary number 2: you will have an easier time controlling a populace if you kill some of it on crudel and bestial ways to show the others.
"And you can't kill them all with the military unless the military agrees"
Not an assertion proper from a republican. You can't kill them all with the military unless you *command* the military. Where does the phrase comes from? Military is there to protect democracy, not to practice it.
"they're not going to if the populace includes their own families and countrymen. "
Uh... Are you forgetting about those little Draft Riots in New York, 1863, due to *citizens* opposing *Congress* were *Congress* under command of *Abraham Lincoln*, no less, mandated *military* the use of bayonets and heavy artillery in order to kill up to 2000 *countrymen*?
Are you forgetting about that little issue in the USA about the definition of "itself" and "citizen" between 1861 and 1865 when about 1 million of American *countrymen* were killed by the *military* (one side or the other)?
"Yours is just a stupid nonsensical liberal argument against gun ownership."
Whatever.
"Under a "true" free market, corporations wouldn't even exist because they are a creation of government"
Sorry, but not, they aren't. Corporations are not a creation of government, but a *recognized* by government (in hope to better control them). People have formed gangbands for as long as we have memories and corporations are only the government-blessed form for a gangband. Just take a history book (or even a fiction one) and you'll find it by the example. From Ali-Baba and the forty thieves onwards.
"I'd like to know why this lady spent two nights in jail for a *civil* violation."
Because on a free market, once you have enough money you can buy enough fear to maintain your desired 'statu quo'.
"No.
It's because they cost hundreds of dollars."
You think you are arguing against the thread when you are instead conceding.
"I want an open source phone, I really do, but I can't justify spending 500 on little more than a PDA + phone."
You seem to forget that *all* PDA+phone-like devices cost 500+. If you get some WinMo or iPhone almost for peanuts is because they are heavily subsidized by the carriers (wich, of course, get their ROI and way more on the long run). And as long as you (consumers in general) concede to the carriers' game you will get whatever is in the best interest of the carriers, not yours. And as long as your (consumers in general) concede to the carriers' game, device makers will produce them to the carriers' expectations, not yours.
Obvious, isn't it?