"You can't tell me that Libby deserved to go to jail for "obstructing" an investigation into whether someone committed a crime "
Yes! Heaven forbid we hold federal officials accountable to the faithful pursuit of justice and to uphold the Constitution and rule of law to which they have sworn an oath!
Lying to federal investigators? Conspiring to mislead the american people? My God, people! If we don't allow the administration to lie, to obstruct justice, and to mislead the american people, how on earth will they stay in power?
In my opinion a 2.5 year prison term is not excessive for a federal official lying to federal investigators in an effort to mislead the american people.
A guy can get more time than that for personal marijuana possession. Which is worse, possessing some plant leaves, or conspiring to mislead the 280 million american citizens you are sworn to serve?
For me the really depressing part is that I have zero confidence that we will ever bring these criminals to justice. They're raping our economy, our brave soldiers, our rights, and our dignity, and it really seems there is not a thing we can do about it but grit our teeth and bare it out. This news just drives home that point.
IMHO, second to getting out of Iraq, my top priority as a voter for the next administration is to prosecute these criminals until they are old and infirm if that is what it takes. We must not let them retire to the easy life of private sector profiteering they think they have to look forward to, the life that Bush Sr. enjoys.
It is the duty of this generation to send a message down through history: fool us once, shame on us, fool us agai... you can't fool us again, because this nation will pursue you to the grave; the american people not rest until you and all your cronies are made to account for the wrongs you have committed against us and against the world in our name. Never Again.
Of course Real ID will be implemented. Just watch those resisting states come crawling back to implement Real ID when the feds tie federal highway funds to implementation of Real ID.
Don't think they will will do it? Of course they will, because they've done it before. Look no further than 1973 when another administration that fancied itself above the Constitution was in power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Spe ed_Law).
Isn't that clever? They take your money then refuse to give it back to you and your community unless you submit to their dictates. The only difference between the federal government and a highway bandit is that the government robs you in broad daylight and gets away with it.
I hope every one of you so-called Republicans out there wake up to what your party has done to our country. But you have a way to redeem yourself. It takes a true patriot to state on national television that those who nonviolently resist the IRS and the unconstitutional federal tax are freedom fighters, not criminals. http://www.ronpaul2008.com/. And you can be certain he will fight tirelessly against Real ID, because he has already been doing so for the past 2 years.
"Since no two programming jobs are the same, creating a position that requires very specific knowledge is not really fraudulent: After all, what the company is asking for is someone that can take the foreigner's responsibilities."
Except that's not what's going on here. Again, people, watch the YouTube video in its entirety.
This law firm is marketing their services to EXCLUDE reasonably and even FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants in order to save money on the bottom line, if only for a year or three, by bringing in a foreign worker. Watch the video already. They market their services to exclude an applicant, even in the case that they come upon an applicant who in good faith is FULLY QUALIFIED, by providing legal advise on how to conduct a sham interview to exclude the candidate by any means possible in order to satisfy the letter of government regulation.
This means things like disqualifying a "worryingly qualified" (the horror!) citizen applicant by bringing him in for an interview and turning him down because you didn't like his choice of tie, just to check off the box on the government form to circumvent the spirit of the law and sell out another american worker.
This corporate shill is posting the same crap over and over again here, so I'm going to keep posting again and again to call him out.
If you have any doubt who is in the wrong here, watch the entire YouTube video. There's a very good reason they don't want you to see it. Watch it now before they find a way to pull it down over copyright infringement or trade secrets.
This is about one thing: violating the good faith letter of the law to sell out american workers and save on the bottom line.
The law firm is marketing their services to bring in cheap foreign labor by following the letter of the law in bad faith by 1) advising clients how to post ads with the explicit inention of EXCLUDING all reasonably QUALIFIED citizen applicatns, and 2) advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law.
"These companies are trying to do the right thing--getting their foreign employees green cards. They don't deserve to be dragged through the mud for it."
You pathetic shill. Anyone who has any doubts should go watch the video on YouTube, the whole thing.
The law firm is marketing their services to bring in cheap foreign labor by following the letter of the law in bad faith by 1) advising clients how to post ads with the explicit inention of EXCLUDING all reasonably QUALIFIED citizen applicatns, and 2) advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law.
"Not contacting a lawyer is the most basic legal mistake there is."
And a system where the legal code is so complex that we have made it a crime for non-certified professionals to attempt to interpret it (in most every state, lobbied for by the same lawyers who want to get paid exhorbitant fees to defend you and to to prosecute you, thank you very much), is a system of INjustice.
As an entrepreneur you should be absolutely clear what you are dealing with when you talk about GNU/Linux, specifically GNU. Richard Stallman has stated time and again that he considers proprietary software development and distribution to be immoral and that it is the goal of his project and organization to eliminate it - that's you! Go to their project page and read their philosophy documents yourself. They make their goals completely clear for the world to see.
Make no mistake about it, while using the GNU system may be convenient, their goals are in direct conflict with your goals - they consider your goals to be outright immoral - and they control the licensing of the GNU projects that make up the system.
I'm sorry, but if your business model depends on benefiting from the continued maintenance and security support of GNU/Linux system projects, you need to very seriously weigh the risks and benefits.
Selling a closed box solution, you're really doing yourself a disservice if you don't start with *BSD and prove to yourself why you should risk basing your product on GNU/Linux.
I think GNU is great personally, but I really think it's funny to see corporations jumping on the bandwagon without realizing who's up front driving.
From TFA: ""In the end, adults ought to be able to decide for themselves how they spend the money they earn themselves," said Rep. Barney Frank"
Yeah, about that. You see Mr. Frank, you arrange the taking of a very large percentage of the money I work hard to earn every year, and you decide how it should be spent for me. So if you could go ahead and look into that while you're at it, that'd be great, mmmkay?
So it takes online gambling to get Barney to come around? Looks like someone must've spent a lot of time playing online poker.
"Sorry, but if you read to the end of the story, you find out that the objections were raised and the program was changed. At the end, the AG and all his cronies all signed off on the program. The acting AG seems a bit mousy to me."
Why don't you try telling the truth next time? You can't possibly still be defending this despicable administration, can you?
Ashcroft, Comey, and more than 20 professionals within the DOJ were prepared to quit over what they believed to be the gross misconduct of this administration in "this program". Yes, Ashcroft. This was so bad that even Ashcroft was going to resign in protest.
When Gonzales and Card couldn't illegally coerce a hospitalized, weakened, partially incapacitate Aschroft into signing off on "this program", THEY DID NOT STOP as you say. The program continued WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION in a form that even Ashcroft felt was deeply improper. Then, while the program continued on, unauthorized, in this highly improper and troubling form, the administration reluctantly submitted a scaled back program with concessions that was eventually signed off on by the DOJ.
Well, considering that the EFF case against the NSA for conspiring with AT&T to perform illegal dragnet wiretapping of ordinary americans' voice and data communications was suppressed by the State Secrets Privilege, we will not know for sure until 50 years from now when those documents are declassified, just like we now know what atrocities the CIA committed in the 50s and 60s in our name (and with our hard earned money, no less).
But it should be enough to make any reasonable, independent person stop to think why we should tolerate a government that, when there is even the strong *appearance* that they are massively violating our liberties, prevents us from finding out the truth in court of law? I can tell you right now, there is no secret so important, no terrorist attack so grave, that I will ever willingly surrender those liberties to avert. The government should never need to be trusted, it should only need to be made accountable.
And those liberties which are being violated and taken away are not the cause of the problems we face. On the contrary, those liberties being suppressed is the cause of the problems we face, because without them we lack the freedom and the courage to cut off the problem at its source. The very thing the populace is so afraid of, islamic terrorism, is driven by the the neo-con foreign policy, militarism, and war profiteering of our government in the region over the past 50 years. They don't hate us because we're free. Write that on the chalk board 100 times. If you poke a stick in a wasp nest you are going to get stung. And if you keep doing it, you have to expect that some are going to chase you, and they are going to follow you home.
Our liberties are being suppressed to allow these criminals to continue to perpetuate this war as long as possible by preventing wholesale domestic outrage and unrest at home. This is their biggest fear, and this is why they moved quickly when the opportunity arose to pass things like the patriot act, and to stack the supreme court with pro-executive branch power justices.
We start to win once we stop being afraid. This administration has tortured people to death. It has sold our environment wholesale to corporate interests. It has sullied our good name around the globe. It has seized our troops and put them into service as mercenaries for Haliburton and Exxon. And in the name of protecting our freedoms, it has robbed us of them. The only thing you should be afraid of now is what more this administration will do before we can stop them.
"Please direct us to the court proceedings and rulings that deemed that his actions and directives were and are illegal."
"This program" has been FOUND ILLEGAL IN COURT OF LAW. This finding may ultimately not stand, and its order to stop the program (but no its finding) has been temporary stayed, or it may be overturned and suppressed on national security or state secrets grounds, but as of now "this program" has been found to be illegal in court of law. http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26489prs200 60817.html
What other programs are out there other than "this program"? Well, we're having a hard time finding out. It certainly appears that AT&T at the direction of the NSA has engaged in the wholesale interception of the internet and telephone communications of ordinary Americans without a warrant. Of course it will probably be 50 years before we know for sure, if ever, because we can not have a fair hearing before the courts because the administration invokes the state secrets privilege.
Given that it seems the administration will continue to use this strategy of delay and suppression at every attempt to uncover and expose their misdeeds, our only recourse IS the Congress. The administration effectively holds the Judicial branch in check.
Suggesting that the strides being made in Europe on emissions are the ethical or environmental equivalent of the destructive pollution policies of the GWB administration, because, oh, "really both sides are biased," is an affront to science and to intelligence.
The policy of this administration has been unapologetically regressive. Bush loosened and terminated regulations through a stacked Congress and rolled back initiatives by presidential order, because corporate big business lobbyists told him environmental regulations were cutting into profits, "and that hurts the economy." This isn't even up for debate. He has related his policies and his actions over and over again to the press and in his speeches across the nation. We have so much going wrong in this country after 8 years that even if we get a Democratic president and Congress, it will take 10 years to recover policy-wise after this administration is finally run out of office.
The environment isn't high school debate club; this is serious and it matters, and unless Mars suddenly develops an atmosphere, we only have one shot at getting it right.
For crying out loud, they based their product on a system (GNU) whose founder - Stallman - openly believes that development and distribution of software that violates the so-called "4 essential freedoms of software users" are unethical and should cease. That's Tivo, that's what they do. The founder of the system they chose to base their business model on clearly and openly states that these practices are unethical and that it is the goal of the movement he founded, to eliminate them.
If they couldn't have been bothered to figure this out before they went down this road then someone in their development organization needs to be fired.
Somehow I don't think General Electric and Proctor and Gamble want to be known as supporters of fantasy depictions of gay mind control sex between tom cruise and has anthropomorhic clone.
Why use CG actors when you can use cheap, often unknown human actors? Star Wars has never been about the acting; it's about the story and the style.
Mark Hamill was an unknown, very mediocre actor who only managed to pull off the part in spite of the horrible dialogue because his naivete played in his favor.
Hayden Christensen, also an unkown, in this case with horrible acting skills, couldn't salvage the atrocious dialogue because he was the villain and came off as a bratty prick, not as someone the audience identified with.
Further, having CG actors doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't with human actors. Audiences fell in love with the original trilogy because they could identify with the heroes. Star Wars doesn't need flying green yodas and mortal combat robots. In the original trilogy the supernatural Force powers were natural-seeming extensions of ordinary people who rose to the occassion to accomplish extraordinary things because of their humanity, not in spite of it, and not by gimmicks or arcade fighting moves.
But then any ability to relate to the characters was pretty much ruined by Mr. Lucas explaining away everything in terms of bio-technological elitism.
The duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in the original trilogy was 10x more compelling and emotional than anything in the new trilogy, eventhough it was slow paced and had no video game acrobatics.
You know, at this point: screw it. There's nothing redeeming left about the Star Wars universe. Have at it Mr. Lucas. I hope you make millions turning the franchise into a DragonBall Z ripoff. Jedis' hair volume and color should correlate to their Jedi rank and powers. That's really all that's left to do.
I don't know which "Linux APIs" they standardize on in their product, but there are very few "Linux APIs" I would be interested in standardizing on as an application developer.
Perhaps this has value for companies wishing to port legacy GNU/Linux products to Windows and OS X with less effort than is required to target Cygwin + OS X native, but then how many companies are there in that situation who are willing to accept the risk of targetting a brand new VM platform from an unknown vendor, and do not already have the inhouse expertise to maintain Cygwin and OS X ports?
And why not Java? That's the question they need to sell any intelligent prospective customers on. If you care about performance to the extent that you don't want to target Java (VM) in the first place, why would you want to target this VM virtualizing the entire Linux kernel, a VM that doesn't have the benefit of years of tuning and performance enhancing technologies from some of the brightest engineers in the industry (Java)? And once again, a VM from an unknown player that is not proven in production?
My suspicion is that this is just a bunch of people looking to be bought out, or at least hired, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do,...unlike, perhaps, basing a new product on their technology.
"In short, he wants to cut services, not allow woman to make up their own minds, and do what supports his belief in the magical tooth fairy...oh sorry "god""
You'd do a lot better for yourself if you'd spend the time to understand your opponents rather than shouting them down with reams of reactionary bullshit. You know, respect and dialogue?
Dueling voting records do not an informed citizenry make.
Why don't you take a moment to understand why Ron Paul votes as he does?
Dr. Paul votes primarily on the principle, "Does the Constitution authorize the *federal* government to do this?" where "this" is the program, law, regluation, or tax under consideration.
He believes that most of what the federal government does and spends our money on these days, it does in violation of the Constitution. These things should be done at the state level or not at all. Or if there is consensus that they should be done at the federal level, then the Constitution should be ammended to reflect this.
As it is, we have in the past 120 years dramatically eroded the foundations of our system of government - and thereby our democratic authority - by permitting lawmakers, judges, and executives to adapt, twist, and even ignore the Constitution in its original intent. This constant abuse and erosion of our system of government and our democratic authority are then used by people like this current administration to grab sweeping new powers, take away our freedoms, and continue to illegally subsidize (with our own money) the transferring of our wealth into the pockets of large corporations.
How would you feel if one day the Congress started passing bills to the president to sign into law with only a 40% yea vote? This is similar to kind of illegal, unspoken abandonment of the foundations of our system of government that has occurred.
And regarding abortion, the Constitution is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. Whether and how the government should enact pro-life or pro-choice policies, and at what level they should be enacted, depends ultimately on a number of auxiliary philosophical and ethical presuppositions.
This isn't popular to say on Slashdot now that the abolish-copyright stance has become part of the "groupthink gospel", but I am fed up with largely a particular demographic whining about copyright law and its enforcement. Sure, complain about its excesses, but when in practice it most of the time amounts to complaining about being caught downloading the latest Spiderman movie from your dorm room, all I have to say is: grow up, put up, or shut up.
While copyright infringement is not theft, your average media consumer has as much excuse for knowingly downloading a song or movie in violation of copyright law as he or she does for taking a candybar from the supermarket without paying for it: none at all.
And there is similarly no excuse for not being willing to accept the consequences of those actions, They know it is illegal, yet still do it. Maybe they style themselves as practicing civil disobedience? Then deal with the consequences of those actions. The more out of line the punishment, the more they should relish it, because that is how civil disobedience makes its case. But they don't, because they aren't. It's completely transparent.
Everything from the demographic, to the logic, to the motives, to the actions of these people screams one thing, and it is blatantly obvious to the rest of society: casual copyright infringing consumers want content but are not willing to pay for it. Take just for example that there are now many (perhaps too many) services out there offering legally downloadable music, DRM-FREE, for reasonable prices (reasonable to anyone working hard to earn a living).
Not to mention, abolishing copyright would practically impose significantly upon the rest of society. Prices of movies in theatres would be several times what they are now. Consumers wouldn't be able to buy their favorite movies on DVD. Studios would need to keep them running in theatres as long as possible. Entering a theatre would be more security intensive than boarding an airplane. You would probably have to sign a contract when entering. And yes, mainstream content is mainstream in large part because a great many people like it. These same people think that your svelt black metal and electronica-subgenre is crap. It isn't a conspiracy and no one is a "sheep" for listening to music that makes them happy. Grow up.
You and the artists you like are free to produce as much public domain or copyleft content as you wish. No one is stopping you. No. No, they are not.
These same commercial web services will benefit GNU/Linux.
At present I am an OS X user because I am willing to pay for the high quality, hassle-free user experience Apple provides.
But already 90%+ of my computer use outside of work is of web-based. So long as GNU/Linux continues to be - and continues to improve as - a viable platform for this content, I suspect a great number of users will continue to inch nearer to being able to use GNU/Linux as their primary (and sole) system.
I'd really like to see usage statistics for the general populace: percentage breakdowns of non-business related usage categories.
My guess: email, web browsing, multimedia, games, taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
"You can't tell me that Libby deserved to go to jail for "obstructing" an investigation into whether someone committed a crime "
Yes! Heaven forbid we hold federal officials accountable to the faithful pursuit of justice and to uphold the Constitution and rule of law to which they have sworn an oath!
Lying to federal investigators? Conspiring to mislead the american people? My God, people! If we don't allow the administration to lie, to obstruct justice, and to mislead the american people, how on earth will they stay in power?
In my opinion a 2.5 year prison term is not excessive for a federal official lying to federal investigators in an effort to mislead the american people.
A guy can get more time than that for personal marijuana possession. Which is worse, possessing some plant leaves, or conspiring to mislead the 280 million american citizens you are sworn to serve?
For me the really depressing part is that I have zero confidence that we will ever bring these criminals to justice. They're raping our economy, our brave soldiers, our rights, and our dignity, and it really seems there is not a thing we can do about it but grit our teeth and bare it out. This news just drives home that point.
IMHO, second to getting out of Iraq, my top priority as a voter for the next administration is to prosecute these criminals until they are old and infirm if that is what it takes. We must not let them retire to the easy life of private sector profiteering they think they have to look forward to, the life that Bush Sr. enjoys.
It is the duty of this generation to send a message down through history: fool us once, shame on us, fool us agai... you can't fool us again, because this nation will pursue you to the grave; the american people not rest until you and all your cronies are made to account for the wrongs you have committed against us and against the world in our name. Never Again.
Of course Real ID will be implemented. Just watch those resisting states come crawling back to implement Real ID when the feds tie federal highway funds to implementation of Real ID.
e ed_Law).
Don't think they will will do it? Of course they will, because they've done it before. Look no further than 1973 when another administration that fancied itself above the Constitution was in power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Sp
Isn't that clever? They take your money then refuse to give it back to you and your community unless you submit to their dictates. The only difference between the federal government and a highway bandit is that the government robs you in broad daylight and gets away with it.
I hope every one of you so-called Republicans out there wake up to what your party has done to our country. But you have a way to redeem yourself. It takes a true patriot to state on national television that those who nonviolently resist the IRS and the unconstitutional federal tax are freedom fighters, not criminals. http://www.ronpaul2008.com/. And you can be certain he will fight tirelessly against Real ID, because he has already been doing so for the past 2 years.
"Since no two programming jobs are the same, creating a position that requires very specific knowledge is not really fraudulent: After all, what the company is asking for is someone that can take the foreigner's responsibilities."
Except that's not what's going on here. Again, people, watch the YouTube video in its entirety.
This law firm is marketing their services to EXCLUDE reasonably and even FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants in order to save money on the bottom line, if only for a year or three, by bringing in a foreign worker. Watch the video already. They market their services to exclude an applicant, even in the case that they come upon an applicant who in good faith is FULLY QUALIFIED, by providing legal advise on how to conduct a sham interview to exclude the candidate by any means possible in order to satisfy the letter of government regulation.
This means things like disqualifying a "worryingly qualified" (the horror!) citizen applicant by bringing him in for an interview and turning him down because you didn't like his choice of tie, just to check off the box on the government form to circumvent the spirit of the law and sell out another american worker.
This corporate shill is posting the same crap over and over again here, so I'm going to keep posting again and again to call him out.
If you have any doubt who is in the wrong here, watch the entire YouTube video. There's a very good reason they don't want you to see it. Watch it now before they find a way to pull it down over copyright infringement or trade secrets.
This is about one thing: violating the good faith letter of the law to sell out american workers and save on the bottom line.
The law firm is marketing their services to bring in cheap foreign labor by following the letter of the law in bad faith by 1) advising clients how to post ads with the explicit inention of EXCLUDING all reasonably QUALIFIED citizen applicatns, and 2) advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law.
"These companies are trying to do the right thing--getting their foreign employees green cards. They don't deserve to be dragged through the mud for it."
You pathetic shill. Anyone who has any doubts should go watch the video on YouTube, the whole thing.
The law firm is marketing their services to bring in cheap foreign labor by following the letter of the law in bad faith by 1) advising clients how to post ads with the explicit inention of EXCLUDING all reasonably QUALIFIED citizen applicatns, and 2) advising clients how to, by whatever means possible, interview and EXCLUDE FULLY QUALIFIED citizen applicants by conducting sham interviews to satisfy the good faith clause of the law.
"Not contacting a lawyer is the most basic legal mistake there is."
And a system where the legal code is so complex that we have made it a crime for non-certified professionals to attempt to interpret it (in most every state, lobbied for by the same lawyers who want to get paid exhorbitant fees to defend you and to to prosecute you, thank you very much), is a system of INjustice.
"..., but, damn, wow, you're right, we really bent him over good on this one! Good work people!"
As an entrepreneur you should be absolutely clear what you are dealing with when you talk about GNU/Linux, specifically GNU. Richard Stallman has stated time and again that he considers proprietary software development and distribution to be immoral and that it is the goal of his project and organization to eliminate it - that's you! Go to their project page and read their philosophy documents yourself. They make their goals completely clear for the world to see.
Make no mistake about it, while using the GNU system may be convenient, their goals are in direct conflict with your goals - they consider your goals to be outright immoral - and they control the licensing of the GNU projects that make up the system.
I'm sorry, but if your business model depends on benefiting from the continued maintenance and security support of GNU/Linux system projects, you need to very seriously weigh the risks and benefits.
Selling a closed box solution, you're really doing yourself a disservice if you don't start with *BSD and prove to yourself why you should risk basing your product on GNU/Linux.
I think GNU is great personally, but I really think it's funny to see corporations jumping on the bandwagon without realizing who's up front driving.
Not only that, but Congress may be about to pass a bill that leave us better off than we were before.
Could it be?
From TFA:
""In the end, adults ought to be able to decide for themselves how they spend the money they earn themselves," said Rep. Barney Frank"
Yeah, about that. You see Mr. Frank, you arrange the taking of a very large percentage of the money I work hard to earn every year, and you decide how it should be spent for me. So if you could go ahead and look into that while you're at it, that'd be great, mmmkay?
So it takes online gambling to get Barney to come around? Looks like someone must've spent a lot of time playing online poker.
"Sorry, but if you read to the end of the story, you find out that the objections were raised and the program was changed. At the end, the AG and all his cronies all signed off on the program. The acting AG seems a bit mousy to me."
Why don't you try telling the truth next time? You can't possibly still be defending this despicable administration, can you?
Ashcroft, Comey, and more than 20 professionals within the DOJ were prepared to quit over what they believed to be the gross misconduct of this administration in "this program". Yes, Ashcroft. This was so bad that even Ashcroft was going to resign in protest.
When Gonzales and Card couldn't illegally coerce a hospitalized, weakened, partially incapacitate Aschroft into signing off on "this program", THEY DID NOT STOP as you say. The program continued WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION in a form that even Ashcroft felt was deeply improper. Then, while the program continued on, unauthorized, in this highly improper and troubling form, the administration reluctantly submitted a scaled back program with concessions that was eventually signed off on by the DOJ.
Well, considering that the EFF case against the NSA for conspiring with AT&T to perform illegal dragnet wiretapping of ordinary americans' voice and data communications was suppressed by the State Secrets Privilege, we will not know for sure until 50 years from now when those documents are declassified, just like we now know what atrocities the CIA committed in the 50s and 60s in our name (and with our hard earned money, no less).
But it should be enough to make any reasonable, independent person stop to think why we should tolerate a government that, when there is even the strong *appearance* that they are massively violating our liberties, prevents us from finding out the truth in court of law? I can tell you right now, there is no secret so important, no terrorist attack so grave, that I will ever willingly surrender those liberties to avert. The government should never need to be trusted, it should only need to be made accountable.
And those liberties which are being violated and taken away are not the cause of the problems we face. On the contrary, those liberties being suppressed is the cause of the problems we face, because without them we lack the freedom and the courage to cut off the problem at its source. The very thing the populace is so afraid of, islamic terrorism, is driven by the the neo-con foreign policy, militarism, and war profiteering of our government in the region over the past 50 years. They don't hate us because we're free. Write that on the chalk board 100 times. If you poke a stick in a wasp nest you are going to get stung. And if you keep doing it, you have to expect that some are going to chase you, and they are going to follow you home.
Our liberties are being suppressed to allow these criminals to continue to perpetuate this war as long as possible by preventing wholesale domestic outrage and unrest at home. This is their biggest fear, and this is why they moved quickly when the opportunity arose to pass things like the patriot act, and to stack the supreme court with pro-executive branch power justices.
We start to win once we stop being afraid. This administration has tortured people to death. It has sold our environment wholesale to corporate interests. It has sullied our good name around the globe. It has seized our troops and put them into service as mercenaries for Haliburton and Exxon. And in the name of protecting our freedoms, it has robbed us of them. The only thing you should be afraid of now is what more this administration will do before we can stop them.
"Please direct us to the court proceedings and rulings that deemed that his actions and directives were and are illegal."
0 60817.html
"This program" has been FOUND ILLEGAL IN COURT OF LAW. This finding may ultimately not stand, and its order to stop the program (but no its finding) has been temporary stayed, or it may be overturned and suppressed on national security or state secrets grounds, but as of now "this program" has been found to be illegal in court of law.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26489prs20
What other programs are out there other than "this program"? Well, we're having a hard time finding out. It certainly appears that AT&T at the direction of the NSA has engaged in the wholesale interception of the internet and telephone communications of ordinary Americans without a warrant. Of course it will probably be 50 years before we know for sure, if ever, because we can not have a fair hearing before the courts because the administration invokes the state secrets privilege.
Given that it seems the administration will continue to use this strategy of delay and suppression at every attempt to uncover and expose their misdeeds, our only recourse IS the Congress. The administration effectively holds the Judicial branch in check.
That means contempt of congress and impeachment.
Mr. President, we must not allow an illegal wiretapping gap!
"That's really all this is. It's cherry picking on both sides."
Oh, look, Republican Debating Techniques 101! Look folks, let's play: muddy the waters!
Suggesting that the strides being made in Europe on emissions are the ethical or environmental equivalent of the destructive pollution policies of the GWB administration, because, oh, "really both sides are biased," is an affront to science and to intelligence.
The policy of this administration has been unapologetically regressive. Bush loosened and terminated regulations through a stacked Congress and rolled back initiatives by presidential order, because corporate big business lobbyists told him environmental regulations were cutting into profits, "and that hurts the economy." This isn't even up for debate. He has related his policies and his actions over and over again to the press and in his speeches across the nation. We have so much going wrong in this country after 8 years that even if we get a Democratic president and Congress, it will take 10 years to recover policy-wise after this administration is finally run out of office.
The environment isn't high school debate club; this is serious and it matters, and unless Mars suddenly develops an atmosphere, we only have one shot at getting it right.
For crying out loud, they based their product on a system (GNU) whose founder - Stallman - openly believes that development and distribution of software that violates the so-called "4 essential freedoms of software users" are unethical and should cease. That's Tivo, that's what they do. The founder of the system they chose to base their business model on clearly and openly states that these practices are unethical and that it is the goal of the movement he founded, to eliminate them.
If they couldn't have been bothered to figure this out before they went down this road then someone in their development organization needs to be fired.
Somehow I don't think General Electric and Proctor and Gamble want to be known as supporters of fantasy depictions of gay mind control sex between tom cruise and has anthropomorhic clone.
yiff!
"I mean, we don't expect convincing performances from a bunch of CG characters."
No actor could have salvaged the Hayden Christensen character. The character was poorly conceived and the dialogue was atrocious - really, really bad.
But when it comes to CG characters, all we have is the dialogue and the story, unless you just want to go the stylized eye candy route.
Why use CG actors when you can use cheap, often unknown human actors? Star Wars has never been about the acting; it's about the story and the style.
Mark Hamill was an unknown, very mediocre actor who only managed to pull off the part in spite of the horrible dialogue because his naivete played in his favor.
Hayden Christensen, also an unkown, in this case with horrible acting skills, couldn't salvage the atrocious dialogue because he was the villain and came off as a bratty prick, not as someone the audience identified with.
Further, having CG actors doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't with human actors. Audiences fell in love with the original trilogy because they could identify with the heroes. Star Wars doesn't need flying green yodas and mortal combat robots. In the original trilogy the supernatural Force powers were natural-seeming extensions of ordinary people who rose to the occassion to accomplish extraordinary things because of their humanity, not in spite of it, and not by gimmicks or arcade fighting moves.
But then any ability to relate to the characters was pretty much ruined by Mr. Lucas explaining away everything in terms of bio-technological elitism.
The duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in the original trilogy was 10x more compelling and emotional than anything in the new trilogy, eventhough it was slow paced and had no video game acrobatics.
You know, at this point: screw it. There's nothing redeeming left about the Star Wars universe. Have at it Mr. Lucas. I hope you make millions turning the franchise into a DragonBall Z ripoff. Jedis' hair volume and color should correlate to their Jedi rank and powers. That's really all that's left to do.
I don't know which "Linux APIs" they standardize on in their product, but there are very few "Linux APIs" I would be interested in standardizing on as an application developer.
...unlike, perhaps, basing a new product on their technology.
Perhaps this has value for companies wishing to port legacy GNU/Linux products to Windows and OS X with less effort than is required to target Cygwin + OS X native, but then how many companies are there in that situation who are willing to accept the risk of targetting a brand new VM platform from an unknown vendor, and do not already have the inhouse expertise to maintain Cygwin and OS X ports?
And why not Java? That's the question they need to sell any intelligent prospective customers on. If you care about performance to the extent that you don't want to target Java (VM) in the first place, why would you want to target this VM virtualizing the entire Linux kernel, a VM that doesn't have the benefit of years of tuning and performance enhancing technologies from some of the brightest engineers in the industry (Java)? And once again, a VM from an unknown player that is not proven in production?
My suspicion is that this is just a bunch of people looking to be bought out, or at least hired, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do,
"In short, he wants to cut services, not allow woman to make up their own minds, and do what supports his belief in the magical tooth fairy...oh sorry "god""
You'd do a lot better for yourself if you'd spend the time to understand your opponents rather than shouting them down with reams of reactionary bullshit. You know, respect and dialogue?
Dueling voting records do not an informed citizenry make.
Why don't you take a moment to understand why Ron Paul votes as he does?
Dr. Paul votes primarily on the principle, "Does the Constitution authorize the *federal* government to do this?" where "this" is the program, law, regluation, or tax under consideration.
He believes that most of what the federal government does and spends our money on these days, it does in violation of the Constitution. These things should be done at the state level or not at all. Or if there is consensus that they should be done at the federal level, then the Constitution should be ammended to reflect this.
As it is, we have in the past 120 years dramatically eroded the foundations of our system of government - and thereby our democratic authority - by permitting lawmakers, judges, and executives to adapt, twist, and even ignore the Constitution in its original intent. This constant abuse and erosion of our system of government and our democratic authority are then used by people like this current administration to grab sweeping new powers, take away our freedoms, and continue to illegally subsidize (with our own money) the transferring of our wealth into the pockets of large corporations.
How would you feel if one day the Congress started passing bills to the president to sign into law with only a 40% yea vote? This is similar to kind of illegal, unspoken abandonment of the foundations of our system of government that has occurred.
And regarding abortion, the Constitution is neither pro-choice nor pro-life. Whether and how the government should enact pro-life or pro-choice policies, and at what level they should be enacted, depends ultimately on a number of auxiliary philosophical and ethical presuppositions.
...and climb on board as an enterprise IPv6 migration consultant.
Hopefully it *is* the new Y2K.
...you're pretty damn pathetic.
This isn't popular to say on Slashdot now that the abolish-copyright stance has become part of the "groupthink gospel", but I am fed up with largely a particular demographic whining about copyright law and its enforcement. Sure, complain about its excesses, but when in practice it most of the time amounts to complaining about being caught downloading the latest Spiderman movie from your dorm room, all I have to say is: grow up, put up, or shut up.
While copyright infringement is not theft, your average media consumer has as much excuse for knowingly downloading a song or movie in violation of copyright law as he or she does for taking a candybar from the supermarket without paying for it: none at all.
And there is similarly no excuse for not being willing to accept the consequences of those actions, They know it is illegal, yet still do it. Maybe they style themselves as practicing civil disobedience? Then deal with the consequences of those actions. The more out of line the punishment, the more they should relish it, because that is how civil disobedience makes its case. But they don't, because they aren't. It's completely transparent.
Everything from the demographic, to the logic, to the motives, to the actions of these people screams one thing, and it is blatantly obvious to the rest of society: casual copyright infringing consumers want content but are not willing to pay for it. Take just for example that there are now many (perhaps too many) services out there offering legally downloadable music, DRM-FREE, for reasonable prices (reasonable to anyone working hard to earn a living).
Not to mention, abolishing copyright would practically impose significantly upon the rest of society. Prices of movies in theatres would be several times what they are now. Consumers wouldn't be able to buy their favorite movies on DVD. Studios would need to keep them running in theatres as long as possible. Entering a theatre would be more security intensive than boarding an airplane. You would probably have to sign a contract when entering. And yes, mainstream content is mainstream in large part because a great many people like it. These same people think that your svelt black metal and electronica-subgenre is crap. It isn't a conspiracy and no one is a "sheep" for listening to music that makes them happy. Grow up.
You and the artists you like are free to produce as much public domain or copyleft content as you wish. No one is stopping you. No. No, they are not.
Thank you.
These same commercial web services will benefit GNU/Linux.
At present I am an OS X user because I am willing to pay for the high quality, hassle-free user experience Apple provides.
But already 90%+ of my computer use outside of work is of web-based. So long as GNU/Linux continues to be - and continues to improve as - a viable platform for this content, I suspect a great number of users will continue to inch nearer to being able to use GNU/Linux as their primary (and sole) system.
I'd really like to see usage statistics for the general populace: percentage breakdowns of non-business related usage categories.
My guess: email, web browsing, multimedia, games, taxes.