You're missing the point of the article. Read it closer - WhenU is saying they support federal legislation, but not state legislation as it interferes with their ability to conduct commerce. The interstate commerce clause in the Constitution specifically grants Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce, and the 10th Amendment states that unenumerated federal powers are reserved to the states and the people (coversely, enumerated federal powers are not given to the states or the people). In this case, WhenU is challenging Utah's right to interfere with their business, and I think they have a point - the restriction cannot come from a state law, but must be federal.
Find me another nation with the same rights and freedoms as the U.S. The U.S. may be slowly abrogating the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, but it's still better than most other countries (the current administration excluded). The solution isn't to leave, but to change the slow slide into tyranny.
Maybe in 5 years Linux will have many more (clueless) users, and also more problems like Windows currently has.
So what are you doing now to prepare for the contigency, other than bashing MS and gloating that your OS hasn't been attacked, grasshopper? Five years from now, when you're trying to get everyone together from points unknown to fix a major security hole the DoD heard about on Bugtraq, what's the plan?
Personally, for business use, I'd rather use Windows - sure, it's got holes, and a cadre of attackers and script-kiddies trying to break it, but it's also got engineers behind it working against those attacks to make it better and safer. I don't see that in the Linux community, and I'm deathly afraid that when a Linux worm comes around and actually makes some splash in the news media, there won't be a fix in time to stop it.
I've also got a small problem with the security reporting that happens in Linux. Open reporting means there's a big gap between the time a vulnerability is found and the time a patch is available - that gap is where the exploits come from. For MS, the vulnerabilities usually (not always) aren't reported until the patch is ready. The gap is short, and if you patch regularly, your exposure approaches nil. When I hear about a Linux vulnerability, I've got no patch, maybe a workaround, and I'm vulnerable until someone (maybe me) decides it's worth fixing.
The other bad thing about Linux - there's no one person to bitch and complain about on/. (unless you count Sun).
You do not need a license to buy a car - you need a license to operate a car, and the standards for getting that license is defined by the state, not the federal government. However, in most states, you don't even need a license or a permit to operate a car if you're learning, so the standard for learning to drive is parental, not even state or federal.
And if you think that the waiting period and police check to buy a gun is a guarantee of standards, you're sorely mistaken - the waiting period is to prevent crimes of passion, and the background check is to make sure the buyer isn't a felon prohibited from owning a gun. They don't check that you've taken a gun safety course, or even know which end to point at the bad guy. Anyone willing to fill out the paperwork, lay down the cash, and wait a week can get a gun, without any other standards prohibiting them. We actually have more training for automobile drivers than for gun owners.
No, I'm not leaving anytime soon - I'm not Alec Baldwin. I'm working to change the trend towards socialism that started with Lincoln and has been perpetuated ever since. Actually, I'd contact the local militia--the city police, county sherrif, or local military command
None of those entities constitute the local milita - they are the select militia, government controlled agencies that have no obligation to aid you or accept your help. The local militia - the one referred to in the Second Amendment - consists of all able bodied males age 18 or older who own guns. You want to help, find the gun owners in your area.
Don't forget that this "cracked foundation" has been more productive and given the nation a higher standard of living (and opulant ceiling) than the pre-Lincon system ever could.
Ever hear of the Industrial Revolution? The fact that Lincoln's administration occurred around the same time is coincidence. The industrial revolution did more to increase prosperity and peace in the U.S., while Lincoln's policies made sure that a disproportionate piece of that prosperity went to his big business buddies and public works projects.
Not everybody has the time, much less the qualification, to teach their children. When both parents work full-time to bring in a decent amount of money, somebody else has to educate the kids.
When I got my first real job after graduating college, my wife stopped working, and hasn't held a 40+ hour a week job since then (9 years and holding). We keep our expenses down enough that we can live well, save and invest some money, and still make sure she's home for our daughter.
Second, there are alternatives to home-schooling for people who don't think they're qualified to teach their kids. Community based schools, co-operative ventures based in the community and run by a group of people brought together of their own free will. The essence of these schools is the free-will involved on the part of parents, rather than the enforced and coerced involvement in public schools.
Private school isn't a choice for everyone.
I agree, and I also don't like the idea of vouchers - it's just another tax-money boondoggle. Notice I never made that argument...
Charter schools are in most cases a joke.
I agree totally here as well - charter schools are nothing more than public schools dressed in private school clothes. They're no better than school vouchers.
The first step to fixing them is making the kids want to learn.
There are kids who want to learn, if only given the chance. Personal anecdote - I grew up in two states, Ohio and Connecticut. I started in CT, then moved to OH for third and fourth grade. While there, I ran through spelling and math books - by the middle of my fourth grade year, I was finishing the sixth grade spelling book. Then I moved to CT, and was put back into a fourth grade speller, which I had finished in the third grade. I asked to be put ahead to where I was, and was denied - apparently, no one else was that far ahead, so it wasn't fair for me to move ahead. So I aced the fourth grade spelling tests, finishing ahead of my classmates, and had to wait for the tests to end before I could go on to somehting else. I had to sit quietly waiting for my classmates to finish - it was agonizing and led to previously unknown behavior problems (I was unruly and slightly belligerent because I was bored stupid).
There were people in my class for whom the tests were agonizing - there were other things these kids should and could have been doing, like learning a trade or practicing athletics. Why should we make students who excel at school work slow down so the slower kids don't lose "self-esteem"? Why should we force the slower kids to learn useless information when they could be productive and happier learning to weld, farm, repair shoes, build houses, or any of a host of other skilled jobs for which algebra is useless? Not every child is smart enough to finish high school as it now stands, let alone go to college
Now, as for fixing the system, I put it to you that the system isn't broken - it's doing exactly what it's meant to do, i.e. pump out brain-washed youths filled with inaccurate half-truths in history, mostly useless mathematics, outdated scientific information, and a complete lack of basic critical thinking skills. Instead of learning to ask questions, you're taught to answer them from authority figures - I'm still plagued with this problem when confronted with authority. Instead of learning the basic scientific method (observe, hypothesize, experiment, refine, theorize), you're taught how to recite memorized facts. All of this is designed to produce docile citizens. It's not broke and doesn't need to be fixed - it needs to be dismantled and American's returned to the same state Alexis de Toqueville found us in the 1830's - the most educated and literate society on earth.
I feel it really IS a good thing for kids to socialize with each other and get out of the same house.
So why do you have to not do that if you home-school? Take your kids to the YMCA, church groups, Boy Scouts, Little League baseball (oops, forgot the millenium - soccer), whatever. There's nothing that says you have to deprive them of socialization, just of the forced socialization publci schools provide.
Oh Christ, now I'm having socialist song lyrics quoted at me. *sigh*
For the record, I never said it would be better after a revolution, and I did say that no one would plan one because the cost of having one would be too high. I'm not advocating violent revolution as a viable alternative, but discussing the issues as I see them.
As for building before tearing down, that would be nice if we could get the proper permits to do the building. Some people tried to build first, in places like Ruby Ridge and Waco. You see how successful they were.
As for replacements, why do I need to replace oppressive taxation and corrupt government entities with anything? That's like saying I want this cancerous mass removed from my body, but you could fill the gap with a plastic ball please? There are some things that need replacing, but those things were replaced themselves - all we need do is go back to what was there before (like gold standard for currency, State sovereignty over the federal government, community schools).
You are absolutely right - so why can't I have an M1 tank? How about a shoulder-mounted heat-seeking rocket launcher? How about some claymore mines? Hell, I can't even get a bloody handgun without telling the government who I am and why I want one.
Because you've done something for the greater good?
You're drinking the government Kool-Aid if you think giving your kids and your money to the government to lock them inside a brick building six hours a day, keeping them calm and docile with drugs if necessary, taking years to teach reading (which is a necessary skill, easily learnable in 6-8 weeks with phonetic skills), and forcing socialization on them is for the "greater good".
Your arguments about taxpayers are spot on - no one wants to pay for it, so in steps the government to steal the moeny from you for it (yes, it's theft - they take my money without my consent under threat of violence. Muggers are actually more honest about it - they produce the gun before they ask for my wallet). So, if the current system isn't working and no one is happy with it, why are we continuing to try to patch it up?
The Indians have a saying: When you find yourself riding a dead horse, the best thing to do is dismount. However, it seems that when it comes to public education (which I posit is a dead horse), we are more willing to paint the horse a festive color, try to revive the horse, put more people on the horse, feed the horse more high-quality oats, or anything other than get off the damn thing.
How can you help? Simple - get off the horse. Home school your kids - when the government agents come knocking on your door to ask why your kids aren't in school, tell them your home-schooling, don't need your schools, thankyouverymuch and close the door. When you reward poor choices with more money (like raising funding to schools based on the number of kids in the school), the best way to help is to reduce your involvment in the behavior.
in keeping with the whole point of public free education.
Then I posit that publickly funded free education is a bad thing. It's a government run youth progandizing system designed to keep the overachievers held down, the active doped up on Ritalin, the stupid made to feel good about themselves, and everyone docile enough to never question government and authority.
A more educated populace is a more prodctive populace
When Alexis de Toqueville visited the U.S. in the early 19th century, he found the populace was mostly literate and well educated. Note that this was before Massachusetts instituted the Prussian model of public education (conditioning young "commoners" to follow simple orders, be literate enough to read gun manual, and obedient enough to respond to bells and sounds - they were training them to be cannon fodder in future Prussian wars), when people were regularly schooled at home or in community run schools.
meaning that we'll have a stronger nation more easily to support us when we retire
That is the most socialist thing I have heard anyone say about education, and supports most of my vehement opposition to public education. Quite frankly, I don't want your kid's fscking money when I retire - that's why I have a retirement account and savings, so I can retire an not be leech on society. And I'll be damned if my kid's money is gonna go to support your socialist ass when you feel you'v earned a rest. You want a rest, grasshopper, stop playing away the summer and start saving for it.
defend us when we are invaded and too old to fight on the front lines
Are you saying that, should an armed invasion of the U.S. happen, that you wouldn't hobble your broken-down socialist ass onto your lawn to defend your home and family? I'd defend my home and family with a ball-point pen and some shipping twine in a wheelchair if I had to. Oh, but wait, you're a socialist (see previous paragraph) - I guess you'll just have to wait for the government to tell you what to do or save you. Have fun.
blame the cold war. The Federal government literally prints money
You're not going back far enough. Blame the Whig/Republican party during the Civil War. They illegally setup the national banking system and started printing fiat paper currency, backed by nothing more than promises and hot air. They setup to protectionist tariff system that crippled the economy and has left it wheezing ever since. They started the basis of the modern military-industrial complex we know and love today. Everything since then is resting on the cracked foundation the tyrant Abraham Lincoln left us with.
That is one unsalvagable little girl. Not only is her father playing the system left him, but he's raising his daughter to play the system as well, rather than change it for the better.
The problem lacks a clear-cut solution Actually, there is a clear cut solution that no one wants to entertain because the price is so very very high. Do as stated in the Declaration of Independence - abolish the current form of government and replace it with one that does what we want.
Why is the price so high? Other than the obvious reasons, there is the historical precedent that is was tried already once, from 1861-1865, and 600,000 people died during that conflict between two groups that were closely matched in armaments. Now, thanks to people like Feinstein and Brady and Clinton and Moynihan, there's no way a group of citizens could match the armament of the U.S. military. It would be suicide, and right now, that's a much worse alternative than anything on the table.
I'd be for a return to the original mercatilist system- or a return to capitalism as we had it before Lincoln.
I'm not a mercantilism fan, but a free market capitalistic system is worth shooting for.
But the only way to do that will be with an ammendment to the constitution instituting the separation of State and Business
Why would we need an amendment? Lincoln didn't need it to circumvent the Constitution to set it up in the first place. We need leaders with scruples and principles to stop using illegal precedent to set policy and start interpretting the Constitution as it was written. How we get find those leaders and get them into the positions they need to be in is as yet undefined, but I guarantee you that neither Bush nor Kerry nor Nader are them.
I think there's a germane point in there, and that is that no one seems to to understand that there is a difference between speech and action. Quite frankly, talk is cheap, and with the semi-anonymity the Internet provides, it's easier to come close to and go over the edge from heated discussion to "them's fightin' words". It's also a big step from saying something and doing it, and most people will stop and rethink their course before committing potentially offending words into definitely injurious actions.
The U.S. government currently has laws they enforce on a regular basis that inappropriately links speech to behavior right now. Look them up - start with the Patriot Act, then find the FAA ruling that says you can't say "bomb" going through the metal detectors, and finally try to run a politcal ad a week before an election or give a candidate $100,000 for his campaign.
Actually, I'd call it a shining example of Corporatism
It's called mercatilism, a prevalent economic form in Europe in the 19th century, and the primary economic policy of the Whig's and later, the Republicans, in the U.S. It was fought against for eighty years until Abraham Lincoln instituted it, imposing protective tariffs, subsidizing railroad and canal building, centralizing the money supply in a national bank, and giving birth to the military-industrial complex. Until then, yes, the U.S. was capitalistic - now, almost every administration since Lincoln (and certainly every administration since FDR) has broadened and expanded the mercantilist system in the U.S. The primary result? Now people distrust corporate America as much as they distrust the government, simply because they work so well together...
If you think the people are not ultimatly responsible for the governments actions, ask yourself if we would be fighting in Iraq if Gore had won the election.
It think that proves the opposite point - a majority of the American poeple voted for Gore in the last election. The Supreme Court gave the election to Bush the Younger.
Now ask yourself if it was worth it. What changes has it made in your life? Is your life any better or worse? Has government done what it is chartered to do by the Constitution by waging this war? How about the open-ended undeclared wars on terror and drugs?
Now ask yourself if we went to war to free the Iraqi people, why haven't we done the same for the Tibetan people, or the Timorese people, or the North Korean people, or the Cuban people, or any other people around the world who aren't free? Once you figure that out, ask yourself why Iraw again, and then re-ask yourself whether the costs of this war cover the gains.
At this point the only effective method the American people have of stopping their government is to read, understand, and follow the words in the Declaration of Independence that says "...whenever any form of government becomes destructive to [the rights of people], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government..."
I think I'd like the chart a little better if it didn't distinguish between each version of each language. Major updates are OK (Fortran --> Fortran 4 --> Fortran 77, B --> C --> C++, Lisp ---> Common Lisp, etc.), but the dot versions just clutter things up.
That being said, the lighter connecting arrows between languages (Lisp to Logo, Algol to almost everything else) makes the chart easy to follow and interesting to look at.
There's a major problem with splitting service like this. I had Qwest local phone service and their DSL package, but since I was upgrading from a dial-up service that also offered DSL hosting, I stayed with them for ISP services.
The problems occured when the DSL went out for a week. Called Qwest - no problems, call your ISP. Called the ISP - no problems, call your DSL provider. Round and round for a week. Well, OK, two days before I got fed up, told 'em both to get stuffed and called my cable provider for a cabel modem.
After the cable was up and working, I called Qwest and my ISP to drop their plans. They asked why, I told them "Because my service went out for a week and nobody wanted to help me - you both wanted to blame the other guy. No service to me means no more money to you."
While this may level a certain market playing field and break up a potential monopoly, it may not be a good thing for consumers if they have togo to three different companies to figure out why something's not working anymore, especially if SBC holds a grudge and doesn't want to play nice with other DSL and ISP providers in the area.
This is almost an automatic setup for an appeal and upgrade to the next higher court. There is absolutely no way a judge can rule a contract or agreement unenforcable because both parties didn't read it. If you didn't read it, then that's you're tough luck, but there's a couple centries of contract law showing that unread portions of contracts are enforcable as long as the contract itself is enforcable.
I'm wondering if the judge was just lazy and wanted this at a higher level, so he made an asinine ruling to get it bumped up on appeal. Doesn't make sense - he would get dinged for the crappy judgement at some point, but it's kinda like not vetoing a bill hoping the court will rule it invalid.
You need to work on your reading comprehension. I said that all spam is theft, and most of it is fraud.
Maybe we need to agree on a definition of spam first. I've heard it defined as all unsolicitied e-mail, unsolicited commercial e-mail, and your definition (inferred from your response) of fraudulent e-mail. My definition is unsolicitied commercial e-mail, which includes advertisements for legitimate businesses, fraudulent e-mails, and theft attempts. Taking your more narrow definition, your initial statement is accurate - using my definition, your statement is false.
The Constitution quite plainly says that Congress does have the authority to regulate interstate commerce.
You are correct - I was confusing two different issues in my head. Article 1, Section 8 enumerates the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. My confusion came from recent state laws to stop spam, which is not Constitutional by the same argument - the power belongs to the federal government, and by the Tenth Amendment is not something the States can do. My apologies for a patently false argument.
make the punishment for getting caught multiplied by the probability of getting caught greater than the expected gain from committing it.
OK, now, how do you catch them? Spoofing a return e-mail address can be made illegal, but how do you find out who did it? The trail back to them has been deliberately obfuscated. Tracking them back through routers to the source requires the freely given assitance of router operators, or more legislation to compel them to comply (a wire tap law for Internet routers).
But my argument of reducing the cost-effectiveness was more a search for market forces that could be brought to bear on the situation rather than legislative measures to do the same. I believe that market forces that reduce profitability of a particular business or business practice have a greater impact on businesses than laws do - markets and market forces can't be bribed or lobbied, and are not subject to election year pressures.
I repeat, the existence of locks and alarms is not an argument against having police and prisons.
It's a bit of a non-sequiter, but you do know that the police have no mandate to stop a crime in progress, right? This has been upheld in courts - if you are being mugged and a policeman witnesses it, he has nothing forcing him to help you. After it's over, his job is to investigate and hopefully apprehend the criminal, but he doesn't have to stop it. The same thing goes here - any federal police force tasked with stopping spam would have no mandate to stop it, just investigate and follow-up.
I'm also wondering how a federal police force to stop spam would be any more effective than the DEA is with drugs.
We could also argue the constitutionality of such a federal police force (even another task for the FBI), but since Lincoln's administration, such arguments are useless.
the latter (spam) alwasy fall into one (theft) and almost always into a second (fraud).
You are prepared to argue that all commercial e-mail sent to you is fraud and theft? Do you have evidence to substantiate that? None of it comes from legitimate business owners trying to expand their customer bases? I'll concede some of it is fraudulent, some of it criminal (viruses and worms), some of it may even be crude theft attempts (PLEASE HELP ME GET THIS US$30 MILLION OUT OF MY NATIVE NIGERIA), but most of it comes from legitimate e-businesses trying to get me to buy their crap.
Quite frankly, neither a do-not-call nor a do-not-e-mail list are the proper roles of government. An argument can be made that the government is interfering with interstate commerce, prohibited by the Constitution. I agree that calls and e-mails are a pain in the butt, but are they any more taxing on our resources than commercial snail mail?
The simple economic fact is that spam is a very cost-effective way to market and advertise your product or business. Make it less cost-effective and it will go away on it's own. How? Stop clicking on the damn links and stop opening the e-mails before you delete them. There are other good technical solutions that have been tried, others that haven't, and still more that haven't been developed yet - that's where you should be investing your time and money, rather than petitioning government to take everyone's money to enact an ineffective bureaucracy to handle the problem for you.
Seems like the only difference here is the Creative Commons License (which can be extended to wiki's) and the fact they want to publish a meatspace book (not sure why - it would be outdated the minute they snapped the content).
Technically, China is still communist, and Wikipedia is about as fine an example of the triumph of successful communist principles (community-owned, from according to assets, to according to need) as you could ask for.
Huh? Get yer head out yer ass - wikipedia is a voluntary organization of people brought together for a common purpose. Communism is the introduction of force to redistribute wealth and prosperity "from those according to their abilities, to those according to their needs". The difference between wiki's and a communist government is the force bit - if I don't want to contribute to a wiki, I don't contribute. If I don't want to contribute to a communist government, I get shot.
You know, it's not just liberals or Democrats who think the Consstitution gets in the way. Back around 1860, a prominent Republican thought the Constitution got in the way of a lot of his reforms too (central state bank, government subsisidies for railroads, income taxes, that kind of thing). So when he had the chance, he cast it aside and remolded this country from a republic of independant states into a European-style mercantilist system where the federal government reigned supreme. To make his point, he killed a couple'a hundred thousand citizens, and his buddies made sure they stayed beaten for twelve years of "reconstruction". Wiping one's ass with our Constitution has a long and sordid history, started by Abraham Lincoln, Whig, Republican, and the best damn dictator this country ever had!
And lest we forget, most recently it was the neo-cons who decided those Fourth and Fifth Amendment things got in the way of fighting terror, so they got a law passed that basically ignored them. We'll search you when we want and where we want, and hold you in prison with no lawyer, no trial date, no charges, no nothing, until Jesus comes again.
So, the liberals want the Second Amendment gone, the conservatives want the First, Fourth, and Fifth gone, and Lincoln wiped out the Ninth and Tenth with the Army of the Potomac. Your Constitution, your Bill of Rights - void where prohibited by law.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the point of the article. Read it closer - WhenU is saying they support federal legislation, but not state legislation as it interferes with their ability to conduct commerce. The interstate commerce clause in the Constitution specifically grants Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce, and the 10th Amendment states that unenumerated federal powers are reserved to the states and the people (coversely, enumerated federal powers are not given to the states or the people). In this case, WhenU is challenging Utah's right to interfere with their business, and I think they have a point - the restriction cannot come from a state law, but must be federal.
Find me another nation with the same rights and freedoms as the U.S. The U.S. may be slowly abrogating the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, but it's still better than most other countries (the current administration excluded). The solution isn't to leave, but to change the slow slide into tyranny.
So what are you doing now to prepare for the contigency, other than bashing MS and gloating that your OS hasn't been attacked, grasshopper? Five years from now, when you're trying to get everyone together from points unknown to fix a major security hole the DoD heard about on Bugtraq, what's the plan?
Personally, for business use, I'd rather use Windows - sure, it's got holes, and a cadre of attackers and script-kiddies trying to break it, but it's also got engineers behind it working against those attacks to make it better and safer. I don't see that in the Linux community, and I'm deathly afraid that when a Linux worm comes around and actually makes some splash in the news media, there won't be a fix in time to stop it.
I've also got a small problem with the security reporting that happens in Linux. Open reporting means there's a big gap between the time a vulnerability is found and the time a patch is available - that gap is where the exploits come from. For MS, the vulnerabilities usually (not always) aren't reported until the patch is ready. The gap is short, and if you patch regularly, your exposure approaches nil. When I hear about a Linux vulnerability, I've got no patch, maybe a workaround, and I'm vulnerable until someone (maybe me) decides it's worth fixing.
The other bad thing about Linux - there's no one person to bitch and complain about on
And if you think that the waiting period and police check to buy a gun is a guarantee of standards, you're sorely mistaken - the waiting period is to prevent crimes of passion, and the background check is to make sure the buyer isn't a felon prohibited from owning a gun. They don't check that you've taken a gun safety course, or even know which end to point at the bad guy. Anyone willing to fill out the paperwork, lay down the cash, and wait a week can get a gun, without any other standards prohibiting them. We actually have more training for automobile drivers than for gun owners.
Actually, I'd contact the local militia--the city police, county sherrif, or local military command
None of those entities constitute the local milita - they are the select militia, government controlled agencies that have no obligation to aid you or accept your help. The local militia - the one referred to in the Second Amendment - consists of all able bodied males age 18 or older who own guns. You want to help, find the gun owners in your area.
Don't forget that this "cracked foundation" has been more productive and given the nation a higher standard of living (and opulant ceiling) than the pre-Lincon system ever could.
Ever hear of the Industrial Revolution? The fact that Lincoln's administration occurred around the same time is coincidence. The industrial revolution did more to increase prosperity and peace in the U.S., while Lincoln's policies made sure that a disproportionate piece of that prosperity went to his big business buddies and public works projects.
When I got my first real job after graduating college, my wife stopped working, and hasn't held a 40+ hour a week job since then (9 years and holding). We keep our expenses down enough that we can live well, save and invest some money, and still make sure she's home for our daughter.
Second, there are alternatives to home-schooling for people who don't think they're qualified to teach their kids. Community based schools, co-operative ventures based in the community and run by a group of people brought together of their own free will. The essence of these schools is the free-will involved on the part of parents, rather than the enforced and coerced involvement in public schools.
Private school isn't a choice for everyone.
I agree, and I also don't like the idea of vouchers - it's just another tax-money boondoggle. Notice I never made that argument...
Charter schools are in most cases a joke.
I agree totally here as well - charter schools are nothing more than public schools dressed in private school clothes. They're no better than school vouchers.
The first step to fixing them is making the kids want to learn.
There are kids who want to learn, if only given the chance. Personal anecdote - I grew up in two states, Ohio and Connecticut. I started in CT, then moved to OH for third and fourth grade. While there, I ran through spelling and math books - by the middle of my fourth grade year, I was finishing the sixth grade spelling book. Then I moved to CT, and was put back into a fourth grade speller, which I had finished in the third grade. I asked to be put ahead to where I was, and was denied - apparently, no one else was that far ahead, so it wasn't fair for me to move ahead. So I aced the fourth grade spelling tests, finishing ahead of my classmates, and had to wait for the tests to end before I could go on to somehting else. I had to sit quietly waiting for my classmates to finish - it was agonizing and led to previously unknown behavior problems (I was unruly and slightly belligerent because I was bored stupid).
There were people in my class for whom the tests were agonizing - there were other things these kids should and could have been doing, like learning a trade or practicing athletics. Why should we make students who excel at school work slow down so the slower kids don't lose "self-esteem"? Why should we force the slower kids to learn useless information when they could be productive and happier learning to weld, farm, repair shoes, build houses, or any of a host of other skilled jobs for which algebra is useless? Not every child is smart enough to finish high school as it now stands, let alone go to college
Now, as for fixing the system, I put it to you that the system isn't broken - it's doing exactly what it's meant to do, i.e. pump out brain-washed youths filled with inaccurate half-truths in history, mostly useless mathematics, outdated scientific information, and a complete lack of basic critical thinking skills. Instead of learning to ask questions, you're taught to answer them from authority figures - I'm still plagued with this problem when confronted with authority. Instead of learning the basic scientific method (observe, hypothesize, experiment, refine, theorize), you're taught how to recite memorized facts. All of this is designed to produce docile citizens. It's not broke and doesn't need to be fixed - it needs to be dismantled and American's returned to the same state Alexis de Toqueville found us in the 1830's - the most educated and literate society on earth.
So why do you have to not do that if you home-school? Take your kids to the YMCA, church groups, Boy Scouts, Little League baseball (oops, forgot the millenium - soccer), whatever. There's nothing that says you have to deprive them of socialization, just of the forced socialization publci schools provide.
For the record, I never said it would be better after a revolution, and I did say that no one would plan one because the cost of having one would be too high. I'm not advocating violent revolution as a viable alternative, but discussing the issues as I see them.
As for building before tearing down, that would be nice if we could get the proper permits to do the building. Some people tried to build first, in places like Ruby Ridge and Waco. You see how successful they were.
As for replacements, why do I need to replace oppressive taxation and corrupt government entities with anything? That's like saying I want this cancerous mass removed from my body, but you could fill the gap with a plastic ball please? There are some things that need replacing, but those things were replaced themselves - all we need do is go back to what was there before (like gold standard for currency, State sovereignty over the federal government, community schools).
You are absolutely right - so why can't I have an M1 tank? How about a shoulder-mounted heat-seeking rocket launcher? How about some claymore mines? Hell, I can't even get a bloody handgun without telling the government who I am and why I want one.
You're drinking the government Kool-Aid if you think giving your kids and your money to the government to lock them inside a brick building six hours a day, keeping them calm and docile with drugs if necessary, taking years to teach reading (which is a necessary skill, easily learnable in 6-8 weeks with phonetic skills), and forcing socialization on them is for the "greater good".
Your arguments about taxpayers are spot on - no one wants to pay for it, so in steps the government to steal the moeny from you for it (yes, it's theft - they take my money without my consent under threat of violence. Muggers are actually more honest about it - they produce the gun before they ask for my wallet). So, if the current system isn't working and no one is happy with it, why are we continuing to try to patch it up?
The Indians have a saying: When you find yourself riding a dead horse, the best thing to do is dismount. However, it seems that when it comes to public education (which I posit is a dead horse), we are more willing to paint the horse a festive color, try to revive the horse, put more people on the horse, feed the horse more high-quality oats, or anything other than get off the damn thing.
How can you help? Simple - get off the horse. Home school your kids - when the government agents come knocking on your door to ask why your kids aren't in school, tell them your home-schooling, don't need your schools, thankyouverymuch and close the door. When you reward poor choices with more money (like raising funding to schools based on the number of kids in the school), the best way to help is to reduce your involvment in the behavior.
Then I posit that publickly funded free education is a bad thing. It's a government run youth progandizing system designed to keep the overachievers held down, the active doped up on Ritalin, the stupid made to feel good about themselves, and everyone docile enough to never question government and authority.
A more educated populace is a more prodctive populace
When Alexis de Toqueville visited the U.S. in the early 19th century, he found the populace was mostly literate and well educated. Note that this was before Massachusetts instituted the Prussian model of public education (conditioning young "commoners" to follow simple orders, be literate enough to read gun manual, and obedient enough to respond to bells and sounds - they were training them to be cannon fodder in future Prussian wars), when people were regularly schooled at home or in community run schools.
meaning that we'll have a stronger nation more easily to support us when we retire
That is the most socialist thing I have heard anyone say about education, and supports most of my vehement opposition to public education. Quite frankly, I don't want your kid's fscking money when I retire - that's why I have a retirement account and savings, so I can retire an not be leech on society. And I'll be damned if my kid's money is gonna go to support your socialist ass when you feel you'v earned a rest. You want a rest, grasshopper, stop playing away the summer and start saving for it.
defend us when we are invaded and too old to fight on the front lines
Are you saying that, should an armed invasion of the U.S. happen, that you wouldn't hobble your broken-down socialist ass onto your lawn to defend your home and family? I'd defend my home and family with a ball-point pen and some shipping twine in a wheelchair if I had to. Oh, but wait, you're a socialist (see previous paragraph) - I guess you'll just have to wait for the government to tell you what to do or save you. Have fun.
blame the cold war. The Federal government literally prints money
You're not going back far enough. Blame the Whig/Republican party during the Civil War. They illegally setup the national banking system and started printing fiat paper currency, backed by nothing more than promises and hot air. They setup to protectionist tariff system that crippled the economy and has left it wheezing ever since. They started the basis of the modern military-industrial complex we know and love today. Everything since then is resting on the cracked foundation the tyrant Abraham Lincoln left us with.
That is one unsalvagable little girl. Not only is her father playing the system left him, but he's raising his daughter to play the system as well, rather than change it for the better.
Actually, there is a clear cut solution that no one wants to entertain because the price is so very very high. Do as stated in the Declaration of Independence - abolish the current form of government and replace it with one that does what we want.
Why is the price so high? Other than the obvious reasons, there is the historical precedent that is was tried already once, from 1861-1865, and 600,000 people died during that conflict between two groups that were closely matched in armaments. Now, thanks to people like Feinstein and Brady and Clinton and Moynihan, there's no way a group of citizens could match the armament of the U.S. military. It would be suicide, and right now, that's a much worse alternative than anything on the table.
I'm not a mercantilism fan, but a free market capitalistic system is worth shooting for.
But the only way to do that will be with an ammendment to the constitution instituting the separation of State and Business
Why would we need an amendment? Lincoln didn't need it to circumvent the Constitution to set it up in the first place. We need leaders with scruples and principles to stop using illegal precedent to set policy and start interpretting the Constitution as it was written. How we get find those leaders and get them into the positions they need to be in is as yet undefined, but I guarantee you that neither Bush nor Kerry nor Nader are them.
The U.S. government currently has laws they enforce on a regular basis that inappropriately links speech to behavior right now. Look them up - start with the Patriot Act, then find the FAA ruling that says you can't say "bomb" going through the metal detectors, and finally try to run a politcal ad a week before an election or give a candidate $100,000 for his campaign.
It's called mercatilism, a prevalent economic form in Europe in the 19th century, and the primary economic policy of the Whig's and later, the Republicans, in the U.S. It was fought against for eighty years until Abraham Lincoln instituted it, imposing protective tariffs, subsidizing railroad and canal building, centralizing the money supply in a national bank, and giving birth to the military-industrial complex. Until then, yes, the U.S. was capitalistic - now, almost every administration since Lincoln (and certainly every administration since FDR) has broadened and expanded the mercantilist system in the U.S. The primary result? Now people distrust corporate America as much as they distrust the government, simply because they work so well together...
It think that proves the opposite point - a majority of the American poeple voted for Gore in the last election. The Supreme Court gave the election to Bush the Younger.
Now ask yourself if it was worth it. What changes has it made in your life? Is your life any better or worse? Has government done what it is chartered to do by the Constitution by waging this war? How about the open-ended undeclared wars on terror and drugs?
Now ask yourself if we went to war to free the Iraqi people, why haven't we done the same for the Tibetan people, or the Timorese people, or the North Korean people, or the Cuban people, or any other people around the world who aren't free? Once you figure that out, ask yourself why Iraw again, and then re-ask yourself whether the costs of this war cover the gains.
At this point the only effective method the American people have of stopping their government is to read, understand, and follow the words in the Declaration of Independence that says "...whenever any form of government becomes destructive to [the rights of people], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government..."
That being said, the lighter connecting arrows between languages (Lisp to Logo, Algol to almost everything else) makes the chart easy to follow and interesting to look at.
The problems occured when the DSL went out for a week. Called Qwest - no problems, call your ISP. Called the ISP - no problems, call your DSL provider. Round and round for a week. Well, OK, two days before I got fed up, told 'em both to get stuffed and called my cable provider for a cabel modem.
After the cable was up and working, I called Qwest and my ISP to drop their plans. They asked why, I told them "Because my service went out for a week and nobody wanted to help me - you both wanted to blame the other guy. No service to me means no more money to you."
While this may level a certain market playing field and break up a potential monopoly, it may not be a good thing for consumers if they have togo to three different companies to figure out why something's not working anymore, especially if SBC holds a grudge and doesn't want to play nice with other DSL and ISP providers in the area.
I'm wondering if the judge was just lazy and wanted this at a higher level, so he made an asinine ruling to get it bumped up on appeal. Doesn't make sense - he would get dinged for the crappy judgement at some point, but it's kinda like not vetoing a bill hoping the court will rule it invalid.
Maybe we need to agree on a definition of spam first. I've heard it defined as all unsolicitied e-mail, unsolicited commercial e-mail, and your definition (inferred from your response) of fraudulent e-mail. My definition is unsolicitied commercial e-mail, which includes advertisements for legitimate businesses, fraudulent e-mails, and theft attempts. Taking your more narrow definition, your initial statement is accurate - using my definition, your statement is false.
The Constitution quite plainly says that Congress does have the authority to regulate interstate commerce.
You are correct - I was confusing two different issues in my head. Article 1, Section 8 enumerates the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. My confusion came from recent state laws to stop spam, which is not Constitutional by the same argument - the power belongs to the federal government, and by the Tenth Amendment is not something the States can do. My apologies for a patently false argument.
make the punishment for getting caught multiplied by the probability of getting caught greater than the expected gain from committing it.
OK, now, how do you catch them? Spoofing a return e-mail address can be made illegal, but how do you find out who did it? The trail back to them has been deliberately obfuscated. Tracking them back through routers to the source requires the freely given assitance of router operators, or more legislation to compel them to comply (a wire tap law for Internet routers).
But my argument of reducing the cost-effectiveness was more a search for market forces that could be brought to bear on the situation rather than legislative measures to do the same. I believe that market forces that reduce profitability of a particular business or business practice have a greater impact on businesses than laws do - markets and market forces can't be bribed or lobbied, and are not subject to election year pressures.
I repeat, the existence of locks and alarms is not an argument against having police and prisons.
It's a bit of a non-sequiter, but you do know that the police have no mandate to stop a crime in progress, right? This has been upheld in courts - if you are being mugged and a policeman witnesses it, he has nothing forcing him to help you. After it's over, his job is to investigate and hopefully apprehend the criminal, but he doesn't have to stop it. The same thing goes here - any federal police force tasked with stopping spam would have no mandate to stop it, just investigate and follow-up.
I'm also wondering how a federal police force to stop spam would be any more effective than the DEA is with drugs.
We could also argue the constitutionality of such a federal police force (even another task for the FBI), but since Lincoln's administration, such arguments are useless.
You are prepared to argue that all commercial e-mail sent to you is fraud and theft? Do you have evidence to substantiate that? None of it comes from legitimate business owners trying to expand their customer bases? I'll concede some of it is fraudulent, some of it criminal (viruses and worms), some of it may even be crude theft attempts (PLEASE HELP ME GET THIS US$30 MILLION OUT OF MY NATIVE NIGERIA), but most of it comes from legitimate e-businesses trying to get me to buy their crap.
Quite frankly, neither a do-not-call nor a do-not-e-mail list are the proper roles of government. An argument can be made that the government is interfering with interstate commerce, prohibited by the Constitution. I agree that calls and e-mails are a pain in the butt, but are they any more taxing on our resources than commercial snail mail?
The simple economic fact is that spam is a very cost-effective way to market and advertise your product or business. Make it less cost-effective and it will go away on it's own. How? Stop clicking on the damn links and stop opening the e-mails before you delete them. There are other good technical solutions that have been tried, others that haven't, and still more that haven't been developed yet - that's where you should be investing your time and money, rather than petitioning government to take everyone's money to enact an ineffective bureaucracy to handle the problem for you.
Huh? Get yer head out yer ass - wikipedia is a voluntary organization of people brought together for a common purpose. Communism is the introduction of force to redistribute wealth and prosperity "from those according to their abilities, to those according to their needs". The difference between wiki's and a communist government is the force bit - if I don't want to contribute to a wiki, I don't contribute. If I don't want to contribute to a communist government, I get shot.
And lest we forget, most recently it was the neo-cons who decided those Fourth and Fifth Amendment things got in the way of fighting terror, so they got a law passed that basically ignored them. We'll search you when we want and where we want, and hold you in prison with no lawyer, no trial date, no charges, no nothing, until Jesus comes again.
So, the liberals want the Second Amendment gone, the conservatives want the First, Fourth, and Fifth gone, and Lincoln wiped out the Ninth and Tenth with the Army of the Potomac. Your Constitution, your Bill of Rights - void where prohibited by law.