Given inflation, I'll probably be making $850k/year before I retire. Not that all those dollars will be worth a whole lot more than the few I'm earning today. Ahh, the joys of government-controlled paper money!
I want an application switcher in the menu bar. If I'm going to mouse to a new app, I shouldn't have to hit a keystroke first. The Dock is big and clunky and in the way other times, so it needs to be hidden, but needs to be available when you need it. The application menu and control strip in the classic MacOS were things of beauty and simplicity.
That's also the reason why the Senate has a longer term than the House: to prevent nutty things from happening as easily.
Too bad that doesn't work nearly as well now that senators are popularly elected instead of selected by state legislatures as they used to be (and should be). They are still influenced by opinion polls and the need to get re-elected. Instead of being cool heads with six year terms, they are now petty tyrants with six year terms.
I won't reply to all your points, either. But one point I do want to make in reply to your "racism" claims.
The right to free association includes the right to exclusivism. If the golf clubs wants to limit admission to men only, that is the right of that group. If the people of Israel want to limit admission to Jews only, that is the right of that group. There doesn't have to be any claims of "inherent superiority" about this at all. It's simply a desire to cultivate a certain type of community, to associate with others that are similar to you in some way, as humanity is wont to do. And I see nothing wrong with that. It doesn't take any twists of logic to justify this at all.
Again, with your "replace the word with 'fascist' or 'racist'" remark: if that's the kind of government the people freely choose for themselves, that's their choice. You may not agree with it, I may not agree with it, but they have the right to be governed the way they want. As long as the process is open and participatory, government is derived from consent of the governed, and the rights of the minority are protected, there's nothing wrong with it. It is only when gov't gets above itself and starts imposing racist/religious/fascist policies on a public that does not support it that we begin to have a problem. (Though typically fascist governments do not have consent of the governed and racist governments typically do not protect minorities, so I have trouble imagining how that could come about...)
Also, I resent the implication that religious is equivalent to racist or fascist.
Probably it was from the same ultra-conservative blindly pro-Israel sources as the rest of your links and points, many of which are ridiculously bald-faced lies.
Ad hominem, ad hominem. Have you looked up the facts yourself, or are you just going to dismiss these as "some idiot conservative site"?
Wrong. Israel has been accepting Jews from around the world since 1948. Despite how crowded it's gotten to be, they still accept newcomers who make aliyah.
These people actually lived in what is now Israel until they were kicked out by force.
Wrong again. Mark Twain said in 1867, "Stirring scenes occur in the valley [of Jezreel] no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent - not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings." No one really lived in Palestine before Jews began resettling there.
We keep hearing how the Jews are encroaching on Arab land...but the Jews have built only 144 settlements compared to the Arabs' 261. If settling the West Bank is so provocative to peace, why do they keep doing it? In fact, since the Jews resettled Israel, it's become prosperous and Arabs have flocked there to be able to find jobs.
Arafat is no Palestinian - he was born in Egypt. As an outsider, this isn't really his fight. So why is he trying to kick the Jews off their land? Yes that's right, Israel belongs to the Jews. In 1854, 2/3 of the population of Jerusalem was Jewish according to none other than Karl Marx. In fact, though Jerusalem is supposed to be the third holiest site to Muslims, they paid little attention to it until it became a political issue with the Israeli state. Arabs didn't want to live in Palestine before 1948.
There are no "Palestinians". It's a convenient political fantasy. Before there was an Israel, there was no movement for an independent Palestinian homeland, because any attempt would have been squashed flat by the reigning Arab monarch.
Israel accounts for about 1% of the land area of the Middle East.
At least twice, many of Israel's Arab neighbors have joined forces to make war against her.
When Israel has taken territory during these unprovoked wars, it has repeatedly withdrawn peacefully.
Israel has consistently proven willing to give up even more land in order to gain peace, yet is met with further terrorism.
In Oslo, Israel agreed to terms that conceded far more on its part than on the Palestinians part, and still Arafat wouldn't agree.
Arabs living in Israel are free to work, live, and can even police themselves and conduct their own governmental affairs to an extent. In fact, Israel is treating these "refugees" better than they are treated in neighboring Lebanon, an Arab state. However, Jews (and Christians) living in Arab countries have to submit to degrading dhimmi status.
Far more Jews have been displaced from Arab lands since 1948 than vice versa. (I wish I could find the link for this one - I remember reading it within the past year.) Why do we not hear about them? Because Israel has welcomed these refugees, something Arabs are unwilling to do for theirs.
Who's oppressed and who's the oppressor?
Who are you to tell people they should just leave their home, and not complain?
The thing is, for most of them, Israel isn't their home. Many of the original refugees were urged to leave by Arab leaders, but not welcomed into those countries. (If living with Jews is so bad to an Arab, wouldn't fellow Arabs be willing to give them a way out?) No other displaced people group in history has continued in "refugee" status for three generations! They either acclimated to where they were living, or someplace else accepted them so they moved on. They are unwilling to fit into Israel, and other A
Creating a new palestinean state is the best way to end the Infantadia.
There already is one. It's called Jordan. Check it out...I don't remember the name of the 1922 treaty off hand, but the entire Israel+Jordan area was meant as the Jewish homeland. A year later they reconsidered and remade over 2/3 of it an Arab state. So if there is any truth whatsoever to the claim that "Palestinians" are a distinct people group, there is already a place for them. Every other country in the world accepts refugees. The only reason the Arab countries don't integrate the "Palestinians" is they have a political agenda to destroy - not coexist with - Israel.
An even better way would be a semi-secular, ethnicity-blind Israel.
Who are you to decide the social policy of another country? Nations always work best, and history bears this out, when the people comprising it are relatively homogeneous. Why do you think we have the term "Balkanize"? Any attempts at lumping together different people groups by pretending differences don't exist will inevitably fly apart. Witness former USSR, former Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia. Teddy Roosevelt (I believe) warned against hyphenated Americanism for this very reason. It's not merely "political" - it's social, cultural, and religious.
The answer sadly is deeply embodied in a belief in controlling other people?s moral behavior.
The dogma that comes hand in hand with most of the control freaks in Washington is that of ultra-conservatism
Don't be so quick to point the finger at conservatives. (Never mind for now that such categories are too simplistic.) Leftists are just are eager to control our thinking. People with deeply held convictions are told they must accept homosexuality (sodomy), abortion (child murder), and adult entertainment (pornography and prostitution) as a normal part of society (and even sacrosanct civil rights!) - or else be branded as "intolerant" or "close-minded", or even face prosecution for "hate crime"! Thought crime is more like it.
Cultural norms that are held for hundreds of years don't become norms by accident, nor are they so drastically changed in a generation. Have you ever stopped to think why these norms exist? Why they are held with such conviction? You can pooh-pooh religion all you want, but you're in a distinct minority. For over 95% of the inhabitants of this planet, spiritual matters are a factor in life. For most of them this means some form of organized religion. Most organized religions traditionally reject homosexuality and the others. (And for good reasons, but that's another discussion.) And for a majority of those people these beliefs are a foundational part of their being. And yet, the irreligious 5% seeks to impose it's own interpretation of morals on society - a society it doesn't relate to on the most basic of levels.
For those that don't think you can legislate morality, wake up, it happens all the time. Statute law is codified morality. It's our ideas of right and wrong written down and given the weight of society to enforce. When basic ideas of what constitutes justice are treated as merely whims of convenience that can be changed for trifling reasons, you'd better expect society as you know it to implode. People's convictions don't change simply because you change a law, and when the two are not aligned you're going to see friction.
I think that's pretty much all it does, provide a built-in CSS with appropriate rules. "Built-in" is the key, as well as the fact that it's persistent - not all browsers handle user CSS very well. Opera 7 provides about a dozen built-in styles you can select when in user CSS mode, such as high-contrast and accessibility. Opera does more for the sight- and mobility-impaired user than any other browser currently available.
I suppose cache could be the exposed shelf above your kitchen island or breakfast bar. If you set a bowl of stuff up there, it's out of the way though not really in storage, and can be retrieved for active use quickly.
This analogy has really helped me on a number of occasions. It maps pretty well to the real situation, and most people understand kitchens. It passes the "mom test".
I explain computers to non-techies with a kitchen analogy.
Your counter space and your cupboard space are both measured in square feet, but you can't use them the same way. To do actual work, and have more things in progress and going at the same time, you need counter space. To tuck away all the tools you need, you need cupboard space. If you don't have enough counter space, you have to wash up your bowls and things and put them away, so that you can bring out other ones. Obviously, swapping to storage space slows the whole process, so it's good to have counter space. Cupboard space is good too, but for different reasons.
As recipes get more elaborate, you need more counter space to work in, and more cupboard space for all the extra cooking implements required.
And faster processors? That's like hiring more chefs, that magically don't bump into each other while they run around cooking.
Analogies help non-techies immensely, if you can find the right ones. Bypassing the jargon helps in the short-term, but in the long run people need an understanding of the basics, at least. For example, Apple markets the iPod as "1000 songs in your pocket" or whatever. You don't need to know how much a MB is, or how many MB a song is, or what format it's saved as. For non-techies, the iPod's drive is "1000 song size", and that's enough. But if the format changes, it's more useful to know how to do the math so you know how many songs will fit on it now. And if they happen to remember that GB == gigabyte == ~1000 MB == billion bytes, that's a bonus.
I knew the phrase sounded familiar, but I didn't know the source. Thank you. Though I'd have to disagree with Hobbes, since the strong central authority is still run by people with the same tendencies as the rest of us. Giving that much strength to a central authority simply lets you know ahead of time who is going to abuse you: the central authority.
My support of freedom of religion does not diminish the ethical argument. It is precisely because of the ethical argument that I support freedom of religion. My beliefs were freely chosen, and while I obligated to share them, I cannot force them on anyone. Others must choose them, or not, in perfect freedom. Though I believe in standards deriving from a specific Source, I cannot compel you to agree with my beliefs. However, under a government formed on this foundation, even those who deny the foundation still gain its benefits!
There are utilitarian benefits to my belief system, even if you happen to disagree with those beliefs. It supports a just, moral, and ethical system of government that regards the lives of people as having innate, inherent value. Other rights are derived logically from this special significance of mankind.
Yet this foundation is eternal, and cannot be changed at whim, when people become selfish and greedy for what others have. It protects human rights at all times, not only when it "seems like a good idea to most of us". This provides order. Sensible people then have a reasonable expectation that tomorrow will be like today - something "good" cannot become "bad" and something "bad" cannot become "good" - and can plan their lives in the freedom of confidence instead of the chains of fear.
All belief systems are not created equal. Not all faiths would provide such a framework in which "competing" faiths could co-exist. The fact that Christianity does speaks volumes, in my opinion.
I don't want to live in your society, where I could be deprived of fundamental liberties like freedom of speech, or religion, or the right to life itself if enough other people thought it was a good idea to revoke them from me!
Some rights are inalienable. They are absolutes, because there is an absolute standard of right and wrong. I do not trust human whims. Without some absolute standards, life can become nasty, brutal, and short.
Re:Screw that, I'll make my own shots.
on
X11 in ASCII
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That's great! And when I shrink it down to 30% in Opera, and squint sideways at it, I can almost make out what it's supposed to be!
Gotta love ASCII art.:)
How long do you actually use your Mac this way? Ever tried? Just curious.
Precisely. I'm setting up NetBSD on an old SE/30 in hopes that I can use it as a print server (to a LW 4/600 PS) for both my computer and my wife's. If anyone happens to have any tips that would be helpful to this novice, please pass them along. URLs, whatever. Thanks.
Fear the pain of trying to build the hulk-that-is-mozilla on my ancient systems.... Or even downloading that much source over 56k.... I just find it strange they build PPC nightlies but not the final releases.
(Posted with Links from one of my ancient systems.)
I'm an optimistic realist. In reality it might never happen, but I have to keep hoping and trying.:)
Eliminating commercials during the news might be a good idea, but I doubt that would help much either. I get very little of my news from the mainstream outlets anymore. With the internet, there's little need to. Most of the media is biased, and I don't care for its agenda.
Approval voting is too easy to rig. Honest conservatives (for example) might vote for Republicans and some other right-leaning parties, but you'll always have the die-hard partisans that won't "approve" anyone but their own party - Republican in this case. Result: the dominant Duopoly will retain their supremacy, but out of "brand loyalty" and ignorance, not because they actually deserve it. As long as it is possible to "lie" at the ballot box to gain an advantage, there are people that will do so. Condorcet'smethod is the only strategy-proof system I know of.
Condorcet is just as easy to vote as Approval, and is much more precise about who the winner is because preferences are expressed about who amongst the approved set is the best. Approval only tells you that those in the approved set beat those in the non-approved set. It doesn't tell you which of the approved candidates you really want. Some examples:
It's possible, though improbable, that everybody would approve the same 3 of 8 candidates (for example), leaving the winner ambiguous. (I suppose it's technically possible for every voter to rank every candidate in a tie, so this would happen in Condorcet too. But the probability of absolutely zero preference in the electorate is, well, zero.)
Similarly it's possible, though extremely improbable, for one voter to overturn the will of the people. Suppose that everybody's approved list contains A, the preferred candidate if we were using a ranking system, and B, the "merely acceptable" candidate (some other candidates may be approved by individual voters in this example, but everybody approves A and B) - except for one guy who approves only B. So this one voter tosses out the candidate that should clearly win, and 99.99999% of us are stuck with a guy who is merely "second best". Sure, 100% can tolerate him, but is that the best criterion for winning an election?
A good voting method shouldn't do these things. I'm sure there are web sites that can make a much better case for Condorcet than I can here, with better examples and more alternative systems to compare against.
Actually I think this would solve the problem of people not knowing their reps. Currently I happen to work in the home town of my rep. But my parents are at the other side of MN from me, and in the same 22-county district. They don't know the guy. If reps only served 30k people, like they were meant to, this rep would stay in his town and their rep would be a guy from their tri-county area. We wouldn't need national media to watchdog these guys (not that they do a very good job now anyway) because local papers would be quite capable of doing this - the rep would practically be a hometown guy in a district that small. You'd run into his spouse at the store. Your kids would play his kids in tourneys. With a closer connection to the people, the people may lose some apathy and actually take an interest in government and politics, which would be a good thing IMO. The problem isn't trying to keep track of 8300 reps, because each voter only needs to keep track of one - his own. Smaller districts makes that much easier.
Agreed. Especially since the reviewer mentioned that Tcl/emacs/awk/pcre regex's were not covered in any detail in this edition. A small appendix at the end summarizing the syntax in those languages would have been helpful to many, I'm sure. It would be nice if O'Reilly did publish such a thing as errata, so we could print it out and tuck it in the back cover or something.
The only problem I have with a binding "NOTA" option is that people would still disregard 3rd party candidates, when they are just as qualified as either of the Duopoly candidates. (Unless you think "D" or "R" after your name is part of the qualification.) The system itself isn't irrevocably broken (though it could use some changes in the voting method used), but nobody gives 3rd parties a real chance, despite how bad the elephants and donkeys keep making it.
But I do agree that many inanimate objects would do just as good a job as many incumbents...
Then the rest of the year, Congressmen can hold jobs where they produce something other than red tape.
Oh, for the days of the citizen-legislator, who put in his three months of service to the nation then returned home to his real job. It's ridiculous that Congress has its fingers in so many pies now that representatives have to spend 90% of their time in DC, and the other 10% campaigning to stay there.
Yes, this is a great idea, that is certain to be implemented in the near future, in Fantasyland.
Vote against the incumbent Duopoly every chance you get, and it might happen. Yes, that's right, don't vote for a Republocrat ever again. Even if they're the only (!) choices on the ballot. Run for office yourself, just to give voters another choice. If you like the idea, take a stand for it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just the "right wing" that believes this. It's the American public in general...unless you believe that a majority of America is "right wing"...which would tend to indicate that those who label what is "left" or "right" (that is, the media) are in fact left of the center. Most Americans (54 to 29) think media is slacking in its job as a watchdog. Most Americans (53 to 29) think there is bias in media. Most Americans that think so (51 to 26) think that bias is left-leaning rather than right-leaning. Most Americans (46 to 25) think the American media is anti-American than pro-American. This isn't just "some right wing conspiracy" it's what's really happening. Even self-described liberals like Bernard Goldberg are speaking out about it...there's some more left-wing perspective for you. You want empirical evidence? OK.
Given inflation, I'll probably be making $850k/year before I retire. Not that all those dollars will be worth a whole lot more than the few I'm earning today. Ahh, the joys of government-controlled paper money!
I want an application switcher in the menu bar. If I'm going to mouse to a new app, I shouldn't have to hit a keystroke first. The Dock is big and clunky and in the way other times, so it needs to be hidden, but needs to be available when you need it. The application menu and control strip in the classic MacOS were things of beauty and simplicity.
Too bad that doesn't work nearly as well now that senators are popularly elected instead of selected by state legislatures as they used to be (and should be). They are still influenced by opinion polls and the need to get re-elected. Instead of being cool heads with six year terms, they are now petty tyrants with six year terms.
I won't reply to all your points, either. But one point I do want to make in reply to your "racism" claims.
The right to free association includes the right to exclusivism. If the golf clubs wants to limit admission to men only, that is the right of that group. If the people of Israel want to limit admission to Jews only, that is the right of that group. There doesn't have to be any claims of "inherent superiority" about this at all. It's simply a desire to cultivate a certain type of community, to associate with others that are similar to you in some way, as humanity is wont to do. And I see nothing wrong with that. It doesn't take any twists of logic to justify this at all.
Again, with your "replace the word with 'fascist' or 'racist'" remark: if that's the kind of government the people freely choose for themselves, that's their choice. You may not agree with it, I may not agree with it, but they have the right to be governed the way they want. As long as the process is open and participatory, government is derived from consent of the governed, and the rights of the minority are protected, there's nothing wrong with it. It is only when gov't gets above itself and starts imposing racist/religious/fascist policies on a public that does not support it that we begin to have a problem. (Though typically fascist governments do not have consent of the governed and racist governments typically do not protect minorities, so I have trouble imagining how that could come about...)
Also, I resent the implication that religious is equivalent to racist or fascist.
Ad hominem, ad hominem. Have you looked up the facts yourself, or are you just going to dismiss these as "some idiot conservative site"?
Wrong. Israel has been accepting Jews from around the world since 1948. Despite how crowded it's gotten to be, they still accept newcomers who make aliyah.
Wrong again. Mark Twain said in 1867, "Stirring scenes occur in the valley [of Jezreel] no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent - not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings." No one really lived in Palestine before Jews began resettling there.
We keep hearing how the Jews are encroaching on Arab land...but the Jews have built only 144 settlements compared to the Arabs' 261. If settling the West Bank is so provocative to peace, why do they keep doing it? In fact, since the Jews resettled Israel, it's become prosperous and Arabs have flocked there to be able to find jobs.
Arafat is no Palestinian - he was born in Egypt. As an outsider, this isn't really his fight. So why is he trying to kick the Jews off their land? Yes that's right, Israel belongs to the Jews. In 1854, 2/3 of the population of Jerusalem was Jewish according to none other than Karl Marx. In fact, though Jerusalem is supposed to be the third holiest site to Muslims, they paid little attention to it until it became a political issue with the Israeli state. Arabs didn't want to live in Palestine before 1948.
There are no "Palestinians". It's a convenient political fantasy. Before there was an Israel, there was no movement for an independent Palestinian homeland, because any attempt would have been squashed flat by the reigning Arab monarch.
Who's oppressed and who's the oppressor?
The thing is, for most of them, Israel isn't their home. Many of the original refugees were urged to leave by Arab leaders, but not welcomed into those countries. (If living with Jews is so bad to an Arab, wouldn't fellow Arabs be willing to give them a way out?) No other displaced people group in history has continued in "refugee" status for three generations! They either acclimated to where they were living, or someplace else accepted them so they moved on. They are unwilling to fit into Israel, and other A
There already is one. It's called Jordan. Check it out...I don't remember the name of the 1922 treaty off hand, but the entire Israel+Jordan area was meant as the Jewish homeland. A year later they reconsidered and remade over 2/3 of it an Arab state. So if there is any truth whatsoever to the claim that "Palestinians" are a distinct people group, there is already a place for them. Every other country in the world accepts refugees. The only reason the Arab countries don't integrate the "Palestinians" is they have a political agenda to destroy - not coexist with - Israel.
Who are you to decide the social policy of another country? Nations always work best, and history bears this out, when the people comprising it are relatively homogeneous. Why do you think we have the term "Balkanize"? Any attempts at lumping together different people groups by pretending differences don't exist will inevitably fly apart. Witness former USSR, former Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia. Teddy Roosevelt (I believe) warned against hyphenated Americanism for this very reason. It's not merely "political" - it's social, cultural, and religious.
Don't be so quick to point the finger at conservatives. (Never mind for now that such categories are too simplistic.) Leftists are just are eager to control our thinking. People with deeply held convictions are told they must accept homosexuality (sodomy), abortion (child murder), and adult entertainment (pornography and prostitution) as a normal part of society (and even sacrosanct civil rights!) - or else be branded as "intolerant" or "close-minded", or even face prosecution for "hate crime"! Thought crime is more like it.
Cultural norms that are held for hundreds of years don't become norms by accident, nor are they so drastically changed in a generation. Have you ever stopped to think why these norms exist? Why they are held with such conviction? You can pooh-pooh religion all you want, but you're in a distinct minority. For over 95% of the inhabitants of this planet, spiritual matters are a factor in life. For most of them this means some form of organized religion. Most organized religions traditionally reject homosexuality and the others. (And for good reasons, but that's another discussion.) And for a majority of those people these beliefs are a foundational part of their being. And yet, the irreligious 5% seeks to impose it's own interpretation of morals on society - a society it doesn't relate to on the most basic of levels.
For those that don't think you can legislate morality, wake up, it happens all the time. Statute law is codified morality. It's our ideas of right and wrong written down and given the weight of society to enforce. When basic ideas of what constitutes justice are treated as merely whims of convenience that can be changed for trifling reasons, you'd better expect society as you know it to implode. People's convictions don't change simply because you change a law, and when the two are not aligned you're going to see friction.
I think that's pretty much all it does, provide a built-in CSS with appropriate rules. "Built-in" is the key, as well as the fact that it's persistent - not all browsers handle user CSS very well. Opera 7 provides about a dozen built-in styles you can select when in user CSS mode, such as high-contrast and accessibility. Opera does more for the sight- and mobility-impaired user than any other browser currently available.
I suppose cache could be the exposed shelf above your kitchen island or breakfast bar. If you set a bowl of stuff up there, it's out of the way though not really in storage, and can be retrieved for active use quickly.
This analogy has really helped me on a number of occasions. It maps pretty well to the real situation, and most people understand kitchens. It passes the "mom test".
I explain computers to non-techies with a kitchen analogy.
Your counter space and your cupboard space are both measured in square feet, but you can't use them the same way. To do actual work, and have more things in progress and going at the same time, you need counter space. To tuck away all the tools you need, you need cupboard space. If you don't have enough counter space, you have to wash up your bowls and things and put them away, so that you can bring out other ones. Obviously, swapping to storage space slows the whole process, so it's good to have counter space. Cupboard space is good too, but for different reasons.
As recipes get more elaborate, you need more counter space to work in, and more cupboard space for all the extra cooking implements required.
And faster processors? That's like hiring more chefs, that magically don't bump into each other while they run around cooking.
Analogies help non-techies immensely, if you can find the right ones. Bypassing the jargon helps in the short-term, but in the long run people need an understanding of the basics, at least. For example, Apple markets the iPod as "1000 songs in your pocket" or whatever. You don't need to know how much a MB is, or how many MB a song is, or what format it's saved as. For non-techies, the iPod's drive is "1000 song size", and that's enough. But if the format changes, it's more useful to know how to do the math so you know how many songs will fit on it now. And if they happen to remember that GB == gigabyte == ~1000 MB == billion bytes, that's a bonus.
I knew the phrase sounded familiar, but I didn't know the source. Thank you. Though I'd have to disagree with Hobbes, since the strong central authority is still run by people with the same tendencies as the rest of us. Giving that much strength to a central authority simply lets you know ahead of time who is going to abuse you: the central authority.
My support of freedom of religion does not diminish the ethical argument. It is precisely because of the ethical argument that I support freedom of religion. My beliefs were freely chosen, and while I obligated to share them, I cannot force them on anyone. Others must choose them, or not, in perfect freedom. Though I believe in standards deriving from a specific Source, I cannot compel you to agree with my beliefs. However, under a government formed on this foundation, even those who deny the foundation still gain its benefits!
There are utilitarian benefits to my belief system, even if you happen to disagree with those beliefs. It supports a just, moral, and ethical system of government that regards the lives of people as having innate, inherent value. Other rights are derived logically from this special significance of mankind.
Yet this foundation is eternal, and cannot be changed at whim, when people become selfish and greedy for what others have. It protects human rights at all times, not only when it "seems like a good idea to most of us". This provides order. Sensible people then have a reasonable expectation that tomorrow will be like today - something "good" cannot become "bad" and something "bad" cannot become "good" - and can plan their lives in the freedom of confidence instead of the chains of fear.
All belief systems are not created equal. Not all faiths would provide such a framework in which "competing" faiths could co-exist. The fact that Christianity does speaks volumes, in my opinion.
I don't want to live in your society, where I could be deprived of fundamental liberties like freedom of speech, or religion, or the right to life itself if enough other people thought it was a good idea to revoke them from me!
Some rights are inalienable. They are absolutes, because there is an absolute standard of right and wrong. I do not trust human whims. Without some absolute standards, life can become nasty, brutal, and short.
That's great! And when I shrink it down to 30% in Opera, and squint sideways at it, I can almost make out what it's supposed to be!
Gotta love ASCII art. :)
How long do you actually use your Mac this way? Ever tried? Just curious.
Precisely. I'm setting up NetBSD on an old SE/30 in hopes that I can use it as a print server (to a LW 4/600 PS) for both my computer and my wife's. If anyone happens to have any tips that would be helpful to this novice, please pass them along. URLs, whatever. Thanks.
Only if you consider nations as more important than individuals.
Fear the pain of trying to build the hulk-that-is-mozilla on my ancient systems.... Or even downloading that much source over 56k.... I just find it strange they build PPC nightlies but not the final releases.
(Posted with Links from one of my ancient systems.)
So where do I get an official release build for PPC Linux? I see a link to official nightly builds, but not a release build.
Some friends and I decided that \. more accurately describes the slant, though.
I'm an optimistic realist. In reality it might never happen, but I have to keep hoping and trying. :)
Eliminating commercials during the news might be a good idea, but I doubt that would help much either. I get very little of my news from the mainstream outlets anymore. With the internet, there's little need to. Most of the media is biased, and I don't care for its agenda.
Approval voting is too easy to rig. Honest conservatives (for example) might vote for Republicans and some other right-leaning parties, but you'll always have the die-hard partisans that won't "approve" anyone but their own party - Republican in this case. Result: the dominant Duopoly will retain their supremacy, but out of "brand loyalty" and ignorance, not because they actually deserve it. As long as it is possible to "lie" at the ballot box to gain an advantage, there are people that will do so. Condorcet's method is the only strategy-proof system I know of.
Condorcet is just as easy to vote as Approval, and is much more precise about who the winner is because preferences are expressed about who amongst the approved set is the best. Approval only tells you that those in the approved set beat those in the non-approved set. It doesn't tell you which of the approved candidates you really want. Some examples:
A good voting method shouldn't do these things. I'm sure there are web sites that can make a much better case for Condorcet than I can here, with better examples and more alternative systems to compare against.
Actually I think this would solve the problem of people not knowing their reps. Currently I happen to work in the home town of my rep. But my parents are at the other side of MN from me, and in the same 22-county district. They don't know the guy. If reps only served 30k people, like they were meant to, this rep would stay in his town and their rep would be a guy from their tri-county area. We wouldn't need national media to watchdog these guys (not that they do a very good job now anyway) because local papers would be quite capable of doing this - the rep would practically be a hometown guy in a district that small. You'd run into his spouse at the store. Your kids would play his kids in tourneys. With a closer connection to the people, the people may lose some apathy and actually take an interest in government and politics, which would be a good thing IMO. The problem isn't trying to keep track of 8300 reps, because each voter only needs to keep track of one - his own. Smaller districts makes that much easier.
Agreed. Especially since the reviewer mentioned that Tcl/emacs/awk/pcre regex's were not covered in any detail in this edition. A small appendix at the end summarizing the syntax in those languages would have been helpful to many, I'm sure. It would be nice if O'Reilly did publish such a thing as errata, so we could print it out and tuck it in the back cover or something.
The only problem I have with a binding "NOTA" option is that people would still disregard 3rd party candidates, when they are just as qualified as either of the Duopoly candidates. (Unless you think "D" or "R" after your name is part of the qualification.) The system itself isn't irrevocably broken (though it could use some changes in the voting method used), but nobody gives 3rd parties a real chance, despite how bad the elephants and donkeys keep making it.
But I do agree that many inanimate objects would do just as good a job as many incumbents...
Budget isn't any indicator of the worthiness of the cause. The big lobbyist might have a good cause, too. *shrug*
Making government more accountable to its constituents can only be a good thing.
Oh, for the days of the citizen-legislator, who put in his three months of service to the nation then returned home to his real job. It's ridiculous that Congress has its fingers in so many pies now that representatives have to spend 90% of their time in DC, and the other 10% campaigning to stay there.
Vote against the incumbent Duopoly every chance you get, and it might happen. Yes, that's right, don't vote for a Republocrat ever again. Even if they're the only (!) choices on the ballot. Run for office yourself, just to give voters another choice. If you like the idea, take a stand for it.