If you can't find a reputale local babysitter with references, then leave the kid in the care of a familiy member when you go out. I don't think that staring at 2" square grainy image of the kid in a crib is going to make your evening out all that enjoyable.
Seriously. My wife and I leave our 3-month old son with my parents and her mom all the time, and basically as soon as we're gone, it's out of sight, out of mind. Not that we want to forget him, but getting time every few days where we don't have to deal with him is really a sanity-saver. During that time, we don't want to be worrying about him.
Go to dinner, go see a movie, do whatever. If you want to know what your kid's doing at all times, then stay with him or her!
Nobody's arguing that the RIAA shouldn't pursue it. The issue is that the RIAA can force people to have to spend thousands of dollars on their defense, whether they've done anything wrong or not. Having probable cause still doesn't mean you're guilty. And even if they're exonerated, they're still in the hole a few grand (minimum). For a lot of people, it's cheaper to settle with the RIAA rather than try to fight them in court. The RIAA knows this. It's morally equivalent to extortion, even if it's not legally equivalent.
The basic point is this: The legal system allows those with lots of money to abuse those with little money, and the RIAA is taking advantage of this situation, which (although rational from the RIAA's standpoint) is immoral from a lot of other people's. Yes, abuse of the legal system has happened a billion times; that doesn't mean that it's okay to let it keep happening, or that we shouldn't do anything about it.
And yes, they are going after some legitimate infringers, but for each victim who is innocent but can't afford to fight, the RIAA gets to chalk up another win against piracy, whether it was happening or not. But we never get to find out whether those people were legitimately offending or not, because they are effectively unable to get a trial.
Fair enough. These posts were taking up way too much of my time anyway;)
But it sure was nice having a political discussion with someone with opposing views, without it degenerating into flames like they usually do on Slashdot!:)
There is a certain sort of very clever person who is hopelessly incapable of anything resembling empathy towards his fellow humans, and that combination (or the perception thereof) is absolute death for politicians - c.f. Michael Dukakis, for example.
Agreed. Warmth means a lot in the political popularity context.
It is, of course, bad to be caught acting without thinking, but being seen as indecisive is a graver sin than being seen as rash, for whatever reason. Don't ask me why, but that's how it appears.
I'd say it's because acting without thought is a lot easier than thinking without acting. Letting your emotions guide your actions doesn't require any introspection or analysis. Maybe people see rash action by a political leader as a (positive?!) reflection upon themselves ("Hey, he's rash, just like me!"), and so find it endearing, so long as the rashness doesn't get too out of hand.
Or it sounds Martian because it is Martian - don't discount the simple explanation out of hand;)
I don't know if the explanation "That idea literally originated on the planet Mars" is really any simpler;)
allow me to report that the caricature that they hate us because we're free is probably less widely held on the right than the left might wish to think.
Probably. And probably less of the left holds that caricature of the right than the right thinks the left does. (Ahh! Recursion!)
They hate you because you're strong and they're weak. They hate you because you're rich and they're poor. They hate you because you're secular/atheistic and modern, and they long for the glory days of the 13'th century. They hate you because you can impose your will on them, which we do from time to time, rather than them being able to impose their will on you, which they desperately desire to do but cannot.
I don't think that any of those reasons is a major factor in this particular situation. At least, whenever a prominent anti-Western Muslim talks about why he's anti-Western, it's virtually always because we're interfering in their affairs, not because we have freedoms but keep to ourselves.
In short, there's a large group of people out there who will not have their hatred of you cured by anything you can do, unless you're willing to become someone else's vassal, or better yet, simply cease to exist. I understand perfectly why they hate us - I simply don't care.
I don't want to say, "You should care," but, uh...:) Even if they will "always" hate us, there's a difference between, "I hate those guys who are tromping all over our lands, so I think I'll attack them," and "I hate those guys who live half a world away, but whatever, I've got other problems closer to home."
Action, reaction. Why are we there? Why do we have military forces there? Would we be there at all if Islamic "civil" society wasn't constantly teetering on the brink of complete dysfunction, wholly incapable of restraining its own homegrown monsters? Rather than embracing them in the name of some absurd pan-Arab fantasy?
Presumably we wouldn't be there at all if we didn't have an interest in being there. But I don't think the first "we" and the second "we" in that sentence are necessarily the same entity. One interpretation is, "Presumably the U.S. military wouldn't be there if the U.S. didn't have an interest in being there." Another is, "Presumably the U.S. military wouldn't be there if Bush didn't have a personal interest in them being there." The implication is that Bush uses the invasion of Iraq for a two-fold purpose: one, to make himself more popular (everyone loves a war), and two, to allow his friends more chances at aggrandizement, at the dual expenses of the U.S. budget and the Iraqi po
I wasn't being snarky, I was being condescending!:) (And a little bitter -- more on that later)
Or if you prefer a view from the left, perhaps Henry Kissinger or Paul Wolfowitz could be regarded in that manner.
For my part, I don't dislike Kissinger or Wolfowitz because I think they're "overanalytical" or any such thing. At worst, I'd consider that a weakness in political ability, rather than a fundamental character flaw. Mostly I dislike them because their actions have disagreed with my personal moral compass. And I'd go so far as to say that the typical "left" liberal wouldn't criticize a conservative for being too thoughtful -- the usual criticism is that they're thoughtless, greedy, heartless bastards, or some such.
I know I stand fairly alone in this, but it would never occur to me to ridicule or belittle someone for being too intellectual, or thinking too analytically about something. Most Americans, though, are (I guess?) made uncomfortable by people who can look so deeply into something, and I still don't know why. Look back at the 1950s, when scientists were revered almost as strongly as athletes. Fast-forward to the 1980s, when I grew up; other kids actually used the name "Einstein" as an insult whenever I showed too much knowledge or intelligence. Being insulted by being compared to one of the greatest scientists in history. What planet are we on?
Rather, there's this sort of impatience with those who insist on contemplation when the consensus is that action is the proper next step.
In general, I'd agree with the sentiment that there's a time for action, and a time for thought. However that vastly oversimplifies things, much to our detriment. There's no reason you can't do both at once. Analyzing what's going on WHILE you're doing something about it is better than committing everyone to one task or the other. It's not as if the entire might of the U.S. hinges on whatever the president is doing at that exact moment; there are millions of people involved in something like the invasion of Iraq. Plenty of people can be acting while others are thinking.
Of course, I'm not saying you're wrong in your explanation of how the American people think; I guess I'm mostly saying that I believe they're doing a disservice to themselves by thinking that way.
To take a more extreme example, I don't think that the far, far left is aware just how badly that Katha Pollitt post-9/11 navel-gazing kind of thing ("Why do they hate us so?") played for much of flyover country - whether she knows it or not, that sort of thing came across as positively Martian to many, many people.
Well sure, it's just like whenever anyone hears doubt expressed about anything they fervently believe in. The idea that the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms is a powerful one, and hearing doubt expressed about it would sound as Martian as someone walking into a small town in Mississippi and claiming there's no God.
As far as I know, most of the left is of the opinion that negative attitudes toward the U.S. are the result of foreign policy decisions over the years, which, frankly, is a simpler, much more obvious explanation than the idea that "Al Qaeda terrorists hate our freedoms." It has better evidence, too. In fact, I don't know if the "hate our freedoms" thing has any actual evidence (I don't even know where that meme originated), but here's a quote from OBL's 1998 manifesto:
"To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country, until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam."
As far as I know, he's never said that he's angry or upset about the fact that we have freedoms here at home in the U.S.; the whole thing has to do with the U.S. (and
So the universe has (for billions of years) been increasing in overall entropy... The universe was at a less entropic state when it was "created" then it is now?
That sounds like creation to me:)
Maybe this is why creationists get so little love -- the extreme tendency toward random non sequiturs.:)
Nothing I (or the great-grandparent poster) said has anything to do with why the universe began. Assuming it's even meaningful to utter the phrase "when the universe began," then yes, when the universe began, entropy was lower than it is now. Whether the universe was created by some intelligent entity, or simply sprang into being for no reason whatsoever, or was born out of an egg lain by an enormous turtle, who knows? That's not what we're discussing, and whether or not evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics (it doesn't) has nothing to do with it!
Good points on political theory. Although I'd venture that as bold as TR was, he wasn't at all stupid -- Bush doesn't appear to possess much in the way of intelligence at all. I wouldn't call him "bold," either -- bull-headed, maybe.
It's not that I'm in favor of intellectuals running things -- one can be intelligent without being intellectual. Whether Kerry qualifies as non-intellectual (he's definitely intelligent), I dunno. 'Course, there's the problem that in the U.S., intelligence and education are not valued, and any person X who is even slightly more intellectual than another random person Y is usually dismissed by Y as being one o' them namby-pamby brainiac types. Maybe that's why, despite all his obvious flaws, Dubya's so popular. Nobody'd ever accuse him of being intellectual.:)
The difference between dna and a snowflake is like the difference between "abcabcabcabcabc" and "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog".
Why can't there be a language where the string "abcabcabcabcabc" codes for the same meaning that "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" does in English? There most certainly could. The English sentence only has meaning because we give it meaning; there is information in both strings regardless of whether there's any human languages where that string means something to someone who speaks that language.
What you are saying is that a closed system (the universe) has over a sustained period of time (billions of years in this case) increased in complexity. This is in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
No, what he said is that the tree decreases in entropy (a local decrease), but the heat reradiated into the environment increases the overall entropy in the entire universe.
Like what? Don't name arbitrary pieces of software, you can always install what you want later.
Scouring the web for a few dozen or few hundred programs is a lot more time and effort than simply having them all on one (or two) CDs along with the kernel. Like I said before, the advantage is that the work has been done for you, instead of having to go out and do everything yourself.
Imagine buying a car, and the only thing it comes with is the absolute minimum in order to run -- body, chassis, engine, steering wheel, driver's seat, pedals, gearshift. If you want more seats, you can just go get them yourself! Radio, air conditioning, airbags, seatbelts, anyone can "install what they want later." And yet nobody sells cars like this to consumers...
Examples? Where this problem does exist (can't actually think of any off the top of my head), that should be fixed through standardisation.
How about package management? Who gets to decide what the "standard" way is, then requiring people who don't like that method to go out and manually install every single update, because (in your standardized world), why would non-standard packages be available?
No it wouldn't. Presumably a standard distro would not *need* to have a subset of all possible software distributed alongside it, you could simply post binary packages on websites and use them.
The whole point of a distro is that someone ELSE went out and did the work to put together a useful computing environment. It's a horrible idea to have to go get everything yourself, just so some people can feel better about standardization.
Exactly. Quit trying to tell people that Linux is a cheaper solution, than changing direction and telling us all that you need to hire an expensive Linux guru to run things.
Linux is definitely cheaper if you only consider purchase price (unless you decide to buy a bunch of Advanced Server Licenses from Red Hat or whatever the hell they sell -- we use Mandrake on all our 300+ servers, total purchase cost: $60). And that's what people are talking about when they claim Linux costs less than Windows.
Of course, you also have to take ongoing costs into account, but even there, the implication is that Linux is still cheaper, because one Linux admin, even at $73,000 a year, can manage more Linux boxes than an equivalent salary's worth of MCSEs. I know that we have 300+ servers and two admins; can two MCSEs manage 300+ Windows servers? Can two decent MCSEs be had for $73k a year?
I'm not defending the claim, I'm just saying what the claim is, since you seem to misapprehend what is being said.
So, what is the benefit of many distros, as opposed to (say) switches I can flip in a standard distro?
Because some distros include things that someone else would not want in their distro at all. Some distros use mutually exclusive methods of configuring certain kinds of software. And who would get to be in charge of this "standard" distro? Who would get to decide what goes into the distro and what doesn't?
Asking this question is like asking, "What's the benefit of there being so many brands of automobile, as opposed to being able to buy a 'standard' car and modify it to my liking?" The work's been done for you, rather than you having to go through and configure everything the way you want. Some distros will include certain software that others will not; a "standard" distro, to meet everyone's needs, would have to include every single piece of software that every distro out there includes now. That would take up a few dozen CD-ROMs.
Who's this "we," white man? I can count on the fingers of zero hands the number of times any Linux box I've used has had a kernel panic. Maybe some kernel versions are more susceptible than others, and surely not everyone is as lucky as I am, but you paint this as some kind of common, widespread problem.
gigantic frameworks for desktop environments and gigabyte sized base installs.
Yes, please conflate the kernel with the userland programs that run on top of it, as if that has anything to do with the speed, robustness, size, or elegance of the kernel.
Seriously, all I was doing was pointing out the fact that the collective group of people, from here on known as "Slashdot," are mind-bogglingly liberal at times.
It would be rational to say that there are more liberals than conservatives on Slashdot, but to characterize the entire group as "mind-bogglingly liberal at times" doesn't even make semantic sense. It means that, at some times, EVERYONE on/. is liberal!
I know what you're trying to say -- that you see a lot of liberal behavior here -- but misphrasing it in a way that literally means "everyone here is liberal" just makes you sound confused.
Try and defend Fox News some time. You won't get a point.
Then what explains all those times I've seen Score:5 posts defending Fox News and Bush?
So I guess that means that +45% of the country right now is experiencing severe psychological distress?
Well, these 45%+ (actually 80%+ -- I don't hold much hope for either side, really) are the same ones who think there's an invisible man in the sky who can solve all your problems. Believing that Bush makes a good president is a cakewalk compared to that.
Cognitive dissonance doesn't have to involve distress, incidentally; all it has to involve is wanting something to be true so bad that you'll gladly ignore all evidence to the contrary as "hatred and outright lies."
You and the rest of the far left need to wake up and realize that Bush isn't evil and that John Kerry isn't the panacea to all our nations problems.
I never said Kerry was a panacea. I even said EXPLICITLY that he's the lesser of two evils! I take it as axiomatic that all politicians are evil, and they have to demonstrate that they are, in fact, not. Kerry is evil, Bush is evil. From what I've seen, Bush is a lot MORE evil. Maybe Kerry will turn out to as bad or worse than Bush once he's president, but right now all we have to go on is Bush's record as president and Kerry's record as a Senator (and candidate).
I'd be casting my vote against the far left which currently embraces nothing less than hatred and outright lies against a sitting president during a time of war.
Maybe you'll dismiss this as semantic nonsense, but Congress has not declared war on Iraq. In fact it hasn't declared war on anyone since Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II. Congress has "authorized" the Iraq war, although there is plenty of debate over how Constitutional that is. But whatever; if it were needed, Bush would have gotten Congress to officially declare war, so the point is moot.
Anyway, we were de facto at war while invading Iraq, until Bush declared that major combat was over, and the administration shifted emphasis to rebuilding Iraq and installing a democracy. We're not meaningfully "at war" with Iraq any more (although there are a number of insurgents who are still pretty pissed, apparently).
Also keep in mind that the only reason we have the Iraq war IS BECAUSE BUSH STARTED IT. He NEVER had any evidence that they had a terrorist connection (except for, I believe, one unsupported document which later turned out to be forged). The WMD thing sure isn't panning out; even if Bush honestly believed in the evidence to begin with, HE FUCKED UP. I don't really think you should get to make a mistake like invading another country on bad data and get to stay president!
It's possible you're referring to the so-called War on Terror, which so far has not been given any defined goals, any timeline, and (much like the War on Drugs) can go on as long as the government wants it to. But then you have to get into a whole debate about why people become terrorists, and dealing with the root cause of the problem instead of just killing terrorists, etc. Since neocons insist that terrorists only hate us because of our freedoms (to which the apparent proper response is to take away those freedoms as fast as possible), and will never admit that maybe our foreign policy has something to do with it, it's going to be a long "war."
I notice that you didn't actually challenge the assertion itself (that Bush is a drooling moron).:) Perhaps you're right, that calling him an idiot, however true it is, isn't going to get people to vote against him.
If I install Kazaa, Comet Cursor, Internet Optimizer and surf porn all day long, would the IT department be responsible for the shit I create on the corporate network?
Considering that securing a computer from undesirable uses is a lot more feasible than securing a bridge from undesirable uses, I don't think your analogy holds. Here's why.
The (de facto) cost to build a bridge that can prevent anyone from driving anything through the railing would be exorbitant; it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the government to build such a bridge. But the (de facto) cost to secure a computer against users installing unauthorized programs is not only relatively low, it is easily within the budget and skills of the average IT department. And once you implement that security policy once, you can replicate the policy for basically zero cost on all the other computers in your department. Building two bridges costs twice as much as building one bridge.
Granted, it's not always that simple; changing requirements, corporate infighting, and budgetary problems can make it difficult for the IT department. Granted, there still is a point of diminishing returns, where spending the effort to make the computers more secure doesn't outweigh the long-term costs of doing so. That point comes much, much earlier when building physical transportation infrastructure.:) Granted, there's only so much the IT department can do, but I think their responsibility can quite easily be stretched a lot farther than the government's responsibility toward building invincible bridges.
Real voter choice without the country being ruled by Los Angeles and New York City.
As opposed to the system now, where someone in Middle Of Nowhere, Wyoming has voting power orders of magnitude higher than someone who lives in any major city.
Where, if you're not a Republican, your vote for president is essentially worthless, because Utah has gone to the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1968.
When the Federal government has so much direct power over citizens, those citizens need to have that same direct power to choose the President.
Come on Slashdot! You complain about "Faux" News being a bastion of republican influence and then promote slanderous bile like this to a +5 score--sometimes in the same thread!
You might want to avoid this rhetorical chestnut in the future, unless you honestly believe that everyone on Slashdot believes the exact same things. You'd have to be clinically retarded to do so, since you posted in opposition to a post you disagreed with, which proves that there exists at least one person on Slashdot (you) who doesn't believe the same things as everyone else. QED.:)
and even though I myself will probably vote for him in November, I will have many reservations in doing so.
The man has the intelligence of a roof shingle. He can't string a sentence together if he isn't reciting from memory or reading from a TelePrompTer! He believes the U.S. should be a theocracy, he has no interest in making things better for anyone except the rich, and he invaded a country that was not only not a threat to us, but had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks that supposedly motivated the whole thing!
This election is a textbook example of the lesser of two evils, and you have to be experiencing extreme cognitive dissonance to honestly think that voting for Bush is a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I jest. NASA's not useless. *cough*
Go to dinner, go see a movie, do whatever. If you want to know what your kid's doing at all times, then stay with him or her!
The basic point is this: The legal system allows those with lots of money to abuse those with little money, and the RIAA is taking advantage of this situation, which (although rational from the RIAA's standpoint) is immoral from a lot of other people's. Yes, abuse of the legal system has happened a billion times; that doesn't mean that it's okay to let it keep happening, or that we shouldn't do anything about it.
And yes, they are going after some legitimate infringers, but for each victim who is innocent but can't afford to fight, the RIAA gets to chalk up another win against piracy, whether it was happening or not. But we never get to find out whether those people were legitimately offending or not, because they are effectively unable to get a trial.
Fair enough. These posts were taking up way too much of my time anyway ;)
:)
But it sure was nice having a political discussion with someone with opposing views, without it degenerating into flames like they usually do on Slashdot!
Agreed. Warmth means a lot in the political popularity context.
I'd say it's because acting without thought is a lot easier than thinking without acting. Letting your emotions guide your actions doesn't require any introspection or analysis. Maybe people see rash action by a political leader as a (positive?!) reflection upon themselves ("Hey, he's rash, just like me!"), and so find it endearing, so long as the rashness doesn't get too out of hand.
I don't know if the explanation "That idea literally originated on the planet Mars" is really any simpler ;)
Probably. And probably less of the left holds that caricature of the right than the right thinks the left does. (Ahh! Recursion!)
I don't think that any of those reasons is a major factor in this particular situation. At least, whenever a prominent anti-Western Muslim talks about why he's anti-Western, it's virtually always because we're interfering in their affairs, not because we have freedoms but keep to ourselves.
I don't want to say, "You should care," but, uh... :) Even if they will "always" hate us, there's a difference between, "I hate those guys who are tromping all over our lands, so I think I'll attack them," and "I hate those guys who live half a world away, but whatever, I've got other problems closer to home."
Presumably we wouldn't be there at all if we didn't have an interest in being there. But I don't think the first "we" and the second "we" in that sentence are necessarily the same entity. One interpretation is, "Presumably the U.S. military wouldn't be there if the U.S. didn't have an interest in being there." Another is, "Presumably the U.S. military wouldn't be there if Bush didn't have a personal interest in them being there." The implication is that Bush uses the invasion of Iraq for a two-fold purpose: one, to make himself more popular (everyone loves a war), and two, to allow his friends more chances at aggrandizement, at the dual expenses of the U.S. budget and the Iraqi po
I wasn't being snarky, I was being condescending! :) (And a little bitter -- more on that later)
For my part, I don't dislike Kissinger or Wolfowitz because I think they're "overanalytical" or any such thing. At worst, I'd consider that a weakness in political ability, rather than a fundamental character flaw. Mostly I dislike them because their actions have disagreed with my personal moral compass. And I'd go so far as to say that the typical "left" liberal wouldn't criticize a conservative for being too thoughtful -- the usual criticism is that they're thoughtless, greedy, heartless bastards, or some such.
I know I stand fairly alone in this, but it would never occur to me to ridicule or belittle someone for being too intellectual, or thinking too analytically about something. Most Americans, though, are (I guess?) made uncomfortable by people who can look so deeply into something, and I still don't know why. Look back at the 1950s, when scientists were revered almost as strongly as athletes. Fast-forward to the 1980s, when I grew up; other kids actually used the name "Einstein" as an insult whenever I showed too much knowledge or intelligence. Being insulted by being compared to one of the greatest scientists in history. What planet are we on?
In general, I'd agree with the sentiment that there's a time for action, and a time for thought. However that vastly oversimplifies things, much to our detriment. There's no reason you can't do both at once. Analyzing what's going on WHILE you're doing something about it is better than committing everyone to one task or the other. It's not as if the entire might of the U.S. hinges on whatever the president is doing at that exact moment; there are millions of people involved in something like the invasion of Iraq. Plenty of people can be acting while others are thinking.
Of course, I'm not saying you're wrong in your explanation of how the American people think; I guess I'm mostly saying that I believe they're doing a disservice to themselves by thinking that way.
Well sure, it's just like whenever anyone hears doubt expressed about anything they fervently believe in. The idea that the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms is a powerful one, and hearing doubt expressed about it would sound as Martian as someone walking into a small town in Mississippi and claiming there's no God.
As far as I know, most of the left is of the opinion that negative attitudes toward the U.S. are the result of foreign policy decisions over the years, which, frankly, is a simpler, much more obvious explanation than the idea that "Al Qaeda terrorists hate our freedoms." It has better evidence, too. In fact, I don't know if the "hate our freedoms" thing has any actual evidence (I don't even know where that meme originated), but here's a quote from OBL's 1998 manifesto: "To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country, until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam." As far as I know, he's never said that he's angry or upset about the fact that we have freedoms here at home in the U.S.; the whole thing has to do with the U.S. (and
Nothing I (or the great-grandparent poster) said has anything to do with why the universe began. Assuming it's even meaningful to utter the phrase "when the universe began," then yes, when the universe began, entropy was lower than it is now. Whether the universe was created by some intelligent entity, or simply sprang into being for no reason whatsoever, or was born out of an egg lain by an enormous turtle, who knows? That's not what we're discussing, and whether or not evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics (it doesn't) has nothing to do with it!
Good points on political theory. Although I'd venture that as bold as TR was, he wasn't at all stupid -- Bush doesn't appear to possess much in the way of intelligence at all. I wouldn't call him "bold," either -- bull-headed, maybe.
:)
It's not that I'm in favor of intellectuals running things -- one can be intelligent without being intellectual. Whether Kerry qualifies as non-intellectual (he's definitely intelligent), I dunno. 'Course, there's the problem that in the U.S., intelligence and education are not valued, and any person X who is even slightly more intellectual than another random person Y is usually dismissed by Y as being one o' them namby-pamby brainiac types. Maybe that's why, despite all his obvious flaws, Dubya's so popular. Nobody'd ever accuse him of being intellectual.
Imagine buying a car, and the only thing it comes with is the absolute minimum in order to run -- body, chassis, engine, steering wheel, driver's seat, pedals, gearshift. If you want more seats, you can just go get them yourself! Radio, air conditioning, airbags, seatbelts, anyone can "install what they want later." And yet nobody sells cars like this to consumers...
How about package management? Who gets to decide what the "standard" way is, then requiring people who don't like that method to go out and manually install every single update, because (in your standardized world), why would non-standard packages be available? The whole point of a distro is that someone ELSE went out and did the work to put together a useful computing environment. It's a horrible idea to have to go get everything yourself, just so some people can feel better about standardization.Of course, you also have to take ongoing costs into account, but even there, the implication is that Linux is still cheaper, because one Linux admin, even at $73,000 a year, can manage more Linux boxes than an equivalent salary's worth of MCSEs. I know that we have 300+ servers and two admins; can two MCSEs manage 300+ Windows servers? Can two decent MCSEs be had for $73k a year?
I'm not defending the claim, I'm just saying what the claim is, since you seem to misapprehend what is being said.
Asking this question is like asking, "What's the benefit of there being so many brands of automobile, as opposed to being able to buy a 'standard' car and modify it to my liking?" The work's been done for you, rather than you having to go through and configure everything the way you want. Some distros will include certain software that others will not; a "standard" distro, to meet everyone's needs, would have to include every single piece of software that every distro out there includes now. That would take up a few dozen CD-ROMs.
Hope that helps.
I know what you're trying to say -- that you see a lot of liberal behavior here -- but misphrasing it in a way that literally means "everyone here is liberal" just makes you sound confused.
Then what explains all those times I've seen Score:5 posts defending Fox News and Bush? Well, these 45%+ (actually 80%+ -- I don't hold much hope for either side, really) are the same ones who think there's an invisible man in the sky who can solve all your problems. Believing that Bush makes a good president is a cakewalk compared to that.Cognitive dissonance doesn't have to involve distress, incidentally; all it has to involve is wanting something to be true so bad that you'll gladly ignore all evidence to the contrary as "hatred and outright lies."
I never said Kerry was a panacea. I even said EXPLICITLY that he's the lesser of two evils! I take it as axiomatic that all politicians are evil, and they have to demonstrate that they are, in fact, not. Kerry is evil, Bush is evil. From what I've seen, Bush is a lot MORE evil. Maybe Kerry will turn out to as bad or worse than Bush once he's president, but right now all we have to go on is Bush's record as president and Kerry's record as a Senator (and candidate). Maybe you'll dismiss this as semantic nonsense, but Congress has not declared war on Iraq. In fact it hasn't declared war on anyone since Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II. Congress has "authorized" the Iraq war, although there is plenty of debate over how Constitutional that is. But whatever; if it were needed, Bush would have gotten Congress to officially declare war, so the point is moot.Anyway, we were de facto at war while invading Iraq, until Bush declared that major combat was over, and the administration shifted emphasis to rebuilding Iraq and installing a democracy. We're not meaningfully "at war" with Iraq any more (although there are a number of insurgents who are still pretty pissed, apparently).
Also keep in mind that the only reason we have the Iraq war IS BECAUSE BUSH STARTED IT. He NEVER had any evidence that they had a terrorist connection (except for, I believe, one unsupported document which later turned out to be forged). The WMD thing sure isn't panning out; even if Bush honestly believed in the evidence to begin with, HE FUCKED UP. I don't really think you should get to make a mistake like invading another country on bad data and get to stay president!
It's possible you're referring to the so-called War on Terror, which so far has not been given any defined goals, any timeline, and (much like the War on Drugs) can go on as long as the government wants it to. But then you have to get into a whole debate about why people become terrorists, and dealing with the root cause of the problem instead of just killing terrorists, etc. Since neocons insist that terrorists only hate us because of our freedoms (to which the apparent proper response is to take away those freedoms as fast as possible), and will never admit that maybe our foreign policy has something to do with it, it's going to be a long "war."
I notice that you didn't actually challenge the assertion itself (that Bush is a drooling moron). :) Perhaps you're right, that calling him an idiot, however true it is, isn't going to get people to vote against him.
The (de facto) cost to build a bridge that can prevent anyone from driving anything through the railing would be exorbitant; it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the government to build such a bridge. But the (de facto) cost to secure a computer against users installing unauthorized programs is not only relatively low, it is easily within the budget and skills of the average IT department. And once you implement that security policy once, you can replicate the policy for basically zero cost on all the other computers in your department. Building two bridges costs twice as much as building one bridge.
Granted, it's not always that simple; changing requirements, corporate infighting, and budgetary problems can make it difficult for the IT department. Granted, there still is a point of diminishing returns, where spending the effort to make the computers more secure doesn't outweigh the long-term costs of doing so. That point comes much, much earlier when building physical transportation infrastructure. :) Granted, there's only so much the IT department can do, but I think their responsibility can quite easily be stretched a lot farther than the government's responsibility toward building invincible bridges.
When the Federal government has so much direct power over citizens, those citizens need to have that same direct power to choose the President.
This election is a textbook example of the lesser of two evils, and you have to be experiencing extreme cognitive dissonance to honestly think that voting for Bush is a good idea.