The government isn't a private organization, in which case I would wholeheartedly agree with you. The gov't is a public organization which serves the citizens of the country. I assure you that many of our employees are not performing well and definitely need to be further scrutinized to locate and repair the problems. I know I'm getting tired of paying far too many middle managers and secretaries while receiving insufficient results. As a co-CEO of this country, I urge my fellow board members to monitor employee performance more diligently and to help eliminate the heinous waste that is causing stagnation in our advancement and ruining our bottom line.
There, let's see if corporatism can succeed where patriotism is failing, since people seem to be far more company-centric than nation-centric these days.
Ain't that the best part about having kids? Even though enslaving adults is now illegal, its perfectly fine to grow your own from scratch, as long as you don't whip 'em. Hell, I'm thinking about having another after this one gets a bit older just so I'll have someone else to put in line. Oh sure, the poor bastards weren't given the choice, but hey, fuck 'em; that's parenting, baby! You get to kick their resentful asses out on to the street once they hit 18 anyway, so just tell 'em to shut the fuck up and get in line until the law allows them their freedom. You tell 'em!
Deo
Heh, semi-amusing sidenote; just as I finished punching that sarcastic rant up, my daughter laughed, smacked my nose and waddled off. Really blows the whole thing out of the water when they won't even put up with your crap when they're barely a year old.;)
Heh, that's pretty funny actually. Allow me to walk you through this sickness that is the current oligarchy that governs our country:
1. You see, most of us semi-intelligent Americans are already aware of this method of voting and many of us even endorse it. 2. The Republicans and Democrats are well aware of it as well, but oppose it as it would reduce their current control of the American political scene. 3. To get this change to the electoral process would require a Constitutional amendment. 4. To even qualify for being voted in as an amendment, it would first have to pass through the Congress. 5. The Congress is made up of almost entirely Republicans and Democrats. 6. Goto 2.
This would be how most laws that would return power to the people rather than the two big political parties get shot down. To be honest, I voted for Browne, I live in Florida and I am happy with my decision. People told me I was wasting my vote, yet when the day comes for Clinton to check out, his replacement won't be "the guy I voted against" or "the lesser of two evils I settled for," it'll just not be the guy I voted for. My vote will still be officially counted as one more that agrees with Browne's ideas and my life will move on as it has been.
On one more odd point before I get back to work, doesn't it seem kind of pointless to base the House and Senate candidates on location when they don't represent an area, but a political party instead? And doesn't it seem even stranger that the chief executive of the US government can hold partisan loyalties which exclude over half of the nation's citizens? And as a final strangeness, aside from what appears to be a split between the electoral vote and the popular vote results, isn't it somewhat disturbing that the next President of the US will have the support of less than half of the nation's people?
Yep, and that's why I won't vote for Gore, even though I'd rather have him in the seat than Bush. The thought of Gore keeling over while Holy Joe is his trusty sidekick scares the shit out of me. He's really into religion and morality, which I would normally care less about, except that he rubs me as the type who'd have no problem with pissing all over the line dividing church and state. I get persecuted enough by the schmucks around me when I'm stupid enough to admit that I don't have a religion; I sure as hell don't need it to be state sanctioned. At least Bush and Cheney are concerned enough about their corporate overlords that they'll only toe the line to avoid pissing off a multibillion dollar CEO who also happens to be Buddist, Wiccan or what have you. Although to be honest, I figure we're all fucked either way, so I'm probably just being needlessly paranoid. Ah well, only four more days left until I get my one chance per four years to make a statement to America and vote for Browne.
Shit, I'm running my mouse over a mouse pad with the proper posture, foot position, head angle, etc. all diagrammed out and looking at a memo stuck to my cube wall detailing these same requirements in text form. Goddamn, do I ever hate being a corporate rat; at least its not during the day, when the management pukes cry at anyone not conforming to the position chart.
All I had to do in high school was to study football for three weeks straight and analyze the clothing of every popular person in order to keep from getting a ration of shit just for being near the popular jokers? Damn, where were you when I needed your advice 12 years ago? I'm glad I now know what preparation I must undergo just to ask a simple fucking question in the world today.
Thank you for detailing my dream life and then making it out to be bad. I now realize that there is no hope for life and will go kill myself. I know, extreme, but it sure beats the hell out of having to answer one more dumbass who calls because, although they seemed to have to funds to purchase a $400+ exec's toy, they don't have the brains to browse the index of the handbook that came with it. Actually, I'd rather give that miserable existance that you described a shot; who do I have to kill?
Man, would I love to eradicate that section of the Bible from existance. I've had so many people bitching at me about our "Number of the Beast" system because the service I support requires a credit card to use. Like the night isn't long enough with morons who can't figure out how to click using more than one button, now I have to deal with the cultists who think that credit card billing is a tool of Satan. Bah, I wish; I'd bet Satan pays a hell of a lot better.
What, are you kidding? I love living in a land where ignorance of the law is not considered an excuse for breaking it, but we require fleets of lawyers and judges who undergo long, expensive educations and years of experience to interpret it. Its a cool feeling to be sitting here wondering just how many things I did yesterday that would get me prison time or hefty fines had I been caught by someone who somehow recognized it as a crime. For instance, I spent nine months unknowingly commiting a crime in my state a couple of years ago, before I got married, and just recently learned about it. Glad I didn't get caught; $500 or a 60 day stay ($1,000 and 120 if they'd have found us on the wrong day:)) in the pokey would have made my minimum wage earning ass homeless. Hell, we have a one year old daughter to worry about now, so I guess dad's not "getting his medicine" (reference: Chris Rock) until we leave this state, as we can't afford to have a nosy neighbor cost us $500.:) Laugh; if you don't, you might just start crying when you realize that nothing I've written here was fictitious.
Heh, I do tech support via email for a living and we have been getting spam from some Republican congressional candidate regularly for about the past four months. If you ever meet some dude named Chuck Yob who's running for Congress, kneecap that dumbass for me. We've also gotten a couple of Bush spams here and there, but I see so much spam flow through here that I barely notice it. But that Chuck Yob shit gets really old after awhile, and after emailing what addresses I could find to let those idiots know that they are emailing tech support at a HUGE company with their stupid crap, I still have yet to get any response other than "Vote for our doofus!"
Nader would so cripple the military and the US that we would become a pathetic little backwater while China moves into the HUGE hole we left behind.
Heh, one of those views that has always amused me. You have nothing to fear from outside invasion, as no country would ever be insane enough to mount a real attack against the United States, and our economy is not based in overseas interests but merely supplemented by them. No, this isn't blind patriotism, its simple numbers; the nuclear capability of the US is enough to turn China, or any other country on the planet, into a fine sheet of glass. And before you say that the US would never use nukes, even when directly attacked with troops marching across US soil, think for a moment; what is the only country in the world to ever exercise a nuclear attack on another nation, at a time when the only attack that had been directed at the nation itself had been a relatively small bombing incident at a naval port, four years prior? Any country that decides to try and invade the US had better send all of their troops and citizens and plan on moving in for life, because the only chance they'd have from being reduced to their component molecules would be to mix deep into the American populace and forget that their homeland was ever anything else other than a nuclear test site. Geez, we live in a country where less than 5% of the population seem to exercise most of the power and yet the fear of China is still invoked regular just because they have a bunch of people.
Don't worry; I'll leave the "wasted vote" portion of your post alone, as I've harped on enough about that previously in this thread.:) Although I must admit that I am saddened that you are so condescending to one of the few people in this country who seems to have actually taken a little time to become educated about his decision, despite what you think of his particular choice.
Considering the radical differences between the Green platform and the platforms of either the Dems or Repubs, it's highly likely that they'd lose far more current support than they'd gain new support by trying to attract Green followers.
Really? From the general sentiment I've seen here and elsewhere, it would pay off far more for Gore to try to pick up Green votes than to try to wrestle away some of Bush's support, as most of the folks who profess to support Nader seem to be saying that they are voting for Gore anyway, so it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch for Gore to nail those votes down solid with some subtle "wasted vote" rhetoric rather than letting some of those voters slip through and vote for Nader anyhow, especially considering how close it appears the election will be. Or perhaps its just wishful thinking on my part that a segment of society not affiliated with either the Republicans or Democrats could actually have some say in this nation.
So, by all means, make your statements, influence the agenda, make the major parties scramble to adopt your more popular positions, and then quietly change your vote to Gore on November 7th. This election is too close, and too important, to do otherwise.
I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat, and I don't own a multimillion dollar corporation or chair a million+ member special interest group, so I don't get much representation in this country anyhow. But at least when the election results are tallied and displayed, I'll be able to look at the official record and say, "My voice has finally been heard." My vote for Harry Browne may be "wasted" in the sense that I won't have a chance to walk around telling everybody, "Lookie, the candidate I voted for won! Heehee!" but I will have the satisfaction of looking at the final tally of votes for Browne and knowing that there are others like me, others who may be disregarded by the current oligarchy as nonessential, unimportant, outside the target demographic, who also had the courage to go to the one place that we have left to make our stand, to have our say, to tell the politicians, the press and the citizens of the United States what we really believe: the voting booth.
I hope you enjoy the victory party and take plenty of time to pat yourself on the back for not "wasting" your vote; I truly do, that was not sarcastic in the least, because I'd like to think that when the election is over that everyone voted for what they wanted, and not against what they didn't, so if you truly want Al Gore to be the president of the country, then by all means cast your vote and make your support for his policies known. Like the man said: "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
On a side note, it is amusing how everyone complains about how there is too much negative campaigning; politicians aren't stupid, they realize that that's how people vote in this country as well, against candidates rather than for them. They're just playing to the crowd, giving them their bread and circuses like any smart would-be ruler would.
Deo
PS: The preceding was not an endorsement of Harry Browne for president; if you agree with his policies, vote for him. If you don't, then don't. All I ask is that you vote for something rather than against, that's all. You have to admit, it would be interesting to see the poll results if people actually did that for just one election in our lifetimes.:)
While I did enjoy reading up on Bush's and Gore's viewpoint as they specifically relate to space and other sciences, I find it rather sad that they are yet again the only candidates to get a mention. It appears that the folks at NASA Watch took some time to find out about the candidates' viewpoints on the space program, but they couldn't spend just a few minutes learning who the other candidates running on the majority of the ballots were and what they thought? I understand the thinking behind the whole "wasted vote" philosophy which so many people abide by and therefore disregard third party candidates, but it is that kind of thinking which has resulted in this two party oligarchy that currently holds power in the USA today and will continue to do so until people learn that you shouldn't vote against a candidate but for a candidate. The Republican Party was a third party once as well, until a guy by the name of Abraham Lincoln ran on their ticket back in 1860, and that was 140 years ago, when to find out what candidates were about, you had to run your dumb ass all over hell and gone just to catch a rally and hear what they were about. These days, we have so much info without ever getting off of our asses, that there really is no excuse for not knowing who's running, what their stances are, etc.
If you are still in the dark, cruise over to www.vote-smart.org to get a brief view of the candidates and links to their official sites, or for a cool website concerning the candidates' stances on many issues, check out Issues2000.org. Oh, and don't neglect to learn about your local Congresscritters, either, especially since their decisions have a hell of a lot more impact on your daily life than the president's does. Whatever you do, don't just whine about not being able to make a difference, because that's a load of horseshit; even if your candidate of choice doesn't win, at least your vote is officially tallied so that whoever is elected will realize that, although they may have won, there is a large number of people, voting people, who support a different way of doing things and that they do well to find out why so many people voted a certain way. So go out, learn about the candidates and their views, decide who you would like to support and, most importantly:
I now know that CDs have truly replaced the floppy disk; I bought my first pack of "white label" CDs this weekend at CompUSA. They're selling 100 blank CDs, shrink wrapped with a white label with something like Blank CDs, 12X printed on it for $29.99. Damn, and to think I paid $50 for 50 just a few months ago...
Turn it off, hell! I need to go snag a few more and see if I can daisy chain them. Between the CueCats, my Intellimouse Explorer, keyboards, monitors, cd-rom drives, case lights and power strips, my desk now resembles a scene out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind when my monitors go to standby when the lights are out. Highly surreal to wake up to, to say the least!:)
On a more ontopic note, I encourage everyone to go post a mirror site of your favorite CueCat RE site. With enough people snagging Cats and posting mirrors, we can simply put them out of business by taking all of the CueCats without providing a return and then sucking the remaining funds dry via postage. Who needs a lawyer when you've got FedEx on your side?;)
I know, screaming offtopic here but I have to ask; where did that extrodinarily numbnuts quote in your sig come from, or did you just make that dumb shit up for a chuckle?:)
I'm gonna have to avoid it like the plague, else I give in to the urge I used to get in 7th grade computer class to write that irritating, short BASIC prog that looped about three thousand times before entering a Ctrl-G goto loop; something like:
10 rem Bwahahaha
20 for n=1 to 3000
30 next n
40 print (Ctrl-g)
50 goto 40
And then running it just as I got up to leave class. Especially fun to punch into about 15 computers, type RUN on all of them and then walk down the row brushing Enter keys on the way out. I do that now and my wife'll feed my my monitor. I do have to admit that I kind of miss having to change the line numbers of about 30 lines when I had to squeeze in one more damn line and I was out of available line numbers in that section of the code.;)
We noticed when you were in third grade, you had difficulty deciding just how much mud was supposed to go into each tower in the sand castles that you were creating during recess, so we determined that we needed to develop a more friendly partitioning application and package selection utility to put into the installer in order to reduce the difficulty you experience when installing Debian. We do hope that you enjoy the new interface enhancements, and we thank you for your continued support.
That would kill the whole reason why copyright is necessary. Example: budding author writes some seriously primo shit, War and Peace kind of good. Author sends it to a publisher for review. Because of copyright laws overriding this postal reg, the author can do this knowing that if the publisher decides not to pick up the book, the author can just toss the rejection slip into his RS pile and send a copy of the book to another publisher. Without copyright laws having precedence, the author would have to hire a legal team to hash out a contract with the publishers legal team in order for the publisher to just view the book, as the publisher, in your scenario, could just take an unsolicited submission, print 50,000,000 copies and distribute it worldwide without the author ever seeing a dime. So while I know Jack Shit about the law, I'm pretty sure that trying to bullshit around copyright laws using the aforementioned postal code would die a flaming death in a court of law (OK, I hope it would; things have become fucked up enough for me to have serious doubts).
Um, sure; why don't you request a perpetual motion machine and a time machine while you're at it. If you're going to indulge in fantasy, go the whole nine.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn you! And here I thought that I could finally get to space with enough dental floss! Bastard...
Deo
The government isn't a private organization, in which case I would wholeheartedly agree with you. The gov't is a public organization which serves the citizens of the country. I assure you that many of our employees are not performing well and definitely need to be further scrutinized to locate and repair the problems. I know I'm getting tired of paying far too many middle managers and secretaries while receiving insufficient results. As a co-CEO of this country, I urge my fellow board members to monitor employee performance more diligently and to help eliminate the heinous waste that is causing stagnation in our advancement and ruining our bottom line.
There, let's see if corporatism can succeed where patriotism is failing, since people seem to be far more company-centric than nation-centric these days.
Deo
#include<perspective.h>
;)
Ain't that the best part about having kids? Even though enslaving adults is now illegal, its perfectly fine to grow your own from scratch, as long as you don't whip 'em. Hell, I'm thinking about having another after this one gets a bit older just so I'll have someone else to put in line. Oh sure, the poor bastards weren't given the choice, but hey, fuck 'em; that's parenting, baby! You get to kick their resentful asses out on to the street once they hit 18 anyway, so just tell 'em to shut the fuck up and get in line until the law allows them their freedom. You tell 'em!
Deo
Heh, semi-amusing sidenote; just as I finished punching that sarcastic rant up, my daughter laughed, smacked my nose and waddled off. Really blows the whole thing out of the water when they won't even put up with your crap when they're barely a year old.
Heh, that's pretty funny actually. Allow me to walk you through this sickness that is the current oligarchy that governs our country:
1. You see, most of us semi-intelligent Americans are already aware of this method of voting and many of us even endorse it.
2. The Republicans and Democrats are well aware of it as well, but oppose it as it would reduce their current control of the American political scene.
3. To get this change to the electoral process would require a Constitutional amendment.
4. To even qualify for being voted in as an amendment, it would first have to pass through the Congress.
5. The Congress is made up of almost entirely Republicans and Democrats.
6. Goto 2.
This would be how most laws that would return power to the people rather than the two big political parties get shot down. To be honest, I voted for Browne, I live in Florida and I am happy with my decision. People told me I was wasting my vote, yet when the day comes for Clinton to check out, his replacement won't be "the guy I voted against" or "the lesser of two evils I settled for," it'll just not be the guy I voted for. My vote will still be officially counted as one more that agrees with Browne's ideas and my life will move on as it has been.
On one more odd point before I get back to work, doesn't it seem kind of pointless to base the House and Senate candidates on location when they don't represent an area, but a political party instead? And doesn't it seem even stranger that the chief executive of the US government can hold partisan loyalties which exclude over half of the nation's citizens? And as a final strangeness, aside from what appears to be a split between the electoral vote and the popular vote results, isn't it somewhat disturbing that the next President of the US will have the support of less than half of the nation's people?
Deo
Yep, and that's why I won't vote for Gore, even though I'd rather have him in the seat than Bush. The thought of Gore keeling over while Holy Joe is his trusty sidekick scares the shit out of me. He's really into religion and morality, which I would normally care less about, except that he rubs me as the type who'd have no problem with pissing all over the line dividing church and state. I get persecuted enough by the schmucks around me when I'm stupid enough to admit that I don't have a religion; I sure as hell don't need it to be state sanctioned. At least Bush and Cheney are concerned enough about their corporate overlords that they'll only toe the line to avoid pissing off a multibillion dollar CEO who also happens to be Buddist, Wiccan or what have you. Although to be honest, I figure we're all fucked either way, so I'm probably just being needlessly paranoid. Ah well, only four more days left until I get my one chance per four years to make a statement to America and vote for Browne.
Deo
Shit, I'm running my mouse over a mouse pad with the proper posture, foot position, head angle, etc. all diagrammed out and looking at a memo stuck to my cube wall detailing these same requirements in text form. Goddamn, do I ever hate being a corporate rat; at least its not during the day, when the management pukes cry at anyone not conforming to the position chart.
Deo
All I had to do in high school was to study football for three weeks straight and analyze the clothing of every popular person in order to keep from getting a ration of shit just for being near the popular jokers? Damn, where were you when I needed your advice 12 years ago? I'm glad I now know what preparation I must undergo just to ask a simple fucking question in the world today.
Deo
Thank you for detailing my dream life and then making it out to be bad. I now realize that there is no hope for life and will go kill myself. I know, extreme, but it sure beats the hell out of having to answer one more dumbass who calls because, although they seemed to have to funds to purchase a $400+ exec's toy, they don't have the brains to browse the index of the handbook that came with it. Actually, I'd rather give that miserable existance that you described a shot; who do I have to kill?
Deo
Man, would I love to eradicate that section of the Bible from existance. I've had so many people bitching at me about our "Number of the Beast" system because the service I support requires a credit card to use. Like the night isn't long enough with morons who can't figure out how to click using more than one button, now I have to deal with the cultists who think that credit card billing is a tool of Satan. Bah, I wish; I'd bet Satan pays a hell of a lot better.
Deo
Of course; you haven't been reading the posts by the people who earn that money (self included, albeit not much of it) for very long, apparently. ;)
Deo
What, are you kidding? I love living in a land where ignorance of the law is not considered an excuse for breaking it, but we require fleets of lawyers and judges who undergo long, expensive educations and years of experience to interpret it. Its a cool feeling to be sitting here wondering just how many things I did yesterday that would get me prison time or hefty fines had I been caught by someone who somehow recognized it as a crime. For instance, I spent nine months unknowingly commiting a crime in my state a couple of years ago, before I got married, and just recently learned about it. Glad I didn't get caught; $500 or a 60 day stay ($1,000 and 120 if they'd have found us on the wrong day :)) in the pokey would have made my minimum wage earning ass homeless. Hell, we have a one year old daughter to worry about now, so I guess dad's not "getting his medicine" (reference: Chris Rock) until we leave this state, as we can't afford to have a nosy neighbor cost us $500. :) Laugh; if you don't, you might just start crying when you realize that nothing I've written here was fictitious.
Deo
Heh, I do tech support via email for a living and we have been getting spam from some Republican congressional candidate regularly for about the past four months. If you ever meet some dude named Chuck Yob who's running for Congress, kneecap that dumbass for me. We've also gotten a couple of Bush spams here and there, but I see so much spam flow through here that I barely notice it. But that Chuck Yob shit gets really old after awhile, and after emailing what addresses I could find to let those idiots know that they are emailing tech support at a HUGE company with their stupid crap, I still have yet to get any response other than "Vote for our doofus!"
Deo
Nader would so cripple the military and the US that we would become a pathetic little backwater while China moves into the HUGE hole we left behind.
:) Although I must admit that I am saddened that you are so condescending to one of the few people in this country who seems to have actually taken a little time to become educated about his decision, despite what you think of his particular choice.
Heh, one of those views that has always amused me. You have nothing to fear from outside invasion, as no country would ever be insane enough to mount a real attack against the United States, and our economy is not based in overseas interests but merely supplemented by them. No, this isn't blind patriotism, its simple numbers; the nuclear capability of the US is enough to turn China, or any other country on the planet, into a fine sheet of glass. And before you say that the US would never use nukes, even when directly attacked with troops marching across US soil, think for a moment; what is the only country in the world to ever exercise a nuclear attack on another nation, at a time when the only attack that had been directed at the nation itself had been a relatively small bombing incident at a naval port, four years prior? Any country that decides to try and invade the US had better send all of their troops and citizens and plan on moving in for life, because the only chance they'd have from being reduced to their component molecules would be to mix deep into the American populace and forget that their homeland was ever anything else other than a nuclear test site. Geez, we live in a country where less than 5% of the population seem to exercise most of the power and yet the fear of China is still invoked regular just because they have a bunch of people.
Don't worry; I'll leave the "wasted vote" portion of your post alone, as I've harped on enough about that previously in this thread.
Deo
Considering the radical differences between the Green platform and the platforms of either the Dems or Repubs, it's highly likely that they'd lose far more current support than they'd gain new support by trying to attract Green followers.
Really? From the general sentiment I've seen here and elsewhere, it would pay off far more for Gore to try to pick up Green votes than to try to wrestle away some of Bush's support, as most of the folks who profess to support Nader seem to be saying that they are voting for Gore anyway, so it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch for Gore to nail those votes down solid with some subtle "wasted vote" rhetoric rather than letting some of those voters slip through and vote for Nader anyhow, especially considering how close it appears the election will be. Or perhaps its just wishful thinking on my part that a segment of society not affiliated with either the Republicans or Democrats could actually have some say in this nation.
Deo
So, by all means, make your statements, influence the agenda, make the major parties scramble to adopt your more popular positions, and then quietly change your vote to Gore on November 7th. This election is too close, and too important, to do otherwise.
:)
I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat, and I don't own a multimillion dollar corporation or chair a million+ member special interest group, so I don't get much representation in this country anyhow. But at least when the election results are tallied and displayed, I'll be able to look at the official record and say, "My voice has finally been heard." My vote for Harry Browne may be "wasted" in the sense that I won't have a chance to walk around telling everybody, "Lookie, the candidate I voted for won! Heehee!" but I will have the satisfaction of looking at the final tally of votes for Browne and knowing that there are others like me, others who may be disregarded by the current oligarchy as nonessential, unimportant, outside the target demographic, who also had the courage to go to the one place that we have left to make our stand, to have our say, to tell the politicians, the press and the citizens of the United States what we really believe: the voting booth.
I hope you enjoy the victory party and take plenty of time to pat yourself on the back for not "wasting" your vote; I truly do, that was not sarcastic in the least, because I'd like to think that when the election is over that everyone voted for what they wanted, and not against what they didn't, so if you truly want Al Gore to be the president of the country, then by all means cast your vote and make your support for his policies known. Like the man said: "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
On a side note, it is amusing how everyone complains about how there is too much negative campaigning; politicians aren't stupid, they realize that that's how people vote in this country as well, against candidates rather than for them. They're just playing to the crowd, giving them their bread and circuses like any smart would-be ruler would.
Deo
PS: The preceding was not an endorsement of Harry Browne for president; if you agree with his policies, vote for him. If you don't, then don't. All I ask is that you vote for something rather than against, that's all. You have to admit, it would be interesting to see the poll results if people actually did that for just one election in our lifetimes.
While I did enjoy reading up on Bush's and Gore's viewpoint as they specifically relate to space and other sciences, I find it rather sad that they are yet again the only candidates to get a mention. It appears that the folks at NASA Watch took some time to find out about the candidates' viewpoints on the space program, but they couldn't spend just a few minutes learning who the other candidates running on the majority of the ballots were and what they thought? I understand the thinking behind the whole "wasted vote" philosophy which so many people abide by and therefore disregard third party candidates, but it is that kind of thinking which has resulted in this two party oligarchy that currently holds power in the USA today and will continue to do so until people learn that you shouldn't vote against a candidate but for a candidate. The Republican Party was a third party once as well, until a guy by the name of Abraham Lincoln ran on their ticket back in 1860, and that was 140 years ago, when to find out what candidates were about, you had to run your dumb ass all over hell and gone just to catch a rally and hear what they were about. These days, we have so much info without ever getting off of our asses, that there really is no excuse for not knowing who's running, what their stances are, etc.
If you are still in the dark, cruise over to www.vote-smart.org to get a brief view of the candidates and links to their official sites, or for a cool website concerning the candidates' stances on many issues, check out Issues2000.org. Oh, and don't neglect to learn about your local Congresscritters, either, especially since their decisions have a hell of a lot more impact on your daily life than the president's does. Whatever you do, don't just whine about not being able to make a difference, because that's a load of horseshit; even if your candidate of choice doesn't win, at least your vote is officially tallied so that whoever is elected will realize that, although they may have won, there is a large number of people, voting people, who support a different way of doing things and that they do well to find out why so many people voted a certain way. So go out, learn about the candidates and their views, decide who you would like to support and, most importantly:
Vote!
Deo
I now know that CDs have truly replaced the floppy disk; I bought my first pack of "white label" CDs this weekend at CompUSA. They're selling 100 blank CDs, shrink wrapped with a white label with something like Blank CDs, 12X printed on it for $29.99. Damn, and to think I paid $50 for 50 just a few months ago...
Deo
That's right; they spawn asexually, like all other bacteria.
Deo
Turn it off, hell! I need to go snag a few more and see if I can daisy chain them. Between the CueCats, my Intellimouse Explorer, keyboards, monitors, cd-rom drives, case lights and power strips, my desk now resembles a scene out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind when my monitors go to standby when the lights are out. Highly surreal to wake up to, to say the least! :)
;)
On a more ontopic note, I encourage everyone to go post a mirror site of your favorite CueCat RE site. With enough people snagging Cats and posting mirrors, we can simply put them out of business by taking all of the CueCats without providing a return and then sucking the remaining funds dry via postage. Who needs a lawyer when you've got FedEx on your side?
Deo
I know, screaming offtopic here but I have to ask; where did that extrodinarily numbnuts quote in your sig come from, or did you just make that dumb shit up for a chuckle? :)
Deo
I'm gonna have to avoid it like the plague, else I give in to the urge I used to get in 7th grade computer class to write that irritating, short BASIC prog that looped about three thousand times before entering a Ctrl-G goto loop; something like:
;)
10 rem Bwahahaha
20 for n=1 to 3000
30 next n
40 print (Ctrl-g)
50 goto 40
And then running it just as I got up to leave class. Especially fun to punch into about 15 computers, type RUN on all of them and then walk down the row brushing Enter keys on the way out. I do that now and my wife'll feed my my monitor. I do have to admit that I kind of miss having to change the line numbers of about 30 lines when I had to squeeze in one more damn line and I was out of available line numbers in that section of the code.
Deo
Dear Bill,
We noticed when you were in third grade, you had difficulty deciding just how much mud was supposed to go into each tower in the sand castles that you were creating during recess, so we determined that we needed to develop a more friendly partitioning application and package selection utility to put into the installer in order to reduce the difficulty you experience when installing Debian. We do hope that you enjoy the new interface enhancements, and we thank you for your continued support.
The Debian Installer Development Team
That would kill the whole reason why copyright is necessary. Example: budding author writes some seriously primo shit, War and Peace kind of good. Author sends it to a publisher for review. Because of copyright laws overriding this postal reg, the author can do this knowing that if the publisher decides not to pick up the book, the author can just toss the rejection slip into his RS pile and send a copy of the book to another publisher. Without copyright laws having precedence, the author would have to hire a legal team to hash out a contract with the publishers legal team in order for the publisher to just view the book, as the publisher, in your scenario, could just take an unsolicited submission, print 50,000,000 copies and distribute it worldwide without the author ever seeing a dime. So while I know Jack Shit about the law, I'm pretty sure that trying to bullshit around copyright laws using the aforementioned postal code would die a flaming death in a court of law (OK, I hope it would; things have become fucked up enough for me to have serious doubts).
Deo
Irregardless, if you're an underground opposition group opposed to an oppresive government...
:) That said, why is it such a fun word to use, even though the correct word, regardless, is shorter and easier to roll out?
;)
Irregardless isn't a word.
Deo
PS: Just a little offtopic chain pulling; I say irregardless all the time and get crap for it myself, so I couldn't resist.
Um, sure; why don't you request a perpetual motion machine and a time machine while you're at it. If you're going to indulge in fantasy, go the whole nine.
Deo