We live in a wonderful world where everyone agrees with each other every day, and every newspaper article, TV news report, and radio discussion is completely positive concerning the current establishment and their decisions.
SHUTTUP YOU STUPID LIBRAL!!!!!!! GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE IN AFGHANISTA!!!!!!!! YOU'RE EITHER WITH THE PRESIDENT, OR WITH THE TERRORISTS HIS FATHER HELPED SETTUP!!!!!!!!
Either that, or they do nothing but yell rhetoric and cliches at you. I'm not actually sure which I prefer. The later at least is more entertaining, but not by my much.
Yep, you're right. I'm going to vote for Dean this time around, but not because I am a liberal -- oh no, I am Rush dittohead. Rather, it is because of Bush and his robots.txt! This is completely inexcusable! How dare he!
I'm voting for McCain. I don't care if he runs or if he is bound and gagged by the RNC.
A few weeks ago I heard that both our Fearless Leader and Condoleezza Rice came out to the press saying that there are no connections between Hussein and 911, and that they have never implied otherwise.
I tried to find some sort of article on this but too much other stuff came up when I tried to search for 911, Saddam, not connected whatever. (Gee, I wonder why?)
Anyway, does anyone know of any mainstream articles on this announcement?
(The Memory Hole looks very interesting, I need to check it out.)
In their perfect world, you pay for everything; more specifically, you pay them for everything.
In PKD's Ubik (and I think some of his other novels, or at least short stories) you had to pay your door to get in and out of your own home, every time. If you didn't have any coins on you, you could become trapped in your conapt, having an argument with your door. It was probably funny when he wrote it, hey it's still funny, but PKD was a real visionary.
He knew it was Round-Up Ready, and he took advantage of that fact. He harvested seeds from the crops so he could continue to benefit from it, knowing that what he was doing was in violation of the patent, but believing that if he were caught he could just claim ignorance.
I have a question. Did Schmeiser use Round Up[tm] on the crops that he grew from the harvested seeds?
(This part is obvious) Round-Up Ready [tm] seeds are genetically engineered so that you can repeatedly spray herbicides on them. Most crops would die if you sprayed, what more than twice(?). But the idea of Round Up Ready[tm] seeds is that you can continuously spray Round Up[tm] herbicides on your crops, and theoretically, get bigger crops because of it.
It seems to me that if he was not doing this, then Monsanto doesn't really have a case, as their GE seeds are to my knowledge, only good for that purpose, and without taking advantage of it are otherwise less valuable because there are lots of consumers that do not want to eat GMOs. (Even if there are no labels and the corporations thumb their noses at us.)
Is he the same guy that turned around and sued Monsanto for contaminating his crops? From what I understand it is still not that uncommon for farmers to harvest their seeds. It is a traditional practice. The main reason I would see for him to not harvest his seeds would be to get a clean crop. But if his neighbors are just going to re-contaminate him again what is the point?
(This post brought to you by, random replies via Meta Moderation.)
So basically what you are advocating is a one party state ala China and the old USSR?
Well, would it really be much different than what we have today? Ha Ha, only serious. With the two parties that act as one, at least it would be more honest with one party. But then most people would not accept it. Better to have the illusion of choice to keep the rabble in line.
No, I don't think that is what Fishbowl was advocating, and neither am I, even if I joke about it.
I guess you could say that is a problem, but then, if the liberals are so smart and progressive, why can't they make enough money to use this system to turn the power structure on its head?
So are you saying that the "liberals" do not have money and are not using it to control the system so to speak? This reminds me of how "conservatives" complain that the "liberals" control the media. But then the "conservatives" also are very "pro-capatilism" and thus if the liberals own the media, why shouldn't they control it?
However, their arguments assume that we are operating under a system of capitalism, and that there is a significant difference between "liberals" and "conservatives" beyond the childish rhetoric.
Conspiracy theories aside, doesn't this mean that those with the influence to gain money, are met with a logical and natural reward of political power?
Well, this would basically amount to bribery, which most people, whether they identify themselves as "liberal" "conservative" "moderate" or something else think is a bad thing. Well, actually, I went to Egypt a couple years ago and bribery, graft and begging were the rule rather than the exception. Still, just because it was normal doesn't necessarily mean they liked it. I digress.
Anyway, it goes into the idea that capitalism and democracy (or representative democracy) have a tendency to corrupt each other. If we have rule by the rich, it is not democracy, it is aristocracy. And then why should we even bother having elections at all. It is not quite that bad yet, and I think most people would prefer a system closer to actual democracy than explicit legalized bribary.
It was incredible getting to visit Egypt, but I wouldn't want to live there and I wouldn't want to live under a system like that. (Although my Egypt analogy applies more to their day to day life, it makes me wonder how their politics work.)
I'm surprised that people who want reform bother with opposition parties at all. I think it might serve their purposes better to JOIN the party with the influence and money.
This reminds me of a concept that I've thought of in the past. I was reading about "Stealth Canidates", reactionary "conservatives" who run for the school board or minor positions without much campaigning, except to conservatives. Another problem with this country is that people fail to vote the most for things that they would exert the most control over (local elections). So nobody has heard of these people until they get into position and then they can cause all kinds of trouble, so to speak.
Well, I've thought, why not "Stealth Canidates" in reverse. Have some progressive (Libertarian, Green, Anarchist, whatever) run and pretend to be a reactionary "conservative" and then after they get elected bingo! It would have someone that has been reatively quiet politically speaking. And they would have to dress and look "straight."
No matter how radical your ideas really are, take a moderate stance, but the whole time making sure the party in power thinks you're one of them...
oops, I misread this at first that you were implying that you take a moderate stance. I was going to say something about politics being more complicated than "left" "right" "middle" but now I notice that that is not what you meant. (I bring it up because others might have also made the wrong inferance.)
I think it would be hilarious if a Republican senator would just come out and bluntly say that the party is spending too much on useless crap, religion doesn't belong in government, education needs finance, the war on drugs is a failure, etc.
Well, there are good Republicans out there. The governer of New Mexico comes to mind. In many ways I identify myself as a "conservative", at least more so than as a "liberal." I guess it comes down to for any significantly large group of people most of them are idiots. This is true for all kinds of politicians, but there are still a few goo
When I was taking Political Science I think that the number one factor in determining an election was the amount of campaign dollars a canidate used for advertising. It is also pretty consistent with ballot measures. There are of course exceptions but it is scary how often it is true.
Other factor that are a big influence on who people vote for (which often correlate with campaign funds) are incumbancy and name recognition. Also note that the TV stations will usually ignore a canidate if they don't have a significant "war chest." Thus most people have never even heard of the Libertarian and Green canidates.
However, all of it might become a moot point if our elections process is taken over by a completely incompetent computer system with no ability to audit.
I don't see how you can make the argument that "NAFTA has been bad for... all three countries.... US unemployment hit historic lows throughout most of the 90's
Well, my main point was about Local, State and National sovereignty, that Corporations should not be above the law. What I was basing the "bad for... all three countries" was that supposedly median income went down, and overtime and people working more than one job went up after NAFTA.
So I did some searching on the web trying to find some hard data. This site had some interesting statistics on median income. Adjusted for inflation the income for Men in general: 1994:36,215 1995:36,387 1996:36,439 1997:36,678 and for Women in general: 1994:26,424 1995:26,197 1996:26,400 1997:26,974
So according to that website income did actually increase slightly in the 3 years after NAFTA was implemented.
This site only has data up to 1994 for not very useful in terms of data when discussing NAFTA. However, it does seem to have good explainations of the many issues involved when these issues.
I can't seem to find any sites that document hours of overtime, or people working multiple jobs. (When doing searches all it would come up with was statistics on overtime pay and not hours worked.)
I did come across this interesting site at AARP. It says that between 1989 and 1997 the poverty rate for the general population went up by 0.2% Ah Hah! um... no wait, it isn't statistically significant.
So I guess the gist of it is that I can't really say that NAFTA affected jobs, income and overtimepay. And even if I had found statistics to support my statement, it is not like the economy occures in a bubble where NAFTA is the only change. The dotcom era certainly affected the economy for instance, and that is something that was quite unique. I suppose if I we were able to find statistics that concentraited on jobs affected by trade that would be more telling. (Times like these I wish I had the time to read the WSJ.)
Anyone out there know how to lookup statistics like these?
If these so called Free Trade agreements were really about free trade, they would be a lot less complicated. They would just be about reducing tarrifs. What these "Trade Agreements" are really about is granting special rights and privilages to corporations, sometimes even making them above the law, at the expense of our national sovereignty.
For example, with NAFTA Canada sued the United States saying that banning asbestos is an infringement of Free Trade.
A few years ago before the WTO became a household word (err Acronym) they were trying to pass the Multilateral Agreement on Investment which would have given coporations an explicit Right to Profit above and beyond a citizens rights and privilages.
And just look at the current example. In the name of Free Trade they are trying to make fair use of our own legally purchased IP illegal, such as bypassing DVD Region codes.
It is not a matter of U.S. vs. Mexico or whatever. NAFTA has been bad for the general population of all three countries, and now they want to extend it to the entire western hemisphere.
Right, cause there is NEVER any fraud using paper.
While I think that free and open evoting system would be a good thing, I think we need to keep a physical paper trail for a physical audit if neccessary. If there is a significant discrepancy between the electronic and the paper tally, then we know that something is up. If someone tried to mess with both, I think it would be very difficult to make the electronic and paper tampering to turn out the same (or statistically insignificant).
Some of the carts at Freddies use them too. A given store will have some with the device, some without. So if you wanted to steal one you could just look for a cart without the device.
I've noticed that some of them will be clamped down even in the store. So it doesn't prevent them from being stolen, but they have false positives as well.
There isn't much point in stealing a common, ordinary cart either.
What about using a shopping Cart as a Percussion Instrument? I've only actually used a shopping cart once, and I didn't actually find it in a store. I was participating with a band at the time and there happened to be a shopping cart a couple blocks away from the venue. I had intedned to destroy the shopping cart by the end of the show but those darn things are pretty strong. I was able to do hardly any dammage with a crowbar, and could only take out a few of the little thingys with a hammer. Maybe if I had had a sledgehammer I could have done real dammage.
Anyway, when I first started reading this article I was wondering if they were going to use the wifi to prevent shopping cart theft. You know, track them down. And I'm thinking, what's going to happen to the proud tradition of using a shopping cart in experimental music.
Shoppers could steal the Shopping Buddies, but there wouldn't be much point. The custom-built devices can't run ordinary computer software; they're good for shopping and nothing else.
Actually, the shopping buddies themselves might be interesting in music. Banal shopping buddy advice would be very fitting in some music.
If the votes are so undeterministic, why can't someone demand a re-vote?
If the ubiquitous "They" can fix an election once, they can do it a second time etc.
What we need is accountability, a way to audit the election results.
How about a printout from the voting machine that is collected like the old fashioned ballots were. Make a printout that can be easily and quickly scanned by a machine as well as manually counted by a human being. And make it blantently obvious what the voter voted for, both so that the voter can confirm before s/he puts it in the box, and so that there is no debate durring a manual recount of whatthe voter voted for.
I see most politicians as being corrupt, both Democrats and Republicans. I don't want to see anyone fscking with the elections. Politicians are bad enough as it is.
Somehow I doubt the RIAA is going away anytime soon. Not unless we achieve a critical mass of people challenging the status quo, the mainstream media, and the mainstream politicians.
But that doesn't mean that until then we can't listen to better music.
Lots of times when these almost daily articles about the EV1L RIAA come up someone proposes boycotting the RIAA. It is an idea. I imagine that most of the music that I would be at all interested in purchasing falls under Jazz or Classical music. (I don't know, how much of a hold does the RIAA have over classical music? I guess I mean recordings since all but modern classical is in the public domain.)
Anyway, a few days ago I wrote a journal entry about this very subject: Music I like that is not RIAA.
One of the comments I got is that if you buy albums at the concerts then the artist gets a much bigger percentage than buying it in a store. (Although I'm a big proponent of buying music from locally owned stores too.) So that is another option if you really must have music from an artist who happens to be under the thumb of the EV1L RIAA.
I remember durring California's rolling blackouts, weren't there some people blaming the internet; ie increased computer usage (instead of fraud) back then? Anyway, I remember thinking about the Crusoe chips and maybe it would make sense to build low power consuming desktop PCs.
And you don't need power companies shutting down the power stations for fraud to motivate this. It is about time we start thinking of efficiancy in all walks of life. Yea, there are people that will actually use the power of a 2ghtz PC, but even those people might want to have a fileserver running ML Donkey 24 hours a day without turning their computer room into a sauna.
I just got on the p2p bandwagon this summer (yea, I'm late but whatever) and my computer room is in the basement and normally cool year round. This summer it was between 80-90 degrees most of the time.
I imagine the cost for the motherboards is in that they are not being mass produced. Well, maybe Transmeta ought to think about marketing these at companies and home users looking to reduce their electric bills.
Question: If you were to do parallel processing or clustering with transmeta chips would you get more bang for your electrical buck?
Slashdot Mirror
you're full of shit, you're a liberal
Yea! Anyone who we disagree with is obviously a Liberal! Grrrrr!!!!!! Fscking Liberals!
Even my father who is a lifetime Republican, and a Marine Corps Officer is now painted a Liberal because he dares to question our fearless leader.
The USA is the greatest country in the world because our politicians are incapable of making mistakes when it comes to foreign policy.
There is a difference between inability to question, and unwillingness to question.
We live in a wonderful world where everyone agrees with each other every day, and every newspaper article, TV news report, and radio discussion is completely positive concerning the current establishment and their decisions.
SHUTTUP YOU STUPID LIBRAL!!!!!!!
GO BACK TO YOUR CAVE IN AFGHANISTA!!!!!!!!
YOU'RE EITHER WITH THE PRESIDENT, OR WITH THE TERRORISTS HIS FATHER HELPED SETTUP!!!!!!!!
Either that, or they do nothing but yell rhetoric and cliches at you. I'm not actually sure which I prefer. The later at least is more entertaining, but not by my much.
or even the visit of the informant who helped the military find Jessica Lynch!
Yea, they should print more actual news and less spin like the rescue of Jessica Lynch!
Yep, you're right. I'm going to vote for Dean this time around, but not because I am a liberal -- oh no, I am Rush dittohead. Rather, it is because of Bush and his robots.txt! This is completely inexcusable! How dare he!
I'm voting for McCain. I don't care if he runs or if he is bound and gagged by the RNC.
A few weeks ago I heard that both our Fearless Leader and Condoleezza Rice came out to the press saying that there are no connections between Hussein and 911, and that they have never implied otherwise.
I tried to find some sort of article on this but too much other stuff came up when I tried to search for 911, Saddam, not connected whatever. (Gee, I wonder why?)
Anyway, does anyone know of any mainstream articles on this announcement?
(The Memory Hole looks very interesting, I need to check it out.)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/india/
Maybe he isn't all bad after all.
That's a pretty kewl looking cat.
In their perfect world, you pay for everything; more specifically, you pay them for everything.
In PKD's Ubik (and I think some of his other novels, or at least short stories) you had to pay your door to get in and out of your own home, every time. If you didn't have any coins on you, you could become trapped in your conapt, having an argument with your door. It was probably funny when he wrote it, hey it's still funny, but PKD was a real visionary.
Didn't the original Apple that Woz made have a wooden case?
He knew it was Round-Up Ready, and he took advantage of that fact. He harvested seeds from the crops so he could continue to benefit from it, knowing that what he was doing was in violation of the patent, but believing that if he were caught he could just claim ignorance.
I have a question. Did Schmeiser use Round Up[tm] on the crops that he grew from the harvested seeds?
(This part is obvious) Round-Up Ready [tm] seeds are genetically engineered so that you can repeatedly spray herbicides on them. Most crops would die if you sprayed, what more than twice(?). But the idea of Round Up Ready[tm] seeds is that you can continuously spray Round Up[tm] herbicides on your crops, and theoretically, get bigger crops because of it.
It seems to me that if he was not doing this, then Monsanto doesn't really have a case, as their GE seeds are to my knowledge, only good for that purpose, and without taking advantage of it are otherwise less valuable because there are lots of consumers that do not want to eat GMOs. (Even if there are no labels and the corporations thumb their noses at us.)
Is he the same guy that turned around and sued Monsanto for contaminating his crops? From what I understand it is still not that uncommon for farmers to harvest their seeds. It is a traditional practice. The main reason I would see for him to not harvest his seeds would be to get a clean crop. But if his neighbors are just going to re-contaminate him again what is the point?
(This post brought to you by, random replies via Meta Moderation.)
So basically what you are advocating is a one party state ala China and the old USSR?
Well, would it really be much different than what we have today? Ha Ha, only serious. With the two parties that act as one, at least it would be more honest with one party. But then most people would not accept it. Better to have the illusion of choice to keep the rabble in line.
No, I don't think that is what Fishbowl was advocating, and neither am I, even if I joke about it.
I guess you could say that is a problem, but then, if the liberals are so smart and progressive, why can't they make enough money to use this system to turn the power structure on its head?
So are you saying that the "liberals" do not have money and are not using it to control the system so to speak? This reminds me of how "conservatives" complain that the "liberals" control the media. But then the "conservatives" also are very "pro-capatilism" and thus if the liberals own the media, why shouldn't they control it?
However, their arguments assume that we are operating under a system of capitalism, and that there is a significant difference between "liberals" and "conservatives" beyond the childish rhetoric.
Conspiracy theories aside, doesn't this mean that those with the influence to gain money, are met with a logical and natural reward of political power?
Well, this would basically amount to bribery, which most people, whether they identify themselves as "liberal" "conservative" "moderate" or something else think is a bad thing. Well, actually, I went to Egypt a couple years ago and bribery, graft and begging were the rule rather than the exception. Still, just because it was normal doesn't necessarily mean they liked it. I digress.
Anyway, it goes into the idea that capitalism and democracy (or representative democracy) have a tendency to corrupt each other. If we have rule by the rich, it is not democracy, it is aristocracy. And then why should we even bother having elections at all. It is not quite that bad yet, and I think most people would prefer a system closer to actual democracy than explicit legalized bribary.
It was incredible getting to visit Egypt, but I wouldn't want to live there and I wouldn't want to live under a system like that. (Although my Egypt analogy applies more to their day to day life, it makes me wonder how their politics work.)
I'm surprised that people who want reform bother with opposition parties at all. I think it might serve their purposes better to JOIN the party with the influence and money.
This reminds me of a concept that I've thought of in the past. I was reading about "Stealth Canidates", reactionary "conservatives" who run for the school board or minor positions without much campaigning, except to conservatives. Another problem with this country is that people fail to vote the most for things that they would exert the most control over (local elections). So nobody has heard of these people until they get into position and then they can cause all kinds of trouble, so to speak.
Well, I've thought, why not "Stealth Canidates" in reverse. Have some progressive (Libertarian, Green, Anarchist, whatever) run and pretend to be a reactionary "conservative" and then after they get elected bingo! It would have someone that has been reatively quiet politically speaking. And they would have to dress and look "straight."
No matter how radical your ideas really are, take a moderate stance, but the whole time making sure the party in power thinks you're one of them...
oops, I misread this at first that you were implying that you take a moderate stance. I was going to say something about politics being more complicated than "left" "right" "middle" but now I notice that that is not what you meant. (I bring it up because others might have also made the wrong inferance.)
I think it would be hilarious if a Republican senator would just come out and bluntly say that the party is spending too much on useless crap, religion doesn't belong in government, education needs finance, the war on drugs is a failure, etc.
Well, there are good Republicans out there. The governer of New Mexico comes to mind. In many ways I identify myself as a "conservative", at least more so than as a "liberal." I guess it comes down to for any significantly large group of people most of them are idiots. This is true for all kinds of politicians, but there are still a few goo
When I was taking Political Science I think that the number one factor in determining an election was the amount of campaign dollars a canidate used for advertising. It is also pretty consistent with ballot measures. There are of course exceptions but it is scary how often it is true.
Other factor that are a big influence on who people vote for (which often correlate with campaign funds) are incumbancy and name recognition. Also note that the TV stations will usually ignore a canidate if they don't have a significant "war chest." Thus most people have never even heard of the Libertarian and Green canidates.
However, all of it might become a moot point if our elections process is taken over by a completely incompetent computer system with no ability to audit.
I don't see how you can make the argument that "NAFTA has been bad for... all three countries.... US unemployment hit historic lows throughout most of the 90's
Well, my main point was about Local, State and National sovereignty, that Corporations should not be above the law. What I was basing the "bad for... all three countries" was that supposedly median income went down, and overtime and people working more than one job went up after NAFTA.
So I did some searching on the web trying to find some hard data. This site had some interesting statistics on median income. Adjusted for inflation the income for Men in general: 1994:36,215 1995:36,387 1996:36,439 1997:36,678 and for Women in general: 1994:26,424 1995:26,197 1996:26,400 1997:26,974
So according to that website income did actually increase slightly in the 3 years after NAFTA was implemented.
This site only has data up to 1994 for not very useful in terms of data when discussing NAFTA. However, it does seem to have good explainations of the many issues involved when these issues.
I can't seem to find any sites that document hours of overtime, or people working multiple jobs. (When doing searches all it would come up with was statistics on overtime pay and not hours worked.)
I did come across this interesting site at AARP. It says that between 1989 and 1997 the poverty rate for the general population went up by 0.2% Ah Hah! um... no wait, it isn't statistically significant.
So I guess the gist of it is that I can't really say that NAFTA affected jobs, income and overtimepay. And even if I had found statistics to support my statement, it is not like the economy occures in a bubble where NAFTA is the only change. The dotcom era certainly affected the economy for instance, and that is something that was quite unique. I suppose if I we were able to find statistics that concentraited on jobs affected by trade that would be more telling. (Times like these I wish I had the time to read the WSJ.)
Anyone out there know how to lookup statistics like these?
If these so called Free Trade agreements were really about free trade, they would be a lot less complicated. They would just be about reducing tarrifs. What these "Trade Agreements" are really about is granting special rights and privilages to corporations, sometimes even making them above the law, at the expense of our national sovereignty.
For example, with NAFTA Canada sued the United States saying that banning asbestos is an infringement of Free Trade.
A few years ago before the WTO became a household word (err Acronym) they were trying to pass the Multilateral Agreement on Investment which would have given coporations an explicit Right to Profit above and beyond a citizens rights and privilages.
And just look at the current example. In the name of Free Trade they are trying to make fair use of our own legally purchased IP illegal, such as bypassing DVD Region codes.
It is not a matter of U.S. vs. Mexico or whatever. NAFTA has been bad for the general population of all three countries, and now they want to extend it to the entire western hemisphere.
It is all about the special interests.
Right, cause there is NEVER any fraud using paper.
While I think that free and open evoting system would be a good thing, I think we need to keep a physical paper trail for a physical audit if neccessary. If there is a significant discrepancy between the electronic and the paper tally, then we know that something is up. If someone tried to mess with both, I think it would be very difficult to make the electronic and paper tampering to turn out the same (or statistically insignificant).
Some of the carts at Freddies use them too. A given store will have some with the device, some without. So if you wanted to steal one you could just look for a cart without the device.
I've noticed that some of them will be clamped down even in the store. So it doesn't prevent them from being stolen, but they have false positives as well.
There isn't much point in stealing a common, ordinary cart either.
What about using a shopping Cart as a Percussion Instrument? I've only actually used a shopping cart once, and I didn't actually find it in a store. I was participating with a band at the time and there happened to be a shopping cart a couple blocks away from the venue. I had intedned to destroy the shopping cart by the end of the show but those darn things are pretty strong. I was able to do hardly any dammage with a crowbar, and could only take out a few of the little thingys with a hammer. Maybe if I had had a sledgehammer I could have done real dammage.
Anyway, when I first started reading this article I was wondering if they were going to use the wifi to prevent shopping cart theft. You know, track them down. And I'm thinking, what's going to happen to the proud tradition of using a shopping cart in experimental music.
Shoppers could steal the Shopping Buddies, but there wouldn't be much point. The custom-built devices can't run ordinary computer software; they're good for shopping and nothing else.
Actually, the shopping buddies themselves might be interesting in music. Banal shopping buddy advice would be very fitting in some music.
SSSShop as usual, and avoid panic buying.
If a job can be automated away, then it should be. It's a waste of a human being to use them in a mundane role that could be filled with a machine.
And I'm sure they can always find jobs at the Soylent Green factory.
I used to wear my Don't Blame Me, I voted for Bill and Opus T-Shirt the day after every election day.
It's gotten kinda ratty, and I haven't worn it in a while. I ought to look for it again.
If the votes are so undeterministic, why can't someone demand a re-vote?
If the ubiquitous "They" can fix an election once, they can do it a second time etc.
What we need is accountability, a way to audit the election results.
How about a printout from the voting machine that is collected like the old fashioned ballots were. Make a printout that can be easily and quickly scanned by a machine as well as manually counted by a human being. And make it blantently obvious what the voter voted for, both so that the voter can confirm before s/he puts it in the box, and so that there is no debate durring a manual recount of whatthe voter voted for.
I see most politicians as being corrupt, both Democrats and Republicans. I don't want to see anyone fscking with the elections. Politicians are bad enough as it is.
Somehow I doubt the RIAA is going away anytime soon. Not unless we achieve a critical mass of people challenging the status quo, the mainstream media, and the mainstream politicians.
But that doesn't mean that until then we can't listen to better music.
Lots of times when these almost daily articles about the EV1L RIAA come up someone proposes boycotting the RIAA. It is an idea. I imagine that most of the music that I would be at all interested in purchasing falls under Jazz or Classical music. (I don't know, how much of a hold does the RIAA have over classical music? I guess I mean recordings since all but modern classical is in the public domain.)
Anyway, a few days ago I wrote a journal entry about this very subject: Music I like that is not RIAA.
One of the comments I got is that if you buy albums at the concerts then the artist gets a much bigger percentage than buying it in a store. (Although I'm a big proponent of buying music from locally owned stores too.) So that is another option if you really must have music from an artist who happens to be under the thumb of the EV1L RIAA.
Warning: I like weird music
Well, if the RIAA is repeating what Edison did, eventually we'll start putting criminals to death by playing some recent CDs at them until they die.
or kill themselves rather than listen?
(Aaaaack! It's a Pepsi Commercial! Hit the Mute! Hit the Mute!)
Just out of curiosity, have you listened to Laurie Anderson? Specifically Dance of Electricity?
As for Tesla I don't know if he made mistakes.
I need to study the Edison vs Tesla feud more but maybe his mistake was to piss off Edison?
For all I know Edison made so many godawful mistakes that he failed utterly to take control of the world as he would have if his plan succeeded.
What are we going to do tomorrow night?
How about sounding interested and keeping them on the line for as long as you think you can, and then just start meowing at them?
I remember durring California's rolling blackouts, weren't there some people blaming the internet; ie increased computer usage (instead of fraud) back then? Anyway, I remember thinking about the Crusoe chips and maybe it would make sense to build low power consuming desktop PCs.
And you don't need power companies shutting down the power stations for fraud to motivate this. It is about time we start thinking of efficiancy in all walks of life. Yea, there are people that will actually use the power of a 2ghtz PC, but even those people might want to have a fileserver running ML Donkey 24 hours a day without turning their computer room into a sauna.
I just got on the p2p bandwagon this summer (yea, I'm late but whatever) and my computer room is in the basement and normally cool year round. This summer it was between 80-90 degrees most of the time.
I imagine the cost for the motherboards is in that they are not being mass produced. Well, maybe Transmeta ought to think about marketing these at companies and home users looking to reduce their electric bills.
Question: If you were to do parallel processing or clustering with transmeta chips would you get more bang for your electrical buck?