I would almost argue a Democratically elected Plutocracy (ruled by the rich), because the system makes the President a 1%er since the Bush era pay increase to $400000 (top 1% starts at ~$350k), and the majority of the elected officials are either rich to begin with or become rich in office through legal bribery.
POTUS has always been rich according to wikipedia:
Presidential pay history
Date established | Salary | Salary in 2009 dollars
September 24, 1789 | $25,000 | $566,000
March 3, 1873 | $50,000 | $865,000
March 4, 1909 | $75,000 | $1,714,000
January 19, 1949 | $100,000 | $906,000
January 20, 1969 | $200,000 | $1,175,000
January 20, 2001 | $400,000 | $487,000
When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables
Now it's the turn of the smartphone that will affect a whole new generation of people
Ordinary cell phones have already affected several generations in at least one way. What's the last group of phone numbers you can recall? Where they all from before you got a cell phone?
A) Science helps us determine that something will cause issues for everybody in the country down the road.
B) The [government] is tasked with protecting the people within it.
[Therefore] Science has determined a threat, so the government is tasked with helping eliminate, reduce, or avoid it.
Unfortunately, premise B is insufficient in describing the full extent of the responsibilities of government. The government is tasked with more than just protecting the people who live in the country; it is also tasked with protecting the rights of said people. If table salt dispensers spread salt uniformly throughout the restaurant or neighborhood and raised everyone's blood pressure, then there might be a cause to have them removed when science proves that salt raises blood pressure (and that raised blood pressure causes heart failure), but salt doesn't work that way. It's very specific to the person eating it and the salt dispensers only give salt to the people using them unless someone uses a shaker on another person's food; that might be assault.;)
[Therefore] There needs to be more to a desire to legislate than mere "This is good/bad" being said by a scientist.
Scientific truth doesn't need anybody's legal imprimatur.
You have that backwards again, even after I explained it, so I fear you're trolling. But I'll try once more:
J'raxis said:
The very premise here, "if X is good, they should promote it; if Y is bad, they should ban it," is never actually questioned.
Once a scientific truth has been discovered, that does not create a condition under which legislation is required to be made regarding the new understanding, but some people think that it does. Some people think that freedoms like those espoused in the Bill of Rights are approximations to law that need be allowed only until enough knowledge can be derived to fully make sure that everyone is living the "correct way" (low-salt, low-fat diets, no eco-footprint, etc).
What you describe is legislation necessitating science. Science necessitating legislation is when someone discovers that salt causes high blood pressure, and they make a law outlawing table salt dispensers in restaurants.
Smoking bans didn't catch on until it was "everyone's" business what you did. Now, people are no longer to smoke inside their own premises.
Smoking in an enclosed public space has always been everyone's business, it just was culturally accepted to shun people allergic to cigarette smoke. Smoking was *healthy*. Once people started realizing what a nasty habit it was (and the dangers associated), they realized that just one person could ruin the atmosphere of a room for everyone else. That's when smoking bans happened.
I'll get on board with anorexia/bulimia bans when they start vomiting all over a restaurant instead of just in the toilet.
At least two halfs of the 4 brazillion people on this planet have -0 idea how to do maths.
According to Wikipedia, 190,732,694 brazillion people were counted in the 2010 census. I'm only a math minor, but I'm sure 190,732,694 is not equal to 4, even though they rhyme.
I ran up huge credit card debt expecting to win the lottery
could easily (and I inferred it to) mean that he ran up credit card debt on other things, expecting to win. Since he never mentioned that he played, his problem could have been that he forgot to buy a ticket. But since it was clearly a joke anyway, I doubt that was really his problem.
What of the LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1? Nobody comments on that? I assume this is some variant of stock Ubuntu? Is there a problem with Ubuntu b# (or a# for alpha)? Is all that other stuff necessary or just an attempt at being funny or cute?
It is stock Ubuntu, not a variant.
LTS=Long Term Support...This is one of the special versions of Ubuntu, like 8.04 and 10.04 that receive support for three(?) years.
Precise Pangolin=OSX Lion=Fedora Zod=Microsoft Windows 7 (6.1)...It's just a name
Beta 1=This is the first Beta release. Sorry, but b1 is less readable than Beta 1.
Only the "Precise Pangolin" is an attempt at being funny or cute, but frankly, it's extremely common for most OSes/distros to have human-centric (code)names.
Thanks, and can I ask why RHEL6 rather then Fedora? I would like to be familiar with RHEL professionally, but I was under the impression it wasn't used as a desktop (I'm a dev.)
It's used as a desktop by people who want a stable desktop environment similar to Fedora but without the frantic upgrade cycle (and worse, package manager updates within a version that rename or totally replace commands). RHEL is like Ubuntu LTS with a longer lifecycle, Fedora is like Ubuntu Alpha Release. Of course, if you run Fedora, and liked a specific version, you can always run it again as RHEL or CentOS/Scientific Linux because Fedora version/2 is roughly identicall to RHEL version. As long as a new feature has stuck around in multiple versions of Fedora, they'll put it into the next version of RHEL.
Not necessarily. Since it's a system designed to be single-user, they probably didn't bother with shadow passwords and had everything in/etc/password. Heck, I bet it was based on SunOS 5.0
It beats fighting for the freedom to speak by forcefully shutting down someone else's ability to live, like our founding fathers did.
The symantics behind this are a little off... we fought with soldiers against soldiers... we did not destroy England to do so.
England had no power to make us do anything except via their soldiers. The revolutionary minutemen forcefully shut down the redcoats' abilities to live. It wasn't some DDoS of inconvenience.
I'm not sure why Cary Sherman expects a free pass on this issue... you've got the lobbying money, get in there and play hardball like everyone else.
I bet a lot more journalists are paying attention there now that Chris Dodd stuck his foot in his mouth and admitted that (at least from the MPAA's perspective if not the congressmen's perspectives) the MPAA was buying votes. They'll have to let that sleep for a while before they can start makin' it rain again.
Slashdot Mirror
Precious snowflakes just ripe to be lead by the pied piper for that single vote that leads to a dictatorship.
"Remember Jar Jar!"
I would almost argue a Democratically elected Plutocracy (ruled by the rich), because the system makes the President a 1%er since the Bush era pay increase to $400000 (top 1% starts at ~$350k), and the majority of the elected officials are either rich to begin with or become rich in office through legal bribery.
POTUS has always been rich according to wikipedia:
Presidential pay history
Date established | Salary | Salary in 2009 dollars
September 24, 1789 | $25,000 | $566,000
March 3, 1873 | $50,000 | $865,000
March 4, 1909 | $75,000 | $1,714,000
January 19, 1949 | $100,000 | $906,000
January 20, 1969 | $200,000 | $1,175,000
January 20, 2001 | $400,000 | $487,000
When electronic calculators started surfacing back in the 1960's/1970's, students stop memorizing the multiplication tables Now it's the turn of the smartphone that will affect a whole new generation of people
Ordinary cell phones have already affected several generations in at least one way. What's the last group of phone numbers you can recall? Where they all from before you got a cell phone?
Just wait until they challenge Gandalf. He cheats with magic.
Chewie on that, Lucas!
You shouldn't connect a win2k machine to the Internet anymore. Security support ended already.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2705663&cid=39235953
A) Science helps us determine that something will cause issues for everybody in the country down the road.
B) The [government] is tasked with protecting the people within it.
[Therefore] Science has determined a threat, so the government is tasked with helping eliminate, reduce, or avoid it.
Unfortunately, premise B is insufficient in describing the full extent of the responsibilities of government. The government is tasked with more than just protecting the people who live in the country; it is also tasked with protecting the rights of said people. If table salt dispensers spread salt uniformly throughout the restaurant or neighborhood and raised everyone's blood pressure, then there might be a cause to have them removed when science proves that salt raises blood pressure (and that raised blood pressure causes heart failure), but salt doesn't work that way. It's very specific to the person eating it and the salt dispensers only give salt to the people using them unless someone uses a shaker on another person's food; that might be assault. ;)
[Therefore] There needs to be more to a desire to legislate than mere "This is good/bad" being said by a scientist.
Scientific truth doesn't need anybody's legal imprimatur.
You have that backwards again, even after I explained it, so I fear you're trolling. But I'll try once more:
J'raxis said:
The very premise here, "if X is good, they should promote it; if Y is bad, they should ban it," is never actually questioned.
Once a scientific truth has been discovered, that does not create a condition under which legislation is required to be made regarding the new understanding, but some people think that it does. Some people think that freedoms like those espoused in the Bill of Rights are approximations to law that need be allowed only until enough knowledge can be derived to fully make sure that everyone is living the "correct way" (low-salt, low-fat diets, no eco-footprint, etc).
What you describe is legislation necessitating science. Science necessitating legislation is when someone discovers that salt causes high blood pressure, and they make a law outlawing table salt dispensers in restaurants.
Neither experts nor laymen. As GP said, they should be questioning the premise that scientific findings necessitate legislation.
Smoking bans didn't catch on until it was "everyone's" business what you did. Now, people are no longer to smoke inside their own premises.
Smoking in an enclosed public space has always been everyone's business, it just was culturally accepted to shun people allergic to cigarette smoke. Smoking was *healthy*. Once people started realizing what a nasty habit it was (and the dangers associated), they realized that just one person could ruin the atmosphere of a room for everyone else. That's when smoking bans happened.
I'll get on board with anorexia/bulimia bans when they start vomiting all over a restaurant instead of just in the toilet.
At least two halfs of the 4 brazillion people on this planet have -0 idea how to do maths.
According to Wikipedia, 190,732,694 brazillion people were counted in the 2010 census. I'm only a math minor, but I'm sure 190,732,694 is not equal to 4, even though they rhyme.
I ran up huge credit card debt expecting to win the lottery
could easily (and I inferred it to) mean that he ran up credit card debt on other things, expecting to win. Since he never mentioned that he played, his problem could have been that he forgot to buy a ticket. But since it was clearly a joke anyway, I doubt that was really his problem.
I do that by carving an extra "0" on the "1" side. I get more 10's as a result, but I never critically fail!
What of the LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1? Nobody comments on that? I assume this is some variant of stock Ubuntu? Is there a problem with Ubuntu b# (or a# for alpha)? Is all that other stuff necessary or just an attempt at being funny or cute?
It is stock Ubuntu, not a variant. ...This is one of the special versions of Ubuntu, like 8.04 and 10.04 that receive support for three(?) years. ...It's just a name
LTS=Long Term Support
Precise Pangolin=OSX Lion=Fedora Zod=Microsoft Windows 7 (6.1)
Beta 1=This is the first Beta release. Sorry, but b1 is less readable than Beta 1.
Only the "Precise Pangolin" is an attempt at being funny or cute, but frankly, it's extremely common for most OSes/distros to have human-centric (code)names.
Thanks, and can I ask why RHEL6 rather then Fedora? I would like to be familiar with RHEL professionally, but I was under the impression it wasn't used as a desktop (I'm a dev.)
It's used as a desktop by people who want a stable desktop environment similar to Fedora but without the frantic upgrade cycle (and worse, package manager updates within a version that rename or totally replace commands). RHEL is like Ubuntu LTS with a longer lifecycle, Fedora is like Ubuntu Alpha Release. Of course, if you run Fedora, and liked a specific version, you can always run it again as RHEL or CentOS/Scientific Linux because Fedora version/2 is roughly identicall to RHEL version. As long as a new feature has stuck around in multiple versions of Fedora, they'll put it into the next version of RHEL.
Sorry, He can't be. Bender was built in Mexico. Although if Mom is an American citizen, that could throw a wrinkle in the works.
Presumably you mean they cracked /etc/shadow
Not necessarily. Since it's a system designed to be single-user, they probably didn't bother with shadow passwords and had everything in /etc/password. Heck, I bet it was based on SunOS 5.0
However, you still have to deal with Steam.
You had me until this line.
It beats fighting for the freedom to speak by forcefully shutting down someone else's ability to live, like our founding fathers did.
The symantics behind this are a little off... we fought with soldiers against soldiers... we did not destroy England to do so.
England had no power to make us do anything except via their soldiers. The revolutionary minutemen forcefully shut down the redcoats' abilities to live. It wasn't some DDoS of inconvenience.
George Costanza says... Hey Cary: the jerk store called, and they're running out of you!"
Friend, you had one strange See 'n Say.
I'm not sure why Cary Sherman expects a free pass on this issue... you've got the lobbying money, get in there and play hardball like everyone else.
I bet a lot more journalists are paying attention there now that Chris Dodd stuck his foot in his mouth and admitted that (at least from the MPAA's perspective if not the congressmen's perspectives) the MPAA was buying votes. They'll have to let that sleep for a while before they can start makin' it rain again.
but fighting for the freedom to speak by forcefully shutting down someone else's ability to speak (a la Anon.)..? Is that the right answer?
It beats ighting for the freedom to speak by forcefully shutting down someone else's ability to live, like our founding fathers did.
If you're a Canadian company with Canadian customers, use .ca, eh? .com makes it seem like you're targeting your southern neighbors.