How are you getting modded to Insightful? The irony of your initial complaint is staggering.
What parent said does not lead to Anarchy (which by definition isn't oppressive but is definitely more stressful.
Look at his sentence again, and more importantly what he was replying to (the whole context thing). Look at it and you'll see he's right.
Grandparent said we should hunt down people and lock them up or we'll never be free. In some cases this is true (rape/murder). But he specifically listed illegal drug use.
That's a loaded statement. Illegal drug use constitutes things that don't lead to psychotic behavior. It counts things that are legal in countries (Amsterdam counts for nothing when comparing drug laws IMO just because they even allow some that can be construed as dangerous).
While I personally would never smoke weed, I know a lot of people that do/have. Several of them are fairly intelligent and none of them are particularly violent.
Go back to what parent said: criminals area/reason/ not an/excuse/ for oppression. You seem to be missing the entire point to that statement.
Someone kills his neighbor with a pipe wrench. Should we now pass a law saying you have to be licensed to use a pipe wrench?
Someone makes explosives out of cleaning supplies, should you have to wait 10 days to get what you need to clean your kitchen while they do a background check? What if your ex-military and happen to have been a demo expert? Will they still let you get your lysol?
A lot of these restrictive laws are the results of criminals behaving criminally. They do not deter other criminals from doing the same by the same means or similar. ALL they do is punish lawful users.
Sound familiar? It should. It parallels DRM "solutions". Powerful entity sees a problem and thinks of a solution. The solution fixes nothing, penalizes those that are not the problem for using the service/living as intended, and costs a whole lot of money and time for a massive net loss.
Anarchy solves nothing, in the same vein police states solve nothing. They are polar opposites. You need to reach a middle ground, which is what was attempted when the US was founded. Only issue is some morons keep pushing the nation towards one pole rather than helping maintain its center.
It is like the word "gay" in video games. When I was first introduced to the word online back on me ol' dial up connection playing Counter Strike people called each other "gay" and "faggot" all the time. After a little while, it was not derogatory to homosexuals.
Essentially its used as a euphemism for "lame" in my experience. In keeping with the theme people will do "gay jokes" ala 40 year old virgin's "You know how i know you're gay?" bit. No offense is meant to homosexuals in most cases but looking at it word for word it looks like it would be.
Point is, meanings change. This is how you get dialects and slang terms. This is how languages slowly change in written form and pronunciation. So now scapegoat is a word, rather than the phrase escaped goat or what ever.
Simpler example: Sheepherder. Pronounced shep-herd now, but spelled sheep-herder.
In before "your just a homophobe": I like lesbians and bi-sexual girls. My favorite bands include Judas Priest and Queen. Marriage is a LEGAL institution and in the US that means separate from religion. Prop 8 is unconstitutional and will eventually be overturned. It needs to have never been voted into law.
Remember that the next time you bite into your salad you vicious vegan! TAKE SCISSORS TO YOUR LAWN INSTEAD OF A MOWER AND LISTEN TO THE SCREAMS FROM EACH BLADE OF GRASS!
STOP pumping plants full of steroids and other "enhancers"! DESIST from government approved foilage mutilation!
AS GOD AS MY WITNESS, I WON'T LET MY TREES FRIENDS DOWN!
I've done some tests. Home Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium at 32bit and Vista Ultimate at x64. Not a perfect test since i didn't do the 32 bit version Vista Ultimate though so keep that in mind.
Hardware in question: Inspiron 1501 from DELL with the 14xx Broadcomm Wireless NIC (rather than the 13xx that game in the first release of that model). Could give full hardware specs to anyone that is interested.
Anyways, there was a *very* noticible improvement using Vista Ultimate x64. Supposedly nothing is different between versions other than a few features I didn't use like BitLocker. Perhaps it was just the 64-bit vs 32-bit but as I said I didn't have a Vista Ultimate 32bit key to try.
My personal conclusion is that Microsoft purposely crippled the Home versions. Turning all the eye candy on in Vista Ultimate, my laptop was MORE responsive than using the "lighter" versions.
I guess I should post all that stuff on a blog or something so people can flame me there.
Now THAT would be interesting! Run a virtual machine off of a separate hardware device powered by the host's motherboard(e.g., the video card in this case).
I think I just got an idea for a better and potentially higher scalable terminal setup. I suppose I should be running to the patent office before I get sued to oblivion for discussing it.
Agreed. I personally love it. 5 months after it came out the driver issues went away and its more stable than XP in my experience. Faster too. Benefit of using the server kernel I suppose.
Be honest though, would you trust Sarah Palin as President? Would you trust her to be in charge of NASA? She admittedly doesn't know how the Executive Branch interacts with the Legislative Branch and thinks the rules only apply if a Judge says so and not before. That's not flamebait, that's fact.
To be honest, McCain would have been a lot closer to winning the election if he had stayed the hell away from Governor Palin. I know far too many Republicans that voted Obama strictly because of her to leave me comfortable that people really want change, despite everything that happened.
Disclaimer: I'm not really an outright Obama supporter, still a little skeptical. But to be honest for the first time in adult life I wanted a candidate based on his own merits and potential rather than the opposition's downsides. Hope is a powerful thing.
Actually I'm more than willing to bet Democrats are corrupt as well. The major difference I see between R and D is that the majority of R's lean on the creationist side. They won't do anything to better their fellow man because well the world is going to end soon anyways and then they go on a tangent about the Rapture.
No disrespect intended to anyone that does believe that, but I find it first rude that one would just treat others like crap for a reason like that. Second, you seem to be missing a major point of your religion if you behave that way. If you want to have a debate about that, we'll go somewhere and I'll respond to you until you start a flame war.
Anyways, democrats at the very least pay lip service to the "everyone should be equal" thing and that lip service actually tends to help make it happen in some cases.
As always there are exceptions, and circumstances, etc, etc. Point is, don't assume that because it's not Republican it's not corrupt.
It seems to me that hardware vendors for PC components have been so competitive compared to software creators that they've shot themselves in the foot by making such powerful devices.
Let's face it. Several things have caused software development to take a steep nose dive in terms of innovation over the years. Some blame lies with business practices such as MicroSoft's well known "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" or even the way Apple bans competing applications on their iPhone. Toss in the ridiculous number of issues with software patents we so love to comment on here and elsewhere and you can readily see just how much is holding software innovations back!
Factor in the rate at which hardware was/has/is getting faster and more powerful and you should see where the problem is.
Simpler example: When I bought my current desktop in April it cost me approximately 3000 USD for the tower and monitor. More than I needed to spend, but at the time it wasn't an issue and that is besides the point.
To build the same exact setup now costs only 1245 USD!
This rig is designed for one thing: gaming. When it was built the only game it couldn't run on the absolute highest settings was Crysis, but it came damn close. Not a single game since Crysis came out comes close to taxing the system and it doesn't look like there is going to be anything for a while that will.
If gamers who are obsessed with having the highest settings possible run flawlessly can do so on "last generation" equipment, why upgrade? Why go top of the line?
If the software doesn't catch up with the hardware again we're going to have a gap of stagnation...
An unknown attack vector is far worse than a known one. If you know where an attack is going to be coming from you have a far better chance of either A) preventing or B) reacting to an attack.
Knowing is a LOT better than having no idea your system is vulnerable and it getting compromised. Particularly if your job is knowing all you can about security and securing your company's system...
I was using Songbird for a while there back in April/May. The sole reason I stopped was something in the meta for my copy of The Wall caused the library to explode and I'd have to delete and re-add everything else. I'm sure they've fixed that by now, donno what it was. Happened every time I ripped, from 3 different apps.
Anyhoo, in regards to the iPod support, someone I knew hated iTunes but loved her iPod. Had her using ephpod for a while but it was fairly blech. She gave Songbird a try after seeing me play with it for a bit. She has not updated it since May and has been using it to sync up her iPod just fine.
Been meaning to give it another shot here now that I'm using Vista on my desktop. My PC caught fire tonight (fan motor burned out due to dust, I hadn't cleaned it for a few months) so I'm on my laptop at the moment trying to figure out how to rip music from my Zune...
Actually, he did mention that its hard to find ANY real news outlet these days. That said, FOX is a cesspool. I can't think of anything positive to say about them.
While this is more for clients than anything else, we use Kaseya where I work. Wouldn't be my first choice based on the price tag but it IS pretty nice for Windows based setups.
Allows you to easily create vbscripts and push them. You can do quite a bit with it, including uninstalling and installing applications. Couple that with what you can do from command line windows and you'll almost never have to physically be at the machine (well, at least so long as it is able to check in).
Oh and if you want to see what is going on there there are several ways to remote in to the client PCs, including the capability for it to install VNC and auto connect you, even through firewalls and the like.
Pretty much its great so long as you are on Windows, have access to a web browser, and the machines are checking in. You can also change the port they use to whatever the hell you want and setup a secondary server.
Oh...and it lets you control patching of applications and Windows.
Like I said, expensive. But still pretty damn useful.
He's the most rational "nutjob" that has ever posted on Slashdot. He actually knows full well what his beliefs entail, and believes in separation of church and state on religious principals.
Our country gives him the RIGHT to vote if he so chooses. He chooses to act responsibly and not vote most of the time because of his religious beliefs.
He chooses to vote this time because even this "nutjob" can see one choice for President MUST NOT be elected.
An observation: People who are anti-religion seem to make a religion out of discriminating against people that have a belief system. I find that sad.
Disclaimer: I don't think about religion 98% of the time, but instead try to think how to make life better for as many people as possible. To put it another way, I don't care if you have faith, I don't care if you're atheist. Just be nice to one another whenever possible.
The irony of God (if the daft bugger did/does exist) is that few have more faith than the atheists, and few act more anti-christian than his most "devoted."
I wish more FPS games had an AI that behaved like it did in FEAR. That single player game had a lot of replay ability for me just because the AI responded with logical tactics.
They hear you make a noise, they'll move in to flank you while a few of them keep you distracted.
IF they notice the grenade they'll take off and run, they don't just run when there is a grenade nearby. A few times I've seen them just stand there still like they didn't notice the 'nade land near them.
If you go hand to hand, they wouldn't always shoot you because they might hit their team mate (or were all dead/dying and couldnt shoot me possibly).
The list really goes on. For a tactical shooter the AI was phenominal. Fast forward to COD4, probably the best modern warfare shooter out (haven't touched FarCry yet). Some spiffy tactics are there but if you throw a nade, they run, and they basically don't miss your head.
It almost seems a step back in a lot of that game.
"As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened."
Funnily enough, the first time Bush was elected people thought he was 'just the same' as Gore would be. The second time he was elected a lot of Republicans still hadn't realized just how a bad job he was doing.
Now you have a LOT of Republicans, and hardcore Republican states, jumping ship and voting for Obama.
Oh and don't get me wrong. Bush isn't evil (Cheney *might* be). He's actually a nice guy according to most everyone that meets him, even people that are political enemies of his, but he's totally out of his depth.
The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.
The electoral college was put there because mob rule is a no win situation for everyone. The entire idea was to distill votes down so people can have a reasonable debate about it and elect the best candidate.
Also, your supposed to be able to throw up any party you would like, or create one on the spur of the moment. Every time nowadays when someone tries that, every single media outlet tells you its a bad idea and you should vote Democrat or Republican, no matter what.
A lot of people think that Democrat and Republican parties are mentioned in the Constitution!
Anyways, no system is perfect. Pushing Amendments is hard. It is best to have an idea of what to replace it with before suggesting we do, even informally. People tend to get touchy about important things.
"When Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species" he thought that God had created evolution."
And what is wrong with that? You said it yourself, Evolution doesn't care if there is a $DIETY or not. That means its potentially fine by everyone!
If there was a God, I know I'd have more faith in his powers if he devised a means for the Universe to run itself rather than hold it together by sheer will.
Brains over Brawns, yo.
If people can replace words/phrases/things with negative meanings, lets work to replace some negative ones with positive meanings.
Those elite white land owners set it up specifically so that _everyone_ gets equal rights. That was actually intended. Granted, not all of them agreed but its kinda the whole point of the nation for EVERYONE to be Free and Equal, regardless of financial/familial status.
Take a look at the US Constitution. It's actually pretty solid, and they tried very hard to make it so that if you get a jackass going for RAW (Rules As Written) and trying to game the system he won't get far/last long.
Overtime, people have forgotten just how much power they wield. They can write in whomever they want to be anything, even President.
But they let people tell them they can't. They listen to people tell them stories of the boogey man and say only they can save them, rather than the truth that each person can save themselves.
The original intent of the Constitution is noble, and is the only thing that makes America even worth a damn. People need to take their powers back.
We need to fix our education system and get out of this 'daddy will save me' attitude that has been turning our nation slowly into a police state (sadly, that's the path our on no matter how far from it we are compared to other nations).
We got a lot of work ahead of us, but we can still fix this. The only problem is that we need to find people to vote in to Congress that will actually be able to make the changes required.
Slashdot Mirror
How are you getting modded to Insightful? The irony of your initial complaint is staggering.
What parent said does not lead to Anarchy (which by definition isn't oppressive but is definitely more stressful.
Look at his sentence again, and more importantly what he was replying to (the whole context thing). Look at it and you'll see he's right.
Grandparent said we should hunt down people and lock them up or we'll never be free. In some cases this is true (rape/murder). But he specifically listed illegal drug use.
That's a loaded statement. Illegal drug use constitutes things that don't lead to psychotic behavior. It counts things that are legal in countries (Amsterdam counts for nothing when comparing drug laws IMO just because they even allow some that can be construed as dangerous).
While I personally would never smoke weed, I know a lot of people that do/have. Several of them are fairly intelligent and none of them are particularly violent.
Go back to what parent said: criminals area /reason/ not an /excuse/ for oppression. You seem to be missing the entire point to that statement.
Someone kills his neighbor with a pipe wrench. Should we now pass a law saying you have to be licensed to use a pipe wrench?
Someone makes explosives out of cleaning supplies, should you have to wait 10 days to get what you need to clean your kitchen while they do a background check? What if your ex-military and happen to have been a demo expert? Will they still let you get your lysol?
A lot of these restrictive laws are the results of criminals behaving criminally. They do not deter other criminals from doing the same by the same means or similar. ALL they do is punish lawful users.
Sound familiar? It should. It parallels DRM "solutions". Powerful entity sees a problem and thinks of a solution. The solution fixes nothing, penalizes those that are not the problem for using the service/living as intended, and costs a whole lot of money and time for a massive net loss.
Anarchy solves nothing, in the same vein police states solve nothing. They are polar opposites. You need to reach a middle ground, which is what was attempted when the US was founded. Only issue is some morons keep pushing the nation towards one pole rather than helping maintain its center.
I call shenanigans.
Key words being: COMMON USAGE
It is like the word "gay" in video games. When I was first introduced to the word online back on me ol' dial up connection playing Counter Strike people called each other "gay" and "faggot" all the time. After a little while, it was not derogatory to homosexuals.
Essentially its used as a euphemism for "lame" in my experience. In keeping with the theme people will do "gay jokes" ala 40 year old virgin's "You know how i know you're gay?" bit. No offense is meant to homosexuals in most cases but looking at it word for word it looks like it would be.
Point is, meanings change. This is how you get dialects and slang terms. This is how languages slowly change in written form and pronunciation. So now scapegoat is a word, rather than the phrase escaped goat or what ever.
Simpler example: Sheepherder. Pronounced shep-herd now, but spelled sheep-herder.
In before "your just a homophobe": I like lesbians and bi-sexual girls. My favorite bands include Judas Priest and Queen. Marriage is a LEGAL institution and in the US that means separate from religion. Prop 8 is unconstitutional and will eventually be overturned. It needs to have never been voted into law.
Parent's post makes me wish you could go higher than 5 for your score. +100 understated humor
Fail. Half the links apparently didn't go in and I didn't check the anonymous box. :(
PLANTS ARE PEOPLE TOO!
Remember that the next time you bite into your salad you vicious vegan! TAKE SCISSORS TO YOUR LAWN INSTEAD OF A MOWER AND LISTEN TO THE SCREAMS FROM EACH BLADE OF GRASS!
STOP pumping plants full of steroids and other "enhancers"! DESIST from government approved foilage mutilation!
AS GOD AS MY WITNESS, I WON'T LET MY TREES FRIENDS DOWN!
I've done some tests. Home Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium at 32bit and Vista Ultimate at x64. Not a perfect test since i didn't do the 32 bit version Vista Ultimate though so keep that in mind.
Hardware in question: Inspiron 1501 from DELL with the 14xx Broadcomm Wireless NIC (rather than the 13xx that game in the first release of that model). Could give full hardware specs to anyone that is interested.
Anyways, there was a *very* noticible improvement using Vista Ultimate x64. Supposedly nothing is different between versions other than a few features I didn't use like BitLocker. Perhaps it was just the 64-bit vs 32-bit but as I said I didn't have a Vista Ultimate 32bit key to try.
My personal conclusion is that Microsoft purposely crippled the Home versions. Turning all the eye candy on in Vista Ultimate, my laptop was MORE responsive than using the "lighter" versions.
I guess I should post all that stuff on a blog or something so people can flame me there.
Now THAT would be interesting! Run a virtual machine off of a separate hardware device powered by the host's motherboard(e.g., the video card in this case).
I think I just got an idea for a better and potentially higher scalable terminal setup. I suppose I should be running to the patent office before I get sued to oblivion for discussing it.
Agreed. I personally love it. 5 months after it came out the driver issues went away and its more stable than XP in my experience. Faster too. Benefit of using the server kernel I suppose.
Be honest though, would you trust Sarah Palin as President? Would you trust her to be in charge of NASA? She admittedly doesn't know how the Executive Branch interacts with the Legislative Branch and thinks the rules only apply if a Judge says so and not before. That's not flamebait, that's fact.
To be honest, McCain would have been a lot closer to winning the election if he had stayed the hell away from Governor Palin. I know far too many Republicans that voted Obama strictly because of her to leave me comfortable that people really want change, despite everything that happened.
Disclaimer: I'm not really an outright Obama supporter, still a little skeptical. But to be honest for the first time in adult life I wanted a candidate based on his own merits and potential rather than the opposition's downsides. Hope is a powerful thing.
Actually I'm more than willing to bet Democrats are corrupt as well. The major difference I see between R and D is that the majority of R's lean on the creationist side. They won't do anything to better their fellow man because well the world is going to end soon anyways and then they go on a tangent about the Rapture.
No disrespect intended to anyone that does believe that, but I find it first rude that one would just treat others like crap for a reason like that. Second, you seem to be missing a major point of your religion if you behave that way. If you want to have a debate about that, we'll go somewhere and I'll respond to you until you start a flame war.
Anyways, democrats at the very least pay lip service to the "everyone should be equal" thing and that lip service actually tends to help make it happen in some cases.
As always there are exceptions, and circumstances, etc, etc. Point is, don't assume that because it's not Republican it's not corrupt.
I'll add to parent's post with another point:
It seems to me that hardware vendors for PC components have been so competitive compared to software creators that they've shot themselves in the foot by making such powerful devices.
Let's face it. Several things have caused software development to take a steep nose dive in terms of innovation over the years. Some blame lies with business practices such as MicroSoft's well known "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" or even the way Apple bans competing applications on their iPhone. Toss in the ridiculous number of issues with software patents we so love to comment on here and elsewhere and you can readily see just how much is holding software innovations back!
Factor in the rate at which hardware was/has/is getting faster and more powerful and you should see where the problem is.
Simpler example: When I bought my current desktop in April it cost me approximately 3000 USD for the tower and monitor. More than I needed to spend, but at the time it wasn't an issue and that is besides the point.
To build the same exact setup now costs only 1245 USD!
This rig is designed for one thing: gaming. When it was built the only game it couldn't run on the absolute highest settings was Crysis, but it came damn close. Not a single game since Crysis came out comes close to taxing the system and it doesn't look like there is going to be anything for a while that will.
If gamers who are obsessed with having the highest settings possible run flawlessly can do so on "last generation" equipment, why upgrade? Why go top of the line?
If the software doesn't catch up with the hardware again we're going to have a gap of stagnation...
An unknown attack vector is far worse than a known one. If you know where an attack is going to be coming from you have a far better chance of either A) preventing or B) reacting to an attack.
Knowing is a LOT better than having no idea your system is vulnerable and it getting compromised. Particularly if your job is knowing all you can about security and securing your company's system...
I was using Songbird for a while there back in April/May. The sole reason I stopped was something in the meta for my copy of The Wall caused the library to explode and I'd have to delete and re-add everything else. I'm sure they've fixed that by now, donno what it was. Happened every time I ripped, from 3 different apps.
Anyhoo, in regards to the iPod support, someone I knew hated iTunes but loved her iPod. Had her using ephpod for a while but it was fairly blech. She gave Songbird a try after seeing me play with it for a bit. She has not updated it since May and has been using it to sync up her iPod just fine.
Been meaning to give it another shot here now that I'm using Vista on my desktop. My PC caught fire tonight (fan motor burned out due to dust, I hadn't cleaned it for a few months) so I'm on my laptop at the moment trying to figure out how to rip music from my Zune...
How is that sad? Sounds like a few Wakes I've been to...
Actually, he did mention that its hard to find ANY real news outlet these days. That said, FOX is a cesspool. I can't think of anything positive to say about them.
While this is more for clients than anything else, we use Kaseya where I work. Wouldn't be my first choice based on the price tag but it IS pretty nice for Windows based setups.
Allows you to easily create vbscripts and push them. You can do quite a bit with it, including uninstalling and installing applications. Couple that with what you can do from command line windows and you'll almost never have to physically be at the machine (well, at least so long as it is able to check in).
Oh and if you want to see what is going on there there are several ways to remote in to the client PCs, including the capability for it to install VNC and auto connect you, even through firewalls and the like.
Pretty much its great so long as you are on Windows, have access to a web browser, and the machines are checking in. You can also change the port they use to whatever the hell you want and setup a secondary server.
Oh...and it lets you control patching of applications and Windows.
Like I said, expensive. But still pretty damn useful.
More at their site: http://www.kaseya.com/
He's the most rational "nutjob" that has ever posted on Slashdot. He actually knows full well what his beliefs entail, and believes in separation of church and state on religious principals.
Our country gives him the RIGHT to vote if he so chooses. He chooses to act responsibly and not vote most of the time because of his religious beliefs.
He chooses to vote this time because even this "nutjob" can see one choice for President MUST NOT be elected.
An observation: People who are anti-religion seem to make a religion out of discriminating against people that have a belief system. I find that sad.
Disclaimer: I don't think about religion 98% of the time, but instead try to think how to make life better for as many people as possible. To put it another way, I don't care if you have faith, I don't care if you're atheist. Just be nice to one another whenever possible.
The irony of God (if the daft bugger did/does exist) is that few have more faith than the atheists, and few act more anti-christian than his most "devoted."
I wish more FPS games had an AI that behaved like it did in FEAR. That single player game had a lot of replay ability for me just because the AI responded with logical tactics.
They hear you make a noise, they'll move in to flank you while a few of them keep you distracted.
IF they notice the grenade they'll take off and run, they don't just run when there is a grenade nearby. A few times I've seen them just stand there still like they didn't notice the 'nade land near them.
If you go hand to hand, they wouldn't always shoot you because they might hit their team mate (or were all dead/dying and couldnt shoot me possibly).
The list really goes on. For a tactical shooter the AI was phenominal. Fast forward to COD4, probably the best modern warfare shooter out (haven't touched FarCry yet). Some spiffy tactics are there but if you throw a nade, they run, and they basically don't miss your head.
It almost seems a step back in a lot of that game.
"As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened."
Funnily enough, the first time Bush was elected people thought he was 'just the same' as Gore would be. The second time he was elected a lot of Republicans still hadn't realized just how a bad job he was doing.
Now you have a LOT of Republicans, and hardcore Republican states, jumping ship and voting for Obama.
Oh and don't get me wrong. Bush isn't evil (Cheney *might* be). He's actually a nice guy according to most everyone that meets him, even people that are political enemies of his, but he's totally out of his depth.
The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.
The electoral college was put there because mob rule is a no win situation for everyone. The entire idea was to distill votes down so people can have a reasonable debate about it and elect the best candidate.
Also, your supposed to be able to throw up any party you would like, or create one on the spur of the moment. Every time nowadays when someone tries that, every single media outlet tells you its a bad idea and you should vote Democrat or Republican, no matter what.
A lot of people think that Democrat and Republican parties are mentioned in the Constitution!
Anyways, no system is perfect. Pushing Amendments is hard. It is best to have an idea of what to replace it with before suggesting we do, even informally. People tend to get touchy about important things.
"When Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species" he thought that God had created evolution."
And what is wrong with that? You said it yourself, Evolution doesn't care if there is a $DIETY or not. That means its potentially fine by everyone!
If there was a God, I know I'd have more faith in his powers if he devised a means for the Universe to run itself rather than hold it together by sheer will.
Brains over Brawns, yo.
If people can replace words/phrases/things with negative meanings, lets work to replace some negative ones with positive meanings.
The difference is the media attention, not the fact that is happening.
Tell that to TJ Max...
Those elite white land owners set it up specifically so that _everyone_ gets equal rights. That was actually intended. Granted, not all of them agreed but its kinda the whole point of the nation for EVERYONE to be Free and Equal, regardless of financial/familial status.
I should stop feeding trolls...
Take a look at the US Constitution. It's actually pretty solid, and they tried very hard to make it so that if you get a jackass going for RAW (Rules As Written) and trying to game the system he won't get far/last long.
Overtime, people have forgotten just how much power they wield. They can write in whomever they want to be anything, even President.
But they let people tell them they can't. They listen to people tell them stories of the boogey man and say only they can save them, rather than the truth that each person can save themselves.
The original intent of the Constitution is noble, and is the only thing that makes America even worth a damn. People need to take their powers back.
We need to fix our education system and get out of this 'daddy will save me' attitude that has been turning our nation slowly into a police state (sadly, that's the path our on no matter how far from it we are compared to other nations).
We got a lot of work ahead of us, but we can still fix this. The only problem is that we need to find people to vote in to Congress that will actually be able to make the changes required.
Turn in your gamers card at the door.
In my day, we'd string you up, but these new fangled wireless controllers...