I do, I care less now.

Ok I'm hopping I can show you your error here.
"We have rights because we define them"
Who is "we". What if you define them differently than I do? We have a dispute here. When you say "we" what you *actually* mean is.. the government as an arbitrator for the people is the one who defines them. This ideology you have with some modern changes was known as "The Divine Right of Kings" before the 17th century. When you believe the power flows from the top to the bottom you create a system of tyranny even if you have the best intentions. Believing rights come from a majority creates a case where the minority will be eventually oppressed.

The 17th Century gave us some great things such as the scientific method (Discourse on Method), refining our ability to use logic and reason and this was a major step in lifting man out of the dark ages. Another good thing from the 17th Century is that a philosopher came along with the name John Locke and he created a little idea he called The Theory of natural rights (also known as The Lockean Theory). His radical theory rejected the, at the time universally believed in, Divine Right of Kings. Locke argued that all men are equal to other men and because of that we have rights based in a negative sense. To summarize it simply you could say "You have the right to be left alone from my forceful actions upon you, and I have the right to be left alone from your forceful actions upon me." Locke's writings also inspired another man known as Thomas Jefferson.. you probably have heard of him.

When I say you have rights because your human, I mean you have rights not because your government or king gives them to you but because all men are equal and therefore no man or group has the power to bestow rights upon another. This lack of power forms the basis for the the concept of negative rights. (This phrase negative rights means simply they are not granted but it is currently being perverted these days by people like Rush Limbaugh who say democrats believe rights are an obstacle thus negative..) You have rights because you and nobody else possess ownership of your body. (some people say the authority comes from a god, but the logic holds either way)

Now.. I don't want to tell you what to do so *you* can believe in the Divine Right of Kings if you like. While you are at it you can also reject the scientific method and start praying to mythical creatures to give you answers to complex problems.. and return man to the dark ages.. but *I* prefer to believe in the Lockean Theory and rather think that men are all equal and nobody possess ownership over other people.

Your choice..

But what did you learn? How could a child possibly understand why the democratic nation of Germany supported the rise of the Nazi's or the actual reasons behind the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor? What would the coloring book say.. they were bad people? I think there is a lot more to learn there than just they were bad and people died.. unfortunately even adults don't by in large seem to go much deeper than that.

Is a fleeting grasp of something worse than no understanding at all? I don't know but..Maybe Obama's economic team has the answer to that.. hmm

At some point you would think it would be irreverent for people to keep brining up the constitution. Our government hasn't followed it since the ink was dry.. Remember old Honest Abe Lincoln wiped his ass with it. I don't know why you think we start following it now.

I kinda wish Obama would burn it so people stop referring to it like it has any kind of meaning. You have rights because your human, not because some dead guys signed a piece of paper.

Global warming is fraud.. however if they pay me the difference I'll shut down the work stations. No? then I could care less.

(Note for socialists here: responsibility makes people do good things, if I'm paying the bill I'll shut them down, if some anonymous ideological group like a corporation or government pays then I will waste.)

What's a program? Is it just a binary, or is it everything including documentation. Would you like to try another bar?

Vista contains 50 Million lines of code.
Debian 4.0 contains 282 Million lines of code.

Vista cost Microsoft somewhere around $10 Million to develop.
Debian 4.0 would have cost an estimated $2.437 Billion if developed by traditional software means.

The simple fact is, the more you know, the more you can know. ??? No, science and philosophy can help someone arrive at a logical conclusion but belief in what people would call a fact or factoid (that is not a scientific fact or law) with out proof and then believing you can therefore "know more", is in my opinion foolish.

Your friend has an illogical belief or "knows" that the size of the operating system is what matters. I used the example before that many people think they "know" if you go swimming after eating you will get cramps, however there are worse beliefs than this.. such as the state or religion. A great number of people "know" there are countries. A great number of people "know" there is a god of some form. The very word faith itself should be read as "made up fiction nonsense". Belief without proof in something is allowing yourself to be controlled and is a dangerous thing to allow peoples minds to be polluted by such nonsense mis-think so they can be controlled to the aims of the controller that are usually quite evil as evident by something we know of as a war, or as I like to call it senseless mass murder.

"So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him." -- Apology By Plato

Sorry about the OT.

I can run notepad in wine so fucking what.

My point is Debian ships with more software than Microsoft even makes let alone ship in Vista.

You must have failed economics. $150 that is not spent on a product means you now have $150 to spend on something else. Going by what you say..if someone paid you to not use vista when you otherwise would have then your gain would be $300 not $150.. the $150 not spent and the $150 you were paid.

There are many reasons. $150 reasons actually, but your logic is flawed. In fact if you don't desire some new feature there is no reason to not use what you are comfortable using. Applying changes when changes are not needed is introducing risk. ..Uhh.. Do you work for Microsoft? Just wondering..

Vista comes with a nice clock, a calculator, and notepad.

Debian 5.0 (Lenny) has over 25113 packages with on 5 DVD, and even more not more than a few ticks of a keyboard away.

This is true, optimizations in GCC have lead to the newer OS's becoming faster on new hardware when doing the same things.

So the above note about the latest version *always* being slower.. that actually only applies to Windows.

Sure they went to high school.. then they went to the army and lost all ability to think for themselves.

We iz jest following ORDERS! Blinking komputer is terrorist!

In other words then, no you don't have cancer..

I class you as a fucking lier.

Beyond that.. even if you did. (and I think your a poser but lets play a long)

If you really did choose to work a job and sit in a smoky office for 40 years and got lung cancer from it, then really you have nobody to blame but yourself for that. Hope the job was worth it.