As an outsider to the US, may I humbly suggest that as a start, an alternative voting system could be used, such as some sort of single transferable vote system. At least then citizens will not have to worry about wasting their vote.
If there is something wrong with my above statement, I would like to know. And yes, pigs may fly and all that.
Society is in general revolt over the current copyright law terms. The man in the street realizes the media giants have gone too far, but some how congress can't see it yet. Maybe they are just starting to see there is a problem.
In my experience it is completely mixed. A lot of people think that it is the law, so it must be good. The techs where I work first heard about SOPA when I went to a wikipedia page in front of them during the blackout (not deliberately, actually was trying to look something up); they didn't much care, and since I knew about it I believe they thought I used the internet too much. The close relatives I have mentioned it to (once) didn't know what it is either, probably because they are informed by TV news and newspapers, which never mentioned it at all, at least before the blackout. It is not something I would particularly want to talk about face to face, simply because it is not 'cool', and that matters.
Maybe your experience is different.
Couldn't resist.
Ah, a budding eugenicist. You do realise that the traits a child manifests are not necessarily the traits either of their parents manifested. This is high school chemistry class material.
Totally agreed.
I have seen people who base their actions on an idealised (to them) version of what the world should be. The results are disastrous. This can be seen when someone puts up argument around something that sounds good, such as "you shouldn't use or benefit from something that was made from the suffering of others". They don't even think of what effects the abstract construction that they invented actually has if it is used. It sounds good to them so it MUST be right. These people also tend to be very hypocritical and selective about what these rules apply to.
As for doing something because it is the 'right' thing to do, screw that, give me cause and effect.
Note I am not devaluing the value of human life, dignity, non-suffering or anything of the kind, just saying that certain moralities that appear good can have very negative effects.
Put it in the other direction, what if US get successfully invaded, the government replaced, the resistence obliterated, people sent to be tortured in concentration camps and the invaders shit over the corpse of your fathers/friends/whatever, would you be a little outraged? Would be their right to do so? At least the disclosing is not as bad as what was done in Irak.
And misspelling your country's name.
I also have a face, so I claim MyFace. I also have a book about space.
The only way to get them to change their position is to apply real political force. That means forming lobbies and throwing actual money at the problem, just like the large corporations do.
Yeah right, like that's going to happen. It's a personal cost to throw money into a political cause as an individual; for corporations and their owners, it is for their own interests. It's a social dilemma, money will not get thrown into stopping horrible laws like this, because it is not in anyone's self interest to do that. Why would anyone donate to a political cause when the bastard next to them is just going to keep their money and therefore have an advantage over them?
Even if a large proportion of the population came together and threw money at the problem, it's doubtful that it will work, simply because of the vast difference in disposable income/assets between commoners and the wealthy elite. It's easy to imagine the incumbents pulling something unforeseen out with the power that they have.
Other than to nit pick that point, I agree with you. Are there any education resources that would actually allow people to self organise and prevent them from being pushed around? It's certainly something that wasn't taught at school.
Especially when you could just look it up on your phone...
Worse, there seem to be a whole lot of people in the USA that would like to reduce it to a boolean: { republican, democrat }.
They both ring false to me.
Ba-dum-tish
This may have been a bit later, but there was the ad supported version, which was fine.
1048576 rows now.
People still have the choice to use Linux and its desktop environments. I would say Linux has truly failed if that choice is taken away.
Do not forget the animated buildings! If that's not occult then what is?
About the link in your signature, you might want to separate the exclamation mark from it or make it so your web server doesn't care about it.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
