When did I say it did?

"Deal with it" is a Claytons option. If you take the time to actually read what you're responding to - you'd get that.

Which would be "A phrase or expression in which the component words contradict one another".

Capitalism is voting with your wallet, Democracy is voting with your ballot. If Capitalism drives legislation (and I think it does) then laws are passed according to the influence of lobbyist groups - an effective mechanism as any politician wants to be re-elected and previous sources of funds are the key to funding a re-election. The "numbers" person for any party is only the person who can organise the "numbers" (votes) because they know all the "numbers" (telephone numbers for donors).

Does a "political mandate" (platform elected on by voters) take precedent over lobbyists? No - get elected because you say you'll do something about better eating and bury that mandate because the Beef Farmers lobby steps up and threatens to remove funding next election. Does a political mandate to increase employment take precedence over some country suing because the minimum wage was raised? No - to that too (Trans Pacific Trade Agreement). If it was a "democracy" then voters would take precedence over industry. Remember corporations can't vote, that only "voters" vote is the core of Democracy. The fact that in effect corporations do vote, and their vote counts for more than a "voters" is what I'd call "a contradiction in terms".

Nope - not ignoring it. That's just "how it works", the following paragraph (which you had trouble comphrending also) explained how to leverage that.

[slowly] By making their investments much less profitable.

If Koch brothers have $25 million to invest in political lobbying they can "invest" $12.5 in each of the main parties. That means they get no return on that investment for every vote that doesn't go to the major parties. The more votes that goes to parties that aren't backed by Koch, the worse the return on their investment.

Now read my original post again - you seem to have trouble comprehending the obvious.

Which, does nothing to change the influence of lobbyists or force parties to actually listen to voters when setting the agenda. If you keep picking from the offered cards hoping for a game that you control you're just hoping for the triumph of optimism over experience.

Tell what? An unjust law is no law at all?

Clearly you neither understood what I wrote (read it again). I've never said fixing the problem was easy or simple. Freedom doesn't come for free, it's gained at the cost of security. The security of being able to outsource responsibility and sit on the couch making a contribution no greater than whining. A pre-requisite for positive change is loss of social time, safety, and an investment in education (basically the result of trusting nothing and verifying everything - anytime someone says "but...." it's a cop out). If that's sounds like anarchy without the destruction it's because it is (libertarianism is bullshit).

Only when you seek definition of rules from those that set the game. Try reading the context of Augustine's quote.

There's the problem (flawed logic) - you don't live in a democracy. Capitalism (which I support) and democracy are contradictions in terms.

Kind of, maybe. More accurately "the people who can be bothered voting" - don't make an informed choice or understand the system. The system is simple - "the people" basically pick from two choices. Both choices are lies that don't get called. Neither do the choices get forced on the candidates. Education (not outsourced to institutions) is a pre-requisite to solve all those problems (voting, informed voting, setting the agenda, making candidate responsible for meeting the agenda).

Making an agenda requires understanding how the agenda is set. Each of the major parties want an increased majority. They seek that by looking at the results of the last election and playing lip service to issues that they percieve as votes they lost last time. So an agenda (platform) is influenced by a previous election. Knowing that, the solution is to not for any party that stands a chance of being elected - this forces the agenda. Pick an issue that you support as part of a platform by someone who will not win enough votes to gain power. It has the two-fold result of forcing an agenda for the last election and making the incumbent responsible for failing their mandated position (if they fail to hold or increase their power they are dumped by their financers).

Money wins elections (basically). You can't, as individuals, set an agenda by throwing money at candidates (individual candidates or parties) - only business/groups can do that as individuals do not all want the same thing. But as individuals we can make the major backers investments much less profitable.

Only one - which I've briefly outlined above. All others lead to failure via either bloodshed or disapointment. History demonstates this more than adequately. Increase accountability by legislation and you only exacerbate the exisiting problem. Overthrown the oppressors and learn firsthand what they were trying to oppress (trust me - that ain't a pretty revelation (hint: evolution is far from horizontal, many people will only be happy if they get to burn the entire planet to save the tiny backyard that they'll tire of tomorrow)

Yes - it's part of "take an active and constant part of change (and requires that pesky self-education - a critical component of which is the ever elusive self-awareness, another is the willingness to sacrifice i.e. security).

Historically that's only every been a short-term option, eventually no one is too small to be insignificant - and the first people the oppressed turn on are their neighbours (notice how poor junkies don't rob the rich?). That short-term option is catered to by big pharma already - like Elderberry in the fable I referenced earlier, their demands (driven by their shareholders) are insatiable. It's one of many closed loops that require increased oppression (both locally and globally) that cannot be fed without increasing the original problem it pretends to solve.

"Dealing with it" (suck it up etc) is the ostrich solution to the threat of rape. Likewise buying a Prius or "making enough to buy self-sufficiency far from the rat-race"

Of course - that's just my opinion. "God" (fundamentalism and conservatism"), Entertainment (ooh shiny thing), and Fantasy (woo, woo), are the most popular ways of "dealing with it". Sadly "thinking" about it (as you are obviously doing) and not (and it is, IMO, the only "begining") - subscribing to a stock opinion is just another form of outsourcing responsibility, which is just as bad as ignoring the problem.

Pushed for time - no edits or proof-reading. Hope it's readable

Lex iniusta non est lex An unjust law is no law at all.

It seems the degree of instrusion and control is directly related to the ratio of forum flooding disguised as trolling. Cue the gun debate/Republican/Democrat/Oh Look Shiny thing flood (sigh)

Agreed - time changes nothing. If it wasn't OK a hundred years ago for a judge to issue a similar warrant to raid the house of someone who visits or recieved mail from his jurisdiction - but didn't reside in it, why should it be OK now? And if the judge doesn't even know which jurisidiction the target lived in he couldn't approve a warrant for everywhere the target might go - on the offchance the target might be there one day.

This link that attracted all the slushpot comments earlier summarised the syndrome and problem well.

:)
It's both. Most commonly coders are either employees or contractors - they can be terminated for a number of reasons. Generally it's simplest to simply say "you are surplus to requirements". Less often coders (or companies) are contracted to produce code to a standard (i.e. named security standards) - if the code is not up to standard it's a simple breach of contract. The usual process (best practise) when dismissing an employee or contractor is to give them the required notice but escort them out the door, pay them to the end of the notice period, and remove their code and network access immediately. HTH

With Open Source we just block their write access and send their messages to nul. The OP is talking out his arse when he conflates any can submit to Open Source therefore all submissions are automagically added.

If a certain benchmark is required then yes - it's written into the contract. Otherwise it's no different to hiring a forklift driver - there's no benchmark but you fire the bastard if he does no work or fails to move product in a suitable manner.

Neither have many of the other commenters - but they lack the honesty to admit it. My apologies for being harsh.

There's a host of difficulties - some times we have to deliver the impossible, most of the time we don't get to do the hiring (ever seen ads for impossible skill sets and experience? Those ads are written by the wittling fools in HR - or worse - wish lists by employment agencies). Regardless of those difficulties as a general rule - crap code gets rejected regardless of the licence model because it defeats the purpose of the project and costs time (in Closed Source time is money - and review and wages costs money). The politics of "next project" is even messier - too many managers leave before the end of doomed projects, still get paid, and move on to other projects they'll doom, others stay and manage badly while putting the blame on the coders. In the long term good management means good coders - and good code means the company/project succeeds for a long time. Government projects are a land of lollipops devoid of market forces (except maybe brown paper bags) but I'm biased by cynicism that is the product of experience. All of which doesn't have much to do with "Open Source has to accept crap code" or "Closed Source has to accept crap code" - both of which are bullshit.

and it doesn't end with "and they lived happily ever after".

Neither was I - try re-reading, though you might need to rest your lips a bit first.

Rubbish. I don't know everything about software development - but I have spent thirty odd years doing it, both FLOSS and closed source, and your opinion as contrary to most of my experience. Sure there are corner cases where you're told to keep Dumbo on because the major shareholder is their parent - they're the companies you don't want to work for and are no more useful as a guide than your opinions about bubonic plague and automobiles or "other countries" where people smoke one or two cigarettes a day (novel, but rubbish).

Yes - it happens all the time (changing projects, rejecting code and terminating employment). We don't need contracts that specify the quality of the code - but they do exist e.g. secure code standards. Don't know what planet you live on where that doesn't happen (Planet Couch?).

Wrong. It's wastes valuable time. And the only difference between commercial and FLOSS software development is that FLOSS doesn't always pay coders - both styles (closed and open) cost time (time == money), both can produce crap code and miss deadlines, and both can have butt-hurt contributors whose code was rejected. That's why we pay them to piss off and suspend their access rights when we've had enough of their crap code - at least in sane, consistently profitable companies doing closed source software development. (note: I've never worked in a Communist country - YMMV)

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Dud - why reply to my post? Don't you understand sarcasm/satire/irony - or do you just not understand how to reply to posts? FLOSS and closed source can, and should reject crap code. Just because I pay someone doesn't mean I can't reject their code - at least where I live (consistent crap code == termination, either for crap coders or projects that deploy crap code/miss deadlines).

Why not? If they're not worried about quality of code why not just outsource the entire project to some random company whose "proposals" fill their email spam filters?

Real life example:

• Q. What's the date?
• A. The 14th.

P.S. The USA is not the world, and time might be a concept but...

In her case I introduced her to Lynx (tab key navigation) and elinks for browsing, hotkeys (Home, Ctrl+Home, End, Ctrl+End) for editing and reading, and a large "scrollball" for mouse control. As her condition deteriorated her son built her a custom keyboard - a modified keyboard for the vision impaired (large buttons) with the number pad removed and a large, custom, hotkey pad in it's place.

At some point we plan to change to screen reading and speech recognition as she has issues seeing when she can't control her head movements - based on Klaus Knopper's Ariadne (Knoppix is already based on Debian).

Racial discrimination - like "that white bloke" (two for the price of one! sexual discrimination), or Racial bigotry - like "that uppity nigger"?

'cos "discrimination" is Bad (m'kay)

I'm told colour discrimination is bad - but it's easier to find my car when I employ it. I don't believe the colour of my car is superior to other cars - that would be stupid. (ya no wat I meen, roight?)