Couldn't agree more. I've said for some time that if you're not voting third party (at least considering the candidates based on their merits), you're not paying attention. We need to implement a Condorcet voting system, too. And proportional representation in one chamber of bicameral state legislatures would probably be a good idea.

You have a right to speech, but you have to make your own speech. Just like you have to make your own money. Entitlements are not rights.

I think you are feeling very confused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

You actually live in something *better* than a direct democracy.

A direct democracy enjoys no constitutional guarantees of rights. It's strictly majority rule.

Right this way sir... here's some bread, we hope you enjoy the circus.

This study defines "rich people" as those making around $146000/year.

If you think about it, there's no control for expenses there, so it's not a very effective definition (I'm always kind of a amazed at the mindset in the US that tries to simplify things by drawing a numeric line in the sand, as if there were no other issues. And people put up with it. We need better schools.

I define "rich" as: wealthy enough to be living in a manner comfortable in every material way to the individual or family, and able to survive indefinitely in that state, or in an increasingly wealthy state without relying on income from, or charity of, others. Regardless of if one actually chooses to exist in that state, or not.

Not trying to force that definition on anyone else, but that's how I see it personally.

I recommend antibiotics.

The transition was from a flawed, but still readily identifiable constitutional republic (not a democracy), to a corporate oligarchy.

This has never been a democracy, and furthermore, the constitution insists that the federal government guarantee each state a republican form of government, as in, a republic -- not a democracy. That's in article 4, section 4.

This is why representatives decide the actual matters, and voters don't, in the basic design.

Of course, now even the representatives don't decide -- nor judges -- if the legislation deals in any significant way with business interests. The only way the old system still operates even remotely the way it was designed to is when the issue(s) at hand a purely social ones. Even then, the bill of rights seems to be at the very bottom of any legislator's or judge's list of concerns.

Can't see any of this changing, though. The public is too uninformed, and short of completely revamping the school curriculums, they're going to remain that way.

Guess I should have been a little more explicit. I meant, as distinguished from one that required another object impact. Just an original ring system.

...a collapsed ring system?

Devops is even more than this, it also means applying common change management that is common in source code development to operational configuration, using tools like chef or puppet. It's scary how much "cowboy configuration" there is out there, and yet in the programming world, "cowboy coding" is frowned upon.

Sigh.

It's a good god damned harder to introduce an array index out-of-bounds error in Ada, PL/1, Pascal, BASIC and COBOL than in C.

Why? Because the RTLs in those languages check for out-of-bounds errors.

Thus, those languages, while not perfectly safe (nothing can be), are manifestly safer than C.

While true, this thread is about whether or not C is or can be a safe language.

And yet the vast majority of C programmers... are not hypervigilant.

Why do you presume that of me?

(Back in the day, languages bootstrapped themselves. Now GOML!)