The US Federal Government played the central role to create todays internet with federal fundet research on ARPANET. And true visionaries in the Federal Government like Al Gore saw the potential of the open "information highway" and acted on it very early in the internets history. This makes the comment about the Fedral Governments "ineptitude" strange. It is hard to imagine how the "free market" on its own would have created the sucess story todays open "net neutral" internet is, both commercially and for education and information sharing even deep into many of the worlds worst dictatorships.

The US slashdoters should ditch the childish republican mantra that "the government is always the problem" and instead be proud of what the the US Federal Government has done for the advancement of the world with the development and realisation of the open internet. And the US Federal Government wouldnt be doing their job if they did not work on introducing and maintaining good regulation in this field as all the other fields of commerce. Good regulations are the foundation of a free market.

NY Times did this article on the Obama administration, which was not favourable or ment to get votes for Obama, but just stated the facts (in the sense the administration has not denied the story). So, in which respect is the NY Times doing "the same thing for the other side"?! Fox news is a pure propaganda branch for the republican party. The NY Times in this article (which was just cited by the Faux news article linked to) did the job the press is supposed to do: investigate and state the facts as they are and tell developments in the world that will influence the lifes of people. This "both sides are equally bad" bullshit is wrong and is a stupid excuse for the degradation of the press by Fox "news". Something is true and something is based on facts and some things are just spinned in a way to make a political party look good. There is a difference.

I see a lot of liberals (go to salon.com or huffingtonpost.com) complaining about this proposal from the Obama administration. When the Bush administration did wiretapping illegally (even with the lax requirements to get a judge to approve such wiretapping in retrospect when it comes to terrorist plots), most so-called republicans seemed to say that if you critise POTUS you are helping the terrorists. Or can you show me some conservative voice speaking loudly against it?

I do not see this relativism where liberals and conservatives are equally bad when it comes to protecting liberty. It seems to be something conservatives are saying to feel better about voting for republicans.

Obama has lived up to most of his campaign promises: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

Beside, Obama is damned smart, even if you do not agree with his administration on this policy proposal. And for a man with "no experience", Obama has achieved a lot in two years, even though you clearly do not approve of what he has achieved.

Funny how it seems like most of the Obama basher in this post are people who voted for Bush and now are happy that "Obama is just as bad" by making a proposal to make legal what the Bush administration did illegally with no regard for law or constitution. The proposal is not even submitted yet, use the political process to stop it before it becomes law. (Hint: voting republican wont make anything better).

There are two arguments for universal health care. One is of course the moral aspect of giving poor people the chance to live a healthy life. The other one is that it is less expensive for the society. Or in other words, you pay less taxes.

What is expensive is to let people die in the emergency room instead of letting them see a doctor to get preventive care and necessary help at an early stage to deal with health issues. Expensive is the lack of a health system that prevent the whole population from getting sick unnecessary or for a prolonged time since sick people don't go to work and pay their taxes. Expensive is to have poor homes where children -- who should be the next generation scientists and engineers -- don't get a proper education and diet since their parents are sick.

Of the western world, the USA have the most expensive health system per citizen and at the same time have the lowest percentage of the population with adequate access to doctors and medicine. It doesn't make sense from an economic point of view and it denies the american dream to large percentage of your population.

Only in the USA. The rest of the world is discussing how to deal with Global Warming taking place at the moment.

Found any of those WMD in Iraq yet?

Gore did not get a science Nobel, Gore got the peace prize. The reason was that the Nobel committee reason that future wars will be war over resources, like water, food etc. Gore's work on raising the awareness of the dangers of climate change was therefore seen as extremely important.

You can disagree with Gore and his lack of charisma, but the grandparent post is right that most people believe in Global Warming due to when most scientist agreeing on something it usual means that they are correct judging by past records. Flat earthers like yourself only need Gore to have someone to make fun off and to push your story it is a political ploy, since you don't have any real arguments against the careful work of thousands of scientists.

Windows 7 doesn't kill batteries, people using Windows 7 kill batteries.

Republicans always love to repeat like sheep that "government bad, companies good". They also point out that companies have no responsibility except to increase their profit, so in their world view Exxon has the moral obligation to screw the planet if that increase their shareholders savings. And of course repubs can point to the 8 years of Bush as a very good example of a government that don't care about facts but want to invade countries and ruin the environment and economy as they please.

The major problem of your argument is that for the last 8 years the Bush government only wanted to hear that global warming did not take place, and the same government has shown no hesistance to lie and cheat to get it their way. So, not only can you not believe the global warmer deniers and other flat earthers from Exxon, but you cannot even believe the global warming deniers in the same periode with government grant (if you can find any of those?).

So once more, what was your argument?

I believe it runs on GNU/linux/amd64 as you call it, even though I have only tried on an Ubuntu x86. And as long as LGP stays a float I assume they will produce patches if OpenAL etc need it, they have at least done so far.