Wait I'm confused, you make the point that A basic income has no preconditions for working, then you give a number for currently available handouts at around $600 and say that basic income in your view is $1000 (only about $400 more) but you also say if that isn't enough people could work for more.

So I'm confused, isn't this exactly how things are today? There is a group of people living off basic handouts from the government and a group of people that have decided they want more than the basic so they work for more. But now the first group is screaming how it is unfair the working group has more and the government should take it away and spread it out.

So maybe I'm missing something, but what you describe is exactly what is happening right now, except you left out the part where those on the basic level who don't want to work still want more.

As others have pointed out, the Preamble does not bestow any powers, it is merely an introduction.

Now, inside the Constitution in the actual details, that phrase also exists in the Taxing and Spending clause (Article 1 Section 8 Clause 1), but is always taken out of context.

The text of the clause is:

Notice what follows the general Welfare -- of the United States (and this means the collection of States, not a federal republic).

Our nation was founded as a union of independent sovereign States. At the time of the writing each State had its own laws, own rules and many had their own currency. The Constitution was written to recognize those States were sovereign, but would come together collectively for defense and dealing with external nations. Prior to the civil war we referred to ourselves as these United States, after that war (which may also have been un-Constitutional since there is no prohibition against States leaving the union, so the 10th Amendment gives them the right to do so) we became known as the United States.

So the clause refers to the welfare of the States. There is absolutely no authority granted to the federal government to deal with welfare of the people. None of the so called entitlement programs is backed by Constitutional authority, neither are areas like education or EPA regulations that apply only to instate resources. Congress claims all of these powers under the Commerce Clause.

So no, the Constitution does not grant the federal government any say in the welfare of the citizens of the States.

Ok, so say Oracle does end up destroying the Java community and you get your wish that Java dies, what replaces it?

Java is huge in corporate development because Java provides a complete ecosystem. It is a supported platform, there are large numbers of trained developers, it has a huge pool of good quality external components available from the Apache projects for example. It works.

You can go from zero to a working webservice, complete with connections to a database in a couple of hours. With some decoration you can change that from being XML based to JSON based.

You can build 3D games, using OpenGL that perform remarkably well, so long as your target platform supports OpenGL (not a Java issue).

And you can do all of this in one language, with one development kit, some well known, well defined add-on libraries that you can deploy to multiple operating systems. Or you can use a number of other languages, if you prefer to code in a different style and don't like the wordiness of Java the language. Java the platform gives you this ability.

Call it the new Cobol if you like, be all smug. Doesn't matter to all the companies using it and developers making a living coding in it.

I would really like to know what could replace this? I have been concerned since the Oracle take over and have been trying, for example, to find an alternative to a simple webservice world.

Today I can download, unzip and fire up Tomcat and I'm ready to write code, or I can use Jetty and embed an HTTP server and servlet engine in my jar file and make it a single jar deployment. Yes I know, I have to install a JVM, which is a simple download and install. You do the same with Ruby, Python, Perl or PHP. With C/C++ you don't need a runtime, but you have to code for cross platform usability.

I've looked at Apache with modules and CGI, tried out Node.js and Seaside (Smalltalk). I've looked at RoR and some of what is available in the Python world. I'm even seeing what it takes to build a web server (using PocoLib) with a connected V8 Javascript engine for scripting (I'm aware of the V8CGI project that makes a module for Apache, but on Windows, I use the MinGW toolkit, not Microsoft tools, and I've not be able to successfully get that whole stack to build, Poco builds out of the box).

But none of these has the complete environment Java and Java frameworks offer.

So, for all of you wishing Java would go away, please, what is a complete replacement?

The part that continues to annoy me (more than the stupid name change) is how they continue to take and repackage BBC shows (Dr Who, Prime Evil, Merlin, Being Human, etc) and advertising them as "original series".

Now they don't directly claim it to be a SciFi channel (hate the new name) original but they make no mention of the fact they were originally on someone else's network. Almost seems like they are violating copyrights for profit.

I've actually started watching more BBC America, History and Discovery than SciFi, more interesting.

I've asked this question before, many times, and have yet to receive a reasonable answer from the climate change crowd, so I'll try again:

So what if the climate is changing? It has never been static, it never will be static. Weather patterns have changed continuously throughout Earth's history, when humans were not even present. Hell, previous changes could have been caused by all the methane released in dinosaur farts for all we know. Some areas of the world that are barren may become lush, others may become inhabitable, coast lines may change. Outside of the political implications of which nation is on top or not, so what? That's life, and humans will adapt.

There's a saying I've heard that goes something like:

software that is 50% complete and ships provides 50% more functionality to users than software that strives for 100% completeness but never gets shipped

Getting software in the hands of users, even if it doesn't provide all the functionality they want up front, can give you a first mover advantage. Then, as you learn what your users like or request (which is almost guaranteed to change from your original idea as they start using it), you do iterative releases with new capabilities. By the time a competitor gets a really polished, complete system out the door, you'll already have a growing user base.

You young guys take note: When you hate someone for having what you do not, you bring curses upon your own head.

Funny, but at least in the US, this is today's way of life. Class/wealth envy is the most powerful tool being used by today's political elite to stay in power.

I'm not sure this is a totally correct assessment. Large companies tend to have defined desktop standards that they force all users to adhere to, even when they cause problems (i.e. full disk PGP encryption on a developers desktop work station because they might test with sensitive data). The standards apply to developers, call center and executive admins equally, so they don't really work well for any one group. This is the norm as a way to keep internal support costs down.

But, because of this standardization, the internal development staff only needs to target one defined platform, they aren't really worried about cross-platform support. So they'll use what ever tool they are familiar with or that will get them to the end product fastest, because internal development is also usually an expense (not a revenue generator) and those systems tend to be rushed to not waste money.

Here's a question I've always wondered about, what happens if someone refuses to take the oath? Say for example you are brought into court under subpoena, and when you take the stand and they say Do you swear to tell the truth.. you answer with Nope, I don't. Could you be charged later with perjury or lying then?

Can't see that there is any way to force a person to take the oath, but knowing our system, I'm sure the judge would just say You're under oath anyway or hold you in contempt.

Or how about A Boy and his Dog

While I also play WoW under Wine and agree it works reasonably well, I have to ask a simple question.

One reason WoW works reasonably under Wine is that it will use OpenGL and is not tied to DirectX. Many of the WoW developers are actually using Macs so the application could not be dependent on DirectX. And yet, there is no native Linux client produced for it, only native for Mac OS X and Windows.

As popular as the game is, and knowing it can run on a *nix variant, Blizzard still won't produce a native Linux client. So why do you suppose that is?

What you appear to be describing is not so much what I think of as simplification but more reduction. It is possible to simplify the laws but still cover all the same points, just make the laws clearer and in more readily understandable language.

But that aside, a bigger change we could make (at least in the US) is tort-reform to a loser-pays system. Lawsuit-lottery exists in the US simply because the lawyers know they can keep dragging it out because if their client loses, they aren't stuck with the law bills for the other side.

In the US system the lawyers always get paid, regardless of outcome. In a loser-pays model, a lawyer weighs the actual merits of a case before taking it because if his/her client loses, he/she runs the risk of not getting paid.

Of course every time tort-reform is introduced it gets defeated by the lobbying might of the trial lawyers (which many members of Congress are) and the late-night TV class action lawsuit-mill lawyers ("Were you denied Vanilla ice-cream with your birthday meal at Joe's Pizza Parlor? Well call us, we can help").

And this excuse continues to come up over and over as well. Since nothing is physically lost, no one is harmed

Ok, so let us say that that is an acceptable argument. If you truly believe that argument, why don't you print your own money? After all, all you are doing is making your own copy, no one else is losing anything. The technology today makes it very easy to do.

Now of course people will jump all over this saying "but counterfeiting is a criminal offense, this is just a civil offense blah blah blah" but the fact is there is no difference based on your argument, so you should be protesting the fact that copying money is a criminal offense whereas copying the work of others without their permission isn't.

So when do you start printing your own money?