Why not assemble a constitutional congress

And who would be in charge of that? The rich and powerful, who are the problem in the first place.

I for one don't expect that this country as we know it will last more than another 20 years.

That could have been said anytime in our history, and would have been true. The country is nothing like it was in 1990, and in 1990 it was nothing like it was in 1970.

So maybe, just maybe, we've enough debt and oppression afoot to question whether this was all a swift idea, and consider an alternative.

The trouble is the way the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution. Like when they ruled in the Lessig decision that "limited" means whatever Congress says it means. Being able to search your car without a warrant is clearly unconstituional, as are "free speech zones" and searching anyone within 100 miles of a border.

I see no solution.

You're still doing it... I think you're just trying to drive me crazy

I have problems with both parties. I just think of the two, the Republicans are generally worse. Perhaps you're right about the Koch brothers, but I just don't see how anyone with that much money could be anyone else's patsy.

I see you friended me, I've had a policy of friending everyone who friended me; if someone is reading my JE's I like to read theirs in return, but I hit slashdot's 400 friend limit. :(

Sorry.

The other option sucks more

Yeah, I agree, despite my grandmother's experience in her hundred years on Earth. She outlived two husbands and three of her four children, lived in arthritic pain, and spent her last five years weak and frail in a nursing home. I'd personally rather be dead than in a nursing home, but unless I'm living in hell I'd prefer to be alive.

I see you're still playing cowboys and indians

I almost always vote against both of them if I have an alternative, although I've voted for candidates from both and yeah, sometimes they seem identical. Bush and Blago were identical, Bush was the worst President I've seen in my life (I thought I'd never see one worse than Carter) and Blago was the worst Governor I've seen. Both sucked because they appointed incompetent cronies to key positions. Bush almost ruined the country and Blago did the same thing to Illinois.

My problem with the Republican party is their stance on taxes and social programs. Federal taxes are lower than than any time since Eisenhower and they're too high? Really? Their idiotic and disingenuous notion that cutting taxes on the rich helps the economy pisses me off; they have to know that history shows that's pure bullshit.

The Koches are bullying punks, but patsy? Who's he a patsy for? Everything they do is in their own greedy self interest. The working class tea partiers are the Koch's patsies.

One copyright, patents, drug laws, and a few other topics important to me I'm 100% against both parties.

As to Obama, he hasn't yet started any wars, and when he took office the economy was worse than at any time since the Great Depression, and the economy isn't great but it has improved greatly. He's certainly not a great President, though. I was especially annoyed with health care reform, that was just a gift to the insurance companies. We need a system like sane countries, all of whom have cheaper care but beats ours in every metric. I've known people who have died from lack of health care.

If you haven't read Nobots, wait for the book. The ebook version will be free.

WQNA or does the guy repeat the show elsewhere? That one was in the block, too, you must have heard it.

Well, yes, I'm not saying Windows is completely useless; if you're a professional image designer you're going to need a $700 copy of photoshop and an OS that will run it. Hardcore gamers will need Windows. But nobody but a professional needs (and few can easily afford) photoshop.

If I was still into gaming I'd have a dual-boot setup that defaulted to Linux, but the game companies lost my business years ago; I think the last game I bought was Quake III. DRM killed gaming for me.

I presume you meant evade, yes? :)

Yeah, I have no idea how that happened. I must have had what my mom calls a "senior moment". Getting old sucks.

The misspelling of Koch's name was deliberate, though.

of course only for the conservative definition of waste - which of course is only applicable when discussing spending that they are philosophically opposed to.

Very true. Giving me the money I put in social security for the last forty years back is waste to them, as is feeding the hungry, spending on scientific research, etc. But they're fine with the money being so usefully invested in war and fighting drugs and pornography and prostitution and gambling.

If so, they are epically slow learners then when it comes down to the greenhouse effect.

Nice, even though I was referring to the fictional future terraformed Venus in "Nobots."

Odd how every Republican President since Hoover presided over a recession or even worse economic disaster, isn't it? Or how every Republican President in almost the last half century has started a war. Even odder is how nobody seems to notice that.

That said, if the pictures he has linked to that he tells us are of himself at various political rallies are accurate, then he certainly does not outwardly appear to be rich.

Or very intelligent. The only three kinds of conservatives are rich ones, stupid ones, and brainwashed ones.

Sounds like you heard the same show, that was the song that followed "Beam Me Up"!

Those are good points, and I don't hate Gates, but he'll have to do a LOT of good to even begin to make up for the misery he's caused so many.

The same goes for Rockefeller, whose money is still doing good a century later. He was worse than Gates; his evil killed people.

So educate me, what functionality and features does Windows have that Linux lacks?

Do you know how many people I know who still go to the edit menu to select COPY and PASTE rather than using keyboard shortcuts or even right clicking?

Oh, man, now I have to shut slashdot down because you made me think of work. There's an online database I have to put data into at work, so I just generate the data in my own database and copy and paste it into the online form.

It won't let me right click and paste, I have to hit Ctrl-V. Fucking kids these days can't design their way out of paper bags.

What I find interesting is that W8 feels like it has more concessions to power users than is typical.

Using the keyboard doesn't make you a power user. Being able to hack the registry to make it do things Microsoft doesn't want it to do makes you a power user.

Two words: mouse elbow. Microsoft doesn't document for shit these days and after using a computer for thirty years I don't want to fucking have to learn all over again!

I learned to drive 45 years ago and only had to learn once, even though automotive technology has changed completely. If Ballmer took over Ford, he'd swap the brakes and throttle.

At least, I don't want to relearn it without an overriding benefit, like when we went from DOS to Windows.

Or Windows to Linux, great improvement. Windows can't hold a candle to it, and it was surprisingly intuitive because it was logically laid out and not hard at all to learn (the console is like DOS, but I only use it when I forget my root password).

Your method is a bit more ergonomic, using only the keyboard. Using Office at work I not only get mouse elbow but my index finger gets sore from all the clicking.

Microsoft seems to go out of their way to make the design as unergonomic and hard to use as possible. Glad I retire next year and only have my own computers.