freedom

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals? more …

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors

Some things truly amaze me, among them:

• The number of people who think Sarah Palin would be a great president. If you vote for McCain/Palin that’s essentially what you believe.
• The number of people who think that Creationism should be taught in schools alongside Evolution. A vote for McCain/Palin will practically assure that it will be.
• The number of people with bumper stickers on their car that say; “Smile your mother chose life.”. Unless you were born after 1973 your mother had no choice. She could keep you, put you up for adoption or go to a back alley butcher. A vote for McCain/Palin could send women back to those days.
• The number of people who think Global Warming is a theory. A vote for McCain/Palin says that’s exactly what you believe.

Look up Sarah Palin’s beliefs, she’s no Hillary Clinton. This would not be a step forward for women but a step backward.

Remember freedom isn’t only about what you believe. In a free society each one of us has the right to make our own decisions based on our own individual beliefs. You can believe what ever you want but when it begins infringing on my beliefs it’s no longer freedom.

Wikipedia says:

Political freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. The members of a free society would have full dominion over their public and private lives. The opposite of a free society would be a totalitarian state, which highly restricts political freedom in order to regulate almost every aspect of behavior. In this sense ‘freedom’ refers solely to the relation of men to other men, and the only infringement on it is coercion by men.

As Voltaire said to Rousseau:

“I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”.

This was one of the most moving speeches I have ever read. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to hear him give it.

Netflix discriminates against Mac users. Apparently they are offering premium services that Mac users must pay for as part of their regular monthly service fees. However the  services are only available to those running Windows on a PC.
Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com of Macopinion comments on the new iTunes/AppleTV

Recently Netflix even announced they are expanding their own digital download service. Now subscribers get all the downloads they want for no additional fee!

I have no idea how Netflix can support this. Surely the bandwidth has a
cost and the studios would want a fee for each download (Apple
supposedly makes very little on downloads), so I can only assume that
Netflix is doing this at a loss to promote their download service and
keep customers from defecting to iTunes. The interesting twist is that
if the movie studios are cooperating with Netflix to offer flat-rate
viewing, then that is something Apple could negotiate as well.

Unfortunately Netflix’s “instant viewing” feature is only for
Windows users as Netflix foolishly built their system upon Microsoft’s
proprietary DRM. This is a kick-in-the-teeth for Mac users who pay the
same subscription fees but don’t benefit from the service.

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Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2007 8:20:01 AM by Paul DavisSeems Comcast thinks that they can interfere with your web usage on their network. Apparently, if you have Comcast, you no longer are paying to use the bandwidth as you want - Comcast has determined various applications and services just aren’t allowed. Things like peer-to-peer file sharing, other VOIP providers, Lotus email and FTP.

Comcast is being bad.