jcl

Unix time will be 1234567890 at 2009-02-13 23:31:30 UTC. (You can view the current Unix time with date +"%s". If you'd like a countdown there's a site or you can use while true; do echo $((1234567890 - `date +"%s"`)); sleep 1; done.)

We might not know where he stands until after the election. On the bright side, if he loses he'll likely be replaced by a moderate and if he wins and genuinely wants improve relations with the US he might be able to use national unity as leverage against the powers that be if they don't support him. Anyway, I don't think there's any need to resolve the situation before the election.

Ahmadinejad's possible flakiness aside, there are two problems: Iran is holding a presidential election in a few months. That raises the possibility that the Ahmadinejad's government will be replaced before the talks could accomplish anything and the possibility that Ahmadinejad is only reaching out to the US to win votes. It's not clear how much influence Ahmadinejad has in the Iranian government.

I don't understand why people believe that. The economy emerges from the economic behavior of every individual in the economy. The only way to control the country's economy is to control the behavior of every single person in the country. The president can't do that. The most the president can do is try to influence people to behave in a way that will produce the economy he desires. Even then he can only succeed by accident because he cannot reliably predict how the economy will react to his actions. That isn't the GOP's policy. Greenspan might have believed that it was his policy but he was

Red Hat, I think.

You're going to keep doing that until someone complains, aren't you? The ICC has no authority in Israel.

The legalization debate is a philosophical debate.

I think the core argument for legalization, the 'presumption of liberty', is essentially irrefutable in the US.

At least there are arguments for legalization.

sudo takes the password for the account you're logged into, doesn't it? I've only seen it ask for a root password once. Check /etc/sudoers. From a quick google it appears that only admins can sudo by default.

Erm, Iraq killed US citizens in the Gulf War. The government has provided probably a dozen explanations for the war and there's likely some truth to all of them. The explanation I favor is that the long term goal -- "long term" meaning decades -- was to create a less hostile political environment in the Middle East by (forcibly) 'westernizing' the entire region. Iraq was targeted because it had no military capabilities to speak of, no real allies in the region, relatively strong internal opposition to the government (e.g., the Kurds and Shiites), no significant Western interests that would be

You're assuming that WMDs were the reason for the war and that the US takes the UN seriously. I expect that the war will end according to the schedule announced last year and whoever is president at the time will get the credit.

It was exactly where it is now. Conservatives have been extremely critical of Bush and the congressional Republicans.

He doesn't need a line-item veto: he can threaten to veto the entire budget if it isn't amended to his liking.

Actually, he made CNN today: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/...er.limbaugh.cnn He's in the news a couple times a year but it's standard political commentary and celebrity scandal stuff. Nothing like the '90s.

You mean Rush Limbaugh? He's a conservative commentator and host of the most popular show on talk radio since the '90s. Apparently neither is the BBC. Rush hasn't been news since the Clinton years.

Because it's France?

I consider XP a minor releases. It was essentially Windows 2000 with a slightly revised user-interface and new branding. Hey, wait a minute.... Vista was fine for the five minutes I used it. I quite like 7.

I think the 'seventh version' almost works a few ways: There have been eight distinct consumer releases of Windows: Windows 1, Windows 2, Windows 3, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. An argument could be made that Windows ME doesn't count because it was a stop-gap until XP was ready. That leaves seven. You could then argue that Windows 95 and 98 should be considered one system (not completely implausible) or that Windows 1 shouldn't count because it wasn't really Windows (a bit dubious, I think) or that Windows Vista and 7 should count as one system because 7

But, but, taskbar. The least stupid explanation I can think of is that by coincidence Windows 7 is the 7th major mass-market system under the Windows brand, the 7th major release of NT and, if you pretended that Windows 7 was a completely new system, it would be Microsoft's 7th operating system. That fact that at most 1.5 of those statements is correct in no way makes that more stupid than the other explanations I've heard. Also, seven is magic.

The crisis is arguably caused by insurance. Insurance effectively increases the wealth of the insured, the market does its thing, and the result is that only the (effectively) wealth can afford health care. There are lots of small clinics in the US that provide very good and affordable service. However, they're funded by the government and target the poor, so it's socially unacceptable for Americans to talk about them. (Case in point: I ignored them in my first paragraph )

I am aware of no government services that benefit that public as a whole. I am not entirely sure that such a thing could exist. I don't know enough about their situation. The government has intervened. The 'medical insurance crisis' is partly the fault of the government. It's not unreasonable to expect the government to address a situation that it helped created. Responsibility and all that. That statement was more sarcastic that it might have appeared. AFAICT, as the word is commonly used, a person is 'responsible' when they do what we want them to do. That's it. Actual moral responsibilit

That is sort of the whole idea of government: it takes people's money and uses it to provide services to the public. There's not much point having a government if everyone who wants to use those services is going to be bludgeoned with the personal responsibility bat.

Linux section of the FAQ, third and fourth Qs.

Hey, WordPad can read and write ODF now. It's progress.