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Taxation is the assertion that my body, my labor and the product of it, are not my own. It is slavery.

No, taxation is the assertion that you have benefited from society and as such are obligated to return something to society. I realize people like you prefer the delusion that you got everything you have based on your own merit, but you didn't. You would not have what you have today without the support of society. And it is specifically b/c of people that refuse to acknowledge that debt that we as a society have to force you to give something back. Or kick you out of our society.

Doesn't the middle class have more products for living a good life than they did 10 years ago?

Yes, there are more goods available, but it costs me a greater percentage of my time (as measured in money earned) to be able to afford even the necessary basics. The middle class has stagnated in terms of buying power, the elite has grown. You still sound like you think the peons should be grateful we still get some crumbs, while your cake gets bigger and better.

I wouldn't hesitate to give to a good charity that addressed these issues, if they were real.

Over half a million homeless in the US, 3.5 million children at risk of malnutrition, and of course the fact that wealth is directly correlated to life expectancy. But you're right, the poor in America are really just upset b/c they don't have as many shiny toys as the rich.

Because most of you spend dozens of hours a week in front of the boob tube, playing video games, social networking and doing other unproductive things with your free time rather than educating yourself or finding more ways to enrich your lives.

I'm sure there are some people stuck in poverty b/c they won't make the effort to get out. Just as there are some that were fortunate enough to get out via luck and hard work. But assuming that everyone stuck at or below the poverty level is just some lazy slob simply isn't true. There are many many studies documenting the reduced class mobility available to the poor and even the middle class.

There is unarguably a growing income disparity in our country. Wealth has an unarguable impact on quality and quantity of life. If you are unaware of these things, it's b/c you prefer to sit around and justify your greed and self-centeredness with wild fantasies about how free markets automagically correlate righteousness with wealth. Hell, you even pretend all advancement is thanks to your pet religion, free market capitalism. Ignoring the many many advancements in technology and societal infrastructure that have come about b/c of government. Space program, Internet, fundamental medical research? Government. You admit that capitalism relies on marketability, without acknowledging that this is a fundamental weakness when it comes to the basic research necessary to promote science. You ignore that the rewards of capitalism are more often than not negatively correlated with ethics. You ignore that capitalism as mixed with human nature is inherently bad at self-regulation and long term sustainability. You ignore the inability to properly deal with externalities. Capitalism is a wonderful tool, but it has strengths and weaknesses. Utilizing a separate tool, government, to offset some of those weakness is neither immoral nor foolish.

You're aware that you're talking about Julian Assange, right? Spend the next ten minutes trying to work out a scenario wherein someone sics lawyers on him, finds him (that is, gets through the layers of paranoia embedded deep within him to hide his location and activities), hauls his ass back to whatever jurisdiction is needed for legal proceedings,

You're not informed, because his current location is known and he is pending extradition to Sweden at the very moment:

"Assange must wear an electronic tag, report to police every day and observe a curfew. He also must stay at a registered address - a 10-bedroom mansion in eastern England owned by Vaughan Smith, a WikiLeaks supporter and founder of London's Frontline Club for journalists."

and ultimately manages to get five hundred thousand quid out of him sometime EARLIER than the next twenty-five years (money which, inevitably, has already been spent).

This is the most difficult part. However, supposedly the money is in escrow to pay for his lawyers, so it really depends on who has rights to it first. Common sense says the people who gave it to him under contract should get it first, but the law isn't always common sense.

Anyways, I agree that publishing was the smart thing to do, despite all of the above. I was just correcting the misconception that Assange is some master of concealment that could disappear like a ghost.

I was referring to independent studies, like this:

Report: Government spends billions more hiring contractors over public workers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/01/climate.change

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming...-it-stopped-in-1998.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/05/scitech/main20076934.shtml

"Scientists have come up with a possible explanation for why the rise in Earth's temperature paused for a bit during the 2000s, one of the hottest decades on record."

Wow, a voluntary do not track program -- that'll catch on. The only reason the Do Not Call List worked out ok was because there were penalties for not using it and even then there was abuse and numerous work arounds and loopholes.

Mr. Wadhwa should really learn to find out the full story before he goes ranting. I believe the original source of this story is probably: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/14/eveningnews/main20071167.shtml

I know you are just an IT guy doing what you are told, but you are still responsible for your actions, and in this case your actions have a negative impact on the children in your school district.

You say that like it's unusual. Having worked for a K-12 system I can tell you that the vast majority of the staff (teachers included) are more interested in personal power politics within the system, and the children and their education are, at best, a second thought. I was thoroughly disgusted with the entire thing and I have absolutely zero respect for the school system due to it. If I ever decide to have kids they will be home-schooled, at least then I know someone who gives a damn whether they learn anything or not will be responsible for their education.

Also, I'd rather become homeless than work for a K-12 system ever again. There's no way to fix that corruption beyond firing everyone involved and starting over. While not from Georgia, I was completely unsurprised about the recent cheating scandal in Atlanta schools. From my experiences that kind of stuff is the norm, not the exception. Unfortunately most of it's just simply neglect, so whistle blowing doesn't help as nothing actually illegal's going on. Plus the teachers unions will fight tooth and nail to prevent anything being changed.

Just this month, Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for taking a $1 million bribe from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a case that became known as "kids for cash.". http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/11/national/main20091371.shtml

This can happen to your kids too! I am so sick of all of the "unique snowflake" crap from people on here saying the schools and state should be able to do whatever they want to my kids to get them "in line". We homeschool all of our kids, are extremely respectful to all of them and treat them with the same respect and dignity I want for myself. I will never send them off to be harassed by the state and turned into a tool for the elites or a cog in the wheel. They live their lives along with us in the "real world" and are charting their own course rather than the one defined by the government, political, religious and corporate sponsors of education.

that would be Oscar
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/01/health/main6162157.shtml

how creepy is that though?
"oh shit, the cat's here"

not less than 5 people in order to push Berlusconi away from me?
I need a longer, much longer separation from him as I have two teen daughters.

Just try it sometime - enable Instant and type "sex" into the bar. It will not display results.

OK, I did that. Typed 'sex', did NOT press Enter or click anything, and within 0.5 second got an ad for 'naughty local girls' along with a full page of sex-related stuff. Proceeded to type 'tant' and got what I needed in the first place.

Typed 'kill' and got suggestions and search done on that. Proceeded to type 'een' and got the stuff about the city in Texas.

This experiment failed to reveal a filter. I was not logged in and I was using standard, default settings. The browser was IE9. Besides, I doubt very much that Google would know all NSFW fragments of all languages on Earth, in all encodings.

One of concerns is that the cache of your browser will be searched and used against you if something happens.

We aren't yet at the stage when your searches can trigger the police response, but it's getting there. There is no need to make "the man's" job easier. As had been said by a competent specialist: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." That part hasn't changed.

At work your searches go through the corporate filter; we had one at the last place (a big company) that I worked at. The whole 'sex' page would be blocked by that filter, with logs and all. How would you prove to your boss that your search was innocent? The filter has no reason to log traffic that it doesn't block, so your search of 'sextant' a second later won't be logged.

As I see it, instant search doesn't help (at least me) to get results faster. It only helps Google to claim 10x more searches done. In reality, most of the intermediate searches are a waste of resources. For example, all intermediate searches in "internal combustion engine in prius" are useless until the last word is entered. It doesn't help that one of suggestions after "internal" is "internal hemorroids."

This has a direct analogy IRL. A few people like to reply to someone's speech before the speaker finishes. It is rarely welcome or productive. Humanity worked out a simple protocol: listen to the complete statement, think about it, voice your answer. Google here tries to answer before you are done asking. When it's not pointless it is simply distracting; sometimes it is also disturbing, disgusting or otherwise unwelcome (and unrelated to your query.)

Might as well be a new meme for the crazies such as yourself who just toss the name around and don't even know what you're whining about.

Yeah, I know. Crazies like me never know what they're talking about.

They also specifically called out the lack of a credible plan to address the main drivers of projected spending growth: SS and Medicare.

My opinion is that if the U.S. had passed $4T in projected deficit reduction (instead of the $2.3T it did) and had made up some small portion of that (say, $800B) in the form of additional revenue, then the downgrade wouldn't have happened. S&P did announce ahead of time that it wanted to see $4T in projected deficit reduction or else a downgrade would probably be forthcoming.

Worth noting that Obama called for something similar, albeit with a 3:1 ratio of spending to revenue, on April 12.

You are correct. The current administration does have power.

Same experience. I like Lion, it's just a ton of nice little tweaks and everything else just works. Spaces... it actually works *and* I can set different desktops. Hidden scrollbars... awesome, my monitor is bigger.

And regarding the censorship, you're absolutely right.

From TFS:

Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'

Yeah, because here on /., posts that are hopelessly offtopic are never modded down to death. Are you fucking kidding me, you're really whining that idiotic comments were deleted? Let's do a test, I'll go to CBS news (a typical news site with unmoderated comments) and click the first story I see. Yup, sure enough, the comments are completely fucking retarded.

Ever wonder how many fewer women and children would be sold into slavery if prostitution were less tolerated? You think if brothels were legal and well regulated that the sex slaves would be a thing of the past? In Amsterdam on the fringes, many of the women are slaves. Sure, in the legal brothels, the women do it willingly, but if you think the only prostitutes in Amsterdam are in the legal brothels you are naive or stupid. Any place where prostitution is legal or tolerated, there are more sex slaves.

The companies don't need to move overseas, they just need to take in revenue through an offshore shell. How do you think multinational companies like GE pay negative taxes?

Really? Someone believing that god created us in our present form is not a religious nutjob? That's the majority right there.

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

And the people talking about "tax cuts for billionaires" routinely forget to include the fact that the Bush tax cuts cut taxes for _everyone_. In fact, the bulk of the expense of those tax cuts is coming from the lower brackets, not the highest.

Sigh. Another misinformed, deliberately moronic Tea Partier on the loose.

The Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy, plain and simple.

This is confirmed years later. The top 1% of earners laughed all the way to the bank taking a WHOPPING 38% of the benefit from the Bush tax cuts.

So no, the "bulk" of the expense is not coming from those lower brackets. Feel free to go fuck yourself.

What if the name Dennis was fashionable among the upper-middle class during the years the current generation of dentist was born, leading to a significantly higher propensity for a high-investment, high-income career for the children ?
The guys of Freakonomics explained how children names become fashionable among the upper classes, and are then emulated by the lower classes; the upper classes then move to new names as the old names become mundane. Slutty names like Bambi and Brandy were at one point all the rage. Incidentally, they point to a study where identical CVs get 50% less callbacks when they belong to people named Tyrone and Lakisha.

US still need to work a lot. 51% of americans do not believe in evolution.

Wow! That correlates quite nicely with the statistical probability that 51% of Americans are below average intelligence.

Jus' sayin'...

US still need to work a lot. 51% of americans do not believe in evolution.

A lot of work has been put into conversational doublespeak such that the same word "believe" is used for both:

1) Irrational brainwashed notions to be assumed unthinkingly as fact; evidence is irrelevant because if in support, duh, if not in support, its just devil testing the viewer.

2) Scientific bets made using this theory haven't been proven wrong yet, despite immense intellectual effort, so its unlikely to be proven completely wrong in the future.

It's intentional that conversations are phrased that way... keeps the masses under control and unthinking.

Personally I don't "believe" in evolution either, at least not in the first sense above. I think its about 1e100 times more likely that evolution is correct than any one of the ten thousand mutually incompatible known non-extinct religions is correct.

US still need to work a lot. 51% of americans do not believe in evolution.

In fact, the Tea Party has threatened Republicans who have tried to make a deal with President Obama over raising the debt limit.

That's flat-out not true. There's no issue with working with Obama to find a compromise on what to cut. No, the issue is with the President's insistence on raising taxes.

For a deal to be accepted, it must not raise taxes, period. That's the sticking point. Obama insists on raising taxes on the very people who would grow our economy. And it's that threat that's killing our economy and preventing job growth.

There's no issue with working with Obama, so please don't say that. The issue has been and always will be Obama trying to do a stealth tax hike. As long as Obama stops trying to raise taxes behind the voters' backs, there's no reason a deal can't be found.

This is completely wrong. The Republican Party is terrified of the Tea Party, which has repudiated Republicans such as John Boehner and Lindsey Graham. In fact, the Tea Party has threatened Republicans who have tried to make a deal with President Obama over raising the debt limit. Furthermore, the extreme positions of the Tea Party has undermined Republican efforts to reach out to the mainstream and independent voters. TP Michelle Bauchmann claiming that slavery was good for black families is not what the Republican Party needs at this juncture. There is probably nothing more the Republicans want at this point than to be separated from the Tea Party.

The Google+ app also crashes immediately after signing in and clicking on Stream under iOS5. Apparently version 1.0.1.1809 was supposed to be more stable. Unfortunately that's the version that's also crashing for me under iOS 5.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20080767-501465.html

I remember a time of "bleeding heart liberals giving it all away", a.k.a. Democrats, now a couple of billionaires, ( a.k.a. the koch brother's ) seem to think that America should live like other 4th world countries is a good thing. Once voters start connecting the events together, and vote accordingly, then the family Kock will go back to molesting clams. But I think this is going to take awhile; there appears to be a lot of White Old Angry People who have found common ground with Koch's, that's until they need medical help.

Instead of PayPal.. I think the mobile phone payment system may get some traction. Even vending machines at work have that option now.

If you are one to give any credence to biblical prophecies, the chip in the cell phone will be moved where it can't be lost of stolen. It will be placed in the hand or forehead. After cash no longer exists, nobody will be able to buy or sell without the ID. It will be referred to as the mark of the beast.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/22/tech/main631231.shtml
Vending machines at work and the ticket booth at the local cinema has this up and running now. It is NOT Paypal. Paypal will be toast unless they change.

needs to be shut down!

Why would they shut it down when they've gotten 80% of Americans to approve of the invasion of our privacy?

Apparently, Americans deserve neither liberty nor safety

What I'd like to know, is why he keeps dodging the question of medical marijuana when it's THE most requested question...

From what I've seen he hasn't been dodging the question at all, he's just not giving you the answer you want. He has flat out stated more than once that he is against legalizing marijuana.

Not sure I would agree with the term "in bed with", but anyway, up to the mid 80's the south was solidly controlled by Democrats. The south is also where you find local economies and jobs being driven by the oil industry. So, now that the Republicans solidly control the south, they are speaking up for the companies that provide jobs in their districts.

Take a look at statements recently made by Democrat Senator from Louisiana Mary Landrieu in regards to the ban on drilling in the gulf. Not saying all southern Democrats are for drilling, but you will certainly find more in the south than anywhere else.

It is a "jobs for my constituents" thing, not a "in bed with" thing.

Full disclosure, I'm from Houston, TX and have (in the past) worked in the oil industry.'

As for the flip flopping of labels over the last "many" years, I agree that they have flipped but not with your description of their current definitions. I would summarize it as:
Conservatives today believe in limited government and states rights, at the base of the movement, not all "Republicans" are conservative, of course.
Liberals, or Progressives, believe in a strong federal government to such a point that leaders such as Nancy Pelosi make statements that Food Stamps have more "bang for the buck" than creating actual jobs.

You can probably tell by my summary where I stand :)

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20027668-10391704.html

During last year's federal battle over President Obama's health care legislation, some Republicans claimed his program promoted "death panels" which they seemed to suggest would involve government bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies.

The health care bill did include language which paid doctors to offer end-of-life counseling. That was eventually removed.

Facing a tough budget situation, however, Arizona has instituted what critics say is much closer to these so-called "death panels" than anything that ever appeared in the federal government's health care legislation.

Or even a transparent government.

If he did, you gotta wonder how he lasted 2 1/2 years....

In the US they use your phone or in nav system.
http://www.zdnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/150467
With the new GPS rules and very friendly telcos, expect ever more data to be available to the FBI with less oversight.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/us/13fbi.html ie. expect to be of interest after 'five meetings of a group" and enjoy terms like "preliminary investigation", “proactively” ect.
Or just fix a device to your car as a nice and legal "tracking beacon" that lasts for months.
China did good with the use of the case via the resonant cavity idea and having lots of legal electronics that phone home by default.
No need to hope the suspects bring their own always on Apple/Google/MS toys.
Catching 100% was just silly. Learn from the US gun walking efforts http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20040189-503544.html - track that shipment.
Then use passive 'bad luck" at the end or COINTELPRO to weaken the group as they hunt for an informer.

Whilst - purely coincidentally - completely avoiding paying Wikileaks anything for any of these files, from Afghanistan to the US State Dept's opposition to the Haitian government daring to propose a raise in their minimum wage up to 59/hour. (Not by that much, but to that much)

You do realize that Paul Revere was captured on his ride and did warn the British that they would not be able to take away the colonists' guns?

Meh, it's a stretch. But try and fix this one: "Obviously, we gotta stand with our North Korean allies."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20023899-503544.html

Once upon a time, Haiti was going to increase their minimum wage from $0.24/hour to $0.61/hour. Levi Strauss and Hanes (among others) didn't like that, so the US State Department pressuredHaiti to create an exemption for textile workers.

The only reason anyone knows that happened is because of wikileaks.

(CBS/AP) SCRANTON, Pa. - Former juvenile court judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted in an alleged "kids for cash" scheme that accused him and another judge of sending youth offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illicit payments from the builder and owner of the lockups. ...

I see your Stargate: Atlantis and raise you real life.

"When all you've got is an iPhone, everything starts to look like you're getting screwed."

Sure does.

That's how the situation plays out with Monsanto IP. If you're growing crops which contain their IP, then you're going to pay. The courts side with the bio-techs every time. The system is fixed in favor of the bio-techs and firmly against the farmers.

Here's a mainstream story about it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20034694-504083.html

That's the first one that comes to mind, although I'm certain it happens elsewhere, but hasn't seen the light of public scrutiny.

then I trust the free market to make the right decision and choose the seed that is best for the food supply.

That, actually, is a mistake in an era of regulatory capture and corporatism. You think that only applies to the phone company and ISPs?

Screwmaster's This sentiment is correct. Monsanto, specifically, has been suing farms not using their seeds as well. Here's the details:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goliath_and_David:_Monsanto's_Legal_Battles_against_Farmers

http://nelsonfarm.net/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml

So much for a free market...

- Dan.

Well, for one thing, they have medical care that's better than ours in hospitals that are better and more comfortable than ours filled with doctors that benefited from America's excellent medical education system.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/21/60minutes/main689998.shtml

I saw this on the telly 6 years ago. Some important bits: medical care in Thailand costs about 1/8th of what it costs here, and labor and malpractice insurance are cheaper in Thailand, so that keeps costs low.

Or how about India, where a hospital visit is 1/10th the cost?

The article is a very good read. Even if you factor in the cost of a plane ticket you end up saving a lot of money.

I agree completely. Someone should tell Newt Gingrich.

There is also another article at the linked site which I found informative.

"Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government's ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23."

- from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/26/politics/main20066686.shtml

In Saudi Arabia, and most of the middle east, it has prohibited the use of aerial photography which includes satalite based version. To enforce this they just don't issue the archaeology licences to people who do this. That however doesn't stop someone else from using google earth to do it. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20032043-501465.html I suspect part of this is because of the change of government in Egypt which has allowed this type of research to slip though.

Not quite "homeowner", but police killed their mayor's dogs a few years ago. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/08/national/main4331948.shtml Google mayor dogs shot raid for more.

'I have a plane,' Cuban quipped. 'I bought it so I could use it. Shocking, isn't it?'

That was just awesome. As far as google goes they have a right to do whatever they want but don't at the same time expect anyone to think Google is somehow different or less 'evil' than any other large corporation. How rediculous the following 60 minutes piece seems today.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063.shtml