Slashdot Mirror

What are you basing this on? One or two proposed aspects of a tax code?

Here is the big picture: wealth redistribution is real, and has occurred at a rapid pace since the inception of Reaganomics. The beneficiaries are the ultra-rich. And why should this surprise anybody? "Supply-side economics" is a synonym for wealth redistribution to the rich, under the presumption they are the smart ones and know best how to spend it.

Here are a couple stats from this article:
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hourly wage of the average American non-supervisory worker is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1970. Meanwhile, CEO pay has soared -- from less than thirty times the average wage to almost 300 times the typical worker's pay.

So, there is your wealth redistribution.

Ummm..last I knew a maverick was a wild horse-do we want a wild horse in the White House?

Wild horses or not, I'm not interested in seeing those two in the White House.

Rolling Stone has an interesting article about John McCain, the make-believe maverick and how he came to claim that title.

Ummm..last I knew a maverick was a wild horse-do we want a wild horse in the White House?

Wild horses or not, I'm not interested in seeing those two in the White House.

Rolling Stone has an interesting article about John McCain, the make-believe maverick and how he came to claim that title.

Even if Gore would have unilaterally invaded Iraq without seeking a world-wide consensus first, do you think that he would have invaded with a woefully inadequately-sized force that could not secure the peace? Do you think he would have disbanded the Iraqi police and military after seizing power, so that you'll have hundreds of thousands of jobless men trained to use weapons? Do you think he would have de-Baathed Iraq so that all the doctors and schoolteachers lost their jobs because you had to swear allegiance to the Baath party in order to have any important job? Do you think he wouldn't have had a plan set up to rebuild Iraq promptly and restore order so that it wouldn't devolve into a clusterfuck of neglect and lawlessness?

I think any sane person fighting a war would have done all of those things. Gore would have; Bush did not. Even assuming everything you said, Bush winning the election was a terrible tragedy for this country.

And there's reason to believe that the narrow gaps in the elections were not mistakes. According to tools we use to monitor the validity of foreign elections, the 2004 election was rigged. It may be the case that 269 votes was NOT the difference after all.

This was in the coming.
See Naomi Klein a few months ago.

Its our responsibility to rally against paperless voting machines. I think the general public equates electronic voting with newfangled, unnecessary, geeky stuff that in the end doesn't work. It's not tech's fault, its the way it was implemented. Nerds should all be voicing contempt that for such a simple technical challenge America has failed so utterly. One message we should all be delivering, in unison, is that electronic voting is easy, saves the government time and money, and is more reliable as long as we have 1) paper trail (easily scanned), 2) encryption and secure programming, 3) physical security. Why don't I hear that more often from sites like this, or every time a nerd is interviewed by the press?

So who paid Blender more Money than Rolling Stone?

And Disney does not make use of this meaningless marketing machine?

Perhaps he's talking about the huge discrepancy between the exit polls and recorded vote in Ohio. Which is the state discussed in TFA. Well, maybe he's also thinking about some of the other anomalies in the 2000, 2002, 2004, and even the 2006 elections as well.

When a foreign country has even a minor discrepancy between the exit polls and the recorded vote, we insist the election was fraudulent and demand a new election. In the USA, however, we just don't release the exit polls, and say they were "flawed". In the 2004 elections in Ohio, for example, one county declared they had a terrorist threat and couldn't allow anyone but a select few (republican) vote counters to see the ballots. Of course, they can't tell you what the terrorist threat was, but they say that it was really, really serious. Nothing suspicious about that... Move along now, nothing to see here.

What happens when the work that makes the sound waves is interactive? In that case, the instructions to make the sound wave don't ever need to leave the player.

So, that would involve turning all movies, TV series, and songs into games? No doubt there will be some of that format in the future but can't see it being the preferred method of generating (or consuming) content.

Capturing the sound wave just captures one playing of the work, and replaying that over and over can get boring.

Boring? There are a lot of films, TV shows, and even more so music that people watch watch/listen to over and over again.
And there are enough people driving cars while interacting over their cell phones that I wouldn't want to see what would happen if they were also interacting with the music.

Could be wrong but I think "boring" non-interactive forms of entertainment will always be the the norm.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Rolling Stone magazine just had a big story about how Facebook was itself stolen in the first place.

It looks like from older sources that the CEO was traveling with a technician who actually installed the patch. The technician has since thought that it was an unusual thing to be doing. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked/2 "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."

I don't know if this was posted on slashdot before and I'm too lazy to look, but this article from Rolling Stone about the founder of Facebook seems far more interesting than a slashdotted hour long flash presentation.

Fortenberry told a story about a nephew of his who called him up one night. "Both of his kids had fallen on the ground in respiratory distress, half-conscious, writhing around, gasping for air," Fortenberry said. "And I said to my nephew, I said, 'It isn't something they've done. It's something you've done.' "

The crowd murmured in assent.

"I told my nephew to look around the house," Fortenberry continued. "I said, 'Do you have a copy of Harry Potter?' And he said yes. And I said, 'That's your problem.' So I told him to go get that copy of that book, tear it in half and throw it out the window. So he does it, and guess what? Both of those kids stood up completely recovered, just like that."

He snapped his fingers, indicating the speed with which the kids had jumped up in recovery. The crowd cooed and applauded. I frowned, wondering for a minute what life must be like for a person mortally afraid of toothless commercial fairy tales. It struck me that Phil Fortenberry's nephew was probably more afraid of Harry Potter than Macbeth, which to me said a lot about this religion and about America in general. -- http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/print

There was a very interesting article in Rolling Stone recently regarding China's use of such technology in their ermerging hyper-surveillance society.

Poetry!

Yet, consider this: "No campfire shit ever in the Hives" - http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/03/10/photo-gallery-step-into-the-hives-tour-bus/

Stipe says that comment about the Beatles was taken out of context.[mp3 file]

Link to RS story...
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/03/12/exclusive-audio-rem-talks-you-listen.

You've got a lot of information, but you've got it wrong. The Bricks of cash on palets, mentioned here, among other places, were supposed to pay civilian contractors aiding in the reconstruction efforts. Accounting practices bordering on criminal have allowed some sickening war profiteering, and certainly some of that money ended up in Iraqi hands, but since the Iraqis are the actual workers, I'm not too concerned.

It is, after all, unavoidable when the goal of spending all that money is to rebuild Iraq.

There have been accusations of Coalition commanders paying off Afghani warlords to not attack their bases, and that, I agree with you, is entirely unacceptable. That no-one has been brought up on charges for the practice yet (to my knowledge?) - is something to be pissed about.

You've got no arguements with me over the scary implications of what Blackwater, or similar private mercenary groups, could do. I like to think they realize they stand a whole lot better chance of long-term business if their primary employer stays internally stable, but you never know.

-----------

On to Iran:

New IED's Made in Iran. These are currently the most feared and effective weapons in the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres.

Terrorist training camps, In Iran. Remember we went to war in Afghanistan over this one.

"Israel will be Annhilated". This is a good enough reason for me why Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons.

----

While I agree with most of your points about how we should be watching our own government much more closely than we should be watching Iran, I disagree with your conclusions. We've had recurring problems in the Middle East because our economic concerns (competing with the Soviet Union, taking natural resources, etc.) - involve screwing over the Middle East at every oppourtunity. The leadership of the Middle East realizes this and is rightfully pissed off about it.

This is why major problems crop up every ten or twenty years, the goal of US foreign policy is to keep the middle east more or less destabilized.

Of course, every once in a while all this nonsense creates a situation that might actually be threatening to the US, like Afghanistan, or a nuclear-armed Iran. We have to deal with it.

Autism symptoms don't develop at 2 months, the time when the first vaccine is mandated.

Or, heck, even at birth, now that Hep-B shots before leaving the hospital are all the rage.

With "factual analysis" by morons like you backing them up, it's little wonder crap statistical analyses like "this doesn't cause Autism" is the major focus, when spending the money on finding out what *does* cause it would be real science, but that ain't happenin'.

If you had half a brain cell to rub together, you might also be interested in this article, which has not been refuted by anyone. You'd think such a damning article would merit some sort of legal reaction due to the blatant accusations clearly laid out by the article's author in a national magazine. But keep your head in the sand -- besides helping you avoid seeing anything, it puts your ass right where the overlords like it.

Kurt Cobain was one of the most important musicians in the 90's IMHO. But you should not take it from me. The guy put 80's glam rockstars jobless practically overnight and put grunge in the spotlight. OTOH just take a look at these links and think about what have You just said:
  http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11028260/the_rs_500_greatest_songs_of_all_time
  http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/q1001_songs.htm
  http://www.the-top-tens.com/lists/top-ten-songs-of-all-time.asp

"I believe we all know who the *real* criminals are."

Ooooh! Ooooh! Ooooooooh! is it the 59,945 people Rudy Giuliani put in jail for smoking pot?!?!?

Yeah, I haven't bought a 'label' CD for myself in nearly 8 years now. I've bought a couple as gifts, but that's all. Of course, helping this is that most CDs are total crap. Even the remastered copies of old good albums are total crap as they have just cranked up the wave forms, sliced off the top and bottom, all in the effort to make it sound louder. It sounds like poo. For example, the new Led Zepplin "Mothership" is horrible. Nice writeup about this at http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity

I think you need to read more carefully.

Quoth Jobs:

When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content.

...

What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that.

...

We said: These [music subscription] services that are out there now are going to fail. Music Net's gonna fail, Press Play's gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45's; then they bought LP's; then they bought cassettes; then they bought 8-tracks; then they bought CD's. They're going to want to buy downloads. People want to own their music.

He didn't actually use the words "Digital Rights Management", but I think his position in 2003 was crystal clear. DRM is not going to work in the long term. I'll say one thing for Jobs: his view of the near future is extremely good, and unlike most corporate types, he has no mental investment in his point of view. He understands the difference between sunk cost and new costs, and he watches technology evolution constantly then branches in new direction like a speed skater picking a line. He doesn't keep throwing money at bad ideas.

you're missing the point entirely. What you say would be relevant if the drug war actually reduced the use (or even increased the price) of hardcore drugs. But it doesn't. It won't stop a single person from sniffing coke or shooting smack or speed or freakin' ayahuasca. If anything, it made hardcore drug use more common, cheaper, and deadlier. The war on pot in the 70s led smugglers to turn to cocaine, which was far easier to transport in larger quantities. The war on coke in the 80s was successful in hitting the major cartel but guess what? The drug economy became a hydra-headed monster and new smugglers popped up all over central and south America ... the coke trade continued to flourish after a brief setback when the price went up but it quickly came back down (it's now cheaper than it was in 1979), and in the meantime Mexican smugglers decided to start dealing meth instead because they didn't need to rely on Colombian sources. Meth has since become a brutal epidemic. I don't mean to boil everything down to a single cause - there are a lot of other issues involved - but it is resoundingly clear that the drug war has been an absolute failure it achieving its goals. There's a great article in a recent issue of Rolling Stone that discusses some of this historically if you care to learn about this. But I think we're past the point where we can make the statement with a straight face that a particular drug is particularly bad, therefore it should be illegal.

No no, he's got a good point. He might not even know it, really, but he's right.

In this case it might be one of those "Stopped clocks right twice a day" scenarios though. I don't know.

Despite the source, This Article is depressingly accurate. Having been over there (A couple months in Baghdad, a couple more on a podunk FOB in Afghanistan) - I can tell you contractors are paid massive amounts of money, and the companies behind those contractors are being paid even more just to ensure people are on the ground. They negotiate a number of slots to fill with the government, and get paid for filling them, regardless of whether the people filling those slots can actually do the job or not.

Some Bureaucrat in the states then sits back and collects the money for it. And if one of those civilians gets blown along the way?

Chances are their boss laughs about it all the way to the bank.

While it doesn't do this exact type of analysis, Rolling Stone make a pretty convincing case that there was some serious meddling going on in the Ohio election in 2004.

I don't doubt the law is well-meaning. But, we all know where good intentions get us. I predict it will stop kiddie porn about as well as the drug war stops drugs. And it is 100% certain that laws like this lead to enormous side costs, while doing nothing to stop the action itself. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17438347/how_america_lost_the_war_on_drugs

Radiohead is very well known. Three of their albums made it onto the Rolling Stone "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2003, for what it's worth:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6598668 ("The Bends" at #110)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6599036 ("OK Computer" at #162)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6626855 ("Kid A" at #428)

Radiohead is very well known. Three of their albums made it onto the Rolling Stone "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2003, for what it's worth:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6598668 ("The Bends" at #110)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6599036 ("OK Computer" at #162)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6626855 ("Kid A" at #428)

Radiohead is very well known. Three of their albums made it onto the Rolling Stone "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2003, for what it's worth:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6598668 ("The Bends" at #110)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6599036 ("OK Computer" at #162)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6626855 ("Kid A" at #428)

What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions.

We said: These [music subscription] services that are out there now are going to fail. Music Net's gonna fail, Press Play's gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45's; then they bought LP's; then they bought cassettes; then they bought 8-tracks; then they bought CD's. They're going to want to buy downloads. People want to own their music. You don't want to rent your music -- and then, one day, if you stop paying, all your music goes away.

And, you know, at 10 bucks a month, that's $120 a year. That's $1,200 a decade. That's a lot of money for me to listen to the songs I love. It's cheaper to buy, and that's what they're gonna want to do.

They didn't see it that way. There were people running around -- business-development people -- who kept pointing out AOL as the great model for this and saying: No, we want that -- we want a subscription business. We said: It ain't gonna work.

Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain some credibility with these folks. And they started to say: You know, you're right on these things -- tell us more.

Nice troll.

http://www.rockonthenet.com/archive/2000/vh1hardrock.htm
#1 in "VH1: 100 Greatest Hard Rock Artists"

http://www.avrev.com/bands/
#1 in "AVRev Top Ten Rock Bands of All Time"

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939214/the_immortals_the_first_fifty
#14 on "The Immortals: The First Fifty"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4595384/
#6 in "The 10 best rock bands ever"

http://classicrock.about.com/od/recommendationsandreviews/a/top100_bands.htm
#5 in "Top 50 Classic Rock Bands"

Then again, 4 years ago the pollsters were all wrong.

Or were they ?

Really ?

In practical reality, our society relies on corporate input to serve the people as well as accumulate wealth in the country.

No. The sole desire of large publicly-traded corporations is to grow, not to "serve the people". And the wealth they accumulate goes to a minority owning class, doing little for most of the country.

(Yes, there's some trickle down. But the fact that poor people can benefit by eating scraps out of the trash cans of the nobility, is no reason to not overthrow the fsckers (peacefully, of course) and institute a more just system where nobody has to eat out of trash cans.)

The corporations do not rule the people.

The corporations rule the government. (Yes, the linked story is from 2005. Let's not pretend things are fundamentally different with Democrats in the majority.) The government, by definition, rules the people.

The government is not out to get you.

Me specifically? Proabably not. (Well, other than that it would put me away for years if it had evidence of all of my "crimes" of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.)

But the government is clearly willing to screw over the middle class and the working class to the benefit of the wealthy.

And it's clearly willing to screw political dissidents who might change the power structure - I direct you to the Church report on COINTELPRO activity, which found that "covert action programs have been used to disrupt the lawful political activities of individual Americans and groups and to discredit them, using dangerous and degrading tactics which are abhorrent in a free and decent society."

Don't pretend it can't happen here - it already has. Many times.

They even had a non-partisan group do a recount after the fact, and the paper trail showed that Bush in fact did win Florida.

No.

Data from the NORC recount shows that under the legal standard in force at the time, the "intent of the voter", more ballots were cast for Gore than for Bush.

As the Washington Post admitted (though only deep into an article whose headline and lead tells how recounts would have favored Bush):

Under several scenarios examined by the consortium, and using a standard in which two of the three reviewers agreed on the markings on each ballot, Gore emerged with more votes than Bush.

The overvotes that could have provided the margin for Gore were on ballots where voters tried to be extra-clear in their choice and ended up nullifying the vote. They filled in the oval next to a candidate and then filled in the oval for "write-in" and wrote the same candidate's name again.

...

The narrowest margin, according to the study, came under a scenario in which at least one corner of a chad was detached from punch-card ballots -- the prevailing standard across the state of Florida at the time -- or any mark on the optical scan ballots showing clear voter intent. In that case, the study showed Gore with 60 votes more than Bush.

Gore's margin grows under three other scenarios. Under the least-restrictive standard for interpreting voter intent, which counted all dimpled chads and any discernible optical mark (which in the case of optical ballots Florida's new election law now requires to be counted as votes), Gore had 107 more votes.

Gore's margin rose to 115 votes in the study under a tighter standard, calling for chads to be fully punched and a more restrictive interpretation of what constitutes a valid mark on optical scan ballots.

But this is one case where disagreements among the reviewers affected the outcome. Gore won under this scenario when two of the reviewers agree on the markings. Under a standard in which all three were required to agree, Bush won by 219 votes.

Gore's largest margin in a statewide recount involving all ballots comes under a scenario that sought to recreate the standards established by each of the counties in their recounts. In that case, Gore emerged with 171 more votes than Bush.

That's not even taking into account the inclusion of illegitimate absentee ballots that favored Bush, or the illegal disenfranchisement of likely Gore voters, or the poorly-designed and illegal "butterfly ballots" in Palm Beach.

It also appears that, emboldened by their success in Florida in 2000, the Bush camp went on to conduct massive vote fraud in Ohio in 2004, quite possibly enough to steal the election there.

uh oh, forgot to put on the flame retardant overcoat before I said that

Not meant as a flame. The corporate mainstream media did in fact report as if the recount favored Bush, by focusing on what recounts were demanded under Gore's strategy rather than the question of what ballots were actually cast.

But it is clear that in Florida in 2000, more voters went to the polls intending to vote for Gore; despite intimidation and illegal purges of the voter rolls, more voters got to the voting booth intending to vote for Gore; and despite bad balloting technology and practices (which disproportionately affected poor neighborhoods, making a mockery of "equal protection"), more voters voted for Gore than voted for Bush.

But the GOP played better politics than the spineless, gonad-less, soulless thing that is all that remains of the Democratic Party. And so came the point the historians will mark as the end of the

The DJ known as "BT" (Brian Transeau) went through a similar situation, although it was some unknown burglar as opposed to an armed robbery. He too, did not make a backup (stupid, stupid, stupid). Hello, you're a techno-geek, the first think you think of is "how do I back up my Peter Gabriel collaboration tracks". Duh! http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bt/articles/story/5919472/bts_studio_robbed

What can you expect from a state that voted for George Bush in 2004?

is the idea that the exit polls results should be considered to be more accurate than the actual vote. Which is of course absurd.

Actually exit polls are widely used to detect election fraud. See the 2004 Ukraine elections, for example.

When as much hanky-panky occurs in an election as did in Ohio in 2004, and when large numbers of people are unlawfully denied their right to cast a ballot, the reported "actual vote" is meaningless.

(quote from article):Casey, a sexpot college student and aspiring dancer in tight jeans who is playing jailbait decoy today because her landlord dad owns this house. (Added bonus: Local prosecutors wrote her college a note so she could get out of a chemistry test.) Casey gabs to potential predators on the phone. "Come on over, we're not going to get caught," she says. "If we got caught, I would get into trouble, and everybody would call me a slut, and I don't want that, either. I'll pay for your gas. It's no big deal, trust me. My dad gave me plenty of money for the weekend." When the guy fails to take the bait, her voice rises in pitch. "OK, fine, whatever, lame. L-A-M-E. You're being a baby. I told you I've done it a million times!"

because, as we all know, Michael Moore is always about the greater good.

OK, somebody has got to say it. I've followed most of MM's career and I would have to say that, yeah, he is. He's made some bloopers and done a couple of real asshole things (Heston Interview?) but far fewer than his opponents would have you believe. Unlike most television "reporters" he doesn't just read official statements. He does his research, checks his facts and generally makes an effort to tell the truth. When he does exaggerate or portray things in a slanted light I believe that he does so with the greater good in mind. I don't think this is wrong. For example, a dry factual explanation of the function of the House Rules Committee does not inspire nearly the outrage that, with any reason, one could consider appropriate "for the greater good". America is at war and the weapons are TV stations, websites and videophones. I believe MM to be on our side.

The CIA doesn't decide to assassinate foreign leaders without direct orders from the President of the United States.

Tell that to JFK and E. Howard Hunt.

Well I'll say this, the Republican party in the 2004 elections here in SC actually sent out operatives to polling places at all the state's black colleges (Benedict, SC State, etc.) to keep students from voting (because, technically, they could only vote in their parents districts, since college doesn't count as "residency").

That's not true, the Supreme Court ruled to the contrary in 1979.