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Four Outrages Techies Need To Know About the State of the Union
Mr.Intel writes "Last night's State of the Union Address contained ten things (and four outrages) technical professionals need to know about the President's plans, and how his policies might affect you, your employer, and your family well into the future."
I read the article, I don't see anything specific to techies. Actually that whole article headline sounds like an article out of People magazine. What's going on here?
Outrage 8: I was outraged at Outrage 2 (and some other stuff!)? Is this guy serious? The whole article just seems to be some incoherent and ill-constructed rant. As a Non-US citizen, is there some deep and meaningful message in the drivel that I'm not understanding?
I must be blind b/c I couldn't find the link to the article. I googled the post's title and found this article: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/10-things-and-4-outrages-techies-need-to-know-about-president-obamas-state-of-the-union-address/9930 In case someone is equally blind as me, I hope that helps.
...was the President's jest that a benefit of high speed rail was the absence of a pat down. If he realizes this bothers people... why not actually address privacy rights and the out-of-control TSA in his SOTU speech instead of bringing it up and throwing it aside?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
At 27, I'm a "millennial." My generation and Generation X are looking at a bleak future because of what is being done by the Boomers.
I have a simple solution: take away the Boomers' Social Security and Medicare. All of it. Keep the Boomers' parents on it. They paid in and didn't give us this situation. They passed on the baton of leadership to the Boomers around Bush Sr. and the Boomers hit prime time in the Clinton and Bush years.
I say "f#$%" them, as a generation. They want to be able to default $500k mortgages and enjoy generous pensions and Social Security when they won't even let my generation discharge a few 10s of thousands of dollars in student loans **in bankruptcy court**. They want to turn Generation X into beasts of burden to fund their benefits while my generation wallows in disproportionate unemployment?
Screw them. The revenues from taking them off the potential Social Security and Medicare rosters would more than pay off our debt in under a decade.
Now exactly why much of that matters to most "techies" is beyond me. Really most of it doesn't mattter to most techies.
However it does draw eyes to the website. And I noticed there was a Michele Bachmann ad here on slashdot last night, and this seems to go well with her sales pitch as well. Since president lawnchair has already caved to everything that the GOP has asked for to date, they need to find something to get excited about for the future.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Disturbingly, that's not as 100% true as you think. There are some cases of local laws in various places also being privately held copyrighted material and/or "trade secrets" of various organizations. The most common example of this are laws covering zoning and construction written by local engineering forms which then charge money for copies. The bigger concern isn't petty local corruption like that, however, it's actually things like case law and various binding legal interpretations by the legislative and executive branch. Case law has traditionally largely only been accessible by contracting with private firms with virtual monopolies on republishing them. Aside from that, we're increasingly seeing (or not seeing) more and more binding decisions being made by secret courts and various executive offices which in some cases aren't even accessible by Congress. We're also more and more seeing what amounts to superuser permissions to create binding policy equivalent to laws being handed off to more and more agencies.
Consider no fly lists. We know that certain people aren't allowed on airplanes. We don't know which people, and we don't know why, and we don't know which things we might do that might get us put on the list, or on other lists which we don't even know about. The rationale in that particular example is that flying is a privilege, not a right, and therefore having it taken away is not a punishment. Clearly that's a load of nonsense. Traveling about the country is certainly a right, and removing of the more convenient ways to do that is a curtailment of that right. If that argument is faulty, that means that it's acceptable to refuse registered voters entrance to polling places because it only inconveniences them and they can find another way to vote. Even if being able to board planes is a privilege and not a right, removal of privileges that everyone enjoys by default still qualifies as a punishment by any sane definition.
Just to shed some facts on the rhetoric: PolitiFact tracks all of the promises Obama made during the campaign and categorizes them. At present, the results are:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/
Promise Kept: 134
Compromise: 34
Promise Broken: 34
Stalled: 71
In The Works: 220
Not Yet Rated: 2
"Promise Kept" means he promised it, and has already delivered it largely in-tact (example: Lily Ledbetter Fairl Pay Act). "Compromise" means that he promised it, and managed to get it through congress, but had to compromise or water it down to get it passed (example: a lot of the stuff related to Healthcare). "Promise Broken" means that he promised it, but didn't even try or gave up (example: having a public review period for all bills before signing them). "Stalled" means he's still supporting it, but hasn't been making much progress (difficulties in implementation, congressional obstruction, etc) (example: closing Guantanamo). "In The Works" means that he's pushing it, but it hasn't yet made it to through congress (example: eliminating oil and gas tax loopholes).
Consider that net result as positively or negatively about him as you prefer.
... in Siberia, where Putin killed a fish with a speargun. He later claimed it was killed by Ukrainian separatists.