Not only must we nationalize everything, we need to shoot every property owner in the head and then EAT THEIR BABIES!!!
sheesh.
"Privatize the sidewalks" is the standard joke used by liberals in discussions about libertarians. Social conservatives tend to attack their stance on drug legalization, prostitution, etc. While I did once hear a LP pundit actually argue in favor of sidewalk privatization on a TV discussion show, anyone who's talked to many 'big L' Libertarian party members knows they don't widely hold that extreme a position. Many/most understand that in a successful society, government plays a vital role in establishing necessary infrastructure (what's necessary, and what's 'make work' porkbarrel, is left as an exercise for the reader).
But I have yet to hear any LP member or 'small l' libertarian Republican advocate, say, a 25% cut in government expenditures applied equally and across the board to all government programs. There's always a preferred target (welfare, military, unionized public education, medicare), and a collection of sacred cows (NASA, public education, historical preservation, welfare, military). I seriously doubt the Grover Norquists of the Republican party are going to stand behind the 'big L' LP's assertion that the US military should be used for defense only, and thus its spending curtailed. Likewise, while they may be dismayed with Bush's move to funnel federal social spending into 'faith based' programs instead of simply cutting it, I'd be very surprised to see them liken Bush big spenders to 'big government' liberals and democrats.
I think your portrayal of the ideological splits in the Republican party are wildly exaggerated. While I find a lot of common cause with libertarians, it makes more sense for me to support liberals than to try to pull libertarian republicans toward my point of view.
If you really want to characterize the Republican party with those two broad 'wings', and I want to extend the metaphor, than I'd have to say the RP is a flightless bird, because in terms of numbers, the 'social conservative' wing so outsizes the 'libertarian' wing that if it were ever to try to flap those wings in earnest, it would spin in circles. As you noted, it's the balance of power that keeps the RP in power. While I might wish for the social conservatives to tip that balance and spin the whole thing out of control, I do worry about the damage they'd do to the country on their way out.
In any case, the "small government" agenda is a myth. Even most "big L" Libertarian party members don't really want to privatize the sidewalks, and all the libertarians I've ever met have a soft spot for some aspect of non-essential large-scale government spending (e.g., NASA, public schools, historical preservation, etc.). In reality, "small government" just means eliminating those parts of government that a particular group doesn't like or benefit from.
When it comes to reducing taxes, nothing is a scam if it is legal. Paying the lowest tax allowable by law is every citizen's duty to their country.
And it's every congressman's duty to make sure tax law is obfusicated to the point where the bulk of the tax burden lands on those with the least assets.
In addition, for vessels over a certain size, there is a "big red button" that signals the coast guard that the vessel is being taken over by terrorists. My roomate (studying for a Marine Transportation degree and unlimited ton Coast Guard liscense) recommends not messing around with the button as the coast guard has never had a false alarm to date with these.
meaning they've never had an alarm, or that there have been actual terrorist takeovers of large commercial vessels?
if the latter, are we talking within US waters, or someplace like the malacca straits (which have had an increasing problem with piracy).
the unemployed liberals i know are either out there pounding the pavement every day looking for work, and/or retraining themselves for the job market.
i'll admit that most of the conservatives i encounter, unemployed or not, are online, not personal acquiantences or friends. therefore among conservatives, it's more likely i'll encounter unemployed wingnut bloggers than useful members of society.
i'd imagine it's the same situation for you, but with political ideologies reversed.
huh. i'm a liberal who's WORKing to EARN money. most of the conservatives i've encountered are unemployed, and spending their days BLOGGING, which does little in the way of EARNing money.
oh ok... i thought it was a joke targetted toward the right-wingnut blogger crowd, who largely think stealing taxpayer funds is perfectly ok, as long as it's going to their friends and cronies.
nope, in fact i've been interested in using RFID to track inventory in my business.
i'm just noting that your "traditional" "conservative" values evidently include stealing. not surprised really, just surprised to hear it put so bluntly.
heh! i'm never surprised when right-wingnuts like yourself get excited about opportunities for scamming, cheating, and stealing... but i am surprised when they're as open about it as you're being.
Right. A tiny red tip at the end of a barrel is REAL easy to see when you have a split-second to decide whether to shoot to try to protect your life.
a-GAIN, we're talking about kids on the playground, screaming "wheeeee!" and "no fair! you're dead! you gotta lay down!" no cop in his/her right mind would have their hand anywhere near their gun in that circumstance.
but maybe you're right... we're all on high alert after all! stay indoors! FEAR! watch fox news! reguritate what you're told on your blog!
Yeah, jokes where you pretend to shoot people with real-looking cap guns is REAL funny. Try it on a real cop sometime.
we're talking about kids running around playing make-believe, not a practical joke where an unsuspecting victim is made to believe they're facing a real gun. you might also notice that cap guns these days have a red plug in the muzzle, to help prevent confusion with real guns.
this is why real cops are required to have a ounce of common sense, while people like you who whip themselves into a froth of paranoia and fear have to content themselves with spewing their drivel on laughable blogs (or, evidently, becoming school administrators).
Bush is about the only person who can either over rule or remove O'Keefe and Bush has a history of supporting people he appoints. Kerry flip flops so much that whatever he says he would do about Hubble if he were President doesn't carry much weight in my mind.
ah yes, criticizing poorly made decisions is nattering nabob negativity, while blindly following such mistakes shows 'courage of conviction' and real leadership!
Here in California... the Democrat party and the ACLU FOISTED this up our collective asses. There was not a single Republican in charge of even the smallest dog pound out here when not 5 minutes after the 2000 vote, every Democrat went screaming into the streets - "We must have e-voting or else the poor minorities will get disenfranchised!"
wipe the spittle from your mouth, cool your fevered head, and realize that you're confusing issues: the "poor minorities" issue was related to the "scrubbing" of voter rolls in FL that lead to a lot of black people being "accidentally" removed. the "we must have e-voting" was a result of the "hanging chad" fiasco, and if you polled 100 democrats and 100 republicans and asked "would you like a system that eliminated doubt as to which candidate a person voted for?", 198 to 200 of those people would say "hell yeah!"
actually implementing a doubt-free system is, of course, a completely different matter.
and thus it happened - and they bought Diebold.
not sure which "they" you're referring to, or which diebold voting machines, but if it's the AccuVote-TSx machines: "The decision means that Kern, San Joaquin, San Diego and Solano counties will not be able to use the 15,000 or so AccuVote-TSx voting machines they purchased from Diebold. They will likely use optical-scan machines made by Diebold."
now, i know it's common among recent bible-belt arrivals to imagine that california is a seething den of ungodly durned librulz and pagan-satanic hippies, but once you've spent some time in the state you'll realize that not all places here are democratic party strongholds, for instance, san diego, kern, and san joaquin counties.
It is NOT a Republican conspiracy - as much as some would like to believe it.
yes, and i'm sure if the CEO of diebold had promised to "deliver votes" to kerry this november, you'd pay no notice and content yourself with making jokes about clinton and blowjobs?
Yeah, the Indians had their finer points, not to mention they were just as savage as any other race/culture, but lets not raise them to the level of uber-nature geniuses whose ways we westerners simply comprehend.
actually it's pretty easy to comprehend... having earlier hunted the sloths and wooly mammoths to extinction, the indians were kind of pissed when europeans came along and nearly extermined the bison, seeing as how the indians had practiced thousands of years of self-restraint, eating some grains and berries in addition to buffalo steaks.
putting other things (like asteroid defence, or space exploration in general) aside until they are taken care of is like me saying "I'm going to wait to have kids until I've got a seven-figure salary, three cars, and a mansion."
it's really more like saying, "i'm going to wait on buying the quad ATV, and the denon 5.1 home theater, until i pay off my five-figure credit card debt and feed and clothe the kids."
it might be cheaper to donate a chunk of his haul to the bush re-election fund, rather than go to the expense of setting up house and home (mansion?) in another country. seems to have worked well for ken lay.
... and, he liked the ladies. when he passed away, there was court battle over his estate between the family and the fifteen or so mistresses who'd allegedly been promised a part of the loot.
I have a small sticky label over one of my screws on my CDRW drive that says "Do not remove". Doing so will be against the DMCA(?)
Washington, D.C. (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today that the mandate of the FBI's Upholstry Mutilation Prevention division would be expanded to cover personal computer peripherals and other consumer electronic products. "For decades this Department has stood by the notion that pillows, mattresses, couches, and other upholstered items should not have to worry that their care and composition labels might be removed by those who would flaunt the laws of this great nation of ours. It is time now to extend the same protections to comsumer electronic devices," Ashcroft said in a prepared statement. He noted in particular that CD-RW drives are a new and tempting target for abuse. "Our young men need to spend less time figuring out how to copy pornography and hardcore rap 'artists' material faster, and more time working at their jobs and praying to Jesus our Lord and Savior," he said. Asked why funiture items carry tags that read, "Do not remove under penalty of law," Ashcroft said, "I was raised to not ask questions about why our laws are they was they are. Unless you want to have the full weight of an FBI investigation on your hands, I'd suggest you do the same."
the author's main point about pointless feature or interface changes causing user pain is solid, but one of the examples he uses isn't
Syntrillium's Cool Edit Pro or Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro are so intuitive they really don't need manuals -- though Steinberg's Cubase has a gigantic manual and it's still unfriendly to use
cool edit and acid are fine examples of good UI design, but they have very specific uses as compared to cubase... the latter has the potential to emulate an entire control room full of outboard recording studio gear on a 19" monitor, so naturally it's going to be more difficult to grasp every feature. a milling machine is going to take more time to learn how to use effectively than a hole punch.
a more apt comparision might be between cubase and emagic's logic audio, where the average user would want to do roughly the same task in either environment, but learning to do it in logic seems to take people twice as long and cause much gnashing of teeth.
heh! from your description of the situation, your employee was straightforward about the other company wanting to pay "so much more," yet you balked when he gave you a figure. if you want to pay your people "average pay" similar to what everyone else (who is willing to disclose their salary in a meaningless media survey) is paid, don't expect to find dependable employees who will appreciate how "critical" your project is.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:1:./t em p/~c107bV3sgy:e242304:
"This clause shall not apply to any material support the alien afforded to an organization or individual that has committed terrorist activity, if the Secretary of State, after consultation with the Attorney General, or the Attorney General, after consultation with the Secretary of State, concludes in his sole unreviewable discretion, that this clause should not apply."
as the saying goes: "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
i also went to harvey mudd college, and majored in physics, in the days before there was a distinct 'computer science' major. graduating during the late eighties' recession and simultaneous defense industry boom, but determined not to be employed making better bombs, i found my prospects pretty limited. a few years later, we moved to santa fe, new mexico, shortly after los alamos and sandia national labs had laid off thousands of workers... literally there were PhD's flipping burgers at McDonalds. it was a very humbling experience, and i ended up at a bill printing shop coding pascal scripts for under $8/hour. we later moved to the bay area, where employment prospects improved considerably;), but it taught me that a technical degree from a (expensive!) private school guarantees nothing if the market isn't interested in your skills.
working at various dot-coms in the years since, i've found there's a very big difference between 'computer science' and 'software engineering'. it seems very few schools even try to teach the latter (i can't speak for what present-day hmc does, though they now appear to have separate programs for both). most seem to believe that turing's halting thoerem and AI will somehow help a person trying to take a typical project from requirements to design to usable application. imo, there's as much difference between CS and SE as there is between solid-state physics and mechanical engineering.
not that my college experience was useless... far from it. to solve some physics problems numerically on an overloaded vax 11/750, i learned how to write tight code. more importantly, i learned how to approach a problem where existing practical knowledge is slim, and do a benchmarking experiment using minimal lab resources to come to an informed design decision. i've found this much more satisfying than relying on religious discussions of the 'my friend at this other company uses product x and loves it!' and 'but dood, product x sucks, product y rules!' sort.
as for college producing 'better people'... one of the main reasons i chose harvey mudd college was a strong interest in comparative literature. while most other technically-oriented schools' lit programs consisted of bonehead english classes, hmc allows cross-registration at the other five claremont colleges, a couple of which had very good lit programs.
only a couple weeks after graduation, i met a woman in a bar who had a similarly strong interest in lit, she'd read much of the same material i'd read in my classes. we dated for a while, and i found her perspective on the stuff we'd read far more insightful and interesting than any of the class discussions i'd been involved in. she'd graduated high school early and never went to college, and had read all of this stuff on her own initiative. she worked at an industrial leasing company as a salesperson, and while she didn't exactly love her job, she had a much more playful and inquisitive outlook on life than most of my english, lit, and physics major friends a couple years out from graduation.... i guess it all depends on your definition of 'better person'.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Not only must we nationalize everything, we need to shoot every property owner in the head and then EAT THEIR BABIES!!!
sheesh.
"Privatize the sidewalks" is the standard joke used by liberals in discussions about libertarians. Social conservatives tend to attack their stance on drug legalization, prostitution, etc. While I did once hear a LP pundit actually argue in favor of sidewalk privatization on a TV discussion show, anyone who's talked to many 'big L' Libertarian party members knows they don't widely hold that extreme a position. Many/most understand that in a successful society, government plays a vital role in establishing necessary infrastructure (what's necessary, and what's 'make work' porkbarrel, is left as an exercise for the reader).
But I have yet to hear any LP member or 'small l' libertarian Republican advocate, say, a 25% cut in government expenditures applied equally and across the board to all government programs. There's always a preferred target (welfare, military, unionized public education, medicare), and a collection of sacred cows (NASA, public education, historical preservation, welfare, military). I seriously doubt the Grover Norquists of the Republican party are going to stand behind the 'big L' LP's assertion that the US military should be used for defense only, and thus its spending curtailed. Likewise, while they may be dismayed with Bush's move to funnel federal social spending into 'faith based' programs instead of simply cutting it, I'd be very surprised to see them liken Bush big spenders to 'big government' liberals and democrats.
I think your portrayal of the ideological splits in the Republican party are wildly exaggerated. While I find a lot of common cause with libertarians, it makes more sense for me to support liberals than to try to pull libertarian republicans toward my point of view.
If you really want to characterize the Republican party with those two broad 'wings', and I want to extend the metaphor, than I'd have to say the RP is a flightless bird, because in terms of numbers, the 'social conservative' wing so outsizes the 'libertarian' wing that if it were ever to try to flap those wings in earnest, it would spin in circles. As you noted, it's the balance of power that keeps the RP in power. While I might wish for the social conservatives to tip that balance and spin the whole thing out of control, I do worry about the damage they'd do to the country on their way out.
In any case, the "small government" agenda is a myth. Even most "big L" Libertarian party members don't really want to privatize the sidewalks, and all the libertarians I've ever met have a soft spot for some aspect of non-essential large-scale government spending (e.g., NASA, public schools, historical preservation, etc.). In reality, "small government" just means eliminating those parts of government that a particular group doesn't like or benefit from.
Typically the vast bulk (~80%) of income tax revenue is generated from the top 20% or so of income earners...
Linkie-poo? Cause exactly who's paying what proportion of the fed's total tax revenue seems difficult to substantiate.
When it comes to reducing taxes, nothing is a scam if it is legal. Paying the lowest tax allowable by law is every citizen's duty to their country.
And it's every congressman's duty to make sure tax law is obfusicated to the point where the bulk of the tax burden lands on those with the least assets.
if the latter, are we talking within US waters, or someplace like the malacca straits (which have had an increasing problem with piracy).
the unemployed liberals i know are either out there pounding the pavement every day looking for work, and/or retraining themselves for the job market.
i'll admit that most of the conservatives i encounter, unemployed or not, are online, not personal acquiantences or friends. therefore among conservatives, it's more likely i'll encounter unemployed wingnut bloggers than useful members of society.
i'd imagine it's the same situation for you, but with political ideologies reversed.
huh. i'm a liberal who's WORKing to EARN money. most of the conservatives i've encountered are unemployed, and spending their days BLOGGING, which does little in the way of EARNing money.
oh ok... i thought it was a joke targetted toward the right-wingnut blogger crowd, who largely think stealing taxpayer funds is perfectly ok, as long as it's going to their friends and cronies.
nope, in fact i've been interested in using RFID to track inventory in my business.
i'm just noting that your "traditional" "conservative" values evidently include stealing. not surprised really, just surprised to hear it put so bluntly.
heh! i'm never surprised when right-wingnuts like yourself get excited about opportunities for scamming, cheating, and stealing... but i am surprised when they're as open about it as you're being.
over-reacts? heh! you're the one who jumped from kids playing cops & robbers to hair-triggered cops. sheesh.
i find rational, factually consistent arguments very interesting. i find your posts boring. see the difference?
do you how to discuss something without just screaming the same falacious points over and over? i think i'm done with this; you're boring.
but maybe you're right... we're all on high alert after all! stay indoors! FEAR! watch fox news! reguritate what you're told on your blog!
this is why real cops are required to have a ounce of common sense, while people like you who whip themselves into a froth of paranoia and fear have to content themselves with spewing their drivel on laughable blogs (or, evidently, becoming school administrators).
actually implementing a doubt-free system is, of course, a completely different matter.
not sure which "they" you're referring to, or which diebold voting machines, but if it's the AccuVote-TSx machines: "The decision means that Kern, San Joaquin, San Diego and Solano counties will not be able to use the 15,000 or so AccuVote-TSx voting machines they purchased from Diebold. They will likely use optical-scan machines made by Diebold." now, i know it's common among recent bible-belt arrivals to imagine that california is a seething den of ungodly durned librulz and pagan-satanic hippies, but once you've spent some time in the state you'll realize that not all places here are democratic party strongholds, for instance, san diego, kern, and san joaquin counties. yes, and i'm sure if the CEO of diebold had promised to "deliver votes" to kerry this november, you'd pay no notice and content yourself with making jokes about clinton and blowjobs?it might be cheaper to donate a chunk of his haul to the bush re-election fund, rather than go to the expense of setting up house and home (mansion?) in another country. seems to have worked well for ken lay.
... and, he liked the ladies. when he passed away, there was court battle over his estate between the family and the fifteen or so mistresses who'd allegedly been promised a part of the loot.
cool edit and acid are fine examples of good UI design, but they have very specific uses as compared to cubase... the latter has the potential to emulate an entire control room full of outboard recording studio gear on a 19" monitor, so naturally it's going to be more difficult to grasp every feature. a milling machine is going to take more time to learn how to use effectively than a hole punch.
a more apt comparision might be between cubase and emagic's logic audio, where the average user would want to do roughly the same task in either environment, but learning to do it in logic seems to take people twice as long and cause much gnashing of teeth.
heh! from your description of the situation, your employee was straightforward about the other company wanting to pay "so much more," yet you balked when he gave you a figure. if you want to pay your people "average pay" similar to what everyone else (who is willing to disclose their salary in a meaningless media survey) is paid, don't expect to find dependable employees who will appreciate how "critical" your project is.
also from the text of the bill at
t em p/~c107bV3sgy:e242304:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c107:1:./
"This clause shall not apply to any material support the alien afforded to an organization or individual that has committed terrorist activity, if the Secretary of State, after consultation with the Attorney General, or the Attorney General, after consultation with the Secretary of State, concludes in his sole unreviewable discretion, that this clause should not apply."
as the saying goes: "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
working at various dot-coms in the years since, i've found there's a very big difference between 'computer science' and 'software engineering'. it seems very few schools even try to teach the latter (i can't speak for what present-day hmc does, though they now appear to have separate programs for both). most seem to believe that turing's halting thoerem and AI will somehow help a person trying to take a typical project from requirements to design to usable application. imo, there's as much difference between CS and SE as there is between solid-state physics and mechanical engineering.
not that my college experience was useless... far from it. to solve some physics problems numerically on an overloaded vax 11/750, i learned how to write tight code. more importantly, i learned how to approach a problem where existing practical knowledge is slim, and do a benchmarking experiment using minimal lab resources to come to an informed design decision. i've found this much more satisfying than relying on religious discussions of the 'my friend at this other company uses product x and loves it!' and 'but dood, product x sucks, product y rules!' sort.
as for college producing 'better people'... one of the main reasons i chose harvey mudd college was a strong interest in comparative literature. while most other technically-oriented schools' lit programs consisted of bonehead english classes, hmc allows cross-registration at the other five claremont colleges, a couple of which had very good lit programs.
only a couple weeks after graduation, i met a woman in a bar who had a similarly strong interest in lit, she'd read much of the same material i'd read in my classes. we dated for a while, and i found her perspective on the stuff we'd read far more insightful and interesting than any of the class discussions i'd been involved in. she'd graduated high school early and never went to college, and had read all of this stuff on her own initiative. she worked at an industrial leasing company as a salesperson, and while she didn't exactly love her job, she had a much more playful and inquisitive outlook on life than most of my english, lit, and physics major friends a couple years out from graduation.... i guess it all depends on your definition of 'better person'. :)
-n8