Apologies to the Welsh from the bottom of my heart. -.- (bow in shame)
On a personal note, today is the memorial for a dear friend from Wisconsin that died last year. In the few years she spent here in Mexico she managed to became a pillar in her neighborhood and her parish. She left so many precious memories. All the americans and british that I have personally meet have been wonderful people. I can't understand how the same societies that managed to raise such wonderful people manage to turn a blind eye to the criminal behavior of their politicians and corporations around the world, specially when that behavior is completely unneeded and counterproductive.
We like, even love americans, but we hate what americans let their government do in our countries. Who in his right mind can hate the land of hamburgers, apple pay, beautiful girls in bikini, theme parks, Hollywood, Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Michel Jackson?
But then how people will sleep in their willful ignorance of that dropping bombs in other people's cities killing and maiming men, women and children is a murderous, evil thing? But then, most of the people in this group is also of the same mindset of the ones that will fill the bodies of their fellow countrymen of bullet holes at the drop of a hat.
Or siding with the SOB's that have ruled and mismanaged Mexico in the last 4 decades, and then decrying the huge influx of cheap mexican workers to the USA and border violence. What they expected? That people would stand still and simply wait to die of starvation?
The following human rights problems continued: isolated unlawful killings and use of excessive force by security forces, sometimes with impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; corruption and other abuses by security forces; a high number of pretrial detainees; and corruption and denial of due process within the judicial system. President Correa and his administration continued verbal and legal attacks against the independent media. Societal problems continued, including physical aggression against journalists; violence against women; discrimination against women, indigenous persons, Afro-Ecuadorians, and lesbians and gay men; trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation of minors; and child labor.
I don't know if that claims are true. Probably they are since all those problems are endemic to almost all the countries of Latin America, we differ sadly only in a matter of degree but:
Do you know that Mexico is and has been for the last 6 years the most dangerous country for the press, when not in only in Latin America, in the whole world? Do a Google search about Regina Martínez (RIP), Lydia Cacho, Carmen Aristegui and Anabel Hernández for starters. The mexican bloodbath with at least 100,000 organized crime related murders, 26,000 disappeared on the official count. The two men with a key responsibility for all of this, former president Felipe Calderón and the former head of the Mexican Federal Police, Genaro García Luna are living happy in the USA. Calderón "teaching" in Harvard, Genaro García Luna has spend the last 3 years issuing death treats to Anabel Hernández; she and her family are under around the clock protection by the police of Mexico City, see:
The former president is a staunch catholic conservative that is against abortion, condoms, gays and marriage equality; the current mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, sent police to rape a gay teacher:
Also, the police when he was governor of Mexico state gang raped several women, -allegedly 47 victims, 26 documented in the National Human Rights Commission report- including spanish and chilean citizens: 2006 civil unrest in San Salvador Atenco
I have a equatorian friend that dislikes Correa. But, at least, his personal experience doesn't match mine; in my workplace a forensic team recovered from the foundations of and old building the bodies of victims of the mexican dirty war sponsored by Kissinger; my grandmother, uncles and a cousin were almost killed in one illegal house search 5 years ago by the Army, and just last week I had to park a few blocks of my house my car because my street was closed by a police roadblock for a day. Fortunately, nothing serious happened.
No, actually you've just learned the Marxist perversion. I'm pretty sure that my possessions are mine even when no government is involved. If my property is not mine, then neither are my freedom and my life and I will ensure that yours are forfeit if you dare to challenge that. Now go back to your brothers, you disgusting robber.
But your life, your freedom and your claims to your possessions are backed and made stronger by the society and its laws against anyone that tries to hurt that; in your case, by the USA's society and their government. If you try to do anything serious against the life, freedom or lawful claims of possessions of others you will soon find out that society and his government will make you part from your freedom, possessions or life. That's the social contract at its core.
I have a uncle that was the Mayor in the small town in which I was born in north-central Mexico. He had 3 police chiefs murdered in his tenure, after leaving his post, he had his house an one of his business burned by the tugs of the drug lords. He had to sell all his remaining properties and business far below their fair price; he and his family lives now in an undisclosed location in USA or Canada. We only know that they are alive and well, not more than that. What you say and the purpose of taxes are not just the case of a political argument, they are backed by painful empirical evidence.
I understand that some people don't like what they get for their taxes in USA; certainly, compared with what taxpayers get in scandinavian countries, Australia or Germany they are not getting a very good deal, but still they get:
-A working state without an impunity rate of 96-98% for murder for the general population, 99% in case of the press like in Mexico, I doubt that is much different in any country with a weak/failed state
-A proper enforcement of transit laws that makes 2 to 5 five times less likely to die every time you hit the road than in Mexico
-5 times less likely to be murdered than in Mexico
-A powerful Army and Navy that for the last 200 years have imposed to hundreds if not thousands of governments around the world treaties and policies fairly advantageous to the interests of the american government and american companies
If they don't like what they have in the USA just by working hard and the government that they get by paying taxes to Uncle Sam we can trade places. In fact, they would find that they can trade places with 90% of people around the world.
I and our team are responsible of the ERP system that enables the public owned power company to serve to 110,000,000 customers in Mexico and sells energy to California, Texas and Guatemala, how in the hell we don't create wealth?
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Elizabeth Warren.
If you neglect your part of the social contract then it makes easy to others to break it too and descent into anarchy. Yugoslavia collapsed not only by the ethnic tensions, it collapsed because their economy collapsed itself before. You don't care about the race or what have your neighbor when you and your loved ones have a job, a roof, food on the table and a hope for a better future. You don't have that and then you are easy prey of demagogues or criminal gangs.
The same tax avoidance schemes criticized by most here, the same preferential treatment to the super rich was implemented in Mexico 3 decades ago, when the country had a better development than South Korea. Now Walmart Mexico pays less than USD$6 a year on income tax, while I as a middle rank public servant paid USD$17,600 on income tax last year plus all the other taxes. Even with their crazy neighbor up north they are way better than Mexico now, and thanks to the hi tech development program financed by their government in the late 1990's they are now a technological power house that rivals with the USA or Japan.
The insane concentration of wealth combined with low or no taxes for the rich and low wages-high taxes for the middle class and the poor destroys the market economy that is consumer based. There aren't many wares or services that can be sold to the homeless or the extremely poor. On the social side, people that not have anything to lose by breaking the rules and the law join criminal gangs that offer a change to a living wage. In my city the ones that planned a mass murder of 18 people earned from the cartels the same wage than me, the gunners earned 5,000 pesos weekly, at least two times more than what gets earned on average by the workers of the local branch of IBM or HP.
It was a very sad day when Gene Siskel died fairly young, and now we've lost Roger Ebert as well. It's just movies, I realize
It isn't "just" movies - movies are a major part of modern culture. Once a society gets above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence.
If you don't mind, I will steal and share that quote. With attribution, of course.
At the time, Windows was Windows 98 that security wise, was a POS, while Linux was making impressive inroads in the server area and, despite not being as polished, the distributions tailored at common users were really god, like Mandrake Linux. Outside the winmodems it had sometimes better hardware support than Windows at the time, so the discussions had more technical merits at the time than the ones we have now about the mayor OS's which are only about personal preferences really, and calling names with people that don't agree with you.
Well, here this place used to get at least daily posts from Carmack or Bruce Perens, or people from the Antartica missions, for example. Also, always good posts from the usual users from that time like jafac, Millenium, BoredAtWork and others. What ruined this place lately are the ridiculous and stupid flame wars between Android/Google fans and Apple/iOS fans that drop comment quality to Yahoo or Youtube levels, with some Microsoft or Samsung fans or shills for good measure.
People only need to do one thing at a time. The iPad, with its silly single tasking interface, proves that.
(takes deep breath) Jobs said a lot of things, most if not all may to manipulate a market into believing that the shortcoming of of Apples products were design decisions, and the world had to bend to its will. Its why flash has been replaced without a real replacement, because it ran badly with an iphone, its why Apple were so late to market with a small tablet, its why your holding it wrong.
Apple products didn't multi task...and do to so some extent now. Its a feature users want, and viewing too applications (although not exclusive to Microsoft; Samsung tablets do it too) its a great feature.
You need to look at the current crop of Android tablets...they are so ahead of Apple its not funny.
But those were really good design decisions. Before the iPad we had ipaQ and PDA's, large and expensive x86 tablet computers and netbooks that had a really poor design. I saw netbooks with dual 9" or 10" screens to try to get a premium price and overcome the obvious design failures of using a no full screen application in such a small device. Others with resistive screen and stylus, but by running a OS not tailored to the constraints of a small screen, they all sucked despite having good specs.
The "one app full screen" from iOS and notifications from Android provide the benefits of multitasking and a good design to modern iOS and Android devices.
I'm not locked into the Apple ecosystem so it simply Does not work! I would have to use something that supports open standards. I actually went for a rasberry pi running XBMC. FYI a Apple TV in my country is $150, for its crippled experience.
My wife and my mom differ. It is a extremely nice, well thought and powerful product, it is a shame that in your country is so ridiculously overpriced.
The ones that purchased this are simply corrupt officers getting a cut from this purchases. The "scam" is only a red herring for the public to avoid prosecution.
Slashdot Mirror
Apologies to the Welsh from the bottom of my heart. -.- (bow in shame)
On a personal note, today is the memorial for a dear friend from Wisconsin that died last year. In the few years she spent here in Mexico she managed to became a pillar in her neighborhood and her parish. She left so many precious memories. All the americans and british that I have personally meet have been wonderful people. I can't understand how the same societies that managed to raise such wonderful people manage to turn a blind eye to the criminal behavior of their politicians and corporations around the world, specially when that behavior is completely unneeded and counterproductive.
Best Regards
They elected Reagan and a pair of Bushes, who were every bit as bad without the excuse of Mao's morphine addiction.
Bush was as bad as Mao? Are you fucking serious?
Ask the people of Iraq or Afghanistan.
of course, I meant apple pie.
We like, even love americans, but we hate what americans let their government do in our countries. Who in his right mind can hate the land of hamburgers, apple pay, beautiful girls in bikini, theme parks, Hollywood, Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Michel Jackson?
But then how people will sleep in their willful ignorance of that dropping bombs in other people's cities killing and maiming men, women and children is a murderous, evil thing? But then, most of the people in this group is also of the same mindset of the ones that will fill the bodies of their fellow countrymen of bullet holes at the drop of a hat.
Or siding with the SOB's that have ruled and mismanaged Mexico in the last 4 decades, and then decrying the huge influx of cheap mexican workers to the USA and border violence. What they expected? That people would stand still and simply wait to die of starvation?
Are we talking about the same Nixon that sabotaged the peace talks to end Vietnam war in 1968 for political gains?
The following human rights problems continued: isolated unlawful killings and use of excessive force by security forces, sometimes with impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; corruption and other abuses by security forces; a high number of pretrial detainees; and corruption and denial of due process within the judicial system. President Correa and his administration continued verbal and legal attacks against the independent media. Societal problems continued, including physical aggression against journalists; violence against women; discrimination against women, indigenous persons, Afro-Ecuadorians, and lesbians and gay men; trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation of minors; and child labor.
I don't know if that claims are true. Probably they are since all those problems are endemic to almost all the countries of Latin America, we differ sadly only in a matter of degree but:
Do you know that Mexico is and has been for the last 6 years the most dangerous country for the press, when not in only in Latin America, in the whole world? Do a Google search about Regina Martínez (RIP), Lydia Cacho, Carmen Aristegui and Anabel Hernández for starters. The mexican bloodbath with at least 100,000 organized crime related murders, 26,000 disappeared on the official count. The two men with a key responsibility for all of this, former president Felipe Calderón and the former head of the Mexican Federal Police, Genaro García Luna are living happy in the USA. Calderón "teaching" in Harvard, Genaro García Luna has spend the last 3 years issuing death treats to Anabel Hernández; she and her family are under around the clock protection by the police of Mexico City, see:
After years of threats, Mexican journalist fights to keep armed protection: By Anabel Hernández
The former president is a staunch catholic conservative that is against abortion, condoms, gays and marriage equality; the current mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, sent police to rape a gay teacher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prBKa_TaE3I
Also, the police when he was governor of Mexico state gang raped several women, -allegedly 47 victims, 26 documented in the National Human Rights Commission report- including spanish and chilean citizens:
2006 civil unrest in San Salvador Atenco
I have a equatorian friend that dislikes Correa. But, at least, his personal experience doesn't match mine; in my workplace a forensic team recovered from the foundations of and old building the bodies of victims of the mexican dirty war sponsored by Kissinger; my grandmother, uncles and a cousin were almost killed in one illegal house search 5 years ago by the Army, and just last week I had to park a few blocks of my house my car because my street was closed by a police roadblock for a day. Fortunately, nothing serious happened.
It used to be the same thing in both sides of the korean border up to 1970's, and to a lesser degree up to 1987. Selective memory.
Are you real???? This joke has gone too far.
Acknowledged. Thank you.
Sorry, slip on translation. "Public" means in Mexico State owned, "private" applies equally to publicly traded corporations and private companies.
Best regards.
The only way to have a sane conversation with a libertarian or a follower of Ayn Rand is when they are helpless drowning or hanging from a cliff.
No, actually you've just learned the Marxist perversion. I'm pretty sure that my possessions are mine even when no government is involved. If my property is not mine, then neither are my freedom and my life and I will ensure that yours are forfeit if you dare to challenge that. Now go back to your brothers, you disgusting robber.
But your life, your freedom and your claims to your possessions are backed and made stronger by the society and its laws against anyone that tries to hurt that; in your case, by the USA's society and their government. If you try to do anything serious against the life, freedom or lawful claims of possessions of others you will soon find out that society and his government will make you part from your freedom, possessions or life. That's the social contract at its core.
This is what happens when you don't have a government enforcing the social contract:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3615633&cid=43374647
I have a uncle that was the Mayor in the small town in which I was born in north-central Mexico. He had 3 police chiefs murdered in his tenure, after leaving his post, he had his house an one of his business burned by the tugs of the drug lords. He had to sell all his remaining properties and business far below their fair price; he and his family lives now in an undisclosed location in USA or Canada. We only know that they are alive and well, not more than that. What you say and the purpose of taxes are not just the case of a political argument, they are backed by painful empirical evidence.
Best regards.
I understand that some people don't like what they get for their taxes in USA; certainly, compared with what taxpayers get in scandinavian countries, Australia or Germany they are not getting a very good deal, but still they get:
-A working state without an impunity rate of 96-98% for murder for the general population, 99% in case of the press like in Mexico, I doubt that is much different in any country with a weak/failed state
-A proper enforcement of transit laws that makes 2 to 5 five times less likely to die every time you hit the road than in Mexico
-5 times less likely to be murdered than in Mexico
-A powerful Army and Navy that for the last 200 years have imposed to hundreds if not thousands of governments around the world treaties and policies fairly advantageous to the interests of the american government and american companies
If they don't like what they have in the USA just by working hard and the government that they get by paying taxes to Uncle Sam we can trade places. In fact, they would find that they can trade places with 90% of people around the world.
I and our team are responsible of the ERP system that enables the public owned power company to serve to 110,000,000 customers in Mexico and sells energy to California, Texas and Guatemala, how in the hell we don't create wealth?
Enlightened self interest, that's why
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Elizabeth Warren.
If you neglect your part of the social contract then it makes easy to others to break it too and descent into anarchy. Yugoslavia collapsed not only by the ethnic tensions, it collapsed because their economy collapsed itself before. You don't care about the race or what have your neighbor when you and your loved ones have a job, a roof, food on the table and a hope for a better future. You don't have that and then you are easy prey of demagogues or criminal gangs.
The same tax avoidance schemes criticized by most here, the same preferential treatment to the super rich was implemented in Mexico 3 decades ago, when the country had a better development than South Korea. Now Walmart Mexico pays less than USD$6 a year on income tax, while I as a middle rank public servant paid USD$17,600 on income tax last year plus all the other taxes. Even with their crazy neighbor up north they are way better than Mexico now, and thanks to the hi tech development program financed by their government in the late 1990's they are now a technological power house that rivals with the USA or Japan.
The insane concentration of wealth combined with low or no taxes for the rich and low wages-high taxes for the middle class and the poor destroys the market economy that is consumer based. There aren't many wares or services that can be sold to the homeless or the extremely poor. On the social side, people that not have anything to lose by breaking the rules and the law join criminal gangs that offer a change to a living wage. In my city the ones that planned a mass murder of 18 people earned from the cartels the same wage than me, the gunners earned 5,000 pesos weekly, at least two times more than what gets earned on average by the workers of the local branch of IBM or HP.
A civilized country with reasonable laws, civilized people and a good economy, that is why you guys are the envy of the rest of the world.
It was a very sad day when Gene Siskel died fairly young, and now we've lost Roger Ebert as well. It's just movies, I realize
It isn't "just" movies - movies are a major part of modern culture. Once a society gets above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence.
If you don't mind, I will steal and share that quote. With attribution, of course.
At the time, Windows was Windows 98 that security wise, was a POS, while Linux was making impressive inroads in the server area and, despite not being as polished, the distributions tailored at common users were really god, like Mandrake Linux. Outside the winmodems it had sometimes better hardware support than Windows at the time, so the discussions had more technical merits at the time than the ones we have now about the mayor OS's which are only about personal preferences really, and calling names with people that don't agree with you.
Well, here this place used to get at least daily posts from Carmack or Bruce Perens, or people from the Antartica missions, for example. Also, always good posts from the usual users from that time like jafac, Millenium, BoredAtWork and others. What ruined this place lately are the ridiculous and stupid flame wars between Android/Google fans and Apple/iOS fans that drop comment quality to Yahoo or Youtube levels, with some Microsoft or Samsung fans or shills for good measure.
But then you stumble with posts like this:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3604217&cid=43334125
and patience gets rewarded.
People only need to do one thing at a time. The iPad, with its silly single tasking interface, proves that.
(takes deep breath) Jobs said a lot of things, most if not all may to manipulate a market into believing that the shortcoming of of Apples products were design decisions, and the world had to bend to its will. Its why flash has been replaced without a real replacement, because it ran badly with an iphone, its why Apple were so late to market with a small tablet, its why your holding it wrong.
Apple products didn't multi task...and do to so some extent now. Its a feature users want, and viewing too applications (although not exclusive to Microsoft; Samsung tablets do it too) its a great feature.
You need to look at the current crop of Android tablets...they are so ahead of Apple its not funny.
But those were really good design decisions. Before the iPad we had ipaQ and PDA's, large and expensive x86 tablet computers and netbooks that had a really poor design. I saw netbooks with dual 9" or 10" screens to try to get a premium price and overcome the obvious design failures of using a no full screen application in such a small device. Others with resistive screen and stylus, but by running a OS not tailored to the constraints of a small screen, they all sucked despite having good specs.
The "one app full screen" from iOS and notifications from Android provide the benefits of multitasking and a good design to modern iOS and Android devices.
I'm not locked into the Apple ecosystem so it simply Does not work! I would have to use something that supports open standards. I actually went for a rasberry pi running XBMC. FYI a Apple TV in my country is $150, for its crippled experience.
My wife and my mom differ. It is a extremely nice, well thought and powerful product, it is a shame that in your country is so ridiculously overpriced.
I doubt they really believed that.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3577793&cid=43272025
The ones that purchased this are simply corrupt officers getting a cut from this purchases. The "scam" is only a red herring for the public to avoid prosecution.