All these services you talk about except federal highways are paid by local, not federal taxes.
You want to talk federal taxes, lets talk federal taxes. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities the 2008 federal spending was used in the following ways:
Defense and Security: 21%
Social Security: 21%
Saftey Net Programs: 11%
Interest on Debt: 8%
Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP: 20%
Benefits for Federal Retirees and Veterans: 6%
Transportation Infrastructure: 3%
Education: 2%
Non-security International: 1%
All Other: 5%
You directly (or indirectly) benefit from all of these activities in one way or another. While there may be a certain level of corruption and certain individuals may be using the system for their own purposes your tax dollars are by and large being spent to keep you safe and comfortable. I'll give you a couple of freebees; even leaving out Defense and Security (which allow us to even have this conversation in the safety of our own homes without worrying about someone coming in and killing us) and interest on the national debt you still benefit from 71% of the total budget. You're right that we are giving 36% of our production to the government, and here is how it is being spent.
I also agree that in certain cases the private sector can do things better and more cheaply. On the other hand there are plenty of examples of how the private sector can really screw individuals, mainly because they're only concerned with making a profit.
Taxes DO serve a purpose. They make people poorer and dependent on the government, therefore guaranteeing it's survival.
This isn't 'mindless anti-establishment', its quite mindful Liberalism actually.
Your first statement invalidates anything you might be trying to say in the second. You can say it's not mindless all you want, but until you back up your statements with some facts and logic your arguments don't hold any water.
The GP might be nuts for suggesting that we "invade" tax havens, but you're just as much out of your mind if you think taxes simply "feed bureaucrats and their friends." Unless you happen to be some hermit out in the middle of nowhere (I won't discount the possibility, this is slashdot.) keep in mind that taxes are what keeps your streets in good repair, miscreants from taking your things, fire from burning down your neighborhood and raw sewage from backing up into your john.
I realize it's popular to "stick it to the man" here but try to keep some perspective. Taxes (when properly applied) serve a purpose and no amount of mindless anti-establishment sentiment will change that.
Out of all the examples that you could've come up with that is the one you chose? An obviously incomplete version of a film that really wasn't that great (I actually paid to watch it the other day. The cheese factor of that movie was pretty high, I think more people were laughing at the movie than were following the plot.). I was actually talking about content like full high-quality episodes of popular shows and all of those music videos that were recently yanked per Viacom's demands. I didn't say that I thought any of this would be a "good idea" for them, but I can see what their line of reasoning is. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that this could be what they have in mind.
I would assume that that is where the "premium content" part comes in to play. If there was content that was available only on youtube (yes, I realize that given the current availability of content all over the web this is nigh impossible) I could see some people being willing to pay for it. I would also assume that the content that is user-generated or public domain would remain free (at least I would hope), though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see user content prefixed with ads. As for media companies already having other venues, do you really think that if they can get their tentacles into more diverse outlets that they won't do so?
I'm not saying that the pay-per-view (or whatever other model they come up with) will be successful, but I do believe that P.T. Barnum had it right when he said there is a sucker born ever minute, and SOMEONE will pay up.
I'm not saying that money shouldn't be a factor, but I would hope that it isn't the only factor. As for myself I worked hard to earn my degree and I work hard to earn my living. I have a family to support so I completely understand that people want to be compensated enough to live comfortably and to be able to provide for their families. By that same token we are talking about jobs which are paid for with taxpayer money, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the pay might be lower than what is offered in the private sector. *shrugs* I'm not claiming to be an expert here, and maybe increasing compensation would be a good idea (or at least re-evaluating how we are currently allocating our funds). Obviously there needs to be some kind of change.
Personnel and hardware are both assets (although one would hope the human assets are considered less expendable than the material ones), why is it OK to spend significant portions of a country's GDP on one type of asset in order to increase security and then skimp on another type of asset?
I'm not saying it is. In fact I would say it was a huge mistake to put more effort into using SIGINT than what is put into recruiting highly skilled agents. This is a case of having a hammer and seeing every problem as a nail when in fact what they needed was more (and better trained) workers. Now I realize that one way to do that is to offer better pay, benefits, etc, but at the same time our intelligence agencies probably want to attract people who's primary motivation is something other than the love of money. After all, what good is a spy who could be bought out by the competition?
So the CIA guy went home with half a dozen apple-faced applicants who were only too glad to take a ridiculously tiny salary for their huge amounts of effort, all in the name of protecting the American Way.
So really, what they hired were a bunch of pinheads prone to blind patriotism and the eating of ramen noodles.
What an arrogant way of looking at things. Not everyone is motivated by money you know, and just because someone may have a job that pays great doesn't mean they are somehow smarter than someone who's job don't pay so great. It just means they are more concerned with making a buck than with making a difference. Look at all the highly motivated people in the FOSS community, do you fault them for putting so much effort into open source projects for little to (more commonly) no compensation?
And now here we are, everyone they couldn't afford to hire telling them that none of this is any sort of surprise, and them being all kinds of surprised. It'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
Were you part of the investigation? Did you have any inkling of what could've been done to catch them sooner? If they answer is no then you hardly have any right to criticize them. If the answer is yes then what kept from helping out? Oh wait, it was the money, right?
You are correct, however this is true only in the short term. The whole argument of "We're saving money by not switching." will only hold water for so long. Eventually there will come a point at which their enforcement of IE6 will prevent them from being competitive. While everyone else is moving forward with new technologies that allow them to do more (and more securely) they'll still be stuck with applications that depend on ActiveX and open them up to attack. Also, if enough people are using IE8/Firefox outside of work (or more importantly enough management-types) their frustration with the older browser will eventually leak into the workplace, and there will be a push to upgrade intranet apps to get with the times. Change does happen in the corporate world, it just happens slowly.
No, they basically just avoided committing seppuku and it's only a matter of time before they try again.
No, having to commit seppuku would indicate that they have some honor to save in the first place. This was a straight-up attempt at fleecing that fell apart when the word got out. The honorable thing to do would've been to upgrade their network when they were supposed, and failing that to offer a fair pricing plan.
BTW newspaper recycling has been available for the past 50 or 60 years - you might want to check it out sometime.
See, and that is the thing. The newspapers piled up because I was loathe to throw them out knowing they would end up in a landfill somewhere. On the other hand (and this might come off as just plain lazy on my part) I didn't/don't recycle because the process as a whole is simply too much trouble to bother with. I know, I know, separate your plastics, papers and aluminum, etc. The problem with this is that recycling centers are few and far between in my area, and the trash man does not collect recyclables. I'm all for recycling but I think the process needs to much simpler before it takes hold in the majority of households (including mine).
It is a hell of a lot easier to deal with digital spam than the paper kind. The paper kind accumulates in my house and clutters the place up. It wastes dead tree and plastic. At least with the digital kind I can press a button and *poof* it's gone. I can only hope that more businesses will switch to 100% digital spam.
On a related note this is pretty much the same reason I don't get my news from a paper newspaper (well, among others). I got sick of having newspapers piling up in my home. I get 99% of all of my news through online sources (the other 1% is radio) and I'll never go back to having a paper delivered to me again.
Ah yes, the Litigation Saving Throw. All PCs must roll a 20 unless you happen to be a Rules Lawyer, in which case you only need to roll a 15 or higher. Rolling a 1 on a Save vs Litigation invokes the court's wrath, causing you to be in contempt, whereupon you will be thrown in jail with several burly ogres covered in prison tattoos:-D
Zombies are metaphors for death. We all join them in the end.
I always took them to be a metaphor for powerlessness and despair. Once people start to feel they're powerless they can't escape it, and that feeling can spread to others. Survivors are those who refuse to be powerless victims. I've also heard the argument that zombies (at least in modern times) are metaphors for consumerism run rampant. Dawn of the Dead was a good example of this. The world starts to fall apart and where do the survivors end up? In a mall; a classic symbol of the consumer lifestyle. And they're essentially trapped there by their own choice. They have no ability to create new supplies and they know that at a certain point the mall will no longer be able to sustain them. Obviously there are differences between the original and the remake (no biker gang to ruin their sanctuary in the new one), but the idea of consumerism run rampant still fits.
Then again I always hate reading too much into my zombie fiction;-) Give me my poorly defended farm houses and overrun cities and I'll be happy.
I really enjoy that game but I wouldn't call it the epitome of survival horror. Unlimited ammo and the ability to essentially rez your friends near the end of each stage count against it as far as the "survival" bit is concerned. RE4 was a much better example of survival horror. You really had to watch your ammo and fight smart if you wanted to get anywhere.
Really though I'm still waiting for a game to come out that looks at survival horror in the long run. I'd love to see a MMO or RPG-esque zombie game come out. Instead of worrying about the next thing to jump out at you around the corner (though you'd have to worry about that too) you would have to worry about things like having enough food and supplies to outlast the zombie hordes, or having to fight off other people from taking over your shelter. You could work with a team of other survivors to find a safe haven (i.e. clear this area of zombies and defend it). Since your supplies would constantly be depleting another aspect of the game would be leaving the safety of the shelter (while still leaving enough people back there to defend) would be going out into the world to find more. I'm sure there are all kinds of problems with a game like this and I don't know that anyone aside from myself would be interested in playing such a game, but it would be a nice change of pace from the "instant survival horror games" out there right now.
PS - I just finished reading World War Z and The Walking Dead, so it may be somewhat unsurprising that I'd be interested in a game like this;-)
It was (quite) a while back but I remember it being very dice heavy with an insanely complex ruleset. I think we spent more time on character creation than we did actually playing the game because no one could figure out exactly how the damned combat system worked.
I also don't remember it being popular enough to merit its own MMO, but superhero is in these days, so why not? Between this, Marvel's MMO, DC's MMO and City of Heroes there will be plenty of competition. It will be interesting to see how it competes against one well-established community (CoH/CoV) and two up-and-coming games with big brands backing them up.
Yes, standards-compliant browsers are gaining more support every year, but it doesn't change the fact that with such a huge market share MS is still setting the defacto standard. This is especially true in the corporate environment. The great majority of corporate intranets are still using IE as their supported/required browser, and there is still A LOT of legacy web applications out there that rely on technologies like ActiveX to function. All that being said I'm glad to see Microsoft is finally starting to get with the program with IE8. Whether or not businesses start following suit and update their sites to be standards compliant is another question entirely, but I would hope that would be the case.
Maybe it's time to start over. Flash and Java applets seem like a good place to start.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious, or if you're saying that we should move back towards Java applets and use more Flash or if they should go away. Care to elaborate?
Personally the idea of bringing Java applets back makes me cringe. I also have FlashBlock set to block all Flash by default, so you can guess my stance there as well. In fact the trend to include more Flash and the increasing use of Silverlight has me wondering what the future HTML and CSS will be if they have one at all. (I say as I format my post with HTML tags...)
A couple of weeks ago we were having some inane conversation and the topic of our respective work places came up. I work in an IS shop with a relatively young crew of developers (I'm 29, I still consider myself young) and most of us show off our inner nerd on a daily basis. You know the stuff; ringtones from old school games, anime, Star Wars, oddball wallpapers, conversations about stuff that leaves non-nerds scratching their heads. A while back I even heard someone playing StarFox a couple cubicles over on a Friday afternoon. All in all it is a pretty great environment:-D My friend's response was "You're so lucky, you work with nerds out in the open. All I have around here are a bunch of closet ninja nerds!" He went on to say that if you're a nerd in the army it's generally better not to show it. Apparently he catches more crap about his nerdy past-times than he does about anything else. Nothing serious really, just the general razzing you might expect. He re-upped a couple of years ago though, so it can't be all bad.
If you RTFA, you'll see that something entirely different is being discussed here. Alpha is supposed to actually answer the question because it knows a lot of facts, not because it's been programmed to look for certain phrases and respond with certain strings of text.
Good points, but this is still just a different (better perhaps?) implementation of the same concept. The big issue with the implementation is that it will only "know" what you tell it, the same as any other computer. Further it will only be able to tell you about what you want to know based on the system's ability to parse your question and return what it "thinks" you want to know.
Look, I'm not saying it isn't a cool idea, I'm just saying that it isn't as shiny and new as the creator would lead you to believe. I'm also not inclined to be impressed considering that it isn't even available to try yet. It hasn't even been released yet.
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You want to talk federal taxes, lets talk federal taxes. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities the 2008 federal spending was used in the following ways:
You directly (or indirectly) benefit from all of these activities in one way or another. While there may be a certain level of corruption and certain individuals may be using the system for their own purposes your tax dollars are by and large being spent to keep you safe and comfortable. I'll give you a couple of freebees; even leaving out Defense and Security (which allow us to even have this conversation in the safety of our own homes without worrying about someone coming in and killing us) and interest on the national debt you still benefit from 71% of the total budget. You're right that we are giving 36% of our production to the government, and here is how it is being spent.
I also agree that in certain cases the private sector can do things better and more cheaply. On the other hand there are plenty of examples of how the private sector can really screw individuals, mainly because they're only concerned with making a profit.
Your first statement invalidates anything you might be trying to say in the second. You can say it's not mindless all you want, but until you back up your statements with some facts and logic your arguments don't hold any water.
The GP might be nuts for suggesting that we "invade" tax havens, but you're just as much out of your mind if you think taxes simply "feed bureaucrats and their friends." Unless you happen to be some hermit out in the middle of nowhere (I won't discount the possibility, this is slashdot.) keep in mind that taxes are what keeps your streets in good repair, miscreants from taking your things, fire from burning down your neighborhood and raw sewage from backing up into your john.
I realize it's popular to "stick it to the man" here but try to keep some perspective. Taxes (when properly applied) serve a purpose and no amount of mindless anti-establishment sentiment will change that.
Out of all the examples that you could've come up with that is the one you chose? An obviously incomplete version of a film that really wasn't that great (I actually paid to watch it the other day. The cheese factor of that movie was pretty high, I think more people were laughing at the movie than were following the plot.). I was actually talking about content like full high-quality episodes of popular shows and all of those music videos that were recently yanked per Viacom's demands. I didn't say that I thought any of this would be a "good idea" for them, but I can see what their line of reasoning is. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that this could be what they have in mind.
I would assume that that is where the "premium content" part comes in to play. If there was content that was available only on youtube (yes, I realize that given the current availability of content all over the web this is nigh impossible) I could see some people being willing to pay for it. I would also assume that the content that is user-generated or public domain would remain free (at least I would hope), though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see user content prefixed with ads. As for media companies already having other venues, do you really think that if they can get their tentacles into more diverse outlets that they won't do so?
I'm not saying that the pay-per-view (or whatever other model they come up with) will be successful, but I do believe that P.T. Barnum had it right when he said there is a sucker born ever minute, and SOMEONE will pay up.
PS: I absolutely hate your sig, you jerk. >:-D
I'm not saying that money shouldn't be a factor, but I would hope that it isn't the only factor. As for myself I worked hard to earn my degree and I work hard to earn my living. I have a family to support so I completely understand that people want to be compensated enough to live comfortably and to be able to provide for their families. By that same token we are talking about jobs which are paid for with taxpayer money, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the pay might be lower than what is offered in the private sector. *shrugs* I'm not claiming to be an expert here, and maybe increasing compensation would be a good idea (or at least re-evaluating how we are currently allocating our funds). Obviously there needs to be some kind of change.
I'm not saying it is. In fact I would say it was a huge mistake to put more effort into using SIGINT than what is put into recruiting highly skilled agents. This is a case of having a hammer and seeing every problem as a nail when in fact what they needed was more (and better trained) workers. Now I realize that one way to do that is to offer better pay, benefits, etc, but at the same time our intelligence agencies probably want to attract people who's primary motivation is something other than the love of money. After all, what good is a spy who could be bought out by the competition?
What an arrogant way of looking at things. Not everyone is motivated by money you know, and just because someone may have a job that pays great doesn't mean they are somehow smarter than someone who's job don't pay so great. It just means they are more concerned with making a buck than with making a difference. Look at all the highly motivated people in the FOSS community, do you fault them for putting so much effort into open source projects for little to (more commonly) no compensation?
Were you part of the investigation? Did you have any inkling of what could've been done to catch them sooner? If they answer is no then you hardly have any right to criticize them. If the answer is yes then what kept from helping out? Oh wait, it was the money, right?
Boy, I thought that the MSDN and Technet would've had a higher percentage!
You are correct, however this is true only in the short term. The whole argument of "We're saving money by not switching." will only hold water for so long. Eventually there will come a point at which their enforcement of IE6 will prevent them from being competitive. While everyone else is moving forward with new technologies that allow them to do more (and more securely) they'll still be stuck with applications that depend on ActiveX and open them up to attack. Also, if enough people are using IE8/Firefox outside of work (or more importantly enough management-types) their frustration with the older browser will eventually leak into the workplace, and there will be a push to upgrade intranet apps to get with the times. Change does happen in the corporate world, it just happens slowly.
While true, this only means that he can simply hit his new unknown cap that much faster, and he is still paying more than the average user.
Read the article, they were paying for it. The customer in question had the premium "turbo" service.
No, having to commit seppuku would indicate that they have some honor to save in the first place. This was a straight-up attempt at fleecing that fell apart when the word got out. The honorable thing to do would've been to upgrade their network when they were supposed, and failing that to offer a fair pricing plan.
See, and that is the thing. The newspapers piled up because I was loathe to throw them out knowing they would end up in a landfill somewhere. On the other hand (and this might come off as just plain lazy on my part) I didn't/don't recycle because the process as a whole is simply too much trouble to bother with. I know, I know, separate your plastics, papers and aluminum, etc. The problem with this is that recycling centers are few and far between in my area, and the trash man does not collect recyclables. I'm all for recycling but I think the process needs to much simpler before it takes hold in the majority of households (including mine).
It is a hell of a lot easier to deal with digital spam than the paper kind. The paper kind accumulates in my house and clutters the place up. It wastes dead tree and plastic. At least with the digital kind I can press a button and *poof* it's gone. I can only hope that more businesses will switch to 100% digital spam.
On a related note this is pretty much the same reason I don't get my news from a paper newspaper (well, among others). I got sick of having newspapers piling up in my home. I get 99% of all of my news through online sources (the other 1% is radio) and I'll never go back to having a paper delivered to me again.
Ah yes, the Litigation Saving Throw. All PCs must roll a 20 unless you happen to be a Rules Lawyer, in which case you only need to roll a 15 or higher. Rolling a 1 on a Save vs Litigation invokes the court's wrath, causing you to be in contempt, whereupon you will be thrown in jail with several burly ogres covered in prison tattoos :-D
I always took them to be a metaphor for powerlessness and despair. Once people start to feel they're powerless they can't escape it, and that feeling can spread to others. Survivors are those who refuse to be powerless victims. I've also heard the argument that zombies (at least in modern times) are metaphors for consumerism run rampant. Dawn of the Dead was a good example of this. The world starts to fall apart and where do the survivors end up? In a mall; a classic symbol of the consumer lifestyle. And they're essentially trapped there by their own choice. They have no ability to create new supplies and they know that at a certain point the mall will no longer be able to sustain them. Obviously there are differences between the original and the remake (no biker gang to ruin their sanctuary in the new one), but the idea of consumerism run rampant still fits.
Then again I always hate reading too much into my zombie fiction ;-) Give me my poorly defended farm houses and overrun cities and I'll be happy.
Heh, maybe that is the issue. I have been playing on Normal. I'd still like to see a little more variety in my survival horror games though.
I really enjoy that game but I wouldn't call it the epitome of survival horror. Unlimited ammo and the ability to essentially rez your friends near the end of each stage count against it as far as the "survival" bit is concerned. RE4 was a much better example of survival horror. You really had to watch your ammo and fight smart if you wanted to get anywhere.
Really though I'm still waiting for a game to come out that looks at survival horror in the long run. I'd love to see a MMO or RPG-esque zombie game come out. Instead of worrying about the next thing to jump out at you around the corner (though you'd have to worry about that too) you would have to worry about things like having enough food and supplies to outlast the zombie hordes, or having to fight off other people from taking over your shelter. You could work with a team of other survivors to find a safe haven (i.e. clear this area of zombies and defend it). Since your supplies would constantly be depleting another aspect of the game would be leaving the safety of the shelter (while still leaving enough people back there to defend) would be going out into the world to find more. I'm sure there are all kinds of problems with a game like this and I don't know that anyone aside from myself would be interested in playing such a game, but it would be a nice change of pace from the "instant survival horror games" out there right now.
PS - I just finished reading World War Z and The Walking Dead, so it may be somewhat unsurprising that I'd be interested in a game like this ;-)
Let me translate that from the original Greek for you: "Hey, you kids get off my lawn!"
It was (quite) a while back but I remember it being very dice heavy with an insanely complex ruleset. I think we spent more time on character creation than we did actually playing the game because no one could figure out exactly how the damned combat system worked.
I also don't remember it being popular enough to merit its own MMO, but superhero is in these days, so why not? Between this, Marvel's MMO, DC's MMO and City of Heroes there will be plenty of competition. It will be interesting to see how it competes against one well-established community (CoH/CoV) and two up-and-coming games with big brands backing them up.
The rest of the world where? I'm as pro-standards as anyone else, but I hate to break it to you that most of the world is still using IE.
Yes, standards-compliant browsers are gaining more support every year, but it doesn't change the fact that with such a huge market share MS is still setting the defacto standard. This is especially true in the corporate environment. The great majority of corporate intranets are still using IE as their supported/required browser, and there is still A LOT of legacy web applications out there that rely on technologies like ActiveX to function. All that being said I'm glad to see Microsoft is finally starting to get with the program with IE8. Whether or not businesses start following suit and update their sites to be standards compliant is another question entirely, but I would hope that would be the case.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious, or if you're saying that we should move back towards Java applets and use more Flash or if they should go away. Care to elaborate?
Personally the idea of bringing Java applets back makes me cringe. I also have FlashBlock set to block all Flash by default, so you can guess my stance there as well. In fact the trend to include more Flash and the increasing use of Silverlight has me wondering what the future HTML and CSS will be if they have one at all. (I say as I format my post with HTML tags...)
My apologies for replying to my own post. I forgot mention that this conversation was with a friend in the army. Gotta love jumping the submit gun.
A couple of weeks ago we were having some inane conversation and the topic of our respective work places came up. I work in an IS shop with a relatively young crew of developers (I'm 29, I still consider myself young) and most of us show off our inner nerd on a daily basis. You know the stuff; ringtones from old school games, anime, Star Wars, oddball wallpapers, conversations about stuff that leaves non-nerds scratching their heads. A while back I even heard someone playing StarFox a couple cubicles over on a Friday afternoon. All in all it is a pretty great environment :-D My friend's response was "You're so lucky, you work with nerds out in the open. All I have around here are a bunch of closet ninja nerds!" He went on to say that if you're a nerd in the army it's generally better not to show it. Apparently he catches more crap about his nerdy past-times than he does about anything else. Nothing serious really, just the general razzing you might expect. He re-upped a couple of years ago though, so it can't be all bad.
Good points, but this is still just a different (better perhaps?) implementation of the same concept. The big issue with the implementation is that it will only "know" what you tell it, the same as any other computer. Further it will only be able to tell you about what you want to know based on the system's ability to parse your question and return what it "thinks" you want to know.
Look, I'm not saying it isn't a cool idea, I'm just saying that it isn't as shiny and new as the creator would lead you to believe. I'm also not inclined to be impressed considering that it isn't even available to try yet. It hasn't even been released yet.