I posted the article to suggest that the hard drive throughput bottleneck might be on the verge of disappearing. 2 gigabits per second is getting there. With a bit more work, they can get full uncompressed hidef video pouring in and out of a harddrive array. As a matter of fact, video is the main reason they are creating drives with multiple R/W heads. The drives will exist soon that can deal with uncompressed video. And it occurs to me just now that a RAID array of these fat-pipe hard drives can meet the enormous needs of HDTV even faster than waiting for a single-drive multihead solution. 4 drives at 2Gb/s = 8Gb/s if you stripe the data; that could do it.
Nope. It was a success then, and it would have been a success in the future.
You see, as I said, we had a massive FICA (SS) tax hike in '78. The hike ensured that we would take in far more money into the trust fund than was needed in the '70's, the '80's, the '90's, and the '00's. Jimmy Carter was lambasted for pushing the tax hike through. He took enormous political damage for it.
If the money would have remained untouched, the fund would have had hundreds of billions, if not trillions, ready and waiting for the Boomers come the teens and '20's.
The massive increase in retirees had been factored in by Carter and the tax hike supporters. Carter was an engineer, and could do arithmetic. They calculated exactly how much would be needed, and met the numbers with the tax. They made the fund successful and sustainable for all time.
The meme, as I have said, was exactly what you said. It just happens to be a lie, a marketed tool, a mathematical hoax. The fund had the cash. It did not matter how the old:young ratio increased. It was anticipated.
What was not anticipated was the outright theft of the trillions.
And your comment illustrates my "meme" comment in my original post. The devil's greatest accomplishment was in convincing others he did not exist, but the necon's greatest success was in convincing young libertarians that Social Security was bust. The numbers simply don't support it. I lived through it all; I watched it happen. It just isn't politically correct to discuss the theft anymore.
The young were never meant to support the old! The trust fund was invested in conservative instruments. It was to increase in value as taxes flowed into it over the decades, and additionally to accrue all that lovely interest. If it had not been stolen by 23 + years of ideologues and political ass-coverers who wanted to pretend that the tax cuts weren't bankrupting us, we would now be in no trouble funding the retirees. We were sold out in the '80's for tax cuts for the rich, as David Stockman, the Brock of the '80's, told us after he left Reagan's employ. And we are being robbed now, to cover up a fraction of the financial disaster caused by the present tax givaway.
On paper, it is flush. This is because back in '78 or so, we passed a major Social Security tax hike, with the express purpose of funding the payouts for Baby Boomers retiring post 2010.
In 1985, with eyes wide shut, the Social Security trust fund was completely wiped out. How? It was "borrowed". The fund is full of IOU's, due whenever. The money was grabbed with the sole reason of masking the humongous national deficit created by the supply sider's tax cuts.
The fund did not "fail". The same neocons that passed the tax cut made up the idiot idea that Social Security was "failing" to cover their own deception, and to create a meme that the more gullible would swallow. They knew it wasn't "failing" -- they were stealing it to get yummy tax breaks. And they had a Randian hatred of public programs, SS in particular, so they not only got gobs of cash, they also killed their hated liberal program, AND got to blame the program for a liberal "failure". A momumental game of chicanery that most Americans have swallowed.
Now, the national debt, that seven TRILLION dollars, is comprised somewhat of the IOU's owed the Social Security trust fund. IF the money was paid back, Social Security would not "fail". And as a sidenote, if the money had been left in the fund to gather interest, rather than being stolen by "borrowing" to finance giveaways to the wealthy, it would have generated large amounts of interest on investment over the last 23 years. Enough interest to have lowered Social Security taxes today.
And, one more thing: the Social Security program is still taking in more than it needs, even today. BUT THE MONEY IS BEING "BORROWED" AGAIN, for the same reason as in '85 -- to hide deficit spending.
To recap: Social Security was a success. Neocon ideologues hated it. They wanted tax cuts in '81. They hid the fiscal disaster of the tax cuts somewhat by robbing the trust fund. They blamed the trust fund for being a "failure" for having no money after they themselves robbed it. We have a stack of IOU's 7 trillion dollars high. And they are back in power, and are robbing what dreggs are left in the fund -- and Greenspan, that consistent Randian, proclaimed that we should cut SS because of the budget shortfalls.
Circular blame-the-victim garbage that will impoverish tens of millions of elderly people someday.
Let's keep this real. The program worked, was well funded, and was sucked dry by greedy rich people who didn't want to pay taxes. We need to pay the IOU's off, and restore the fund. That means RAISING TAXES. Go ahead, cry.
Maybe this, from the Register article "Maxtor champions 6 stream DVRs", will give you the data rate we need. It's designed to do so.
exerpt:
Dramatic crush Existing TV formats require a stream of about 270 megabits per second or 34 megabytes per second, in raw video. MPEG or other compression crushes this down dramatically to around 675 kilobits per second or even less with the new H.264 codecs. Six such streams would require a disk-reading speed of only 4 megabits per second.
But if we consider HDTV, then suddenly the streams could be far larger: possibly 22 megabits a second for each stream after compression. Furthermore, roughly four times the speed would be required, because there are so many more bits to convey due to the 1080 by 1280 maximum pixel numbers per frame.
Six of these would add up to 132 megabits per second - child's play to a disk drive, as long as doesn't have to spend all of its time moving from one stream to another and ragging its heels with seek times and latency. Latency, btw, is the time spent looking up where the data is and waiting for the part of the disk it needs to come round to the actuator.
Actuate this Maxtor this week completed tests on a device which had two separate ports. It's unclear if these were two actuators, but it sounds like it. These combined to yield I/O transfers of 3 gigabits per second. A hard drive delivering multiple video streams would need multiple reading heads (actuators) to optimize delivery and lower seek times and latency.
Is Ken Lay in jail for stealing tens of billions of dollars? Doesn't seem so. How about Rush Limbaugh, who sent his maid out to buy drugs by the thousands? Not a chance.
However, Slashdot pulls a post about Scientology's OT3 "Xenu is an alien" theology, even though they broke no laws.
Ah, I read today that John Ashcroft (Attorney General, anointed by Judge Clarence Thomas) is going to keep prosecuting Scott Ritter, chief American weapons inspector for Iraq, for something involving that faked kiddie porn charge that was leveled against the ex-Marine after he told everyone that Bush was lying about WMD's. Pure vengeance, pure evil, pure abuse of law to punish those who speak truth to corrupt power.
Here I see that RIAA has hired thugs to wear black windbreakers with the letters "RIAA" emblazoned across the back. They are raiding flea markets and "busting" people. The first recorded use of corporate private law enforcement on the streets.
With all this, who cares about breaking the law about "intellectual property". It's an article, it's on the Internet, it's free. That's how the Internet works. That is how file transfer technology works. Deal.
Stupid laws, and rich bastards who can break any law they like with impunity weaken respect for the law. Enron didn't care. Thousands of CEOs who are looting the nation don't care. Why should we?
The only ethics anyone with cash cares about is: if I can get away with it, screw legal. Obedience is for suckers without lawyers.
Now, overlay that with the current location of every wired node. Every cell phone. RFID tagged people and materiel. Biometric scans. Current locations of police cars, aircraft, automobiles, when tracking tech becomes mandatort. Current locations of known dissidents, troublemakers.
Mix in with Total Information Awareness of everyone. Real time video surveillance a la London. Really GOOD realtime satellite video and radio monitors.
Shake well...
And you have a system where a person can sit down with a cup of coffee, and be able to wander the earth with a mouse. Who's that guy on that street corner with a protest sign? Click. Current financial info, address, physical movement recorded for n years, communications history. Any criminal history? Click. Any friends? Click click. Where are they? Click click.
Seems he's an agitator. Click. Sending be-aware report to HSA. What's his IRS status? Click.
Best assign him to the Tracking list. Can't be too careful. And let's record movements of his buddies, too.
Hmm, the guy used to write anti-L. Ron Hubbard screeds. I'm a Scientologist. Best let my local manager know about this guy.
Click. Wander the world. What's up in Sidney today? Any anti-American protests going on? There! Click-clickety-click... good thing we share everything nowadays... can't be too Secure in our Homelands...
* Picture thousands of people using this thing, from cops, cult insiders, the FBI, and the military, all using different authorizations for their own purposes.
As for the cult thing, the Church of Scientology in Clearwater now has the entire downtown area video cameraed -- really good cameras -- and they have a situation room staffed with watchers 24-7. Not paranoia; motivated people are watching us now.
The TIA program, driven underground tho still alive, paired with modelling inreal time will turn the entire planet -- eventually -- into a prison. The only places without tracking tech will be the rooms where the watchers watch us -- and the homes and offices of the people who give them orders.
Soon we will have biometric passports. If I refuse to give up my retinal patterns and fingerprints, and soon my DNA info, I will be refused a pssport.
I will not be free to leave.
If I try to leave without a passport, or try to fake my way out of the U.S., I go to prison.
If I try to escape from prison, I may be shot dead.
Conclusion: if I refuse to give up all pretensions to my privacy, and refuse to be tracked for the rest of my life, I cannot leave the country. If I do try to leave, ultimately I will be shot dead.
Damn. I cam up with the computer-in-the-pen idea a few months ago. Input by penstroke, display by an intelligent led projector in the top of the pen, above the hand, that could compensate for hand movement. I was going to use it in a SF story. If I had been smart as a yoot, I would have an EE and made the bloody thing. The prototype would probably have weighed ten pounds, which would have been amusing in itself.
A pen-as-PC makes design sense, for utilitarian and human reasons. People can deal with a pen. We've used them for millenia.
They also could be cell phones as well, with voice, video, and internet capabilities. Wireless, of course.
I was seriously considering applying for a patent on the idea. Ya know, sometimes working for a living gets in the way of living. No time, no time.
Photonic circuitry can someday make them cool and powerful. Should be a pretty thing to see.
Ah, well. Run with the idea, guys! I want to have one.
The U.S. doesn't require biometric passports. Yet. Yes, you can visit the U.S. without one.
Statement stands. We are now all in a U.S. prison unless we submit out most private information to global databases. And then we'll still be in prison. Just a bigger one.
We're all being locked up. And the ones building our prison are not themselves submitting to lockdown. There will be two classes of people in the world: the prisoners and the guards.
I have this thing, more than a thing, really; more of a screaming, frothing refusal to submit to fingerprinting, retinal scanning, DNA sampling, gait analysis, random drug testing, ID picture taking... I don't think I should have to unless I am arrested and accused of a crime (and I better see a judge and a lawyer, too -- no torture pit in Syria, please).
I understand that pasports are necessary, and I would submit to good old picture ID, of course. Seems to have worked for a very long time. I do detest having to state various things about my private life (are you married? divorced? where's your wife? A: why the hell is that your business?).
The 40 or so hijackers that crashed the jets were here on perfectly valid ID's. No biometric scanning would have made a difference.
So, why are we submitting to this crap? And do you think that the powerful in the U.S. will be ducking their heads into retinal readers when they travel? Do you think the Saudi royals will?
Do you think they will stop at retinas? DNA will follow. Then RFID tags to track us. All in the name of Safety. Although none of these things will stop criminals from blowing something up. They merely have to keep their noses clean until they attack.
Now, I know that I am unemployable in corporate America now and forever, for they operate in some realm other than constitutional democracy. I don't grant them the right to make me pee on command, or track my private life (they can fire you for going to a union organizing meeting on your own time -- ruling was upheld).
But this -- I'm not going to guess, I am going to state that very soon I am locked out of Europe. And if the U.S. follows the EU's lead, I won't be able to leave the United States because I would refuse to have my biometric data taken for a passport?
I'm never able to travel out of the U.S. unless I submit. They won't let me leave.
"Whether more money would fix the educational system in America is open for debate of course. "
In the wealthier Chicago suburbs, they pay $16,000+ per year per student, roughly; Chicago itself pays... um, about 5K a year per student.
Since the students up north in the burbs wipe up the floor with Chicago students, it seems that money does buy you a better educational system.
Otherwise, why pay 16 grand per student? Why not knock it down to 5K/student/year, save 11K per, and get the same results?
Cause it wouldn't work, and everyone knows it. That's why they went to the burbs in the first place. The schools are hyperfunded, and the kids are academic successes.
Money drained from "urban" (non-white) schools when the panicked whites ran away and erected walls around their money. Non-conforming or underemployed families are kept out by housing tricks. The results of the financial segregation are obvious.
Not to mention that Al Qaeda achieved the primary and secondary objectives. First - make the U.S. remove its forces and bases from Saudi Arabia, the holy land. Done. Second, hurt us and scare us into doing something really dumb. Done.
For over two years, I keep hearing the same assumption: that Al Qaeda exists to attack us. Why do we assume that? What does it benefit them? The got what they wanted: no American troops in Saudi Arabia. We moved the bases into Iraq. And Al Qaeda hated the secular Iraqi state; we've removed that for them as well. A bloody-minded religious oligarchy is coming on line after we book this June.
The idea that the net, meaning newsgroups, the Freenet overlay, web pages, FTP sites, the idea that all of them are hotspots of kiddy porn -- where did this idea come from?
Is there a metric? Has anyone done any studies? How could such a count be made, since viewing the pictures, hell, having them on your harddrive, is a federal crime?
Isn't it mostly anti-free internet politicos and religous agitators the people making these claims? And cops, federal and local, who are making big budget careers out of policing the net?
Isn't it just pandering to people's fears?
I mean, it started out small, this meme. After years in the echo chamber of mass communication, "terrorists and pedophiles" are now almost synonymous with file transferers. And, oh yeah, music and video "thieves". Small, now HUGE.
How many thousands of kiddy shots have any of you actually seen? Downloaded? And how many of that subset of imagery on the net was made lately? Are most if not all ancient 8 MM junk made in the 80's, and long before that? And of all that, how much is actually really being traded around by willing hosts, and how much of it is BEING PLACED THERE BY COPS looking to make some easy bust?
IS there kiddy porn on the net? Really? Examine the question for a minute. We are, in my opinion, being suckered into believing something is real 'cause everyone SAYS it is real -- like the WMD in Iraq, who dares say it is a pile of vapor?
And what is kiddy porn? Is a 16 year old in a bikini porn? For most people in this argument, yep. I seem to recall as a young lad that I really liked the Montgomery Ward catalog for its fashionably clad young ladies. Was it kiddy porn?
I seem to remember that Scott Ritter, the chief American weapons inspector in Iraq, got busted for "kiddy porn" on his hard drive not long after calling Bush a liar about WMD's. He's walking around today, so I guess the highly publicized charges were dropped, after he was suitably ruined, of course. What were those naughty pictures? I'm guessing it was the not-kiddy-porn variety.
Again and again, WHAT kiddy porn? How would anyone know without downloading it? And if they don't download it, HOW THE HELL DO THEY KNOW IT'S "ALL OVER" THE FREENET?
It wouldn't be an issue with licensing StarOffice from Sun. OpenOffice is not owned by Sun, of course, being open source software; StarOffice is a derivative of OpenOffice. Anyone can use OpenOffice.
You do realize that, while governor of Texas, Bush signed a law mandating recounts in close elections?
And you do realize that the Republicans were planning on suing for recount after recount if the original count had gone against Bush, even if it meant keeping it in the courts for months? Were they getting ready to whine?
What happened was a neocon takeover of the election process, no more no less. If the election had gone against Bush, recounts would have been sacred. Since it went to Bush, they demanded all recounts stopped.
And you do realize that Bush had demanded at least one, maybe two, recounts in other states at the time the Florida recount was being hijacked? Recounts were fine in OTHER states. Just not Florida.
And there was no problem in counting the votes. A major privately funded recount was conducted during the late part of '01; the results were misreported and supressed by the very news organizations that sponsored it. Because of 9-11, they thought it unwise to baldly state that Gore won, if all votes, including "overcounts" (people who both punched and wrote in Gore's name) were counted.
By all standards but one, Gore won.
Bush issued the ultimate takeback when Scalia and the other neocons stopped the recount. He had lost.
Buzzflash.com and Mediawhoresonline.com fake their whois information becaues they fear retaliation from the right in their employment and in their private lives. And as the Valerie Plame outing shows, the White House IS targeting people for destruction for speaking against Bush. The deafening silence we hear from the White House press corps is one more indication that a lot of nasty intimidation is going on, both from the White House and their bosses.
Also, for just about ever, people who run cult-expose sites most assuredly have hidden their identities. The vendettas of the Moonies and the Scientologists are WELL documented, and it is wise to stay anonymous if you out them -- they will destroy your life.
Somewhere L. Ron Hubbard screams with laughter in the bowels of Heck.
Scientology rejoices today. There will be no way they do not obtain access to this tracking system.
I'm sure Reverend Moon (R-God on Earth), good friend of Bush, and owner of the Washington Times, will also receive his TrackYourEnemiesOnline! account userid and password at the same time the Doublecrossers will.
How would this system have stopped 40 men with boxcutters from crashing those planes?
This is a dream system for crushing dissidents. That's all it is.
"Actually, there are a bunch of jobs the fed *can't* outsource for national security reasons. "
Why not? We've outsourced electronics, steel manufacuring, IT, damned near everything manufactured for the armed services, with more to come, in the name of savings. What difference does it make anymore?
"Hmmmmm; how are they going to come to a process that can produce an extruded filament that can be bought in Radio Shack, if cooling to such a low temperature is needed in the process?"
Well, the point is the process, or some future decendant of it, will produce materials that will superconduct AFTER it is warmed up to room temperature. That this is only the first step to creating new, heretofore unknown superconductors that will perform to different specs.
As for how it would be economical, which I think your point is: how economical is the process that builds silicon processors? How incredibly, ridiculously persnickity and expensive. But economies of scale and massive investment by both government and private concerns made factories theat could turn out enough chips to change the world.
Superconducting materials at room temperature will change so many things. Motors. Power transmission. Industrial manufacturing. Transportation. No matter how hard it is to make the room temperature superconductors, it would be more expensive NOT to make them. It'll be done.
"God save this country from busybodies and good-government types who want "mandates" and "aggressive public policy". That horse shit has been tried for years in Europe, with unsurprisingly poor results."
It seems to work for India. Their busybody government makes sure only native Indians get the outsourced jobs. No foreigners need apply.
"Keep taxes low, spending down, and government regulations minimized and predictable. Everything else government does is secondary, if not counterproductive."
Large corporations don't pay taxes anymore. And they are still outsourcing the jobs. Amazing, ain't it? Microsoft gets rebates from the Feds every year, and they are pouring coding jobs put to Russia and India as fast as they can, for a few extra bucks.
Just to hammer it home: EVEN IF THEY PAY NO TAXES, THEY OUTSOURCE THE JOBS. Who benefits? There ARE people living in the US that aren't inheiriting wealth, hold large stock portfolios, or holding nice jobs.
As for the useless government. That is such a colossally wrong statement it staggers me. Let's see. Who built the roads? The docks? The schools? The military forces? The Federal reserve? The merchant marine? The billion of processes that make up our nation, that make it other than a feudal corporate society, are all made by our representatives in our government. You're mad.
Do "terrorists" want us to "give up our freedoms"?
I know Bush has established firmly in the minds of Americans the idea that the 9-11 hijackers were part of a large evil called Terrorism, which has branches everywhere; a large organic thing, Islamic in our minds, that operates to destroy America.
I have to gently call a time out.
Has anyone actually discussed why bin Laden's political cult did what they did? From what he SAID, he was trying to 1) remove Americans from Saudia Arabian soil, holy to his mind, 2) make Americans feel pain for what they, in his estimation, have done, and 3) raise a holy war by instigating a first attack, in order to remove the pollution of his religious values that Americans represent to him. Not waged by him, but by us.
He has succeeded in 1) and 2), and 3) frankly our reactions are guaranteeing a eternal war of vengeance if we don't cut the shelling of homes in Iraq and the other rambunctious stupidity our dumber commanders think wise.
bin Laden was NOT trying to instigate a shooting war in America in the sense of blowing up buildings every day, even tho Americans have been convinced this is the case. He wanted to strike in a way that would make us do something stupid, such as rounding up Arabs and putting them in holes in the ground, or shooting large numbers of the wrong people. This is fundamental insurgency technique: make the enemy attack blindly or unwisely and generate more converts to your cause.
bin Laden was NOT trying to change our way of life, or remove our freedoms, or piss on the flag, or whatever meme is popular and promoted by Bush.
He had certain goals, and he has accomplished them. And he got away, along with the real brains of the Al Queda network, while we've been beating up Afghanistan and Iraq, and tossing people into holes in other countries.
As for hunting them down, I agree. Let's hunt down bin Laden and his cult. In Saudia Arabia and Pakistan, which is where they are, but where, curiously, we aren't.
We've hunted, imprisoned, and tortured by the thousands people who were fingered even casually by any crackpot or vengeful business associate or looney housewife, but we let the guy who actually led the attack get away. It was great power-mongering strategy for the White House machiavellis, but missed the target. And we gave bin Laden his most important goal: removal of American bases from Saudi Arabia, where they had been since the first Gulf War. We are based in Iraq now.
In what sense have we even made a dent in bin Laden?
Bush's people instituted a Patriot Act in two weeks that looks like a police state wish list that had been in the process of being written for years. We demonified Arabs in our country, and apparently none of the people we arrested here or elsewhere were guilty of anything but thought crimes, if that much. Our privacy is gone forever. We want to install cameras and biometric scanners and real time email monitors.
But the 9-11 attackers would have been stopped by none of those things. They used surprise and the normal assumptions of the passengers that if they cooperated, they would live. We know better now, so airplane hijackings are useless as a tactic. Why are we so obsessed?
We can convert to a police state, and it wouldn't stop a single determined attacker. All an attack would do would be to make us even crazier, lock up more innocent people, and become more evil ourselves.
The world is not us against Evil; and Bush cannot define Evil, or the parameters of defeating it. So his War against Evil is just a declaration of eternal supreme executive power. His war is undefineable and unwinnable.
Evil, to Bush himself, is easy to detect. And when he says "evil", he's not being metaphorical. He is a fundamentalist southern christian; he means Satan. He sees himself as a leader of the Godly armies against Satan's minions, which is why he can blythely and firmly state his intention to wage it forever. He's speaking code to his religiou
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I posted the article to suggest that the hard drive throughput bottleneck might be on the verge of disappearing. 2 gigabits per second is getting there. With a bit more work, they can get full uncompressed hidef video pouring in and out of a harddrive array. As a matter of fact, video is the main reason they are creating drives with multiple R/W heads. The drives will exist soon that can deal with uncompressed video. And it occurs to me just now that a RAID array of these fat-pipe hard drives can meet the enormous needs of HDTV even faster than waiting for a single-drive multihead solution. 4 drives at 2Gb/s = 8Gb/s if you stripe the data; that could do it.
Nope. It was a success then, and it would have been a success in the future.
You see, as I said, we had a massive FICA (SS) tax hike in '78. The hike ensured that we would take in far more money into the trust fund than was needed in the '70's, the '80's, the '90's, and the '00's. Jimmy Carter was lambasted for pushing the tax hike through. He took enormous political damage for it.
If the money would have remained untouched, the fund would have had hundreds of billions, if not trillions, ready and waiting for the Boomers come the teens and '20's.
The massive increase in retirees had been factored in by Carter and the tax hike supporters. Carter was an engineer, and could do arithmetic. They calculated exactly how much would be needed, and met the numbers with the tax. They made the fund successful and sustainable for all time.
The meme, as I have said, was exactly what you said. It just happens to be a lie, a marketed tool, a mathematical hoax. The fund had the cash. It did not matter how the old:young ratio increased. It was anticipated.
What was not anticipated was the outright theft of the trillions.
And your comment illustrates my "meme" comment in my original post. The devil's greatest accomplishment was in convincing others he did not exist, but the necon's greatest success was in convincing young libertarians that Social Security was bust. The numbers simply don't support it. I lived through it all; I watched it happen. It just isn't politically correct to discuss the theft anymore.
The young were never meant to support the old! The trust fund was invested in conservative instruments. It was to increase in value as taxes flowed into it over the decades, and additionally to accrue all that lovely interest. If it had not been stolen by 23 + years of ideologues and political ass-coverers who wanted to pretend that the tax cuts weren't bankrupting us, we would now be in no trouble funding the retirees. We were sold out in the '80's for tax cuts for the rich, as David Stockman, the Brock of the '80's, told us after he left Reagan's employ. And we are being robbed now, to cover up a fraction of the financial disaster caused by the present tax givaway.
Social Security DID NOT FAIL.
On paper, it is flush. This is because back in '78 or so, we passed a major Social Security tax hike, with the express purpose of funding the payouts for Baby Boomers retiring post 2010.
In 1985, with eyes wide shut, the Social Security trust fund was completely wiped out. How? It was "borrowed". The fund is full of IOU's, due whenever. The money was grabbed with the sole reason of masking the humongous national deficit created by the supply sider's tax cuts.
The fund did not "fail". The same neocons that passed the tax cut made up the idiot idea that Social Security was "failing" to cover their own deception, and to create a meme that the more gullible would swallow. They knew it wasn't "failing" -- they were stealing it to get yummy tax breaks. And they had a Randian hatred of public programs, SS in particular, so they not only got gobs of cash, they also killed their hated liberal program, AND got to blame the program for a liberal "failure". A momumental game of chicanery that most Americans have swallowed.
Now, the national debt, that seven TRILLION dollars, is comprised somewhat of the IOU's owed the Social Security trust fund. IF the money was paid back, Social Security would not "fail". And as a sidenote, if the money had been left in the fund to gather interest, rather than being stolen by "borrowing" to finance giveaways to the wealthy, it would have generated large amounts of interest on investment over the last 23 years. Enough interest to have lowered Social Security taxes today.
And, one more thing: the Social Security program is still taking in more than it needs, even today. BUT THE MONEY IS BEING "BORROWED" AGAIN, for the same reason as in '85 -- to hide deficit spending.
To recap: Social Security was a success. Neocon ideologues hated it. They wanted tax cuts in '81. They hid the fiscal disaster of the tax cuts somewhat by robbing the trust fund. They blamed the trust fund for being a "failure" for having no money after they themselves robbed it. We have a stack of IOU's 7 trillion dollars high. And they are back in power, and are robbing what dreggs are left in the fund -- and Greenspan, that consistent Randian, proclaimed that we should cut SS because of the budget shortfalls.
Circular blame-the-victim garbage that will impoverish tens of millions of elderly people someday.
Let's keep this real. The program worked, was well funded, and was sucked dry by greedy rich people who didn't want to pay taxes. We need to pay the IOU's off, and restore the fund. That means RAISING TAXES. Go ahead, cry.
Maybe this, from the Register article "Maxtor champions 6 stream DVRs", will give you the data rate we need. It's designed to do so.
exerpt:
Dramatic crush
Existing TV formats require a stream of about 270 megabits per second or 34 megabytes per second, in raw video. MPEG or other compression crushes this down dramatically to around 675 kilobits per second or even less with the new H.264 codecs. Six such streams would require a disk-reading speed of only 4 megabits per second.
But if we consider HDTV, then suddenly the streams could be far larger: possibly 22 megabits a second for each stream after compression. Furthermore, roughly four times the speed would be required, because there are so many more bits to convey due to the 1080 by 1280 maximum pixel numbers per frame.
Six of these would add up to 132 megabits per second - child's play to a disk drive, as long as doesn't have to spend all of its time moving from one stream to another and ragging its heels with seek times and latency. Latency, btw, is the time spent looking up where the data is and waiting for the part of the disk it needs to come round to the actuator.
Actuate this
Maxtor this week completed tests on a device which had two separate ports. It's unclear if these were two actuators, but it sounds like it. These combined to yield I/O transfers of 3 gigabits per second. A hard drive delivering multiple video streams would need multiple reading heads (actuators) to optimize delivery and lower seek times and latency.
(C) Copyright 2004 Faultline
Let's put it this way.
Is Ken Lay in jail for stealing tens of billions of dollars? Doesn't seem so. How about Rush Limbaugh, who sent his maid out to buy drugs by the thousands? Not a chance.
However, Slashdot pulls a post about Scientology's OT3 "Xenu is an alien" theology, even though they broke no laws.
Ah, I read today that John Ashcroft (Attorney General, anointed by Judge Clarence Thomas) is going to keep prosecuting Scott Ritter, chief American weapons inspector for Iraq, for something involving that faked kiddie porn charge that was leveled against the ex-Marine after he told everyone that Bush was lying about WMD's. Pure vengeance, pure evil, pure abuse of law to punish those who speak truth to corrupt power.
Here I see that RIAA has hired thugs to wear black windbreakers with the letters "RIAA" emblazoned across the back. They are raiding flea markets and "busting" people. The first recorded use of corporate private law enforcement on the streets.
With all this, who cares about breaking the law about "intellectual property". It's an article, it's on the Internet, it's free. That's how the Internet works. That is how file transfer technology works. Deal.
Stupid laws, and rich bastards who can break any law they like with impunity weaken respect for the law. Enron didn't care. Thousands of CEOs who are looting the nation don't care. Why should we?
The only ethics anyone with cash cares about is: if I can get away with it, screw legal. Obedience is for suckers without lawyers.
Why should we care either?
Okay, here we have a model of the earth.
Now, overlay that with the current location of every wired node. Every cell phone. RFID tagged people and materiel. Biometric scans. Current locations of police cars, aircraft, automobiles, when tracking tech becomes mandatort. Current locations of known dissidents, troublemakers.
Mix in with Total Information Awareness of everyone. Real time video surveillance a la London. Really GOOD realtime satellite video and radio monitors.
Shake well...
And you have a system where a person can sit down with a cup of coffee, and be able to wander the earth with a mouse. Who's that guy on that street corner with a protest sign? Click. Current financial info, address, physical movement recorded for n years, communications history. Any criminal history? Click. Any friends? Click click. Where are they? Click click.
Seems he's an agitator. Click. Sending be-aware report to HSA. What's his IRS status? Click.
Best assign him to the Tracking list. Can't be too careful. And let's record movements of his buddies, too.
Hmm, the guy used to write anti-L. Ron Hubbard screeds. I'm a Scientologist. Best let my local manager know about this guy.
Click. Wander the world. What's up in Sidney today? Any anti-American protests going on? There! Click-clickety-click... good thing we share everything nowadays... can't be too Secure in our Homelands...
*
Picture thousands of people using this thing, from cops, cult insiders, the FBI, and the military, all using different authorizations
for their own purposes.
As for the cult thing, the Church of Scientology in Clearwater now has the entire downtown area video cameraed -- really good cameras -- and they have a situation room staffed with watchers 24-7. Not paranoia; motivated people are watching us now.
The TIA program, driven underground tho still alive, paired with modelling inreal time will turn the entire planet -- eventually -- into a prison. The only places without tracking tech will be the rooms where the watchers watch us -- and the homes and offices of the people who give them orders.
Americans may soon be NOT free to leave.
Soon we will have biometric passports. If I refuse to give up my retinal patterns and fingerprints, and soon my DNA info, I will be refused a pssport.
I will not be free to leave.
If I try to leave without a passport, or try to fake my way out of the U.S., I go to prison.
If I try to escape from prison, I may be shot dead.
Conclusion: if I refuse to give up all pretensions to my privacy, and refuse to be tracked for the rest of my life, I cannot leave the country. If I do try to leave, ultimately I will be shot dead.
Damn. I cam up with the computer-in-the-pen idea a few months ago. Input by penstroke, display by an intelligent led projector in the top of the pen, above the hand, that could compensate for hand movement. I was going to use it in a SF story. If I had been smart as a yoot, I would have an EE and made the bloody thing. The prototype would probably have weighed ten pounds, which would have been amusing in itself.
A pen-as-PC makes design sense, for utilitarian and human reasons. People can deal with a pen. We've used them for millenia.
They also could be cell phones as well, with voice, video, and internet capabilities. Wireless, of course.
I was seriously considering applying for a patent on the idea. Ya know, sometimes working for a living gets in the way of living. No time, no time.
Photonic circuitry can someday make them cool and powerful. Should be a pretty thing to see.
Ah, well. Run with the idea, guys! I want to have one.
"Now the company has put a lot of money into R&D/Programming/Distribution and then they get sued."
Actually, you have it backwards. The company preemptively sued first. They wanted to fight on their own terms.
Pity we have such a pro-business judiciary. You can't really play craps when the dice are loaded.
Phone sex. THE reason for picture phones.
The U.S. doesn't require biometric passports. Yet. Yes, you can visit the U.S. without one.
Statement stands. We are now all in a U.S. prison unless we submit out most private information to global databases. And then we'll still be in prison. Just a bigger one.
We're all being locked up. And the ones building our prison are not themselves submitting to lockdown. There will be two classes of people in the world: the prisoners and the guards.
I have this thing, more than a thing, really; more of a screaming, frothing refusal to submit to fingerprinting, retinal scanning, DNA sampling, gait analysis, random drug testing, ID picture taking... I don't think I should have to unless I am arrested and accused of a crime (and I better see a judge and a lawyer, too -- no torture pit in Syria, please).
I understand that pasports are necessary, and I would submit to good old picture ID, of course. Seems to have worked for a very long time. I do detest having to state various things about my private life (are you married? divorced? where's your wife? A: why the hell is that your business?).
The 40 or so hijackers that crashed the jets were here on perfectly valid ID's. No biometric scanning would have made a difference.
So, why are we submitting to this crap? And do you think that the powerful in the U.S. will be ducking their heads into retinal readers when they travel? Do you think the Saudi royals will?
Do you think they will stop at retinas? DNA will follow. Then RFID tags to track us. All in the name of Safety. Although none of these things will stop criminals from blowing something up. They merely have to keep their noses clean until they attack.
Now, I know that I am unemployable in corporate America now and forever, for they operate in some realm other than constitutional democracy. I don't grant them the right to make me pee on command, or track my private life (they can fire you for going to a union organizing meeting on your own time -- ruling was upheld).
But this -- I'm not going to guess, I am going to state that very soon I am locked out of Europe. And if the U.S. follows the EU's lead, I won't be able to leave the United States because I would refuse to have my biometric data taken for a passport?
I'm never able to travel out of the U.S. unless I submit. They won't let me leave.
I'm in prison. We all are.
"Whether more money would fix the educational system in America is open for debate of course. "
In the wealthier Chicago suburbs, they pay $16,000+ per year per student, roughly; Chicago itself pays... um, about 5K a year per student.
Since the students up north in the burbs wipe up the floor with Chicago students, it seems that money does buy you a better educational system.
Otherwise, why pay 16 grand per student? Why not knock it down to 5K/student/year, save 11K per, and get the same results?
Cause it wouldn't work, and everyone knows it. That's why they went to the burbs in the first place. The schools are hyperfunded, and the kids are academic successes.
Money drained from "urban" (non-white) schools when the panicked whites ran away and erected walls around their money. Non-conforming or underemployed families are kept out by housing tricks. The results of the financial segregation are obvious.
Money matters. Of course it does.
Not to mention that Al Qaeda achieved the primary and secondary objectives. First - make the U.S. remove its forces and bases from Saudi Arabia, the holy land. Done. Second, hurt us and scare us into doing something really dumb. Done.
For over two years, I keep hearing the same assumption: that Al Qaeda exists to attack us. Why do we assume that? What does it benefit them? The got what they wanted: no American troops in Saudi Arabia. We moved the bases into Iraq. And Al Qaeda hated the secular Iraqi state; we've removed that for them as well. A bloody-minded religious oligarchy is coming on line after we book this June.
A few comments.
The idea that the net, meaning newsgroups, the Freenet overlay, web pages, FTP sites, the idea that all of them are hotspots of kiddy porn -- where did this idea come from?
Is there a metric? Has anyone done any studies? How could such a count be made, since viewing the pictures, hell, having them on your harddrive, is a federal crime?
Isn't it mostly anti-free internet politicos and religous agitators the people making these claims? And cops, federal and local, who are making big budget careers out of policing the net?
Isn't it just pandering to people's fears?
I mean, it started out small, this meme. After years in the echo chamber of mass communication, "terrorists and pedophiles" are now almost synonymous with file transferers. And, oh yeah, music and video "thieves". Small, now HUGE.
How many thousands of kiddy shots have any of you actually seen? Downloaded? And how many of that subset of imagery on the net was made lately? Are most if not all ancient 8 MM junk made in the 80's, and long before that? And of all that, how much is actually really being traded around by willing hosts, and how much of it is BEING PLACED THERE BY COPS looking to make some easy bust?
IS there kiddy porn on the net? Really? Examine the question for a minute. We are, in my opinion, being suckered into believing something is real 'cause everyone SAYS it is real -- like the WMD in Iraq, who dares say it is a pile of vapor?
And what is kiddy porn? Is a 16 year old in a bikini porn? For most people in this argument, yep. I seem to recall as a young lad that I really liked the Montgomery Ward catalog for its fashionably clad young ladies. Was it kiddy porn?
I seem to remember that Scott Ritter, the chief American weapons inspector in Iraq, got busted for "kiddy porn" on his hard drive not long after calling Bush a liar about WMD's. He's walking around today, so I guess the highly publicized charges were dropped, after he was suitably ruined, of course. What were those naughty pictures? I'm guessing it was the not-kiddy-porn variety.
Again and again, WHAT kiddy porn? How would anyone know without downloading it? And if they don't download it, HOW THE HELL DO THEY KNOW IT'S "ALL OVER" THE FREENET?
It wouldn't be an issue with licensing StarOffice from Sun. OpenOffice is not owned by Sun, of course, being open source software; StarOffice is a derivative of OpenOffice. Anyone can use OpenOffice.
You do realize that, while governor of Texas, Bush signed a law mandating recounts in close elections?
And you do realize that the Republicans were planning on suing for recount after recount if the original count had gone against Bush, even if it meant keeping it in the courts for months? Were they getting ready to whine?
What happened was a neocon takeover of the election process, no more no less. If the election had gone against Bush, recounts would have been sacred. Since it went to Bush, they demanded all recounts stopped.
And you do realize that Bush had demanded at least one, maybe two, recounts in other states at the time the Florida recount was being hijacked? Recounts were fine in OTHER states. Just not Florida.
And there was no problem in counting the votes. A major privately funded recount was conducted during the late part of '01; the results were misreported and supressed by the very news organizations that sponsored it. Because of 9-11, they thought it unwise to baldly state that Gore won, if all votes, including "overcounts" (people who both punched and wrote in Gore's name) were counted.
By all standards but one, Gore won.
Bush issued the ultimate takeback when Scalia and the other neocons stopped the recount. He had lost.
Buzzflash.com and Mediawhoresonline.com fake their whois information becaues they fear retaliation from the right in their employment and in their private lives. And as the Valerie Plame outing shows, the White House IS targeting people for destruction for speaking against Bush. The deafening silence we hear from the White House press corps is one more indication that a lot of nasty intimidation is going on, both from the White House and their bosses.
Also, for just about ever, people who run cult-expose sites most assuredly have hidden their identities. The vendettas of the Moonies and the Scientologists are WELL documented, and it is wise to stay anonymous if you out them -- they will destroy your life.
Somewhere L. Ron Hubbard screams with laughter in the bowels of Heck.
Scientology rejoices today. There will be no way they do not obtain access to this tracking system.
I'm sure Reverend Moon (R-God on Earth), good friend of Bush, and owner of the Washington Times, will also receive his TrackYourEnemiesOnline! account userid and password at the same time the Doublecrossers will.
How would this system have stopped 40 men with boxcutters from crashing those planes?
This is a dream system for crushing dissidents. That's all it is.
"Actually, there are a bunch of jobs the fed *can't* outsource for national security reasons. "
Why not? We've outsourced electronics, steel manufacuring, IT, damned near everything manufactured for the armed services, with more to come, in the name of savings. What difference does it make anymore?
"all the children are above average"
Um, that's actually possible (almost). Now if all of the children are above the median, that'd be impressive.
"Hmmmmm; how are they going to come to a process that can produce an extruded filament that can be bought in Radio Shack, if cooling to such a low temperature is needed in the process?"
Well, the point is the process, or some future decendant of it, will produce materials that will superconduct AFTER it is warmed up to room temperature. That this is only the first step to creating new, heretofore unknown superconductors that will perform to different specs.
As for how it would be economical, which I think your point is: how economical is the process that builds silicon processors? How incredibly, ridiculously persnickity and expensive. But economies of scale and massive investment by both government and private concerns made factories theat could turn out enough chips to change the world.
Superconducting materials at room temperature will change so many things. Motors. Power transmission. Industrial manufacturing. Transportation. No matter how hard it is to make the room temperature superconductors, it would be more expensive NOT to make them. It'll be done.
"God save this country from busybodies and good-government types who want "mandates" and "aggressive public policy". That horse shit has been tried for years in Europe, with unsurprisingly poor results."
It seems to work for India. Their busybody government makes sure only native Indians get the outsourced jobs. No foreigners need apply.
"Keep taxes low, spending down, and government regulations minimized and predictable. Everything else government does is secondary, if not counterproductive."
Large corporations don't pay taxes anymore. And they are still outsourcing the jobs. Amazing, ain't it? Microsoft gets rebates from the Feds every year, and they are pouring coding jobs put to Russia and India as fast as they can, for a few extra bucks.
Just to hammer it home: EVEN IF THEY PAY NO TAXES, THEY OUTSOURCE THE JOBS. Who benefits? There ARE people living in the US that aren't inheiriting wealth, hold large stock portfolios, or holding nice jobs.
As for the useless government. That is such a colossally wrong statement it staggers me. Let's see. Who built the roads? The docks? The schools? The military forces? The Federal reserve? The merchant marine? The billion of processes that make up our nation, that make it other than a feudal corporate society, are all made by our representatives in our government. You're mad.
We. Can't. Work. For. A. Dollar. An. Hour.
Do "terrorists" want us to "give up our freedoms"?
I know Bush has established firmly in the minds of Americans the idea that the 9-11 hijackers were part of a large evil called Terrorism, which has branches everywhere; a large organic thing, Islamic in our minds, that operates to destroy America.
I have to gently call a time out.
Has anyone actually discussed why bin Laden's political cult did what they did? From what he SAID, he was trying to 1) remove Americans from Saudia Arabian soil, holy to his mind, 2) make Americans feel pain for what they, in his estimation, have done, and 3) raise a holy war by instigating a first attack, in order to remove the pollution of his religious values that Americans represent to him. Not waged by him, but by us.
He has succeeded in 1) and 2), and 3) frankly our reactions are guaranteeing a eternal war of vengeance if we don't cut the shelling of homes in Iraq and the other rambunctious stupidity our dumber commanders think wise.
bin Laden was NOT trying to instigate a shooting war in America in the sense of blowing up buildings every day, even tho Americans have been convinced this is the case. He wanted to strike in a way that would make us do something stupid, such as rounding up Arabs and putting them in holes in the ground, or shooting large numbers of the wrong people. This is fundamental insurgency technique: make the enemy attack blindly or unwisely and generate more converts to your cause.
bin Laden was NOT trying to change our way of life, or remove our freedoms, or piss on the flag, or whatever meme is popular and promoted by Bush.
He had certain goals, and he has accomplished them. And he got away, along with the real brains of the Al Queda network, while we've been beating up Afghanistan and Iraq, and tossing people into holes in other countries.
As for hunting them down, I agree. Let's hunt down bin Laden and his cult. In Saudia Arabia and Pakistan, which is where they are, but where, curiously, we aren't.
We've hunted, imprisoned, and tortured by the thousands people who were fingered even casually by any crackpot or vengeful business associate or looney housewife, but we let the guy who actually led the attack get away. It was great power-mongering strategy for the White House machiavellis, but missed the target. And we gave bin Laden his most important goal: removal of American bases from Saudi Arabia, where they had been since the first Gulf War. We are based in Iraq now.
In what sense have we even made a dent in bin Laden?
Bush's people instituted a Patriot Act in two weeks that looks like a police state wish list that had been in the process of being written for years. We demonified Arabs in our country, and apparently none of the people we arrested here or elsewhere were guilty of anything but thought crimes, if that much. Our privacy is gone forever. We want to install cameras and biometric scanners and real time email monitors.
But the 9-11 attackers would have been stopped by none of those things. They used surprise and the normal assumptions of the passengers that if they cooperated, they would live. We know better now, so airplane hijackings are useless as a tactic. Why are we so obsessed?
We can convert to a police state, and it wouldn't stop a single determined attacker. All an attack would do would be to make us even crazier, lock up more innocent people, and become more evil ourselves.
The world is not us against Evil; and Bush cannot define Evil, or the parameters of defeating it. So his War against Evil is just a declaration of eternal supreme executive power. His war is undefineable and unwinnable.
Evil, to Bush himself, is easy to detect. And when he says "evil", he's not being metaphorical. He is a fundamentalist southern christian; he means Satan. He sees himself as a leader of the Godly armies against Satan's minions, which is why he can blythely and firmly state his intention to wage it forever. He's speaking code to his religiou