Oh... OK, let me ask you this... would you let a man in the army to shower with the women (and force them to tolerate it even if they object)?
Then why do you want to force straight men to shower with those who find them sexually attractive?
I have nothing against gays in general. I just don't want to share shower with one any more than a random woman wouldn't want to share a shower with me (Well, my wife seems to enjoy the experience, but I said RANDOM woman:)
-DVK
Re:This is scary, or is it just over-reaction?
on
Brain Privacy
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· Score: 1
Beats me why they don't do it, but i'm all for it. I hate junkie Presidents as much as junkie.
Oh, wait, we DO have an equivalent. YOU, the employer (being the people of the United States), HIRED a junkie president knowing he was a junkie.
[ I said "YOU", because I wasn't eligible to vote until 2000 elections. Were I eligible, I would have voted against the junkie. ]
Re:This is scary, or is it just over-reaction?
on
Brain Privacy
·
· Score: 1
Or may be because i'm 100% against drug users, don't want them working near me, and feel BETTER working for a company that drug-tests?
Umm... must be a breezy day in Hell... someone actually thoughtfully responded to my right-wing post instead of modding down:) Well, let's go through the points:
1) "That's the same New York with a Republican governor and a Republican mayor in its largest city, right?"
Sadly, registering on the ballot as a Republican does not a Republican make. As Mike Bloomberg clearly demonstrates. He seems to have managed to tick off EVERYONE - left, right (me included:), his former employees (lots of people I know work[ed] for Bloomberg LLP), and probably everyone else too:) The guy is pro-high-taxes and rather to the left socially (he seems to be, like Rudy, pro-gay-rights, for example). NOT a poster boy for Grand Old Party. Oh, and the only reason he got elected at all, as opposed to his very left-wing opponent, was Rudy's post-9/11 influence. You should have seen the polls before Rudy started to endorse him.
2) "Sounds pretty lefty." A city whose legislature includes former "Black Panthers" and other people of similar ideological persuasion? A State with 2 Democratic Senators? A borough where in the last election all but 2 local choices were between Democrat and Liberal party? I'd call it pretty lefty. Although probably not compared to my last place of rsidence (hint: its name had 4 letters and it ain't on the map anymore:)
3) "You show me someone who is actually willing to talk unhysterically about state ownership of the means of production and who is willing actively to pursue redistribution of wealth, and I'll show you a leftist."
Desire to tax me to death to pay off her "disenfranchised" (read: lazy bums who don't want to work as hard as I do, even if I don't know how to spell the word) voter is precisely what "redistribution of wealth" is. Oh, and her health care stuff plus "let's steal the child from parents and raise it with a village" very nearly falls into the "state ownership of the means of production" category. After all, in USA, health care and education are rather important sectors of life and economy.
4) Although I have to agree, "talk-the-talk cultural liberal" is a great label for her.
Probably lives in New York State, like me. Yes, you can not only immigrate, but if you're left-wing enough, and have lots of money and powerful friends, you'll be elected Senator in less than a year.
'Cos you know, if the gummint says it's so, it must be so.
Nope... but just because the United States government (you DO know how to spell, don't you) says it's so, it doesn't automatically make it not so either.
They (US government) are not exactly PolitBureau/Saddam's Minitry of Propaganda. And unless you lived in a communist country like I did, you're not qualified to dispute this statement, BTW. They may lie sometimes. They may fuck up sometimes, in words, thoughts or even in deeds. But they aren't set all out to center their lives on lying to you about some Joe Blow. So you can hang up that tinfoil hat.
Oh, and just because some web site run by a bunch of guy's friends - and half of SlashHerd - says he is an angel, doesn't mean he is.
I can't comment on how crazy it is, although IMHO this is not as easy engineering-wise as you think for hardware. Also, software would be a problem too in terms of supoprting those options, for example QVGA on Handera required their new version of PalmOS.
However, one place where you're dead wrong is the grayscale part - unless and until someone comes up with a color screen that doesn't eat up batteries any faster than grayscale one, i'm opting for grayscale, and i'm sure many other people too. I don't need color for PIM functionality, nor for reading books on my Handera. And battery life is very important.
What i WOULD like, would be ClearType support on Palms for either color or grayscale screens... then again, i'd like world peace too:)
> Does open source and freely available security support terrorism by its very nature?
1) Software is a tool, like any tool it supports whatever goal (freedom or terrorism) the user of the tool supports.
2) HOWEVER, open source *community*, unfortunately, supports terrorism by nature. No this is not a troll, so please don't moderate as such even if you disagree with my political views. Hear me out and if you disagree, tell me why my logic is at fault. Why is it so? Because (as most comments in this thread - or on/. in general - indicate), proponents of open source are in their vast majority on the far left of the political spectrum. And in the recent century, ESPECIALLY recent 20 years, left wing has been a lot more supportive of terrorism - on all levels - than right wing. Please note that i'm not saying that every individual open souce developer supports terrorism. Just that as a mass, their combined views help terorists, whether the people hlding them intend to or not.
- Financial support. Yes, I know that CIA financed Mujaheddin. But socialist countries (openly admired by many on the left) have supported/created almost every other terrorist organization out there, and i'm not even mentioning that most of those organizations are officially "marxist", or "socialist", or otherwise left-wing.
- Political support. Whether or not you are pro-Israel or anti-Israel, ONLY those on the left wing have ever issued any statements other than condemning murder of innocent civilians without any attempt to justify them. Those one the left range from "we will condemn them only after they stop occupation" to "it is a valid weapon in the fight against stronger foe". The same exact pattern repeated itself after 9/11 towards US. Those on the left often view terrorism as an excusable method of doing things.
- Opposition to anti-terrorism. Ranging from general "anti-US-ianism", to opposing any forceful method to stop terrorists because you don't condone forceful methods. Willingness to believe every word Saddam's Information Ministry said over what US press reported (no offense, but having lived in USSR - which was far freeer than Iraq - all I can say to those who think so is taht they are dumb morons with no clue as to reality of the world).
If you don't believe what I just said on in the second point (about political support), or the third one, just read comments in this article carefully.
>>> Opps, someone stupid got put in charge of the US economy. >>> Just like with his father the economy when to #%@(!
Oh, i didn't know Clinton's father had anything to do with economy... you WERE talking about Clinton, werent you? The president that was in office when the current economic downturn started (not to mention the president who turned down Sudanese offer to capture Bin Laden, which theoreticlaly could have prevented 9/11 which could have stopped the major recession).
See, what marxists don't seem to get is that economy takes a while to change due to certain policies. So, the cycle we get is: - Respublican inherits shitty economy - Respublican does things to fix it - Economy looks bad because fixes haven't worked yet - Population elects a democrat - Democrat benefits from the good economy - caused by policies of the previous Republican and/or simply the economic cycle - Democrat doesn't help (or hurts) the economy by increasing spending and taxes - Economy doesn't have enough time to tank yet, when Republican gets elected because the population wants someone who doesn't think with his dick - Economy tanks thanks to cycle and previous policies - Respublican gets blamed by economically clueless liberals like you.
As for on-topic advice: 1) Don't ask professional advice on/. unless it's conputer related. You have no way to evaluate which responses are from dumbasses and which from those who know 2) File. Don't fuck with IRS - they can do things to you. Very, very bad things.
BS. Plenty has been writen on this, the most recent i recall was http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=58957&cid=5628 391:
"a person appointed to his job by a court of people appointed to their jobs"
Um... which court was that? The US Supreme Court, as always, chose between "you go fix it" and "not our problem" (which is what they've always done since 1789 or so). The people they told to "fix it" were the democratically elected members of the Florida Supreme Court, interpreting Florida laws written and ratified by democratically elected state legislators and signed into law by a democratically elected governor. The issue in question were the election results that a democratically elected secretary of state signed off on.
And even then there was very little the US Supreme Court could have done. All they could do is say whether or not what the State of Florida was doing violated parts of the Fourteenth Amendment or not. Otherwise, the US Constitution clearly spells out that the Florida Legislature can pick its memebers of the Electoral College however it damned well pleases.
And don't forget that appointments to all federal courts have to be cleared by a democratically elected Congress, which also has the power to remove them from their bench.
> Please pray for all those who will die in this war, both Iraqi and American. Each human life has the same worth.
I would pray for innocent Iraquis who die in the war (assuming i pray at all). I totally agree that one innocent life is the same worth as another wherever the person lives.
I will NOT pray for (and assume their life are worth the same) Saddam, his security apparatus (who tortured, raped and killed those same Iraquis you claim to value), or his advisers who benefitted from his regime. So no, not ALL human lives have the same worth.
I also hope that you pray for many (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of Iraquis killed by Saddam's regime. And weigh te amount of people he would have kept killing if he's not kciked out now against any casualties of this war.
What all the anti-war protestors don't get is that this war was NOT a choice between killing couple of hundred - at worst, couple of thousand - Iraquis and letting all those people live. It's a choice between killing couple of hundred - at worst, couple of thousand - Iraquis and letting Saddam keep killing a LOT more, not even counting potential deaths from terroriss he supports, or any wars he would launch in the future.
-DVK
---- "People get annoyed when you try to debug them."
- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999)
Re:Part of the growing class division in the US
on
Improving Company Morale?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
>>> those who make the rules do so to assure their continued rule-making.
Wold you please site a specific rule which proibits the setting up of a new executive-less company as I have described? The only stopblock I can see would be funding, and as I stated, in the "everyone trades" environment of post-late-1990s, it's no longer valid as the "not in the in" little people can invest in such company even if big shots could theoretically conspire not to (and for that matter, given the strategic blindness of big trading houses vs. short-term gains, i'm 99% sure they'd invest too, as it would mean better ROI which is their mantra).
>>> Democracy doesn't just happen, either -- lots of dictators argue that the little people can't make decisions without the inspired leadership of their betters as well.
Invalid example - in a dictatorship, one of your first freedoms to go is the ability to escape. If a dictatorship has free emigration (whether by choice, or due to porous borders), people will jump ship to a better neighbour. As an immigrant from fUSSR, I can personally confirm that trend;)
In case of a company, nothing stops the people to jump ship and organize a new one.
>>> distinct class with a seperate set of privileges that are not granted to others.
Such as? Other than perhaps a membership in some exclusive golf club, what exactly are those priviledges? Remember, you can say the same thing, for example, about "privildges" of computer-savvy to have the perks of online auctions, comparison-shopping online or stealing^H^H^H^H^H^Hsharing digital content... or reading/. at work:))))
>>> Coupled with the repeal of the estate tax,
OK, so if I came to this country, worked my ass off to start - literally - from zero, and made some money that i'm hoping I can leave to my kids, what exactly makes you think that some lazy welfare-sitting bum who has had MORE opportunities in this country than I ever did has more rights to what I earned than my family?
>>> increasingly expensive college tuition at "good" schools and we have all the fixings for a new American aristocracy.
Anyone smart enough to pass tests decently can get a bunch of scolarships. And anyone determined enough can get VERY good education from a cheaper, good - if not Ivy League quality - college. Look at the amount of first/second generation immigrants in graduate Math or CS departments at Princeton, for example.
Yes, you may have to work harder than some rich guy's child born in silver shirt, but other than this requirement to work really hard, there are no other barriers. You may not likely to get to be the President of the USA or Ford CEO, but the reasonably high executive position is quite possible for just about anyone with appropriate qualities.
While I can't argue with the fact that management is basically buttering their own toast (and who wouldn't), your underlying premise of the existance of "people whose real work consists solely of 'managing' and ***who are useless***" is faulty. The easiest proof is a very simple thought experiment: Let's say your company has 400 workers who "create" stuff, and 20 high level executives who solely "manage". If what you said was true, those 400 workers could easily walk, set up their own shop, and instantly get all the investors (private or stock market) who invested into old company to switch over, since their company -according to your assumption - has 100% the same productivity and output as the old one, yet costs a LOT less to run (since we skip compensation to 20 highly paid executives), and thus posts better profits and is more attractive to invest in.
The fact that this doesn't happen on global scale (and given the fact that these days everyone and their grandmother's cat was investing, so it's not the case of rich investors refusing to support such an experiment to preserve status quo) indicates that there's some ***ECONOMIC*** reason why this is a non-working idea, or it'd have happened, in droves. Therefore, those uber-compensated executives actually are needed.
The extent of compensation needed for them is, of course, debatable, but until you try to run something as complicated as a company without 'people whose real work consists solely of "managing"', you can't appreciate taht such work is vital.
Disclaimer: I myself am a lowly developer for a large company, none of my friends/relatives are executives, so i've got no reason to be pro-management. I bitch about The Man as much as anyone out there. Moreover, i'm actively resisting anything which can make me a manager, as I loath managing other humans due to my personality (when they need a manager for a bunch of AIs, we can talk;)
OK, may be it's my paranoya talking, but hasn't anyone ever considered that this JUST MIGHT NOT BE Joe Iraqi's blog? Anyone from some pro-saddam nut (err... sorry, should I use PC anti-war activist?;) to French intelligence officer to Saddam's goon could have put that up.
Of course, it could, but somehow i'm highly skeptical. And before you mod me down/yell about right wing nuts, please recall the speed at wich any pro-MS/anti-Linux, or pro-some-movie "grass-roots" campaign is claimed to be the work of MPAA/M$ PR machines on/. Probably deservedly, too.
Cheers, DVK ---- "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."
- The Chicago Times review of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
OK, that's/. for you. I write a serious response being pissed off at liberals. I expect to get moderated +1(Informative) -3(Troll) -3 (Flamebate), this being Slashtod and knowing from personal experience the tendency of moderators to mod down anything they politically disgree with (translation: right of Fidel).
Instead, the thing gets +4(Funny). IT WAS NOT MEANT TO BE FUNNY! It was serious, not satirical, people! (but thanx for the karma points, and for promoting the info;) Now, this post should be made +Funny:)
-DVK -- replying to self... yikes;(
Re:It must be terrorists
on
More on Columbia
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· Score: 2, Funny
We know who put the unsafe foam there. Eco-"aware" liberals did, because old, reliable one contains miniscule amount of the stuff that the Holy Ones of Enviromental Protection Order deemed too unsafe to exist. I'm too tired to go find the actual reference but you can dig up on Google news, I'm sure, if you want the details.
Unless you can prove that every geek/ner who got picked on in HS had bad hygiene or no sense of humor, what you said is a complete and utter BS.
I was cleaner than most my schoolmates, as well as had better sense of humor (as in, got picke out to represent the class in humor contests). Same is true of MOST of my geek friends, both in US and in my past life in USSR.
I still got picked on because: * I was a geek/nerd. As in, a LOT smarter. * I was smaller and younger than everyone else. * I was a four-eye. * I was jewish (in USSR schools, that was a more valid reason to beat someone up than being Goth in US is from what I see on/.:)
Guess what, i stopped being harrassed after i decided to hit back. After an older kid got chased by me around the schoolyard with a brick, they all got the idea and stopped bugging me. After a class bully got a blody nose from a "weak geek", not only was he bloody surprised (pun intended;) but nobody else bothered me till i finished my Junior High and moved to a math-specialized school where being smart was a benefit.
Bullshit. Why is it OK for a jock to act like he is better (which he isn't) or more athletic (which he is) than everyone else, but not OK for nerd to do the same?
And if the latter is in your eyes a good justification for a jock to use his advantage to hurt the geek (his strength to beat the geek up), then why would it not be OK for a geek to do the same thing - WITHOUT PROVOCATION - to hurt the jock (say, blow the shit out of him with some chemical stuff)? And i'm sure you would agree that such action would be without justification, if the jock being harrassed didn't actually attack you and merely acted superior due to his athletic ablities.
> People would be equally upset if national parks > in the US were being filled with internet cafes.
WHY?????????? I wouldn't complain at all - and i'm as much of a nature and outdoors freak as anyone out there. Definitely more than most "sitting in my basement getting suntan from the monitor"/.-ters.
I may not use a I-cafe in Yellowstone (due to costs - just like I don't use them in NYC where I live or in any big town where I travel, if I can help it). But I sure as hell would like the fact that i CAN access the internet if needed.
Now, Starbucks i would mind - but that is because I go to Yellowstone to escape urban "culture", not civilization or technology.
> They should be cutting off the money supply to terrorism that flows from America itself.
Uhm... there's the problem. They tried to do so (whatever the controversy other parts of P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act may have, a big part of it is SPECIFICALLY aimed at dealing with vterrorism financing, dealing with money transfer etc...).
Except... scroll back in/. article history, and read comments that slashdotniks made when Sybase tried to introduce a progrm that would help banks comply with those portions of the Act... they we made into the Main Enemies Of Civilization And Freedom.
As far as/. crowd is concerned, the only thing US govenment can do in War on Terror that is right, is to resign, invite Ralph Nader to take over, and go hug and kiss Saddam and some trees (plus, help Arafat kick the kikes back into the sea as he's been wanting to do all along - go read the *still active* PLO charter if you don't believe that).
A chief of security job is about ***MAKING SURE THE COMPANY IS SECURE***. First and formost, in a physical sense. These days, also in computer sense. It was ***NOT*** in any way, shape or form his job to ensure the product that the company makes has no security code. (Also, in case of M$, his job was made more difficult in that there was obviously company internal pressure to use their own products to perform his job, which - how should I put it mildly - may not have been the optimal choice:)
Therefore, his competence should have been evaluated solely on the amount of SECURITY FAILURES that M$ as a company had, both physical (someone broke in and stole Gates' favourite chair:) and cyber (someone broke into their network and stole beta code for Windows), and how he dealt with resultant issues. (I.E., not only whether someone could break in, but how was he able to make sure the method could not be repeated). Again, additional adjustement needs to be made due to pressure on M$ security to use in-house developed software which sux.
Before all of "bush bad, MS bad, Marx good" slashdotniks start yelling about "he was a security chief for M$ and the holes in Windoze mean that he is not good at his job", please use your brains for a change!!! (And no, I have no great love for M$, I just use my brains from time to time:)
> if they've planted nasty things on board why not blow them up during ascent?
Well, I can not say it was terrorism. But the above argument against the terrorism version doesn't hold water: the best reason to do it during descent is to cover up your tracks. If you sabotage the shuttle to kill it on takeoff, the chances of being able to find hard data about it are much higher than if you do this at descent when almost all evidence gets burnt up.
Again, i'm not saying this WAS terrorism. But pleae don't rule it out based on arguments that don't work.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh... OK, let me ask you this... would you let a man in the army to shower with the women (and force them to tolerate it even if they object)?
:)
Then why do you want to force straight men to shower with those who find them sexually attractive?
I have nothing against gays in general. I just don't want to share shower with one any more than a random woman wouldn't want to share a shower with me (Well, my wife seems to enjoy the experience, but I said RANDOM woman
-DVK
Beats me why they don't do it, but i'm all for it. I hate junkie Presidents as much as junkie .
Oh, wait, we DO have an equivalent.
YOU, the employer (being the people of the United States), HIRED a junkie president knowing he was a junkie.
[ I said "YOU", because I wasn't eligible to vote until 2000 elections. Were I eligible, I would have voted against the junkie. ]
Or may be because i'm 100% against drug users, don't want them working near me, and feel BETTER working for a company that drug-tests?
-DVK
Umm... must be a breezy day in Hell... someone actually thoughtfully responded to my right-wing post instead of modding down :)
:), his former employees (lots of people I know work[ed] for Bloomberg LLP), and probably everyone else too :)
:)
Well, let's go through the points:
1) "That's the same New York with a Republican governor and a Republican mayor in its largest city, right?"
Sadly, registering on the ballot as a Republican does not a Republican make. As Mike Bloomberg clearly demonstrates. He seems to have managed to tick off EVERYONE - left, right (me included
The guy is pro-high-taxes and rather to the left socially (he seems to be, like Rudy, pro-gay-rights, for example). NOT a poster boy for Grand Old Party.
Oh, and the only reason he got elected at all, as opposed to his very left-wing opponent, was Rudy's post-9/11 influence. You should have seen the polls before Rudy started to endorse him.
2) "Sounds pretty lefty."
A city whose legislature includes former "Black Panthers" and other people of similar ideological persuasion? A State with 2 Democratic Senators?
A borough where in the last election all but 2 local choices were between Democrat and Liberal party? I'd call it pretty lefty. Although probably not compared to my last place of rsidence (hint: its name had 4 letters and it ain't on the map anymore
3) "You show me someone who is actually willing to talk unhysterically about state ownership of the means of production and who is willing actively to pursue redistribution of wealth, and I'll show you a leftist."
Desire to tax me to death to pay off her "disenfranchised" (read: lazy bums who don't want to work as hard as I do, even if I don't know how to spell the word) voter is precisely what "redistribution of wealth" is.
Oh, and her health care stuff plus "let's steal the child from parents and raise it with a village" very nearly falls into the "state ownership of the means of production" category. After all, in USA, health care and education are rather important sectors of life and economy.
4) Although I have to agree, "talk-the-talk cultural liberal" is a great label for her.
-DVK
Did they have any of the Honorverse spaceships?
:)
FYI, 1/2 of the relevance of the comment is that Honorvers by David Weber is part of the above-mentioned Baen CD
The books had decent dimention descriptiosn, and the CD included schematics/drawings.
-DVK
Probably lives in New York State, like me.
Yes, you can not only immigrate, but if you're left-wing enough, and have lots of money and powerful friends, you'll be elected Senator in less than a year.
Nope... but just because the United States government (you DO know how to spell, don't you) says it's so, it doesn't automatically make it not so either.
They (US government) are not exactly PolitBureau/Saddam's Minitry of Propaganda. And unless you lived in a communist country like I did, you're not qualified to dispute this statement, BTW. They may lie sometimes. They may fuck up sometimes, in words, thoughts or even in deeds. But they aren't set all out to center their lives on lying to you about some Joe Blow. So you can hang up that tinfoil hat.
Oh, and just because some web site run by a bunch of guy's friends - and half of SlashHerd - says he is an angel, doesn't mean he is.
-DVK
> Suppose, for example, every single person in a country decided to be communist.
/. as a country.
See... there's your problem... NO SUCH COUNTRY EXISTS. Unless you count
Most people are sane enough to not want to live under communism - especially those who, like me, actually experienced it on their own skin.
-DVK
I can't comment on how crazy it is, although IMHO this is not as easy engineering-wise as you think for hardware. Also, software would be a problem too in terms of supoprting those options, for example QVGA on Handera required their new version of PalmOS.
:)
However, one place where you're dead wrong is the grayscale part - unless and until someone comes up with a color screen that doesn't eat up batteries any faster than grayscale one, i'm opting for grayscale, and i'm sure many other people too. I don't need color for PIM functionality, nor for reading books on my Handera. And battery life is very important.
What i WOULD like, would be ClearType support on Palms for either color or grayscale screens... then again, i'd like world peace too
-DVK
> Does open source and freely available security support terrorism by its very nature?
/. in general - indicate), proponents of open source are in their vast majority on the far left of the political spectrum. And in the recent century, ESPECIALLY recent 20 years, left wing has been a lot more supportive of terrorism - on all levels - than right wing. Please note that i'm not saying that every individual open souce developer supports terrorism. Just that as a mass, their combined views help terorists, whether the people hlding them intend to or not.
1) Software is a tool, like any tool it supports whatever goal (freedom or terrorism) the user of the tool supports.
2) HOWEVER, open source *community*, unfortunately, supports terrorism by nature. No this is not a troll, so please don't moderate as such even if you disagree with my political views. Hear me out and if you disagree, tell me why my logic is at fault.
Why is it so? Because (as most comments in this thread - or on
- Financial support. Yes, I know that CIA financed Mujaheddin. But socialist countries (openly admired by many on the left) have supported/created almost every other terrorist organization out there, and i'm not even mentioning that most of those organizations are officially "marxist", or "socialist", or otherwise left-wing.
- Political support. Whether or not you are pro-Israel or anti-Israel, ONLY those on the left wing have ever issued any statements other than condemning murder of innocent civilians without any attempt to justify them. Those one the left range from "we will condemn them only after they stop occupation" to "it is a valid weapon in the fight against stronger foe".
The same exact pattern repeated itself after 9/11 towards US. Those on the left often view terrorism as an excusable method of doing things.
- Opposition to anti-terrorism. Ranging from general "anti-US-ianism", to opposing any forceful method to stop terrorists because you don't condone forceful methods. Willingness to believe every word Saddam's Information Ministry said over what US press reported (no offense, but having lived in USSR - which was far freeer than Iraq - all I can say to those who think so is taht they are dumb morons with no clue as to reality of the world).
If you don't believe what I just said on in the second point (about political support), or the third one, just read comments in this article carefully.
-DVK
>>> Opps, someone stupid got put in charge of the US economy.
/. unless it's conputer related. You have no way to evaluate which responses are from dumbasses and which from those who know
>>> Just like with his father the economy when to #%@(!
Oh, i didn't know Clinton's father had anything to do with economy... you WERE talking about Clinton, werent you? The president that was in office when the current economic downturn started
(not to mention the president who turned down Sudanese offer to capture Bin Laden, which theoreticlaly could have prevented 9/11 which could have stopped the major recession).
See, what marxists don't seem to get is that economy takes a while to change due to certain policies. So, the cycle we get is:
- Respublican inherits shitty economy
- Respublican does things to fix it
- Economy looks bad because fixes haven't worked yet
- Population elects a democrat
- Democrat benefits from the good economy - caused by policies of the previous Republican and/or simply the economic cycle
- Democrat doesn't help (or hurts) the economy by increasing spending and taxes
- Economy doesn't have enough time to tank yet, when Republican gets elected because the population wants someone who doesn't think with his dick
- Economy tanks thanks to cycle and previous policies
- Respublican gets blamed by economically clueless liberals like you.
As for on-topic advice:
1) Don't ask professional advice on
2) File. Don't fuck with IRS - they can do things to you. Very, very bad things.
-DVK
BS. Plenty has been writen on this, the most recent i recall was http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=58957&cid=5628 391:
"a person appointed to his job by a court of people appointed to their jobs"
Um... which court was that? The US Supreme Court, as always, chose between "you go fix it" and "not our problem" (which is what they've always done since 1789 or so). The people they told to "fix it" were the democratically elected members of the Florida Supreme Court, interpreting Florida laws written and ratified by democratically elected state legislators and signed into law by a democratically elected governor. The issue in question were the election results that a democratically elected secretary of state signed off on.
And even then there was very little the US Supreme Court could have done. All they could do is say whether or not what the State of Florida was doing violated parts of the Fourteenth Amendment or not. Otherwise, the US Constitution clearly spells out that the Florida Legislature can pick its memebers of the Electoral College however it damned well pleases.
And don't forget that appointments to all federal courts have to be cleared by a democratically elected Congress, which also has the power to remove them from their bench.
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> Please pray for all those who will die in this war, both Iraqi and American. Each human life has the same worth.
I would pray for innocent Iraquis who die in the war (assuming i pray at all). I totally agree that one innocent life is the same worth as another wherever the person lives.
I will NOT pray for (and assume their life are worth the same) Saddam, his security apparatus (who tortured, raped and killed those same Iraquis you claim to value), or his advisers who benefitted from his regime. So no, not ALL human lives have the same worth.
I also hope that you pray for many (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of Iraquis killed by Saddam's regime. And weigh te amount of people he would have kept killing if he's not kciked out now against any casualties of this war.
What all the anti-war protestors don't get is that this war was NOT a choice between killing couple of hundred - at worst, couple of thousand - Iraquis and letting all those people live. It's a choice between killing couple of hundred - at worst, couple of thousand - Iraquis and letting Saddam keep killing a LOT more, not even counting potential deaths from terroriss he supports, or any wars he would launch in the future.
-DVK
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"People get annoyed when you try to debug them."
- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999)
>>> those who make the rules do so to assure their continued rule-making.
;)
/. at work :))))
Wold you please site a specific rule which proibits the setting up of a new executive-less company as I have described? The only stopblock I can see would be funding, and as I stated, in the "everyone trades" environment of post-late-1990s, it's no longer valid as the "not in the in" little people can invest in such company even if big shots could theoretically conspire not to (and for that matter, given the strategic blindness of big trading houses vs. short-term gains, i'm 99% sure they'd invest too, as it would mean better ROI which is their mantra).
>>> Democracy doesn't just happen, either -- lots of dictators argue that the little people can't make decisions without the inspired leadership of their betters as well.
Invalid example - in a dictatorship, one of your first freedoms to go is the ability to escape. If a dictatorship has free emigration (whether by choice, or due to porous borders), people will jump ship to a better neighbour. As an immigrant from fUSSR, I can personally confirm that trend
In case of a company, nothing stops the people to jump ship and organize a new one.
>>> distinct class with a seperate set of privileges that are not granted to others.
Such as? Other than perhaps a membership in some exclusive golf club, what exactly are those priviledges? Remember, you can say the same thing, for example, about "privildges" of computer-savvy to have the perks of online auctions, comparison-shopping online or stealing^H^H^H^H^H^Hsharing digital content... or reading
>>> Coupled with the repeal of the estate tax,
OK, so if I came to this country, worked my ass off to start - literally - from zero, and made some money that i'm hoping I can leave to my kids, what exactly makes you think that some lazy welfare-sitting bum who has had MORE opportunities in this country than I ever did has more rights to what I earned than my family?
>>> increasingly expensive college tuition at "good" schools and we have all the fixings for a new American aristocracy.
Anyone smart enough to pass tests decently can get a bunch of scolarships. And anyone determined enough can get VERY good education from a cheaper, good - if not Ivy League quality - college. Look at the amount of first/second generation immigrants in graduate Math or CS departments at Princeton, for example.
Yes, you may have to work harder than some rich guy's child born in silver shirt, but other than this requirement to work really hard, there are no other barriers. You may not likely to get to be the President of the USA or Ford CEO, but the reasonably high executive position is quite possible for just about anyone with appropriate qualities.
-DVK
While I can't argue with the fact that management is basically buttering their own toast (and who wouldn't), your underlying premise of the existance of "people whose real work consists solely of 'managing' and ***who are useless***" is faulty. The easiest proof is a very simple thought experiment:
;)
Let's say your company has 400 workers who "create" stuff, and 20 high level executives who solely "manage". If what you said was true, those 400 workers could easily walk, set up their own shop, and instantly get all the investors (private or stock market) who invested into old company to switch over, since their company -according to your assumption - has 100% the same productivity and output as the old one, yet costs a LOT less to run (since we skip compensation to 20 highly paid executives), and thus posts better profits and is more attractive to invest in.
The fact that this doesn't happen on global scale (and given the fact that these days everyone and their grandmother's cat was investing, so it's not the case of rich investors refusing to support such an experiment to preserve status quo) indicates that there's some ***ECONOMIC*** reason why this is a non-working idea, or it'd have happened, in droves. Therefore, those uber-compensated executives actually are needed.
The extent of compensation needed for them is, of course, debatable, but until you try to run something as complicated as a company without 'people whose real work consists solely of "managing"', you can't appreciate taht such work is vital.
Disclaimer: I myself am a lowly developer for a large company, none of my friends/relatives are executives, so i've got no reason to be pro-management. I bitch about The Man as much as anyone out there. Moreover, i'm actively resisting anything which can make me a manager, as I loath managing other humans due to my personality (when they need a manager for a bunch of AIs, we can talk
-DVK
I wish :))) /. :)
Always wanted a government job... perhaps your idea has some merit once i get fired from the current one for reading
OK, may be it's my paranoya talking, but hasn't anyone ever considered that this JUST MIGHT NOT BE Joe Iraqi's blog? Anyone from some pro-saddam nut (err... sorry, should I use PC anti-war activist? ;) to French intelligence officer to Saddam's goon could have put that up.
/. Probably deservedly, too.
Of course, it could, but somehow i'm highly skeptical. And before you mod me down/yell about right wing nuts, please recall the speed at wich any pro-MS/anti-Linux, or pro-some-movie "grass-roots" campaign is claimed to be the work of MPAA/M$ PR machines on
Cheers,
DVK
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"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."
- The Chicago Times review of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
OK, that's /. for you. I write a serious response being pissed off at liberals. I expect to get moderated +1(Informative) -3(Troll) -3 (Flamebate), this being Slashtod and knowing from personal experience the tendency of moderators to mod down anything they politically disgree with (translation: right of Fidel).
;) :)
;(
Instead, the thing gets +4(Funny). IT WAS NOT MEANT TO BE FUNNY! It was serious, not satirical, people! (but thanx for the karma points, and for promoting the info
Now, this post should be made +Funny
-DVK -- replying to self... yikes
We know who put the unsafe foam there.
Eco-"aware" liberals did, because old, reliable one contains miniscule amount of the stuff that the Holy Ones of Enviromental Protection Order deemed too unsafe to exist. I'm too tired to go find the actual reference but you can dig up on Google news, I'm sure, if you want the details.
-DVK
Unless you can prove that every geek/ner who got picked on in HS had bad hygiene or no sense of humor, what you said is a complete and utter BS.
/. :)
;) but nobody else bothered me till i finished my Junior High and moved to a math-specialized school where being smart was a benefit.
I was cleaner than most my schoolmates, as well as had better sense of humor (as in, got picke out to represent the class in humor contests).
Same is true of MOST of my geek friends, both in US and in my past life in USSR.
I still got picked on because:
* I was a geek/nerd. As in, a LOT smarter.
* I was smaller and younger than everyone else.
* I was a four-eye.
* I was jewish (in USSR schools, that was a more valid reason to beat someone up than being Goth in US is from what I see on
Guess what, i stopped being harrassed after i decided to hit back. After an older kid got chased by me around the schoolyard with a brick, they all got the idea and stopped bugging me.
After a class bully got a blody nose from a "weak geek", not only was he bloody surprised (pun intended
-DVK
Bullshit. Why is it OK for a jock to act like he is better (which he isn't) or more athletic (which he is) than everyone else, but not OK for nerd to do the same?
And if the latter is in your eyes a good justification for a jock to use his advantage to hurt the geek (his strength to beat the geek up), then why would it not be OK for a geek to do the same thing - WITHOUT PROVOCATION - to hurt the jock (say, blow the shit out of him with some chemical stuff)? And i'm sure you would agree that such action would be without justification, if the jock being harrassed didn't actually attack you and merely acted superior due to his athletic ablities.
-DVK
> People would be equally upset if national parks
/.-ters.
> in the US were being filled with internet cafes.
WHY??????????
I wouldn't complain at all - and i'm as much of a nature and outdoors freak as anyone out there. Definitely more than most "sitting in my basement getting suntan from the monitor"
I may not use a I-cafe in Yellowstone (due to costs - just like I don't use them in NYC where I live or in any big town where I travel, if I can help it). But I sure as hell would like the fact that i CAN access the internet if needed.
Now, Starbucks i would mind - but that is because I go to Yellowstone to escape urban "culture", not civilization or technology.
-DVK.
> They should be cutting off the money supply to terrorism that flows from America itself.
/. article history, and read comments that slashdotniks made when Sybase tried to introduce a progrm that would help banks comply with those portions of the Act... they we made into the Main Enemies Of Civilization And Freedom.
/. crowd is concerned, the only thing US govenment can do in War on Terror that is right, is to resign, invite Ralph Nader to take over, and go hug and kiss Saddam and some trees (plus, help Arafat kick the kikes back into the sea as he's been wanting to do all along - go read the *still active* PLO charter if you don't believe that).
Uhm... there's the problem. They tried to do so (whatever the controversy other parts of P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act may have, a big part of it is SPECIFICALLY aimed at dealing with vterrorism financing, dealing with money transfer etc...).
Except... scroll back in
As far as
Let the modding down begin...
-DVK
A chief of security job is about ***MAKING SURE THE COMPANY IS SECURE***. First and formost, in a physical sense. These days, also in computer sense. It was ***NOT*** in any way, shape or form his job to ensure the product that the company makes has no security code. (Also, in case of M$, his job was made more difficult in that there was obviously company internal pressure to use their own products to perform his job, which - how should I put it mildly - may not have been the optimal choice :)
:) and cyber (someone broke into their network and stole beta code for Windows), and how he dealt with resultant issues. (I.E., not only whether someone could break in, but how was he able to make sure the method could not be repeated). Again, additional adjustement needs to be made due to pressure on M$ security to use in-house developed software which sux.
:)
Therefore, his competence should have been evaluated solely on the amount of SECURITY FAILURES that M$ as a company had, both physical (someone broke in and stole Gates' favourite chair
Before all of "bush bad, MS bad, Marx good" slashdotniks start yelling about "he was a security chief for M$ and the holes in Windoze mean that he is not good at his job", please use your brains for a change!!! (And no, I have no great love for M$, I just use my brains from time to time
-DVK
> if they've planted nasty things on board why not blow them up during ascent?
Well, I can not say it was terrorism.
But the above argument against the terrorism version doesn't hold water: the best reason to do it during descent is to cover up your tracks.
If you sabotage the shuttle to kill it on takeoff, the chances of being able to find hard data about it are much higher than if you do this at descent when almost all evidence gets burnt up.
Again, i'm not saying this WAS terrorism. But pleae don't rule it out based on arguments that don't work.
-DVK