And what about the women who may have been forced to have sex against their will to perform sexual favors ("suck me or lose your job")? Do her rights not matter? Would you also turn your back on your own secretary if she reported a similar offense about her manager? Seems pretty callous. Although I don't think impeaching Clinton was the right answer, I do think he deserved to be prosecuted for the alleged crimes, so the victims could get justice.
And no you can't "wait" as you suggest. The statute of limitations is only 7 years, the presidency was 8, therefore they had to prosecute before time ran out, not after.
>>>as though it were a "wag-the-dog" distraction from the country's real priority: the president's philandering.
Today: "President Clinton testified before a grand jury...." Tomorrow: "Clinton announced he launched tomahawk missiles again Bin Laden tents."
I think it was obvious Mr. Clinton was doing exactly what you describe - trying to distract people from legal troubles. That alone is bad enough, but I also find it distasteful you think it's okay for a boss to rape an intern (that's how sexual harassment is legally defined; give sex or get fired), and we should all pretend nothing happened. What about womens' rights to a safe workplace? Or do those not matter?
I wish I was in a position to tell them, "Sorry but your budget for next year will only be 50% as large," just so I could watch their face. And of course to also cut spending and pay-off-the national debt.
>>>4 cents placed in a plain-old savings account would actually also equal a dollar today.
That's zero growth in wealth. 4 cents could buy you a hamburger back in 1910, and if it grows to a dollar over one hundred years, well it still only buys you a hamburger. Not something to brag about.
>>>Invested in bonds or an index fund, that $0.04 would now be worth $9
Unless I was German, in which case the 1910 bond would now be worthless paper, due to the devaluation of their currency during the 1920s. I would feel more secure buying gold in 1910, such that even if the government collapses, the metal still holds value.
>>>Inflation drives the economy forward.
It makes the numbers bigger, but I don't see any real increase in wealth. As I mentioned before an ounce of gold in 1910 or 2009, still buys you a new suit. The numbers printed on the ticket grew larger, but the real value of the commodity has not altered or "moved forward".
For all their flaws, Microsoft is still better than Congress. Microsoft can't suck money directly from my paycheck, toss me in jail if I refuse to let them into my house, or draft me to die in some mudhole in Vietnam or Afghanistan. I'd rather have an evil corporation (which I can largely ignore) than an evil government (which I cannot ignore).
Even if Microsoft did start a monthly subscription service on Windows OS, they still can't force me to pay it. There are lots of alternative OSes out there.
Well as a longtime Windows user (since Win95), I recently bought my first Macintosh (used). I put their OS X onto this old 400 megahertz/128 megabyte machine, not really expecting much, and it ran like a dream!
Try that with Vista or XP and it either won't fit and/or will run like a snail through molasses (at least that's the case with my PCs).
Why the heck have I been modded troll? Just because I happened to buy my first Mac (used), did some experimentation, and enjoyed the operating system more than the Win95/XP/Vista systems I've used for the last fifteen years????? Jesus Christ. Loosen up.
You committed the broken window fallacy, which states breaking windows creates work for the glassmaker. While that's true, it's more efficient not to break the window in the first place and instead spend that money on some other activity (like saving it for your kids' college fund, or buying new jeans, or whatever). The same applies to trees. It's better not to cut down the trees if you don't have to.
>>>Am I the only person left on earth that like and often prefers to read things printed on dead trees?
No but you're definitely in the minority. I can just sit here, in my lounge chair, browsing through the news while watching Simpsons reruns and barely move a muscle.
But books are so *heavy* to hold up. Even if you're laying in bed, after awhile the weight of the 500 or 1000 page tome tires-out your arms. And sitting-up while bending-over makes your neck hurt. It's just so much easier to effortlessly read through a book while it scrolls across my self-supporting computer screen.
P.S. In case you're wondering why the paragraphs are so short, it's because the C=64 screen was only 40 characters wide due to its limited 320x240 resolution, which was imposed by the channel 3 RF cable connection (analog blur). Higher resolutions would have been unreadable.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> what is a grue?
The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.
(This brings back good memories of staring at my tiny 15" television while the blue-on-blue text scrolled across my little 1 megahertz Commodore computer. Ahhh to be a teenager again; no worries except remembering what time Buck Rogers comes on.)
>>>The cost is zero to the telcos, but the profit is gravy. It is a complete rip-off scam to the consumer.
I disagree. The retail cost is whatever the market will bear. This idea goes all the way back to John Smith, and is not necessarily tied to the actual cost of the good. You might call it a "ripoff" but it's a ripoff that customers *voluntarily* enter into. They could just as easily decide not to do texting (as I do).
The flip-side of this is that money collected from all these texters helps subsidize my (and your) voice calls. I pay just 18 cents a minute, which is a real bargain considering wired phone calls in 1990 used to be 25 cents a minute. Simple inflation says the price should have increased to 45 cents, but instead prices have dropped and with the added benefit of being wireless. Without texting the voice calls would have to be significantly higher in order to cover the maintenance/electricity costs.
Anyway it could be worse. The cellphone company could be run by Congress (like Amtrak). In which case you wouldn't have a choice; instead they'd suck the money from your paycheck.
With today's private companies I can choose to buy or not buy, text or not text, make calls or not make calls. I control my own destiny and how much I want to spend (or not spend).
If the extra XX billion had not been spent overpaying military workers, those billions could have been kept by the original taxpayers who would have spent it on their own personal projects - like maybe buying food for their kids.
What you just described is true of ALL levels of government, whether it's the schools, or the local planning commission, or whatever. They spend every penny they are given, rather than return excess, because they don't want next year's budget to be cut.
>>>Too bad [Bush] had to inherit the problems created under the 8 years of [Clinton].
Fixed that for ya. Bush inherited not only a dot-com crash from Clinton, but also the headache of Saddam and Bin Laden. So as long as you're going to be giving Obama a "free pass" and blame today's problems on Bush, then we should give Bush a free pass and blame those problems on Clinton.
By the way I hate them all. I haven't liked any of our presidents since the Ronald Reagan/Bush Senior combo. Not that they were perfect, but they were far more capable than the bozos we've had since 1993. The next best president prior to them? Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democrats.
Check out these graphs. They show how the consumer price index has been relatively the same from 1774 to 1900, and how from 1900 it has skyrocketed. What changed? We abandoned the stability of precious metals, and now we have paper currency which has devalued from 1 dollar in 1910 to about 4 cents today.
We're not really comparing the cost of goods, but the devaluation of the dollar. i.e. A dollar in 1910 is equivalent to just 4 cents today; it's lost 96% of its purchasing power. The excess printing of money has led paper to lose value rapidly. (Whereas an ounce of gold both then, and now, could buy you a brand-new suit. Gold is relatively stable.)
Anyway I came-up with $6 in 1969 is equivalent to $39 today, which is just shy of what I get as an engineer.
Oh course. This has always been true with Microsoft, where in the late 80s/early 90s they advertised they could read WordPerfect files from Amigas or Macs, but all it did was strip all the formatting to leave-behind plain text. Yuck. Even later when Word was released for early PowerMacs, I found that Windows Word could not read the Word documents from my Macintosh.
Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.
>>>Microsoft said that it'd be different this time and they've changed, they really have
For all their flaws, Microsoft is still better than Congress. Microsoft can't suck money directly from my paycheck, toss me in jail if I refuse to let them into my house, or draft me to die in some mudhole in Vietnam or Afghanistan.
Oh well. I'll just keep boycotting MS products like I've always done. I use Windows for compatibility, but open-source for everything else: VLC, WinAmp, OpenOffice, Utorrent, et cetera.
>>Its called the DEMOCRATIC party. I don't know where this "democrat" party meme came from, but I'm sick of it.
Thomas Jefferson founded the Republican Party in the earl 1790s. The Federalists use the slang term "Democrats" in order to make the rival party sound like an unruly mob. Jefferson decided, rather than be insulted, to incorporate the slang into his party name - Democratic-Republican Party. And now you know the rest of the story.
Still better to give to the homeowners, because they spend the money on themselves (pay the mortgage), whereas if the money went to the banks, it might be used to fund a $100 million bonus to the CEO and other managers.
Not that it really matters. The BEST place for the money is to leave it in my wallet. It was my body that sweated to earn the money; I have a right to keep it.
Slashdot Mirror
And what about the women who may have been forced to have sex against their will to perform sexual favors ("suck me or lose your job")? Do her rights not matter? Would you also turn your back on your own secretary if she reported a similar offense about her manager? Seems pretty callous. Although I don't think impeaching Clinton was the right answer, I do think he deserved to be prosecuted for the alleged crimes, so the victims could get justice.
And no you can't "wait" as you suggest. The statute of limitations is only 7 years, the presidency was 8, therefore they had to prosecute before time ran out, not after.
>>>as though it were a "wag-the-dog" distraction from the country's real priority: the president's philandering.
Today: "President Clinton testified before a grand jury...."
Tomorrow: "Clinton announced he launched tomahawk missiles again Bin Laden tents."
I think it was obvious Mr. Clinton was doing exactly what you describe - trying to distract people from legal troubles. That alone is bad enough, but I also find it distasteful you think it's okay for a boss to rape an intern (that's how sexual harassment is legally defined; give sex or get fired), and we should all pretend nothing happened. What about womens' rights to a safe workplace? Or do those not matter?
I wish I was in a position to tell them, "Sorry but your budget for next year will only be 50% as large," just so I could watch their face. And of course to also cut spending and pay-off-the national debt.
>>>4 cents placed in a plain-old savings account would actually also equal a dollar today.
That's zero growth in wealth. 4 cents could buy you a hamburger back in 1910, and if it grows to a dollar over one hundred years, well it still only buys you a hamburger. Not something to brag about.
>>>Invested in bonds or an index fund, that $0.04 would now be worth $9
Unless I was German, in which case the 1910 bond would now be worthless paper, due to the devaluation of their currency during the 1920s. I would feel more secure buying gold in 1910, such that even if the government collapses, the metal still holds value.
>>>Inflation drives the economy forward.
It makes the numbers bigger, but I don't see any real increase in wealth. As I mentioned before an ounce of gold in 1910 or 2009, still buys you a new suit. The numbers printed on the ticket grew larger, but the real value of the commodity has not altered or "moved forward".
>>>Say what you will about Microsoft, but...
For all their flaws, Microsoft is still better than Congress. Microsoft can't suck money directly from my paycheck, toss me in jail if I refuse to let them into my house, or draft me to die in some mudhole in Vietnam or Afghanistan. I'd rather have an evil corporation (which I can largely ignore) than an evil government (which I cannot ignore).
Even if Microsoft did start a monthly subscription service on Windows OS, they still can't force me to pay it. There are lots of alternative OSes out there.
>>>Winamp and uTorrent are not open source.
Ooops. I guess I shouldn't assume "free" means open-source. My bad.
Well as a longtime Windows user (since Win95), I recently bought my first Macintosh (used). I put their OS X onto this old 400 megahertz/128 megabyte machine, not really expecting much, and it ran like a dream!
Try that with Vista or XP and it either won't fit and/or will run like a snail through molasses (at least that's the case with my PCs).
Why the heck have I been modded troll? Just because I happened to buy my first Mac (used), did some experimentation, and enjoyed the operating system more than the Win95/XP/Vista systems I've used for the last fifteen years????? Jesus Christ. Loosen up.
You committed the broken window fallacy, which states breaking windows creates work for the glassmaker. While that's true, it's more efficient not to break the window in the first place and instead spend that money on some other activity (like saving it for your kids' college fund, or buying new jeans, or whatever). The same applies to trees. It's better not to cut down the trees if you don't have to.
>>>Am I the only person left on earth that like and often prefers to read things printed on dead trees?
No but you're definitely in the minority. I can just sit here, in my lounge chair, browsing through the news while watching Simpsons reruns and barely move a muscle.
But books are so *heavy* to hold up. Even if you're laying in bed, after awhile the weight of the 500 or 1000 page tome tires-out your arms. And sitting-up while bending-over makes your neck hurt. It's just so much easier to effortlessly read through a book while it scrolls across my self-supporting computer screen.
(click)
read
(click)
read
(click)
Yep I'm lazy. ;-)
P.S. In case you're wondering why the paragraphs are so short, it's because the C=64 screen was only 40 characters wide due to its limited 320x240 resolution, which was imposed by the channel 3 RF cable connection (analog blur). Higher resolutions would have been unreadable.
>Look
It is pitch black. You are likely to be
eaten by a grue.
> what is a grue?
The grue is a sinister, lurking presence
in the dark places of the earth. Its
favorite diet is adventurers, but its
insatiable appetite is tempered by its
fear of light. No grue has ever been
seen by the light of day, and few have
survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.
(This brings back good memories of staring at my tiny 15" television while the blue-on-blue text scrolled across my little 1 megahertz Commodore computer. Ahhh to be a teenager again; no worries except remembering what time Buck Rogers comes on.)
>>>The cost is zero to the telcos, but the profit is gravy. It is a complete rip-off scam to the consumer.
I disagree. The retail cost is whatever the market will bear. This idea goes all the way back to John Smith, and is not necessarily tied to the actual cost of the good. You might call it a "ripoff" but it's a ripoff that customers *voluntarily* enter into. They could just as easily decide not to do texting (as I do).
The flip-side of this is that money collected from all these texters helps subsidize my (and your) voice calls. I pay just 18 cents a minute, which is a real bargain considering wired phone calls in 1990 used to be 25 cents a minute. Simple inflation says the price should have increased to 45 cents, but instead prices have dropped and with the added benefit of being wireless. Without texting the voice calls would have to be significantly higher in order to cover the maintenance/electricity costs.
Anyway it could be worse.
The cellphone company could be run by Congress (like Amtrak).
In which case you wouldn't have a choice;
instead they'd suck the money from your paycheck.
With today's private companies I can choose to buy or not buy, text or not text, make calls or not make calls. I control my own destiny and how much I want to spend (or not spend).
To summarize:
If the extra XX billion had not been spent overpaying military workers, those billions could have been kept by the original taxpayers who would have spent it on their own personal projects - like maybe buying food for their kids.
What you just described is true of ALL levels of government, whether it's the schools, or the local planning commission, or whatever. They spend every penny they are given, rather than return excess, because they don't want next year's budget to be cut.
>>>Too bad [Bush] had to inherit the problems created under the 8 years of [Clinton].
Fixed that for ya. Bush inherited not only a dot-com crash from Clinton, but also the headache of Saddam and Bin Laden. So as long as you're going to be giving Obama a "free pass" and blame today's problems on Bush, then we should give Bush a free pass and blame those problems on Clinton.
By the way I hate them all. I haven't liked any of our presidents since the Ronald Reagan/Bush Senior combo. Not that they were perfect, but they were far more capable than the bozos we've had since 1993. The next best president prior to them? Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democrats.
Check out these graphs. They show how the consumer price index has been relatively the same from 1774 to 1900, and how from 1900 it has skyrocketed. What changed? We abandoned the stability of precious metals, and now we have paper currency which has devalued from 1 dollar in 1910 to about 4 cents today.
http://www.measuringworth.org/graphs/graph.php?year_from=1774&year_to=1900&table=US&field=DOLLAR&log=
http://www.measuringworth.org/graphs/graph.php?year_from=1900&year_to=2000&table=US&field=DOLLAR&log=
The entire span: http://www.measuringworth.org/graphs/graph.php?year_from=1774&year_to=2008&table=US&field=DOLLAR&log=
We're not really comparing the cost of goods, but the devaluation of the dollar. i.e. A dollar in 1910 is equivalent to just 4 cents today; it's lost 96% of its purchasing power. The excess printing of money has led paper to lose value rapidly. (Whereas an ounce of gold both then, and now, could buy you a brand-new suit. Gold is relatively stable.)
Anyway I came-up with $6 in 1969 is equivalent to $39 today, which is just shy of what I get as an engineer.
I like Apple. I put their OS X onto an old 400 megahertz/128 megabyte machine, not really expecting much, and it ran like a dream!
Try that with Vista or XP and it either won't fit and/or will run like a snail through molasses.
Oh course. This has always been true with Microsoft, where in the late 80s/early 90s they advertised they could read WordPerfect files from Amigas or Macs, but all it did was strip all the formatting to leave-behind plain text. Yuck. Even later when Word was released for early PowerMacs, I found that Windows Word could not read the Word documents from my Macintosh.
Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.
>>>While this is Microsoft and we all "know" that this was intentional, ODF is what should be fixed first.
Here's a Kleenex (tm). You got some brown stuff on your nose.
>>>We were all bashing OOXML specifications, but ODF 1.1's far from perfect, as we can see.
Oh my gosh. What is this smelly stuff around my feet? Ugh. And it's rising!
>>>Microsoft said that it'd be different this time and they've changed, they really have
For all their flaws, Microsoft is still better than Congress. Microsoft can't suck money directly from my paycheck, toss me in jail if I refuse to let them into my house, or draft me to die in some mudhole in Vietnam or Afghanistan.
Oh well. I'll just keep boycotting MS products like I've always done. I use Windows for compatibility, but open-source for everything else: VLC, WinAmp, OpenOffice, Utorrent, et cetera.
>>>>>Democrat Party
>>Its called the DEMOCRATIC party. I don't know where this "democrat" party meme came from, but I'm sick of it.
Thomas Jefferson founded the Republican Party in the earl 1790s. The Federalists use the slang term "Democrats" in order to make the rival party sound like an unruly mob. Jefferson decided, rather than be insulted, to incorporate the slang into his party name - Democratic-Republican Party. And now you know the rest of the story.
Still better to give to the homeowners, because they spend the money on themselves (pay the mortgage), whereas if the money went to the banks, it might be used to fund a $100 million bonus to the CEO and other managers.
Not that it really matters. The BEST place for the money is to leave it in my wallet. It was my body that sweated to earn the money; I have a right to keep it.