I haven't seen a vending machine for a long time, that wouldn't take dollar coins. Not to mention, anyplace that has more than one or two vending machines invariably has a change machine.
I won't be around in another fifty years. I hope someone drops me a postcard or something, to let me know how well that fiat money works out, after China has become the global economic power. I can't see it being much good at all. Eventually, we'll have to link our dollar to China's yuan, and the exchange rates are going to blow worse than the lowest budget porn flick you've ever seen.
More heinous, in that we had first hand knowledge of what the same attitudes toward indigenous people, both from our own history, and from the two wars that we had recently fought.
For all our "enlightenment", we closed our eyes on what history was trying so hard to teach us, for the sake of the price of oil.
The nearest thing to that, in my experience, is a railroad spike hammer. And, I think they were just a little more than three pounds, maybe 3 1/2 or 4 pounds. I never had a use for one, but I thought it looked cool!
If you'll read all of my posts on this subject, you'll realize that I'm absolutely NOT defending the Ayatollah. He was two steps down from the Shah. The Shah pushed his country backward in time. The Ayatollah did more of the same.
The democracy that the United States destroyed had a good legal and justice system. They had everything that demarks a modern society that cared about it's citizens. When I say the Shah took his country backward in time, those are the things I'm talking about. Not technological wonders, not position on the geopolitical stage, not military power. If those are the things that you consider important, then you might make an argument (a very weak argument) that the Shah did some good for his country.
Look at the democratic government that the Shah replaced, then consider the evil that we did in that country.
The shah had a progressive vision? You simply don't understand - he went BACKWARDS in time! Progressive? Sure, if you call it progress to abandon the cities to move into caves.
The only visions the shah may have ever had, were induced by bad drugs.
The Shah of Iran was a low life scumbag, who wasn't worthy of licking the boots of the men and women the United States threw under the bus with Operation Ajax.
Don't compare the Shah with what came after. Compare him with what we destroyed for the sake of having our own puppet ruling that country. The destruction of Iran's democratic government is probably the grandest and most heinous of our sins.
Colonialism isn't "alright" with much of the world - except England, Spain, Portugal, and France, and I guess Germany.
And, I guess it's hard for an outsider, or for a colonial, to see much difference between Old World colonialism and modern American hegemony.
Not to worry, though. We are currently pissing away all of our collateral on the world stage, while China collects power. Soon enough, it will be China that everyone hates, instead of us.
I'm an American, and I've studied Operation Ajax. An awful damned lot of what is wrong in Iran is our fault. And, it was all done for the sake of saving a few cents on oil. Not dollars, but cents. Ajax happened just a little before I was born. Gasoline was selling for about twenty cents per gallon. Quarts of oil were little more than a gallon of gas - maybe a quarter. Crude was cheap, cheap, cheap back then.
And, we destroyed a legitimate democracy for the sake of the company that is now known as British Petroleum, or BP.
Profits before anything.
Capitalists can mock Iran, Iranian culture, camel jockeys, and anything else they care to mock. But, we murdered a legitimate democracy for the sake of oil profits, then we installed that puppet who eventually caused the revolution.
Go ahead, put the blame on the rag heads - no good capitalist is ever to blame for anything.
To me, it isn't a sledge hammer until it's 8 pounds minimum. Anything smaller than three pounds is a "shop hammer". Three pounds is a "three pound hammer". All of these hammers have handles between 12 and 18 inches.
I don't see very many hammers between three and 8 pounds, that is something of a dead zone, for some reason.
Sledge hammers have long handles. Ideally, the handle is as long as your arm, which means my handles are 34 inches long. An 8 pound hammer isn't much good for serious work. I much prefer a twelve pound. Sixteen used to be nice, but nowadays, it wears me out to quickly, so I use the twelve for almost everything. Since I'm not all that big a man, I never went looking for anything larger than 16 pounds. If 16 pounds wouldn't do the job, I would call in a bulldozer or a crane with a wrecking ball.
I said almost the same thing recently, in another venue. I disagree with almost everything the liberals are up in arms about. Does that make them all evil bastards? No - just a bunch of doofuses with whom I disagree. Ditto with the "conservatives". Are they evil, because of their opinions? Again, no - just another bunch of doofuses with whom I disagree.
During the recent campaigns, both sides more or less said that if the other side won, it would spell doom for the United States.
I DO happen to think there are some evil bastards on both sides. The most recent evil bastard in the news is Norquist. Anyone who meticulously signs up potential office holders to pledge their votes, in exchange for campaign backing and funds is evil.
The problem is, why do hundreds of thousands of people support Norquist? The man is manipulating their elected representatives. If there is merit to Norquist's position, then a lot of those representatives will vote that way anyway. If Norquist's position is without merit, then representatives should be free to vote against it, without repercussion.
Politics is a dirty business, and it looks to me like Norquist is the source of a lot of the dirt.
Don't mean to pick on Conservatives only - the Dems have their own dirt balls. Ted Kennedy, for instance. I breathed a sigh of relief that he will never sit in Washington again.
AC's reply deserves your attention - as it's the same thing I was thinking.
Not to mention - I have a huge pile of keys. I have keys that I haven't thrown away since my Navy days, more than thirty years ago. I just don't throw keys away, no matter how "useless" they might seem.
From time to time, I need to open a lock. I examine the lock, think a bit, poke through my big pile of keys, and usually come up with a match. There are three keys that I carry on my key chain that don't fit anything - specific. They just seem to fit a lot of things that need to be opened. There are, after all, only so many combinations that can be cut into a blank key.
I'll admit, though, that I have few keys that are likely to fit motel room doors.
The Telco's are pushing the stuff you're talking about, and people just run out and buy it.
My computer isn't as fast, or as nice, as some of the guys here are talking about. I can't afford to drop two grand on computer components. In fact, I recycle some of my components, only replacing them if/when they crap out. A DVD writer lasts me a long, long time - the one in the wife's current machine is a decade old.
Despite my relatively old, relatively crappy hardware - the machine is mine, mine, all mine. No crapware, no spyware, no bots, not trojans, almost no advertising, no trackware, I never see a popup, popunder, popout, or even Popeye.
And, since I don't run anything from Symantec or their competition, all my CPU cycles are mine.
It's adequate to play the games I like to play, while I have more browser windows open than I know what to do with, and I can do real work at the same time.
I guess you've answered my question. If you want the latest consumer goody, and appearance is more important than performance or security, then you're stuck with whatever the vendors are offering.
If you need a secure, reliable, stable system, and you don't care very much that it looks obsolete, then you can knock together a damned good tower at a fraction of the cost that you're going to pay for the vendor's comparable version.
The question is - why are people buying these computers? Newegg, TigerDirect, and others sell components, online, and cheap. In an afternoon, a guy can build an equivalent computer from components, install his favorite OS, and be ready to start installing all his required software in the morning.
Why pay 100 to 1000% extra, for a compromised system?
So, maybe some slashdotters really don't understand how to turn a screwdriver. I'm sure there's kid in the neighborhood who does. Maybe your own son, daughter, niece, nephew? Give the kid fifty bucks to assemble your machine, you're still money ahead.
Gross profits aren't profits, nor are they income.
I'm making - ohhhh - dolls.
It costs me m to purchase the plastic bodies. It costs me n to purchase the paint. It costs o to purchase the hair. It cost p to purchase the clothes. It costs q for labor It cost r for plant and equipment.
I sell my dolls to distributors for $S, which may or may not look like a lot of money. But, S is not my profit, nor my income. S is nothing more than liquid cash flow - and it's not all that very liquid. From S, I must deduct m, n, o, p, q, r, and s to determine my net profit - which is taxable. If I fail to allot that money back into the various expenses, I'll be out of business within weeks.
I could dummy it down a little more, or I could find some business accounting books to reference, but you should have the idea here.
And, BTW - Uncle does NOT tax your gross profits. There are a myriad benefits (like social security and insurance, 401K) that Uncle doesn't tax. There are per diem pays that are not taxed, or taxed at much lower rates. Itemized returns allow you to deduct from taxable income any tools, clothing, equipment, personal protection gear, transportation expenses. You are taxed on your NET INCOME. If you fail to make deductions, that doesn't mean that businesses should also pay taxes on gross income.
In short, you don't understand what gross income is, or net income.
Some of us old timers remember when we heated with wood and/or coal furnaces. You could have all the fuel you wanted, you could have a nice draft going through the firebox - and the fire would still burn out if not tended occasionally. You needed to grab the shaker handle, give it a couple good shakes to knock the ashes into the ash bin, then open the door and poke the mass of smouldering stuff in the firebox. Depending on conditions, you may or may not throw another log, or another chunk of coal on top of the smouldering mess.
While you're not right, you're not terribly wrong. The neocon's ultimate goal, is to have every man, woman, and child in the world working to enrich Wall Street. With globalization at it's current stage, "Wall Street" is only a pointer towards those people who really own and control Wall Street. Those few thousands who ultimately control all of the world's largest corporations, with interlocking seats on boards of directors.
If they think that an invasion of this country or that will ultimately be profitable to them, then they approve of invasion. A few thousand, or a few million dead bodies don't faze them.
Mr. Wovel - look around you. How many people in your home town even knows the name of their congress critter? How many have any idea what's going on with ACTA, NPAA, and a buttload other measures aimed at government and corporate intrusion on your privacy? How many are aware of the ramifications of the Patriot Act, TSA, and ongoing debate about curtailing rights even further?
I'm involved. How many of your homies are involved?
I'm pretty sure that if you're to answer honestly, your numbers will be pretty close to my numbers. More than 90% of my acquaintances have no clue, and they can't be bothered to listen and to learn. And, they WON'T listen or learn, until someone close to them is imprisoned or bankrupted by the **AA.
Special? Different? Anyone who stands up and is counted is different in this day and age. And, they are certainly NOT part of the herd.
How long has it been since you wrote the occupant of the White House? Your congress critters? Even your mayor? Odds are with me, so I'll guess "never".
Don Spandex? Glad to meet you - although, I've never heard that name before. Is Spandex your family name, or did you just change your name to protect the innocent?
Well - you can check out I2P. It's easily found with a google search. First set up a virtual machine so that you can easily delete everything when you are utterly sick of seeing what's available. Set up I2P, and let it settle in, then start browsing. Depending on your tolerance for that sick shit, you can see just about anything you care to see - or don't care to see. Some time before you are ready to tear your eyes out of your head, just close it all down, and delete the VM, then write zeros to the free space left behind.
Proxies are very traceable, on the real internet. If I were a political activist or a CP guy, there's no way I'd trust any combination of proxies.
I'm not so sure that statement is true. Bearing in mind, there are three kinds of people in the world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and the biggest group, those who wonder what the hell happened.
I'm in and out of the first two groups, on this and other issues. That other group? They are the enablers, who permit big media to do what they do. They aren't big media, they aren't the Axis, they are just there, giving tacit support to whatever government and big media might do in their names. The so-called sheeple. Hollywood, or any other member of the **AA tells them to go watch a movie for twenty bucks, the sheeple just say "Bahhh", and they run with the herd down to the cinema.
Ehhh - someone will come along directly to tell me that I've lost all credibility with the word sheeple. Whatever . . .
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen a vending machine for a long time, that wouldn't take dollar coins. Not to mention, anyplace that has more than one or two vending machines invariably has a change machine.
I won't be around in another fifty years. I hope someone drops me a postcard or something, to let me know how well that fiat money works out, after China has become the global economic power. I can't see it being much good at all. Eventually, we'll have to link our dollar to China's yuan, and the exchange rates are going to blow worse than the lowest budget porn flick you've ever seen.
That sounds most plausible. Restoring an image of a hard drive with spyware installed produces a hard drive with spyware installed. No surprises here!
The FBI knows the finality of doing a *nix dd command. I would assume that most computer shops know it too.
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda
If spyware survives that command, then it wasn't resident on the hard disk to start with. Time to look inside to see what other storage there is!!
More heinous, in that we had first hand knowledge of what the same attitudes toward indigenous people, both from our own history, and from the two wars that we had recently fought.
For all our "enlightenment", we closed our eyes on what history was trying so hard to teach us, for the sake of the price of oil.
The nearest thing to that, in my experience, is a railroad spike hammer. And, I think they were just a little more than three pounds, maybe 3 1/2 or 4 pounds. I never had a use for one, but I thought it looked cool!
If you'll read all of my posts on this subject, you'll realize that I'm absolutely NOT defending the Ayatollah. He was two steps down from the Shah. The Shah pushed his country backward in time. The Ayatollah did more of the same.
The democracy that the United States destroyed had a good legal and justice system. They had everything that demarks a modern society that cared about it's citizens. When I say the Shah took his country backward in time, those are the things I'm talking about. Not technological wonders, not position on the geopolitical stage, not military power. If those are the things that you consider important, then you might make an argument (a very weak argument) that the Shah did some good for his country.
Look at the democratic government that the Shah replaced, then consider the evil that we did in that country.
The shah had a progressive vision? You simply don't understand - he went BACKWARDS in time! Progressive? Sure, if you call it progress to abandon the cities to move into caves.
The only visions the shah may have ever had, were induced by bad drugs.
The Shah of Iran was a low life scumbag, who wasn't worthy of licking the boots of the men and women the United States threw under the bus with Operation Ajax.
Don't compare the Shah with what came after. Compare him with what we destroyed for the sake of having our own puppet ruling that country. The destruction of Iran's democratic government is probably the grandest and most heinous of our sins.
Colonialism isn't "alright" with much of the world - except England, Spain, Portugal, and France, and I guess Germany.
And, I guess it's hard for an outsider, or for a colonial, to see much difference between Old World colonialism and modern American hegemony.
Not to worry, though. We are currently pissing away all of our collateral on the world stage, while China collects power. Soon enough, it will be China that everyone hates, instead of us.
Stop blaming America?
I'm an American, and I've studied Operation Ajax. An awful damned lot of what is wrong in Iran is our fault. And, it was all done for the sake of saving a few cents on oil. Not dollars, but cents. Ajax happened just a little before I was born. Gasoline was selling for about twenty cents per gallon. Quarts of oil were little more than a gallon of gas - maybe a quarter. Crude was cheap, cheap, cheap back then.
And, we destroyed a legitimate democracy for the sake of the company that is now known as British Petroleum, or BP.
Profits before anything.
Capitalists can mock Iran, Iranian culture, camel jockeys, and anything else they care to mock. But, we murdered a legitimate democracy for the sake of oil profits, then we installed that puppet who eventually caused the revolution.
Go ahead, put the blame on the rag heads - no good capitalist is ever to blame for anything.
Define "small sledge" please.
To me, it isn't a sledge hammer until it's 8 pounds minimum. Anything smaller than three pounds is a "shop hammer". Three pounds is a "three pound hammer". All of these hammers have handles between 12 and 18 inches.
I don't see very many hammers between three and 8 pounds, that is something of a dead zone, for some reason.
Sledge hammers have long handles. Ideally, the handle is as long as your arm, which means my handles are 34 inches long. An 8 pound hammer isn't much good for serious work. I much prefer a twelve pound. Sixteen used to be nice, but nowadays, it wears me out to quickly, so I use the twelve for almost everything. Since I'm not all that big a man, I never went looking for anything larger than 16 pounds. If 16 pounds wouldn't do the job, I would call in a bulldozer or a crane with a wrecking ball.
I said almost the same thing recently, in another venue. I disagree with almost everything the liberals are up in arms about. Does that make them all evil bastards? No - just a bunch of doofuses with whom I disagree. Ditto with the "conservatives". Are they evil, because of their opinions? Again, no - just another bunch of doofuses with whom I disagree.
During the recent campaigns, both sides more or less said that if the other side won, it would spell doom for the United States.
I DO happen to think there are some evil bastards on both sides. The most recent evil bastard in the news is Norquist. Anyone who meticulously signs up potential office holders to pledge their votes, in exchange for campaign backing and funds is evil.
The problem is, why do hundreds of thousands of people support Norquist? The man is manipulating their elected representatives. If there is merit to Norquist's position, then a lot of those representatives will vote that way anyway. If Norquist's position is without merit, then representatives should be free to vote against it, without repercussion.
Politics is a dirty business, and it looks to me like Norquist is the source of a lot of the dirt.
Don't mean to pick on Conservatives only - the Dems have their own dirt balls. Ted Kennedy, for instance. I breathed a sigh of relief that he will never sit in Washington again.
AC's reply deserves your attention - as it's the same thing I was thinking.
Not to mention - I have a huge pile of keys. I have keys that I haven't thrown away since my Navy days, more than thirty years ago. I just don't throw keys away, no matter how "useless" they might seem.
From time to time, I need to open a lock. I examine the lock, think a bit, poke through my big pile of keys, and usually come up with a match. There are three keys that I carry on my key chain that don't fit anything - specific. They just seem to fit a lot of things that need to be opened. There are, after all, only so many combinations that can be cut into a blank key.
I'll admit, though, that I have few keys that are likely to fit motel room doors.
Yes, yes, and yes - and yes again!
The Telco's are pushing the stuff you're talking about, and people just run out and buy it.
My computer isn't as fast, or as nice, as some of the guys here are talking about. I can't afford to drop two grand on computer components. In fact, I recycle some of my components, only replacing them if/when they crap out. A DVD writer lasts me a long, long time - the one in the wife's current machine is a decade old.
Despite my relatively old, relatively crappy hardware - the machine is mine, mine, all mine. No crapware, no spyware, no bots, not trojans, almost no advertising, no trackware, I never see a popup, popunder, popout, or even Popeye.
And, since I don't run anything from Symantec or their competition, all my CPU cycles are mine.
It's adequate to play the games I like to play, while I have more browser windows open than I know what to do with, and I can do real work at the same time.
I guess you've answered my question. If you want the latest consumer goody, and appearance is more important than performance or security, then you're stuck with whatever the vendors are offering.
If you need a secure, reliable, stable system, and you don't care very much that it looks obsolete, then you can knock together a damned good tower at a fraction of the cost that you're going to pay for the vendor's comparable version.
The question is - why are people buying these computers? Newegg, TigerDirect, and others sell components, online, and cheap. In an afternoon, a guy can build an equivalent computer from components, install his favorite OS, and be ready to start installing all his required software in the morning.
Why pay 100 to 1000% extra, for a compromised system?
So, maybe some slashdotters really don't understand how to turn a screwdriver. I'm sure there's kid in the neighborhood who does. Maybe your own son, daughter, niece, nephew? Give the kid fifty bucks to assemble your machine, you're still money ahead.
So, what's the bottom line on this story? Should it have been posted to Sodahead, along with some moronic two-choice poll?
If you define "terrorisim" as threatening corporate profits - then yeah.
Gross profits aren't profits, nor are they income.
I'm making - ohhhh - dolls.
It costs me m to purchase the plastic bodies.
It costs me n to purchase the paint.
It costs o to purchase the hair.
It cost p to purchase the clothes.
It costs q for labor
It cost r for plant and equipment.
I sell my dolls to distributors for $S, which may or may not look like a lot of money. But, S is not my profit, nor my income. S is nothing more than liquid cash flow - and it's not all that very liquid. From S, I must deduct m, n, o, p, q, r, and s to determine my net profit - which is taxable. If I fail to allot that money back into the various expenses, I'll be out of business within weeks.
I could dummy it down a little more, or I could find some business accounting books to reference, but you should have the idea here.
And, BTW - Uncle does NOT tax your gross profits. There are a myriad benefits (like social security and insurance, 401K) that Uncle doesn't tax. There are per diem pays that are not taxed, or taxed at much lower rates. Itemized returns allow you to deduct from taxable income any tools, clothing, equipment, personal protection gear, transportation expenses. You are taxed on your NET INCOME. If you fail to make deductions, that doesn't mean that businesses should also pay taxes on gross income.
In short, you don't understand what gross income is, or net income.
Precisely.
Some of us old timers remember when we heated with wood and/or coal furnaces. You could have all the fuel you wanted, you could have a nice draft going through the firebox - and the fire would still burn out if not tended occasionally. You needed to grab the shaker handle, give it a couple good shakes to knock the ashes into the ash bin, then open the door and poke the mass of smouldering stuff in the firebox. Depending on conditions, you may or may not throw another log, or another chunk of coal on top of the smouldering mess.
The same applies to paper.
While you're not right, you're not terribly wrong. The neocon's ultimate goal, is to have every man, woman, and child in the world working to enrich Wall Street. With globalization at it's current stage, "Wall Street" is only a pointer towards those people who really own and control Wall Street. Those few thousands who ultimately control all of the world's largest corporations, with interlocking seats on boards of directors.
If they think that an invasion of this country or that will ultimately be profitable to them, then they approve of invasion. A few thousand, or a few million dead bodies don't faze them.
Mr. Wovel - look around you. How many people in your home town even knows the name of their congress critter? How many have any idea what's going on with ACTA, NPAA, and a buttload other measures aimed at government and corporate intrusion on your privacy? How many are aware of the ramifications of the Patriot Act, TSA, and ongoing debate about curtailing rights even further?
I'm involved. How many of your homies are involved?
I'm pretty sure that if you're to answer honestly, your numbers will be pretty close to my numbers. More than 90% of my acquaintances have no clue, and they can't be bothered to listen and to learn. And, they WON'T listen or learn, until someone close to them is imprisoned or bankrupted by the **AA.
Special? Different? Anyone who stands up and is counted is different in this day and age. And, they are certainly NOT part of the herd.
How long has it been since you wrote the occupant of the White House? Your congress critters? Even your mayor? Odds are with me, so I'll guess "never".
Don Spandex? Glad to meet you - although, I've never heard that name before. Is Spandex your family name, or did you just change your name to protect the innocent?
Well - you can check out I2P. It's easily found with a google search. First set up a virtual machine so that you can easily delete everything when you are utterly sick of seeing what's available. Set up I2P, and let it settle in, then start browsing. Depending on your tolerance for that sick shit, you can see just about anything you care to see - or don't care to see. Some time before you are ready to tear your eyes out of your head, just close it all down, and delete the VM, then write zeros to the free space left behind.
Proxies are very traceable, on the real internet. If I were a political activist or a CP guy, there's no way I'd trust any combination of proxies.
I'm not so sure that statement is true. Bearing in mind, there are three kinds of people in the world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and the biggest group, those who wonder what the hell happened.
I'm in and out of the first two groups, on this and other issues. That other group? They are the enablers, who permit big media to do what they do. They aren't big media, they aren't the Axis, they are just there, giving tacit support to whatever government and big media might do in their names. The so-called sheeple. Hollywood, or any other member of the **AA tells them to go watch a movie for twenty bucks, the sheeple just say "Bahhh", and they run with the herd down to the cinema.
Ehhh - someone will come along directly to tell me that I've lost all credibility with the word sheeple. Whatever . . .