Apparently, you equate "unix-like" with Ubuntu. Two of the best known unix-likes include MacOS and Redhat. My wife runs Linux Mint Debian, not to be confused with Linux Mint Ubuntu. I am running Sabayon Linux. There are literally dozens more unix-like OS's that are totally independent of Ubuntu. Canonical can go their own way, and I can go mine.
My Linux installations all have Mate desktop. I don't have a Metro style, nor does the wife have a Metro style desktop. Neither of us can stand it, so we won't have it. If there were no Mate available, then I would use one of the less "feature rich" desktops. I'm not sure what the wife would do - she might switch off to Windows 7, or she might migrate to one of the light weight desktops with me. She seemed to like Xfce, but preferred Gnome, and then Mate.
Uhhh, face it. Things do get obsolete. I kinda had your opinion back when I finally got Windows XP. A lot of people seemed to have the same opinion of Win2K. In their day, both were pretty damned great.
Windows 7 really is pretty decent. Especially in 64 bit - it's a little better than decent.
But, things are going to change, and in five or ten years, Win7 will have to be phased out to make room for the next great thing. There won't be a long term stable operating system for a few decades, at least. Maybe around the year 2100, you can buy a computer that can be expected to run for a man's lifetime. Or at least the lifetime of the hardware allowing for replacement of components a few times. Maybe. But, even then, I doubt it.
Yeah, I clicked the links. The images supplied show a metro theme. I've never quite decided whether I had more interest in metro, or in cutting off my body parts. Tough decision. I'll continue to put off the decision while I run a Unix-like OS.
That is exactly what I do. If there is no money to steal, the bad guys cannot get it. Only twice in 2013 was there more than $100 in the account that I use online. Most of the time, there is only about $10 in that account. I put money in when I intend to spend it, I spend it, and the account is nearly empty again. No hacker anywhere has had an opportunity to steal $5,000 from that account.
If Mom keeps a cookie jar on the counter, and only ever puts two cookies at a time in it, then you can't steal more than two cookies at a time.
And, what are the statutory rates on the dividends and such which people like Romney pay taxes on, again? Oh yeah, 15% - the second LOWEST tax rate on the chart. That is the statutory rate, as you point out - not the effective rates paid after the rich bastids take advantage of the loopholes and tax shelters. The only people paying lower percentages are those people who have nothing. Look at that 10% tax bracket again - an individual paying 10% can't afford to pay for much of ANYTHING. $9,000/year income? Let's get real - we spend half of that or more JUST FOR FOOD in my home! We pay about 1/3 of that JUST FOR ELECTRICITY.
Human reaction time is measured in seconds and tenths of seconds. Computer reaction time is measured in nanoseconds. There is no contest - IF the damned computer and all of it's peripherals are working correctly, AND the programming actually works as desired. Think about how poorly people maintain their vehicles, and you can expect several cars in a "train" to have one or more faulty sensors. And, I simply don't want to trust my life to a computer program.
I've had a number of vehicles that got equal or better fuel mileage at higher speeds.
In 1977, I rented a Camaro to drive home from Virginia Beach. On the drive home, I drove the speed limit. I had to stop for fuel before I arrived home. I drove around after I got home, then fueled up for the drive back to Va. Beach. On the drive back to the naval base, I drove like a madman. I DID NOT have to stop for fuel - I returned the car with the needle just about at the "E", but it still had some gas.
That was a rental, and I had no opportunity to experiment further with that car.
Since then, I've owned a number of vehicles that cruised very efficiently at 80 or 85 mph. Slowing below 65 actually decreased fuel efficiency.
dknight's post suggests that that the "vast" majority of cars do best at 55. I might agree with "majority", but certainly not with the "vast".
By "most Americans", I take it you refer to the dirt poor, who have nothing to pay, and to the filthy rich, who simply do not pay.
Working stiffs pay 25 to 33%. Note the word "working". People who WANT TO WORK, but can't find anything better than a minimum wage job only pay 15% - like Romney. People who fall into the 35% bracket are no longer "working".
Please don't sing Romney's praises to me, for paying 15% taxes. I pay considerably more than that. Worse, like any other politician, he makes his money at our expense, THEN cheats on those taxes!
And, THAT is a large part of what is wrong with "policy" departments today. They have zero respect for citizens, and an armed citizen is considered a threat to the "policy". A police officer who guns down a citizen should be required to demonstrate that there was a clear and present threat to his own life, or to another person's life.
(no, I'm not a grammar/spelling nazi - this one was just obvious and funny)
Obviously, you have little to fear from people who are armed then. A person who does not assault unarmed people is very unlikely to be assaulting an armed person.
So, you are telling me that if you see me with a weapon openly displayed in a holster, you feel the need to attack me?
I would think that Charles Darwin might have had some comments on that.
Personally, I've never felt provoked to act on the fact that people around me were displaying weapons. I often notice that one or more persons are armed, then the fact is all but dismissed from my mind. The facts are filed away somewhere, for possible reference, but those facts have little to no impact on my actions and decisions in the presence of those armed men.
Apparently, you don't understand what the militia is.
All able bodied males between the ages of 18 and 40 are members of the militia. All of us. The right to keep and bear arms was not reserved to some select body(s) of those able bodied males who had won the approval of one legislature or another. The right to keep and bear arms was mandated for the entirety of the militia.
There are any number of instances around this nation, where police have gunned down innocent people. The stories aren't hard to find - I think it's fair to say that there are one or more high profile cases in each state, and there are one or more cases in each of the largest cities.
There are many more instances where police have gunned down people who may or may not be innocent, when other options were available.
Why do these things happen? Because local governments are virtually untouchable, of course. A private citizen faces monumental challenges when he decides to take a police department to court for wrongful death. The first monumental challenge just happens to be that most of those local governments investigate themselves. When a city cop(s) gun down a helpless person, there is always an internal investigation. Seldom is the FBI called in. Seldom are the state police called in. The victim's relatives are barred from investigating, barred access to internal documents, barred even from interrogating the shooter.
Individuals and small groups don't need tanks and rockets and aircraft to face down a vigilante police force. Overthrowing a local government doesn't require a million man army.
A police force that has to go out into an armed population is going to be a lot more respectful of that population. And, if they are not respectful, then they need to be overthrown.
Incidentally, most police forces in this country have been misused for most of our lifetimes. Unless you're an octogenarian, all of your life the police have been used to enforce unconstitutional drug laws. Major portions of our police have been used in the "war on drugs". The legalization of marijuana will go a long way toward alleviating that misuse. But, that isn't going to fix everything of course. Now we have the "war on terra", which will be used in the same way the "war on drugs" was used. The primary purpose is to keep a strong police presence in neighborhoods.
Arm the population. The population will deal with the worst criminals, sooner or later.
I would say that none of the gun control laws in Chicago are working, full stop. Those laws don't prevent ANYTHING. Those laws only permit law enforcement and prosecutors to take draconian actions against gun owners and/or people who use guns after the fact. The laws do not have the intended results to back them up. It is that plain and simple.
Some cities and states have results to back up the intended consequences of authorizing people to own and use weapons. http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm
Suicides. You, along with government, seem to presume that suicide is wrong, and should be illegal. Dismiss those suicide numbers. Those numbers represent citizens who made decisions that you disapprove of, they do not represent crimes.
You're right, crime is a socioeconomic problem. When society coddles criminals, then criminals feel justified in what they do. When society takes a stand, and informs criminals that they will die as a result of certain actions, criminals take notice. Either they become better criminals, or they die, or they change their ways.
Permitting and/or requiring heads of households to own weapons, and to use those weapons to defend themselves and their homes does address an underlying root cause of crime.
Please look at the TPP being hammered out right now. There is nothing of democracy there. Corporate interests are shaping a treaty that will simply eliminate any democratic approach to determining copyright law, trade law, tax and tariff law, and much more.
Corporations are actively working to ensure that governments don't have the tools available to structure their laws democratically.
If it is merely your position that the United States is greedy, and willing to kill off any number of people who happen to interfere in our "interests", you and I may find a lot of common ground.
But, you seem to be saying that the United States has actually caused the underlying reasons that so many millions of people around the world have killed each other. You lose me there. How did the US cause Idi Amin to come to power? Or, Pol Pot? Or, Joseph Stalin? Restricting my questions to more modern-day mid-east countries, you might begin to make sense. The UK caused the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. European and US powers have constantly interfered in the mideast since then. But - even then, you completely ignore the power struggle between factions of Islam, you ignore the non-theists who have ruled parts of the mideast, and you further ignore all of the peripheral powers in the mideast. You have heard of the Phalangists, have you not? The Bedouin? The Kurds? Do you realize that Turkey is a power aside from Islam, with a lot of influence and power throughout the region? Have you considered the friction between Persians and Arabs?
We, the west, bear a lot responsibility for things that are happening over there. We destabilized a large portion of the world when we destroyed the Ottoman Empire. But - that responsibility is far more limited than you would propose. Or, did you somehow assume that life under the Ottoman was serene, simple, peaceful, even idyllic?
I suggest that the Ottoman had a full time job keeping the lid on the sprawling diverse nation that they ruled over. All the tensions and strife that we witness today has it's roots in history that preceded even the Empire.
Yeah, we may be bad guys in a lot of instances, but we would be the most arrogant fools in history to claim responsibility for all the problems in the mideast. Those people have histories that go back ten thousand years, compared to our ~250 year history.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, you equate "unix-like" with Ubuntu. Two of the best known unix-likes include MacOS and Redhat. My wife runs Linux Mint Debian, not to be confused with Linux Mint Ubuntu. I am running Sabayon Linux. There are literally dozens more unix-like OS's that are totally independent of Ubuntu. Canonical can go their own way, and I can go mine.
My Linux installations all have Mate desktop. I don't have a Metro style, nor does the wife have a Metro style desktop. Neither of us can stand it, so we won't have it. If there were no Mate available, then I would use one of the less "feature rich" desktops. I'm not sure what the wife would do - she might switch off to Windows 7, or she might migrate to one of the light weight desktops with me. She seemed to like Xfce, but preferred Gnome, and then Mate.
Uhhh, face it. Things do get obsolete. I kinda had your opinion back when I finally got Windows XP. A lot of people seemed to have the same opinion of Win2K. In their day, both were pretty damned great.
Windows 7 really is pretty decent. Especially in 64 bit - it's a little better than decent.
But, things are going to change, and in five or ten years, Win7 will have to be phased out to make room for the next great thing. There won't be a long term stable operating system for a few decades, at least. Maybe around the year 2100, you can buy a computer that can be expected to run for a man's lifetime. Or at least the lifetime of the hardware allowing for replacement of components a few times. Maybe. But, even then, I doubt it.
Yeah, I clicked the links. The images supplied show a metro theme. I've never quite decided whether I had more interest in metro, or in cutting off my body parts. Tough decision. I'll continue to put off the decision while I run a Unix-like OS.
That is exactly what I do. If there is no money to steal, the bad guys cannot get it. Only twice in 2013 was there more than $100 in the account that I use online. Most of the time, there is only about $10 in that account. I put money in when I intend to spend it, I spend it, and the account is nearly empty again. No hacker anywhere has had an opportunity to steal $5,000 from that account.
If Mom keeps a cookie jar on the counter, and only ever puts two cookies at a time in it, then you can't steal more than two cookies at a time.
Thanks for the compliment, asshole.
And, what are the statutory rates on the dividends and such which people like Romney pay taxes on, again? Oh yeah, 15% - the second LOWEST tax rate on the chart. That is the statutory rate, as you point out - not the effective rates paid after the rich bastids take advantage of the loopholes and tax shelters. The only people paying lower percentages are those people who have nothing. Look at that 10% tax bracket again - an individual paying 10% can't afford to pay for much of ANYTHING. $9,000/year income? Let's get real - we spend half of that or more JUST FOR FOOD in my home! We pay about 1/3 of that JUST FOR ELECTRICITY.
Human reaction time is measured in seconds and tenths of seconds. Computer reaction time is measured in nanoseconds. There is no contest - IF the damned computer and all of it's peripherals are working correctly, AND the programming actually works as desired. Think about how poorly people maintain their vehicles, and you can expect several cars in a "train" to have one or more faulty sensors. And, I simply don't want to trust my life to a computer program.
I've had a number of vehicles that got equal or better fuel mileage at higher speeds.
In 1977, I rented a Camaro to drive home from Virginia Beach. On the drive home, I drove the speed limit. I had to stop for fuel before I arrived home. I drove around after I got home, then fueled up for the drive back to Va. Beach. On the drive back to the naval base, I drove like a madman. I DID NOT have to stop for fuel - I returned the car with the needle just about at the "E", but it still had some gas.
That was a rental, and I had no opportunity to experiment further with that car.
Since then, I've owned a number of vehicles that cruised very efficiently at 80 or 85 mph. Slowing below 65 actually decreased fuel efficiency.
dknight's post suggests that that the "vast" majority of cars do best at 55. I might agree with "majority", but certainly not with the "vast".
I was hoping that you would make enough popcorn to share. AC is selfish, and I'm lazy. Can I haz popcorn, please?
So, you're refuting the source I linked to? Do you have a better source to back up your claim?
EXCELLENT!!
I got to "3 terms" and I start thinking "what a dumbass". "2 in office and 1 in prison" makes my day though!
I allowed half of my mod points to expire. I wish I still had a +1 insightful for your post.
By "most Americans", I take it you refer to the dirt poor, who have nothing to pay, and to the filthy rich, who simply do not pay.
Working stiffs pay 25 to 33%. Note the word "working". People who WANT TO WORK, but can't find anything better than a minimum wage job only pay 15% - like Romney. People who fall into the 35% bracket are no longer "working".
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx
Please don't sing Romney's praises to me, for paying 15% taxes. I pay considerably more than that. Worse, like any other politician, he makes his money at our expense, THEN cheats on those taxes!
And, THAT is a large part of what is wrong with "policy" departments today. They have zero respect for citizens, and an armed citizen is considered a threat to the "policy". A police officer who guns down a citizen should be required to demonstrate that there was a clear and present threat to his own life, or to another person's life.
(no, I'm not a grammar/spelling nazi - this one was just obvious and funny)
Obviously, you have little to fear from people who are armed then. A person who does not assault unarmed people is very unlikely to be assaulting an armed person.
I agree 1000% or more.
Open carry is provocative?
So, you are telling me that if you see me with a weapon openly displayed in a holster, you feel the need to attack me?
I would think that Charles Darwin might have had some comments on that.
Personally, I've never felt provoked to act on the fact that people around me were displaying weapons. I often notice that one or more persons are armed, then the fact is all but dismissed from my mind. The facts are filed away somewhere, for possible reference, but those facts have little to no impact on my actions and decisions in the presence of those armed men.
Apparently, you don't understand what the militia is.
All able bodied males between the ages of 18 and 40 are members of the militia. All of us. The right to keep and bear arms was not reserved to some select body(s) of those able bodied males who had won the approval of one legislature or another. The right to keep and bear arms was mandated for the entirety of the militia.
Sorry, but I think you err.
There are any number of instances around this nation, where police have gunned down innocent people. The stories aren't hard to find - I think it's fair to say that there are one or more high profile cases in each state, and there are one or more cases in each of the largest cities.
There are many more instances where police have gunned down people who may or may not be innocent, when other options were available.
Why do these things happen? Because local governments are virtually untouchable, of course. A private citizen faces monumental challenges when he decides to take a police department to court for wrongful death. The first monumental challenge just happens to be that most of those local governments investigate themselves. When a city cop(s) gun down a helpless person, there is always an internal investigation. Seldom is the FBI called in. Seldom are the state police called in. The victim's relatives are barred from investigating, barred access to internal documents, barred even from interrogating the shooter.
Individuals and small groups don't need tanks and rockets and aircraft to face down a vigilante police force. Overthrowing a local government doesn't require a million man army.
A police force that has to go out into an armed population is going to be a lot more respectful of that population. And, if they are not respectful, then they need to be overthrown.
Incidentally, most police forces in this country have been misused for most of our lifetimes. Unless you're an octogenarian, all of your life the police have been used to enforce unconstitutional drug laws. Major portions of our police have been used in the "war on drugs". The legalization of marijuana will go a long way toward alleviating that misuse. But, that isn't going to fix everything of course. Now we have the "war on terra", which will be used in the same way the "war on drugs" was used. The primary purpose is to keep a strong police presence in neighborhoods.
Arm the population. The population will deal with the worst criminals, sooner or later.
I would say that none of the gun control laws in Chicago are working, full stop. Those laws don't prevent ANYTHING. Those laws only permit law enforcement and prosecutors to take draconian actions against gun owners and/or people who use guns after the fact. The laws do not have the intended results to back them up. It is that plain and simple.
Some cities and states have results to back up the intended consequences of authorizing people to own and use weapons.
http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm
Suicides. You, along with government, seem to presume that suicide is wrong, and should be illegal. Dismiss those suicide numbers. Those numbers represent citizens who made decisions that you disapprove of, they do not represent crimes.
Some minds are easily boggled. Please read http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm
You're right, crime is a socioeconomic problem. When society coddles criminals, then criminals feel justified in what they do. When society takes a stand, and informs criminals that they will die as a result of certain actions, criminals take notice. Either they become better criminals, or they die, or they change their ways.
Permitting and/or requiring heads of households to own weapons, and to use those weapons to defend themselves and their homes does address an underlying root cause of crime.
Please look at the TPP being hammered out right now. There is nothing of democracy there. Corporate interests are shaping a treaty that will simply eliminate any democratic approach to determining copyright law, trade law, tax and tariff law, and much more.
Corporations are actively working to ensure that governments don't have the tools available to structure their laws democratically.
If it is merely your position that the United States is greedy, and willing to kill off any number of people who happen to interfere in our "interests", you and I may find a lot of common ground.
But, you seem to be saying that the United States has actually caused the underlying reasons that so many millions of people around the world have killed each other. You lose me there. How did the US cause Idi Amin to come to power? Or, Pol Pot? Or, Joseph Stalin? Restricting my questions to more modern-day mid-east countries, you might begin to make sense. The UK caused the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. European and US powers have constantly interfered in the mideast since then. But - even then, you completely ignore the power struggle between factions of Islam, you ignore the non-theists who have ruled parts of the mideast, and you further ignore all of the peripheral powers in the mideast. You have heard of the Phalangists, have you not? The Bedouin? The Kurds? Do you realize that Turkey is a power aside from Islam, with a lot of influence and power throughout the region? Have you considered the friction between Persians and Arabs?
We, the west, bear a lot responsibility for things that are happening over there. We destabilized a large portion of the world when we destroyed the Ottoman Empire. But - that responsibility is far more limited than you would propose. Or, did you somehow assume that life under the Ottoman was serene, simple, peaceful, even idyllic?
I suggest that the Ottoman had a full time job keeping the lid on the sprawling diverse nation that they ruled over. All the tensions and strife that we witness today has it's roots in history that preceded even the Empire.
Yeah, we may be bad guys in a lot of instances, but we would be the most arrogant fools in history to claim responsibility for all the problems in the mideast. Those people have histories that go back ten thousand years, compared to our ~250 year history.
Just OK?
That's what she said.