but two-party consent is not the law the prosecution should be hanging their hat on
. . . It's a well-established law on the books that was violated.
two-party consent is bullshit
Well, YES. But that's just... like... our opinion man.
If I'm a party to a conversation I should have the right to record it regardless of the consent -- or indeed, knowledge -- of any other party involved!
Rather than "at a party", I believe the term "no reasonable expectation of privacy" is more appropriate.
BUT. What the law IS versus what the law SHOULD be are two different things.
Listen, one of the reasons we even HAVE states is to test out different rulesets and find out what works, what doesn't, and for who. California and Chicago are trying out the whole "you can lie your ass off while off the record" idea. And yeah, both you and I agree that's probably just a tool for corrupt officials. But until the locals get pissed off enough about it to change it, those are the rules.
Instead, what these people should be prosecuted for is not the act of recording itself, but rather the act of slanderously misrepresenting their findings!
Instead? Rather than? How about "in addition to". Hence why they have 15 different charges against them.
No, they don't understand. But that's just ignorance, not idiocy.
There's nothing wrong with ignorance. It's the default state and we all start there. And these sort of classes are great for curing this sort of ignorance. The comment is from someone BEFORE taking the introductory class. If they make such a comment AFTER taking the class, then they're an idiot.
Now... coming from the First Lady... That's damn embarrassing. Don't they have anyone on their team that isn't completely ignorant? And doing this sort of promotional gig and letting slip that level of ignorance is pretty idiotic.
Charitable donations are deductible. You are not taxed on that money. If you make $50K, and dontate $40K to your well-vetted (501c) private charitiy, then you are only taxes AS IF you earned a mere $10K.
This is available to everyone. The only hitch is that you have to itemize instead of taking the standard deduction.
Hmmmm. That's kinda interesting. For anyone paying attention, three people (or at least one person and two cowards who may be people) all said essentially the same thing but in different ways with different tones and highlighting different details. -1 Troll, -1, +4 informative. Salesmanship, diplomatic tact, and a dose of political correctness makes all the world of a difference.
First off, whatever label used will eventually be a slur or co-opted. Welcome to the treadmill. Language sucks. If you're trying to steer it though, you should at least offer your preferred alternative. The alt-right / right / conservatives / republicans have it just as bad.
Second, I'm not sure you should jump to the conclusion that any idiotic statement on our side of the fence must be some false-flag trolling operation. Both camps are HUGE and we both have our fair share of idiots. Unless we call them out and self-police a little, then the idiots will flock to us and we'll be as bad as those TEA partiers. Some people will simply fight anything and everything suggested by Trump. And that's dangerous. ISIS is really deplorable. They should not be defended even tangentially.
Really, it ought to be:
First they came for the muslims, and you agreed because they look like ISIS. Next they will come for you, and all your bootlicking nazi buddies will turn against you.
This issue here though? With the visas for those from "ISIS controlled territory"? For the uninformed, that's fancy-talk for "Syrian refugees". And of course those people should be investigated. The newsworthy bit is that it calls out social media. Like what the hell is a "social media check"? If someone's friend posts to their cat-picture-post on facebook with "durka muhamed jihad", and a search tool hits that, is that it? Check failed? Entry denied?
Yeah, but you get your genes from your parents. You get your memes from the Internet.
But in your worldview, whoever is on top has some sort of divine right simple because their numerical superiority shows that their way is best.
Which is why Mandarin is God's language, and the Han are his chosen people. They ought to be Christians (specifically catholic), work a factory job, and die of heart disease.
All minorities are "degenerate" and rationality is irrelevant because what wins is what wins....Jesus fucking christ I think you're a god-damned monster. The exact sort of hate-spewer that twists religions into a weapon against people and force a conformist fascist regime. My only consolation is that people like you are why developed nations are becoming less religious.
Imagine if you will, a society that successfully eliminates con-men for a time. They have a "tough on lies" stance, or lock down the currency, or no one has anything to steal. Whatever reason, you have a generation of people who have never been flim-flammed, cheated, lied to, stolen from, and/or welshed. And then things change, as they do, and now con-men are introduced to the populous. They are liars in a society full of trust. Imagine that clusterfuck.
So, is the inverse true? Let's say we had some sort of sanctioned thieves guild. Government employees who were paid to try and swindle money away from you. Hopefully without actually taking your money. Do you think that society would be "easy pickings" for con-men?
It might be tempting to kill all the germs around you child. Or to protect them from liars and cheats. Or to protect them from themselves when they want to do something risky. But raising kids is a difficult tightrope of balancing protection and experience. If your kids never see any ads and are never told that the smiling people aren't quite what they appear, they're in for a world of hurt when you release them into the real world.
The mantra used to be "Hard work is the pathway to prosperity". You know, back when a highschool grad could go work in the town's factory and earn a middle-class income for 40 years. The American Dream. Of course that was in the wake of WWII where America rose to the status of super-power.
Then the mantra turned to "A degree is a pathway to prosperity". And that was true for a long time until everyone started getting them.
Now the mantra is "A useful degree is a pathway to prosperity". And that will be true for a while. Not forever, because things change. But it's the best advice I've got for kids these days. Or a trade. The work is rougher and your wage-earning years are fewer, but getting into a trade is a good life.
The summary says "education only guarantees debt, not a stable job." That's compete bullocks. Debt is 100% optional. Common, but entirely optional.
Pft, sure. If you have the money.
There's ways to make college cheaper than normal. Cheaper options. Testing out of classes (if they allow that). Getting other people to pay. And you could save up before going to college if you've got employment opportunities without it. It sounds like you had a very fortunate path for the college experience. Good for you.
But by that logic no one NEEDS to go into debt to buy a house. It's 100% optional. The mortgage industry is apparently "bullocks".
Some people don't have those options though. They don't have the money. They don't have the scholarships or grants. They don't have a job willing to put them through college. The college with the degree they want won't accept transfer credits and won't let them test out of classes for free credits.
But some people are fortunate. They have wealthy parents. They can get scholarships. They land a job while in college that will help. Have a degree and college in mind that lines up with cheaper alternatives and cost-cutting measures. But not everyone is as fortunate as you and I. Understanding the plight of less fortunate is the crux of compassion. Which the baby boomers are lacking on the whole.
You can say it's 100% optional to go into debt for college, for everyone.... Only if their alternative choice is to not go to college. And that's a really shitty option for a lot of less wealthy, less fortunate, perfectly smart kids who would do well in college. And it's a net gain for society for them to carry a bit of debt for a while so they can get an education.
That said, there are a lot of people that really probably shouldn't go to college. Even if they can afford it. Which is hard advice to give and harder advice to take.
Whoa there dude. Practically everything in that paragraph has something wrong with it.
I don't think that's a supportable opinion.
Did you mean viable? Because plenty of people hold and support that position.
If religions were not useful for propagating a people and culture into the future we wouldn't have so many religions that have endured for thousands of years.
By that logic addictive substances wouldn't have endured for thousands of years and we wouldn't have so many. People have been using and abusing opium for a long time, but you have to do some pretty serious libertarian-grade mental gymnastics to say that opium dens are a net gain.
And areligious people tend to not have children, so their culture dies out.
So the Mormons and Muslims are going to inherit the world? I understand the concept of outbreeding the competition... but that doesn't seem like the best solution in today's modern world with the whole lack of resources thing and limited fossil fuel situation.
Indeed, having fewer kids seems to be the consensus among developed nations. Religion or no. I'd even go so far as to say that's the rational viewpoint. Especially when your retirement plans aren't "hope one of the children feed you".
Religion must have been a net positive (even if locally negative for those who don't conform to the predominant religion) because otherwise, the areligious would have had an evolutionary advantage over the religious and would have dominated and killed them off millennia ago. Instead just the opposite happened.
It's not a gene. It's not something you inherit from your parents. You could be talking about how much people appreciate Shakespeare. Do you think that gives people a evolutionary edge to out-compete the rest?
"The opposite happened"? Care to name an areligious group of people that were killed off by a religious group 1000+ years ago? PLENTY of examples of two religions making war upon each other, but I don't think that's helping your case.
Furthermore, if you're talking about evolutionary time-scales, and ideas rather than gene-pools, the decline of religious participation indicates that it might be on it's way out. But I doubt it will ever completely disappear.
You can certainly argue that religion was or is a net gain for society. And there are plenty of valid points to that effect. But all of these arguments are just plain bad.
Then there was their more successful wiretapping of the DNC at the Watergate Complex. Of the two devices they planted only one worked and that soon broke down, forcing them to attempt a second burglary. That second burglary was badly bungled and five "plumbers" were arrested, eventually leading to the downfall of the Nixon presidency.
You're missing the best part. The way they badly bungled it.
So the first time in they pick their way through a door. That's fine. They TAPE the bolt open so they don't have to pick it again. Like if the bug breaks and they have to replace it. That's... somewhat ok. It leaves evidence that they were there. But ostensibly they'll be back in to gather the bug so ok, I can deal with that. One tiny technical tidbit is that they tape it horizontally so it sticks out the door instead of vertically up and down the door jam so it's out of sight.
Because a janitor walks by, sees the door is taped open and unlocked. Now... he removes the tape and thinks nothing of it. That's not super-shocking. Bit of a lucky pass on their part.
And then they come back a second time, like you said, because one of their bugs broke. Then these CIA rejects, under order of the president, performing clandestine and illegal operations, see that someone removed their tape.... Re-pick the door... and then tape it again in the same way with half of it sticking out. And they go inside to fix the bug. The janitor comes by, sees the tape is back, wises up, calls the cops, and these dufuses are caught red-handed.
Final result:
The president steps down.
A bunch of officials get charged with perjury and some serve between a month and a year and a half.
Of the actual buglers:
G. Gordon Liddy. Served 4½ years in federal prison.
E. Howard Hunt. Served 33 months in prison.
James W. McCord Jr. Served 2 months in prison.
Virgilio Gonzalez. Served 13 months in prison.
Bernard Barker. Served 18 months in prison.
Eugenio Martínez. Served 15 months in prison.
Frank Sturgis. Served 10 months in prison.
And it took 4-5 years before before any of the burglars were actually put in prison.
Just from the press releases, it sounds like they didn't break encryption but bypass the need to. That's something that exploits allow them to do. Isn't that the basis of Privilege Escalation?
What really bugs me about this sort of thing is that they're charged with keeping America safe. THAT'S their job. And I fully understand that to keep us safe, the state has to make certain other people very much unsafe. In the dead sort of way. Sad but true. And towards that end the CIA has developed weapons to help them with that.
But these are weapons that can be used against us. Zero-day exploits. Unknown vulnerabilities in critical systems that US citizens and officials and generals use on a daily basis.
Do they think they're the only ones who found these exploits?
Has the CIA made any effort to fix these exploits? To help the maintainers patch up the holes? I don't know. It's hard to know anything about the CIA. But I doubt it since they had a pile of zero-day exploits. The nature of the weapon is that it goes away if other people know about it.
By not being ethical hackers, and keeping these exploits secret and useable for themselves, they've traded DEFENSE of the USA for their own OFFENSIVE capabilities. Which runs counter to their stated goal.
Right. I get all that. Very correct. Investors today give the venture capitalists from years past a reason to exist.
But how much do we give a damn about the initial venture capitalists that helped get General Electric founded? It was founded in 1892. Not 1992, 1892. You're suggesting that we need a system in place that vastly favors the investors in GE because we have to encourage those venture capitalists back in 1892.
Yaaaaay long term thinking, but the workers are getting the shaft for short-term gains while you defend this idea.
How many doughnuts do you think I can eat? There's an upper limit. I'm past it. My investment does nothing for the company. As a legal construct, the company doesn't care. Even if they get bought out, it's still just business. Unless the workers have equity, it doesn't affect them. They have no stake in that. The customers don't care and probably don't know who really owns it all. The only people that it affects are other investors, who aren't actually doing anything for the economy. (Other than, it's worth repeating and as you pointed out, rewarding the initial investors who picked the winners). Aren't there any alternatives that don't involve throwing piles of cash at already rich people?
Any time you talk about economics, it's tempting to just extend the scope. "Raising taxes on corporations will only raise prices and lower wages." "We've already paid income tax on those financial gains when our corporation paid taxes." "Give the rich money and they'll buy more services from the poor and it will trickle down". But you can JUST like easily say things like "Raising taxes helps pay for infrastructure which supports business", "Shifting the tax burden to corporations will give more money to their customers who will do more business". See? Raising taxes on corporations is for their benefit!
When everything is interconnected, you can play these games, but it's bloody bullshit.
My point is that past the the first sale of stock, anything that happens with it is meaningless to the business and the part of the real economy which isn't smoke and mirrors and bullshit.
I'd argue that we should raise capital gains taxes or simply make it part of income, make additional higher brackets to reflect the higher incomes, and increase unemployment benefits to help people retrain, educate, or move. These are reactionary measures in response to the growing inequality due to technological improvement and should go away once the GINI co-efficient is back below... I dunno... 0.4 or something. It's wealth redistribution just assuredly as a progressive tax structure and welfare are. But that's part of the government's job. The goal is a functional society. We can do better than the 1800's robber-baron era.
Also I think a lot of non-profits are fucking bullshit tax dodges, but that's kind of a side-rant.
Slashdot Mirror
But an undercover video related to abortion gets a different standard.
I am foursquare opposed to double standards under the law.
So after everything you've learned in this thread, how do you feel about states rights?
You know, the part that makes two different standards that different people in different states have to follow.
but two-party consent is not the law the prosecution should be hanging their hat on
. . . It's a well-established law on the books that was violated.
two-party consent is bullshit
Well, YES. But that's just... like... our opinion man.
If I'm a party to a conversation I should have the right to record it regardless of the consent -- or indeed, knowledge -- of any other party involved!
Rather than "at a party", I believe the term "no reasonable expectation of privacy" is more appropriate.
BUT. What the law IS versus what the law SHOULD be are two different things.
Listen, one of the reasons we even HAVE states is to test out different rulesets and find out what works, what doesn't, and for who. California and Chicago are trying out the whole "you can lie your ass off while off the record" idea. And yeah, both you and I agree that's probably just a tool for corrupt officials. But until the locals get pissed off enough about it to change it, those are the rules.
Instead, what these people should be prosecuted for is not the act of recording itself, but rather the act of slanderously misrepresenting their findings!
Instead? Rather than? How about "in addition to". Hence why they have 15 different charges against them.
No, they don't understand. But that's just ignorance, not idiocy.
There's nothing wrong with ignorance. It's the default state and we all start there. And these sort of classes are great for curing this sort of ignorance. The comment is from someone BEFORE taking the introductory class. If they make such a comment AFTER taking the class, then they're an idiot.
Now... coming from the First Lady... That's damn embarrassing. Don't they have anyone on their team that isn't completely ignorant? And doing this sort of promotional gig and letting slip that level of ignorance is pretty idiotic.
YOU CAN!
Charitable donations are deductible. You are not taxed on that money. If you make $50K, and dontate $40K to your well-vetted (501c) private charitiy, then you are only taxes AS IF you earned a mere $10K.
This is available to everyone. The only hitch is that you have to itemize instead of taking the standard deduction.
"I'm not a paranoid, delusional basement dweller "
"I don't have an urgent need to hyperbolize everything"
Do you ever try listening to yourself?
Yes, the upgrade is still free(gratis). All you have to do is check a box saying it's for accessibility issues.
Remember people, when the service is free, YOU are the product.
Eh, more like
In other words: "You aren't going to find anything better, everyone else is just as bad. There's some good people here."
But at this point we're really sticking words in her mouth.
Hmmmm. That's kinda interesting. For anyone paying attention, three people (or at least one person and two cowards who may be people) all said essentially the same thing but in different ways with different tones and highlighting different details. -1 Troll, -1, +4 informative. Salesmanship, diplomatic tact, and a dose of political correctness makes all the world of a difference.
Jesus christ dude, they're both freedom of movement issues.
First off, whatever label used will eventually be a slur or co-opted. Welcome to the treadmill. Language sucks. If you're trying to steer it though, you should at least offer your preferred alternative. The alt-right / right / conservatives / republicans have it just as bad.
Second, I'm not sure you should jump to the conclusion that any idiotic statement on our side of the fence must be some false-flag trolling operation. Both camps are HUGE and we both have our fair share of idiots. Unless we call them out and self-police a little, then the idiots will flock to us and we'll be as bad as those TEA partiers. Some people will simply fight anything and everything suggested by Trump. And that's dangerous. ISIS is really deplorable. They should not be defended even tangentially.
Really, it ought to be:
First they came for the muslims, and you agreed because they look like ISIS. Next they will come for you, and all your bootlicking nazi buddies will turn against you.
This issue here though? With the visas for those from "ISIS controlled territory"? For the uninformed, that's fancy-talk for "Syrian refugees". And of course those people should be investigated. The newsworthy bit is that it calls out social media. Like what the hell is a "social media check"? If someone's friend posts to their cat-picture-post on facebook with "durka muhamed jihad", and a search tool hits that, is that it? Check failed? Entry denied?
So when are the politicians going to be charged with contempt of court when they "do not recall"?
Yeah, but you get your genes from your parents. You get your memes from the Internet.
But in your worldview, whoever is on top has some sort of divine right simple because their numerical superiority shows that their way is best.
Which is why Mandarin is God's language, and the Han are his chosen people. They ought to be Christians (specifically catholic), work a factory job, and die of heart disease.
All minorities are "degenerate" and rationality is irrelevant because what wins is what wins. ...Jesus fucking christ I think you're a god-damned monster. The exact sort of hate-spewer that twists religions into a weapon against people and force a conformist fascist regime. My only consolation is that people like you are why developed nations are becoming less religious.
Probably government. Apes have alpha males of the tribe. We don't know if they have religion.
Imagine if you will, a society that successfully eliminates con-men for a time. They have a "tough on lies" stance, or lock down the currency, or no one has anything to steal. Whatever reason, you have a generation of people who have never been flim-flammed, cheated, lied to, stolen from, and/or welshed. And then things change, as they do, and now con-men are introduced to the populous. They are liars in a society full of trust. Imagine that clusterfuck.
So, is the inverse true? Let's say we had some sort of sanctioned thieves guild. Government employees who were paid to try and swindle money away from you. Hopefully without actually taking your money. Do you think that society would be "easy pickings" for con-men?
It might be tempting to kill all the germs around you child. Or to protect them from liars and cheats. Or to protect them from themselves when they want to do something risky. But raising kids is a difficult tightrope of balancing protection and experience. If your kids never see any ads and are never told that the smiling people aren't quite what they appear, they're in for a world of hurt when you release them into the real world.
The world doesn't owe you shit, life doesn't have to be fair,
Do you want your social security check to show up in the mail?
I mean, you paid into it. It'd be awfully unfair if it just went away.
The hell?
The mantra used to be "Hard work is the pathway to prosperity". You know, back when a highschool grad could go work in the town's factory and earn a middle-class income for 40 years. The American Dream. Of course that was in the wake of WWII where America rose to the status of super-power.
Then the mantra turned to "A degree is a pathway to prosperity". And that was true for a long time until everyone started getting them.
Now the mantra is "A useful degree is a pathway to prosperity". And that will be true for a while. Not forever, because things change. But it's the best advice I've got for kids these days. Or a trade. The work is rougher and your wage-earning years are fewer, but getting into a trade is a good life.
The summary says "education only guarantees debt, not a stable job." That's compete bullocks. Debt is 100% optional. Common, but entirely optional.
Pft, sure. If you have the money.
There's ways to make college cheaper than normal. Cheaper options. Testing out of classes (if they allow that). Getting other people to pay. And you could save up before going to college if you've got employment opportunities without it. It sounds like you had a very fortunate path for the college experience. Good for you.
But by that logic no one NEEDS to go into debt to buy a house. It's 100% optional. The mortgage industry is apparently "bullocks".
Some people don't have those options though. They don't have the money. They don't have the scholarships or grants. They don't have a job willing to put them through college. The college with the degree they want won't accept transfer credits and won't let them test out of classes for free credits.
But some people are fortunate. They have wealthy parents. They can get scholarships. They land a job while in college that will help. Have a degree and college in mind that lines up with cheaper alternatives and cost-cutting measures. But not everyone is as fortunate as you and I. Understanding the plight of less fortunate is the crux of compassion. Which the baby boomers are lacking on the whole.
You can say it's 100% optional to go into debt for college, for everyone.... Only if their alternative choice is to not go to college. And that's a really shitty option for a lot of less wealthy, less fortunate, perfectly smart kids who would do well in college. And it's a net gain for society for them to carry a bit of debt for a while so they can get an education.
That said, there are a lot of people that really probably shouldn't go to college. Even if they can afford it. Which is hard advice to give and harder advice to take.
Accomplishments
Christian has 3 projects 3
Projects
Project name Starcraft: Broodwar AI - CMProtoBot
Instant hire!
Whoa there dude. Practically everything in that paragraph has something wrong with it.
I don't think that's a supportable opinion.
Did you mean viable? Because plenty of people hold and support that position.
If religions were not useful for propagating a people and culture into the future we wouldn't have so many religions that have endured for thousands of years.
By that logic addictive substances wouldn't have endured for thousands of years and we wouldn't have so many. People have been using and abusing opium for a long time, but you have to do some pretty serious libertarian-grade mental gymnastics to say that opium dens are a net gain.
And areligious people tend to not have children, so their culture dies out.
So the Mormons and Muslims are going to inherit the world? I understand the concept of outbreeding the competition... but that doesn't seem like the best solution in today's modern world with the whole lack of resources thing and limited fossil fuel situation.
Indeed, having fewer kids seems to be the consensus among developed nations. Religion or no. I'd even go so far as to say that's the rational viewpoint. Especially when your retirement plans aren't "hope one of the children feed you".
Religion must have been a net positive (even if locally negative for those who don't conform to the predominant religion) because otherwise, the areligious would have had an evolutionary advantage over the religious and would have dominated and killed them off millennia ago. Instead just the opposite happened.
It's not a gene. It's not something you inherit from your parents. You could be talking about how much people appreciate Shakespeare. Do you think that gives people a evolutionary edge to out-compete the rest?
"The opposite happened"? Care to name an areligious group of people that were killed off by a religious group 1000+ years ago? PLENTY of examples of two religions making war upon each other, but I don't think that's helping your case.
Furthermore, if you're talking about evolutionary time-scales, and ideas rather than gene-pools, the decline of religious participation indicates that it might be on it's way out. But I doubt it will ever completely disappear.
You can certainly argue that religion was or is a net gain for society. And there are plenty of valid points to that effect. But all of these arguments are just plain bad.
Then there was their more successful wiretapping of the DNC at the Watergate Complex. Of the two devices they planted only one worked and that soon broke down, forcing them to attempt a second burglary. That second burglary was badly bungled and five "plumbers" were arrested, eventually leading to the downfall of the Nixon presidency.
You're missing the best part. The way they badly bungled it.
So the first time in they pick their way through a door. That's fine. They TAPE the bolt open so they don't have to pick it again. Like if the bug breaks and they have to replace it. That's... somewhat ok. It leaves evidence that they were there. But ostensibly they'll be back in to gather the bug so ok, I can deal with that. One tiny technical tidbit is that they tape it horizontally so it sticks out the door instead of vertically up and down the door jam so it's out of sight.
Because a janitor walks by, sees the door is taped open and unlocked. Now... he removes the tape and thinks nothing of it. That's not super-shocking. Bit of a lucky pass on their part.
And then they come back a second time, like you said, because one of their bugs broke. Then these CIA rejects, under order of the president, performing clandestine and illegal operations, see that someone removed their tape.... Re-pick the door... and then tape it again in the same way with half of it sticking out. And they go inside to fix the bug. The janitor comes by, sees the tape is back, wises up, calls the cops, and these dufuses are caught red-handed.
Final result:
The president steps down.
A bunch of officials get charged with perjury and some serve between a month and a year and a half.
Of the actual buglers:
G. Gordon Liddy. Served 4½ years in federal prison.
E. Howard Hunt. Served 33 months in prison.
James W. McCord Jr. Served 2 months in prison.
Virgilio Gonzalez. Served 13 months in prison.
Bernard Barker. Served 18 months in prison.
Eugenio Martínez. Served 15 months in prison.
Frank Sturgis. Served 10 months in prison.
And it took 4-5 years before before any of the burglars were actually put in prison.
oh you poor sweet summer child.
It's not that they literally can't.
It's that they legally can't.
But that's more of a guideline than a hard-set rule.
Just from the press releases, it sounds like they didn't break encryption but bypass the need to. That's something that exploits allow them to do. Isn't that the basis of Privilege Escalation?
"Well they're the CIA, that's their job right?"
What really bugs me about this sort of thing is that they're charged with keeping America safe. THAT'S their job. And I fully understand that to keep us safe, the state has to make certain other people very much unsafe. In the dead sort of way. Sad but true. And towards that end the CIA has developed weapons to help them with that.
But these are weapons that can be used against us. Zero-day exploits. Unknown vulnerabilities in critical systems that US citizens and officials and generals use on a daily basis.
Do they think they're the only ones who found these exploits?
Has the CIA made any effort to fix these exploits? To help the maintainers patch up the holes? I don't know. It's hard to know anything about the CIA. But I doubt it since they had a pile of zero-day exploits. The nature of the weapon is that it goes away if other people know about it.
By not being ethical hackers, and keeping these exploits secret and useable for themselves, they've traded DEFENSE of the USA for their own OFFENSIVE capabilities. Which runs counter to their stated goal.
No, I'm just not a customer.
I'm not so much a cable-cutter as young and techy enough that I never got cable TV.
Right. I get all that. Very correct. Investors today give the venture capitalists from years past a reason to exist.
But how much do we give a damn about the initial venture capitalists that helped get General Electric founded? It was founded in 1892. Not 1992, 1892. You're suggesting that we need a system in place that vastly favors the investors in GE because we have to encourage those venture capitalists back in 1892.
Yaaaaay long term thinking, but the workers are getting the shaft for short-term gains while you defend this idea.
Economically speaking, you're foregoing consumption.
How many doughnuts do you think I can eat? There's an upper limit. I'm past it. My investment does nothing for the company. As a legal construct, the company doesn't care. Even if they get bought out, it's still just business. Unless the workers have equity, it doesn't affect them. They have no stake in that. The customers don't care and probably don't know who really owns it all. The only people that it affects are other investors, who aren't actually doing anything for the economy. (Other than, it's worth repeating and as you pointed out, rewarding the initial investors who picked the winners). Aren't there any alternatives that don't involve throwing piles of cash at already rich people?
Any time you talk about economics, it's tempting to just extend the scope. "Raising taxes on corporations will only raise prices and lower wages." "We've already paid income tax on those financial gains when our corporation paid taxes." "Give the rich money and they'll buy more services from the poor and it will trickle down". But you can JUST like easily say things like "Raising taxes helps pay for infrastructure which supports business", "Shifting the tax burden to corporations will give more money to their customers who will do more business". See? Raising taxes on corporations is for their benefit!
When everything is interconnected, you can play these games, but it's bloody bullshit.
My point is that past the the first sale of stock, anything that happens with it is meaningless to the business and the part of the real economy which isn't smoke and mirrors and bullshit.
I'd argue that we should raise capital gains taxes or simply make it part of income, make additional higher brackets to reflect the higher incomes, and increase unemployment benefits to help people retrain, educate, or move. These are reactionary measures in response to the growing inequality due to technological improvement and should go away once the GINI co-efficient is back below... I dunno... 0.4 or something. It's wealth redistribution just assuredly as a progressive tax structure and welfare are. But that's part of the government's job. The goal is a functional society. We can do better than the 1800's robber-baron era.
Also I think a lot of non-profits are fucking bullshit tax dodges, but that's kind of a side-rant.