Agreed, and the other issue is that much of what passes for "news and information" is WRITTEN BY TROLLS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
It would be nice... if an automated bot could filter out the cutters and pasters in the comment sections (Which is where the real story is) but that would require Discus and others to crowdsource complaints in near real time.
In other words, the same as every other quasi-government enterprise... Because politicians have hoodwinked masses of people into believing that government is benign, on their side, and looking out for them, whereas enterprise is pure evil and must be stopped. When the truth is both sides are equally greedy, corrupt, venal, and deceptive.
Humans are involved. Corruption is a matter of degree...
So all those bailouts to an inefficient post office - that can't do the job DHL, USPS, and Fed-X do... And all those raises in postage... where did that money go and come from again?
Me thinks you're living in a fantasy world when it comes to how things are funded at the government level. Government "agencies". a.k.a. "Tenured Jobs Programs" primary mission is continuing their existence, and increasing their funding. It's why we have "mandatory budget increases" written into LAW for absolutely everything, and why Congress won't pass a budget - they want to keep the mandatory increases written into law before the recession hit. One buys the most federal worker votes this way...
I've never read a story on the NYT that wasn't laced with a hidden political agenda, so it's no surprise that an ex-NYT science writer would pen a book with a hidden political agenda....
You're absolutely right but I am sure the ideologues that inhabit/. will attack you mercilessly for this.
On a side note, I used to sail the Southern California Coast quite a bit before the days of GPS, the Dolly Parton Memorial Monument was a great dead reckoning fix and will be missed.
Thank you so much for having the courage to speak up on this topic on/.
I so hope the young wet behind the ears passionate naive millennials who actually believe the propaganda spewed by the so called civil rights leaders on MSNBC... Propaganda carefully crafted to make people angry and send money to greedy people who only have their own self interest at heart... These people do not speak for the majority of blacks, nor do they represent black culture, nor are they doing blacks any favors.
I have personally seen racism in many forms it makes me sick. Literally physically sick.
Same thing happened with.net.... Had this conversation with a headhunter back when I was coding for a living:
HeadHunter: The position requires five years of.net experience
Me: No one on planet earth has five years.net experience, it's been 8 months since the PDC Tech Preview Edition, and 4 months since the first real version shipped.
HeadHunter: Oh, so you're saying you don't meet the requirement?
Me: NO ONE meets the requirement.net is only FOUR MONTHS OLD
HeadHunter: OK, I won't submit your resume then
He is wrong, you are correct. I am simply stating the facts of the matter, as I talk to people in Eastern Ukraine every day as part of my job. It is very annoying to see the Russian trolls posting their propaganda on social media in the U.S.....
The OFA trolls who constantly cut and paste foolishness about how all the Democrats were dead set against the evil Bushitler and Demonic Cheney come to mind...
The Russian take over of Georgia was done using the exact, same tactics... as are being used here.
It would be very worthwhile for the uneducated bathed in propaganda folks in the West for you to explain:
The propaganda that the Bear is broadcasting to its own people about the atrocities committed by the Ukrainians.
The treaty Ukraine entered into - that Obama resigned - that nobody wants to talk about, and is being reported as something completely different.
The Russian propaganda trolls are out in full force on all U.S. websites, news sites are especially hard hit, and they are right here on Slashdot. People here in the U.S. are so naive that they don't realize the rest of the world does the same stupid govno our political parties do on social media.
That there is no civil war in Ukraine. We have an ex-FSB operative hiring bratva stooges and pretending to be an "insurgency" for the benefit of the media...
Correct, and god forbid the CONSUMER actually expends a tiny bit of EFFORT and educates themselves. Very few places left where you don't have more than one choice for getting your Internet.
Of course the lazy folks, who want someone else to do their thinking for them, want somebody else to do all the work... Despite the fact that this always turns out the same, the politicians and the business folks get rich, the consumer gets screwed. Doesn't matter which party is in charge.
So get out there and vote - with your wallet. It's the most powerful vote you have.
The NDAA is the most heinous attack on the personal liberties in the bill of rights ever singed by any president ever. And no, it wasn't bushitler folks. Using the IRS to target political enemies didn't occur under his watch either.
They already tried this with "Attack Watch". Pathetic display of political arrogance.
The problem isn't that the Obama Administration is very intent on suppressing all dissent, controlling all media outlets, and turning the U.S. into a model of Soviet Citizen drone control. The problem is that their actions are opening the doors for the next guy/party to double down on all of this, and then the next guy does it even more.
Watch for the Demoncrats to scream, howl, and wail when the inevitable Rethugnican overlords have a majority in government again and do the exact same things we are letting the Demoncrats away with and please, please learn something about how the parties operate this time and stop this "My party is pure as the driven snow and your party is pure evil" idiocy. We must reduce the size of the Federal government, folks. No matter what it takes. Try and edumakate your friends...
The small countries in Western Europe do socialism well. That could work here on a state by state basis, but not on the Federal level, as "one size fits all" just doesn't work in a country as large as ours. I wouldn't want to live there... You need a permit to do darn near anything to your house, even ridiculously small, and I just couldn't pay the near 20% VAT and 50% income tax required to support all the services you get. Government employees over there are even lazier, and less responsive than they are here, they have zero motivation to do anything as they can't be fired and there is little performance based pay except for "time served".
Quality of living... is very subjective. A lot of those folks (I was there for extended business trips) were jealous of life in the USA and thought we had it much better. It's one thing to be a tourist, another to work alongside people there for two, three months.
Eastern Europe, another story. You can't blame the Russian overlords for the millions of people in Ukraine who starved - it's the fault of too much power centralized, and the utter disaster that is a centrally planned economy. The corruption in those countries didn't just happen, the communist system was one of the most corrupt ever devised, worse than a banana republic. This is the part people just don't get. One party rule - no matter how glorious the ideology is, no matter how well intentioned the people claim to be, no matter how good it sounds.... always comes out the same: A small group oppresses the shit out of everybody else, living the high life while everyone else suffers. Witness how the Obama's are behaving these days. It's "Let them eat cake" all over again. Witness the "Death to all Republicans" message the new Democratic Party sends out. When the truth is that competing ideas, balancing each other out, are what made this country great.
Well that explains why Obama has more Wall Street Bankers on his cabinet than any other President in history. He's a fan of the 1% and capitalism! He is, after all, one of the 1%, along with Hillary, Kerry, Reid.
The truth is that cheating and malfeasance are human traits that can't be attributed to one system of government, or applied to business but not to government, or legislated out of existence, or "controlled" by regulation. Some people will feel compelled to cheat. The real question is whether or not is how easy it is to get away with it, and whether or not it is frowned upon. As long as the cheaters scream it's the other guy doing all the cheating, and the followers believe this nonsense, cheating will proliferate.
Socialism is communism lite, and before you proclaim it's glory go visit countries that were ruled by real communists - don't just read about it, go there.
Once you've done that, your worldview may change. Drastically.
Sorry didn't mean to come off angry. I am tired of people who know very little about economics, or business declaring absolutes based on one or two statistics, or when you dive into the analysis you quickly discover they did a fine job of lying with statistics, or they have an axe to grind because they believe that one group of people is inherently evil, and another group is not.
I have a bachelors degree in Economics - and a strong case of plain old common sense. Wage/Price controls... are wrong on so many levels. It's like we are starting with a very wrong premise (wage/price controls) and trying to prove it's really not such a horrible idea after all - without ever thinking that we started out with a bad idea in the first place. The whole system... has been so completely fucked by the business/government "alliance" also known as pay to play, business as usual, that's just how the system works, etc. that it's hard to see how one more "adjustment" in the system is going to help at all. We have chronic underemployment - not because we need to "force" business to do one thing or another, but because we keep pretending that a centrally planned economy will actually work - when all evidence is that it fails miserably. So we dance around with a partially planned economy, where every group tries to control this micro economic indicator or that one, and we we watch the system get more and more fucked up, the solution is always that we need to adjust this lever, or that one, or punish this group by rewarding that one.
I'm old enough to remember when the system actually worked for the majority of the people, and to remember the point in time where we started screwing it up....
All the people that have eaten bread have died, so clearly there's a relationship between bread eating and death, so don't eat bread unless you want to die.
However I did learn that the story about how raising the minimum wage = job growth was on NPR, that's all I needed to hear.
Statistics we can trust please? It's easy to make such statements, and easier still to find someone lying with statistics trying to prove this or that.
First no numbers coming out of the Obama Administration should be trusted as they have a history of lying to suit the politics du jour.
Second, before the government got involved wages were based on demand and supply. If you couldn't find a job there was no safety net, you relied on the kindness of strangers. And big surprise, there were just as many poor folks as we have now, wages were fair, and everything worked out just fine. The whole idea that the government mandates wages, and pays unemployment is a creation of the Great Society of the 1960's, we survived just fine for millennia before that. Many would say we were better off...
It is already illegal to hire undocumented aliens, just enforce the damn laws...
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, and the other issue is that much of what passes for "news and information" is WRITTEN BY TROLLS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
It would be nice... if an automated bot could filter out the cutters and pasters in the comment sections (Which is where the real story is) but that would require Discus and others to crowdsource complaints in near real time.
In other words, the same as every other quasi-government enterprise... Because politicians have hoodwinked masses of people into believing that government is benign, on their side, and looking out for them, whereas enterprise is pure evil and must be stopped. When the truth is both sides are equally greedy, corrupt, venal, and deceptive.
Humans are involved. Corruption is a matter of degree...
So all those bailouts to an inefficient post office - that can't do the job DHL, USPS, and Fed-X do... And all those raises in postage... where did that money go and come from again?
Me thinks you're living in a fantasy world when it comes to how things are funded at the government level. Government "agencies". a.k.a. "Tenured Jobs Programs" primary mission is continuing their existence, and increasing their funding. It's why we have "mandatory budget increases" written into LAW for absolutely everything, and why Congress won't pass a budget - they want to keep the mandatory increases written into law before the recession hit. One buys the most federal worker votes this way...
I've never read a story on the NYT that wasn't laced with a hidden political agenda, so it's no surprise that an ex-NYT science writer would pen a book with a hidden political agenda....
This is ancient news that was debated endlessly during the MH-17 breathless cable news-a-thon, the lost airline network had this on every night.
No clickbait global warming stories today? No polarizing left wing loon right wing nutcase stories? Gee slashdot, are you on vacation too this week?
You're absolutely right but I am sure the ideologues that inhabit /. will attack you mercilessly for this.
On a side note, I used to sail the Southern California Coast quite a bit before the days of GPS, the Dolly Parton Memorial Monument was a great dead reckoning fix and will be missed.
Thank you so much for having the courage to speak up on this topic on /.
I so hope the young wet behind the ears passionate naive millennials who actually believe the propaganda spewed by the so called civil rights leaders on MSNBC... Propaganda carefully crafted to make people angry and send money to greedy people who only have their own self interest at heart... These people do not speak for the majority of blacks, nor do they represent black culture, nor are they doing blacks any favors.
I have personally seen racism in many forms it makes me sick. Literally physically sick.
Please send all those unemployed iOS developers my way. Have the rates gone down?
Same thing happened with .net.... Had this conversation with a headhunter back when I was coding for a living:
.net experience .net experience, it's been 8 months since the PDC Tech Preview Edition, and 4 months since the first real version shipped. .net is only FOUR MONTHS OLD
HeadHunter: The position requires five years of
Me: No one on planet earth has five years
HeadHunter: Oh, so you're saying you don't meet the requirement?
Me: NO ONE meets the requirement
HeadHunter: OK, I won't submit your resume then
He is wrong, you are correct. I am simply stating the facts of the matter, as I talk to people in Eastern Ukraine every day as part of my job. It is very annoying to see the Russian trolls posting their propaganda on social media in the U.S.....
Apparently the poster hasn't seen the monument in Kyiv to the millions of people who starved to death under the boot of the Russians...
The OFA trolls who constantly cut and paste foolishness about how all the Democrats were dead set against the evil Bushitler and Demonic Cheney come to mind...
The Russian take over of Georgia was done using the exact, same tactics... as are being used here.
It's because the slavic languages have more in common than they are different...
Thank you for your comment.
It would be very worthwhile for the uneducated bathed in propaganda folks in the West for you to explain:
The propaganda that the Bear is broadcasting to its own people about the atrocities committed by the Ukrainians.
The treaty Ukraine entered into - that Obama resigned - that nobody wants to talk about, and is being reported as something completely different.
The Russian propaganda trolls are out in full force on all U.S. websites, news sites are especially hard hit, and they are right here on Slashdot. People here in the U.S. are so naive that they don't realize the rest of the world does the same stupid govno our political parties do on social media.
That there is no civil war in Ukraine. We have an ex-FSB operative hiring bratva stooges and pretending to be an "insurgency" for the benefit of the media...
Correct, and god forbid the CONSUMER actually expends a tiny bit of EFFORT and educates themselves. Very few places left where you don't have more than one choice for getting your Internet.
Of course the lazy folks, who want someone else to do their thinking for them, want somebody else to do all the work... Despite the fact that this always turns out the same, the politicians and the business folks get rich, the consumer gets screwed. Doesn't matter which party is in charge.
So get out there and vote - with your wallet. It's the most powerful vote you have.
The NDAA is the most heinous attack on the personal liberties in the bill of rights ever singed by any president ever. And no, it wasn't bushitler folks. Using the IRS to target political enemies didn't occur under his watch either.
They already tried this with "Attack Watch". Pathetic display of political arrogance.
The problem isn't that the Obama Administration is very intent on suppressing all dissent, controlling all media outlets, and turning the U.S. into a model of Soviet Citizen drone control. The problem is that their actions are opening the doors for the next guy/party to double down on all of this, and then the next guy does it even more.
Watch for the Demoncrats to scream, howl, and wail when the inevitable Rethugnican overlords have a majority in government again and do the exact same things we are letting the Demoncrats away with and please, please learn something about how the parties operate this time and stop this "My party is pure as the driven snow and your party is pure evil" idiocy. We must reduce the size of the Federal government, folks. No matter what it takes. Try and edumakate your friends...
The small countries in Western Europe do socialism well. That could work here on a state by state basis, but not on the Federal level, as "one size fits all" just doesn't work in a country as large as ours. I wouldn't want to live there... You need a permit to do darn near anything to your house, even ridiculously small, and I just couldn't pay the near 20% VAT and 50% income tax required to support all the services you get. Government employees over there are even lazier, and less responsive than they are here, they have zero motivation to do anything as they can't be fired and there is little performance based pay except for "time served".
Quality of living... is very subjective. A lot of those folks (I was there for extended business trips) were jealous of life in the USA and thought we had it much better. It's one thing to be a tourist, another to work alongside people there for two, three months.
Eastern Europe, another story. You can't blame the Russian overlords for the millions of people in Ukraine who starved - it's the fault of too much power centralized, and the utter disaster that is a centrally planned economy. The corruption in those countries didn't just happen, the communist system was one of the most corrupt ever devised, worse than a banana republic. This is the part people just don't get. One party rule - no matter how glorious the ideology is, no matter how well intentioned the people claim to be, no matter how good it sounds.... always comes out the same: A small group oppresses the shit out of everybody else, living the high life while everyone else suffers. Witness how the Obama's are behaving these days. It's "Let them eat cake" all over again. Witness the "Death to all Republicans" message the new Democratic Party sends out. When the truth is that competing ideas, balancing each other out, are what made this country great.
Well that explains why Obama has more Wall Street Bankers on his cabinet than any other President in history. He's a fan of the 1% and capitalism! He is, after all, one of the 1%, along with Hillary, Kerry, Reid.
The truth is that cheating and malfeasance are human traits that can't be attributed to one system of government, or applied to business but not to government, or legislated out of existence, or "controlled" by regulation. Some people will feel compelled to cheat. The real question is whether or not is how easy it is to get away with it, and whether or not it is frowned upon. As long as the cheaters scream it's the other guy doing all the cheating, and the followers believe this nonsense, cheating will proliferate.
Socialism is communism lite, and before you proclaim it's glory go visit countries that were ruled by real communists - don't just read about it, go there.
Once you've done that, your worldview may change. Drastically.
Sorry didn't mean to come off angry. I am tired of people who know very little about economics, or business declaring absolutes based on one or two statistics, or when you dive into the analysis you quickly discover they did a fine job of lying with statistics, or they have an axe to grind because they believe that one group of people is inherently evil, and another group is not.
I have a bachelors degree in Economics - and a strong case of plain old common sense. Wage/Price controls... are wrong on so many levels. It's like we are starting with a very wrong premise (wage/price controls) and trying to prove it's really not such a horrible idea after all - without ever thinking that we started out with a bad idea in the first place. The whole system... has been so completely fucked by the business/government "alliance" also known as pay to play, business as usual, that's just how the system works, etc. that it's hard to see how one more "adjustment" in the system is going to help at all. We have chronic underemployment - not because we need to "force" business to do one thing or another, but because we keep pretending that a centrally planned economy will actually work - when all evidence is that it fails miserably. So we dance around with a partially planned economy, where every group tries to control this micro economic indicator or that one, and we we watch the system get more and more fucked up, the solution is always that we need to adjust this lever, or that one, or punish this group by rewarding that one.
I'm old enough to remember when the system actually worked for the majority of the people, and to remember the point in time where we started screwing it up....
Yeah I thought so.
All the people that have eaten bread have died, so clearly there's a relationship between bread eating and death, so don't eat bread unless you want to die.
However I did learn that the story about how raising the minimum wage = job growth was on NPR, that's all I needed to hear.
Statistics we can trust please? It's easy to make such statements, and easier still to find someone lying with statistics trying to prove this or that.
First no numbers coming out of the Obama Administration should be trusted as they have a history of lying to suit the politics du jour.
Second, before the government got involved wages were based on demand and supply. If you couldn't find a job there was no safety net, you relied on the kindness of strangers. And big surprise, there were just as many poor folks as we have now, wages were fair, and everything worked out just fine. The whole idea that the government mandates wages, and pays unemployment is a creation of the Great Society of the 1960's, we survived just fine for millennia before that. Many would say we were better off...
It is already illegal to hire undocumented aliens, just enforce the damn laws...
You make a good point, and the Democrats played the same game with Bush (and still do)
But It was Obama who re-signed the mutual defense pact with Ukraine, and it is Obama who refuses to honor that treaty