Yes, lets get over this party-line bullshit now, because the LAST thing this nation needs after the last 8 years, is a close examination of mistakes-made, and how to avoid them in the future.
The real question, then, I suppose, is how the fuck exactly does an AIDS patient survive this procedure? Their immune system is already compromised, and they're infected with this deadly retrovirus. Sounds riskier than normal.
There were protests. There were also large-scale violations of rights; "free-speech zones" as well as severe police brutality. To add insult to injury, our rightwing media kowtowed to the bush regime, abusing the free speech rights of others while opportunistically using their own; not to mention their government-granted monopolies of the public airwave resources. The media gave almost no coverage of these protests - and purposely distorted the scale and content of them. As the rightwing newsmedia has done, in the US, since before 1968.
Yes, 60-million bad-apples voted Bush into office in 2004, after seeing a clear demonstration of his fascistic policies. But there are 240 million OTHER Americans. Some of them voted in 2004, a lot of them sat on their asses. But a lot of those actually got off their asses in 2008. As ashamed of my ignorant, fearful countrymen I was in 2004, I'm actually proud and encouraged in 2008.
When Germany fell, though there were "terrorists" until the 1950s, remants of Nazis that refused to give up, they eventually were either captured, died out or simply gave up and accepted things the way they had become.
. . . or they moved to the US, took over the economy and the Republican party, and kept on going.
For a Libertarian, it is morally repulsive to be in any way involved in the SOCIALIST institution of Pro Sports.
Yes.
Pro Sports is a SOCIALIST institution. Sports franchises are granted local monopolies by the state, and their stadiums are publicly funded, and the land acquired often through eminent domain type legal shenanigans. Never mind the PUBLIC expense of police traffic and crowd control provided for games.
When teams start building their own damn stadiums, providing their own services, and begin competing on a level playing field with new startup teams; anyone who wants to put together a team can compete! THEN I'll retract this claim. Until then: Watch NFL. . . LOVE Communism.
None of this acknowledges the fact that's staring everyone in the face, yet we are all ignoring.
US PRESENCE IN IRAQ BECOMES ILLEGAL AT THE END OF 2008.
The UN resolution that authorizes us to even BE there expires at the end of this year.
Attempts to get an agreement from the Iraqi government to give us permission to be there, have all failed.
Yep.
What major news outlet is even acknowledging this fact?
NONE.
Not a single one.
Fact is - until we get an agreement, or until the UN votes to extend the resolution (and neither look likely to happen) - any talk about staying in Iraq, or leaving Iraq, is pretty much masturbation at this point.
Do you think the Russians learned a lesson in Afghanistan, er, Chechnya, er, Georgia,. . . (etc.)
America didn't learn any lessons from Korea, or VietNam - they're sure not going to learn from Iraq.
If you take genocidal intentions into a war, but fight it in a modern, "civilized" fashion, you're going to lose. End of story.
You can't change people's minds short of killing them. Winning "hearts and minds" . . . does that EVER work? Vlad the Impaler's about the most recent success story in history.
The only way we could possibly have succeeded in Iraq is if we had undone the meddling done after WWII, and partitioned the freaking country, and bit the bullet on handing the Shia portion over to Iran (giving a portion of their territory to Kurdistan), and the Sunni portion over to KSA.
Then we'd let them fight it out over the next 100 years. We could trade them guns for oil. The US makes the best weapons, and we need their oil.
Then, when all the oil runs out - they'll suddenly find that they had nothing to fight over anymore.
Put yourself in their position, and imagine if Iraqi planes were bombing your town, Iraqi tanks were driving through your streets and Iraqi soldiers were shooting at you and your family. Would you fight back?
I would be posting bomb-making plans to "bomb-a-day.com"
Damn effing right I would be fighting back. There would be no atrocity or tactic too heinous in defense of my home.
Much of the economy is actually very simple, if you remember a couple of basic principles:
Supply and Demand is a pretty decent model, most of the time. 2/3 of the Economy is driven by consumer spending. Energy is a basic input.
Given that incomes for MOST Americans have been flat, or in decline, in real terms for the past 8 years (some would argue for the past 15), it's a no-brainer that the economy would slow down.
The reason it didn't LOOK like it was slowing down, is because: Cheap Energy allowed productivity to appear to be increasing. Cheap Credit (Greenspan's lowered interest rates across 2002-2005) reduced upward pressure on wages, while still allowing people to spend as if wages were going up; giving us a nice, but temporary illusion of prosperity during that period.
Obama's policies, in general, are going to be directly targeted to the middle class, intending to boost incomes. This certainly is not going to hurt the economy.
McCain/Bush policies, have been INDIRECTLY targeting incomes of the middle class. "Trickle-Down" is a nice sentiment, but making the super-wealthy more prosperous does not necessarily guarantee that any of that prosperity is going to happen for anyone else. The super wealthy can just as easily put that money into a numbered account in barbados, as invest in an American business hiring American workers and paying American taxes. The argument that giving them more tax breaks helps the middle class (and by extension, the broader economy) is specious at best. The past 8 (28) years have pretty much proven the illegitimacy of Trickle-Down economics, and deficit spending.
We'll have to see if the Democrats can be disciplined enough to make this work. They sure talk the talk.
This "revolutionary" "new" technology is based on rpc. . . er, I mean DNA. . . er, I mean OLE. . . er, I mean COM. . . er, I mean DCOM. . . er, I mean dotNET. . . um - hey, Marketing guys, we need a new name for the tech we borrowed from IBM back in the 1980's so our customers think that we're actually investing in R&D. . . whaddya got? What's hip and sexy this year? Azure? You sure? wasn't that like "old n busted" back in 2003? no? Consumers got short memories? okay - "Azure" it is!
The federal reserve and FDIC are the unsung saving grace of this crisis. Without the guarantees on deposits, main street would have long ago run the banks, resulting in economic devastation which would have made the depression look like a quiet, happy picnic.
Sounds like you think this is all going to be over soon. Son, we're just getting started here. How long before depositors start losing faith in that FDIC insurance? When the government starts defaulting, then you'll see the real panic start.
Brush up on your Mandarin. I reckon we've got about two more years before we get to that stage.
Everyone seems to believe the bullshit that this is going to last maybe 12 months. Take a look at the housing sales inventory backlog. That's the real indicator - and that's not going to clear until at least the end of 2010, and that's if things don't get worse (with unemployment) in the meantime. Poor credit means poor business outlook, means employment problems, means loss of government revenue. . . etc.
The only garbage that went in, was the Ayn Rand garbage Greenspan used to justify his "Lord of the Flies" economic policies that have led us all to economic ruin.
The "computer bug" is a convenient excuse for the fact that Greenspan's extended lowering of interest rates in 2003 was nothing more than a cheap mechanism to finance George Bush's fake war (and subsequent looting of the US treasury through war-profiteering and massive fraudulent defense contracts).
So now, they got their money, and now they're going to high-tail it out of Dodge and leave the poor taxpayers holding the bag.
Well - the joke's on the Grover Norquist tax revolt crowd, because even though they got their tax cuts - they're still screwed because all their wealth is going to evaporate now that they've crashed the stock and equity markets. The only ones who are going to have any wealth in this new economy, are George Bush's close friends - the ones who FINANCED 9/11. The ones who trained the terrorists. The ones who hate America. The ones who are sitting on all the oil - which they will now use to destroy the west.
And when that happens - remember, in the 1970's, during the Saudi oil embargo, and the Iran hostage crisis, we warned you this was going to happen. Y'all wouldn't listen. You wanted your guns and tax cuts.
This is why a certain amount of lying is constructive, to con people into believing the economy is working (ie. changing the way unemployment and inflation are measured, as they did in the 1980's and 1990's).
Then again, you can't piss on people and tell them it's raining. Too much lying, and then they start losing confidence in the messenger. . . that credibility damage will take an entire generation to repair. (fresh batch of young, naive marks. . . )
Yes, and his GENIUS was to con people into thinking he was a conservative. All it took was a few key phrases about God, Abortion, and Commies. Conservatives are so easy to con with simple ideas.
We've all known from day one that USB was being pushed by Intel, against rival IEEE-1394 (aka fire-wire, aka iLink, etc.).
We also knew that fire-wire would eventually go away the day Apple said they were switching to Intel CPUs.
(this has been signaled, as we've seen Apple release patch after patch that tended to introduce more fire-wire problems than they fixed; Apples priorities were evident. Who did not know we weren't witnessing a gradual phase-out? Probably the nicest and most gradual in the history of Apple.)
We're all aware that fire-wire is faster, we're all aware that fire-wire lets you do cool stuff that USB can't even dream about, and we all know that USB needs to be arbitrated by the host's CPU (which is why Intel supports it: USB performs better; overall when you have a faster CPU - so USB increases demand for Intel's flagship products - duh. No brainer. No wonder Intel wants people to use a keyboard/mouse interface for heavy data transfers).
From day one of the PC-age, crappy inferior technology has ALWAYS won-out over superior technology.
So. . . um, duh?
Whine all you want. Be happy that fire-wire was cool, and it was around for a long time.
You are forgetting that Americans can not get permanent residence or citizenship in India.
They can come here, and put downward stress on American wages and standards of living. We can't go there, and take advantage of a lower cost of living.
Scotty's repair estimates included: Requirements elicitation and valiation, Design, Documentation, Review, Test development, Development/Engineering, Test validation and review, User documentation, Deployment, Testing.
Well, add this to the post about high media cost, and high player cost. High monitor cost is a huge factor as well.
I bought a $4000 Toshiba 56" rear-projection TV in 2000. It's capable of 1080i, through ColorStream. The problem is, there are NO players or any other sources that output 1080i directly to ColorStream without a very expensive adapter.
As long as this behemoth still gives me a decent 720p picture - I sure as hell am not going to pay to replace it.
I got an upconverting player, and DVD at 720 is just fine for my philistine eyes.
$30 for detail I can't readily distinguish?
I mean - I think movies recently went through a huge evolution in the past 15 years, with regard to stressing on visual impact. Big budget special effects, CGI, etc. (from the revolution that was Terminator II, on through Matrix, then LOTR as major milestones. . . ) - some tentative next-steps have been taken, and once again, studios are even playing with 3D (as they have done since the 1950's!). At the end of the day, plot, dialog, and character development is really what makes a great movie. Presentation format hasn't got jack squat to do with any of that. The problem is that ALL of this has been done before, nothing is new. Even the "groundbreaking" work that was supposedly Pulp Fiction wasn't really all that original.
Studios are scrambling to inject some much needed creativity into their money-making formulas. Technology is just a band-aid, for making movies compelling. Talent is important - but the real talent gets watered-down as soon as the stench of the mass-market touches it. The very formula that makes them money, is destroying what makes these movies compelling.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, lets get over this party-line bullshit now, because the LAST thing this nation needs after the last 8 years, is a close examination of mistakes-made, and how to avoid them in the future.
The real question, then, I suppose, is how the fuck exactly does an AIDS patient survive this procedure? Their immune system is already compromised, and they're infected with this deadly retrovirus. Sounds riskier than normal.
There were protests.
There were also large-scale violations of rights; "free-speech zones" as well as severe police brutality. To add insult to injury, our rightwing media kowtowed to the bush regime, abusing the free speech rights of others while opportunistically using their own; not to mention their government-granted monopolies of the public airwave resources. The media gave almost no coverage of these protests - and purposely distorted the scale and content of them. As the rightwing newsmedia has done, in the US, since before 1968.
Yes, 60-million bad-apples voted Bush into office in 2004, after seeing a clear demonstration of his fascistic policies. But there are 240 million OTHER Americans. Some of them voted in 2004, a lot of them sat on their asses. But a lot of those actually got off their asses in 2008. As ashamed of my ignorant, fearful countrymen I was in 2004, I'm actually proud and encouraged in 2008.
When Germany fell, though there were "terrorists" until the 1950s, remants of Nazis that refused to give up, they eventually were either captured, died out or simply gave up and accepted things the way they had become.
. . . or they moved to the US, took over the economy and the Republican party, and kept on going.
For a Libertarian, it is morally repulsive to be in any way involved in the SOCIALIST institution of Pro Sports.
Yes.
Pro Sports is a SOCIALIST institution. Sports franchises are granted local monopolies by the state, and their stadiums are publicly funded, and the land acquired often through eminent domain type legal shenanigans. Never mind the PUBLIC expense of police traffic and crowd control provided for games.
When teams start building their own damn stadiums, providing their own services, and begin competing on a level playing field with new startup teams; anyone who wants to put together a team can compete! THEN I'll retract this claim. Until then: Watch NFL. . . LOVE Communism.
None of this acknowledges the fact that's staring everyone in the face, yet we are all ignoring.
US PRESENCE IN IRAQ BECOMES ILLEGAL AT THE END OF 2008.
The UN resolution that authorizes us to even BE there expires at the end of this year.
Attempts to get an agreement from the Iraqi government to give us permission to be there, have all failed.
Yep.
What major news outlet is even acknowledging this fact?
NONE.
Not a single one.
Fact is - until we get an agreement, or until the UN votes to extend the resolution (and neither look likely to happen) - any talk about staying in Iraq, or leaving Iraq, is pretty much masturbation at this point.
A lesson for Americans?
Do you think the Russians learned a lesson in Afghanistan, er, Chechnya, er, Georgia,. . . (etc.)
America didn't learn any lessons from Korea, or VietNam - they're sure not going to learn from Iraq.
If you take genocidal intentions into a war, but fight it in a modern, "civilized" fashion, you're going to lose. End of story.
You can't change people's minds short of killing them. Winning "hearts and minds" . . . does that EVER work? Vlad the Impaler's about the most recent success story in history.
The only way we could possibly have succeeded in Iraq is if we had undone the meddling done after WWII, and partitioned the freaking country, and bit the bullet on handing the Shia portion over to Iran (giving a portion of their territory to Kurdistan), and the Sunni portion over to KSA.
Then we'd let them fight it out over the next 100 years. We could trade them guns for oil. The US makes the best weapons, and we need their oil.
Then, when all the oil runs out - they'll suddenly find that they had nothing to fight over anymore.
Put yourself in their position, and imagine if Iraqi planes were bombing your town, Iraqi tanks were driving through your streets and Iraqi soldiers were shooting at you and your family. Would you fight back?
I would be posting bomb-making plans to "bomb-a-day.com"
Damn effing right I would be fighting back. There would be no atrocity or tactic too heinous in defense of my home.
Much of the economy is actually very simple, if you remember a couple of basic principles:
Supply and Demand is a pretty decent model, most of the time.
2/3 of the Economy is driven by consumer spending.
Energy is a basic input.
Given that incomes for MOST Americans have been flat, or in decline, in real terms for the past 8 years (some would argue for the past 15), it's a no-brainer that the economy would slow down.
The reason it didn't LOOK like it was slowing down, is because:
Cheap Energy allowed productivity to appear to be increasing.
Cheap Credit (Greenspan's lowered interest rates across 2002-2005) reduced upward pressure on wages, while still allowing people to spend as if wages were going up; giving us a nice, but temporary illusion of prosperity during that period.
Obama's policies, in general, are going to be directly targeted to the middle class, intending to boost incomes. This certainly is not going to hurt the economy.
McCain/Bush policies, have been INDIRECTLY targeting incomes of the middle class. "Trickle-Down" is a nice sentiment, but making the super-wealthy more prosperous does not necessarily guarantee that any of that prosperity is going to happen for anyone else. The super wealthy can just as easily put that money into a numbered account in barbados, as invest in an American business hiring American workers and paying American taxes. The argument that giving them more tax breaks helps the middle class (and by extension, the broader economy) is specious at best. The past 8 (28) years have pretty much proven the illegitimacy of Trickle-Down economics, and deficit spending.
We'll have to see if the Democrats can be disciplined enough to make this work. They sure talk the talk.
This "revolutionary" "new" technology is based on rpc. . . er, I mean DNA. . . er, I mean OLE. . . er, I mean COM. . . er, I mean DCOM. . . er, I mean dotNET. . . um - hey, Marketing guys, we need a new name for the tech we borrowed from IBM back in the 1980's so our customers think that we're actually investing in R&D. . . whaddya got? What's hip and sexy this year? Azure? You sure? wasn't that like "old n busted" back in 2003? no? Consumers got short memories? okay - "Azure" it is!
It's not even as SIMPLE as coming up with a completely trustworthy machine.
Next, you'd have to trust ALL of the people who come into contact with or operate the machines.
(congratulations: you just lost the game!)
The federal reserve and FDIC are the unsung saving grace of this crisis. Without the guarantees on deposits, main street would have long ago run the banks, resulting in economic devastation which would have made the depression look like a quiet, happy picnic.
Sounds like you think this is all going to be over soon. Son, we're just getting started here. How long before depositors start losing faith in that FDIC insurance? When the government starts defaulting, then you'll see the real panic start.
Brush up on your Mandarin. I reckon we've got about two more years before we get to that stage.
Everyone seems to believe the bullshit that this is going to last maybe 12 months. Take a look at the housing sales inventory backlog. That's the real indicator - and that's not going to clear until at least the end of 2010, and that's if things don't get worse (with unemployment) in the meantime. Poor credit means poor business outlook, means employment problems, means loss of government revenue. . . etc.
The only garbage that went in, was the Ayn Rand garbage Greenspan used to justify his "Lord of the Flies" economic policies that have led us all to economic ruin.
The "computer bug" is a convenient excuse for the fact that Greenspan's extended lowering of interest rates in 2003 was nothing more than a cheap mechanism to finance George Bush's fake war (and subsequent looting of the US treasury through war-profiteering and massive fraudulent defense contracts).
So now, they got their money, and now they're going to high-tail it out of Dodge and leave the poor taxpayers holding the bag.
Well - the joke's on the Grover Norquist tax revolt crowd, because even though they got their tax cuts - they're still screwed because all their wealth is going to evaporate now that they've crashed the stock and equity markets. The only ones who are going to have any wealth in this new economy, are George Bush's close friends - the ones who FINANCED 9/11. The ones who trained the terrorists. The ones who hate America. The ones who are sitting on all the oil - which they will now use to destroy the west.
And when that happens - remember, in the 1970's, during the Saudi oil embargo, and the Iran hostage crisis, we warned you this was going to happen. Y'all wouldn't listen. You wanted your guns and tax cuts.
No gears? How is THAT fun to drive?
WHAT?!
You mean economics is NOT as simple as just letting bad companies fail, so the good ones can thrive?
Say it ain't so!
(now - let's see someone apply this logic to labor policy. . . )
This is why a certain amount of lying is constructive, to con people into believing the economy is working (ie. changing the way unemployment and inflation are measured, as they did in the 1980's and 1990's).
Then again, you can't piss on people and tell them it's raining. Too much lying, and then they start losing confidence in the messenger. . . that credibility damage will take an entire generation to repair. (fresh batch of young, naive marks. . . )
Yes, and his GENIUS was to con people into thinking he was a conservative. All it took was a few key phrases about God, Abortion, and Commies. Conservatives are so easy to con with simple ideas.
I'm REALLY glad you didn't use a sex analogy.
Hey, you can bet I'm still pissed about the iMac, with their switch from ADB to USB, making my WACOM tablet obsolete.
(in fact, the fucker's still working JUST FINE on my beige G3 - wish I could connect this $600 monstrosity to my Pro.)
We've all known from day one that USB was being pushed by Intel, against rival IEEE-1394 (aka fire-wire, aka iLink, etc.).
We also knew that fire-wire would eventually go away the day Apple said they were switching to Intel CPUs.
(this has been signaled, as we've seen Apple release patch after patch that tended to introduce more fire-wire problems than they fixed; Apples priorities were evident. Who did not know we weren't witnessing a gradual phase-out? Probably the nicest and most gradual in the history of Apple.)
We're all aware that fire-wire is faster, we're all aware that fire-wire lets you do cool stuff that USB can't even dream about, and we all know that USB needs to be arbitrated by the host's CPU (which is why Intel supports it: USB performs better; overall when you have a faster CPU - so USB increases demand for Intel's flagship products - duh. No brainer. No wonder Intel wants people to use a keyboard/mouse interface for heavy data transfers).
From day one of the PC-age, crappy inferior technology has ALWAYS won-out over superior technology.
So. . . um, duh?
Whine all you want. Be happy that fire-wire was cool, and it was around for a long time.
You are forgetting that Americans can not get permanent residence or citizenship in India.
They can come here, and put downward stress on American wages and standards of living. We can't go there, and take advantage of a lower cost of living.
Can anyone say: uneven playing field?
Scotty's repair estimates included:
Requirements elicitation and valiation,
Design,
Documentation,
Review,
Test development,
Development/Engineering,
Test validation and review,
User documentation,
Deployment,
Testing.
Kirk was always happy to cut corners.
I would rather drop $1000 on gas to drive to work. But that's just me.
Well, add this to the post about high media cost, and high player cost. High monitor cost is a huge factor as well.
I bought a $4000 Toshiba 56" rear-projection TV in 2000. It's capable of 1080i, through ColorStream. The problem is, there are NO players or any other sources that output 1080i directly to ColorStream without a very expensive adapter.
As long as this behemoth still gives me a decent 720p picture - I sure as hell am not going to pay to replace it.
I got an upconverting player, and DVD at 720 is just fine for my philistine eyes.
$30 for detail I can't readily distinguish?
I mean - I think movies recently went through a huge evolution in the past 15 years, with regard to stressing on visual impact. Big budget special effects, CGI, etc. (from the revolution that was Terminator II, on through Matrix, then LOTR as major milestones. . . ) - some tentative next-steps have been taken, and once again, studios are even playing with 3D (as they have done since the 1950's!). At the end of the day, plot, dialog, and character development is really what makes a great movie. Presentation format hasn't got jack squat to do with any of that. The problem is that ALL of this has been done before, nothing is new. Even the "groundbreaking" work that was supposedly Pulp Fiction wasn't really all that original.
Studios are scrambling to inject some much needed creativity into their money-making formulas. Technology is just a band-aid, for making movies compelling. Talent is important - but the real talent gets watered-down as soon as the stench of the mass-market touches it. The very formula that makes them money, is destroying what makes these movies compelling.