Go take a look at the movie "Minority Report" (BTW, I haven't personally seen the movie...
Always good to hear about new folks entering into the electorate commenting on things they don't know anything about. Don't forget to vote in the primaries!
Obviously, speed limits, domestic abuse laws, and safety codes are all wrong.
None of those require a police state.
We should let people sort out the speed limit among themselves, keep familiy business within families, and just trust in capitalism's free hand to ferret out unsafe building practices...
Hello happy socialist, you might try reading that line again. It did not say "if you need a policeman" or "if you need the police". It was referring to a "police state", which is just a wee bit different.
I think the better application of your quote would be "If you need a police state to enforce your laws, then YOU are wrong."
Oh now, lines like that should require a preface of, "In Soviet Russia...".
A more apropos phrasing...
"Any law that requires the good will of law enforcement to be enacted fairly is by it's very nature bad law. The only guarantee is that it will be abused eventually."
why doesn't the Enterprise's main computer automagically raise shields
For the same reason the original crew had overly clever walkie talkies at a timeframe where you'd expect this kind of thing to be embeddable under the skin. So they could lose them!
It's a plot device. If the Enterprise actually did all the basic defense of itself that it should, then you don't get the drama of the captain calling through the smoke to have shields raised.
It's along the same lines as why you'll never see a movie "hacker" pounding away at VI instead of some dead sexy heavy graphics interface. It's eye candy for the "oooo, shiny things" crowd.
Timeline debates are too much fun. You can take them into hundreds of different directions, while all participants can be both right and wrong. With that little disclaimer outta the way...
If the timeline had been altered even the slightest bit in First Contact, it would change the future in unpredictable ways.
This is of course assuming that a timeline "can" be altered. Call it fate, predestination, or what have you. It may be that the Borg had to show up in the past in order to get Cochran's ship into place for the Vulcans to see.
You're assuming that all those things had happened without the Borg coming back in time, and thus their presence would somehow change what really happened.
Even little things have serious ramifications down the line, and it's impossible to know what can and cannot be safely altered.
The ramifications may very well be that there was a Star Fleet at all. The contact with Enterprise crew alone may very well have set into motion the concept of a Star Fleet more so than contact with the Vulcans. Heck, Cochran even had some of his best lines that would be recorded later provided to him by folks that would read it a couple hundred years later in their youth.
Round and round the timeline goes, with no amount of futzing that actually harms it.
Wellll, that's one way to look at it. If the timeline is changeable, then you are of course dead right. I suggest we go back in time, alter something, and see what happens. Seems like a reasonable test.
Ricochet provides seamless coverage across an entire city that works even when a user is traveling 70 miles per hour on a highway
Did anyone else get an image of BillMurray in "Where the Buffalo Roam" driving down the highway at 70 MPH while banging away at a typewriter? Oh yeah, and folks think driving with cel phones are bad!
All I can say to this is that I've had a VERY different experience with Linux installers.
My very first Linux install was with a purchased copy of RedHat 6.0. Even then I was impressed at how well it worked. Literally 30 minutes from CD in the drive to a working desktop getting on the net.
Later, I ran a Suse 8.0 install. This one had some problems with the drive which required a low level format from an OEM utility. After that, I was again extremely impressed with both the presentation and functionality of the installer.
I can honestly say the same for Mandrake as well.
I have other issues with all of these that keep me using FreeBSD, which doesn't have the same super-slick installer, but provides for many other benefits. Even still, I managed to get it installed and working properly on the first try without anywhere near the kinds of problems you had.
I suppose the appropriate response here would be to illustrate the many frustrating hours fighting various Windows installs that didn't play nice due to a variety of reasons. How many folks here intuitively knew about the F6 trick to get SCSI loaded properly for NT? How about changing out a motherboard from underneath an already installed system. Oh yeah, Windows just loves that!
Why just pick on Windows though? I've run into all kinds of interesting glitchies with Mac OS 9 and X in the past. Various formating gotchas, or extension conflict finding sucking away the hours.
Go have yourself a visit on any newsgroup or mailing list for OS tech support. All of them have horror stories or odd gotchas that impact every darn thing out there. Coming up with one for Linux is hardly that noteworthy, escpecially when the vast majority of folks are able to get their installs to work properly.
Likewise, if you're a normal logged-in user under an NT environment, you can't modify the Registry either.
That's all very true, except when presented to the real world of Windows software.
Although what I'm about to say is slowly changing, it's still true today. Trying to run Windows as a non-admin user is extremely difficult to setup. Many applications are designed with the notion that it can write to anywhere on the drive or registry. For each of these an admin must take into account what holes to punch through the security model so apps can actually run.
On a Unix based machine even the simplest of applications understands that it lives in a sort of sandbox. Running the system as a normal user is trivial to set up and actually have it run all the available software.
This concept really hit home with me when I attempted to setup a friend's PC so that he could use his Win2k system as just a normal user. There were so many exceptions due to the software that he just runs as admin. Even if I could manage to work through punching the security holes, he sure couldn't.
This is where the notion of patching security on top of an insecure system really starts to expose the flaw in the logic. Probably also why Mundie is now threatening to break older apps through patches. So much for building a castle in a swamp.
With the end of the world right around the corner the population of the planet would be clammering to get to their site. The server obviously auto ejected itself into orbit after what it perceived to be massive panic on the web.
If only more nitwit sites had features like this... *sigh*
You ever happen to get a copy of the ILOVEYOU virus? Did you happen to actually take a look at the plain text code if you did?
Being someone who has to clean up after these things, and do to it's wide exposure I did look into it pretty closely. Reformatted the indenting so it was readable and all that.
For those that took the time to do these things I would guess they had a similar reaction. Thanks to the "features" that MS provided in WSH (Windows Scripting Host) and Outlook, a virus like this was a trivial thing to create. Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of Visual Basic code could have written it. All the hard tools were already provided for by Microsoft!
They aren't standard operating procedure.
It seems that it is at Microsoft. We've all seen this too many times to believe otherwise.
People make mistakes, and we need to face the facts that no software - I repeat - *no* software can be proven to be bug free.
No, but it can be proven to be criminally negligient. We ARE talking about a one click to a reformatted hard drive. This isn't a minor thing. The fact that this is possible at all would hold any other vendor to the fire.
Could you imagine the front page NY Times ad that MS would run if we were instead talking about RedHat?
No, it's not hard. It's not exactly intuitive either.
A decision was made to use sysinstall as both the installer, and post installation utility. In short, it's not really adequate for either.
It's not whether it's text based or GUI. The real problem is that it doesn't follow a linear path to complete the installation. Even after a number of installations it's not entirely obvious what step happens in which order. For a first timer at it, it is quite confusing.
What should happen is to have a step by step process that walks a user through the process without allowing for deviations. Aside from the GUI, this is what makes the Linux installers so much easier for someone who hasn't seen them before.
The one advantage to a GUI installer is to provide a little more screen space to describe exactly what is going on. Full descriptions of packages that can be installed, things like that.
Lastly, a GUI would provide a bit more professionalism to what the user perceives. Text based installers are just too closely associated with the 80's. It's harmful to FreeBSD's image essentially.
The current SAMBA ACL's are not compatible with FreeBSD 4.x, You need Linux or FreeBSD Current.
Never had a problem configuring lists under STABLE. Exactly what functionality can't you get?
IP NAT+firewall tend to be very OS specific pf only available for OpenBSD at the moment (AFAIK) and ip tables are only available for Linux
Yeah, that's kinda like saying IPFW isn't available for Linux. It's a different methodology to a similar end.
FreeBSD has it's own version of Sendmail that is carefully tuned and fully integrated into the OS. If you are going to use sendmail instead of postfix qmail or exim this my be important.
I recently configured Postfix on a FreeBSD box. Took about 10 minutes following the compile to disable Sendmail entirely. There are dozens of tutorials that cover replacing Sendmail with either Postfix or QMail. In short, this is by no means a deciding factor as to which OS to use.
Gnome is much easier to upgrade with Debian. Many people resort to uninstall all of Gnome and all of it's libraries in order to do an upgrade of Gnome on FreeBSD.
That's just plain silly. Gnome is installed as a "meta" port. In other words, it calls out to the variety of other ports that make up the over all system. One can just as easily upgrade only those libraries that need it, while leaving the rest intact. The very same thing is true of KDE.
but if you need MACL you have to use Linux
Sorry, not familiar with the term MACL. What exactly are you referring to here?
I would start to tax coorporations and individuals in similar manors
A tax, any tax, removes currency from the economy and places it in the government, where some of it may come back into general use again. The state of the economy is not how rich the government is, but how rich the populace is.
so that the little guy, the driving force behind the economy, has more money to spend to keep the economy going.
The "little guy" does very little one way or the other in the economy, or in taxation now. Folks who would fit into this category aren't likely to invest cash into new businesses or technology. They definitely aren't going to actually hire someone.
Right now coorporate tax law dictates that coorporations do not pay income tax, they pay a profit tax, in other words, no increase in net worth, no taxes.
Are you under the impression that corporations don't pay taxes by the truckload?
Even a small coorporate income tax would provide enough government revenue to reduce the tax burden on the american consumer, and stimulate the economy.
Lost you on this point... You want to raise taxes on the folks that produce the goods that the consumer's are going to buy from? Umm, who do you think actually pays for that? The money that companies pay in taxes really does come from somewhere. You and me.
This would also make it much more difficult for companies to dodge their financial obligations to the government (see what Marvel is doing to Stan).
A tax increase would have given Stan a better contract? You really lost me on that point. Care to work the logic that brought you to that conclusion please?
...a mandate for more Supply Side Economics (tax cuts) when our real problem is a demand-strapped economy.
Okay, I'm confused.
I know SSE is a set of rules that go into place which include aspects to it like tax cuts.
So what in the heck is a "demand-strapped" economy? What exactly are you proposing to deal with it? Raise taxes? Increase government spending? How does the left deal with stimulating a soft economy? I haven't seen a Democrat do so since Kennedy (who dropped taxes to do so BTW), so I'm honestly curious as to the counter position on this.
Anyone else think of the National Missile Defence project when they hear of the Maginot line?
I'm thinking of marking myself off topic for replying to this. Oh well, moderate away.
Your comparison falls short on one major point. The Maginot line was literally the only defense that France put up to the invading Germans. One they walked around it, it was not much more than a contest between artillery and small arms. We all know how that ended.
In contrast, nobody is suggesting that missile defense is the only line of defense we maintain. It's meant to be a means to close a huge opening in the variety of defenses we do have in place.
Yes, even with missile defense there remain other means to move a nuke. Those means aren't totally unstoppable, as missiles are today though. It forces any potential enemy to work a LOT harder to get through to us. It gives our intelligence agencies at least a chance to stop delivery.
Far as I'm concerned, missile defense is worth exactly the cost of having one major city destroyed, and all the people in it killed. Haven't heard many opponents quote that cost into an argument.
So what happens? The Germans flank the French, ignore the Maginot line, smash both the French and the British armies, and have reached the English channel in 8 days.
It really is worth mentioning why it was so easy to flank the French lines.
All of the big French artillery guns were literally buried into position facing in the direction that the Germans were supposed to come. When the Germans decided that walking into a killing field would be silly, the French couldn't turn their guns!
This thread reminds me of a few years back when some really big commemarative event was happening in Normandy. Presidents and Prime Ministers attending kinda big, along with soldiers who had fought on that beach. A number of Germans were also looking to attend, which the French opposed. One commentator noted...
make sure I know it's only your opinion (unless you have iron clad, set in stone hard proof to back up your statements) and don't lie to me just to further your point.
So, by this measure could you also include media biases?
For example, on the left there were a number of heavily inflated reports on Aids cases. They were told as hard facts by respected media groups, though they were grossly false. There have been a number of books out lately discussing these types of number distortions by media outlets, with a more than apparent effort to further a point or cause.
On the right I've read similar glitches in stats and facts, though usually more openly within the context of editorial. Still, even in editorial form, the author generally presents information as fact, regardless of whether it is.
I don't mean to go on some kind of Aids reporting tangent here. I only mention it as one of MANY issues that are politicized. Inflating numbers, discarding critical facts, and interjecting opinion as fact are an extremely common means to an end in both written and oral arguments. The entire human history of political argument is filled with these tactics.
Are these hate speech as well?
A free society must, by it's very nature, include hate "speech" of all manner. This, as ugly as it is, is the very foundation of what freedom of speech is about. To take the good with the bad, but never to restrict. Obvious exceptions granted for slander and liable of course.
It's only when those who take that "speech" and turn it into "action" where laws have a rightful place in dealing with those individuals and groups. If a Jew is assaulted, prosecute the assailant for ASSAULT for crying out loud. Why is this so darn complicated?
The US government can have an official spokesgoon stand up and claim "they had no prior knowledge of al queda threats against US buildings or using airplanes as weapons and etc". Well, that's a total lie, literally dozens of "official" cops and bureaucrats knew full well about it, fbi agents reporting it got told to shut up, etc.
An otherwise excellent post, but I have to interject on this point. Nobody was saying that the US intelligence wasn't aware of Al Queda. They were well known, and under close investigation during the latter part of the Clinton administration. This was a top priority pass along to the Bush administration as Miss Rice pointed out very publicly following Sep 11th.
The only claim of ignorance on our part was the where and how. We did know something was in the works, that it was big, and it was coming soon. In other words, pieces of the puzzle were known, while others weren't until they struck.
To the best of my knowledge, no official report from any agency contradicts what I'm stating here. If you truly believe we knew all the details and just decided to ignore them, that's purely in the speculation mode.
There are a number of voices out there that are concerned with how evidence was handled, examined, and acted upon. Unfortunately it often takes a massive event to occur before those voices gain volume enough to be heard.
I would like to know exactly who these "dozens of cops and bureaucrats" who knew exactly what was going to happen were though. Without that, you statements concerning how things were handled are irresponsible.
As I stated in my post, you'd have to go back over 100 years to get a glimpse of the original concept of a corporation. We do not disagree on this point. The reasoning for my series of questions was to encourage the person I was addressing to look these kinds of things up for him/herself.
they were slapped hard by the feds
My understanding of this time frame was that corporate charters were usually handed out by local and state governments. Rarely did the federal government get involved. At least at that time.
As the article you pointed out states, the nature of what a corporation is was decidedly changed through decisions at the Supreme Court.
I do want to make one point very clear. I am not arguing in favor of either 17th or 20th century corporations. There's simply no way within the confines of a Slashdot post to discuss the matter fully enough to provide a coherent argument for either.
What I take exception to are the blind accusations by those who clearly do not have a basic grounding in what a "corporation" means. It's also not helpful to the discussion, either pro or con, to leave out basic economic facts. Ignoring profits while demanding lifetime employment for workers is nothing more than an empty emotional plea.
Like in any problem solving equation we must first establish the basic facts. From there we can discuss the pros and cons of one form or another.
Thanks for providing the link. It's at least a little bit of background information to this subject.
It's a cute poster title. We have similar kinds of governmental posters down in the US as well.
In reality, these are regulations defining the relationship between employer and employee. If an employer doesn't pay you for those holidays, then he/she would be in violation of employment regulations, not your "rights".
A better example of rights would be your "right" to a lawyer. Essentially, the state cannot prosecute you without providing for, or allowing you to procure, a proper defense.
Being that a "right" is a pretty powerful thing when defining the relationship between the state and an individual, the term gets over used. It's a similar issue with a word like "war", where it's used for effect rather than accuracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Go take a look at the movie "Minority Report" (BTW, I haven't personally seen the movie...
Always good to hear about new folks entering into the electorate commenting on things they don't know anything about. Don't forget to vote in the primaries!
Obviously, speed limits, domestic abuse laws, and safety codes are all wrong.
None of those require a police state.
We should let people sort out the speed limit among themselves, keep familiy business within families, and just trust in capitalism's free hand to ferret out unsafe building practices...
Hello happy socialist, you might try reading that line again. It did not say "if you need a policeman" or "if you need the police". It was referring to a "police state", which is just a wee bit different.
I think the better application of your quote would be "If you need a police state to enforce your laws, then YOU are wrong."
Oh now, lines like that should require a preface of, "In Soviet Russia...".
A more apropos phrasing...
"Any law that requires the good will of law enforcement to be enacted fairly is by it's very nature bad law. The only guarantee is that it will be abused eventually."
why doesn't the Enterprise's main computer automagically raise shields
For the same reason the original crew had overly clever walkie talkies at a timeframe where you'd expect this kind of thing to be embeddable under the skin. So they could lose them!
It's a plot device. If the Enterprise actually did all the basic defense of itself that it should, then you don't get the drama of the captain calling through the smoke to have shields raised.
It's along the same lines as why you'll never see a movie "hacker" pounding away at VI instead of some dead sexy heavy graphics interface. It's eye candy for the "oooo, shiny things" crowd.
Timeline debates are too much fun. You can take them into hundreds of different directions, while all participants can be both right and wrong. With that little disclaimer outta the way...
If the timeline had been altered even the slightest bit in First Contact, it would change the future in unpredictable ways.
This is of course assuming that a timeline "can" be altered. Call it fate, predestination, or what have you. It may be that the Borg had to show up in the past in order to get Cochran's ship into place for the Vulcans to see.
You're assuming that all those things had happened without the Borg coming back in time, and thus their presence would somehow change what really happened.
Even little things have serious ramifications down the line, and it's impossible to know what can and cannot be safely altered.
The ramifications may very well be that there was a Star Fleet at all. The contact with Enterprise crew alone may very well have set into motion the concept of a Star Fleet more so than contact with the Vulcans. Heck, Cochran even had some of his best lines that would be recorded later provided to him by folks that would read it a couple hundred years later in their youth.
Round and round the timeline goes, with no amount of futzing that actually harms it.
Wellll, that's one way to look at it. If the timeline is changeable, then you are of course dead right. I suggest we go back in time, alter something, and see what happens. Seems like a reasonable test.
$22MB and $1.4GB? What do those stand for - megabucks and gigabucks? :-)
Oh, this is just horrible. Malda goes and gets married, and already the slashes are dropping outta slashdot. There are bad omens in these signs.
This is probably way off topic, but...
Ricochet provides seamless coverage across an entire city that works even when a user is traveling 70 miles per hour on a highway
Did anyone else get an image of Bill Murray in "Where the Buffalo Roam" driving down the highway at 70 MPH while banging away at a typewriter? Oh yeah, and folks think driving with cel phones are bad!
All I can say to this is that I've had a VERY different experience with Linux installers.
My very first Linux install was with a purchased copy of RedHat 6.0. Even then I was impressed at how well it worked. Literally 30 minutes from CD in the drive to a working desktop getting on the net.
Later, I ran a Suse 8.0 install. This one had some problems with the drive which required a low level format from an OEM utility. After that, I was again extremely impressed with both the presentation and functionality of the installer.
I can honestly say the same for Mandrake as well.
I have other issues with all of these that keep me using FreeBSD, which doesn't have the same super-slick installer, but provides for many other benefits. Even still, I managed to get it installed and working properly on the first try without anywhere near the kinds of problems you had.
I suppose the appropriate response here would be to illustrate the many frustrating hours fighting various Windows installs that didn't play nice due to a variety of reasons. How many folks here intuitively knew about the F6 trick to get SCSI loaded properly for NT? How about changing out a motherboard from underneath an already installed system. Oh yeah, Windows just loves that!
Why just pick on Windows though? I've run into all kinds of interesting glitchies with Mac OS 9 and X in the past. Various formating gotchas, or extension conflict finding sucking away the hours.
Go have yourself a visit on any newsgroup or mailing list for OS tech support. All of them have horror stories or odd gotchas that impact every darn thing out there. Coming up with one for Linux is hardly that noteworthy, escpecially when the vast majority of folks are able to get their installs to work properly.
Likewise, if you're a normal logged-in user under an NT environment, you can't modify the Registry either.
That's all very true, except when presented to the real world of Windows software.
Although what I'm about to say is slowly changing, it's still true today. Trying to run Windows as a non-admin user is extremely difficult to setup. Many applications are designed with the notion that it can write to anywhere on the drive or registry. For each of these an admin must take into account what holes to punch through the security model so apps can actually run.
On a Unix based machine even the simplest of applications understands that it lives in a sort of sandbox. Running the system as a normal user is trivial to set up and actually have it run all the available software.
This concept really hit home with me when I attempted to setup a friend's PC so that he could use his Win2k system as just a normal user. There were so many exceptions due to the software that he just runs as admin. Even if I could manage to work through punching the security holes, he sure couldn't.
This is where the notion of patching security on top of an insecure system really starts to expose the flaw in the logic. Probably also why Mundie is now threatening to break older apps through patches. So much for building a castle in a swamp.
Apparently MS found something worth incorporating from FreeBSD though.
Remember the "computer-phobia" of the Eighties? They were going to take away our jobs? Now my 75 year-old in-laws have a PC with XP and a Cable modem.
Sounds like the phobia was justified.
Obviously their systems work!
With the end of the world right around the corner the population of the planet would be clammering to get to their site. The server obviously auto ejected itself into orbit after what it perceived to be massive panic on the web.
If only more nitwit sites had features like this... *sigh*
That's about a month/month-and-a-half. Don't you think they deserve a good solid two months before posting the exploit?
So how long would you give them for an already publicly available exploit?
You know, bugs aren't created on purpose.
You ever happen to get a copy of the ILOVEYOU virus? Did you happen to actually take a look at the plain text code if you did?
Being someone who has to clean up after these things, and do to it's wide exposure I did look into it pretty closely. Reformatted the indenting so it was readable and all that.
For those that took the time to do these things I would guess they had a similar reaction. Thanks to the "features" that MS provided in WSH (Windows Scripting Host) and Outlook, a virus like this was a trivial thing to create. Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of Visual Basic code could have written it. All the hard tools were already provided for by Microsoft!
They aren't standard operating procedure.
It seems that it is at Microsoft. We've all seen this too many times to believe otherwise.
People make mistakes, and we need to face the facts that no software - I repeat - *no* software can be proven to be bug free.
No, but it can be proven to be criminally negligient. We ARE talking about a one click to a reformatted hard drive. This isn't a minor thing. The fact that this is possible at all would hold any other vendor to the fire.
Could you imagine the front page NY Times ad that MS would run if we were instead talking about RedHat?
The history is here [freebsd.org], for further reading.
Thank you for this post. This clears up a LOT of confusion on my part as to why things were done the way they were.
Being that this thing was dated over 2 years ago, I don't suppose there's much point in holding our breath for libh's completion. *sigh*.
Like FreeBSD's text-based install is hard. NOT.
No, it's not hard. It's not exactly intuitive either.
A decision was made to use sysinstall as both the installer, and post installation utility. In short, it's not really adequate for either.
It's not whether it's text based or GUI. The real problem is that it doesn't follow a linear path to complete the installation. Even after a number of installations it's not entirely obvious what step happens in which order. For a first timer at it, it is quite confusing.
What should happen is to have a step by step process that walks a user through the process without allowing for deviations. Aside from the GUI, this is what makes the Linux installers so much easier for someone who hasn't seen them before.
The one advantage to a GUI installer is to provide a little more screen space to describe exactly what is going on. Full descriptions of packages that can be installed, things like that.
Lastly, a GUI would provide a bit more professionalism to what the user perceives. Text based installers are just too closely associated with the 80's. It's harmful to FreeBSD's image essentially.
The current SAMBA ACL's are not compatible with FreeBSD 4.x, You need Linux or FreeBSD Current.
Never had a problem configuring lists under STABLE. Exactly what functionality can't you get?
IP NAT+firewall tend to be very OS specific pf only available for OpenBSD at the moment (AFAIK) and ip tables are only available for Linux
Yeah, that's kinda like saying IPFW isn't available for Linux. It's a different methodology to a similar end.
FreeBSD has it's own version of Sendmail that is carefully tuned and fully integrated into the OS. If you are going to use sendmail instead of postfix qmail or exim this my be important.
I recently configured Postfix on a FreeBSD box. Took about 10 minutes following the compile to disable Sendmail entirely. There are dozens of tutorials that cover replacing Sendmail with either Postfix or QMail. In short, this is by no means a deciding factor as to which OS to use.
Gnome is much easier to upgrade with Debian. Many people resort to uninstall all of Gnome and all of it's libraries in order to do an upgrade of Gnome on FreeBSD.
That's just plain silly. Gnome is installed as a "meta" port. In other words, it calls out to the variety of other ports that make up the over all system. One can just as easily upgrade only those libraries that need it, while leaving the rest intact. The very same thing is true of KDE.
but if you need MACL you have to use Linux
Sorry, not familiar with the term MACL. What exactly are you referring to here?
I would start to tax coorporations and individuals in similar manors
A tax, any tax, removes currency from the economy and places it in the government, where some of it may come back into general use again. The state of the economy is not how rich the government is, but how rich the populace is.
so that the little guy, the driving force behind the economy, has more money to spend to keep the economy going.
The "little guy" does very little one way or the other in the economy, or in taxation now. Folks who would fit into this category aren't likely to invest cash into new businesses or technology. They definitely aren't going to actually hire someone.
Right now coorporate tax law dictates that coorporations do not pay income tax, they pay a profit tax, in other words, no increase in net worth, no taxes.
Are you under the impression that corporations don't pay taxes by the truckload?
Even a small coorporate income tax would provide enough government revenue to reduce the tax burden on the american consumer, and stimulate the economy.
Lost you on this point... You want to raise taxes on the folks that produce the goods that the consumer's are going to buy from? Umm, who do you think actually pays for that? The money that companies pay in taxes really does come from somewhere. You and me.
This would also make it much more difficult for companies to dodge their financial obligations to the government (see what Marvel is doing to Stan).
A tax increase would have given Stan a better contract? You really lost me on that point. Care to work the logic that brought you to that conclusion please?
...a mandate for more Supply Side Economics (tax cuts) when our real problem is a demand-strapped economy.
Okay, I'm confused.
I know SSE is a set of rules that go into place which include aspects to it like tax cuts.
So what in the heck is a "demand-strapped" economy? What exactly are you proposing to deal with it? Raise taxes? Increase government spending? How does the left deal with stimulating a soft economy? I haven't seen a Democrat do so since Kennedy (who dropped taxes to do so BTW), so I'm honestly curious as to the counter position on this.
Anyone else think of the National Missile Defence project when they hear of the Maginot line?
I'm thinking of marking myself off topic for replying to this. Oh well, moderate away.
Your comparison falls short on one major point. The Maginot line was literally the only defense that France put up to the invading Germans. One they walked around it, it was not much more than a contest between artillery and small arms. We all know how that ended.
In contrast, nobody is suggesting that missile defense is the only line of defense we maintain. It's meant to be a means to close a huge opening in the variety of defenses we do have in place.
Yes, even with missile defense there remain other means to move a nuke. Those means aren't totally unstoppable, as missiles are today though. It forces any potential enemy to work a LOT harder to get through to us. It gives our intelligence agencies at least a chance to stop delivery.
Far as I'm concerned, missile defense is worth exactly the cost of having one major city destroyed, and all the people in it killed. Haven't heard many opponents quote that cost into an argument.
So what happens? The Germans flank the French, ignore the Maginot line, smash both the French and the British armies, and have reached the English channel in 8 days.
It really is worth mentioning why it was so easy to flank the French lines.
All of the big French artillery guns were literally buried into position facing in the direction that the Germans were supposed to come. When the Germans decided that walking into a killing field would be silly, the French couldn't turn their guns!
This thread reminds me of a few years back when some really big commemarative event was happening in Normandy. Presidents and Prime Ministers attending kinda big, along with soldiers who had fought on that beach. A number of Germans were also looking to attend, which the French opposed. One commentator noted...
"Yeah right. Like they could keep them out!"
make sure I know it's only your opinion (unless you have iron clad, set in stone hard proof to back up your statements) and don't lie to me just to further your point.
So, by this measure could you also include media biases?
For example, on the left there were a number of heavily inflated reports on Aids cases. They were told as hard facts by respected media groups, though they were grossly false. There have been a number of books out lately discussing these types of number distortions by media outlets, with a more than apparent effort to further a point or cause.
On the right I've read similar glitches in stats and facts, though usually more openly within the context of editorial. Still, even in editorial form, the author generally presents information as fact, regardless of whether it is.
I don't mean to go on some kind of Aids reporting tangent here. I only mention it as one of MANY issues that are politicized. Inflating numbers, discarding critical facts, and interjecting opinion as fact are an extremely common means to an end in both written and oral arguments. The entire human history of political argument is filled with these tactics.
Are these hate speech as well?
A free society must, by it's very nature, include hate "speech" of all manner. This, as ugly as it is, is the very foundation of what freedom of speech is about. To take the good with the bad, but never to restrict. Obvious exceptions granted for slander and liable of course.
It's only when those who take that "speech" and turn it into "action" where laws have a rightful place in dealing with those individuals and groups. If a Jew is assaulted, prosecute the assailant for ASSAULT for crying out loud. Why is this so darn complicated?
The US government can have an official spokesgoon stand up and claim "they had no prior knowledge of al queda threats against US buildings or using airplanes as weapons and etc". Well, that's a total lie, literally dozens of "official" cops and bureaucrats knew full well about it, fbi agents reporting it got told to shut up, etc.
An otherwise excellent post, but I have to interject on this point. Nobody was saying that the US intelligence wasn't aware of Al Queda. They were well known, and under close investigation during the latter part of the Clinton administration. This was a top priority pass along to the Bush administration as Miss Rice pointed out very publicly following Sep 11th.
The only claim of ignorance on our part was the where and how. We did know something was in the works, that it was big, and it was coming soon. In other words, pieces of the puzzle were known, while others weren't until they struck.
To the best of my knowledge, no official report from any agency contradicts what I'm stating here. If you truly believe we knew all the details and just decided to ignore them, that's purely in the speculation mode.
There are a number of voices out there that are concerned with how evidence was handled, examined, and acted upon. Unfortunately it often takes a massive event to occur before those voices gain volume enough to be heard.
I would like to know exactly who these "dozens of cops and bureaucrats" who knew exactly what was going to happen were though. Without that, you statements concerning how things were handled are irresponsible.
How about the United States, circa 1776?
As I stated in my post, you'd have to go back over 100 years to get a glimpse of the original concept of a corporation. We do not disagree on this point. The reasoning for my series of questions was to encourage the person I was addressing to look these kinds of things up for him/herself.
they were slapped hard by the feds
My understanding of this time frame was that corporate charters were usually handed out by local and state governments. Rarely did the federal government get involved. At least at that time.
As the article you pointed out states, the nature of what a corporation is was decidedly changed through decisions at the Supreme Court.
I do want to make one point very clear. I am not arguing in favor of either 17th or 20th century corporations. There's simply no way within the confines of a Slashdot post to discuss the matter fully enough to provide a coherent argument for either.
What I take exception to are the blind accusations by those who clearly do not have a basic grounding in what a "corporation" means. It's also not helpful to the discussion, either pro or con, to leave out basic economic facts. Ignoring profits while demanding lifetime employment for workers is nothing more than an empty emotional plea.
Like in any problem solving equation we must first establish the basic facts. From there we can discuss the pros and cons of one form or another.
Thanks for providing the link. It's at least a little bit of background information to this subject.
"Your rights as an employee in Ontario"
It's a cute poster title. We have similar kinds of governmental posters down in the US as well.
In reality, these are regulations defining the relationship between employer and employee. If an employer doesn't pay you for those holidays, then he/she would be in violation of employment regulations, not your "rights".
A better example of rights would be your "right" to a lawyer. Essentially, the state cannot prosecute you without providing for, or allowing you to procure, a proper defense.
Being that a "right" is a pretty powerful thing when defining the relationship between the state and an individual, the term gets over used. It's a similar issue with a word like "war", where it's used for effect rather than accuracy.
You borrow the money to pay them, and then you go bankrupt. Oh, wait, that doesn't maintain their jobs very long.
:)
Wow, are you ever wrong!
You borrow the money to balloon payment the executives. Geeesh, I'm never letting you run any company of mine!