...Using infrastructure paid for by me, kept safe by police paid for by me, and when you're caught - subject to a fair trial with a jury served by me.
I'm not going to say I agree with government taxation at its current levels, but you can't have a free society without rule of law and protection of property. You can't have prosperous commerce without infrastructure. Skipping out on paying into a society you benefit from doesn't make you a noble hippie stickin' it to the man, it makes you a freeloader.
Could be wrong here, but I believe the breakaway bolt also holds against the power from the aircraft thrust so that when the catapult launches the aircraft is already under power.
I'm not sure what the problem is with it as a currency... If I owe you money you are obliged to take it in greenbacks. If we are engaging in a transaction and one of us don't want to deal with cash dollars, there is nothing forcing us to, we can simply walk away. The same should be true with any form of currency. I do find it extremely disturbing that there are more places popping up where I can't use cash dollars (IE: airline food). If this trend continues - you're right, we have a problem.
Wait what? Currency may have it's faults, but it's been a long time since it was feasible to barter for anything. Part of industrialization (and specialization) means that what you produce won't be valuable to everybody. I can't exactly trade some software coding work with the farmer up the highway for some eggs, but I can trade it for some money from a software company and then use that money to buy my eggs. There's no reason to look so far backwards when trying to be "free." It's unfortunate the steps governments have taken these days to get the impression that anything a government can do is automatically restricting to freedom - but realistically speaking, without a small government with a rule of law and protection of property, you *can't* be free. Try bartering anything when the guy with the bigger guns will simply take what he wants. I'll be the first to stand up and say the government has far overstepped its bounds, but claiming there's more freedom in using a Mastercard than a nationally recognized legal tender is asinine.
Cash transactions are not to avoid reporting income. It's to buy what I want from who I want without anybody snooping into the details, government or otherwise.
You're blurring the line between genuinely useful safety equipment and devices that *may* be useful under exceedingly rare circumstances. How many accidents per year occur due to the car being too quiet? No, I don't take the claims of the accident victim as the truth here. I don't think many people would own up to it if they walked out in front of a car. Last batch of numbers I saw did not indicate conclusively a greater accident risk between like hybrid vehicles and non-hybrids (there was an article up here a month or three ago about this issue...). This falls under the same umbrella as mandating back-up cameras: A technological bandaid to make up for driver inattentiveness which will only serve make drivers more reliant on their technologies. If only we could convince people that it is socially acceptable to take public transit when you don't feel like actually driving your car...
The first step to solving a problem is identifying the problem. We haven't shown that there is an actual problem, just talk about hypothetical problems. "This might help some people" is not an excuse for new legislation.
That doesn't make us enemies - it makes us competitors. Consider how we replaced Britain as the dominant economic power in the middle of the 20th century, and how we still compete and cooperate with the EU today. Last I read the news, China wasn't out blowing up our factories. China wants to be the dominant power? Game on! It isn't exactly their fault if we're blowing up our own factories because we'd rather use theirs. If we can't beat them with our own economy and productive ability, I honestly don't believe we are entitled to beat them with our guns.
I don't think either of us know what we're talking about anymore... Historically speaking - over the last 50 years *I* have been the bully, choosing all sorts of people to pick on. Now you're telling me that when I buy a bike from Taiwan, they are bullying me? By building stuff I might want, they are choosing to be an enemy rather than a friend? While I absolutely agree that Americans are happily spending away and killing our own industrial base, calling those nations who are producing the crap we buy our enemies really doesn't make sense to me. It's capitalism at its finest - they can produce the goods cheaper, so we suffer. Problem that most people don't realize is that we are *choosing* to suffer. Taiwan, China, and India aren't our enemies. They may be the ones manufacturing cheap knives, but we are the ones stabbing ourselves with them. Blaming them is just us trying to lash out against our own stupidity.
Bad mods... The $460,000 absolutely did exist. The money came from the bank's balances (since one of their member accounts is now 460k in the red), and now they are going to recover that balance by taking the sucker's house. It's not crazy, it's not insightful. If the money never existed, why would anybody bother with recovering it?
So you're telling me that after you were *asked* to leave a private establishment in no uncertain terms, you simply offered to move to a different part of it? Wow. Yes, if that were my shop I would have absolutely forcibly removed you. You are no longer a customer, you are a trespasser and they clearly don't want your money any longer. I'm not saying the store is right for stifling price shopping - but once they decided they don't want your money and want you to leave, that's the end of discussion.
Good lord, and here I was thinking I'd *never* take Best Buy's side in a discussion:P
Maybe a little bit forceful... Last I checked there's nobody we are actually at war with - so don't know who I'd consider my "enemy." However your point is definitely sound. Americans are working awful hard to undermine our own industrial base by purchasing cheap consumer goods from overseas. Unfortunate that now when I *want* to support an American manufacturer on many things, I simply can't because they have already closed up shop.
Let's highlight and summarize this point as the decline in demand for durable goods. Things get cheaper and don't last as long. Sure there's the option to pony up more cash but often times (take textiles for instance) you're stuck with either super cheap crap or super high end designer goods. Everybody knows you don't get the quality proportional to the price you pay for the label - but who makes goods with a focus on quality at a middle of the range price?
That's sort of the genius of it... Everybody has this image of HD as a badass motorcycle company when really it's a marketing company (like Nike, Hollister, etc, etc). They sell an image, motorcycles are just a conduit for the higher-margin apparel. How many people do you see wandering in HD apparel that don't ride any bikes? How many places sell the HD logo that don't have anything to do with the bikes? There's definitely some talent somewhere to make that much money without a lot of effort. I'm just jealous that I didn't think of it first;)
...and yet your sig references a future world with genetic memory, clairvoyance - and we won't even start on the bene gesserit. Oddly enough, Tron really didn't try to describe much of the computer world, it was just there and the users really had no clue about it. It absolutely has it's faults and in my opinion is by no means a great (maybe not even good?) movie, but over-explaining was not a problem.
I think if your suspension of disbelief is that challenging, may be best to stick with documentaries? With your caveats about The Matrix and Terminator, it sounds like you're trying to make any movie that takes place in "reality" into a potential documentary...
Well, if I built a highway with money out of my own pocket, sure I'd charge a toll to everybody who travels on it. Of course most highways don't work that way these days...
You may be on to something with the house though... Will need to consult with some lawyers, but perhaps I could build a house and copyright the design or plans (Don't need to be detailed as some of these recent claims have shown!) then whenever it comes time for the owners to resell it, they are clearly unlawfully transferring their license to my copyrighted designs. Hell, why settle for just a cut when I could probably manage to get the whole damn house back?
Thank you Mr nospam007, you may have just made me a very wealthy man!
Very generally speaking - this is why you want a Judge to decide a case if you really want justice, and juries to decide the case if you want to get away with it...
And clearly as an enterprising business man, you have somebody else that can handle emergencies when you are unavailable? You know... when you take vacations, fly on airplanes, or are otherwise out of cell phone range... It almost makes me wonder how anything every got done in the days before instant communication to anybody you want.
If my friend doesn't like that I don't have airbags and feels unsafe about it - absolutely he should call a cab. There is nothing ever forcing a passenger to get in a car. They always have that choice. Arguing "do it for the children" doesn't fly with me either. Parents should take responsibility in that case and decide who drives their children in what. My car has no airbags. If you want me to pick up your kids at the pool for you - that is your risk to take and not mine. I don't want or need somebody else determining my acceptable levels of risk.
I realize your point #2 there is tongue in cheek, but it's a dangerous attitude that can get people to take it seriously. It can be applied to just about everything. Too much cybercrime? Just make computers too expensive to own. Too much phone spam? Make telephones too expensive to own. Too much pollution from energy usage? Make electric lights too expensive to operate. There's no reason for us to go back to the dark ages to keep ourselves safe;)
Regulations aren't perfect and rarely are they implemented without somebody's monetary interests in mind. Pour the few hundred bucks it costs for a back-up camera into some quality drivers training courses and see what gives better results. Personally, I would much rather the driver backing out of his driveway onto my street be looking back at the road than down at the rear-view screen. The problem with a lot of automotive safety regulation being proposed these days is that most of the low hanging fruit has been covered. Low cost, easy-to-do features such as seatbelts and third brake lights provide leaps and bounds of safety improvement at low cost. Airbags add some marginal safety at higher cost. Now you're adding back up cameras for a miniscule improvement (and lacking statistics, I'd argue they are detrimental) and at an even higher cost. Where does the cycle end? When cars are too expensive for people to buy anymore? There's a fine line to walk between being needlessly unsafe and overkill. I'm convinced we're well outside of "needlessly unsafe" right now.
Final note - it's my choice to drive a car without airbags, just like it is my passenger's choice to ride in that car.
Add a several hundred dollar add-on to all cars? I definitely have a problem with this. Guessing you've never had to buy an entry level car where every penny matters... Transfer some of *my* money into somebody else's pocket and then tell me it's for my own good? Yeah, I'll fight that every time - doesn't matter how much I support the cause.
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Your rental agreement should outline what forms of payment are accepted in advance...
Who are you and what are you doing on Slashdot?
...Using infrastructure paid for by me, kept safe by police paid for by me, and when you're caught - subject to a fair trial with a jury served by me.
I'm not going to say I agree with government taxation at its current levels, but you can't have a free society without rule of law and protection of property. You can't have prosperous commerce without infrastructure. Skipping out on paying into a society you benefit from doesn't make you a noble hippie stickin' it to the man, it makes you a freeloader.
Could be wrong here, but I believe the breakaway bolt also holds against the power from the aircraft thrust so that when the catapult launches the aircraft is already under power.
I'm not sure what the problem is with it as a currency... If I owe you money you are obliged to take it in greenbacks. If we are engaging in a transaction and one of us don't want to deal with cash dollars, there is nothing forcing us to, we can simply walk away. The same should be true with any form of currency. I do find it extremely disturbing that there are more places popping up where I can't use cash dollars (IE: airline food). If this trend continues - you're right, we have a problem.
Wait what? Currency may have it's faults, but it's been a long time since it was feasible to barter for anything. Part of industrialization (and specialization) means that what you produce won't be valuable to everybody. I can't exactly trade some software coding work with the farmer up the highway for some eggs, but I can trade it for some money from a software company and then use that money to buy my eggs. There's no reason to look so far backwards when trying to be "free." It's unfortunate the steps governments have taken these days to get the impression that anything a government can do is automatically restricting to freedom - but realistically speaking, without a small government with a rule of law and protection of property, you *can't* be free. Try bartering anything when the guy with the bigger guns will simply take what he wants. I'll be the first to stand up and say the government has far overstepped its bounds, but claiming there's more freedom in using a Mastercard than a nationally recognized legal tender is asinine.
Cash transactions are not to avoid reporting income. It's to buy what I want from who I want without anybody snooping into the details, government or otherwise.
You're blurring the line between genuinely useful safety equipment and devices that *may* be useful under exceedingly rare circumstances. How many accidents per year occur due to the car being too quiet? No, I don't take the claims of the accident victim as the truth here. I don't think many people would own up to it if they walked out in front of a car. Last batch of numbers I saw did not indicate conclusively a greater accident risk between like hybrid vehicles and non-hybrids (there was an article up here a month or three ago about this issue...). This falls under the same umbrella as mandating back-up cameras: A technological bandaid to make up for driver inattentiveness which will only serve make drivers more reliant on their technologies. If only we could convince people that it is socially acceptable to take public transit when you don't feel like actually driving your car...
The first step to solving a problem is identifying the problem. We haven't shown that there is an actual problem, just talk about hypothetical problems. "This might help some people" is not an excuse for new legislation.
That doesn't make us enemies - it makes us competitors. Consider how we replaced Britain as the dominant economic power in the middle of the 20th century, and how we still compete and cooperate with the EU today. Last I read the news, China wasn't out blowing up our factories. China wants to be the dominant power? Game on! It isn't exactly their fault if we're blowing up our own factories because we'd rather use theirs. If we can't beat them with our own economy and productive ability, I honestly don't believe we are entitled to beat them with our guns.
I don't think either of us know what we're talking about anymore... Historically speaking - over the last 50 years *I* have been the bully, choosing all sorts of people to pick on. Now you're telling me that when I buy a bike from Taiwan, they are bullying me? By building stuff I might want, they are choosing to be an enemy rather than a friend? While I absolutely agree that Americans are happily spending away and killing our own industrial base, calling those nations who are producing the crap we buy our enemies really doesn't make sense to me. It's capitalism at its finest - they can produce the goods cheaper, so we suffer. Problem that most people don't realize is that we are *choosing* to suffer. Taiwan, China, and India aren't our enemies. They may be the ones manufacturing cheap knives, but we are the ones stabbing ourselves with them. Blaming them is just us trying to lash out against our own stupidity.
Bad mods... The $460,000 absolutely did exist. The money came from the bank's balances (since one of their member accounts is now 460k in the red), and now they are going to recover that balance by taking the sucker's house. It's not crazy, it's not insightful. If the money never existed, why would anybody bother with recovering it?
I spose we'll just disagree on the definition of "enemies" :)
Fair enough, but I don't have much in my house labeled "Made by Al Queida"
So you're telling me that after you were *asked* to leave a private establishment in no uncertain terms, you simply offered to move to a different part of it? Wow. Yes, if that were my shop I would have absolutely forcibly removed you. You are no longer a customer, you are a trespasser and they clearly don't want your money any longer. I'm not saying the store is right for stifling price shopping - but once they decided they don't want your money and want you to leave, that's the end of discussion.
:P
Good lord, and here I was thinking I'd *never* take Best Buy's side in a discussion
Maybe a little bit forceful... Last I checked there's nobody we are actually at war with - so don't know who I'd consider my "enemy." However your point is definitely sound. Americans are working awful hard to undermine our own industrial base by purchasing cheap consumer goods from overseas. Unfortunate that now when I *want* to support an American manufacturer on many things, I simply can't because they have already closed up shop.
Let's highlight and summarize this point as the decline in demand for durable goods. Things get cheaper and don't last as long. Sure there's the option to pony up more cash but often times (take textiles for instance) you're stuck with either super cheap crap or super high end designer goods. Everybody knows you don't get the quality proportional to the price you pay for the label - but who makes goods with a focus on quality at a middle of the range price?
:P
And $60 tires... hell, my last *pair* cost $500
That's sort of the genius of it... Everybody has this image of HD as a badass motorcycle company when really it's a marketing company (like Nike, Hollister, etc, etc). They sell an image, motorcycles are just a conduit for the higher-margin apparel. How many people do you see wandering in HD apparel that don't ride any bikes? How many places sell the HD logo that don't have anything to do with the bikes? There's definitely some talent somewhere to make that much money without a lot of effort. I'm just jealous that I didn't think of it first ;)
Absolutely agree - just felt the need to attack that particular analogy in GP's post.
...and yet your sig references a future world with genetic memory, clairvoyance - and we won't even start on the bene gesserit. Oddly enough, Tron really didn't try to describe much of the computer world, it was just there and the users really had no clue about it. It absolutely has it's faults and in my opinion is by no means a great (maybe not even good?) movie, but over-explaining was not a problem.
I think if your suspension of disbelief is that challenging, may be best to stick with documentaries? With your caveats about The Matrix and Terminator, it sounds like you're trying to make any movie that takes place in "reality" into a potential documentary...
Well, if I built a highway with money out of my own pocket, sure I'd charge a toll to everybody who travels on it. Of course most highways don't work that way these days...
You may be on to something with the house though... Will need to consult with some lawyers, but perhaps I could build a house and copyright the design or plans (Don't need to be detailed as some of these recent claims have shown!) then whenever it comes time for the owners to resell it, they are clearly unlawfully transferring their license to my copyrighted designs. Hell, why settle for just a cut when I could probably manage to get the whole damn house back?
Thank you Mr nospam007, you may have just made me a very wealthy man!
Is there a point here or are we just counting words? (11 words!!!)
Very generally speaking - this is why you want a Judge to decide a case if you really want justice, and juries to decide the case if you want to get away with it...
And clearly as an enterprising business man, you have somebody else that can handle emergencies when you are unavailable? You know... when you take vacations, fly on airplanes, or are otherwise out of cell phone range... It almost makes me wonder how anything every got done in the days before instant communication to anybody you want.
If my friend doesn't like that I don't have airbags and feels unsafe about it - absolutely he should call a cab. There is nothing ever forcing a passenger to get in a car. They always have that choice. Arguing "do it for the children" doesn't fly with me either. Parents should take responsibility in that case and decide who drives their children in what. My car has no airbags. If you want me to pick up your kids at the pool for you - that is your risk to take and not mine. I don't want or need somebody else determining my acceptable levels of risk.
;)
I realize your point #2 there is tongue in cheek, but it's a dangerous attitude that can get people to take it seriously. It can be applied to just about everything. Too much cybercrime? Just make computers too expensive to own. Too much phone spam? Make telephones too expensive to own. Too much pollution from energy usage? Make electric lights too expensive to operate. There's no reason for us to go back to the dark ages to keep ourselves safe
Regulations aren't perfect and rarely are they implemented without somebody's monetary interests in mind. Pour the few hundred bucks it costs for a back-up camera into some quality drivers training courses and see what gives better results. Personally, I would much rather the driver backing out of his driveway onto my street be looking back at the road than down at the rear-view screen. The problem with a lot of automotive safety regulation being proposed these days is that most of the low hanging fruit has been covered. Low cost, easy-to-do features such as seatbelts and third brake lights provide leaps and bounds of safety improvement at low cost. Airbags add some marginal safety at higher cost. Now you're adding back up cameras for a miniscule improvement (and lacking statistics, I'd argue they are detrimental) and at an even higher cost. Where does the cycle end? When cars are too expensive for people to buy anymore? There's a fine line to walk between being needlessly unsafe and overkill. I'm convinced we're well outside of "needlessly unsafe" right now.
Final note - it's my choice to drive a car without airbags, just like it is my passenger's choice to ride in that car.
Add a several hundred dollar add-on to all cars? I definitely have a problem with this. Guessing you've never had to buy an entry level car where every penny matters... Transfer some of *my* money into somebody else's pocket and then tell me it's for my own good? Yeah, I'll fight that every time - doesn't matter how much I support the cause.