What recession? If you're one of the rich people funding this "Tea Party" astroturf campaign you couldn't be happier: your company is making record profits, and sinking the country into a deflationary death spiral will make the billions you sucked off the government teat over the past decade worth even more than it already is. Sure, you'll have to move to Austrailia or Canada when the Republican's 2011 budget causes unemployment to jump to 15 percent, just like when they passed an austerity measure in 1937, but that doesn't really matter because none of your money is invested in the US economy anyway.
So your argument goes that we're all doomed anyway, so we may as well live it up while we can?
By the way, not even the environmentalists think we can "save the planet;" the planet will continue on with or without us, unless someone actually invents a Molecular Disruption Device. They do, however, think it is important, and possible, to preserve the ability of this planet to support human life, at least until we develop the technology to live in outer space or travel to extrasolar planets.
To be fair, the fishing boat rammed the Japanese military boat (there is speculation that elements within China have been putting fishing boat captains up to this in the hope of provoking Japan), so the crime isn't really that the guy was fishing in disputed waters.
Because they're made out of silicon and gold, both of which are plentiful (we have enough gold already mined to last 100 years, if everyone would stop hoarding it in silly attempts to create yet another bubble.)
Even worse than software patents, there is a new UN resolution going around that would give world governments more control over the internet. This is even worse, IMO, than software patents, which "only" threaten to drive software innovation to a virtual standstill: allowing governments to control the flow of information on the Internet could well destroy it, and the newfound freedom of expression and access to information we are currently taking for granted.
There are so many new threats to freedom on so many new fronts it's hard to even define what they all are, let alone what can be done about them.
Ah, but did you notice that Paul Allen did not sue Microsoft? Yup, he went down the list of the top search engines--number 1, 3, 4, 5, etc--but "somehow" forgot about Bing, the number 2 engine.
No, allowing this lawsuit to succeed will play right into his hands. It's SCO all over again: Microsoft can't compete in the free market, so they trot out another sleeper cell patent troll with its portfolio of submarine patents to try to sink their competition in the courts. And they'll keep doing it, as long as they have the money and software patents continue to be as stupid as they are.
Do you think the local news could get their mouths off of the authorities' collective dick long enough to air something like that? No, they'd keep quiet about it.
Not in LA. The LA Times can't wait to post something derogatory of the LAPD, even when they didn't do anything wrong. It's one of the reasons LAPD still has such a terrible reputation these days, despite being far and away improved over what they were back during the riots.
I have read as much as there is but I cant see any details of victim(s) or of the crime itself. But surely surely surely he would have to be as stark staring mad as a bottle of chips to commit a crime like while running the worlds biggest whistle blowing web site.
Well, unfortunately people do have this annoying tendency to be incredibly stupid a lot of the time; it wouldn't completely surprise me to learn that Assange made either or both of these attempts because he thinks he is above the law, what with his website embarrassing some of the most powerful governments and corporations on Earth. It wouldn't be the first time a powerful or famous person decided morality or the law didn't apply to them.
On the other hand, because of said website there is huge international pressure to use any means--even blatant prosecutorial misconduct--to "get" him, so much so that regardless of his innocence or guilt it will be next to impossible for him to receive a fair trial just about anywhere. This is very much not a black and white issue, and it's sure to end with nobody being happy, except for high-priced lawyers.
That would be true if the prosecution was a highly-paid attorney, looking to secure his job against competition, but it's not. Public prosecutors make less money than private attorneys (not, of course, public defenders, who are usually even worse off than prosecutors due to being incredibly overworked), and are union employees who have a reasonable amount of job security. You don't go to law school, rack up huge amounts of debt, and deliberately get a lower-paying job because you're ambitious; you do it because you want to make the world a better place.
Now, there are the occasional bad apples who get blinded by their win/loss records, usually because they have political ambitions or want to get their face on the news, but on the whole the law enforcement community really doesn't deserve to be panned as much as they usually are. Yeah, it's a cliche to say that these people put their lives on the line every day for inadequate compensation, but it's a cliche because it's pretty much true.
But neither can you retry every case infinitely because there are some remaining doubts. There will always be doubts.
You can and you should retry cases if there are doubts; you should acquit immediately if there are any reasonable doubts.
The rule of law in this country is founded on the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. Not "pretty sure," not "it's too much trouble to give you a fair trial, so we'll just convict you anyway." Beyond a reasonable doubt. That standard of proof will inevitably mean that people who actually committed crimes will be let free, and some will indeed go on to commit more crimes, and that is unfortunate. This country, however, is supposed to be based on the love of freedom, and the notion that everyone deserves not to be railroaded by a kangaroo court bent on throwing as many people as they can into a life of permanent second-class citizenship (convicted criminals have few rights in this country, and remain persecuted even long after they've "paid their debt to society.") You can't have that if you are willing to sacrifice freedom for temporary, largely illusory, safety.
You can sell GPL3 works. Not sure what your point is.
The iPhone is not the be all and end all, no matter what your master jobs told you. Check out the android sales numbers for a good example.
Note that Android as well only uses the "magic gestures" form of multitouch. It isn't just Apple who has decided that simple, intuitive multitouch additions to a traditional touchscreen are the way to go; everyone has.
Now, that's not to say this is entirely a bad idea. This actually seems to echo the idea of mouse gestures, a notion that plays well to the niche crowd who is willing to memorize a series of not-necessarily-intuitive commands in order to powerfully interact with the system quickly and efficiently. In other words, the same people who like terminal windows and ssh will like this new multitouch "language;" everyone else will complain that the commands are hidden from normal user interaction unless they're also available via a GUI/menu somewhere.
Most people don't want to have to learn a new language just to talk with their phone/PC/TV/etc. They have other things to be doing--being parents and workers and social butterflies--they don't interact with computers for enough of their lives to make learning a whole new language worthwhile. This is the lesson that Apple learned long ago, Microsoft has learned more recently, and Ubuntu is finally bringing to the Linux space. The UI Guidelines seem to indicate that they at least understand this:
"2.2 Gestural heuristics To help meet the innate challenges of multi-touch development the following heuristics should be applied to gestural interactions:
Heuristic name Description Task frequency The simplicity of the gesture should be directly related to the frequency of the action. The most commonly used functions should be mapped to the simplest gestures. The addition of more complex gestures must never degrade the usage of simple gestures. Completeness Simple gestures must be consistently supported in across the Unity platform. Completeness takes precedence over features; simple gestures must be fully supported before new more advanced gestures are launched. Once a gesture is learnt by a user it should be applicable in all relevant contexts. Responsive feedback Immediate visual feedback must be provided in response to all gestural actions. Low latency is of critical importance. If a application cannot provide instant low latency feedback it should make use of system visual indication functions. Intuitive The function performed by a gesture should match a users preconceived expectations of what the gesture should do. Resonant Similar outcomes should be achievable through similar gestures across the Unity platform. For example a translation or rotation gesture should generally have a translation or rotation consequence where ever it is used. Easy to perform and remember The basic gesture vocabulary should be minimal with complex actions performed through a sequence of simple, logical gestures. Logical Gestures should be metaphorically and iconically logical towards the functionality. Full single touch support All gesture functions must be accessible via single touch. Multi-touch gestures can provide a shortcut, but a user must be able to complete all gesture based user journeys using only a single finger. Complementary gesture consideration Where something can be manipulated through touch, the full set of complementary gestures should be considered and defined, if only to explicitly ignore such a gesture. For example if you can rotate a object right, consider and define explicitly which function is mapped to a left rotation. Predictable Gestures should not invoke outcomes that surprise the user."
there are no peanut allergies in developing countries.
Not yet. Wait until they introduce it on a massive scale.
What the GP means is that food allergies are the inevitable consequence of living in a highly sterilized society. The human body actually requires a whole host of organisms to function properly. The gut in particular is an ecosystem all to itself; something like 50-75 percent of the efficiency of your digestive system comes from various bacteria and other organisms living in your stomach, mouth and intestines. Food allergies mostly stem from the immune system becoming too aggressive and attacking the body due to the presence of certain foods: dairy, peanuts, wheat gluten, pollen, etc.
There is a growing body of medical evidence suggesting that certain parasites common to third world nations can prevent such allergic reactions from occurring, possibly because the remind the body what a "real" threat is. These sorts of parasites are of course missing from societies that partake heavily of antibacterial soap and are keenly aware of the germ theory of disease. Even today there are people (crazy, IMO, as the science is still up in the air) who deliberately infect themselves with hookworms to cure asthma and other allergies. Someday in the future it may not be unusual to see people deliberately infecting themselves with custom-designed parasites to cure these sorts of diseases.
For some bizarre reason, the US, the EU, and many other places have decided that it's okay to patent basic concepts: human and animal genes, business methods, math (also known as software patents), etc, rather than the end-stage products that patents were originally meant to cover. As a result, many fields of innovation are grinding to a halt, as people scramble to place roadblocks and paywalls across the road of innovation. Biology can't go anywhere because dozens of different groups have patents on basic testing procedures and even the genes themselves. Computer programmers can't get anywhere because programming has become a minefield, where bits arranged in certain ways can suddenly see you being sued for millions of dollars.
The moment the walls are lowered, even for a short period in a limited field, great things can be accomplished in a short amount of time, but the exceptions will remain exceptions if the non-innovators keep thinking there's profit to be made in continual delay.
Note that the same thing happens with gasoline and with cars in general. Oil companies in the US receive heavy compensation; if you'll scroll upwards you'll note breakdowns that conclude that without government subsidies gas would "naturally" fall between $5.50 and $15 a gallon, and most of the interstate highway system was funded by enormous taxes on the wealthy (90%+, as opposed to the mere 36% base rate they pay today). You can't just take government subsidies away from one side and just ignore the effects on the other.
I'm aware; I've actually invested in some 2012 call options on AMD stock. Even as-is they should be worth $10 a share. If Bobcat can make them competitive in the ultraportable market (Android on ARM is going to eat Intel's lunch in the netbook-level arena; x86's crufty instruction set can't compete at that low level), and/or Bulldozer makes them competitive in the mid- to high-end desktop market, that should go up to $13-15, easy. It is a hell of a gamble, though; they're still almost a full processor node behind Intel, and that's hard to compete with.
We'll also accept child pornography, political views in opposition to the party in power, or the belief that corporations do not deserve more human rights than actual humans.
More to the point, it's the credit card company's money that is gone, so they are a lot more proactive about hunting down fraud. Most banks don't give a flying crap if someone drains your account of $5,000, but if someone charges $100 at a gas station on another person's card the company is quick to nullify the charge. They usually don't even charge to stop payment, unlike the banks who've been getting really creative with fees lately.
I actually don't recall any of that showing up on my credit history either, and I just had a look at my credit history because I got a home loan. My student loans, car loan, credit cards, and now home loan all showed up (basically as a bunch of check boxes showing if I paid on time or not), and that was it.
As far as I know, cell phone bills and the like don't show up at all. You can use phone bills and the like as proof of address for background checks, if you don't have two forms of photo ID, but that's completely different from credit history.
If you've been paying attention to the opinion section of the WSJ, it's been sliding closer and closer to Fox's view ever since Murdoch bought them; they're definitely cribbing off the same set of notes. And the only thing Murdoch hates more than Google is the thought of a government being anti-business, specifically being anti-his-business, and that's what's going on here in China.
And how did they spend us into oblivion? By centralizing power into the federal government and instituting socialistic policies by creating entitlement after entitlement that they couldn't pay for, despite party affiliation. Entitlements now dwarf military spending in the federal budget and are growing at an exponential rate under Obama, and that doesn't even begin to take into account our unfunded liabilities which are mostly entitlement spending.
Okay, I'll certainly agree that Bush expanded entitlements--the prescription drug handout to big pharmaceutical companies was particularly egregious--but it's only half the story. The big problem was that, in addition to loading up on spending, the Republicans also loaded up on tax cuts to the wealthy. I know why they did it: rich people donate disproportionately to Republican candidates, and they want their money's worth.
It's... sort of okay to spend money, so long as the cause is in the interest of the public. What's not okay is to spend money with no plans to pay off your debts. Clinton came up with a spending plan that eventually paid for itself. Obama is currently looking for the political cover to do the same, as soon as unemployment isn't 10%. Bush, like all the other Republicans in the past thirty years, simply ignored the debt problem entirely when he was in office, only mentioning it while on the campaign trail.
Bush overspent. He liked buying votes with entitlements too. He was, however, pretty conservative in his spending and in expanding the power of the federal government compared to Obama. But, that doesn't mean all his spending or power grabs were the right thing to do. He was leading us down the wrong path too.
Wait a minute, are trying to tell me that Bush, the man who brought the following words into the US lexicon:
-extraordinary rendition -the Patriot Act -warrantless wiretaps and NSAs -regime change -"post 9/11 world" -Title 1 "regulation" of ISPs -Abu Graib and Guantanimo Bay
was, "conservative... in expanding the power of the federal government compared to Obama"? Say what you will about health insurance mandates, but Obama has never gone on record, like Bush has, as saying the President has the authority to ignore both Congress and the courts whenever he deems their oversight inconvenient, or he thinks he can invoke national security.
As to spending, Obama's big spending bill--the financial stimulus that the vast majority of economists agree saved us from Great Depression 2--was a one-off venture, and didn't create any entitlement programs. It did waste nearly half its stimulus money on tax cuts, which only have marginal economic benefit as opposed to, say, construction projects and unemployment insurance extensions, but that was to get the two Republican votes they needed to call it "bi-partisan".
If the Democrats had shown the backbone to lead, and passed healthcare, the stimulus, and financial reform without deciding to wait on the party of "no", we'd have a public option, real rules reigning in banks, and a stimulus that would have actually brought back the economy, rather than the flimsy half-measures we have now.
Well of course private insurance companies are a scam, and are designed to extract the most money from people at the most vulnerable times in their lives. The better solution is to make healthcare infrastructure a public good, just like firefighters and police.
Unfortunately Joe frickin' Lieberman killed that idea back in September, when he killed the public option. So we don't get to have nice things like low-cost pharmaceuticals, or hospitals who don't have to employ twice as many insurance reps as doctors, like the rest of the civilized world. We get to share a healthcare model with Mexico and Iran, which results in us paying three times as much for a lower life expectancy than any European nation.
Slashdot Mirror
What recession? If you're one of the rich people funding this "Tea Party" astroturf campaign you couldn't be happier: your company is making record profits, and sinking the country into a deflationary death spiral will make the billions you sucked off the government teat over the past decade worth even more than it already is. Sure, you'll have to move to Austrailia or Canada when the Republican's 2011 budget causes unemployment to jump to 15 percent, just like when they passed an austerity measure in 1937, but that doesn't really matter because none of your money is invested in the US economy anyway.
So your argument goes that we're all doomed anyway, so we may as well live it up while we can?
By the way, not even the environmentalists think we can "save the planet;" the planet will continue on with or without us, unless someone actually invents a Molecular Disruption Device. They do, however, think it is important, and possible, to preserve the ability of this planet to support human life, at least until we develop the technology to live in outer space or travel to extrasolar planets.
That assumes you hit the right country.
"Iran... Iran... Iran... IRAQ!" *BANG*
They showed us the dangers of exposing the ruling class to lead for generations.
To be fair, the fishing boat rammed the Japanese military boat (there is speculation that elements within China have been putting fishing boat captains up to this in the hope of provoking Japan), so the crime isn't really that the guy was fishing in disputed waters.
Because they're made out of silicon and gold, both of which are plentiful (we have enough gold already mined to last 100 years, if everyone would stop hoarding it in silly attempts to create yet another bubble.)
Even worse than software patents, there is a new UN resolution going around that would give world governments more control over the internet. This is even worse, IMO, than software patents, which "only" threaten to drive software innovation to a virtual standstill: allowing governments to control the flow of information on the Internet could well destroy it, and the newfound freedom of expression and access to information we are currently taking for granted.
There are so many new threats to freedom on so many new fronts it's hard to even define what they all are, let alone what can be done about them.
Ah, but did you notice that Paul Allen did not sue Microsoft? Yup, he went down the list of the top search engines--number 1, 3, 4, 5, etc--but "somehow" forgot about Bing, the number 2 engine.
No, allowing this lawsuit to succeed will play right into his hands. It's SCO all over again: Microsoft can't compete in the free market, so they trot out another sleeper cell patent troll with its portfolio of submarine patents to try to sink their competition in the courts. And they'll keep doing it, as long as they have the money and software patents continue to be as stupid as they are.
Do you think the local news could get their mouths off of the authorities' collective dick long enough to air something like that? No, they'd keep quiet about it.
Not in LA. The LA Times can't wait to post something derogatory of the LAPD, even when they didn't do anything wrong. It's one of the reasons LAPD still has such a terrible reputation these days, despite being far and away improved over what they were back during the riots.
I have read as much as there is but I cant see any details of victim(s) or of the crime itself. But surely surely surely he would have to be as stark staring mad as a bottle of chips to commit a crime like while running the worlds biggest whistle blowing web site.
Well, unfortunately people do have this annoying tendency to be incredibly stupid a lot of the time; it wouldn't completely surprise me to learn that Assange made either or both of these attempts because he thinks he is above the law, what with his website embarrassing some of the most powerful governments and corporations on Earth. It wouldn't be the first time a powerful or famous person decided morality or the law didn't apply to them.
On the other hand, because of said website there is huge international pressure to use any means--even blatant prosecutorial misconduct--to "get" him, so much so that regardless of his innocence or guilt it will be next to impossible for him to receive a fair trial just about anywhere. This is very much not a black and white issue, and it's sure to end with nobody being happy, except for high-priced lawyers.
That would be true if the prosecution was a highly-paid attorney, looking to secure his job against competition, but it's not. Public prosecutors make less money than private attorneys (not, of course, public defenders, who are usually even worse off than prosecutors due to being incredibly overworked), and are union employees who have a reasonable amount of job security. You don't go to law school, rack up huge amounts of debt, and deliberately get a lower-paying job because you're ambitious; you do it because you want to make the world a better place.
Now, there are the occasional bad apples who get blinded by their win/loss records, usually because they have political ambitions or want to get their face on the news, but on the whole the law enforcement community really doesn't deserve to be panned as much as they usually are. Yeah, it's a cliche to say that these people put their lives on the line every day for inadequate compensation, but it's a cliche because it's pretty much true.
But neither can you retry every case infinitely because there are some remaining doubts. There will always be doubts.
You can and you should retry cases if there are doubts; you should acquit immediately if there are any reasonable doubts.
The rule of law in this country is founded on the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. Not "pretty sure," not "it's too much trouble to give you a fair trial, so we'll just convict you anyway." Beyond a reasonable doubt. That standard of proof will inevitably mean that people who actually committed crimes will be let free, and some will indeed go on to commit more crimes, and that is unfortunate. This country, however, is supposed to be based on the love of freedom, and the notion that everyone deserves not to be railroaded by a kangaroo court bent on throwing as many people as they can into a life of permanent second-class citizenship (convicted criminals have few rights in this country, and remain persecuted even long after they've "paid their debt to society.") You can't have that if you are willing to sacrifice freedom for temporary, largely illusory, safety.
You can sell GPL3 works. Not sure what your point is.
The iPhone is not the be all and end all, no matter what your master jobs told you. Check out the android sales numbers for a good example.
Note that Android as well only uses the "magic gestures" form of multitouch. It isn't just Apple who has decided that simple, intuitive multitouch additions to a traditional touchscreen are the way to go; everyone has.
Now, that's not to say this is entirely a bad idea. This actually seems to echo the idea of mouse gestures, a notion that plays well to the niche crowd who is willing to memorize a series of not-necessarily-intuitive commands in order to powerfully interact with the system quickly and efficiently. In other words, the same people who like terminal windows and ssh will like this new multitouch "language;" everyone else will complain that the commands are hidden from normal user interaction unless they're also available via a GUI/menu somewhere.
Most people don't want to have to learn a new language just to talk with their phone/PC/TV/etc. They have other things to be doing--being parents and workers and social butterflies--they don't interact with computers for enough of their lives to make learning a whole new language worthwhile. This is the lesson that Apple learned long ago, Microsoft has learned more recently, and Ubuntu is finally bringing to the Linux space. The UI Guidelines seem to indicate that they at least understand this:
"2.2 Gestural heuristics
To help meet the innate challenges of multi-touch development the following heuristics should be applied to gestural interactions:
Heuristic name
Description
Task frequency
The simplicity of the gesture should be directly related to the frequency of the action. The most commonly used functions should be mapped to the simplest gestures. The addition of more complex gestures must never degrade the usage of simple gestures.
Completeness
Simple gestures must be consistently supported in across the Unity platform. Completeness takes precedence over features; simple gestures must be fully supported before new more advanced gestures are launched. Once a gesture is learnt by a user it should be applicable in all relevant contexts.
Responsive feedback
Immediate visual feedback must be provided in response to all gestural actions. Low latency is of critical importance. If a application cannot provide instant low latency feedback it should make use of system visual indication functions.
Intuitive
The function performed by a gesture should match a users preconceived expectations of what the gesture should do.
Resonant
Similar outcomes should be achievable through similar gestures across the Unity platform. For example a translation or rotation gesture should generally have a translation or rotation consequence where ever it is used.
Easy to perform and remember
The basic gesture vocabulary should be minimal with complex actions performed through a sequence of simple, logical gestures.
Logical
Gestures should be metaphorically and iconically logical towards the functionality.
Full single touch support
All gesture functions must be accessible via single touch. Multi-touch gestures can provide a shortcut, but a user must be able to complete all gesture based user journeys using only a single finger.
Complementary gesture consideration
Where something can be manipulated through touch, the full set of complementary gestures should be considered and defined, if only to explicitly ignore such a gesture. For example if you can rotate a object right, consider and define explicitly which function is mapped to a left rotation.
Predictable
Gestures should not invoke outcomes that surprise the user."
there are no peanut allergies in developing countries.
Not yet. Wait until they introduce it on a massive scale.
What the GP means is that food allergies are the inevitable consequence of living in a highly sterilized society. The human body actually requires a whole host of organisms to function properly. The gut in particular is an ecosystem all to itself; something like 50-75 percent of the efficiency of your digestive system comes from various bacteria and other organisms living in your stomach, mouth and intestines. Food allergies mostly stem from the immune system becoming too aggressive and attacking the body due to the presence of certain foods: dairy, peanuts, wheat gluten, pollen, etc.
There is a growing body of medical evidence suggesting that certain parasites common to third world nations can prevent such allergic reactions from occurring, possibly because the remind the body what a "real" threat is. These sorts of parasites are of course missing from societies that partake heavily of antibacterial soap and are keenly aware of the germ theory of disease. Even today there are people (crazy, IMO, as the science is still up in the air) who deliberately infect themselves with hookworms to cure asthma and other allergies. Someday in the future it may not be unusual to see people deliberately infecting themselves with custom-designed parasites to cure these sorts of diseases.
Rare, huh?
You sure about that?
You might want to rethink that statement, especially as those three articles are from this past week.
The patent craziness.
For some bizarre reason, the US, the EU, and many other places have decided that it's okay to patent basic concepts: human and animal genes, business methods, math (also known as software patents), etc, rather than the end-stage products that patents were originally meant to cover. As a result, many fields of innovation are grinding to a halt, as people scramble to place roadblocks and paywalls across the road of innovation. Biology can't go anywhere because dozens of different groups have patents on basic testing procedures and even the genes themselves. Computer programmers can't get anywhere because programming has become a minefield, where bits arranged in certain ways can suddenly see you being sued for millions of dollars.
The moment the walls are lowered, even for a short period in a limited field, great things can be accomplished in a short amount of time, but the exceptions will remain exceptions if the non-innovators keep thinking there's profit to be made in continual delay.
Note that the same thing happens with gasoline and with cars in general. Oil companies in the US receive heavy compensation; if you'll scroll upwards you'll note breakdowns that conclude that without government subsidies gas would "naturally" fall between $5.50 and $15 a gallon, and most of the interstate highway system was funded by enormous taxes on the wealthy (90%+, as opposed to the mere 36% base rate they pay today). You can't just take government subsidies away from one side and just ignore the effects on the other.
I'm aware; I've actually invested in some 2012 call options on AMD stock. Even as-is they should be worth $10 a share. If Bobcat can make them competitive in the ultraportable market (Android on ARM is going to eat Intel's lunch in the netbook-level arena; x86's crufty instruction set can't compete at that low level), and/or Bulldozer makes them competitive in the mid- to high-end desktop market, that should go up to $13-15, easy. It is a hell of a gamble, though; they're still almost a full processor node behind Intel, and that's hard to compete with.
Sorry; AMD can't afford a freezer.
We'll also accept child pornography, political views in opposition to the party in power, or the belief that corporations do not deserve more human rights than actual humans.
More to the point, it's the credit card company's money that is gone, so they are a lot more proactive about hunting down fraud. Most banks don't give a flying crap if someone drains your account of $5,000, but if someone charges $100 at a gas station on another person's card the company is quick to nullify the charge. They usually don't even charge to stop payment, unlike the banks who've been getting really creative with fees lately.
I actually don't recall any of that showing up on my credit history either, and I just had a look at my credit history because I got a home loan. My student loans, car loan, credit cards, and now home loan all showed up (basically as a bunch of check boxes showing if I paid on time or not), and that was it.
As far as I know, cell phone bills and the like don't show up at all. You can use phone bills and the like as proof of address for background checks, if you don't have two forms of photo ID, but that's completely different from credit history.
If you've been paying attention to the opinion section of the WSJ, it's been sliding closer and closer to Fox's view ever since Murdoch bought them; they're definitely cribbing off the same set of notes. And the only thing Murdoch hates more than Google is the thought of a government being anti-business, specifically being anti-his-business, and that's what's going on here in China.
And how did they spend us into oblivion? By centralizing power into the federal government and instituting socialistic policies by creating entitlement after entitlement that they couldn't pay for, despite party affiliation. Entitlements now dwarf military spending in the federal budget and are growing at an exponential rate under Obama, and that doesn't even begin to take into account our unfunded liabilities which are mostly entitlement spending.
Okay, I'll certainly agree that Bush expanded entitlements--the prescription drug handout to big pharmaceutical companies was particularly egregious--but it's only half the story. The big problem was that, in addition to loading up on spending, the Republicans also loaded up on tax cuts to the wealthy. I know why they did it: rich people donate disproportionately to Republican candidates, and they want their money's worth.
It's... sort of okay to spend money, so long as the cause is in the interest of the public. What's not okay is to spend money with no plans to pay off your debts. Clinton came up with a spending plan that eventually paid for itself. Obama is currently looking for the political cover to do the same, as soon as unemployment isn't 10%. Bush, like all the other Republicans in the past thirty years, simply ignored the debt problem entirely when he was in office, only mentioning it while on the campaign trail.
Bush overspent. He liked buying votes with entitlements too. He was, however, pretty conservative in his spending and in expanding the power of the federal government compared to Obama. But, that doesn't mean all his spending or power grabs were the right thing to do. He was leading us down the wrong path too.
Wait a minute, are trying to tell me that Bush, the man who brought the following words into the US lexicon:
-extraordinary rendition
-the Patriot Act
-warrantless wiretaps and NSAs
-regime change
-"post 9/11 world"
-Title 1 "regulation" of ISPs
-Abu Graib and Guantanimo Bay
was, "conservative ... in expanding the power of the federal government compared to Obama"? Say what you will about health insurance mandates, but Obama has never gone on record, like Bush has, as saying the President has the authority to ignore both Congress and the courts whenever he deems their oversight inconvenient, or he thinks he can invoke national security.
As to spending, Obama's big spending bill--the financial stimulus that the vast majority of economists agree saved us from Great Depression 2--was a one-off venture, and didn't create any entitlement programs. It did waste nearly half its stimulus money on tax cuts, which only have marginal economic benefit as opposed to, say, construction projects and unemployment insurance extensions, but that was to get the two Republican votes they needed to call it "bi-partisan".
If the Democrats had shown the backbone to lead, and passed healthcare, the stimulus, and financial reform without deciding to wait on the party of "no", we'd have a public option, real rules reigning in banks, and a stimulus that would have actually brought back the economy, rather than the flimsy half-measures we have now.
Well of course private insurance companies are a scam, and are designed to extract the most money from people at the most vulnerable times in their lives. The better solution is to make healthcare infrastructure a public good, just like firefighters and police.
Unfortunately Joe frickin' Lieberman killed that idea back in September, when he killed the public option. So we don't get to have nice things like low-cost pharmaceuticals, or hospitals who don't have to employ twice as many insurance reps as doctors, like the rest of the civilized world. We get to share a healthcare model with Mexico and Iran, which results in us paying three times as much for a lower life expectancy than any European nation.