Ahhh, the "save the children" cry. Always a good one to use on the clueless masses. (What was that one Simpsons ep where Rev Lovejoys wife shouts it when it obviously had nothing to do with the matter at hand...or maybe it just happened so many times that it's just a blur now.)
But even more than that, just because I don't have children I love how everyone assumes that I don't care about them. Sure, I don't have the many personal experiances that parents do but lets get a grip here people. Having kids is NOTHING special when you think about it. It's been happening for THOUSANDS of years. My own personal nightmare is having to deal with some hick with the IQ of a speed-bump who gets more respect in a discussion because his condom broke and he now has some whineing brat, and thus is now is a "parent."
Mod me down if you must, but whenever I hear that "save the children" I simply turn away from the argument because rarely are you talking about the real issues anymore.
If/when the code in question does come out they lose their pump and dump. Simple as that.
If the goverment was doing it's job and had a clue about tech they would see right though all the smoke and mirrors that SCO has going on and none of this would really be of any matter. (And other Enron/SCO type co's.)
However, such as it is it's in vogue to screw the public as long as your allready rich enough to matter and contribute to the right slush funds. Ahh, to be alive 500 years from now and read the history books.
Even the average joe went nuts when Intel tried to pass that unique chip thing by. Right now they are dressing up the methods of control in fancy terms like DRM that will "protect" things. In reality they are just trying to do what they have wanted to for years now, control your computer.
However, much like the early attempt by Intel, I think the cartels will get another rude awakeing when users simply won't buy products that broadcast unique ids for services that truely don't require it. Maybe banks and other truely secure sites will but to be honest if my bank feels that they have to go that far I will just do my banking in person. When I go to thinkgeek.com and browse for stuff they will have no right (Not that thinkgeek.com would ever do such a thing...I hope.) to expect me to hand over a unique id just to gain access to their site. That would be the equivlant of being carded when you walked into the Gap.
No, I know that the cartels of media will keep trying to turn computers glorified TVs but even joe sixpack knows when they are being asked to give up too much.
Little late in replying but yes! I actually do know!
I write some short fiction sometimes and it's odd when you think about how people really talk vs how things are written. It also makes you understand why they teach speech and drama, getting up and speaking non stop or not in conversation is not something that you do all the time. (For most ppl.)
I agree. The public often sees inactividy as a sign of weakness. If SCO is allowed to FUD unabatited then they seem to be winning.
I think we need to get some more lawsuits against THEM. Every time Bruce goes off on how he has been wronged in the press the next sentence should be about how another *nix user has brought suit against him.
So now the website becomes the centralized tracker server...
Not if we use Freenet, then it's a P2P website! Or better yet, the fact that the website offers starter IPs does not change the fact that without it the app still could fully function. New users would just have to get their starter IPs from some other source.
Then how do you know the cache isn't out of date? There are so many modem users out there, or other people that that have dynamic IPs.
Split the database into hunks, have it update on the fly. No one node need handle the whole database, it's P2P right?
And how are you supposed to connect to the first node if there are no centralized nodes? Finding an IP is already too much work for Joe Average.
Have the clients track uptime and determine which clients are nearly always on. Have those clients report back to the apps webpage with a list of starter IPs for new users.
I could, if I thought about it, figure out even more ways that it might work but the point of what I'm saying is that such an app is far from impossable.
Not possible? Maybe not feasable but few things are truely impossable.
How about having each node cache a database of users? With modern bandwidth and compression this can be do-able. Each time your client fires up it scans down it's list of nodes to find an active one and then updates it's list. And then much like other truely P2P apps it would grow more efficent the longer you used it.
However, I personally use IRC. IMing just bugs me for some reason.
You can wipe out several generations of family with a car, but you an also wipe out the savings of generations of family with a computer. That is another extreme example but it can potentially happen.
The question is, how? If I fail to stop for a red light I can cause terrible damage to someone else. If I drive into an oncoming lane I can do the same. Both of these actions are full wrong and preventable by me following the rules that have been setup.
Now, exactly how would I "wipe out the savings of generations of a family?" Is it as easy as deciding to not press a break petal? As easy as shifting a wheel a few degrees to the right or left? Not hardly, I know of NO way that I could bypass the safeguards that have been setup to protect financial institutions with such ease or without forethought.
To bypass such safeguards would require not only special skills and knowledge, but you would also actively know what you were doing during the process. (IE knowledge that you were actively breaking the rules that have been setup.)
Whereas a trojan or virus is designed to infiltrate a persons PC without their knowledge and do things that they have no knowledge of. And in most cases does things that they would not even have the skills to do either.
That you proably made some tech support persons day.
Most support houses have a very strict rule of no hanging up on the customers. (And yeah, paid my dues with SBC, AT&T, and a few other smaller ones.) So when you told the person to hang on they did just that. Meanwhile they didn't have to take any other calls during your time off and were free (Hopefully if they wern't in too bad of a call-center.) to surf the web or play some freecell.
By the time you got back and had calmed down they were also well rested as well and I'm sure quite ready to help you with whatever you wanted!
This shit is trouble, mark my words. The guys at the top of companies don't read slashdot either - keep that in mind.
I whould have agreeded with this before RedHat stepped into the ring and threw down the gauntlet as well. SuSe has pledged alliance as well and as I'm sure everyone knows, it's a bad idea to piss off the Germans.
Yeah, it has been a PITA but I think SCO's days of FUD generation are going to be numbered as the linux community decides in masse that since being nice won't work it's time to get dirty and fight fire with fire.
Agreed. And it sounds like to me, no offence to the original poster, that if your CTO can issue such a statement your investment in Linux must be rather small.
If I had to reinstall my home network to remove Linux it would be a pretty good sized hassle reinstalling and moving all the things I have fine tuned over time to get it back to where it was. On a larger level the issues can only grow.
But since your CEO and CTO are obviously falling prey to SCO's FUD then they must not have a real good understanding of Linux and OSS anyway so I again doubt that you have much Linux there anyway. (If I am wrong, please, feel free to enlighten us as to the actual size of your Linux install and what it is/was doing. And how you mitigated all the systems over to...? [Another detail you left out.])
As soon as users stop caring about their software investments.
But, with the CPU power that that there is now why does this have to be an issue anymore? If AMD can make a chip that is 32 bit backwards compatable why can't there be an inbetween chip that moves us to a new architecture? (Yes yes, I know that having the transistors for a fully backwards compatable architecture and having those for a new architecture is not the same thing but don't tell me that it can't be done.)
And even failing a full hardware solution it's more than possable to recompile even Windows for a diffrent platform and have a Windows issued eumlator which is co-designed by the chip makers so that we can bridge the in-between gap.
No, I think it's more the fact that Intel is greedy and would rather keep pushing it's old tech so that it does not lose any more market share than it allready has to AMD and other smaller co's. If they ever were to get a true monopoly again we might see some real innovation out of them but as long as the focus is on quarterly reports rather than what's really good for computing I doubt much will change.
Leaving all the arguments of how people pirate music over P2P networks and such there is also the issue of Fair Use with IP.
When dealing with real property it's pretty easy to establish fair use. Does Joe Blow have a right to park on my lawn during the big football game? Nope, thats a pretty clear cut deal there. But what about the big game thats being broadcast and recorded by my TiVo? Even though I don't have any rights to say rebroadcast that game for profit shouldn't I be able to move that TV game from the TiVo in my living room to the one in my bedroom whenever I want? Or archive it for later viewing? Ahhh, now we are getting into murky waters.
Now the courts have allready established long ago that "time shifting" is legal and thus thwarted big medias attempt to stifle fair use but they are relentless, at every turn unless forced not to they will limit fair use with cry's of "piracy!" as their reasons for doing so.
And looking at a larger picture we see why they wish to do so, as has been so often pointed out here on/. it's no so much about the content but about *controlling* the content. If I can't record and save the big game in a format that makes it conveinent for me they can resell it to me later. If they control the bands that are allowed to play I might not ever know that there are better ones out there. If they control the movies that are being produced (Of course how this will change is much more complicated due to the budgets involved but it's the same basic idea.) they can use shills to say "Must see!" over and over until I am under the impression that I must be missing something.
Bottom line, while many people do pirate IP content that does not mean that there should be no fair use. It's, imo, the cost of doing buissness in IP and if you don't like the risk go find something else to do.
I think one of the major things in issues like this is the speed at which such cases are able to move.
When a persons life is at stake and they face the prospect of losing years of their lives or their very life itself I can understand why the US legal system might tend to seem slow, providing the defandant every opportunity to make sure that they are getting a fair trial.
However, when a reputation is at stake there needs to be either a) a swift resolution (Which I understand might not always be possable.) or b) if a swift resolution appears not to be possable then some sort of gag orders on both parties to prevent them from using the delay to boost stock on false claims, pressure clients to do something based on the outcome of a trial that has not even happened, etc.
Who knows how this would work in practice since IANAL but I agree something needs to be done.
Not sure why this got modded down as Flamebait because I'd have to say it was spot on.
Over time they were early adapters of new tech which made them sometimes superior to the PC lineup, but now they sport many of the mainstream PC features because it was finally realized that to many people cost *does* matter.
As for Intellivisions, I just wish that the Blue Rangers would turn out a emu of Sub Hunt. That was one of my all time fav games. I was deadly with the sub.;)
While I don't know the #'s, whenever I have had the displeasure of shopping for a cheap ink-jet it always seems to me that while cheap, you are surely getting what you pay for. (A cheap printer.)
Thus, my gut feeling is that they proably are breaking even, if not making a tiny profit, on these cheap-o-ink-jet printers that we are talking about but does that make it ok for them to have a 500% markup on ink carts? (Again, I am not in that part of the biz so I don't know about my #'s but damn they sure do mark up that ink alot.)
If they were doing nominal price markups on ink carts would messy ink refill kits be such an issue?
... And yet, people keep linking to the NYT stories. Why's that?
Good point, but I think one of the main reasons is because it's a landmark type paper. If it's in the NYT it's pretty much guaranteed that a large number of people who still rely on print for their news are reading it.
I, for one, don't read much print anymore but then again I'm a/. geek.
Don't get me wrong. I'm entirely in favor of a balanced budget and would favor an ammendment that requires it by law--as long as that ammendment considers the entire federal budget and doesn't exempt "non-discretionary" programs.
The fact is, we could eliminate ALL defense spending and our debt would STILL be growing by over $100 billion per year. If we got rid of all social spending, on the other hand, we'd pay off the national debt in under five years. Until everyone realizes that defense spending is not the primary cause of the debt we're not going to be able to solve it.
I agree, I've actually always been a big proponent of defense spending. It really should be the federal goverments ONLY jobs, but alas, that idea is long gone.
I remember that in the news, too, and I'm not going to spend time to see if that was honestly true or just technically true. But, of course, the budget you sign means little if the reality is different. I can make a budget for my personal finances that shows me with a $100k surplus per year. Of course, it could jsut be wishful thinking.:)
Well again, and I am not going to check the facts myself either,;), but I do remember him going to battle with congress over what needed to be cut to make the budget balanced. (And even set aside some to try and start paying off the debt.) However...
Of course, all a balanced budget would do is keep the debt from growing. You need a surplus to bring it down. Which I thought I heard there was, but I sure don't see it reflected in the actual year-to-year record of the U.S. debt. Makes me kind of wonder where all that surplus went.:)
Well, and this again is just what I'm pieceing together from what I know, the suplus was in the budget and would have went to paying off the debt but much like money in a bank account that you have set aside for say an investment but then when your plans changed and you had to use that money for something else, it never actually made it to your investment account. So, once the new budget took effect that money was basicly gone.
I think the problem most people have with Clinton is that he was kind of a joke and a blatant liar. Now, that could be construed as the "norm" for a politican--but the fact that he is most memorable for "not being as bad as some people" make him out to be just goes to show that he really didn't accomplish anything in his 8 years. Nixon might have been impeached, but he improved relations with China. Reagan is criticized, but he fixed the economy that Carter left him and won the cold war. Bush Sr. led one of the most unified coalitions to kick Iraq out of Kuwait. What did Clinton preside over? Nothing, really. And given that he didn't really do anything, the fact that he was a moral joke and a blatant liar received a lot more attention than would have been the case if he had used his 8 years in office do something worthwhile for the U.S. or the world.
Shrug, while I suppose I should, I really don't care much about some of the presidents that I wasn't alive/old enough to care about. Nixon will always be on my list for starting the WOD for one thing, and Regan, while a consument actor, gets a lot of credit IMO for things that would have happened anyway. People love to say that Clinton didn't "fix" the econ at all but simply stepped into a growing one, but then don't like it when that argument is applied to Reagan. Nor, IMO was the 80's really much of a "growth" econ, unless you count junk bond tradeing as real growth.;) And the cold war was just about over anyway, congress had it's part in spending all the money that eventually bankrupted the Soviets so to give any president all the credit is to ignore our other branch of goverment that does a lot of the work and really should be doing even more a-la no executive orders but thats a whole other issue. Taken all together I think Clinton is just your typical modern American president who gets slammed by current right-wingers beacuse he's the closest target.
Tax cuts are always a good idea, unless you have mega-inflation in which case you can try to take additional money out of circulation if the Fed is unable to do enough by adjusting interest rates. But otherwise, tax cuts will stimulate a sluggish economy and boost a good economy further.
Well, now mind you I'm not trying to flame or anything, but at what point should we then care that the deficit is growing? When it reaches 6,674,178,209,886.86? Or 7,674,178,209,886.86? I mean that intrest payment is just going to get bigger and the tax money we are "saveing" now by lowering taxes will just have to be paid by the next generation. Or should we just never care about it, as you seem to suggest, and allow it to grow unabated?
And while I'm not a great fan of Clinton I'm pretty sure that the budget he signed lowered overall spending. (Thus managing to have a balanced budget for the 1st time in years.)
That's an urban legend started by the Clinton administration and never challenged by the press. Check out the last 50 years of the U.S. debt. The last year I see where the debt went down was in 1960 (Correct me if I missed some more recent year).
While I'll agree that those figures sure do agree with your assment that the debt didn't go down during the Clintion years, it is a fact, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that he did sign a balanced budget. (Which if you will notice was my orignal point.) It would have been some time of course before the deficit actually went down but it was a step in the right direction imo at least.
Again, for the record, I'm no big fan of Clintion. I have a distrust of most politicians as a rule but as far as it goes Clintion was not as bad as some people like to make him out to be.
Again, what would you duplicate here? Raising taxes? Raising spending? Military intervention in countries that have nothing to do with our national interest? Sticking smoking devices into young interns? What exactly should Bush duplicate from Clinton's presidency?
Actually, yeah, I personally think any tax cuts when we have a deficit is pretty foolish but hey, thats just me. And while I'm not a great fan of Clinton I'm pretty sure that the budget he signed lowered overall spending. (Thus managing to have a balanced budget for the 1st time in years.)
As for his personal acts, I really could care less about them. Of course the media and right wing had a field day with that but it seemed pretty silly to me. Consdiering we have had a cross dressing president before, one that actually has an active sex life does little to bother me.
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Ahhh, the "save the children" cry. Always a good one to use on the clueless masses. (What was that one Simpsons ep where Rev Lovejoys wife shouts it when it obviously had nothing to do with the matter at hand...or maybe it just happened so many times that it's just a blur now.)
But even more than that, just because I don't have children I love how everyone assumes that I don't care about them. Sure, I don't have the many personal experiances that parents do but lets get a grip here people. Having kids is NOTHING special when you think about it. It's been happening for THOUSANDS of years. My own personal nightmare is having to deal with some hick with the IQ of a speed-bump who gets more respect in a discussion because his condom broke and he now has some whineing brat, and thus is now is a "parent."
Mod me down if you must, but whenever I hear that "save the children" I simply turn away from the argument because rarely are you talking about the real issues anymore.
If/when the code in question does come out they lose their pump and dump. Simple as that.
If the goverment was doing it's job and had a clue about tech they would see right though all the smoke and mirrors that SCO has going on and none of this would really be of any matter. (And other Enron/SCO type co's.)
However, such as it is it's in vogue to screw the public as long as your allready rich enough to matter and contribute to the right slush funds. Ahh, to be alive 500 years from now and read the history books.
Even the average joe went nuts when Intel tried to pass that unique chip thing by. Right now they are dressing up the methods of control in fancy terms like DRM that will "protect" things. In reality they are just trying to do what they have wanted to for years now, control your computer.
However, much like the early attempt by Intel, I think the cartels will get another rude awakeing when users simply won't buy products that broadcast unique ids for services that truely don't require it. Maybe banks and other truely secure sites will but to be honest if my bank feels that they have to go that far I will just do my banking in person. When I go to thinkgeek.com and browse for stuff they will have no right (Not that thinkgeek.com would ever do such a thing...I hope.) to expect me to hand over a unique id just to gain access to their site. That would be the equivlant of being carded when you walked into the Gap.
No, I know that the cartels of media will keep trying to turn computers glorified TVs but even joe sixpack knows when they are being asked to give up too much.
Little late in replying but yes! I actually do know!
I write some short fiction sometimes and it's odd when you think about how people really talk vs how things are written. It also makes you understand why they teach speech and drama, getting up and speaking non stop or not in conversation is not something that you do all the time. (For most ppl.)
I agree. The public often sees inactividy as a sign of weakness. If SCO is allowed to FUD unabatited then they seem to be winning.
I think we need to get some more lawsuits against THEM. Every time Bruce goes off on how he has been wronged in the press the next sentence should be about how another *nix user has brought suit against him.
To those who don't get the refrence, I do believe the orignal poster was trying to give them the "Boss from Office Space." kinda spin on them.
Sigh...
So now the website becomes the centralized tracker server...
Not if we use Freenet, then it's a P2P website! Or better yet, the fact that the website offers starter IPs does not change the fact that without it the app still could fully function. New users would just have to get their starter IPs from some other source.
Enough now! I've proved my point and you know it!
Then how do you know the cache isn't out of date? There are so many modem users out there, or other people that that have dynamic IPs.
Split the database into hunks, have it update on the fly. No one node need handle the whole database, it's P2P right?
And how are you supposed to connect to the first node if there are no centralized nodes? Finding an IP is already too much work for Joe Average.
Have the clients track uptime and determine which clients are nearly always on. Have those clients report back to the apps webpage with a list of starter IPs for new users.
I could, if I thought about it, figure out even more ways that it might work but the point of what I'm saying is that such an app is far from impossable.
Not possible? Maybe not feasable but few things are truely impossable.
How about having each node cache a database of users? With modern bandwidth and compression this can be do-able. Each time your client fires up it scans down it's list of nodes to find an active one and then updates it's list. And then much like other truely P2P apps it would grow more efficent the longer you used it.
However, I personally use IRC. IMing just bugs me for some reason.
All that is required is people who know what they're doing.
You expect far too much from humanity my friend.
You can wipe out several generations of family with a car, but you an also wipe out the savings of generations of family with a computer. That is another extreme example but it can potentially happen.
The question is, how? If I fail to stop for a red light I can cause terrible damage to someone else. If I drive into an oncoming lane I can do the same. Both of these actions are full wrong and preventable by me following the rules that have been setup.
Now, exactly how would I "wipe out the savings of generations of a family?" Is it as easy as deciding to not press a break petal? As easy as shifting a wheel a few degrees to the right or left? Not hardly, I know of NO way that I could bypass the safeguards that have been setup to protect financial institutions with such ease or without forethought.
To bypass such safeguards would require not only special skills and knowledge, but you would also actively know what you were doing during the process. (IE knowledge that you were actively breaking the rules that have been setup.)
Whereas a trojan or virus is designed to infiltrate a persons PC without their knowledge and do things that they have no knowledge of. And in most cases does things that they would not even have the skills to do either.
This whole analogy is flawed and silly.
That you proably made some tech support persons day.
Most support houses have a very strict rule of no hanging up on the customers. (And yeah, paid my dues with SBC, AT&T, and a few other smaller ones.) So when you told the person to hang on they did just that. Meanwhile they didn't have to take any other calls during your time off and were free (Hopefully if they wern't in too bad of a call-center.) to surf the web or play some freecell.
By the time you got back and had calmed down they were also well rested as well and I'm sure quite ready to help you with whatever you wanted!
This shit is trouble, mark my words. The guys at the top of companies don't read slashdot either - keep that in mind.
I whould have agreeded with this before RedHat stepped into the ring and threw down the gauntlet as well. SuSe has pledged alliance as well and as I'm sure everyone knows, it's a bad idea to piss off the Germans.
Yeah, it has been a PITA but I think SCO's days of FUD generation are going to be numbered as the linux community decides in masse that since being nice won't work it's time to get dirty and fight fire with fire.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Agreed. And it sounds like to me, no offence to the original poster, that if your CTO can issue such a statement your investment in Linux must be rather small.
If I had to reinstall my home network to remove Linux it would be a pretty good sized hassle reinstalling and moving all the things I have fine tuned over time to get it back to where it was. On a larger level the issues can only grow.
But since your CEO and CTO are obviously falling prey to SCO's FUD then they must not have a real good understanding of Linux and OSS anyway so I again doubt that you have much Linux there anyway. (If I am wrong, please, feel free to enlighten us as to the actual size of your Linux install and what it is/was doing. And how you mitigated all the systems over to...? [Another detail you left out.])
As soon as users stop caring about their software investments.
But, with the CPU power that that there is now why does this have to be an issue anymore? If AMD can make a chip that is 32 bit backwards compatable why can't there be an inbetween chip that moves us to a new architecture? (Yes yes, I know that having the transistors for a fully backwards compatable architecture and having those for a new architecture is not the same thing but don't tell me that it can't be done.)
And even failing a full hardware solution it's more than possable to recompile even Windows for a diffrent platform and have a Windows issued eumlator which is co-designed by the chip makers so that we can bridge the in-between gap.
No, I think it's more the fact that Intel is greedy and would rather keep pushing it's old tech so that it does not lose any more market share than it allready has to AMD and other smaller co's. If they ever were to get a true monopoly again we might see some real innovation out of them but as long as the focus is on quarterly reports rather than what's really good for computing I doubt much will change.
Rock on Red Hat. Kudos.
Leaving all the arguments of how people pirate music over P2P networks and such there is also the issue of Fair Use with IP.
/. it's no so much about the content but about *controlling* the content. If I can't record and save the big game in a format that makes it conveinent for me they can resell it to me later. If they control the bands that are allowed to play I might not ever know that there are better ones out there. If they control the movies that are being produced (Of course how this will change is much more complicated due to the budgets involved but it's the same basic idea.) they can use shills to say "Must see!" over and over until I am under the impression that I must be missing something.
When dealing with real property it's pretty easy to establish fair use. Does Joe Blow have a right to park on my lawn during the big football game? Nope, thats a pretty clear cut deal there. But what about the big game thats being broadcast and recorded by my TiVo? Even though I don't have any rights to say rebroadcast that game for profit shouldn't I be able to move that TV game from the TiVo in my living room to the one in my bedroom whenever I want? Or archive it for later viewing? Ahhh, now we are getting into murky waters.
Now the courts have allready established long ago that "time shifting" is legal and thus thwarted big medias attempt to stifle fair use but they are relentless, at every turn unless forced not to they will limit fair use with cry's of "piracy!" as their reasons for doing so.
And looking at a larger picture we see why they wish to do so, as has been so often pointed out here on
Bottom line, while many people do pirate IP content that does not mean that there should be no fair use. It's, imo, the cost of doing buissness in IP and if you don't like the risk go find something else to do.
I think one of the major things in issues like this is the speed at which such cases are able to move.
When a persons life is at stake and they face the prospect of losing years of their lives or their very life itself I can understand why the US legal system might tend to seem slow, providing the defandant every opportunity to make sure that they are getting a fair trial.
However, when a reputation is at stake there needs to be either a) a swift resolution (Which I understand might not always be possable.) or b) if a swift resolution appears not to be possable then some sort of gag orders on both parties to prevent them from using the delay to boost stock on false claims, pressure clients to do something based on the outcome of a trial that has not even happened, etc.
Who knows how this would work in practice since IANAL but I agree something needs to be done.
Not sure why this got modded down as Flamebait because I'd have to say it was spot on.
;)
Over time they were early adapters of new tech which made them sometimes superior to the PC lineup, but now they sport many of the mainstream PC features because it was finally realized that to many people cost *does* matter.
As for Intellivisions, I just wish that the Blue Rangers would turn out a emu of Sub Hunt. That was one of my all time fav games. I was deadly with the sub.
While I don't know the #'s, whenever I have had the displeasure of shopping for a cheap ink-jet it always seems to me that while cheap, you are surely getting what you pay for. (A cheap printer.)
Thus, my gut feeling is that they proably are breaking even, if not making a tiny profit, on these cheap-o-ink-jet printers that we are talking about but does that make it ok for them to have a 500% markup on ink carts? (Again, I am not in that part of the biz so I don't know about my #'s but damn they sure do mark up that ink alot.)
If they were doing nominal price markups on ink carts would messy ink refill kits be such an issue?
... And yet, people keep linking to the NYT stories. Why's that?
/. geek.
Good point, but I think one of the main reasons is because it's a landmark type paper. If it's in the NYT it's pretty much guaranteed that a large number of people who still rely on print for their news are reading it.
I, for one, don't read much print anymore but then again I'm a
Don't get me wrong. I'm entirely in favor of a balanced budget and would favor an ammendment that requires it by law--as long as that ammendment considers the entire federal budget and doesn't exempt "non-discretionary" programs.
:)
;), but I do remember him going to battle with congress over what needed to be cut to make the budget balanced. (And even set aside some to try and start paying off the debt.) However...
:)
;) And the cold war was just about over anyway, congress had it's part in spending all the money that eventually bankrupted the Soviets so to give any president all the credit is to ignore our other branch of goverment that does a lot of the work and really should be doing even more a-la no executive orders but thats a whole other issue. Taken all together I think Clinton is just your typical modern American president who gets slammed by current right-wingers beacuse he's the closest target.
The fact is, we could eliminate ALL defense spending and our debt would STILL be growing by over $100 billion per year. If we got rid of all social spending, on the other hand, we'd pay off the national debt in under five years. Until everyone realizes that defense spending is not the primary cause of the debt we're not going to be able to solve it.
I agree, I've actually always been a big proponent of defense spending. It really should be the federal goverments ONLY jobs, but alas, that idea is long gone.
I remember that in the news, too, and I'm not going to spend time to see if that was honestly true or just technically true. But, of course, the budget you sign means little if the reality is different. I can make a budget for my personal finances that shows me with a $100k surplus per year. Of course, it could jsut be wishful thinking.
Well again, and I am not going to check the facts myself either,
Of course, all a balanced budget would do is keep the debt from growing. You need a surplus to bring it down. Which I thought I heard there was, but I sure don't see it reflected in the actual year-to-year record of the U.S. debt. Makes me kind of wonder where all that surplus went.
Well, and this again is just what I'm pieceing together from what I know, the suplus was in the budget and would have went to paying off the debt but much like money in a bank account that you have set aside for say an investment but then when your plans changed and you had to use that money for something else, it never actually made it to your investment account. So, once the new budget took effect that money was basicly gone.
I think the problem most people have with Clinton is that he was kind of a joke and a blatant liar. Now, that could be construed as the "norm" for a politican--but the fact that he is most memorable for "not being as bad as some people" make him out to be just goes to show that he really didn't accomplish anything in his 8 years. Nixon might have been impeached, but he improved relations with China. Reagan is criticized, but he fixed the economy that Carter left him and won the cold war. Bush Sr. led one of the most unified coalitions to kick Iraq out of Kuwait. What did Clinton preside over? Nothing, really. And given that he didn't really do anything, the fact that he was a moral joke and a blatant liar received a lot more attention than would have been the case if he had used his 8 years in office do something worthwhile for the U.S. or the world.
Shrug, while I suppose I should, I really don't care much about some of the presidents that I wasn't alive/old enough to care about. Nixon will always be on my list for starting the WOD for one thing, and Regan, while a consument actor, gets a lot of credit IMO for things that would have happened anyway. People love to say that Clinton didn't "fix" the econ at all but simply stepped into a growing one, but then don't like it when that argument is applied to Reagan. Nor, IMO was the 80's really much of a "growth" econ, unless you count junk bond tradeing as real growth.
Tax cuts are always a good idea, unless you have mega-inflation in which case you can try to take additional money out of circulation if the Fed is unable to do enough by adjusting interest rates. But otherwise, tax cuts will stimulate a sluggish economy and boost a good economy further.
Well, now mind you I'm not trying to flame or anything, but at what point should we then care that the deficit is growing? When it reaches 6,674,178,209,886.86? Or 7,674,178,209,886.86? I mean that intrest payment is just going to get bigger and the tax money we are "saveing" now by lowering taxes will just have to be paid by the next generation. Or should we just never care about it, as you seem to suggest, and allow it to grow unabated?
And while I'm not a great fan of Clinton I'm pretty sure that the budget he signed lowered overall spending. (Thus managing to have a balanced budget for the 1st time in years.)
That's an urban legend started by the Clinton administration and never challenged by the press. Check out the last 50 years of the U.S. debt. The last year I see where the debt went down was in 1960 (Correct me if I missed some more recent year).
While I'll agree that those figures sure do agree with your assment that the debt didn't go down during the Clintion years, it is a fact, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that he did sign a balanced budget. (Which if you will notice was my orignal point.) It would have been some time of course before the deficit actually went down but it was a step in the right direction imo at least.
Again, for the record, I'm no big fan of Clintion. I have a distrust of most politicians as a rule but as far as it goes Clintion was not as bad as some people like to make him out to be.
You had... Clinton
Again, what would you duplicate here? Raising taxes? Raising spending? Military intervention in countries that have nothing to do with our national interest? Sticking smoking devices into young interns? What exactly should Bush duplicate from Clinton's presidency?
Actually, yeah, I personally think any tax cuts when we have a deficit is pretty foolish but hey, thats just me. And while I'm not a great fan of Clinton I'm pretty sure that the budget he signed lowered overall spending. (Thus managing to have a balanced budget for the 1st time in years.)
As for his personal acts, I really could care less about them. Of course the media and right wing had a field day with that but it seemed pretty silly to me. Consdiering we have had a cross dressing president before, one that actually has an active sex life does little to bother me.