OK, calm down and let's walk through it here. I'm actually kind of curious if you can face the truth.
The ACLU was never about neglect.
Very few people intend to cause harm. The ACLU is the poster-child for "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". I don't doubt the good intentions of the ACLU, but they cause immeasurable damage.
Service were supposed to be provided that never were.
Exactly what are these "magic" services that don't exist? The ACLU made sure that mentally ill people could not be held if they didn't want to be, unless they were an actual danger to people (and even then it's hard to keep them). So if a mentally ill person -- who are usually not in the position to make decisions about themselves -- does not want to take advantage of the services that exist, or doesn't want to take their medication, then what are we supposed to do?
A compassionate society would take these people off the streets, make sure they get the right care, and do what's best for them. But the ACLU made sure that we couldn't do that, since the "rights" of the mentally ill apparently include the right to BE mentally ill and waste away on the street.
And spending on social programs is NOTHING - NOTHING today, comparing to the fetish of weapons and gorging of civil libreties by the police state.
Now, now, at least look up the numbers so you don't look completely ignorant. Let's examine the 2002 budget:
Total budget: 2,052 billion
Defense spending: $336 billion (yes, only 16.4%. Not exactly a "fetish of weapons")
Social spending: $824 billion plus a slew of other stuff. Breakdown:
Social Security: $456 B
Medicare: $223 B
Medicaid: $145 B
Other Mandatory: $310 (not included in total, but there are a lot of social programs in here). I couldn't find a straight "welfare" number, but you know that's huge.
The biggest receiver of welfare today are the megacorps getting away with raiding the treasury, tax breaks to the rich, and subsidies to the war machines.
Uh, no. First of all, there's no such thing as "corporate welfare". You are allowing yourself to be a tool of the socialists. "Corporate welfare" is allowing people to keep more of THEIR money, rather than give it to the government. The government has no money -- they only have money at the permission of the people. A subtle but critical point.
Second of all, when you look at the amount we spend on social programs, you see that it's completely absurd that corporate tax breaks (which create jobs, by the way) are even in the same ball park.
1980 started with a public debt less then a trillion dollars. Reagan/Bush left it over 3 trillion and raising.
Ah yes, the Democrat's Big Lie that they always pull out. Let's review the facts:
a) The Democrats controlled the congress, and therefore controlled the budget. The are solely responsible for the deficits.
b) Tax cuts. The revenues to the government after the tax cuts nearly DOUBLED because of the economic expansion. So where did the money go? That's right -- your buddies the Democrats spent it all, and much, much more.
Now, I will blame Reagan for not going to war with the Democrats over their orgy of spending. Of course, look what happened to Bush when he tried it... the Dems let the government shut down rather than bring the budget under control.
Don't fucking piss on my leg and tell me it is raining!!!!!!!!
You don't specify what you need the military for, in an exploratory endeavour. I can't actually believe one can suppose military actions to be a need for exploration. Military force is the only option left.
Sorry, you misunderstood. My point is not that we need the military for exploration, but that we need the military to keep the world in (relative) peace. Without the (particularly US) military, the unstable wacko leaders would aggressively pursue policies of expansion. There's a reason that the world has had (relative) peace for the last 50 years. You think human nature has changed that much since then?
So, since other countries are not democracies, we should land there, tear the country apart and impose a democracy on the people.
If we did that, then it wouldn't take 100+ years, now wouldn't it? Actually, probably the greatest thing we could do for the world would be to rip apart a lot of countries and remake them. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
What I find amusing is trying to find where in my post you decided I was advocating that. Nah, you're not someone who reads their own biases into things. Nah.
So does that mean that her trauma caused me to remember things that happened while still in the womb?
It's more likely that you just coincidently dreamed or imagined a white car somewhat like your mother's car, and she picked up on the coincidence. Even if you "remembered" some details, it's more likely that both of you just "fuzzed" your memories until they matched.
I mean, there's not much of a mechanism that would account for something like this. Occams Razor, etc.
I'm not doubting your story necessarily, but it might be that the story was told to you over and over until you imagined a memory of it happening. Or it might even just be a "memory of a memory". One year old would be pretty unusual to remember something, even something tramatic. And human memory is notoriously "flexible".
What's you're earliest analytical memory? My earliest memory is probably moving into my new house, which was probably around 4 years old.
On the other hand, my first memory where I figured out something by myself is when I turned 5 -- and I remember distinctly realizing that my age was the same as the number of members of my family.
Of course, this is an easy one to tie to a date because of the specifics of the thought. Others probably don't have memories that are that easy to date. But anyone have any other examples out there?
I've heard this before, and given how low minimum wage is (much, much lower in real dollars than when the law was first enacted) I have to say I'm skeptical. Evidence, please.
Example? Guess why there are no ushers in movie theatres anymore, nor anyone washing your windows at gas stations. Teenagers used to do those jobs for low wages. But who is going to hire people for those jobs for minimum wage, plus unemployment insurance, plus matched social security?
Miles Locker, attorney for the California labor commissioner, said it's against the state labor code for employers to offer stock options as compensation if they're not paying workers at least the minimum wage. All workers in California must be paid at least $6.75 an hour, plus any applicable overtime. He said it doesn't matter if the worker has agreed to work for less.
This is why I hate government interference in the economy. I once worked for a company and developed their product for free, in exchange for future consideration. This was probably illegal in California, but OH MY GOD I did it anyway. It eventually turned into a full-time employment and a really sweet royalty agreement.
If I had followed my oh-so-compassionate government and not allowed myself to be "exploited", I wouldn't have earned a pretty good pile of money.
Obviously that's not the norm and not what the minimum wage is intended for, but "unintended consequences" are what happen when the government screws with things. Of course, let's not even get into how many poor people are locked out of any job at all because of minimum wage...
Doesn't anyone else think it's a bit stupid that nations spend so much money on weapons/military, just to cause that extra human suffering that makes life so grand... while we pass up the opportunity to explore what is undoubtedly the most fascinating and wonderful thing out there: space.
Nope, not stupid at all. It's the spending on the military that gives us the freedom to be explorers. Without the (U.S.) military, we would quickly fall from civilization to barbarism.
Maybe someday when all countries are stable democracies we won't need the military anymore, but that ain't gonna happen this century. Maybe next century.
Sending people into space is a complete waste of money and resources at this point. We should take up manned missions when space is so cheap that it just doesn't make sense to send equipment up there without them.
It's fundamentally different now than in the 60s. In the 60s, space was a challenge -- sending men to the moon would be the greatest accomplishment in all history. We simply didn't know if it was possible or not.
But now? Big f'ing deal. Does anyone have any doubt that with enough time and money it's trivial to go to Mars? I mean, not "trivial", but certainly not a "grand question of mankind". It's just an engineering question at this point.
You mean the ACLU era. They are the ones that got the mentally ill dumped on the street.
then the rollback of social services.
Social services have never been rolled back. Ever. Now, the rate of increase has been reduced at certain points... which the lovely democrats called "cutting" the budgets. Yes, they flat out lied.
America has never seen hoards of homeless like we have now - including during the depression of the 30's.
Funny how that works. The more the government spends on social programs, the worse the problem gets.
Actually, the primary difference between the 30s and now are cheap, unbelievably addicting drugs. There is more than enough shelter beds and food for the homeless -- they choose to live on the street.
The results were again shocking. She finished the Red Hat installation with no sweat, but got stuck with Windows ME
OK, I'm going to call bullshit here, if not f'ing bullshit. I want details if I'm going to believe this. You're trying to tell me that the five or so clicks of installing Windows was more confusing that having to go through the partition setup in Linux that it makes you go through? Maybe she just clicked "do the default", but she obviously had no clue what she was clicking, versus Windows which just does it invisibly.
So explain what was so frustrating about Windows. Clicking the timezone was too complicated?
What part of "applications" doesn't the press (or many on Slashdot) understand? Are there magically going to appear applications that will compete with the commercial ones? If all you do is browse the web or get e-mail, then yes, Linux is viable. But that is a much smaller market than most advocates want to admit. And even if someone thinks that's all they want, most are not going to go the "oddball" route "just in case".
Once again: people use applications, not operating systems. When Linux gets decent user applications, then it will be viable on the desktop.
P.S. I'm talking about user, desktop application. Please save your comments about server apps or programming languages.
It's better than the SF art scene, where nobody tells artists when they suck, and they continue doing bad art for decades.
You know, I actually have more respect for a bad artist who probably knows in their heart that they're bad, but continues trying, than some flashy idiot who shows up at Burning Man to prance around in tin foil to somehow demonstrate that they're on a higher plane of artistic existence. At least the bad artist is about the bad art, rather than trying to be about "being a cool artist".
Now imagine a bunch of freaks and weirdos getting together with a bunch of junk, taking drugs, and going out of their way to prove themselves "more artistic than thou". Then watch as they try and do as many oddball things as possible to desperately cling to the notion that their meaningless lives have some sort of purpose. Hey, if you can't have a purpose that is actually productive, at least you can have an anti-purpose that tries to demonstrate to the world how "cool" you are.
Most teenagers go through this phase (e.g., Goths), and grow out of it. It's really pathetic when they don't.
BeOS seemed to always target the wrong audience and kept switching goals and therefore ended up being nothing to no-one.
And exactly what market should they have targeted? They kept switching markets because every market kept slamming the door in their face.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: people don't buy operating systems, they buy applications. Exactly what did BeOS provide for an application that another operating system couldn't? Where was the "killer app" that would drive the market to BeOS?
Before we get a million posts about how Microsoft is going to start launching lawsuits, it's worth pointing out that Microsoft has zero history of using lawsuits as a weapon. You'll note that Wine, Samba and a million Windows lookalikes already exist.
And no, the Lindows thing has nothing to do with killing Lindows. That's a legitimate trademark infringement. You may not agree with it, but it's not a nuisance suit. Personally, I wish Lindows would just find another name. That name sucks (but I digress).
If you want true Lawsuit Evil, look at Apple, but Microsoft is clean on this issue.
I would be curious to discover what their choices would be if given alternatives.
I would imagine that people would tend to choose the most "goodies" for the least "cost", cost in this case being defined as anything that distracts them from the "goodies". I doubt that most people would go out of their way to watch advertising, although infomercials and shopping channels do give some evidence that there are some people who will watch solid advertising if it's dressed up enough.:)
Your factoid re: magazine cards was very informative and suggests that you're more informed than I am about marketing issues.
To tell you the truth, that knowledge is probably 10-15+ years old and comes from something I vaguely remember reading. Something along the lines of an article asking the question "why do magazines have drop-out cards when everyone hates them" or something. It was so long ago that I don't remember, but it just stuck in my mind as a prototypical example that effective marketing isn't always about making everybody happy.
So, what would those questions prove to you? The question isn't whether people would prefer no advertising, the question is whether advertising works (why anyone would even question that is beyond my comprehension, but moving on...)
Here's an interesting factoid along these lines. You know those drop out cards in magazines that everyone despises? I hate them, you hate them, everyone hates them. So why do magazine publishers go out of their way to piss us off?
Because they work.
The return rate on drop out cards is approximately twice what glue-in cards are, something like 4% return versus 2% return.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, look what happened to Bush when he tried it... the Dems let the government shut down rather than bring the budget under control.
Oops, my mistake. That was Clinton and the Republican congress.
DAMN YOU AND YOUR LIES!!!!!
OK, calm down and let's walk through it here. I'm actually kind of curious if you can face the truth.
The ACLU was never about neglect.
Very few people intend to cause harm. The ACLU is the poster-child for "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". I don't doubt the good intentions of the ACLU, but they cause immeasurable damage.
Service were supposed to be provided that never were.
Exactly what are these "magic" services that don't exist? The ACLU made sure that mentally ill people could not be held if they didn't want to be, unless they were an actual danger to people (and even then it's hard to keep them). So if a mentally ill person -- who are usually not in the position to make decisions about themselves -- does not want to take advantage of the services that exist, or doesn't want to take their medication, then what are we supposed to do?
A compassionate society would take these people off the streets, make sure they get the right care, and do what's best for them. But the ACLU made sure that we couldn't do that, since the "rights" of the mentally ill apparently include the right to BE mentally ill and waste away on the street.
And spending on social programs is NOTHING - NOTHING today, comparing to the fetish of weapons and gorging of civil libreties by the police state.
Now, now, at least look up the numbers so you don't look completely ignorant. Let's examine the 2002 budget:
Total budget: 2,052 billion
Defense spending: $336 billion (yes, only 16.4%. Not exactly a "fetish of weapons")
Social spending: $824 billion plus a slew of other stuff. Breakdown:
The biggest receiver of welfare today are the megacorps getting away with raiding the treasury, tax breaks to the rich, and subsidies to the war machines.
Uh, no. First of all, there's no such thing as "corporate welfare". You are allowing yourself to be a tool of the socialists. "Corporate welfare" is allowing people to keep more of THEIR money, rather than give it to the government. The government has no money -- they only have money at the permission of the people. A subtle but critical point.
Second of all, when you look at the amount we spend on social programs, you see that it's completely absurd that corporate tax breaks (which create jobs, by the way) are even in the same ball park.
1980 started with a public debt less then a trillion dollars. Reagan/Bush left it over 3 trillion and raising.
Ah yes, the Democrat's Big Lie that they always pull out. Let's review the facts:
a) The Democrats controlled the congress, and therefore controlled the budget. The are solely responsible for the deficits.
b) Tax cuts. The revenues to the government after the tax cuts nearly DOUBLED because of the economic expansion. So where did the money go? That's right -- your buddies the Democrats spent it all, and much, much more.
Now, I will blame Reagan for not going to war with the Democrats over their orgy of spending. Of course, look what happened to Bush when he tried it... the Dems let the government shut down rather than bring the budget under control.
Don't fucking piss on my leg and tell me it is raining!!!!!!!!
It's raining. Can you handle the truth?
You don't specify what you need the military for, in an exploratory endeavour. I can't actually believe one can suppose military actions to be a need for exploration. Military force is the only option left.
Sorry, you misunderstood. My point is not that we need the military for exploration, but that we need the military to keep the world in (relative) peace. Without the (particularly US) military, the unstable wacko leaders would aggressively pursue policies of expansion. There's a reason that the world has had (relative) peace for the last 50 years. You think human nature has changed that much since then?
So, since other countries are not democracies, we should land there, tear the country apart and impose a democracy on the people.
If we did that, then it wouldn't take 100+ years, now wouldn't it? Actually, probably the greatest thing we could do for the world would be to rip apart a lot of countries and remake them. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
What I find amusing is trying to find where in my post you decided I was advocating that. Nah, you're not someone who reads their own biases into things. Nah.
Hey Chomsky, is that you?
So does that mean that her trauma caused me to remember things that happened while still in the womb?
It's more likely that you just coincidently dreamed or imagined a white car somewhat like your mother's car, and she picked up on the coincidence. Even if you "remembered" some details, it's more likely that both of you just "fuzzed" your memories until they matched.
I mean, there's not much of a mechanism that would account for something like this. Occams Razor, etc.
I'm not doubting your story necessarily, but it might be that the story was told to you over and over until you imagined a memory of it happening. Or it might even just be a "memory of a memory". One year old would be pretty unusual to remember something, even something tramatic. And human memory is notoriously "flexible".
What's you're earliest analytical memory? My earliest memory is probably moving into my new house, which was probably around 4 years old.
On the other hand, my first memory where I figured out something by myself is when I turned 5 -- and I remember distinctly realizing that my age was the same as the number of members of my family.
Of course, this is an easy one to tie to a date because of the specifics of the thought. Others probably don't have memories that are that easy to date. But anyone have any other examples out there?
I've heard this before, and given how low minimum wage is (much, much lower in real dollars than when the law was first enacted) I have to say I'm skeptical. Evidence, please.
Example? Guess why there are no ushers in movie theatres anymore, nor anyone washing your windows at gas stations. Teenagers used to do those jobs for low wages. But who is going to hire people for those jobs for minimum wage, plus unemployment insurance, plus matched social security?
Miles Locker, attorney for the California labor commissioner, said it's against the state labor code for employers to offer stock options as compensation if they're not paying workers at least the minimum wage. All workers in California must be paid at least $6.75 an hour, plus any applicable overtime. He said it doesn't matter if the worker has agreed to work for less.
This is why I hate government interference in the economy. I once worked for a company and developed their product for free, in exchange for future consideration. This was probably illegal in California, but OH MY GOD I did it anyway. It eventually turned into a full-time employment and a really sweet royalty agreement.
If I had followed my oh-so-compassionate government and not allowed myself to be "exploited", I wouldn't have earned a pretty good pile of money.
Obviously that's not the norm and not what the minimum wage is intended for, but "unintended consequences" are what happen when the government screws with things. Of course, let's not even get into how many poor people are locked out of any job at all because of minimum wage...
Doesn't anyone else think it's a bit stupid that nations spend so much money on weapons/military, just to cause that extra human suffering that makes life so grand... while we pass up the opportunity to explore what is undoubtedly the most fascinating and wonderful thing out there: space.
Nope, not stupid at all. It's the spending on the military that gives us the freedom to be explorers. Without the (U.S.) military, we would quickly fall from civilization to barbarism.
Maybe someday when all countries are stable democracies we won't need the military anymore, but that ain't gonna happen this century. Maybe next century.
Sending people into space is a complete waste of money and resources at this point. We should take up manned missions when space is so cheap that it just doesn't make sense to send equipment up there without them.
It's fundamentally different now than in the 60s. In the 60s, space was a challenge -- sending men to the moon would be the greatest accomplishment in all history. We simply didn't know if it was possible or not.
But now? Big f'ing deal. Does anyone have any doubt that with enough time and money it's trivial to go to Mars? I mean, not "trivial", but certainly not a "grand question of mankind". It's just an engineering question at this point.
It all got insane during the Reagan era.
You mean the ACLU era. They are the ones that got the mentally ill dumped on the street.
then the rollback of social services.
Social services have never been rolled back. Ever. Now, the rate of increase has been reduced at certain points... which the lovely democrats called "cutting" the budgets. Yes, they flat out lied.
America has never seen hoards of homeless like we have now - including during the depression of the 30's.
Funny how that works. The more the government spends on social programs, the worse the problem gets.
Actually, the primary difference between the 30s and now are cheap, unbelievably addicting drugs. There is more than enough shelter beds and food for the homeless -- they choose to live on the street.
Yet I'm sure you use the invetion of a man named Crapper everyday...
Urban legend.
The results were again shocking. She finished the Red Hat installation with no sweat, but got stuck with Windows ME
OK, I'm going to call bullshit here, if not f'ing bullshit. I want details if I'm going to believe this. You're trying to tell me that the five or so clicks of installing Windows was more confusing that having to go through the partition setup in Linux that it makes you go through? Maybe she just clicked "do the default", but she obviously had no clue what she was clicking, versus Windows which just does it invisibly.
So explain what was so frustrating about Windows. Clicking the timezone was too complicated?
What part of "applications" doesn't the press (or many on Slashdot) understand? Are there magically going to appear applications that will compete with the commercial ones? If all you do is browse the web or get e-mail, then yes, Linux is viable. But that is a much smaller market than most advocates want to admit. And even if someone thinks that's all they want, most are not going to go the "oddball" route "just in case".
Once again: people use applications, not operating systems. When Linux gets decent user applications, then it will be viable on the desktop.
P.S. I'm talking about user, desktop application. Please save your comments about server apps or programming languages.
It's better than the SF art scene, where nobody tells artists when they suck, and they continue doing bad art for decades.
You know, I actually have more respect for a bad artist who probably knows in their heart that they're bad, but continues trying, than some flashy idiot who shows up at Burning Man to prance around in tin foil to somehow demonstrate that they're on a higher plane of artistic existence. At least the bad artist is about the bad art, rather than trying to be about "being a cool artist".
Now imagine a bunch of freaks and weirdos getting together with a bunch of junk, taking drugs, and going out of their way to prove themselves "more artistic than thou". Then watch as they try and do as many oddball things as possible to desperately cling to the notion that their meaningless lives have some sort of purpose. Hey, if you can't have a purpose that is actually productive, at least you can have an anti-purpose that tries to demonstrate to the world how "cool" you are.
Most teenagers go through this phase (e.g., Goths), and grow out of it. It's really pathetic when they don't.
That's a possessive, not a plural (the latter is the subject at hand).
Everything2 has the best comments on the matter that I've come across:
Someone quoting Everything2 as authoritative is the best evidence of the apocalypse that I've come across.
BeOS seemed to always target the wrong audience and kept switching goals and therefore ended up being nothing to no-one.
And exactly what market should they have targeted? They kept switching markets because every market kept slamming the door in their face.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: people don't buy operating systems, they buy applications. Exactly what did BeOS provide for an application that another operating system couldn't? Where was the "killer app" that would drive the market to BeOS?
Before we get a million posts about how Microsoft is going to start launching lawsuits, it's worth pointing out that Microsoft has zero history of using lawsuits as a weapon. You'll note that Wine, Samba and a million Windows lookalikes already exist.
And no, the Lindows thing has nothing to do with killing Lindows. That's a legitimate trademark infringement. You may not agree with it, but it's not a nuisance suit. Personally, I wish Lindows would just find another name. That name sucks (but I digress).
If you want true Lawsuit Evil, look at Apple, but Microsoft is clean on this issue.
That you can fix the brain damage doesn't mean it should have shipped with brain damage.
I would be curious to discover what their choices would be if given alternatives.
I would imagine that people would tend to choose the most "goodies" for the least "cost", cost in this case being defined as anything that distracts them from the "goodies". I doubt that most people would go out of their way to watch advertising, although infomercials and shopping channels do give some evidence that there are some people who will watch solid advertising if it's dressed up enough. :)
Your factoid re: magazine cards was very informative and suggests that you're more informed than I am about marketing issues.
To tell you the truth, that knowledge is probably 10-15+ years old and comes from something I vaguely remember reading. Something along the lines of an article asking the question "why do magazines have drop-out cards when everyone hates them" or something. It was so long ago that I don't remember, but it just stuck in my mind as a prototypical example that effective marketing isn't always about making everybody happy.
So, what would those questions prove to you? The question isn't whether people would prefer no advertising, the question is whether advertising works (why anyone would even question that is beyond my comprehension, but moving on...)
Here's an interesting factoid along these lines. You know those drop out cards in magazines that everyone despises? I hate them, you hate them, everyone hates them. So why do magazine publishers go out of their way to piss us off?
Because they work.
The return rate on drop out cards is approximately twice what glue-in cards are, something like 4% return versus 2% return.